In memoriam

Today, I attended the funeral of my dear friend and fellow author Sloan Addams. She contracted polio when she was a very young girl and survived into her 70s with the harrowing reality of post-polio syndrome and resulting complications.

Despite her gimp status (her words, not mine), she was a world traveler, a mother, a teacher, and a writer of warm, cozy mysteries. She supported my crazy, sexy vampires, and would occasionally complain that I gave her yummy things to read at the times she was not allowed *ahem* intimate conversation. What a compliment!

In memory of Sloan, I am reposting my essay about going to a Turkish bath, dated October 18, 2010.

The hammam is one of the few things in the world that I experienced, but she did not.

Cheers, Sloan.

*** 

Photo from www.istanbul-turismo.com

When I was in Istanbul, the one place I knew I had to visit was a hammam. I went to one of the most famous Hamams in the world - Cagaloglu Hamami.

This is the description I sent my fellow author, Sloan Addams. She calls me Wonder Woman. I call her Power Girl.

***

Power Girl! I have come to the conclusion that the hamam is the cure for all the world's ills.

First, some nice lady pours hot water all over you as you sit on a heated marble floor. Then you get to lay there in wet, fabulous bliss. She comes in with soap and a exfoliating mitt and scrubs you all over, front and back, so that your skin is incredibly smooth and clean. This is not fast, either. It's complete relaxation.

You get rinsed by more hot, clean water splashed over you. This feels like heaven.

Then you realize that heaven is even cooler than you thought, because you get a massage with the soap suds. The soap and water is so thick and bubbly that your massage is slick and relaxes every damn part of yourself.

Finally, she washes your hair.

At the end, you ooze your boneless way back to your little room and try to remember how to put on clothes.

I bought some of the soap and one of the mitts there, so I can give myself a cheater's hamam here at home. No heated marble floors, you know. ;)

***
Her response?



Wonder Woman - I just turned green.

2013 Resolutions: The literary life and me

My favorite book on writing, bar none, is Making a Literary Life, by Elizabeth See. The section she wrote on rejection is life changing. I wanted to discuss it today, but I’d have to quote the whole damn thing, and that was way too much copyright infringement, even for me.

Instead, I’m going to discuss her chapter on making the magic, going beyond the words on the page, and into creating the life that makes you shine.

I can’t say it better than she does, so here it is.

Any philanthropist knows that the more money she gives, the more she’ll get back; any volunteer knows that hour spent in a good cause give us golden time. We all know, at some level, that stinginess doesn’t work.

If you start giving away what you want, you give the universe a nudge – you get the cosmic Jell-O trembling.

If you feel you don’t have enough love in your life (no writer, art6ist, human being can exist without love), don’t go around trying to steal it at low bars from impressionable young men and women: Try giving it away, in a blaze of affection, compliments and hugs. Start with your musty old grandma, your lumpy wife, your doltish dad: hugs and compliments- because you have so much love in your bank that you can afford to give it away, lavishly and recklessly.

So what are you waiting for? The best part of the literary and creative life is giving away what you most want. 

My books:

Dracula’s Secret

Dracula’s Desires

Dracula Unleashed

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