SUSAN COLE

I didn't realize until I moved to New Orleans that Mardi Gras isn't over in just one day. Parades, balls, king cakes, and snarled traffic take over New Orleans for two weeks. Many of the parades are breathtaking with gorgeous floats, a kaleidoscope of colors and smoke and fabulously dressed riders,  like Smoking Mary, an iridescent float train about six cars long in the Orpheus Parade. 

St. Anne is the people's parade on Fat Tuesday, the last day of Mardi Gras season. Anyone can join, unlike the more elaborate parades where you have to be a member of a sponsoring krewe. Some people work all year sewing costumes, but others just throw something together. Family and friend groups come up with themes--snarkily decorated boxes over their heads exemplifying quarantine, or a family dressed as roller derby skaters, the Nola Rollas. The red-velvet-cake couple in the photo above were behind a woman covered in soda cans and beside a couple dressed as sunflowers. After days of fancier, pre-planned parades, it's a joy to mingle together on the street. It also has an interesting history.

There was an especially mellow spirit in the air this year with people thankful to be able to celebrate after the unthinkable occurred in 2021 and Mardi Gras was cancelled. Mardi Gras has a new story every time you go out and St. Anne Parade is really special.

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I had a great time last week as the guest author at a memoir class at Simon Fraser University Writers Studio in Vancouver, British Columbia. The students asked great questions like how much I wrote during the sailing voyage, and what my revision process was like. It was also lovely to hear their work.

I'm excited to announce that excerpts of Holding Fast will appear in the next four issues of Blue Water Sailing along with photos, some of which have not previously been published. I'll keep you posted when it comes out!

If you've read the book, please review it on Amazon. It's easy to do–click the link below and scroll down the page until you see "write a customer review" and click on it. It doesn't have to be brilliant, a couple of phrases are fine!

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I really enjoyed talking about Holding Fast to an interested audience of sailors the other night at the Southern Yacht Club, including couples who were hoping to take off cruising themselves one day, and women who sailed and raced their own boats. They had great questions, such as whether, as the spouse of a lifelong sailor who agreed reluctantly to the voyage, I regretted going. 

When John and I first lived on an old, leaky Fire Island ferryboat in our twenties and I told people that I'd never been on the water before I met John, they were surprised and puzzled as to why I would agree to live in a chilly New England harbor with only a Franklin stove for heat and few amenities. Surely, part of it was the power of new love, but it was also the adventure, taking a leap to something so different and romantic. When we sailed off on Laughing Goat, I hated leaving my secure life in Connecticut and was terrified of sailing out of sight of land. I was excited, though, to set out into the unknown with two people whom I loved; and for John to live out his dream.

I would regret if I hadn't said yes. 

I was thrilled to meet women in the audience who were sailing and racing on their own, part of an active group of women sailors in New Orleans. When we were on our voyage, it took my breath away whenever I met a woman sailing single-handed, making her way solo around the world. I didn't have the fortitude or sailing skills for that, but I'm glad that I took the leap I did. 

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I met David in a Dunkin' Donuts parking lot on Veterans Highway in Metairie, about twenty minutes from my home in New Orleans. He had been kind and game enough to answer my plea in an expat Facebook group for someone willing to take a few books between New Orleans and Merida, Mexico. As trucks whizzed by on the highway, I slipped him a ziploc package of books while looking over my shoulder, imagining a narcotics squad about to nab us.

This all started when a Merida friend said she wanted to buy my book but couldn't bring herself to purchase it from Amazon. John and I lived in Merida during what turned out to be his last year. She suggested Between the Lines, a wonderful bookstore in Merida. Shipping costs to Mexico are prohibitive, and I'd already had the experience there of Christmas cards arriving in April and packages held in obscure customs offices for months.

Thank you, David, all the others who offered to take the book, and Between the Lines, where it will now be available! During the process of putting Holding Fast out into the world, I've been continually amazed by your generosity, and hope to pay it forward.

Please keep the reviews coming on Amazon!

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Wishing y'all a splendid day!

I finished writing Holding Fast a year ago. It's hard to believe how much has happened since, from publication in October to book-signings in favorite bookstores to a feature in the Times-Picayune, the New Orleans newspaper; not to mention connecting with so many readers, which has been awesome. While I was writing, post-it notes covered the wall next to my writing desk: ideas for scenes, inspirational quotes, themes. As I begin work on my next book, two notes from Holding Fast remain.

It took some  years, and many writing workshops, before I understood that a main theme of the book was leaving conventional life behind. Once I put that note up, it never came down. If whatever I wrote didn't pertain to it, it couldn't be in the book.

