Pam Goode

Dear Ireland: I’ve missed you so!

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I’ve missed your lonnnnnnng frothy grasses, your ubiquitous flowers and delightfully moody seas. I’ve missed your shells of every color, and certainly your mind-blowing hand-built walls. And your stripey stones — how could I turn away from such whimsy?

I’ve missed your waterside horses and donkeys and cows inching closer and ever closer while hoping to get to know us better. I’ve missed your poets and your deep love of writing. I’ve missed your lovely tea rooms, your lobsters, your ubiquitous inlets, and your spell binding vistas over land and sea.

And I think —

You’re waiting for me, aren’t you?

Only 13 sleeps … and some fleece-lined pants. And two wool hats because one will need drying while the other is worn, and weather-proofed boots ….

But IRELAND!!!!!!!!

I’ve missed you so ….

It’s a Party!

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Setting up for a virtual book release party and having so much fun.

How much food should I make? What’s the happy lighting medium between sultry cocktail party and glaring spotlights on the books? Should I gab or go for “mysterious?” Is there enough virtual parking? Is there a God? Will she be coming? Should I spike the punch for sales and then drive everyone home myself? But, you know, in the backseat behind a divider and wearing masks. But seriously, what color should I paint my nails?

TOF Book Release Party Shot

Touch of Fire: The Scoop

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TouchOfFire-3D-Collection

TOUCH OF FIRE by Pam Goode
Literary Fiction

Release Date: Friday, July 24

And as of July 25, I’ll be lying on a beach somewhere, being greedily ravaged by a pounding surf and loving it.

The Official Blurb:

“In their faces I tried to see who would be the first to break our little world of pick-up sticks and easy living. I caught sight of a spark in some now and then, but I guess deep down I pretty much knew it would be me throwing the dice wild.”

Not everyone grows up with role models for love. Raised in an affluent southern community where rules are clear and secrets held close, Jenny is surrounded by expectations she rarely believes in. When her journey betrays society’s demands, her tentative belief in love makes navigating emotions much more complicated. Ostracized by family and friends and struggling through a difficult marriage with a precocious child, Jenny moves through questions and awakenings with a soulful interior dialogue, hoping to forge a truer path.

My Preferred Blurb:

Sam has a touch of fire. When we got to be almost friends he would put his hand on my shoulder when it was time to leave the parties we both went to and he said goodbye. He would come up behind me and there would be the hand and I would know it was Sam without even turning because his touch was fire. One night I went to a party and I wore a sundress with no back. When it was time I thought he won’t touch me now, not tonight. But then we were leaving and there was the hand again, on my bare shoulder this time, and it was fire. Night after night always the same and when the hand came without stopping I was hard pressed to look at him full when I said goodnight because I knew the eyes would be there and I couldn’t tell yet what they were saying. So I made goodbyes at the floor, not wanting to leave until I knew but needing the cool night air and the dark ride home to keep his touch from showing plain.

The Scoop:

I’m one of those people who doesn’t really know how to engage in polite conversation. Therefore you can count on two things.

  1. I will tell you the truth

  2. It will tumble straight out from my brain, devoid of the usual filters, timeline, and social niceties (though I did cut WAY back on the profanity).

My favorite part of this book is the humanity. There’s no hero or heroine. It’s real and it’s gritty and it follows the journey of good people learning about love and, as they say, “it don’t come easy.” You’ll have a love/hate relationship with the main character, and that’s intentional. Because you know what? We’ve all struggled. We’ve all done things that were ill-advised or worse. We’ve all, at some point, been really ill-equipped to love, muddled through with varying degrees of success, and hoped to come out on the sunny(ish) side.

It’s not James Patterson. There isn’t a neatly penned plot laid bare in short sentences with an obvious (usually) bad guy and an obvious (usually) good guy. It’s real. It’s messy. It’s love and guts.

And because of #2 listed above, some of the internal workings are told in stream of consciousness bursts because … that’s how we think, right?

And Then …

I’d love to know what you think. There’s lots of space below.

Pam

Paperback: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1735174807
E-Book: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B08CCKQVSH

Book Release Coming Right Up!

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It seems easy enough, right? Many claim to have penned this truth: “Writing is easy. Just open a vein and bleed” — and no doubt we’ve all felt it, whether during middle school exams or penning a verse to a would-be lover.

But the truth is, writing is sometimes hard and sometimes easy, but editing and publishing can extinguish god’s own holy spark in the best of us. Not that I’ve ever been particularly holy.

Regardless, I believe I’ve just pulled myself through the last hoop atop the last hill (and yes I CAN hear you laughing in the background) and have pushed the appropriate buttons to make the July 24 release date.

Can you hear my wild self-applause????

Touch of Fire by Pam Goode, available as e-book or paperback July 24, available for e-book pre-order July 10, aka, NOW.

Pre-Order Link here. Let’s roll!

Bowling Lady Watering Can

Birds and Words

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Today I got out early enough for a bit of a breeze and so many birds, The birds are a gift to my own ever-tenuous ability to hear, as well as a sort of much needed cosmic validation that stretches between us. I’m still here and you’re still here, and some knowing of that life spark passes between us.

When I walk, the words flow, quite unlike the way they sit, box-like, arms crossed and eyes shut tight to truth, when I’m still. I often invite them quite graciously to join me at the table, but they know my tricks. And more, they know the cage has to rattle for truth to escape.

So I use my legs for the rattling. They say exercise saves lives. I say that much of that rebirth springs from the ground and heads straight to the page.

Birds in Tree Crop

Touch of Fire by Pam Goode — Get it While it’s HOT!

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Sam has a touch of fire.

