The Shadow of a Dog I Can't Forget

Poetry and Prose by Mary Kennedy Eastham

6"x 9" ~ 76 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9727721-7-4

Published by: Robertson Publishing (RP)

Are you Ready to be seduced?

Mary Kennedy Eastham's work has been called darkly beautiful, erotic, lyrical and haunting. One reviewer said sitting down with her poems blew his hair back flat reminding him of when he was in high school laying in the grass at the end of the runway as the jets took off.

In this carefully crafted world of runaways, mystical goddesses, happy strippers, and Marilyn Monroe returned to us to comment on her life being auctioned away, the poet's words nag at us the way only a great seduction can ...like liquid pearls falling from the sky above/as soft and easy as a fortune teller's dreams/We are beautiful alone with ourselves/they seem to say/evening snowflakes floating/beneath a faint moon/like fingertips about to touch/a new piano/each sound, each song/a miracle.

In the title poem, 'The Shadow of a Dog I Can't Forget' a woman, married for only sixty days, deals with feelings of melancholy by inventing a mysterious dog only she can see.

Mary is a 2011 WILD CARD Runner-Up in the Hollywood Book Festival.

Mary received the 2010 Celebrity Achiever Award from the The National League of American Pen Women.

'A Hymn for Wish' is Mary's SUPERSTAR poem. It was a Top-Ten Prize Winner in the 2008 Poetry SuperHighway International Poetry Contest, was featured in the 2009 'Best Of' Map of Austin Poetry's On-Line journal during National Poetry Month and will be featured in the upcoming 'Best of the Shine Journal Anthology'

Her poem 'Valentine's Day' appeared in Vision Magazine ~ February 2008 issue and has been chosen to promote peace and community connection by the International Valentine Peace Project.

'Points of Love', a poem from this book was a $5,000 award-winner in the Dorothy Sargent Rosenburg Annual Poetry Competition

The last poem in this book 'A Hymn for Wish' appeared in Shine' magazine ~ October 2007 issue.

Her book was Runner-up for BEST POETRY BOOK in 2007.

In 2007  her book was an Honorable Mention Winner D.I.Y. Guerilla Marketing LA Book Contest.

Mary and Sholeh Wolpe (Southern Cal poet/activist) at the LA Bookfest	Mary flew to Mexico to read the wedding poem she wrote for her friend Katie.	Mary has done voice-overs for a number of independent films and was featured in the trailer for the reality show BLOW-OUT with Jonathan Antin.

Please Welcome Author Mary Kennedy Eastham (MKE)
Interview Posted by Hales (NS) ~ Tuesday, May 18, 2010

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NS: How long have you been writing?
MKE: I've made up stories since I was a little girl. I told my first grade teacher I didn't have parents and lived in a tree-house in the woods. I've had lots of jobs that had writing components to them - Grant Writer, Advertising Copywriter, College Professor. I have a side business helping high school kids write their college essays. I've been writing fiction and poetry for over a decade now.

NS: Do you have a daily ritual before you begin writing?
MKE: I read recently about a writer whose artist mother told her to approach her writing as a daily prayer - something she must do every day with passion and joy. I like that. I've got four dogs so I usually get them exercised and fed first thing in the morning. I belong to several online writer's groups, so at around 9:00 a.m.I faithfully check my e-mails. There are usually HUNDREDS! Then it's on to commenting on blogs, where I try to get as much exposure as I can for myself and my book (s). I try to go to bed each night (and believe me, this isn't always possible!) thinking about whatever story I'm working on, hoping I might wake up with some brilliant idea that is just what my story needs. It doesn' t happen often, but when it does, boy, you sure feel glad you're a writer!

NS: What are your inspirations for writing? Do you use art or music to prod your muse?
MKE: The thing that fascinates me most about writing and it's probably what keeps me doing it is the fact that the world around you is just one giant inspirational bin. I remember when I first moved to California from New York City, I signed up for an Intro. to Fiction Writing class at UC Berkeley. The instructor said I had a good ear. I thought to myself, wow, these people are superficial! Of course I later found out it meant I had the gift of listening and paying attention to everything around me, never knowing where something might be able to be slipped into a poem, short story or novel. I love art and music so yes, I draw ideas from that all the time. My poem 'Breaking Them In' was formulated around an Andrew Wyeth painting I just couldn't walk away from.

