The Oceana Beach Club Hotel: A Review
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The Oceana Beach Club Hotel: A Review

The Oceana Beach Club Hotel in Santa Monica

Oceana Beach Club Hotel

Never before have I posted a review of a hotel on my personal blog. But I had such an enchanting experience at the beautiful Oceana Beach Club Hotel in Santa Monica that I decided to write about it.

Please note: I have in no way been compensated for this review.

It’s true I showed up at the Oceana feeling off, trembling with the remnants of a stomach bug that had had its slithery way with me.

It’s true I had a mediocre experience with a supposedly nice hotel prior to finding the Oceana on a third-party booking site that offered an excellent deal.

Notwithstanding, the Oceana surpassed all expectations. From the moment I arrived, I was graciously welcomed by the kindly staff and soothed by the cheerful, elegant surroundings. The gentlemen in the valet parking booth treated me with good-humored kindness. Mason and Jordan and the other guys were lovely!

It was hours before official check-in time, but the lady at the front desk phoned housekeeping to see if there was a room available. She was apologetic that none was yet ready and offered to call my cell phone as soon as one became available. She offered suggestions for lunch if I wanted to walk out into sun-drenched Santa Monica.

Sometimes when I book through a third party for a discount, I get treated like an ugly stepchild. Not at the Oceana Beach Club Hotel. I was treated with courtesy and respect.

Best of all, the room was gorgeous: spacious and peaceful with lovely furnishings. I walked in and my spirits lifted. There is something about being surrounded by luxury close to the sea that soothes and elevates you!

The Oceana provides bicycles for guests to ride, and I rode extensively. I pedaled to Whole Foods and to YogaWorks nearby on Montana Ave. My second and last morning, I rode along the beach just after sunrise. ‘Glorious’ suggests light emerging…and it was such a ride.

I ate one meal at Tower8, the hotel restaurant: lunch. A grilled chicken panini that was sumptuous. Having eaten little in a few days, I devoured it. But even if I hadn’t been off my vittles, I’d have enjoyed this well-made sandwich.

The pool was appealing though I didn’t use it. The ambiance was fun and bright and posh.

The location of the Oceana, on Ocean Avenue overlooking the beach, was spectacular. It’s easy to get to the boutiques on Montana and the shops on the Third Street Promenade.

I recommend the Oceana, and I give it 5*.

 

 

In the HuffPost, International Conference in Shared Parenting 2017
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In the HuffPost, International Conference in Shared Parenting 2017

International Conference Shared Parenting 2017

This week I took the train to Boston to attend the International Conference in Shared Parenting. This conference gathered together specialists in post-divorce child development from all over the world. I sat down with a very lovely Dr. Holstein to discuss the Conference, and I wrote about my experience in the HuffPost.

From my article:

…Despite advances in recognizing fathers’ fundamental rights to be equally involved in their children’s lives, the problem of not implementing that right continues within the legal system. At the same time, there’s a growing awareness that relegating one parent, whether father or mother, to second-class citizen parent status is not in the best interests of the child, when neither parent is actually abusive. There is a growing understanding that, post-separation, children need both parents to be fully present in their lives for optimal wholeness.

I sat down with Dr. Ned Holstein, the founder and chairman of the board of the National Parents Organization, at the International Conference on Shared Parenting in Boston. The National Parents Organization has a mission to preserve the bond between parents and children. To that end, at this conference, the world’s most renowned child development experts in the area of post-divorce parenting have gathered to share their research results. How do children fare with and without shared parenting post-divorce?…

“Court practices haven’t kept up with the growing research evidence on the benefits of shared parenting, so our intention was to gather all the world experts in one place at one time to compile the evidence that needs to be recognized as a basis for changing what our current practices are in the courts,” Dr. Holstein told me. “Based on the work of world experts at our conference today, ‘Best Interests of the Child’ means shared parenting for most children.”

Read the whole post here.

International Conference on Shared Parenting 2017

International Conference Shared Parenting

 

Recent Author Events and Book Reviews
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Recent Author Events and Book Reviews

Recent Author Events

I’ve enjoyed getting out and promoting THE YEAR OF LOVING and my other novels, too, of course.

Book Club

Early in February the Women’s Novels of New York Book Club hosted me at a dinner downtown. What a great group of women! They asked meaty questions and offered insightful comments about The Year of Loving. They reminded me why I am a novelist.

That’s right, books are the keepers of soul, and novels enrich people’s lives! Novels entertain, amuse, provoke, incite, and open the doors to the mind. I was touched and honored to sit with this thoughtful, kind group of readers. Also, the food at Gloo was delicious.

Book Blog Reviews

Two book review blogs posted excellent reviews of THE YEAR OF LOVING.

CTRL, ALT, BOOKS! is run by Layna whom I’ve known for a few years from other blogs. She reads and writes with keen intelligence. I love her well-written, deeply observant reviews. She serves as one of my ‘test’ bloggers; if she doesn’t get what I’m trying to do, then I haven’t done my job as a novelist. She’s that good.

Layna started her review with these words: “Traci L. Slatton is one of the most underrated authors I have come across. I have yet to read one of her works that I didn’t thoroughly enjoy and The Year of Loving is no exception. It was beautifully written and evoked a wide range of emotions.”

