Two invitations this month
You are cordially invited to dial into my National Association of Memoir Writers teleseminar on Friday Oct 11th! 11 AM PDT / 12 PM MDT / 1 PM CDT / 2 PM EDT
The President of the National Association of Memoir Writers, Linda Joy Myers, will be interviewing me. She has written two memoirs, Song of the Plains and the prize-winning Don’t Call Me Mother as well as The Power of Memoir—How to Write Your Healing Story and a workbook The Journey of Memoir: The Three Stages of Memoir Writing. She coaches writers, and offers teleseminars and workshops nationally.
She has asked me to speak about ways to include history — without losing readers’ attention — when writing a memoir. Not an easy task! This was quite a challenge for me and my outstanding editor, Gigie Hall.
In successive drafts of my book The Importance of Paris, we grappled with how to fold in the history of more than one region — not just Paris, France but also one of its colonies, the Paris of the Middle East, as Beirut, Lebanon was once called.
Like immigrant narratives, expatriate memoirs are becoming their own sub-genre. Since readers are often learning new histories from our firsthand stories, it helps to be skillful in our delivery of the historical facts. This is especially important as readers’ minds may have been politicized at a distance, favoring one side of the narrative or the other.
And since my memoir concerns a time of war and a quest for the truth to help me heal from the trauma caused by war, I had to explain decades of armed conflicts in the Arab world, knowing few readers will have visited the region or studied its history.
Join me for the launch of my memoir
You are also invited to The Book Launch Party on October 27th from 2-4 pm.
Join us for a reading and a question and answer period at the Village at Indian Lake, 191 Table Rock Road, Wakefield, RI 02879. Room holds only 60 so RSVP cynthiafdavidson@gmail.com before we run out of space.
You can buy your copy in person and get it autographed by the author. Makes a wonderful Christmas gift for that special someone who loves Paris. Light refreshments will be provided. You may even win one of the raffle seats to next month’s Raclette Dinner.
Workshop
Our next workshop Would You, Could You, Should You Write A Memoir: The Journey from Inception to Publication is on Sunday December 15th 10AM to 4PM. Last one in 2019, and we only take 8, so reserve your spot soon. $160 includes instruction, and all materials, including unlimited coffee, tea & snacks plus a light lunch. Contact me for more info. Consider this an early Christmas gift, for you or your loved one, especially if 2020 New Year Resolutions include getting your book done!
For 2020 we are forming a Get It Done group. We will meet regularly to hold each other accountable and have fun celebrating each milestone on the way towards achieving our writing goals. For those who need to stay overnight, we have rooms for writers. Introductory rate is $35 per night, which includes the evening meal, and supportive encouragement for those sharing what they wrote around the table after dinner. Here at Hope House we help people recommit to their writing project(s).
Ceremonies
The schedule for the remainder of 2019 ceremonies is: Saturday October 5th then Sunday November 3rd and Saturday December 21st for Winter Solstice. All begin at 10AM. Contact me for details.
