I’m not going to enter into the year that was conversation. I think it’s too early.
I will say one thing that kept me going this year was being able to read to you in a podcast. In my isolation it was one way I could contribute, if only to help pass the time.
My sister in-law, a very nice, very acerbic Connecticut lady listens to the novel while knitting. She told me the day after Christmas as I was driving, masked up, to deliver a gingerbread cake across town, that she was having trouble with the speed of the delivery.
I panicked. Had I done something wrong posting the recording? Would I be able to fix it? Oh no. I knew the technology was beyond me! I was just about to say, “What did I do wrong?”
When she said, “I get to your tagline, the part where you say, if you’ve enjoyed this story please tell a friend, and I want to shout — f-ck you, b-tch! Where’s the rest of the story! I want to hear the rest of the book!” Except she supplied the necessary vowels to complete the expletives, and I cracked up. I haven’t laughed that hard since before the pandemic.
That’s what I call constructive feedback.
Some of the political and pandemic zeitgeist entered into the reading just because I was writing and recording at the same time. So thank you for listening and know we are coming up to the end of the novel, only three more episodes. I wanted it to last for the duration of this very odd time, it will fall a bit short. We’ll talk, maybe I’ll have to write and record some more chapters to bring us up to date, or perhaps it will be an entirely new story, in a different era, with an entirely new cast of characters…
Hold on, this is just for my friends friends friends friends (I’m leaving so many out, forgive me!) and wonderful readers, excuse the outrageous accents, and Happy New Year:
WONDERFUL COMMENT FROM SISTER IN LAW!!!!!
I WILL GET TO PODCAST SOON NEXT WEEK!!!!
PROMISE CROSS MY HEART!!!!
HAPPY HAPPY NEW YEAR!
XXX
You would love my sister in-law!
Happy New Year!
Here’s looking forward to seeing you in 2021 and xox to you and yours!
What’s not to love about getting on the Normandie?
I looked at the passenger list for the journey from Le Havre to New York for November, 1937. Onboard were the Pommery’s (great grandmother introduced the champagne) and Mrs. Randolph Hearst (the grand dame who started out in vaudeville and caught the eye of stage-door-Johnny Hearst when she was dancing in the footlights at age fourteen and he was 24…they were married six years later.)
On the Eleventh day of Christmas…! I think you should do a whole podcast in the outrageous French accent of the French Taunter (John Cleese) from Monty Python and the Holy Grail but that’s just me!
Christmas is still here and we all need a little light in the dark which is something we thank you for, Susie. I propose to keep the Christmas Spirit glowing long past Twelfth Night, thus we banish the dark and carry light to cast out shadows. Therefore, I wish you a Transcendent Merry Christmas & a Luminous Happy New Year, we will stand against ignorance, dark, despair, and disease! We STAND!
Yes, the French Taunter would be sublime! At first I heard hints of M. Le Pew of ze Looney Tunes, and then I realized it was more Inspector Clouseau. Thank you, Mr. Kaplan. We do stand, the light is building, and in 16 days action coupled with competence will bring us the start of a brighter future.