I’ve enjoyed the segments where Oprah discusses her favorite things. Some her favorites have become mine. So, I got to thinking about all the special things I’ve come across during my travels through life (of which shopping is a big part), and decided to add a “Favorite Things” category to my blog.

Today is my first entry, and I’m happy to introduce you to wonderful, creamy, totally natural, and beautifully handmade soaps!

This is a photo I took of my bathroom vanity, and the three soaps featured were gifts from a gal I met via social networking. She made them! Well, all I can say is they are wonderful soaps. I love them.  To my surprise (and delight), she has just put up a website and is offering her handmade soaps for sale, so I wanted to share her information here so you can enjoy these beautiful soaps for yourself. She makes many different soaps and below are just a few pictures of her creative talents. To see the entire line, please visit the ENCHANTED BATH.

Cherry Almond

Goldfish Soap

(How cute is this?!)

All the soaps are beautifully done and are fantastic gifts.

I have never met the gal that started this soap company, nor is there any kind of business connection between us. I simply love her soaps and wanted to share them here.

ENJOY!

There’s a distinct light in Marta’s beautiful eyes, and that light comes from deep within.  Marta is youthful in years but she’s an “old soul”—and by that I mean she has depth of heart and understanding, and a lightness of spirit. In these times where tales of vampires and witches have over-saturated the children’s book market, Marta turns the tables and brings us a breath of fresh air and old world charm with her poems and stories of gentler, simpler times—times when the imagination was sparked by visiting nature, playing with animals, and spending time with older family members. Marta’s work is lovely and evokes a similar feel to that of the late Eugene Field. It is her memories of childhood and her love of all creatures that shine from her prose.

Marta is a wonderful friend and an incredibly talented writer. In celebration to her newly published book Wee Three, I asked her if she would be willing to stop by Brava, and I’m so happy that she said yes!  Please join me in welcoming Marta as she shares her story.

How Wee Three began …

My mother was raised in and around Washington D.C., playing hopscotch in the East Wing of the White House and visiting her great aunts who had lived through the Civil War. Her family was raised to believe that because they had more they owed more to the world. With the onset of World War II her world changed. She fell in love with my father who took her away to Northern Minnesota, yet her attitude was passed down to her children along with the love of words, art, theatre, music and literature.

To my mother it didn’t matter that we had little in the pantry or that our clothes were passed down from a neighbor and then through four or five more children till we got them. Her view was still we had more; we had love, dreams, books, culture, and most of all we had each other. Before each Christmas we would each pick one toy that we still liked and in good condition to give it those less fortunate than we were. On Christmas we would get a new toy and one outfit of new clothes that would be ours first. There were nine of us and I was a shy middle child. I didn’t have a lot of friends, I was prone to daydreaming and making up stories from everything I saw and heard around me.

Sometimes the story would spring from the look of determination on a bugs face as it tried to climb a slippery slope, the antics of a squirrel or from watching our cat. Other times I would imagine life from some period of history that I had read or heard about.  In my daydreams I knew the clothes my people wore, the smell of the perfumes they used and I knew the food they ate. I played and worked with them, and shared in their lives.

Adults often told me to stop daydreaming and go play with my friends. However, I was happier with my books and the imaginary stories that ran through my mind.  I had the joy of making pictures in the clouds, watching nature unfold; life around me was new and beautiful. Each day was an adventure with something new to discover and at night I would record my discoveries and dreams in my journal.

When I write I go to a place deep inside myself. It is a place where I can understand and feel the emotions of my characters and their actions. This allows me to gain a deeper understanding of myself and others.  Words and images have always played in my mind and when I finished writing the story or playing out a particular scenario, I would go on to the next story.  In my mind I can create another set of characters learn their world and discover their story.  I can create a new world and take delight in putting it on paper.

WEE THREE began as a means for me to connect with my grandmother and mother. Through the short verses my grandmother wrote, and the memories my mother shared with me, I was able to span across the generations and see into their childhood hearts and minds.  As a result I rediscovered things about my own childhood that I loved and recaptured the ability to see life with the same joy and wonder that a child does. Taking my grandmother’s verses expanding them, adding my mother’s and my memories, WEE THREE was born.  Often in our society we forget what it is like to be excited by the simple pleasures in life, thus complicating and crowding our lives with “things,” losing that sense of wonder that we are born with.

Remember the small child that has opened his/her presents and after happily playing with them for a few moments picks up the box they came in and plays with it. For in the eyes of a child that box can be many things that all the money and glorious presents cannot. It can become a boat, a house, a horse, or even an airplane.

Who am I? I am a woman who hopes to make a difference in at least one person’s life through my stories and to share discoveries, joy and wonder.  I strive to make my writing span age, gender, species, race and religion and hope those who read my work will find we are more similar than we are different.

Yet “viva la difference” for without those differences we would live in a gray, colorless, tasteless world.

Please visit Marta and learn more about her work Here.

