Making Friends with
Other Trees and Flowers –
a Story of Low Vision
and High Expectations
A note from the author…
I was born three
months premature and gradually lost my sight throughout my childhood. Yet mine
is a success story. I went to school with my sighted peers, had a happy
childhood living in Belmont, Massachusetts and traveling with my family across
this country, England, and Europe. When I was thirteen I could no longer read
print. My mother read my homework aloud to me, and for the next five years,
studying was about all I did unless I was practicing the piano or composing. I
had come to music late, yet that was what I wanted to learn. In time I earned a
BA, Master of Music, and Doctor of Musical Arts, from Sarah Lawrence College,
Yale University School of Music, and the University of Arizona respectively. I enjoy my work as a teacher and performer,
and now as a writer I am including literary themes in many of my presentations.
If Emma had Practiced, and Music in the Novels of Jane Austen are
two of my most popular programs. I live in Tucson, Arizona and am currently
writing Emma of Belmont Hill – a Twentieth Century Jane Austen Story. For more info, see: janneirvine@www.com
1.
What really inspired
you to write your book, to force you from taking an idea or experience and
conveying it into a book?
I have always been
uptight about discussing my gradual loss of sight. Many of my music history and
appreciation students, more than students since in time they became my friends,
didn’t know I had a serious visual problem though they knew I did certain
things differently. I began to realize they had the right to know. Why should
they guess at what I could and couldn’t do?
My final class in February
of 2010 was My Life in Music and Poetry. As I began to tell of my
childhood, its problems and pleasures, I knew I had everyone’s attention. I
spoke of my love of observing the changing seasons. Even with limited vision, I
could still revel in the magnificence of a New England autumn. I brought my class up to the present, and when
I finished I could feel the electricity in the air. Everyone was with me.
This powerful
experience is the Postlude of my book. Just talking about it was made all the
more poignant since three months before I gave this class, my mother had died at
the age of ninety-nine. I knew after teaching that two hour class three days in
a row, I had to do something with all of the emotions I was feeling. A few days
later I had written an outline, and by August I had written my first draft of
this book.
2. What is it about and whom do you believe is your targeted
reader?
Making Friends with
Other Trees and Flowers – a Story of Low Vision and High Expectations is a memoir of my
childhood up to the age of eighteen.
There are several varieties
of potential targeted readers:
1.
People interested in a late beginner’s overwhelming desire to
excel in music – Classical piano and composition in my case
2.
People who grew up in the 1950s and are nostalgic about the era
of their childhood.
3.
People (like me) who have moved away from the glorious display
of a New England autumn and who want to recapture its beauty through my
descriptions
4.
Parents and teachers of blind and low vision children
5.
People who want to take their children to see some of the
important places, buildings, and museums in England, France, Germany,
Switzerland, Belgium, and Holland
6.
Anyone who wants to know how to get the greatest enjoyment out
of life
3. What do you hope will be the everlasting thoughts for readers
who finish your book? What should remain with them long after putting it down?
I hope one of the
‘everlasting thoughts’ is that life is wonderful. Disability or no, life is to
be cherished.
What I hope readers
will take away from my book is my love of the acre of woods which surrounded my
home in New England. The discerning reader, especially if he or she has read Anne
of Green Gables, will help me pick violets in the spring and nasturtiums in
the summer. The best season is fall, and I describe it from the moment the
first sumac leaf turns red. The first snowstorm has its own magic, and a few
months later it is time to pick violets again.
4. What advice or words of wisdom do you have for fellow
writers?
My advice is to be in
love with your topic. I loved describing my happy childhood since my happiness
outweighed the challenges of vision loss.
5. What trends in the book world do you see and where do you
think the book publishing industry is heading?
I don’t have enough
information to answer this last question. I don’t read many contemporary works.
I hope the book publishing industry is reasonably healthy, and I hope that
books remain in real space and not just in cyberspace. Personally, I read books
recorded commercially on CDs. I also read books from Talking Books for the
Blind. For books I can’t find in any
other way, I have friends read aloud to me from print books.
6. What great challenges did you have in writing your book?
I think my biggest
challenge was to change from WordPerfect to Word in the middle of my
manuscript! Because I was the only one who really knew my subject, the writing
itself went remarkably smoothly for a first book.
7. If people can only buy one book this month, why should it be
yours?
My book is optimistic
in its viewpoint. It tells of a family lifestyle which is all too rare
now.
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Brian Feinblum’s views,
opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his
employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him
at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the
third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog 2016 ©. Born and
raised in Brooklyn, now resides in Westchester. Named one of the best book
marketing blogs by Book Baby
http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs
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