Elise Frances Miller's Blog: From Reader to Writer to Author - Sorting out the Journey

My novel, The Berkeley Girl, In Paris 1968, won the 2017 Distinguished Favorites award in Historical Fiction, offered by the Independent Press Awards! Thanks to Tory Hartmann from Sand Hill Review Press for submitting my work. Look for my sequel coming out in Sept., The Berkeley Girl: Rendezvous in London and other Stories of the 1960s.

Congratulations to the other California Writers Club, San Francisco Peninsula branch, and Sand Hill Review Press authors, who won 2017 Independent Press Awards and Distinguished Favorites! There were 5 winners from Sand Hill Review Press, 4 from CWC, in a range of genre categories, quite achievement for Tory Hartmann and her publishing company.

IPA Award Winners were: Laurel Anne Hill, The Engine Woman's Light; Tory Hartmann, First Friday: How Virginity Almost Killed Me; and Monsignor Harry G. Schlitt, I'll Never Tell: Odyssey of a Rock & Roll Priest.

Distinguished Favorites were: James Hanna, A Second, Less Capable Head: And Other Rogue Stories in the genre of Anthology. And me! Elise Frances Miller, for The Berkeley Girl, in Paris 1968.

My old, separate website and blog have been transformed into a new, combined Wordpress Premium website with blog.

Read my first blog on the new site at http://elisefrances miller.com/blog about why I made the change and what’s up ahead in my writing and reading life! Then take a moment to look through the revised Menu items for the website. Please note and bookmark the new url/web addresses.

If you missed my historical novel, A TIME TO CAST AWAY STONES, when it was first released in 2012, now you can read it for $1.99 on Kindle. Don’t miss this promotion provided by publisher Sand Hill Review Press!

On August 23 and 24, click on http://amzn.to/1v9UlFW/.

Read more about the novel and Berkeley and Paris in 1968 at: http://www.elisefmiller.com/

I'm so excited to finally meet some of the 44 authors from all around the country whose powerful poetry and prose were selected for the anthology, Times They Were A-Changing: Women Remember the ’60s & ’70s. My memoir, "My People's Park," won 2nd prize in prose for the contest, and I will be reading from it at the Official Launch Party at Books Inc. in Berkeley, 1760 Fourth St., this Sunday, Sept. 29th.

Given the importance of those tumultuous times which blew the accepted topics of conversation wide open, this book is more than a trip down memory lane. It's an important contribution to understanding that era and how what happens today often refers back to it - as is my novel about Berkeley and Paris in 1968 entitled A Time to Cast Away Stones.

So, don your late 60s garb (if you are so-inclined) this Sunday, Sept. 29 from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. for the Official Launch Party for the anthology. Please join me and other contributing authors reading our eye-witness accounts from those life-changing times! Wine, cheese, light snacks. Raffle and book signings! Live music! Hosted by the editors: Kate Farrell, Linda Joy Myers, Amber Lea Starfire.

http://www.timestheywereachanging.com...

Now you can read my blog post on my process for writing personal narrative!
http://www.timestheywereachanging.com...

Thanks to Kate Farrell, Linda Joy Myers and Amber Lea Starfire for creating the contest - and the upcoming anthology of memoir - Times They Were A-Changin': Women Remember the 60s and 70s. I'm honored to have won second prize in Prose out of 265 entries! If this September release is as dynamic and fascinating as the website and Facebook page, it should be a wonderful read and a lasting testament to our youth!

THIS JUST IN -
Best of The Sand Hill Review has been published/edited by Martin F. Sorensen since its inception in 2001. I submitted it to Goodreads with my name as "Contributor" in order to get it up on my Author Program list, and now they list me as the author! Sorry about that, Marty! I did serve as Fiction Editor one year, in 2008, a post subsequently held by James Hanna. This volume contains two of my own short stories and two others that I selected and edited - by Patti Somlo and Tory Hartmann.

Best of The Sand Hill Review presents the best fiction selected from the long run of the Review. It was one of the first literary anthologies for fiction and poetry to be available in both print and online. Stories are by James Hanna, Tory Hartmann, Ray Keifetz, Jim Keim, Bardi Rosman Koodrin, Eva Langston, Charlene Ward Marshall, Elise F. Miller, A. Molotkov, Lisa Meltzer Penn, Tom Sheehan, Christopher Wachlin, b.b. wei, Susan Windsor and others. Published by Sand Hill Review Press, May, 2013.