While on a plane returning home from Charleston, the people sitting in front of me were discussing their  “Bucket Lists” and it got me thinking. What are the top ten things I would put on my list? I was surprised by what I wrote down …

1. Say no without explaining why.
2. Wear hats more often.
3. Suffer fools less often.
4. Take the long way home.
5. Read to the blind.
6. Take food and toys to the dogs and cats in shelters.
7. Hide loving notes for my husband in unusual places.
8. Organize old photos and place them in albums.
9. Send cards to my friends for no reason.
10. Write a list of my three greatest life-lessons, seal it in a jar, and bury it in my garden. Maybe one day a new gardener will discover it. Maybe it will mean something … or nothing at all.

Sarah Pekkanen is more than a pretty face—way more! She’s smart, witty, and determined. She is also one heck of a storyteller. I’m certain many of you have read her work, but if you haven’t, I highly recommend that you do. And speaking of witty and determined, Sarah is the mother of three young boys, which explains why she wrote part of her novel at Chuck E. Cheese. It’s true! I laugh every time I think of it.

Sarah’s latest novel Skipping A Beat will be launching on February 22nd and I can’t wait to read it. To watch her book trailer is enough to be thoroughly hooked. I asked Sarah if she’d have time to stop in at BRAVA, and I’m so glad that she said yes!  So please help me welcome the delightful and talented Sarah Pekkanen and read how she found her way to becoming a writer again…

~~~

My mother loves to tell the story of the time she kept me out of school so she could bring me into her office for the day. She was in charge of a big meeting, and a constant stream of people kept coming up to her for instructions and advice. My mom later told me she’d exposed me to that day so I would realize women had power in the workplace. She wanted me to know I had the potential to do whatever I wanted.

“When you grow up, do you want to work in an office like me?” she asked as we drove home.

I shook my head firmly. “Nope. I want to stay home and sit on the couch like Daddy.”

My father is a writer, and I figured out early on that it’s a pretty sweet gig.

I began as a newspaper reporter, covering Capitol Hill – an odd choice for a person who has zero interest in politics. All that yelling and favor-trading and posturing! For a peacemaking middle child like myself, it was traumatic. So quietly, on the side, I began to write the kind of feature article I’d always dreamed of penning. It was the story of a congressman from Virginia, whose young daughter had been diagnosed with cancer, and his family’s extraordinary and ultimately successful effort to save her. I spent hours interviewing the congressman’s wife and the little girl’s doctors. My father helped edit the piece before I submitted it to The Washingtonian magazine, and during those hours by his side, I learned more than I did during all of my years reporting on Capitol Hill.

The article was published, and it led me to a dream job at The Baltimore Sun newspaper. They wanted me to write features about ordinary people facing extraordinary situations. For the next eighteen months, I hopscotched the country, reporting on painful but important stories. I wrote about an aimless boy who turned into a hero during the Columbine school shootings, and a female police officer grappling with the aftermath of a car crash – one that she survived, but that claimed the life of her fellow officer and friend. I spent a night in a house that was built atop a graveyard – something the owners discovered after eerie things began happening in the household (it wasn’t the basis for the movie “Poltergeist,” but it could have been).

Then I had a baby boy – a sensitive little guy who refused to take a bottle and cried whenever he left my arms – so I quit the paper to free-lance. Less than two years later, I had another baby boy, and suddenly, I didn’t even have time to shower, let alone write the occasional newspaper article. My husband was working long hours at a new job, and we’d recently moved. Life was pure chaos.

Saying I missed writing doesn’t do the emotion justice. I ached for it. I felt like my best friend had suddenly disappeared, without leaving a forwarding address. But how could I juggle spending as much time as possible with my young boys with an all-consuming journalism job – one that required a long, traffic-snarled daily commute and frequent travel? I couldn’t. But I could reach back into my memory and wrap my hands around an old dream. I could see myself as a child, writing Nancy Drew-style books and short stories on three-ring binder paper and mailing them off to publishers in New York.

So one night when the kids were asleep, I brought a glass of wine to the computer for courage and began to type. A few months later, I had a hundred pages. Then one evening, my family went to visit my husband’s parents for dinner. We came home a few hours later, opened our front door, and stood there in shock as thick gray smoke pored out. Although firefighters managed to save our house, many of our belongings, including our computer, were destroyed.

My family was safe, and even our beloved dog had been out with us, so I couldn’t lament the loss of something as relatively unimportant as my half-finished manuscript. But I was too discouraged to start over. We had to move into a hotel room for a couple of months while our house was repaired and to top it off, my husband contracted pneumonia. Who had time to write? I was scrubbing out sippy cups in the bathtub and racing to the drugstore for medicine and submitting piles of paperwork to our insurance agency. I laughed about it so I wouldn’t cry: Could the fire mean God was an editor, and was telling me what he thought of my book?

A few years later, when my kids began elementary school, I finally had time to unpack the final few boxes of our belongings that had been in storage since the fire. And I discovered a back-up copy of my half-written novel.

It wasn’t bad, I realized.

