Tag: writing

Crazy Ed

When I was growing up, there was an older man who lived in my neighborhood named Crazy Ed, at least that’s what everyone called him. I never knew his real name. 

Crazy Ed lived in a basement apartment in a working-class tenement next to the corner store. Everyone in town knew who he was, mainly because he always wore a women’s skirt, usually plaid but sometimes denim, and high heel shoes, usually red.

Every day, he would walk all over town dressed this way—miles and miles—pushing an old shopping cart full of rusty car parts and dented soda cans he’d collected from roadsides and weedy parking lots. At night, Crazy Ed would park his shopping cart outside the door to his apartment with a handmade sign on it: Do Not Touch. As far as I know, no one ever did.

Crazy Ed covered so much ground that you got used to seeing him. He was a fixture in town, so much so that his attire and shopping cart were in many ways just part of the fabric of the place, unremarkable in the way that familiar things tend to be regardless of their normalcy.

Although Crazy Ed wore a skirt and heels (I never saw him dressed any other way), he didn’t identify as female. He had a scraggly white beard and always wore a men’s shirt or sweater. During the colder months, he sometimes wore men’s athletic tube socks, the kind with the stripe at the top, with his high heel shoes.

Sometimes, kids would taunt Crazy Ed, especially young boys. Once, while walking to the corner store from my house, I came across a group of neighborhood boys throwing rocks at him. They were shouting homophobic slurs, and laughing whenever one of the rocks hit him. Unable to run in his heels, Crazy Ed took shelter behind his shopping cart. But the attack was so relentless that Crazy Ed was eventually forced to take his shoes off and hide. He cowered behind a parked car while the boys overturned his shopping cart and tossed his red heels into a nearby trashcan. 

At the time, I was nine years old. I felt so sad for Crazy Ed, and I was angry that the boys were given license to treat another human being so brutally, that they felt justified in doing so. Even at the time, I knew none of them would face consequences for what they had done. And none of them ever did. 

When I was in high school, I worked in a coffee shop downtown. Crazy Ed was one of our regular customers. Almost every day, he would park his shopping cart outside on the sidewalk, sit down at the counter, and order a black coffee, for which he would pay with a handful of grubby coins. He would often sit there for a half hour or more, keeping an eye on his cart through the window. He almost never talked, at least not any more than was necessary, unless someone spoke to him first.

Usually, other customers would just say hello to Crazy Ed, but if someone asked him a question, especially one about why he was wearing a skirt and heels, he would get angry and defensive, often causing a loud argument.

At the time, I found these exchanges, and Crazy Ed himself, pretty frustrating, especially considering the frequency with which they seemed to take place. The coffee shop was almost always busy, and it was easy to fall behind if something took your attention away from your work. The other employees and I eventually started trying to discourage Crazy Ed from sitting at the counter by putting his coffee in a to-go cup, but it usually didn’t work.

After I went away to college, I would still spot Crazy Ed around town sometimes when I was home on breaks, but not very often. A few months after I graduated, I moved to Boston to attend graduate school. After that, I don’t think I saw him again.

In the years since, I’ve often wondered what drove Crazy Ed to live the way he did. Did he suffer from some sort of mental illness or was he just eccentric? What was his life like before he moved into that basement apartment and took up roaming around town with a shopping cart full of junk? When and why did he start wearing a skirt and heels? Did he have a family? Did he have enough to eat? Why didn’t anyone ever try to help him?

When I think about Crazy Ed these days, it’s almost always with a wistful heart. Although I’m not particularly religious in a conventional Western sense, my memories of him often bring to mind the Parable of the Sheep and Goats in the Gospel of Matthew, which says the way we value and care for the most vulnerable among us—the poor, the hungry, the sick, those who are discriminated against for one reason or another—is, in the end, what reveals our true character.

ENP

“The River Is Everywhere” Now in Audiobook Format

I’m very happy to announce that my second novel, The River Is Everywhere, is now available as an audiobook. It can currently be downloaded via Audible, Amazon, and Apple Books, with other purchasing options coming soon. The audiobook is available globally.

A huge thank you to Wordwooze Publishing and the book’s fantastic narrator, John Eli Brewer, for making the audiobook a reality.

Happy listening!