Thank you to The Times They are A'Changin': Women Remember the 60s and 70s (http://www.timestheywereachanging.com/) for selecting my own very first short memoir, "My People's Park," for 2nd place winner in their writing contest - and for sponsoring the contest and publication of memoirs. Their Facebook page and website are well-conceived and worth checking out! Look for the anthology with my story, coming from She Writes Press in August, 2013.

Other very exciting news! A Time to Cast Away Stones just won Honorable Mention in the Great Northwest Book Festival. That's 4 HMs for 4 festival entries. The others were LA, San Francisco, and Southern California. There were 17 HMs out of hundreds of entries. This feels like an incredible validation of my effort to write about the ordinary people of 1968, challenged by those extraordinary times of political and social change.

For those who missed the plot! A Time to Cast Away Stones is set in Berkeley and Paris in 1968. Janet Magill is sent to Paris to get her away from the antiwar movement. There she runs headlong into the May Revolution. Love, action, and intrigue, but most of all an authentic look - and well-researched so many years later - at the era through which I lived.

Perhaps the greatest validations are the personal emails and reviews I have received. MANY from younger readers who enjoy the history and the romance. But here are two that amazed me - one from a former Vietnam War pilot, another from a former radical with Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)!

From Phillip Litts, Lt Col, USAF, Ret, Vietnam era pilot, and Cal, Class of ’66: I read [this book] cover to cover, non-stop, except for nourishment, but no sleep! Thank you so much for a very thought-provoking, spiritual (Cal spirit as well!)…accurate, nostalgic, and sometimes painful trip down memory lane. In my year over [in Vietnam], I thought that “we” were saving the Vietnamese people from the yoke of Communism. If I thought then as I think now, I might well have joined the ranks of the Aaron Beckers and either taken off for Canada or declared myself a Conscientious Objector….I have come to the realization that NOTHING, save actually (not politically perceived!!) threat to the safety of our country, is worth the life of one American soldier. Reading [this book] has been very cathartic for me, and I have a feeling I’ll be reading it again.

From Barry Willdorf, 60s activist, attorney and novelist:
[Miller] is a fine writer who knows how to tell a good story and tells this one well. The story fills a void in 60′s genre literature. What makes it different from the memoirs and apologias that seem to clutter the 60′s literature landscape is that it is not a narrative about leaders, well-known 60′s personalities or the remnants of activists languishing in lock-ups. It is a novel that has the feel of a roman-á-clef with a focus on members of the rank and file, the faces behind the numbers reported in attendance at those many marches and demonstrations…and it reminds us that these multitudes were not merely mindless “followers”… [Miller] gives us people with their own politics, motives and personal agendas, people whose reasons for being among the crowds varied greatly.

Social Media, Just for Writers is Frances Caballo's book that is well worth the time for writers - seasoned and ingenue, like me.

Frances was kind enough to interview me for her blog, and I think you will find the results instructive - and quite different from all my articles about the 1960s! Thank you, Frances! Here is the link to the interview:

http://www.act-comms.com/writing-publ...

A few months ago, I added 15 books to my Goodreads page on a special “a-time-to-cast-away-stones-readings” Bookshelf. These were books I read while researching background and events for my historical novel, A Time to Cast Away Stones, set in Berkeley and Paris in 1968. Suddenly, arcane nonfiction books like Prague's 200 Days: The Struggle For Democracy In Czechoslovakia by Harry Schwartz was popping up on my Facebook page, my Goodreads author page, and other random online spots—as if I were recommending these or calling them my “favorites”! Schwartz was a basic resource for the Czechoslovak part of my novel, just as Daniel Singer’s Prelude to Revolution and Charles Benedetti’s An American Ordeal: The Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Era were go-to scholarly works for the French and U.S. parts of my story, respectively.

Back to Goodreads. I began to regret creating that Bookshelf. After all, I had already made these “Selected Readings” available, both on my website and in the novel’s “Reader’s Guide.”

Attention Goodreads friends: only the need to delve deeply into the events of 1968, especially in Berkeley, Paris and Prague, could motivate a reader to take up these nonfiction studies. The “Selected Readings” are only a small part of my research. There were newspaper and magazine clippings, pamphlets, brochures, monographs and journals displayed by radical tablers from Sproul Placa to the Sorbonne Courtyard. Many works were out of print, others later became available on the Internet. Why did I conduct this meticulous study, spending many hours over many years haunting used and antiquarian bookshelves and the library at the University of California at Berkeley?

