As the months passed, people came to see the baby. They awed at her eyes (the paintings by Caravaggio found inside those beautiful pages) and they listened for her voice. Early coos came in book club gatherings, library and retirement home presentations. As a book creator and parent I began to think, people do care about the voice of my little baby, which every author doubts when writing anything. House of Honor sat up earlier than six months old when the starred review came in from Kirkus. I screamed when I read it, in joy and disbelief that New York reviewers who read thousands of books a year believed that she stood out for her “outstanding literary merit.” I get it, reviewing is totally subjective, but I’ll take a good one from people who review well over ten thousand books a year. It felt like when we took our first born son to see Dr. Lieber on his first check-up and the doctor told us, “I have no concerns with this baby.” Phew. We are all okay.

Now she is walking and like all babies, she is going places you don’t expect and getting into things! She’s been oogled in St. Louis, Nashville, Chicago, San Antonio, New York, Rome and many heartland towns throughout the midwest. She’s never been to California, but she hopes to get there! The L.A. TImes didn’t respond to a request for a review, but many don’t and so, she walks on.  For anyone wanting to write a book, I offer this caution, book life is highly unpredictable and it’s personal (especially if you are writing fiction) so getting hurt and making sacrifices for something you believe in and love is part of the journey. Thomas Merton said, “Every vocation is a call to sacrifice and to joy.” I have lived the truth of this in my short, only 16 years as a professional author life. Stephen King, I bow to you. Writing as the call of a lifetime takes tremendous grit and pluck. Even if your first novel is a best-seller, you have to write the next one and it has to be better than the first.

Next week House of Honor is walking all the way to Philadelphia for a big event and a special one at that because it involves her biggest cheerleader, Charlie Philbrick, a.k.a. my adorable husband,  “caveman lawyer,” “the counsellor,” and in this Italian family-saga that is House of Honor, “Consigliere.” I made a little video honoring her first birthday. We didn’t have a big party, but we did toast her growth with some good Italian wine and exotic adventures. The video also reveals specific locations mentioned in the book. Why am I choosing “her” as her correct pronoun? Well, you’ll have to read the book to find out. It’s only .99cents on Kindle ebook right now and she has never been more adorable.

Thanks to all the dear family and friends who have sacrificed for her, made space for her, coaxed her along when crawling and loved her in this first year of life! More to come…

Love, BookMama Margaret

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Thanks to USPS losing my passport application, I found myself back in my beloved, first city with a birth certificate in hand and a desire to see what’s new in brick & mortar book-land. Saturday, April 26th is Independent Bookstore Day and I’ve got a jackpot of a recommendation for you! Head to the Fine Arts Building at 410 S. Michigan Avenue, go up one flight of ancient stone stairs and you will see Exile in Bookville.I haven’t been in a bookstore this cool, this hidden, this well-curated and aesthetically charming since Marchpane, Cecil Court, London.

The Ramirez View

In it’s fourth year, Javier and Kristen Ramirez have created a mash-up of books and music that makes you wonder, Why did I ever order a book from Amazon? When you walk in one of them personally welcomes you, but don’t miss looking up at the Wall of Sound overhead. The giant windows overlooking Grant Park fill the floor to 12 foot ceiling shelves with natural light giving the store an at home vibe. There are hand-written, thoughtful recommendations by the owners beneath select books. I read a few of these and clearly Javier and Kristen are BIG readers. Nothing feels sterile or impersonal here. Instead, you are in the midst of a passion for developing literary community. There’s a piece of art on the wall that expresses, “To Javier and Kristen, Thank you for bringing books and creating community at Exile.”

Community

“Creating Community.” This is what Amazon and the pandemic stole from us, but bookish die-hards are fighting back and reclaiming ground. According to the American Booksellers Association, 291 Bookstores opened in 2023 and that trend continued in 2024 with an 11% increase. Javier and Kristen’s good friends have just opened a new store in St. Louis called, Leviathan and Javier spoke of how excited he is about their friends joining them and supporting each other in their creative bookselling, community building efforts. He even dreams of writers moving into the Fine Arts Building to grow a Bloomsburyesque community in-house. If I were still in my 20’s. I’d do it!

