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Warming Up: A Novel
fOREWORDINDIES BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD FINALIST
Approaching forty, unemployed but well-off, talented but unknown, functional but depressed, former musical actress Cecilia Morrison reluctantly seeks therapy. Although she once won leading roles, Cecilia now can't bring herself to audition for parts. In the end it's not therapy, but a runaway teenager who changes her life when he cons her out of sixty bucks. Whether at the apex of one's success or just starting out, Warming Up speaks to anyone who's ever wondered, "What's it all about?" or who finds themselves doing something they never thought they'd do.
Warming Up was a short list finalist for the 2011 William Wisdom-William Faulkner Prize for the Novel. Ten percent of the author's proceeds are donated to The Night Ministry, which provides temporary housing, transitional living, and parenting services to Chicago's homeless youth.
Approaching forty, unemployed but well-off, talented but unknown, functional but depressed, former musical actress Cecilia Morrison reluctantly seeks therapy. Although she once won leading roles, Cecilia now can't bring herself to audition for parts. In the end it's not therapy, but a runaway teenager who changes her life when he cons her out of sixty bucks. Whether at the apex of one's success or just starting out, Warming Up speaks to anyone who's ever wondered, "What's it all about?" or who finds themselves doing something they never thought they'd do.
Warming Up was a short list finalist for the 2011 William Wisdom-William Faulkner Prize for the Novel. Ten percent of the author's proceeds are donated to The Night Ministry, which provides temporary housing, transitional living, and parenting services to Chicago's homeless youth.
- GenresContemporary
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 21, 2013
22 people want to read
About the author
Mary Hutchings Reed
19 books17 followersEver since turning 40 a few years ago, Mary has been trying to become harder to introduce, and, at 66, she finds she’s been succeeding. Her conventional resume includes thirty nine years of practicing law, first with Sidley & Austin and then with Winston & Strawn, two of the largest firms in Chicago. She was a partner at both in the advertising, trademark, copyright, entertainment
and sports law areas, and retired February 1, 2015. She continues to write, do community service and pursue hobbies such as golf, sailing, tennis and bridge. Three of Mary's four novels have been ForewordINDIES Book of the Year Awards Fianalists.
Mary was raised in Crystal Lake, Illinois, then a small town forty five miles from Chicago. Her mother was a librarian and her father a PhD in chemical engineering, and that should explain everything. She has one sister, Donna C. Steele, born eleven months and two weeks after her, who skipped first grade so that the “Hutchings girls” were very much like twins—Donna the creative one (the Founder and Artistic Director of Steel Beam Theatre, St. Charles, IL) and Mary the logical one, and that should explain the rest of it!
She attended Prospect High School in Mt. Prospect, Illinois, where she loved being editor-in-chief of the school newspaper and on the speech events team, but was happy to graduate and move on to Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. She is “ever true to Brown” and grateful for lifelong friends she met there, as well as the intellectual encouragement she received from an inspirational faculty. She received both her bachelors (in public policymaking, an interdisciplinary program) and her masters (in economics) in four years, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1973. She then entered Yale Law School (having just missed the Clintons), where she won second prize in the Moot Court of Appeals competition–(“My husband doesn’t really believe in women in law,” one of the judge’s wives told her afterwards)–and chaired the Moot Court Board in her last year. She joined Sidley & Austin in 1976 and was elected to partner in 1983. Winston & Strawn recruited her in 1989 to help start their intellectual property department.
Mary married William R. Reed, an internist, in 1982. They just celebrated twenty five wonderful years together. It’s his fault she’s now a writer. In 1992, Mary took a leave of absence from law to sail from Norfolk, Va. to St. Thomas, U.S.V.I. with Bill in a 32 foot boat. (See Mary’s book, Captain Aunt), which took 22 days and nights. After three storms at sea and a few weeks of recovery at anchor in the Caribbean, Mary resigned her partnership in order to reduce her workload and refocus some of her energy on writing. She began to write every day and to study with Enid Powell in Chicago and Fred Shafer in Evanston. She has attended numerous writing conferences around the country, including
Breadloaf (Middlebury, Vermont), Tin House (Portland, Oregon) and Words and Music (New Orleans).