In 1995, my mother found a cache of letters that I had written during my college years. Among them were what amounted to a 50-page, single-spaced “diary,” all written on crackling thin onion skin stationery or aerograms, which I had written to my parents from Europe in 1968. Re-reading those letters, my interest re-ignited in the American civil rights and anti-war movements and concurrent European protests. I sought details about the scenes and decisions behind the events which I had witnessed, and answers to questions about my own emotional and intellectual growth during that heady period.

Although I found many nonfiction accounts of events, there was little fiction. And although the fiction is more accessible, it is not for everyone. All of it is highly-charged and political, authors taking a side and sticking by it. Most of the time, as with my favorites—Ferlinghetti and Kundera—this makes the stories thrilling. I DO recommend their work! But even in these novels, the viewpoints of the young characters known to be involved in the events of their day were missing. I craved a book that contained a more balanced view – easy to do in fiction, since you can “view” events through the eyes of many different characters. More specifically, I sought characters in their teens and twenties—so I created them myself. If you would like a more complete bibliography, please email me at elisefmiller68 at gmail dot com.

My real recommendations from this Bookshelf? Follow your interests, of course, but besides the beautifully-written novel, In the Days of Love and Rage by beat poet and City Lights founder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, for French history, I would recommend two nonfiction accounts: When Poetry Ruled the Streets: The French May Events of 1968 by Andrew Feenberg and the volume of archival photos of the May Revolution, Protest in Paris, 1968 by Serge Hambourg. For readers interested in learning more about Berkeley in the 60s, my highest recommendation goes to the readable Berkeley at War: The 1960s by W.J. Borabaugh. Finally, for an overall account, if you don’t mind the editorial comments, read 1968: The Year that Rocked the World by Mark Kurlansky a view of how that was a pivotal political year all over the world.

And of course, don’t miss the authentic experience of well-researched history through the eyes of young and engaged fictional characters in A Time to Cast Away Stones by yours truly.

For many years, I’ve been attending various Litquake events, including the infamous Lit Crawl on the festival’s final night. Each year, I would meet up with friends from the San Francisco Writers Workshop – either as presenters or, more usually, as fellow-carousers. I was thrilled that we had a critical mass of hardworking writers and avid readers to support such a citywide event, and as a member of both groups, I had high hopes that one day I would shift my status from onlooker to presenter. This year, my novel and stories were published, and this was the year it was finally going to happen.

My short fiction, “Playing with the Rules,” about a homeless jazz fan who escapes the system and makes it to the Fillmore St. Jazz Festival, was among those to be read at the Lit Crawl with others from the anthology, Fault Zone: Stepping Up to the Edge. I was proud to stand among my talented colleagues from the SF/Peninsula California Writers Club, and pleased especially, after all my appearances in conjunction with my novel, to be able to show my range with short fiction in a current setting (not late 1960s!).

And then, I missed it. A nasty viral infection, high fever and a hacking cough kept me away. Thanks to my friend and colleague, Carole Bumpus, for reading so adeptly from my work. And thanks to my husband Jay Miller for attending and taking materials for my novel, A Time to Cast Away Stones.

Ego. When I am writing, I am as far from ego as I can get. I am not even inhabiting the “I,” but rather, other people, each with their own voice and set of problems. But once the work is published, ego takes over, despite my best intentions. Right from the launch party for Stones, I have thoroughly enjoyed speaking to groups about the book and – to be honest – myself. I enjoyed the faces, the book covers spied in their laps, the rapt attention, and especially, telling my story as if every one in front of me were an old friend. People listen and then ask great questions. Many of them require me to seek my own story in the crazy quilt of fact and fiction. And there has been at least one or two brand new questions with each appearance, delivered emotionally, inquisitively or belligerently. I feel at home with them all. I’ve asked them of myself.

Ego plays its part. I am not only pinching myself but patting myself on the back. But since failing to make it to the Lit Crawl, I have been searching for something else I know is at stake. And here is what I have come up with. After so many years “being” other people, and being alone during the creative process, being a published author still does not feel real. I have to remind myself that the ideas and beings that were in my head are no longer private, but public, very very public. If I had been able to read at Lit Crawl, I would have witnessed uptight Sandra and darling, feisty Trina creeping out of my head and into the minds of others. The looks on the faces of an audience – the public – would feel like a new birth for Sandra and Trina, and a kind of new freedom for me.