NS: What is your favorite health...brain food snack while writing?
MKE: I live in California, the land of clean living and eating, so I do try to eat healthy most of the time. I've been a vegetarian for the past three years, so I have to be creative about getting enough protein. Sometimes I just dip a spoon into the peanut butter and lick away. We have beautiful carrots here at Whole Foods, they almost look like a bouquet when you gather them together. I make a simple fresh guacamole with mashed avocado, fresh lime and salt and I dip the carrots into that. Sometimes I buy this amazing 9 grain bread. I cut out a heart silhouette from the center, brown it just slightly in a frying pan, then plop an egg in the middle. That's just plain fun! I always like munching on walnuts, pecans, pieces of peach or apple. I know, I sound SO California!

NS: What type of exercises do you do to stay healthy while writing?
MKE: I break a sweat every day. I've been a runner for most of my life, though I now do mostly sprints to save my knees! Exercise is a passion of mine. I Spin, I do this class called The Barre, the most intense non-stop 65 minutes of movement I've ever encountered. I do Zumba dancing. I work on my core every day on the Bosu, doing a Plank on an exercise ball, I do pull-ups, push-ups, surf core exercises, I hit the punching bag, I read Men's & Women's Health, always looking for new ways to keep me motivated. Lately, I've been doing alignment exercises so I don't get injured. That's been a real plus for me. My motto is: I haven't met an exercise I won't try! Next challenge - Stand-Up Paddling.

NS: When did you seriously sit down and say to yourself, I'm going to write a novel?
MKE: I started my novel Night Surfing a little over a year ago. I had one book out, The Shadow of a Dog I Can't Forget and I just knew the novel was the next thing I had to tackle.

NS: Have you ever thought of writing out of your comfort zone? Is there any other genre you'd love to attempt but are leery of diving in?
MKE: My friend is writing a historical novel. It is over 400 pages with charts that break my heart. She is so committed to the period she's writing in, the character's timelines, the time consuming checking of facts. I am in complete awe of that kind of writing. I honestly don't think I could do it. I'm more of a seat-of-the-pants, making-shit-up-as-I-go kind of writer.

NS: How have your techniques for character development changed since you've been writing? Is it still the same, or has it developed over time. If so how?
MKE: What makes me different than some writers is that I write in fragments. I think about my story all the time, jotting down character traits, plotlines, ideas I may or may not want to use down the line. I usually clip pictures of what I think my characters look like from a magazine then I paste them onto a storyboard. The novel and characters build from there.

NS: How do you hook your reader into a story?
MKE: I spent my 20's as a New York City advertising copywriter working under a woman famous for hundreds of commercials that earned her the advertising world's equivalent of an Academy Award. We would sit in her huge Madison Avenue office, high above the streets of New York City, brainstorming a product's history, which we called Storyboarding. It's similar to what many writers are doing today with their book trailers and what movie producers have always done with their movie trailers. She taught me how to grab people in that first sentence, how to write fabulous dialogue, how to move easily from scene to scene, what hot actor/actress would best 'sell' the product. She also taught me probably my best lesson in writing fiction - how to break the rules!

NS: What do you find the most difficult to write: Dialogue? Back Story? Emotion?
MKE: Like a lot of writer's, I get stuck in the middle of the story. So I guess the more you know about back story, the easier it will be for your characters to move seamlessly through the middle of the story to the end. I love the mystery of life and love that we find in every character's back story. If life or love were easy, we'd have all the answers, wouldn't we? I still want every character to surprise me. That is the wondrous, magical gift of writing. And I'm thrilled i get to go on this crazy roller-coaster ride every day.

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Her Blog  THE-ONE-AND-ONLY-MARY (found at Blogit) has been called ‘exuberant’, ‘a beautiful weaving of your life and writing’. 

Mary would love to hear  from you. She is available for bookstore and Book Club Readings, Workshops & Residencies. You can contact her at marylovesdogs@sbcglobal.net