Mary's fiction has been honored as a finalist in the following competitions: William Wisdom/William Faulkner; Illinois Library Associaation's Soon to Be Famous author Project; Foreword Reviews' IndieFab; Eric Hoffer; Writers' Digest Self-Published, Florida Review Editors' Prize, and many others.
Mary and Bill have a new, smaller sailboat, If, still ocean-worthy, which they occasionally cruise up Lake Michigan and which they hope to take to salt water some time soon.
Mary also believes in community service, and for many years has served on the boards of various nonprofit organizations, including American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, YWCA of Metropolitan Chicago, Off the Street Club and the Chicago Bar Foundation. She was honored as LAF's 2015 "Champion for Justice" by Chicago's Legal Assistance Foundation. She also sits on the board of her longest-standing service involvement, Lawyers for the Creative Arts. Her past three indie novels all benefit causes that Mary is passionate
and sports law areas, and retired February 1, 2015. She continues to write, do community service and pursue hobbies such as golf, sailing, tennis and bridge. Three of Mary's four novels have been ForewordINDIES Book of the Year Awards Fianalists.
Mary was raised in Crystal Lake, Illinois, then a small town forty five miles from Chicago. Her mother was a librarian and her father a PhD in chemical engineering, and that should explain everything. She has one sister, Donna C. Steele, born eleven months and two weeks after her, who skipped first grade so that the “Hutchings girls” were very much like twins—Donna the creative one (the Founder and Artistic Director of Steel Beam Theatre, St. Charles, IL) and Mary the logical one, and that should explain the rest of it!
She attended Prospect High School in Mt. Prospect, Illinois, where she loved being editor-in-chief of the school newspaper and on the speech events team, but was happy to graduate and move on to Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. She is “ever true to Brown” and grateful for lifelong friends she met there, as well as the intellectual encouragement she received from an inspirational faculty. She received both her bachelors (in public policymaking, an interdisciplinary program) and her masters (in economics) in four years, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1973. She then entered Yale Law School (having just missed the Clintons), where she won second prize in the Moot Court of Appeals competition–(“My husband doesn’t really believe in women in law,” one of the judge’s wives told her afterwards)–and chaired the Moot Court Board in her last year. She joined Sidley & Austin in 1976 and was elected to partner in 1983. Winston & Strawn recruited her in 1989 to help start their intellectual property department.
Mary married William R. Reed, an internist, in 1982. They just celebrated twenty five wonderful years together. It’s his fault she’s now a writer. In 1992, Mary took a leave of absence from law to sail from Norfolk, Va. to St. Thomas, U.S.V.I. with Bill in a 32 foot boat. (See Mary’s book, Captain Aunt), which took 22 days and nights. After three storms at sea and a few weeks of recovery at anchor in the Caribbean, Mary resigned her partnership in order to reduce her workload and refocus some of her energy on writing. She began to write every day and to study with Enid Powell in Chicago and Fred Shafer in Evanston. She has attended numerous writing conferences around the country, including
Breadloaf (Middlebury, Vermont), Tin House (Portland, Oregon) and Words and Music (New Orleans).
Mary's fiction has been honored as a finalist in the following competitions: William Wisdom/William Faulkner; Illinois Library Associaation's Soon to Be Famous author Project; Foreword Reviews' IndieFab; Eric Hoffer; Writers' Digest Self-Published, Florida Review Editors' Prize, and many others.
Mary and Bill have a new, smaller sailboat, If, still ocean-worthy, which they occasionally cruise up Lake Michigan and which they hope to take to salt water some time soon.
Mary also believes in community service, and for many years has served on the boards of various nonprofit organizations, including American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, YWCA of Metropolitan Chicago, Off the Street Club and the Chicago Bar Foundation. She was honored as LAF's 2015 "Champion for Justice" by Chicago's Legal Assistance Foundation. She also sits on the board of her longest-standing service involvement, Lawyers for the Creative Arts. Her past three indie novels all benefit causes that Mary is passionate
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 18, 2014
Nice story and good writing.
April 23, 2014
Well written, kept my interest beginning to end.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews