What’s this all about?
I’ve spent much of my adult life advocating for women in the
home, in the workplace, on the streets, around the world. I’ve been paying it forward from a community
of women that’s been generous to me in so many ways, mentoring me, coaching me,
holding my hand when I’ve been afraid, holding my heart when it was bruised and
battered, slaying my foes when I’ve been too beaten to fend for myself, kicking
me in the ass when they knew I could slay them myself.
So when I set out to write a novel several years ago, it’s
no surprise friendship ran through it like a freight train. For more than five
years I sweat and bled Stella Rose until
finally it was ready to farm out to agents, publishers, hybrid presses. I told
my friends and family I had finally completed a novel. The first question
everyone asks:
What’s your book
about?
At first I’d recount the plot, but that’s not what the book
is about. In my mind, I kept going
back to a conversation with a fellow writer who asked me this question: What do
you want your readers to feel? I knew instantly. “Remember when Barbara Walters
asked Oprah about Gayle and she started bawling?” He had no clue. I told him
how Oprah was overcome with emotion talking about her best friend. “That,” I
told him, “is what I want my readers to feel.”
Now I tell readers this: Stella
Rose is a love letter to friends everywhere who venture into this complex
terrain, who dare to trust each other, to give all they have to the other, and
love one another without agenda, without expectations, and with whole hearts.
But novels, by definition, have an end. So I created this
space to keep the conversation going.
That’s why I’m here, talking to you, about friendship. Not
the ribbons and bows kind, but the ferocious kind. The fierce kind. The don’t
f**k with my best friend kind. This isn’t about spewing rainbows and puppies;
it’s about the real challenge friendship can be when it’s not the lifeblood it
should be.
How about you? Please
leave a comment and tell me why you’re here. Include what you hope to take, or leave, or
both. Please sign up here for my
monthly posts, and add your voice. The
conversation – and our lives – will be richer for having your voice in it.
Welcome. I’m glad you’re here.
In Friendship,
Tammy