Jerry Saltz, in How to Be an Artist, says "Find your own voice. Then exaggerate it."(p. 49). When I asked a writer friend for feedback on the initial draft of Holding Fast, she said, "I want to see more of you in there." At the time, John, Kate, and I were living in Florida. We had enrolled Kate in a regular school, and Kate and I would have the "normal" lives we craved after three years on the water. We had a pretty house in a suburban community with a vibrant downtown and a gorgeous white sand beach on the Atlantic Ocean.

Yet I was miserable. I was away from family and friends (John didn't want to return to the Northeast). I had little in common with the neighbors and hated the locked gates of our development clicking behind me each time I drove in. I cried each night. While writing, I imagined myself on a rosy version of Laughing Goat sailing in ever-sunny seas. I wasn't sure what my friend meant about putting more of myself in.

I gained more insight as time passed and eventually, I was able to reflect back, to find my own voice. I love Saltz' notion of exaggerating it: for those of us who come late to expressing ourselves, what seems like exaggeration is most likely simply an acknowledgement of truths already there. It was hard work but has opened up my life up in ways I could not have imagined, for which I'm grateful. 

Finally, if you've read the book and haven't left a review, please do so. It helps with Amazon's algorithms. Simply click below, and scroll down the page to "write a customer review." One sentence or a couple phrases are fine!

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I also wanted to let you know about a wonderful new website, Shepherd, which Ben Fox started and as he says, is like wandering around your favorite bookstore but reimagined for the online world... along with notes from authors pointing out their favorite books. Here is a link to my page, where you can also buy my book!

 
Shepherd

The blue cup above is a treasured Christmas gift from a potter friend. John, my husband, passed away in 2016, and I moved to New Orleans soon after that. When I got home from a Christmas lunch in 2018 and opened my friend's gift, I was stunned. I had shared sailing stories with the group over the years, including John's mantra, "On we go!" as we sailed through squalls, made our way through reefs, and pressed on even when it got rough and we were miserable. Seeing the cup, I gasped, sobbed, and smiled. It was perfect, reminding me of love and tenacity. 

Holiday gifts used to fill me with dread. My mother once gave me a Chanukah card with an article folded inside about children who didn't visit their parents enough. On my 25th birthday, after I had started a new life with John, madly in love and living on a ferry boat, she sent an old gray bathroom rug with a ragged hole cut in the center, and suggested I wear it as a poncho.

I'm so grateful for the love and support of the people in my life now, and for the outpouring of support from readers. This year, I got a new grandson and the book I had worked on for so long was published. Years ago, I could never have imagined that my life would take these wonderful turns.

This year, I'm spending the holidays with my daughter in Vancouver, Washington, and delighting in my eleven-month-old grandson. All of his grandparents will be here (John's here in spirit) and he will be awash in love, as it should be. 

Holidays can be difficult, especially after loss, but they also bring the opportunity to acknowledge the wonders in your life. I wish you all a serene, loving, joyful holiday. On we go!

During the holiday season, New Orleans' City Park lights up with unicorns, Santas, peacocks, fleur-de-lis, and other festive decorations like the steamboat above, a replica of one that plies the Mississippi River. I'm heading to the Pacific Northwest next week to visit my daughter Kate and her family for Christmas and enjoying a few Christmas traditions here before leaving. 

One tradition I love is going out with a group of close friends for a holiday lunch. We met shortly after I arrived in New Orleans five years ago and sometime after that, a few of us formed the Anarchist Book Club. Our friendship grew and we took road trips to Montgomery, Alabama, to see the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, and to the beach. One of us passed away this year from cancer. On the way to visit her in a hospital in Houston, we stopped for gas at a truck stop and bought her a glowing doll that that eerily transformed from Jesus into Mary and whose eyes seemed to follow you; it was just right for our spiritual, irreverent friend. I've never particularly seen myself as a badass, but with this group of women, I have surprised myself.

Writing my book has led me to surprise myself in other ways, too. Managing my time and working towards a goal have not been areas in which I've excelled in the past. Nearly three years ago, I urgently desired to finish this book that I had been working on for so long. My husband John had passed away a couple of years earlier. One night out at dinner with Kate and my son-in-law Alex, I expressed my frustrations. Alex is an entrepreneur, the CEO of a company of engineers, a terrific manager, and he offered to be my accountability person. We've worked together on it now for almost three years, making goal after goal, though I certainly have a ways to go. We have become personally closer, too, which means a lot to me. As he said the other night, "Not many mothers-and-sons-in-law could do this successfully!"

The holiday season brings out other feelings, too, like how much I miss John. I'm coming to accept that the sadness I often feel at this time of year is simply a part of the season for me.