ENP

Upcoming Audiobook Release and New Role as Fiction Editor

I meant to write a post with a couple of news updates a few weeks ago, but I came down with the flu right after New Year’s. (I got a flu shot last October. So much for that.) I’m finally feeling like myself again now, so:

As of a couple of weeks ago, I’m the new fiction editor for the Franco-American literary journal Résonance. If you’re a Franco-American or French-Canadian writer or artist, check out the current issue and take a look at the submission guidelines. Work is accepted for consideration in both English and French.

Also, my novel The River Is Everywhere will soon be available in audiobook format. This is something I’ve wanted to offer readers (listeners?) since the book came out in 2023, but for a number of reasons, producing an audiobook version of the novel was put on the back burner. The audiobook is currently being recorded. I’m excited (and a bit nervous!) about listening to it once it’s done. Check back soon for information on its release date and a list of retailers that will have the audiobook available.

Be safe and stay healthy.

ENP

The Magic of Untranslatable Words

I’ve always believed that written or spoken words, with their ability to communicate our thoughts, wishes, discoveries, joys, and sorrows — sometimes across time and space — carry with them a bit of magic. On the printed page, whispered into a waiting ear, or shouted from the rooftops, language forms the bedrock upon which society and culture are built. 

I’m particularly captivated by words from other languages that cannot be easily translated into English. These often convey ideas and situations we’re all familiar with, but for some reason, when it came to creating English words to describe them, they never quite made the cut. 

For example, ya’arburnee, an Arabic word, expresses the hope that you will die before someone you love because you wouldn’t be able to bear living without them. Literally, it means “may you bury me.” The Japanese have boketto, which describes the act of staring blankly into the distance. From Yiddish there is luftmensch, which refers to someone who is not successful in life or business due to his or her unrealistic ideas and goals. The French have voisinages, a word that refers to the relationships among or between neighbors. And in Brazilian Portuguese, there’s cafuné, a word that describes the motion one makes when running their fingers through a lover’s hair. (Leave it to the Brazilians to require a word just for this.)

Perhaps one of my favorite, and I think one of the most beautiful “untranslatable” words, is saudade, a Portuguese term that conveys a longing for a person, place or time you recollect fondly but know you will very likely never be able to experience again. Derived from the Latin solitate, or “solitude,” saudade acknowledges, mourns, even celebrates the discarded bits of ourselves that lie scattered across the landscape of our lives. 

Saudade also implies a feeling of gratefulness, the glow we feel in our hearts when we remember how lucky we are to have had particular experiences and people in our lives. Like an empty chair at the family dinner table that reminds us of the person who once filled it, the empty spaces within us take on the silhouettes of those who left them behind.

Saudade is different than nostalgia or reminiscences, which are often about remembering with a sort of affection occurrences and relationships no longer relevant in our lives. Even if it’s rooted in the past, saudade lives in the present.

Portuguese art, literature and traditional fado music, which literally means “fate” or “destiny,” are all heavily informed by the concept of saudade. The Portuguese, along with the people living in Portugal’s former colonies, such as Cape Verde and Brazil, have built an entire culture around their unapologetic, deep and passionate feelings about just about everything, from romantic love to sports teams. They approach life with the notion that all emotions, happy or sad, are worth experiencing because collectively they are what make us human. 

Since my daughter moved into her own condo, I’ve come to know saudade well. Madelaine’s absence from our house has often been difficult, as her absence is often a presence all its own. I sometimes find myself thinking about the days before she started kindergarten, when I was a stay-at-home mom. Back then, we were together all the time, sometimes 24 hours a day for weeks on end when my husband was traveling for work. We ate all our meals together. I helped her get dressed every morning. We shopped together and went for walks around the neighborhood. In the wintertime, we snuggled on the couch under a blanket while we watched her favorite show, “Arthur,” on TV. Some days I longed to get away, to have another adult to talk to. There were times when I lost my patience and did things I now regret. 

I grieve the loss of the baby that Madelaine was, and the loss of myself as a young mother. But these memories also bring with them a powerful and bittersweet happiness. I’m grateful I was able to spend so much time with her when she was young, and I believe the time we spent together helped her become the intelligent, thoughtful, successful young woman she is today. The sadness my memories bring helps me better appreciate the time she and I spend together now. Because I know someday I’ll look back at these moments with longing, too.