Who needs a HOT summer read?

The Touch of Fire release date is barreling ahead, and will also be available for pre-orders. Let me know if you’d like to be on the list for updates. You’ll need a way tall glass of something nice and cool.

Pawleys Hammock Bright

Creating a Life: Inspiration from Orvieto

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Pamela GoodeThere are those who ask me why I love to travel. In a few words: the exploration, the reversion to a simple and spare life, the crisp solitude of being alone in a new culture and unfamiliar language. Quite simply, stripped of my accustomed ways of being, I open my eyes and see. I remember who I am (and who I am not) and redefine the ways I want to experience my finite number of years. Travel sets me free to choose anew and gives me focus.

Below are a few things I’ve learned about myself during a cultural immersion week in Orvieto, Italy, and a handful of images to remind me when I’m tempted to give in to big city ways and forget.

I Want to Live a Life

I want to live a life on the edge — a life between consciousness and culture, between solitude and community, with easy access to the gifts of both.

Adventures in Italy

I want to live a life where city walls both shield and embrace, but also beckon me past my accustomed boundaries.

I want to live a life engulfed in scents and tastes and textures, with visual surprise around every corner, be it a new village or a just-unfurling jasmine bud.

I want to live a life where the strong and stalwart and majestic serve as constants for the fragile, a land where the porosity and lightness of stone do nothing to diminish its fortitude.

I want to live a life where both the dead and the living are honored, and joyously — a life where Etruscan tombs from 400 BC sit beneath the waving of wild cherries, and a waiter from lunch three days ago will wave you down in the lane for a smile.

A life where it’s okay to say hello to anyone you pass, to acknowledge life wherever it exists, including your own.

I want to live a life on many levels, from the surety and abundant offerings of ground and field to the communal path, the surprise and joy of rooftop gardens, the soaring art on soaring cathedrals to cotton ball skies and Jupiter shining above the lane after dinner in Charlie’s gardens.

I want to live a life where children in gingham smocks gather magnolia leaf bouquets and squeal with delight, where song is a part of every day’s curriculum, where physical safety is a given.

I want to live a life as many-layered as this cypress, this town, these rooftops.

I want to live a life with as much community as these vibrant streets and as much peace as these convent gardens.

I want to live a life as broad as this vista, completely unbounded by my psyche and conventions, my habits and my fears. I want a life with such clarity and vision that all of my options are recognizable.

I want to live a life where unexpected joy exists stunningly, and sometimes consists only of a gathering of simple greenery. Where the breezes dance, where the air is cool and clear and food holds the tastes of sunshine, rain, and origin.

People ask me why I travel. I travel to pull myself out of daily habits and rituals that keep me from growth. I travel to empty and refill my soul, to recapture moments that makes my heart beat faster.

So Go. See. Assimilate. Love It Up and let it make you better. And do whatever it takes to sear those images and awakenings onto your heart for the days ahead. Take photos. If there’s one thing I’ve learned taking 57 million photos of life, it’s this: turn around. From every position, there are at least two views, and they will constantly surprise you.

P.S. I’m very blessed to be traveling for six weeks in Italy and Ireland. Endless thanks to Adventures in Italy for giving me the fabulous opportunity to teach, to the loving and adventurous  group that accompanied me to Italy, to Olive Stack Gallery in Listowel Ireland for gifting me an entire month to explore and create, to the inimitable and wondrous Olive herself, and to Laura McRae Hitchcock, best residency partner on the planet. You can read more about my Irish adventures for the month of June at https://exciraanddelira.wordpress.com. Love to All!

She’s Not Here

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Photo and Sculpture by Micheal Pardue

On the beach and far from phones and computers, my thoughts turn like homing pigeons to laundry lists of tasks both real and imagined, and I wonder peevishly how long it will be so. How long before the wind shakes me silly and the sun evaporates every drop of logic until my cranium is hollow, bone dry and thirsty for folly and impulse?

The ocean is tricolor today: aqua near the sand, then teal, with a thin navy stripe that hugs the horizon. How do I move from the frothy edges to the navy depths? Why am I stuck in minutiae?

I’m willing to wait, but I’m anxious. Maybe eager is the better word, but anxiety lurks. I love the deep. I live for the deep as much as life allows, and in this instant when life is handing me an unexpected gift of time and sand and sea, I struggle to be here now.

If I tilt my head just so, I feel the heat of the sun on my left cheek and a sea-cooled breeze against my right, and it charms me to learn that two divergent climates can co-exist on my one small head. I think two lives are spent here as well.

In truth, the voice that pulls at me is not minutiae, and therein lies the rub.

I could stretch myself flat in the sun by the sea quite joyously for every day of the years I have left, until my brain is so bereft of new stimuli that I begin to grow worlds in its place, and I sometimes wonder if that is precisely the life I was made for. Egos crushed like periwinkle shells into smears of yellow or purple against the sand, hair blown wild into a wooly nest for puffins, with skin the color of night, the texture of winds, quite pockmarked with stars and story.

Instead, the sun teases the too-well-known out of us for only moments at a time, until some trivial matter demands our attention and we leap, almost grateful for permission to return to the safety of the familiar, that easy cloak (tired, worn) that fits so effortlessly even though we meant to trade up so many resolutions ago.

The truth is that I’m experiencing a major life-shift, and I don’t yet understand how to walk it. Given the hours to stare into nothingness, understanding will come, but the days that have filled and will fill out this year have not been slated for me; my diligent attention is called for elsewhere and I am honored to give it. One day there will be time and presence to spare, and I will surely miss today. And so for now, I’ll try to make peace with not letting go.

What Are You Waiting For Blog