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day 1 in NYC

Great evening in the Big Apple last night. Our meal at Serafina was excellent, the service/waiter outstanding, but even better - Ruth Calderon was wonderful. I arrived early enough to meet her before the event, where she eagerly accepted a copy of ENCHANTRESS, saying she couldn't wait to see how I interpreted some of the same Talmud passages as she did in her book. Then, to top things off at the end of her talk, I was called on for the final question and she acknowledged me as her "sister in Talmud", then held up ENCHANTRESS and praised my novels in front of the audience of hundreds of people. Wow!

princess bride review

The Princess Bride by William Goldman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


As much as I enjoyed this book, the movie was better. I did appreciate knowing the back story on the characters, but the more I read, the more I found that Goldman's pseudo-biography got in the way of the action. The ending was just plain weird, which is why I couldn't rate this book 5-stars.



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no rest for the weary author

People who are not authors might imagine that after the book is written, my work is over – other than cashing royalty checks. In actuality, I’ve been busier the last few months than when I was writing ENCHANTRESS. There were months of responding to my publisher’s request for edits, both for content and copyediting, each under deadline. Then I got a copy of the galley to look for any errors we’d missed and make any last minute changes. After I made my revisions, a copyeditor checked them and came back to me with any questions still not resolved.

These galleys, also known as ARC’s, advanced reader’s copies, were also sent out to reviewers and various prominent folks in hopes that they would have something nice to say that my publisher can use as a blurb to promote the book. I was expected to proposition any scholars and authors [ideally famous ones] I know to provide blurbs as well, a task I performed diligently.

With the final revisions done and the ARC’s sent out, you might imagine that I get to take a well-deserved rest. Not yet. Now comes the start of promotion – increasing my presence on FaceBook, Goodreads, and LinkedIn. Tweeting and blogging more often. Working with my publisher’s art department to design magazine ads and e-blasts announcing ENCHANTRESS to readers. This is where I am now, in the midst of sending individual emails to my 3300+ Gmail contacts – a task that will take at least a week since Gmail only allows me to send 500 a day. And since the experts say that people needs to see something three times before they remember it, I intend to repeat the process again in July and just before pub date in early September. No rest for the weary author here.

Is This Tomorrow

Is This Tomorrow by Caroline Leavitt

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The subject matter of a missing, presumed dead, child was difficult for me, but Caroline Leavitt has such a great writing style that i read on anyway. Actually, I was so pulled into the 1950's suburbia drama, with its finely-drawn characters and their problems, that I had to keep reading to find out what happened. I grew up in those days and it was fascinating to see it through adult eyes, to observe how those who didn't fit within the strict conforming boundaries coped and tried to live their lives anyway.



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Four Seasons novel

I'm really enjoying Laurel Corona's "The Four Seasons: A Novel of Vivaldi's Venice", as well as learning so much about the musical world of 18th century Venice and the surprising place of women in it. Not quite sure why it took me so long to find it, especially since "The Four Seasons" was one of my father's favorite classical pieces and the record was often playing when I was growing up. Interesting that the book was published in 2008, only a few months before my father died.

Mother's Day feh

My family never observed Mothers Day when I was little in the 50’s; my mom considered it a fake holiday, made up for the purpose of enriching florists and Hallmark. But for the last 25 years, Mothers Day has been bittersweet for me. My Bubbi died on the Shabbat before Mother's Day in 1987 [her yartzeit is today] and because we both lived in the same city, I got the phone call from the hospital ER. That meant I had the unhappy honor of calling my mother, her daughter, to share the bad news. So much for celebrating Mothers Day.

Calderon Goodreads review

A Bride for One Night: Talmud Tales by Ruth Calderon

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Ruth Calderon is a living legend for me - a non-Orthodox woman Talmud scholar who wants other non-Orthodox Jews, and women, to study this canonical text that has been the basis of Jewish law and tradition for 1500 years. I read some of these tales on the internet years ago; they gave me the idea to turn what the Talmud said about Rav Hisda's daughter into my own historical novel, Rav Hisda's Daughter, Book I: Apprentice: A Novel of Love, the Talmud, and Sorcery. As I read this book, I found myself agreeing and disagreeing with how she expanded the various short Talmud passages to get to their meat, but always I was impressed at her scholarship and inventiveness. I was pleased, but not surprised, that one of her tales involves Rav Hisda's daughter, and I was fascinated that she interpreted the Talmud tale quite differently from how I did in Enchantress: A Novel of Rav Hisda's Daughter.

Why only 4 stars, not 5? Because there are so many more pieces of Talmud she could have, should have, included. In the end I was disappointed at all the good stuff that was still missing.

Maggie Anton



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cataract surgery

As some may recall, I suffered my second retinal detachment last October [and had to cancel my Chicago book tour at the last minute. So if you’re in a Jewish group there who wants to hear me speak, I’m rescheduling for Oct 20-26 and looking for a few more venues]. But I digress.

One of the potential complications of my retina surgery was developing cataracts, which could take months or several years. Well, mine took months, forcing me to undergo another eye surgery just before Passover. Let me say first of all that I’m so glad I had it. The cataract removal [it's overkill to call a 15-minute procedure "surgery"] was painless and I was pretty much fine the next afternoon.

The best part however is that they replaced my filmy lens with an implant matching my glasses prescription, so I see almost perfectly with that eye. For the first time since I was a child, I get up in the morning and can read the clock across the room. My other eye, still nearsighted, does the reading, so except for using the computer [neither eye is ideal for that distance], I mostly don't need glasses anymore. Almost amazing, it's as if somebody suddenly replaced all the 40W light bulbs in my house with 100W ones. Frankly, it’s a miracle.