ENP

Success and Perseverance

It feels like I’ve been editing the manuscript of my third novel for ages now. With every pass I make on it, I keep thinking it will be the last time I’ll need to go through its 300+ pages. But I always seem to find more sections that need to be rewritten, more passive voice that needs to be removed, more modifiers to kill. I’ve actually lost track of the number of times I’ve gone over the entire thing.

As frustrating as this can be, with every round I complete, I know the manuscript is improving and that, eventually, it will be done.

I found this petunia growing out from the foundation of my garage this morning. I haven’t had petunias in years, so I don’t know how it got there. But it reminded me that almost anything is possible if we refuse to be deterred from our goals.

My novel will be finished soon, and it will represent the best work I can do. I won’t settle for less than that just because rewriting and editing are tedious and time consuming, just because I really want it to be done. Almost anything worthwhile requires work.

May you refuse to be deterred from your goals no matter how long it takes to reach them.

ENP

Crossroads

The beginning of 2025 finds my life at a crossroads. I’m very close to finishing my third novel, a project on which I’ve been working for years and desperately want to complete. At the same time, I seem unable to focus on it. My husband was laid off from his job at the end of September, leaving us adrift in a gulf of uncertainty.

Do I sequester myself in some quiet place where I won’t be distracted for a couple of weeks to finish my book? Should I put the book aside for the time being and look for steady nine-to-five work? Or should I try to find more freelance jobs so I can have a flexible schedule and make more money at the same time, allowing me to still work on the novel? If I do this, will I be too tired to work on the book anyway?

Perhaps I should try to bushwhack my own path, combining these options in such a way that I’ll be able to accomplish most of what I want?

I’ve been stuck, waiting for a sign, for some sort of messenger to point the way, getting nothing done in the meantime.

In Western folklore, crossroads often symbolize liminal spaces, places between worlds, middle passages that are neither in one realm nor another. In medieval Europe, the bodies of executed criminals and people who had committed suicide were often buried at crossroads as they were considered a sort of no man’s land, places set apart from the world from which the souls of the dead would be unable to escape.

Lacking a map or any sense of direction, I’ve discovered that exiting a crossroads, where no path is clearly defined, can be almost as difficult for the living.

In many cultures, crossroads are places where demons and spirits appear unexpectedly. In the early 20th century American South, many African Americans believed visiting a crossroads at certain times of day meant encountering the Devil. It brings to mind the frequently covered song, Cross Road Blues, by blues guitar pioneer Robert Johnson, originally released in 1937. According to legend, Johnson, who died mysteriously at age 27, acquired his impressive musical skills after selling his soul to the Devil at a crossroads.

Robert Frost’s famous poem The Road Not Taken, published in 1916, also comes to mind, as crossroads often symbolize indecision, uncertainty, or even regret in literature.

But crossroads can also be places of opportunity. By their nature, they are places where chance meetings are likely to occur, perhaps allowing favorable circumstances to unexpectedly manifest themselves.

Modern psychology says when we find ourselves at a crossroads, unable to decide which direction to take, it often means we are preparing to let go of something to which we are emotionally attached. I often feel this way lately. Whichever direction I choose to go, I’ll be leaving something behind. And because whatever I stand to potentially gain remains undefined, the risk involved in taking any one road seems great.

Robert Frost felt called to take the road “less traveled by,” knowing he’d probably never learn what he might have discovered had he chosen the other path. One of these days, the voice of wisdom will prevail and I’ll know what I should do, too. In the meantime, I’ll be keeping an eye out for the Devil.

ENP

New Podcast Interview

I was recently a guest on the Trevor Roberts Talkfest podcast. We discussed Franco-American history and culture and my second novel The River Is Everywhere. It’s especially exciting because the podcast is based on the West Coast, where few people know anything about Franco-Americans or French Canadians. Trevor was a great host and I enjoyed talking with him.

Episode 40 – Rivers, Roots, and Revelation: Emilie-Noelle Provost’s Franco-American Coming-of-Age Tale is available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Buzzsprout, Podchaser and anywhere else you can listen to podcasts. A video version of my conversation with Trevor will be out soon.

ENP

Pen & Ink

I recently returned home from a weekend away to discover that an unexpected package had come in the mail. It was from an old college friend who lives in northern Maine. She still means a lot to me, though we don’t see one another often. Inside the package was a book, an illustrated copy of the French fairy tale The White Cat, along with a beautiful handwritten letter and a photograph of her two teenage sons.