TBR’s

Of course, one must buy books and introduce Javier to my latest release, House of Honor which was not on-shelf, but he was kind enough to take my picture with it. Hopefully, he’ll add it to their fiction room! My son-in-law has been exhorting me to read, The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho and Exile had a gorgeous copy of this title. I couldn’t resist, the artist by Ed Vere (ADORABLE) and Emperor of Rome by Mary Beard for my transatlantic flight to Rome next week, Whoot! I budgeted for $100.00 worth of new books and went a little over, but there were many titles I took photos of for later. An album by Cyndi Lauper was tempting but pricey.

Named “Chicagoans of the Year in Books,” 2024 by Chicago Tribune, the Ramirez duo has more going on here then selling books, which is a lot unto itself. In their thank you post for the honor, they acknowledged everyone who has helped grow this literary jewel in the Fine Arts building, including their UPS and USPS delivery friends, ALL of them, named and regarded as “friends.” I left with my TBR stack refreshed and a feeling that all is right with the world because real people still care about each other and what we read and write. Stop by Exile in Bookville at 410 S. Michigan in Chicago this Saturday and celebrate independent Bookstore Day. I’m sure they’ll have all kinds of hot events and maybe, literary cocktails curated just for you, tequila mockingbird anyone?

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You know the smell of an indoor ice rink. It’s either comforting or vile, a combination of popcorn, rubber, the inside of a freezer and old hot dogs. You probably also know the feeling of exiting the ice by walking onto black rubber mats without falling. The first time you do it, it’s like the first time you successfully exit a chair-lift. Surprise and relief, you did not trip-up the people behind you with your bumbling, careening splat!

I’ve always loved ice skating, probably due to my father’s willingness to flood our driveway in the winter to create our family rink. I can see him bundled up out there in the dark flinging water from the hose night after night. We’d wait and wait until the ice grew thick and firm and we’d pray it didn’t rain or the milkman didn’t drive through it. Once the school clock ticked 3:30 p.m. we’d race home and get into our skates and careen around until dark. Honestly, the night wasn’t a big deal because Dad would turn the car lights on and we’d keep skating.

All of these happy memories add up to the sad morendo of mortality. As you age you become aware of your own powers giving way. A single salchow slips though your fingers before you quit lacing up your skates. Life moves on and others take the big leaps. You are left skating around the outside circle unable to execute a simple sit-spin in the middle of the rink. I admit to even growing jaded about watching ice skating competitions, i.e. “It’s all about the jumps now, the artistry is gone,” I’d moan as I sip on my over-sugared latte and contemplate my menobelly.

Well, my full faith and confidence in ice skating has returned. The awe, the wonder of conquering the ice, restored. Two Americans won the World Championship, Ilia Malinin for the men and staging a spectacular comeback from her 16 year old “retirement,” Alysa Liu for the women. The ICEing on the cake, the St. Louis Blues won 12 in a row, two of the games in overtime.

As a 7 on the enneagram I’m asking you to take in one of these ice-changing moments, the artistry of Ilia Malinin.* He is single-handedly redefining men’s figure skating. Not only is he the only living human who can land a quad axel, he is offering up his heart on the ice to all who are willing to spend the five minutes required to hold it in our hands. This is a miraculous feat of artistry, to invite total strangers in with an emotional attachment that has us crying in our seats for the victims of the D.C. plane crash and leaping from our seats in the end of his program to thank him. His post-competition tribute skate to the music of Cinematic Orchestra’s “To Build a Home” created a collective empathy for the loss and senseless, likely avoidable tragedy that took those loved ones from the earth. It’s a great injustice and no one felt that more than the nineteen year old Mr. Malanin as he sobbed, doubled over at the end of his performance.

I’ve always thought of professional skating as a sport for athletes, but Ilia Malinin, Alysa Liu and the St. Louis Blues convinced me this week, it’s a sport, best communicated by artists.

*Special thanks to Jill Likoi for catching the Gala performance on film and posting it to her You Tube channel. Linked above.

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I have a love/hate relationship with the piano. I love the music it makes. Who doesn’t love the power of the sustain pedal? My parents did not take me to piano lessons as a child. I begged them for lessons as a teenager when I learned that my band teacher, who I deemed “the nicest person in the world” had a wife who taught piano. She also wore cool, wild-printed, maxi skirts and huge earrings and wore her hair in a gigantic bun. Since I was 16, I could drive to piano lessons so they agreed to pay for them. My mom was tired of driving me to all those flute lessons and symphony rehearsals every week, three towns over the river.