In conclusion, she wrote, “The book is written in such a way that you really connect with all of the characters, whether you like them or not. I had to keep reading to know what happened next in Sarah’s life, even if that meant I lost a little (a lot) of sleep in the process. Truly a great story and a must read!”

Layna’s review prompted me think–which a good review does. I had to ask myself, Why am I an underrated author? Because I think Layna is on to something. I sent her a note saying so, and thanking her for the review. Seems like I have some work to do within my own consciousness…

CTRL, ALT, BOOKS! review

Also, Satisfaction for Insatiable Readers published a review. What a treat to find a new review blog! Gina R wrote the review:

On the surface, we have a woman (Sarah) caught between ages, pulled two ways by desire, and struggling to make all the pieces fit one big puzzle in an effort to reach happily-ever-after.  At its heart, it’s a story of one woman truly finding her way back to herself.

Did I agree with all her choices?  No…in fact, I was actually very surprised by the ending… I was thinking something completely different, but then again, that resistance to fit what I think, or what anyone thinks for that matter, is what makes Ms. Slatton’s character that much more real. The way Sarah struggles to deal with her friend’s illness…, the constant battle between her and her daughters (let’s now even mention the ex) to find some common ground let alone agreement on pretty much anything, and even the yoyo not-a-relationship status she puts herself and the two contenders in, all add up to one independent, not-perfect-but-still-trying-mightily woman that will capture your attention, if not your heart…

I enjoyed this review and the openness with which Gina related her experience of the novel.

The Year of Loving Book review

Library Event

In addition, just yesterday I did an author event at the Riverside Library in NYC. It was good fun, with attendees who asked probing questions about THE YEAR OF LOVING. The lovely librarian Ms. Gomila helped out in various ways. A great experience!

Recent author events

The Portsmouth Review on THE YEAR OF LOVING
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The Portsmouth Review on THE YEAR OF LOVING

The Portsmouth Review on THE YEAR OF LOVING

Rebecca Skane at The Portsmouth Review is one of my favorite book reviewers. She writes elegantly and her reviews are thoughtful, salient, and relevant. I am a huge fan! I always send her a copy of a novel as soon as I finish it–immediately if not sooner.

Naturally I sent her a hot-off-the-press copy of THE YEAR OF LOVING. I waited eagerly and, yes, a bit anxiously to find out what she thought about it.

Yesterday her review appeared on The Portsmouth Review: 5 stars! Yay!

Ms. Skane wrote, in part:

Differing from most romances on a level of personal taste, there was no eye rolling. Sarah’s character development is thoroughly hashed out and delivered as a newly independent woman who wants to focus on herself and her children rather than potential suitors. But she’s human. And humans have needs. They also have faults. I found her character to be someone I could relate to and someone I would love to know in real life. She so desperately wants her independence, so much so that she won’t let Carl float her by buying more paintings after they start their tryst. I can completely understand this – she didn’t want to feel indebted, owned, controlled. Scott also threatens that independence when he drops his young children off without warning when he’s on call, and asks (no, TELLS) her to cook for him….

She finishes with, “The Year of Loving is a wonderful read for those who adore romance, intelligent women’s fiction, and steamy scenes. And as always, Slatton manages to turn any story into a literary piece with her sophisticated prose and keen eye for detail.”

Check out this terrific 5* review on The Portsmouth Review!

Also, note my upcoming author events: January 28 at 3 at the Hamilton Grange Library

January 29 at 8 pm on Mommy Interrupted radio with Kristi Beck WLINY

February 11 at 2 pm at the Riverside Library

February 16 at 9 pm on Authors on Air: The Librarian

The Portsmouth Review on The Year of Loving

Enchantment Overlooking Magic Mountain
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Enchantment Overlooking Magic Mountain

Enchantment Overlooking Magic Mountain

Some lovely and generous-hearted friends invited us to stay in their beautiful Vermont home while they were elsewhere. So Sabin and I drove up and found ourselves in a sumptuous and homey palace. There’s a view over the rolling green hills and trees onto Magic Mountain, and a private pond with lights for night time swimming.

I find myself so relaxed that my adrenal glands are pulsing with let-down. My creative angst is nearly replaced with languor. Sabin has set himself up in the dining room to draw the relief panel for the WW1 Memorial.

Our labs Molly and Gabriel are ecstatic. I took them to the pond yesterday and Molly, our chocolate lab, ate some little green frogs before swimming around to look for ducks. Gabriel joined her. Then they ran out of the water to jump on me and I had to laugh even as their enthusiasm ensured that I was wet and smelly.

There are a zillion of these little green frogs, and when do you ever see frogs anymore?

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Latest on the HuffPo: The Phenomenon of Lashing Out
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Latest on the HuffPo: The Phenomenon of Lashing Out

Here’s my latest on the Huffington Post, an article about The Phenomenon of Lashing Out

Trolls, Harassers, Haters, and Shamers: The Phenomenon of Lashing Out

I promote my books. For one novel, I hired a publicist who turned out engaging press releases. She sent them to me for approval and then emailed them to every contact on her extensive list. She sent out dozens. That’s what I paid her to do and she was a responsible publicist.

