books and writing

Update: The Crystal Ballroom

~ Libby Sommer ~ 9 Comments

the legs of a man and a woman dancing tango

I’ve posted the corrected first proofs of ‘The Crystal Ballroom’ back to Adelaide publisher, Ginninderra Press. Final proofs next step in the publication process. In the meantime, we are putting together reviews for the back cover.

 

I love this one received recently from Jan Cornall, Writer’s Journey:

“Libby Sommer lays bare the foibles of human nature in her finely observed stories of love and loss in the singles dance scene. Brilliantly drawn with wit, compassion and poignancy, the characters you meet in the Crystal Ballroom are sure to remind you of someone -maybe even yourself.”

Jan’s quote gives a good description of the contents of the book. Such a hard thing to do in just a couple of sentences.

Would you, or someone you know, be interested in reading a book about this topic? 

p.s. this picture is not the book cover.

Header image: Creative Commons

First Proofs

~ Libby Sommer ~ 14 Comments

book cover of Dancing Backwards in High Heels by Christine DarcasFirst proofs and mock-up of the cover of my second book, ‘The Crystal Ballroom’ have arrived. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t looking forward to rereading the manuscript. It had been rejected by publishers so many times I’d lost confidence in the story. That is, until Ginninderra Press, a small but prestigious Australian publisher said ‘yes’ in April, 2016. Anyway, I sat myself down yesterday to quietly reread the story and, surprisingly, I liked what I had written. I could see what I was trying to say and the themes I’d woven through it.

The mock-up cover looks great. As good as (or even better than) ‘Dancing Backwards in High Heels’ (pictured here) by Australian author, Christine Darcas published by Hachette in 2009.

La La Land movie poster

And now that the movie ‘La La Land’ has won so many awards, there is a renewed interest in dancing. So my new book may be timely:  the story of the hopes and dreams of the characters who dance at a fictional dance hall in western Sydney.

A couple more months till publication of ‘The Crystal Ballroom’.

Looking good 🙂

the book of longing

~ Libby Sommer ~ 7 Comments

Leonard Cohen's 'Book of Longing' with bird in a tree cover drawing

As the world mourns the death of legendary songwriter and musician Leonard Cohen, his art lives on.

The Hallelujah singer’s death last week sparked a massive outpouring of grief across the internet, from fans and fellow musicians alike, including Beck, Courtney Love, A Tribe Called Quest’s Q-Tip and Nick Cave.

“For many of us, Leonard Cohen was the greatest songwriter of them all. Utterly unique and impossible to imitate, no matter how hard we tried,” Cave wrote.

News of Cohen’s death, coming on the heels of the US presidential election results, was also praised by tweeters as the singer’s last compassionate corrective to hateful political chatter, bringing the world’s attention back to the redeeming beauty of art.

“The date of Leonard Cohen’s death is not a coincidence,” went one widely shared tweet. “He did it so we’d stop talking about an imbecile, and instead focus on poetry.”- Sydney Morning Herald

Leonard Cohen made his name as a poet before he came to worldwide attention as a singer and songwriter.

He wrote the poems in Book of Longing his first book of poetry in more than twenty years during his five-year stay at a Zen monastery on Southern California’s Mount Baldy, and in Los Angeles, Montreal, and Mumbai. This dazzling collection is enhanced by the author’s playful and provocative drawings, which interact in exciting, unexpected ways on the page with poetry that is timeless, meditative, and often darkly humorous. An international sensation, Book of Longing contains all the elements that have brought Cohen’s artistry with language worldwide recognition. – Book Depository

The poems in Book of Longing show the full range of one of the most influential and enigmatic writers of his generation.

The book of longing

I can’t make the hills
The system is shot
I’m living on pills
For which I thank G-d
I followed the course
From chaos to art
Desire the horse
Depression the cart
I sailed like a swan
I sank like a rock
But time is long gone
Past my laughing stock
My page was too white
My ink was too thin
The day wouldn’t write
What the night penciled in
My animal howls
My angel’s upset
But I’m not allowed
A trace of regret
For someone will use
What I couldn’t be
My heart will be hers
Impersonally
She’ll step on the path
She’ll see what I mean
My will cut in half
And freedom between
For less than a second
Our lives will collide
The endless suspended
The door open wide
Then she will be born
To someone like you
What no one has done
She’ll continue to do
I know she is coming
I know she will look
And that is the longing
And this is the book – Leonard Cohen

Who do you think should have won the Nobel Prize for Literature, Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen?

The Writing Life

~ Libby Sommer ~ 6 Comments

Book cover 'The Writing Life' by Annie Dillard

Another of my favourite books on the writing process is The Writing Life by Annie Dillard, a small and passionate guide to the terrain of a writer’s world.

Annie Dillard has written eleven books, including the memoir of her parents, An American Childhood; the Northwest pioneer epic The Living; and the nonfiction narrative Pilgrim at Tinker Creek winner of the 1975 Pullizer Prize.  A gregarious recluse, she is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

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