“When I saw this book, I thought of you,” my friend wrote. It was one of the nicest surprises I’ve had in a long time.

In this age of text messages, email, and Zoom calls, handwritten letters almost seem like outdated relics of communication, items to be shelved alongside rotary-dial telephones and telegraph machines. And while I think having the ability to send some forms of correspondence electronically is a godsend, paying my electricity bill online, for example, I believe it’s time for the handwritten personal letter to make a comeback. 

I can think of few better ways to let someone know how much you care about them than to sit down in a quiet place away from distractions, choose a beautiful piece of stationery, and spend time creating a document in your own handwriting that’s meant for that person alone.

Growing up, I wrote letters constantly, sometimes two or three a day. It was the only way I could communicate with friends who lived too far away to call, which in some cases was only a few towns over. (“Long distance” calls cost a bundle then, and were generally reserved for special occasions or emergencies.) I had a large collection of stationery, pens, and note cards, and relatives would often give me books of postage stamps as Christmas or birthday gifts.

In addition to writing letters to friends, I had pen pals in far away places, some of whom I never met. One of my pen pals in high school, a person I wrote to for years, lived in a small town in Vermont, a place so vastly different from my urban neighborhood near Boston that I had trouble imagining what it was like. Through his letters, I came to know Vermont’s culture, food, weather, and landscape in a way that was second only to being there.

In college, I corresponded with a friend who was studying in Japan, amassing a collection of exotic postage stamps and snapshots. I received letters weekly from another friend, a Mormon who was serving his mission in Las Vegas’ underbelly. I still remember the sad and sometimes grisly tales he told about things he saw and experienced there.

When I was a senior in college, I often wrote letters to my sister, who was a homesick freshman at a different university. I still have her replies. Among the only letters I have ever received from her, they tell the story of the time we became friends, rather than siblings who had no choice about our relationship.

I also have shoeboxes full of letters from high school and college boyfriends, some of them serious and more than an inch thick when folded into their envelopes. Others are humorous. One of them begins, “I can’t wait to see what you look like after you get your braces off.”

When my daughter, Madelaine, started college in 2016, I sent her several letters. They sat in her mailbox for months because it never occurred to her to check it. Although I love my smartphone and can’t imagine living or working without texting or the internet, I feel lucky to be a Gen Xer — fluent in both 20th and 21st century technology. Most people Madelaine’s age will never know what it’s like to stand by the window waiting for the mail to be delivered, or the thrill of opening the mailbox to find a much-anticipated envelope. 

Along with the news of the day, letters deliver their writers. Individual personalities, tastes, and moods are revealed by the choice of paper, the color of the ink, and in the unique slant of someone’s handwriting. Each is a singular creation, making a handwritten letter to communication what “slow food” is to cuisine. Like home-baked bread or a plump heirloom tomato, I’d forgotten how good letters could be until I received one.

ENP

Note: A version of this essay appeared in the September-October 2019 issue of Merrimack Valley Magazine.

*NO AI TRAINING

Book Award Finalist

I’m excited to announce that The River Is Everywhere has been named a finalist for the 2023 National Indie Excellence Award in literary fiction. The National Indie Excellence Awards are the gold standard for books published by independent publishers in the U.S. I’m very happy, and I’m even prouder of this book than I already was.

The River Is Everywhere is available from all major booksellers including Amazon and Barnes and Noble as well as from several indie stores including the Lowell Book Company. If you’ve read the book and liked it, please consider leaving a review on Goodreads or Amazon, or drop me a note via this website’s contact page.

ENP

*NO AI TRAINING

Cover Art

I don’t usually like to write posts that have no purpose other than to promote things I’m doing, even though I suppose that’s kind of the point of having an author website. Keeping that in mind, I’m very excited to share the cover of my second novel, The River Is Everywhere, which will be published in March by Vine Leaves Press.

A friend and fellow author told me that the cover was “me” when she saw it, which made me laugh because it’s kind of dark and moody, and a little mysterious. I’m definitely prone to the first two, and maybe the third, but I don’t think I’m the best judge of that.

Anyway, I think the cover is perfect. The folks at Vine Leaves did a great job taking the ideas I sent them and creating something that really conveys the mood of the book, and, I guess, me.

I’ll post updates about The River Is Everywhere as I get them. Thanks again to everyone who follows this blog, and to all the people who have helped the book along its journey to becoming a real, tangible thing.

ENP