Travelin' South: 3 Reviews and an Interview

Another in my recurring series of book-review-as-memoir

Yes, we are travelin’ south, and we are both back to work and school and real life. I’ll be doing another travel column for Womancake Magazine, so there are still some vacation/boating stories and beautiful photos to come, very soon. “Stand by to stand by,” as Captain Russel says.

The first thing I want to share is a new interview that is one of my all-time favorites. I mentioned before that my short story “Two of a Kind” was going to be published in Good Luck With That, a new anthology from the San Diego writers and Editors Guild (SDWEG). For those of you who have read Honeymoon at Sea, “Two of a Kind” was the short story that I wrote in La Paz—the one that made my friend Jane exclaim, “so you’re a real writer,” an unforgettable line that pretty much changed my life.

I have always liked the story, but never found the perfect home for it—it is not a typical short story, being that it is a little bit supernatural but not in a spooky sci-fi or fantasy way. All the stories in Good Luck With That are written by members of SDWEG so the level of writing should be fairly high. The anthology is a fund-raiser for our local literary guild, so if you are intrigued, please do pre-order a copy now.

The SDWEG decided to conduct interviews with some of the authors whose work appears in the anthology, and mine just was released on YouTube. Janet asks fun questions, and I get to talk about our trip to Mexico, why I became a writer, what I think about editing and writing, and a bunch of other cool topics. I actually enjoyed watching this myself and I think you might find it entertaining. It is just over 40 minutes long, so you can also just listen as the visuals are not too exciting after the first couple minutes. Check out the video interview here.

Speaking of our trips to Mexico and Central America, the first book I want to tell you about is set in Costa Rica, a country we loved visiting, and have considered even moving to one day in the not-too-distant-future. (Or maybe Panama?) At any rate, we enjoyed traveling in Costa Rica in 1990 and the thing I remember the most is how interesting it was to meet and talk with Costa Rican people. We found that most of them spoke good English, and had a lot of interest in hearing our opinion of world affairs, especially as our country had recently invaded Panama, leaving devastation in its wake. (Reminds me of visiting Canada this summer, with everyone asking “what is wrong with your president” and us saying “We have no idea—he’s not our president!”)

The other thing I remember about Costa Rica was the lush jungle growth everywhere, brought to verdant perfection by the warm humidity and the near-constant rain. We would go shopping almost daily and, during a ninety-minute outing to the local stores on foot, we’d get warm, then hot, then drenched by a light warm rain, then eventually we’d get dry and warm again. The coastal setting is so striking—dense jungle that grows right up to gorgeous white sand beaches. And plenty of sandy footpaths that wander up to striking vistas and rable back down again. In any story set there, the country itself—the backcountry, not just postcard-pretty resorts—would need to be front and center.

In her novel, You Could Be Happy Here, author Erin Van Rheenen does just that. She drops her main character Lucy, a single, thirty-something scientist, in the middle of the backcountry on a road leading from a small Costa Rican city out to a remote village, where Lucy once lived with her mother and sister. The story is peopled by Ticos and Ticas (Costa Ricans) and Nicas (Nicaraguans) who we and Lucy soon meet and get to know, but none of these supporting characters turn out to be quite what or who we thought they were.

Van Rheenen deals with the book’s abundant environmental and cultural themes (yes there is a tourist resort and some development woes) in an insightful but not overly heavy way; I think you could be happy with You Could Be Happy Here, whether you’re interested in Costa Rica or prefer armchair travel (Van Rheenen, the author of Moon’s guidebook, Living Abroad in Costa Rica, really knows her stuff). The novel comes out soon, so help out a debut author and pre-order now.

Most of you know that I was once an actress—from my first performance (as the witch in Hansel and Gretel at age 5) to my off-off-Broadway performance as Francine in “The Girl Least Likely” by James Lee Hansen at the West Bank Theater in March of 1989. All of you also know that I was very close with my mother, poet and peace activist Diane Shea, who we lost in 2019. What do these things have in common with the memoir I am reviewing next? Well, quite a lot.

Motion Dazzle: A Memoir of Motherhood, Loss, and Skating on Thin Ice by Jocelyn Jane Cox is the story of a young girl raised by her dynamic and ambitious mom (who was pretty much a single mom even before she was divorced and truly a single mom after that). Cox had an older brother who was even more ambitious, and between him and her (the mom) Cox became a figure skater, performing with her older brother for years. Like my own mom, Cox’s mom is not exactly a stage mother cliche, but they both did hunger for the spotlight in what became a vicarious way. My mom might have been more sensitive to what I actually wanted, but both of these women wanted the best for their daughters—and for them to be the best in their field. That is a lot to live up to, no matter how lovingly the pressure is applied. But her mother was also her closest friend, which is definitely what my mom was to me over many many years.

What I’m saying is that I could have written this paragraph from Motion-Dazzle about me and my mom: Imagine a phone call almost two decades long. The call started when I went away to college in Philadelphia, about forty-five minutes away from where she was in Wilmington, Delaware. It continued through my subsequent moves to Denver, Boston, the New York City suburbs, Manhattan, then back to a different NY suburb. Twenty years of chatting from different states, occasionally interrupted by our respective jobs, by sleep (albeit imperfect on both our parts), and by patches of poor mobile service.

It took me years to find another outlet that made me happy creatively as well as mentally and emotionally, and Cox did the same thing with teaching and training ice skaters, after her long and painful break up with the sport. Luckily both my mom and hers adapted and wholeheartedly supported their daughters in their new careers. And then we both “got to” support our moms, as their caretakers, at the end of their lives. Cox had a child during those final years, which I did not, but I related to the whole turning your life upside-down and taking care of your mom. Maybe you can, too.

If you like to get a little scared while seeing the modern world’s dark side, check out Last Seen, the newest thriller from the always-at-the-top-of-her-game

J.T. Ellison

. I don’t do gore or horror, and this is just the level I like my scary stuff. Eerie, but witty and insightful about modern life, sort of like The Stepford Wives, but much more “ripped from the headlines” in ways too awful to describe. The story, which is set in Virginia and then travels south to Tennessee (you wondered how I was going to tie in my title for this post, didn’t you?) was pretty scary and at the same time felt completely real, which made it even more terrifying. Highly recommend this book; and it’s free right now on KU for those who subscribe.

Well, back to work for me—I’m happily reading the third book in Amanda LaPera’s YA “Desert of Dreams” series for a content and structural edit, and also proofreading her second book in the series before it goes to print. Very much a left brain (language, detail) and right brain (creative, intuitive) back and forth switcheroo sort of week.

Hasta pronto!