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http://stockeandbrenner.com/2012/02/09/the-book-publishing-process/
20 January 2012We've been crazy-busy setting up our book tour, discussing foreign book rights, meeting with the Turkish Consulate in Boston, Turkish Tourist Office in New York, and pitching the book to the San Diego Explorers Club, and generally keeping in the flow of the Wild River, which has driven Joy to her new, and possibly very efficient, space...the corner in her kitchen...
...and Angie's been driven to sort through Turkey photos on a cold winter's night:
06 January 2012
We are planning our spring Book Tour now. Our Tour will kick off on March 3 at one of our favorite independent bookstores, The Grove, owned by Angie's good friend Anne Mery. From there, we will travel to Distant Lands in Pasadena.
In April, we will be together on the East Coast at Big Blue Marble Books in Philadelphia, PA and Labyrinth Books in Princeton, New Jersey. On May 5, we are pleased to participate in the PEN American Center World Voices Festival at Double-Knot Gallery on White Street. In early June, Joy will be at the Philadelphia Writers Conference and the Manayunk Arts Center. From there we will travel to our home states of Wisconsin and Michigan; and in the Fall we will travel to the Pacific Northwest. For more information, please go our BOOK TOUR page.
You may pre-order "Anatolian Days and Nights" on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.
Bookstore owners may order through Ingram and Baker & Taylor.
Compassionate, nuanced, tender and informative, this book will change
your perspective on contemporary Turkey. Anatolian Days and Nights is an
intimate, clear-eyed view of a fascinating country. Joy Stocke and Angie Brenner have captured the
contradictions of modern day Turkey, while exposing the complex web of history at
the heart of our human story. —
Alan Drew, author of Gardens of Water
"Impossible to grasp...” That's how
Angie Brenner and Joy Stocke describe Istanbul, and rightly so. And yet through their delicately written and
acutely observed book we get much closer to grasping the heart and soul of the
city, as well as of Anatolia. Compassionate,
nuanced, tender and informative, this book will change your perspective on
contemporary Turkey. - Elif
Shafak, author of Black Milk and The Bastard of Istanbul
In their touching,
often humorous memoir...The landscape and people slip beneath your skin until
you are no longer sure whether you’ve become a part of Turkey or whether Turkey
has become a part of you. As a frequent visitor to Turkey, I applaud Stocke and
Brenner for skillfully weaving a tale that leaves me yearning to return.
—
Harriet Mayor
Fulbright, Board Chairman, Harriet Fulbright College, and Widow of Senator J.
William Fulbright, Founder of the Fulbright Scholarship Program
We would like to thank all of our advance readers for their feedback. Here is one review:
Anatolian Days and Nights is a delightfully different read that takes the traveler by the hand on a journey that is both personal and great fun. Joy Stocke and Angie Brenner, both accomplished writers, invite you to share their experiences covering most of Turkey as it is today. Information relevant to the arts, historical, political, cultural, religious diversity, customs and cuisine is included along the way.
The book is further enriched by the local area guides who Joy and Angie meet, befriend, and engage in discussions dealing with Turkey’s present-day challenges.
Finally, there is a good bibliography that invites further study of this vibrant country.
- Carol Pike
Joy and Friends in Gaziantep
1 September 2011
THE BOOK PUBLISHING PROCESS CONTINUES...
Aktamar Island, Van, Turkey
This book publishing process is a roller coaster journey, but with the galleys (or ARC...Advance Reader Copies) due to arrive at the end of September, it is becoming a reality.
We get many questions about our collaboration process and are happy to report that after more than ten years of traveling and writing together, our friendship is even stronger. Some of the reasons we think makes this successful are:
1. A shared goal in the vision of the book. We have always believed in the need to tell our stories as a way of building a bridge between cultures and dispel misunderstandings many people have of Turkey. The vision carries over into creating a beautiful book that can be read for decades to come. On the road, we often talk about those intrepid women travelers and writers like Freya Stark, Gertrude Bell, and Mary Lee Settle, and realize that we are having similar experiences. We feel connected to them and other women travelers who have journeyed through Anatolia. Yet, each journey is unique and we've had the opportunity to see what they saw "with our own eyes" and in our own time period.
2. A mutual respect for our individual talents. Joy gets into her literary, esoteric head and lost in a romantic space. Angie searches for the irony and humor first. It is a relationship of Air and Earth. When coming to loggerheads, we look for a third - and usually better - solution.
3. We check our egos at the door. It is always about the work (or trip) itself.
4. And, perhaps, most important, our midwestern upbringings have bred in us a 'never give up' attitude.
Angie & Joy
14 January 2011
The past year has been one of book editing, writing, cooking, and talking about one of our favorite subjects: All Things Turkish.