It wasn’t good enough to get published, but it caught the attention of a literary agent who told me to write something else. So I did. Nine months later, I sent her The Opposite of Me, and she submitted it to editors. She sold my novel about twin sisters who are complete opposites at auction to Atria Books, an imprint of Simon and Schuster. And a week later, my agent sold the rights in Italy and Holland.

A year later, I’d produced a third baby boy and a new manuscript (and you’d better believe I carried a back-up of it on a zip drive attached to my key chain every time I left the house). Atria bought that novel, too – it’s titled Skipping a Beat– and it will hit stores on February 22. It’s the story of a woman whose husband changes into a completely different man after a sudden medical trauma.

I’ve noticed something about my novels: I’m drawn to telling the stories of women who get chances to step into entirely new lives. And I think I know why the theme resonates with me: I’ve been given that chance, too.

Being published is wonderful, but it’s not the part of my journey that reshaped my life. The real shift began with that glass of chardonnay and the blank screen of my computer, on a night when I took a deep breath and began to move my fingers across the keyboard. It was when I found a way to become a writer again.

Please visit Sarah’s website HERE. And, when you click on “THE BOOKS” at the top of her page, you’ll be able to read a sample chapter and watch the book trailer for Skipping A Beat too!

Can you see the intensity in those wise-beyond-her-years eyes? Yes? I thought so. It’s impossible to miss. And that beauty and intensity is immediately evident in Elizabeth Eslami’s writing. She has a gift of drawing her readers into her stories—stories that ask us to dive deep and think. And feel.

From her short stories, to her essays, to her novel, Bone Worship, I have always enjoyed reading Elizabeth’s words. I was hopeful that she’d have time to be a guest here on Brava, and I’m delighted that she said yes!

Please help me welcome Elizabeth and enjoy reading her very personal essay about writing!

Head Above Water

I could tell you I started writing because it felt natural, a water birth, the words slipping out like a thick-limbed infant, and that would be true, up to a point.  The urge to write grew like a fingernail, and I did not question it.  But I can’t explain what happened after, when it was time to pull a story or a book to dry land.  Lay it on the sand, see if it could open its lungs, untangle its lashes, spit the salt from its lips.  See if the thing could survive.

With a water birth, they say the baby knows not to breathe, it even swims a bit, arms and legs wiggling on the current of lost memory. A natural swimmer. There is a theory, universally derided, that some of our ancestors came from the sea instead of the trees, either to escape predation on land or to find food among the kelp and reefs.  That we learned to walk upright to keep our heads above water.  Some nights, struggling to tell a story, this theory doesn’t seem all that far-fetched.  For even if we aren’t natural writers, what else could it mean when the words wash into and pull away from us with lunar force?

Perhaps the God of writers is the moon.

Your story, your book, your poem is a life, whether its origins are benthic or terrestrial. You can call it a child if it helps, though I’m not sure why it would.  It will be dear to you from conception, the germ of it an embryo in your brain. But it is not your child, and that is an important distinction.  Once you expel it, even before it becomes something with fingers and toes, it stops being yours.  Sometimes, yes, it will stay the afternoon with you, squeezing its way into your arms.  You will look around at your family, your friends, and say to everyone, “Isn’t this just the best thing in the world?  Each one of these words was born in a splash.  See how I made this precious life?”

But more often, the child will escape and run to the sea, leaping into rogue waves, diving down among box jellyfish and lionfish, scouring the floor for poisonous crates.  Digging up things you’d prefer left undisturbed.  You can stand at the shore for hours, waving your arms, calling your story back, but when it returns to you, all breathless and sun burned, you won’t recognize it.  Go ahead and yell. Hold tight to its arm.  Remind it of the sacrifices you’ve made, ask it why it disobeyed you, why it isn’t everything you hoped it would be.

When you are finished enumerating your frustrations and thwarted plans, you’ll realize you no more own this thing than you do a stranger in the street.  The very best you can do is dig a big enough hole for it to grow into what it wants, like the tide filling the letters of your name in the sand, erasing them, only to write new words in the contours of dunes half a mile away.

When I write a story, it is a little like looking for the end of the ocean, or catching a clam before it bubbles under the sand.  Which is to say, it almost can’t be done.  And yet it happens, and I am not completely responsible.  I listen to what it tells me, even if it isn’t what I want to hear.

My whole life, no one has ever asked me: How do you write?  Everyone thinks they know, like the baby holding his breath under water.  They ask, how do you get published?  Where do you begin?  How do you find an agent?  How long does it take?   They always imagine a gatekeeper.

“Have I got a story for you,” they say.  Sometimes hundreds of stories, loose, like stray pennies that have slipped into the floorboards. “I should tell you my stories, and you can write them.”

But I can no more write another person’s story than they can record my thoughts or give birth to my child, speak in my voice.  I know it’s scary, I want to say.  But you have to do it yourself.  I’m saying that to all of you now, reading this.  Listen.  Don’t wait.  Just look at the moon and start writing.

How do you write?  If someone asked, I’d take them out to the sea and point to the waves.  One and then another.  One and then another.  Write a word and then another, I’d say.  Keep writing them until you have an ocean.

Keep writing until it’s alive.

Please visit Elizabeth’s website HERE.