Even though I could read music, albeit treble clef, learning the piano was hard. The bass clef was like a foreign language. Why are the notes not the same? It would be so much easier. We didn’t have a piano at home which left me practicing after school in the band room. I repeat, learning the piano was hard and I felt embarrassed by kids coming in and hearing me plucking out scales and painful arpeggios. Thankfully, the “nicest man in the world,” Mr. Pinter didn’t mind. I played until I left for college and then I dropped out of lessons until I turned 40. That’s a long hiatus from a musical instrument!

We bought a piano for our three kids, a Boston made Vose & Sons and I couldn’t resist learning how to play it. I will never forget walking into my first 40 year old lesson with our son’s teacher. She asked me, “What do you want to play?” Immediately, I responded, “Beethoven.” Without blinking she said, “Let’s start there.” Obviously she is GREAT piano teacher who gets the effectiveness of learner-centered pedagogy. Beethoven’s Sonatina in G became the first official piece I played on our beautiful piano. I overcame my fear of the bass clef. I practiced at night, after our kids went to bed. I fell in love with the piano alongside an open french door with crickets harmonizing outside in the moonlight.

We had a few “hard” rules in our home. Tell the truth. Be kind to others. The expected ones, but an usual one was, you all have to play the piano until you are 18. We stuck to it and now our two sons can REALLY play the piano and our daughter became a professional dancer, yet she kept up her lessons despite dancing around 30 hours a week while doing full-time school. Her keyboard is waiting for her in the basement of her new home while her twins sleep in their cribs upstairs. She will come back to it. The magical sound of the piano is inescapable once you sit down and take it in beneath your fingers. Even if you don’t sit down and try, it’s mesmerizing. I remember my Uncle Mark Dull telling me about Chopin, Berlioz and Bach’s piano music as a little kid. How he adored his albums, their fidelity and specific recordings even though he did not play the piano.

So, in celebration of Worldwide Piano Day my first novel is releasing as an audiobook with gorgeous piano music embedded into the story. For some unknown, unexplained reason the original publisher did not release this book as an audiobook even though it is all about music! Now I’m doing it with the help of gifted narrator Adam Blanford, ACX and some extraordinary musicians. It has taken far more hours than I can count, listening to Adam’s voice and all the music to get it set as a perfect subtextual compliment to the story itself. Figuring out when to start the music and when to stop it with so much gorgeous music to play is a challenge. The listener needs enough of a taste to want to hear more and not so much that it overpowers the text. Hopefully, we struck the right chord (Ha!)  of balance and intrigue. So welcome to this concept of listening to a musical love story with the music playing, at your convenience.

I want to thank a few folks for making this possible. My current publisher, Ambassador International who introduced me to Adam Blanford when they brought him on to narrate House of Honor, my new novel. Thank you to Adam Blanford. How in the world do you do all those accents and distinguish between Clare and Clive so clearly with your one voice? You are a gift! Thank you to Bonnie and Trevor McMaken and Janna Williamson for their phenomenal musical recordings that greatly enhanced this book. Thank you to ACX who figured out how to make the music work in an audiobook. Thank you to my lawyer husband, Charlie who gets licensing agreements, contracts, all the things and listens to my artistic rants at dinner. Thank you to Nathaniel Philbrick who encouraged me to buy great headphones, indispensable for this project. Thank you to Caleb Philbrick and Dr. Karol Sue Reddington who were my O.G. original inspiration for writing this book. You shared so many hours at the piano, so much love for this instrument, worth it! Thank you to Mrs. Pinter and Carol Ishman, my dear piano teachers.

I’m delighted to give away two free copies of this audiobook with embedded music! If you’ve read this far, you deserve it! The first two readers who email me at tengo3ninos@gmail.com will receive them. Enjoy the sound of my story and the music of so many truly great composers and performers.  A new audiobook with embedded music! Why don’t they all have this? Be blessed!

photo: Janna WIliamson recording Brahms Waltz in A flat major and Schumann’s Traumerei

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The Geneva Grotto: A story of revival

How a dedicated team of volunteers turned back time for a cherished local landmark in my childhood backyard.

Margaret Philbrick
December 20, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

Welcome to Tri-Cities Central, a twice-weekly newsletter highlighting local happenings in Batavia, Geneva, St. Charles and surrounding communities.