A junior editor looked at one release, decided I thought I was better than other authors, and initiated a Twitter shaming campaign that lasted about eight hours.

It struck out of the blue. Suddenly my Twitter feed lit up with nasty tweets, many personal, directed at me. It was shocking and confusing. It took me a while to figure out what was going on. Then I did the best damage control I could.

I can only imagine how horrible a longer Twitter shame-barrage would have been. Eight hours was enough to leave me with a few weeks of mild PTSD. I never understood the point of the shaming episode. What pleasure did the junior editor and her cohorts take in such scathing nastiness? What did they hope to accomplish beyond making me feel badly? I certainly never felt that I was better than other authors, though I will balance that by saying that I have worked hard over the decades to write thousands of pages of prose. I take pride in whatever craftsmanship I accomplish.

A very different episode. I went to pick up my daughter at her bus stop. As a writer, I work out of a small home office. I seldom dress up for that. I brushed my teeth that morning and swiped on sun block–that was the extent of my ablutions. I trotted to the bus stop in my usual stinky yoga clothes.

At the bus stop waited an attractive young African American woman. I sidled up to her and casually chatted, the way parents do.

She suddenly snapped, “I’m not the nanny! I’m the mom!”

Given the current racial tensions, I must preface my remarks by saying that this was a bus stop for a private school in Manhattan. I am sure that this well-turned-out young woman had been mistaken for the nanny. Probably more than once. Few of the private schools here are as well integrated as one would hope. Most are putting honest effort into greater diversity.

On this particular occasion, this young woman correctly noted the calculation in my eyes. Then she incorrectly interpreted it. Yes, I certainly did look at her and make a judgment. But it wasn’t the one she projected onto me.

I was thinking, “Traci, look how nice she looks. You need to dress better. You don’t have to come to the bus stop looking like a schlub. For pete’s sake, woman, take twenty minutes to make yourself presentable.”

I think women of any race will relate to this self-criticism. But until the other mother spoke up, the issue of race had never occurred to me. It was about me looking dowdy.

At the time, I was surprised and flustered. I murmured something like “That’s what I thought.” I felt badly for this woman whose life experience had brought her to this point of assuming that another mom was judging her when I was only judging myself.

Another example. Now I confess to a certain tolerance for unconventional people. There are many worthy trapezoidal pegs; I don’t want to force them into square holes. Unfortunately, this attitude means that sometimes nutters slip inside my sphere. I did business with one such. My husband and a friend gleaned that this person was shaky; they warned me. I didn’t heed them. I should have, because when I made a decision this person didn’t like, they sent me dozens of crazed, threatening emails full of violent imagery. I blogged about this before, because I was helped by an organization called haltabuse.org that works to stop email harassment.

What these painful and bewildering episodes have in common is the phenomenon of projection. The Twitterers, the other mom, and the business fruitcake took something within themselves and projected it outward onto me. I knew this intellectually at the time, but it didn’t solace me. I had to work with myself to return to my center in the face of the onslaught. I think, for the Shamers and the Harasser, that’s what they wanted: to hurt me.

Obviously the mom felt that she was standing up for herself. Though she was projecting onto me, my interaction with her fits into a different category because she didn’t intend to cause harm. Nor did I feel hurt by her. I felt surprised, then I felt compassion.

Indeed, what continually surprises me about our culture now is how little compassion there is, and how widespread the phenomenon of lashing out has become. It often goes along with high self-righteous indignation that reeks of self-pleasuring. I have come to believe that self-righteous indignation is best enjoyed in private.

Recently my husband sculptor Sabin Howard came into the spotlight when he, with architect-in-training Joe Weishaar, won the WW1 Memorial design competition. Someone used social media to disparage Sabin, claiming that Sabin’s beautiful neoclassical works were “Nazi-like.”

The irony is that Sabin is at least one-quarter Jewish. His grandmother was a German Jew. His mother is Italian and I will never forget the dinner when Zio Carlo, upon hearing that I am Jewish, leaned over and whispered, “Ours is an Italian Jewish name. We are descended from Jews who were forcibly converted.”

One hater posted a video of Sabin sculpting in a friend’s studio as “proof” that Sabin’s work is Nazi-esque. But this studio belonged to a dear friend who happens to be gay and recently married to his long time partner. Since Sabin is famed for his male nudes, which are sublimely beautiful but not eroticized, we have, in our inner circle, many cherished gay friends. The Nazis would not have appreciated Sabin’s Jewish heritage nor his inclusiveness. Nor, I dare say, his Jewish wife.

I remain proud of Sabin’s neoclassicism. Beauty is beauty; we don’t have to allow a single ideal of beauty to languish as the province of murderous sociopaths. I wouldn’t give the Nazis that satisfaction.

Ultimately, I don’t want to give satisfaction to those who lash out, either. But it’s worth noting that negative projection causes pain. We are all human beings here, even if social media and email allow for depersonalization and anonymity. “If you prick us, do we not bleed?” Indeed we all do.

Phenomenon of Lashing Out