The manuscript is complete, hooray! Now for the fun work offinal editing and getting all in order to print, publish, and market. Gone are the days of writing and giving the work off to a publisher who will do all the nuts and bolts to get a book launched and sold. Today's authors must also be savvy business and sales people too. Fortunately, we've both worked in business worlds, and as women, are used to multi-tasking. Also, we love to talk to people about Turkey: past, present, and future.
Along with this year's launch of Anatolian Days and Nights in print a digital forms, we are planning to lead a group to Istanbul in the fall (November?), with an option for people to spend additional days in Cappadocia. More on this later when details are ironed out.
Last month, Joy attended the traveling exhibition in New York City: 1001 Islamic Inventions, and found that many of the inventions featured took place during the Ottoman years in Turkey.More on this from her later.
Joy and Angie with the governor of Mardin
20 April 2010
Is no news good news in the publishing world? Probably not. However, we are perservering, cleaning up the manuscript, calling upon our stable of readers to critique the final chapters and laying out our marketing plan. Joy is pounding the literary pavement, getting ready for PEN World Voices, the New York Festival of International Literature, next month, and Angie will be attending the Los Angeles Festival of Books on April 25th at the UCLA Campus, all in an effort to stay in touch with the publishing world through authors, books, and lectures.
Cappadocian Horse Whisperer
17 Jan. 2010
While we reconnected with friends over mezas and raki and walked along Istikal, the pedestrian boulevard in the hip neighborhoods of Beyoglu, Cirhangri, and Taksim, we talked about the resilience of the human spirit, and the people who come together to help – it was the Greek government (long thought to be an adversary) who were the first to help Turkey’s earthquake victims.
THE AFTERMATH
By Angie Brenner
Earthquakes are nothing new to those of us living along California’s San Andreas Fault line. I’ve experienced rolling, jolting, and grinding quakes, yet have managed to remain unscathed from death and damage. There are, in fact, so may small shakes here, that we become complacent. Well, almost so, I still avoid sitting under concrete freeway overpasses, remembering those who lost their lives in the 1989 San Francisco Bay Area earthquake when double-decker highways collapsed.
I missed all but the aftershocks of the devastating August 17, 1999 earthquake near Istanbul, Turkey (when more than 17,000 died and many more left homeless) by a day. Myself and Joy Stocke were floating in ignorance and bliss near Cleopatra’s Cove in the Mediterranean Sea. We soon learned that this was a disaster of major proportions, an unfathomable event that left its’ mark on our Turkish friends forever, and inspired a novel by author Alan Drew, Gardens of Water. Mr. Drew writes about the aftermath, the communities of displaced Turkish families and American aid workers.
Gulhane Park, Istanbul’s ‘tent-city’ earthquake aftermath, August 1999
The losses of life and property which the people of Haiti are experiencing today are difficult to imagine, and our heartfelt sympathies are with them. Yet, I know that the Haitian survivors, like the people in Turkey a decade ago, will work through this disaster. There are many who are coming to their aid, and many blaming the high loss of lives on the lack of infrastructure. It leaves me to wonder why we are so generous to help in the aftermath of a disaster, but reluctant to help people move out of the poverty that exacerbates such catastrophes. Haiti might have been a place on the moon for many of us who never thought once about their day-to-day plight of poverty – until last week. Like New Orleans, the signs were there: the threads of colonization, capitalistic opportunity, political despotism, apathy. Who will be the next people to suffer such loss after an earthquake, tsunami, or other disaster?
9 Jan 2010
Hamam (Bathing) Bowl with Fish and Bird
This morning, The New York Times published an article about one of the taboo stories of the 20th century - A Family Uprooted by a 60-Year-Old Secret - the Armenian Genocide which took place in Ottoman Turkey, and which, under the Presidency of Abdullah Gul is now being gingerly addressed.
In 2005, Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk made an off-the-record and subsequently published comment about the genocide, which caused a furor in Turkey. That year, in Istanbul's Grand Bazaar, Angie and I met an antique dealer who spoke about his own experience.
But first, he described the hamam or bathing bowl, pictured above, made in the town of Van before the genocide by an Armenian craftsman. The fish is made of copper and jointed so that it swims when the bowl is filled with water, and the bird symbolizes our highest aspirations.
***
Osman sits behind his desk in the tiny antique shop he owns tucked into one of the labyrinthine streets of Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar. “Yes, it happened,” he says. “To my father and my grandparents near Erzincan in what was then eastern Anatolia.”