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I consider myself a “new” fiction writer. I’ve only written two novels and that makes me a student of the craft. This past spring I paid for a class with an author who told me that when you’re writing fiction you are, “Selling emotion. Fiction must contain three components: empathy, evil and suspense.” Since my second novel (House of Honor) was complete at the time, I went back and evaluated it against those principles. It held up pretty well, but empathy, evil and suspense are not quite enough to move writing out of the depths of decent to The Magic Mountain – top, thank you Thomas Mann. Lois Lowry taught me that the characters are the drivers and identification with them makes or breaks a work. My beloved mentor, Dr. Coleen Grissom taught me to, “Eschew obfuscation. Embrace simplicity, lucidity and euphony.” She also taught me not to take myself too seriously and inject humor. And by the way, the writing needs to sing. James Michener and Linda Sue Park implored that the quality of the writing is found in the author’s quality of reading, “Read a thousand books before you write your own,” Park said. Eudora Welty and Heinrich Boll extol us to collect and gather moments, just like The Clown. As Welty says in One Writers Beginnings, “I grew up to the striking of clocks.” We must tap all the senses of the reader.

On a rain-streaked evening this past April, my husband and I huddled under our golf umbrella and crept down the block to Left Bank Books in Central West End, St. Louis. This iconic bookstore, owned by the same woman for fifty years sits as an edifice to literature on the southwest corner of “Writers Corner.” There is a sculpted bronze bust of a famous writer on each point of the intersection, T.S. Eliot (my favorite) catty-corner from the bookstore. We went to listen to Leif Enger read from and speak about his latest novel, I Cheerfully Refuse.  What a generous speaker and author Mr. Enger is! Given the pouring rain, the crowd lingered and asked numerous questions, hoping to wait and depart when the rain ended. I wanted his take on the three “must haves” of fiction so I threw out a question, “I took a writing class this spring and the author said that fiction must convey evil, suspense and empathy. What do you think of that list and would you add anything?” He thought for a moment and replied, “That’s a good list, but I would add joy.” 

With Leif Enger at Left Bank Books

“I would add joy.” This one statement smashed my pandora’s box of curiosity. Yes, joy! Why has no other author shared this sacred secret with me?

So, dear students, for our all too short time together on Tuesday let’s write some joyful dialogue. What is it about writing that brings you joy? I look forward to our time together in an antique railcar.

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Dean Grissom was the rare combination of inspiration, wisdom, wit, energy, veracity, love and rigor and she inspired all of us to give our best. Our best was seldom good enough. This past Christmas, just before her 90th birthday, I assured her that she would receive a signed copy of House of Honor. Sadly, her contribution to our world ended before the novel landed on her book stacked nightstand.

Thank you Coleen Grissom for crafting me into a writer and a writing teacher. Your legacy lives on in the words of your students, their students and your own. Rest assured, in this latest effort I’ve tried to “eschew obfuscation” and embrace “simplicity, lucidity and euphony.” I’m forever grateful to you, dear mentor and friend.

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By June that year the first iPhone released and the world and our family changed forever. Instead of saying, “You’ve got to read this,” our kids routinely stuck a phone in front of each other insisting, “You’ve got to see this video.” Our sons were confronted with touch of the finger accessible pornography. Our daughter sat with us around the winter fire with her phone tucked into the cushion of her chair, surreptitiously scrolling and hoping we didn’t notice. When I went to lunch with my friends to celebrate a birthday, they sat in the restaurant with their phones on the table, receiving the constant ding of family text messages. Snapchat. Facebook. Instagram… all took up residence in blue jean back pockets, car pools and even designated “family nights” with their irresistible, cotton-candy sparkle of faces, personal “stories” and things to buy.

It’s 17 years later and I’m on a flight to San Antonio. The woman next to me is ripping through a combination of three hand-held devices while also attempting to watch a movie on the seat in front of her. I’m reading the manuscript of a fellow writer’s soon-to-be published book of poetry for first time moms. As we taxi to the gate I put my computer away and take out my Kyocera flip phone, for the first time in two hours. The obsessed tech woman next to me yells, “What is that? Is that a flip phone? I didn’t know those still existed.” I hand it to her and she exclaims, “This is incredible! Don’t you have an iphone?” I explain that as a writer the overwhelming amount of content on a smartphone is so distracting that if I had one I’d spend my whole life scrolling and reading Substack and never write anything. She blinks her one inch false eyelashes in awe. The twenty-something woman behind us overhears and says, “Yeah, I get it. A study just came out that Gen Zers* want a landline with a cord because they think talking in one place and twirling a cord sounds cool.” Two rows back from her, another Gen Z gal chimes in, “My friends and I are deleting so much from our phones now. We want to spend more time with our friends. Sometimes we go out and just leave them at home.” Within a six row diameter everyone is listening or participating in this conversation, practically bowing to me as I grab my single bag and exit. Okay, not bowing, but they let me out first so they could stare down this curious luddite who has lived 17 years without a smartphone.