Before signing off, a couple of bits of business:

If you have not yet reviewed Holding Fast on Amazon, please review it! It helps tremendously with Amazon's algorithms. It's easy to do by clicking below, and scrolling down the page to the customer review section:

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A number of people have mentioned that they are giving Holding Fast as Christmas presents. If you are doing that, or would like to, I would love to send you a thank-you postcard. Please email me a copy of the receipt and your mailing address to my email address, susan@susan-cole.com.

I'm very grateful this year for all of you, and wish you a holiday and a year full of joy, peace and good health. I'd love to hear from you in the comments below if there's anything you want to share about this time of year.

I had a great time at Garden District Books the other night reading from Holding Fast. The Q & A was really fun, with questions like: how did I handle not having a fixed address given my need for stability? what was my most frightening moment? what did Kate think of the voyage then and now? My favorite part of the book being published is connecting with readers.

The day Holding Fast was published, October 19th, I floated home from the launch party. I had accomplished something that I had wanted very much. In my early life, after my father passed away, I stopped dreaming for myself; it was too painful, reminding me of how much he had loved and encouraged me. When I got together with John in my twenties, he dreamed of sailing away. He kept following that dream, and eventually, in our late forties, we sailed off on Laughing Goat with Kate. John's tenacity made a dream happen and his example showed me the way.

I woke up during the night after the launch party and my left foot was throbbing and sore. The sensation reminded me of cartoons where a character's heart throbs outside the body, ba-boom, ba-boom. For the next couple of weeks, I couldn't put my full weight on that foot and I stepped gingerly. The sensation continued until the day after the reading at Garden District when I got a massage. The masseuse had studied Eastern techniques and told me that the aching spot was linked to the heart. 

My heart is with John on Laughing Goat, on our last boat, Smooch, on all the earlier boats. Our wild adventures were filled with hope and possibility. I'm grateful that I've had the opportunity to share the experience in Holding Fast.

This year, the book I'd worked on for fifteen years was published and my first grandson was born. Progress has never been a straight line for me. After my dad died when I was young, I stopped dreaming. I didn't do it on purpose but without him, it was all I could do to keep my head above water. I began dreaming again when I fell in love with my husband John in my twenties. I went on to have my daughter Kate late in life, sail on an amazing voyage, and write about it.

Dreams do come true. I am in my 70s working on my next book. My daughter and her husband brought my grandson Max to New Orleans for a visit last week (they moved away last summer). I signed a book to Max to read when he gets older. I hope his dreams come true, too.

Thanks so much to everyone who came to celebrate the publication of my first book, Holding Fast: A Memoir of Sailing, Love, and Loss last night at Blue Cypress Books. The bookstore sold out of my book! It was great to see old and new New Orleans friends and to hear from out-of-town friends and relatives who watched on the livestream. I especially enjoyed the question-and-answer period. Kate was seven when we left and someone asked about Kate's perceptions of the voyage. I told them about her cabin in the forward part of the boat, a cozy vee-berth at the bow where she was surrounded by her books and stuffed animals. At one point on the voyage, though, John and I were distressed to hear her refer to it as the "death cabin." Kate was listening to the launch party on livestream from her new home across the country and when I couldn't remember why she referred to it that way, she said, "The Titanic." The movie had just come out when we left on our voyage.

It was a really special night for me, and I'm still taking in that my book is in the world, people are reading it, and perhaps finding their own stories in it. 

If you missed it, you can watch on youtube  Susan's Book Launch Party. Next week on October 27th, I will have a book-signing at Garden District Books, and all are invited. More information on that will follow. 

On Tuesday, Holding Fast will be officially out in the world. There will be a launch party that night at Blue Cypress, a lovely bookstore in New Orleans, with friends and cake. I'll float on the love, warmth, and friendship in the room, and in the spirit of those watching online, or who are no longer here.

When I finished the final draft last year, a good friend asked if I'd be willing to let her book club read it. We were ending a meeting that had nothing to do with writing, but in my image of the encounter, I'm clutching a thick manuscript of Holding Fast tightly to my chest, saying "Nooooo!" as though she'd asked me to hand over my newborn baby girl to a bunch of strangers who would then run off with her. At that point, no one beyond my writing instructors, workshop classmates, and a few close friends had read it.

I remember when my husband, John, was ill and a wise shrink-priest in Merida, Mexico, where we were living at the time, told me that all of our adventures, the sailing, our lives together, were not gone, that they were alive inside of me. 

I said yes to my friend reading it in the book club and it led here, to the book being published.

It's hard to let go, but it is all still alive inside of me.