maryrowen.com

Many, many thanks to book blogger extraordinaire, Book Club Mom, for this generous, thoughtful review of my novel, Leaving the Beach. I highly recommend checking out the Book Club Mom site if you’re looking for something new to read

For years the word scarcely escaped my lips. As to my sisters, the word just didn’t seem right. Was a brother meant to love his sisters? Nanny was a religious woman, a piano player, and born of the depression and because I had asthma and the air was clean in the tiny town where she lived, I’d visit in the autumn and spring.

In fact, if you’ve ever gone to Google (or any other search engine) and run a search for your own name, you’ve performed a vanity search. Carrying out a vanity search is a good start, because it’ll give you a rough idea of what results are surfacing, but it can be time consuming to check as often as you should do. Of course, there’s always the risk that you could carry out a vanity search and see results that are either irrelevant or – worse still – that cast your writing career in a negative light. When people read your books, they’ll typically do a little research beforehand, by checking out reviews, by seeing what people are saying about you on forums and discussion sites, and by simply tapping your name into a search engine to see what comes up.

The Metro train from our hotel in Alexandria into D. C. was jammed with people of various genders, ages, and ethnicities, most wearing pink pussyhats and carrying some of the most creative protest signs imaginable. Also, the current administration may not be doing much for feminists or liberal causes these days, but Mr. Trump has made it clear that he pays attention to crowd size, so seeing images of the crowds at the various marches around the world must’ve made some sort of impression on him. I admit that my participation in politics has waxed and waned quite a bit during my lifetime, but since the Women’s March, I’ve been doing what I can to contact legislators, share factual information in the face-to-face world and on social media, and stay up to date on what our government’s doing. Yes, at the Women’s March, but also at the hotel, where people were just people, taking time out of their regular lives to celebrate and work for what they believe in.