I confess there is one time that I’ve missed having a smartphone and that is when we got rid of our Nissan Juke and it’s gps. Navigating strange cities by an atlas tucked into the back seat pocket is a difficult when you’re driving, especially at night. Sometimes you even need to pull over and ask an actual person for directions. The benefit is that I still have what is called, “a sense of direction.” Our daughter cannot drive anywhere without the gps talking to her. When I tell her how to get somewhere that I’ve been a million times she says, “You don’t need to tell me how to get there, we have a gps.” Basic human knowledge or even wisdom gets you nowhere when every facet of life is checked via a smartphone. This brings me to the real reason why I’ve never wanted a smartphone and that reason is real presence.

Real: actually existing, not imitation or artificial, according to the Oxford Dictionary. I’ve always despised fake ornamental plants. They require nothing of us and they give us nothing in return, besides a thick layer of dust on every leaf. Gardening gives us the smell of the earth, the tactile experience of working our hands into soil and waiting (here’s the kicker) waiting for a result. When we eat a carrot or tomato that we’ve grown we engage all of our senses with a process greater than us. We submit to photosythesis, respiration and transpiration. There is no immediate gratification in gardening. Experiencing creation and committing ourselves to a creative process is the opposite of scrolling a smartphone. Try and sit on an airplane, take out a piece of paper and write something creative by forming letters or draw something. When you land, you have a created work with the possibility of contributing to the beauty of our world or a loved one’s heart. Hopefully, you also nourished yourself, in real time. And real time is something we have little of. According to author Chris Bailey, when you subtract the time the average American spends, sleeping, eating, drinking, working and doing chores you have only 17.5 years to do something else with your precious life of an expected 79.3 years. Yes, basically the same amount of time the Smartphone has existed.

Presence: Mindfulness guru and Zen master, Thich Nhat Hanh said, “The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence.” He was not talking about our attention divided by a zillion pixels while sharing a meal. He was talking about listening to others in a way that respects their personal dignity as a created human being. Can we listen and participate without our own agenda involved, without our family members’ needs distracting us, or our professional job experience directing our thoughts? What if you stuck your smartphone in a drawer and spent one day interacting with people by paying attention to how often your mind wanders into territory that isn’t about them and what they are saying? Catch yourself and redirect your mind to focus on the other person and their needs. Ask questions and try to get in sync with them. Meet them with active listening, compassion and empathy. You can’t look at your phone for one second while they’re talking because you left it at home. The gift of our true and real presence is a sacred trust, a trust that if we are treating it like a gift, we are willing to give away. Smartphones have spent the last 17 years disintegrating that trust.

As an extrovert, I derive kinetic energy from being with other people. I love walking into a room where I don’t know a soul and talking to a stranger. People fuel my life, but I also need time alone to think, write, reflect, walk in the woods and listen to what the God of the universe might be saying to me. To listen to the trees. To sing with the bees. To ponder. To create. Catholic doctrine teaches that the real presence of Jesus is present in the communion elements. I’m not Catholic, but I believe real presence is more valuable than ever in our lonely, isolated by technology, life in a box culture. Living a real and present life for the sake of oneself and others is a rich and fertile field to cultivate in the remaining 17.5 years you may have left to live fully alive.

* It’s not actually a study but rather an article in the New York Post, Feb. 16, 2024
https://nypost.com/2024/02/16/lifestyle/gen-z-is-bringing-back-the-corded-landline-phone/

Margaret Ann Philbrick is the author of the multi-award winning novel, House of Honor – The Heist of Caravaggio’s Nativity. Besides writing novels, she spends her time photographing nature and writing poetry which you can discover at https://www.instagram.com/seasonedpoetess/
or www.margaretphilbrick.com

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