Friend Me - A Whole 'Nother Meaning

I'm excited to tell you about my guest today. She's sweet, funny, talented, and gets into some crazy messes. Her name is Becky Povich, and she blogs at Becky Lewellen Povich: Writer, Humorist, Bliss Follower.

Carol, thanks so much for having me as your guest today! Under the Tiki Hut is somewhere I definitely yearn to be at this stage of winter in St. Louis. Ugh. I keep promising myself, and others, that I will not complain about the heat and humidity when the dog days of summer arrive. (I’ll let you know if I kept that promise in about four months!)

I’m here today to talk about my memoir, From Pigtails to Chin Hairs: A Memoir & More. The other posts I've written have been more about what prompted me to write a memoir, how many years it took to complete, all the ups & downs from start to finish, etc.

This time, though, I’d like to share something different. How I found and rekindled a couple of really old friendships. Every person and every incident in my memoir is real. There are other people I would have loved to include, but I couldn't find them to ask permission to use their real names. Those people are important enough to me that I didn't want to use fictitious names, either. (I have plans, though, to find them so I can add them to the sequel, due out 2015. (No title as of yet.)

I wasn’t much of a facebook person until I began looking for past neighbors & friends in 2010. Obviously, it’s difficult, too, to find women if their page doesn’t include their maiden name. Fortunately, most of my searches could also be found by including men’s last names, so the treasure hunt began. This is where having a fantastic long-term memory is especially useful. I most likely wouldn’t be able to tell you what I had for lunch yesterday, but I can tell you the names of those long ago childhood friends, their parents’ names, and sometimes their street addresses.

One of the women I searched for, Diane, had been my next door neighbor in the 1950s. Through the years I’d heard she had gotten married and at one time still lived in the area. I couldn’t find her because either her maiden name wasn’t posted or she wasn’t on Facebook. I did find her brother, Earl, though. He was alive and well, living in the South, and amazed me with some of the details he remembered, such as the month, date, and year of my brother’s birthday! It was close to his, he said, and that’s why he remembered it…..but, still!

(They are the Diane and Earl in the first chapter, “Paradise on Preston Lane,” and to show how special our friendship was, my family moved to Nebraska when I was eight years old, and we hadn’t seen each other in all these years.) He said Diane lived only about 20 miles from where I live, gave me her e-mail address, and she and I made a lunch date. I brought along some old, black and white photos, and we talked and laughed as if we’d been getting together for years. It was amazing.

About a year later, Earl was able to make the trip home, to the St. Louis area, and I drove the three of us around the Old Neighborhood. Talk about reminiscing! 

We drove past the schools and churches we’d attended, up and down streets of old acquaintances, and of course “our” street…Preston Lane. They remarked how much it hadn’t changed, and yet the ways in which it had. We all viewed it the same. The houses and yards were so much smaller than our young eyes and minds had perceived all those years ago, and the trees had obviously flourished, growing tall and wide. The day was a bittersweet fragment of the story of our lives.

P.S. Diane and I continue to get together for lunch as often as we can. I haven’t seen Earl since that visit in 2011, but he promises to visit sometime this year.

~~~

“What can ever equal the memory of being young together?” – Michael Stein, In the Age of Love

Note: I am in no way endorsing Facebook. There are many things I don’t like about it, but it seems to be a “must” for authors to promote their books these days. It’s just one of the places I used to search for people. I also looked at school alumni websites and www.whitepages.com.

Becky Povich didn't begin writing until she was 48 years old. She’s had stories published in Chicken Soup for the Soul books, plus other anthologies, small newspapers, and magazines. Her memoir, From Pigtails to Chin Hairs: A Memoir & More is her first book. She’s busy promoting her memoir, blogging, and working on the sequel.

Her memoir has received remarkable praise from bestselling authors, and also terrific reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, and Library Thing.

Print copies can be purchased directly from Becky at www.beckypovich.com, on www.amazon.com and www.BN.com. (The e-book will be available very soon.)

In Other News
Stephen Tremp is releasing his new novel, Escalation, today.

Together, Breakthrough, Opening, and Escalation follow the lives of the unlikely participants from innocence to a coming of age through sacrifice, betrayal, passion, lust, unconditional love, and hope. Escalation will appeal to fans of modern-day science fiction, action, and horror.

Purchase Escalation here.

And in Other, Other News
Me, again. If you would like to sign up to participate in the cover reveal for my new novel, you can find all the details and the signup sheet here.