He speaks slowly and clearly, a British inflection threading through his perfect English. “My father was 6 and his brother was 4. When the soldiers came for my grandparents, two families of Alevi Turks — who follow the tradition of Shia Islam — hid my father and his brother. The soldiers gathered the people of the village and brought them to the fields in the shadow of the mountains, and slit their throats. For three years, the Alevis hid my father and his brother in the chimneys of their baking hearths. To protect the boys, they changed their Armenian Christian names to Muslim names."
His son arrives with small cups of coffee, and then shuts the door. The air grows warm and stuffy, but Osman doesn’t seem to notice. “When my father and his brother were freed, they became separated. For the rest of his life, my father looked for him, visiting every town no matter how small, hoping that his brother would appear on the street or in a coffee house. When I was 12, my father died of a broken heart, I’m sure. But there is irony in my story, because the government had a special program for orphaned boys. They sent me to one of the best schools in Turkey.”
In that school, Osman met Nuri, a Muslim, who owns a carpet shop nearby. “All these years, Osman and I have been friends.” says Nuri, “brothers really, but we’ve never talked of this subject. He knows it happened. I know it happened. Why make problems between us?”
Nuri and Osman spoke these words, well aware that on April 24 many Western countries mark Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, the beginning of massacres and deportation of Armenians from a land where they had lived for more than 3,000 years.
Five years ago, most Turks wouldn’t speak openly about what they say is a “so-called genocide,” but with Turkey’s bid to enter the European Union, friends who once were afraid to voice their opinions about an event deleted from their history books are beginning to talk.
The Turkish government, at odds with many of its citizens, denies that systematic deportations and killings of Armenians occurred. Yet, if you travel to the eastern border of Turkey, you will find abandoned churches. And in travel posters and ads in most tourist offices, you will see a lone red brick church sitting on an island called Akdamar in the center of a lake called Van, named for a once-thriving metropolis of Armenian farmers, craftsmen, businessmen, and traders.
You begin to wonder: If a well-photographed Armenian church sits on an island — and in the nearby abandoned city of Ani sit hundreds more churches — where did the Armenians go?
Until the 19th century, the Ottoman Empire was known for tolerance of its Christian minorities, but things changed when the Empire went into decline. In July 1908, a group of Turkish nationalists known as the Young Turks — junior officers in the Turkish Army — forced the Sultan to allow a constitutional government guaranteeing basic rights to Turkey’s citizens.
But in 1913, three leaders of the Young Turks seized control of the government, planning to expand the borders of Turkey into Central Asia, creating a new empire called Turan with one language and one religion. Armed roundups of Armenians — who, encouraged by the European powers and Russia, had considered establishing their own state — began on the evening of April 24, 1915. Three hundred Armenian political leaders, educators, writers, and clergy in Istanbul were jailed, tortured, then hanged or shot.
In the following three years, somewhere between 700,000 to more than 1 million Armenians were killed or died of starvation, thirst and disease, and deported to camps in the Syrian desert.
Osman finishes his coffee, gently setting the cup in its saucer. “You ask me what to call the murders of my family?” he says. “What good is a name if we can’t openly admit it happened?”
9 Nov. 2009
On and Off the Road in Turkey: Cappadocian Life
Pasabaglari
Goreme is about as sweet a village as you might want to visit, and it isn't all that different than when Angie was here almost twenty years ago when it was on the radar for backpackers and other intrepid travellers when all the pensions were $5 per person a night. And while the surrounding towns like Urgup and Avanos have learned to cater to large tour bus groups, Goreme still seeks those who want to experience wildness, smack in the middle.
We are taking time, when not holded up in our beautiful room at the Kelebek (meaning butterfly) Hotel on top of a hill with a view of Uchisar castle, to hike the Rose Valley, and walk through the fairy chimineys at Pasabaglari. Less than five minutes from downtown Goreme we find ourselves among old vineyards and gardens growing huge sugar beets, tomatoes, peppers. The ground here is so fertile that Joy is thinking of filling her duffle bag full of soil to bring home. Yesterday, Ali, the owner of the Kelebek, brought us sweet, ripe, tomatoes picked from his families' garden. His plans are to bring people to Goreme to learn the old farming techniques - which began before the first Christians arrived.
Today, our last full day here, we will go to a horse stable to learn about The Dalton Brothers, the local band of cowboys. More on this later.
Happy Trails,
Angie & Joy
6 Nov. 20009
On and Off the Road in Turkey: A Soldier’s Nightmare
By Angie Brenner and Joy E. Stocke
We wake this morning to the call to prayer from the village’s small mosque, in the heart of central Anatolia. While our internet connection waxes and wanes, we connected long enough to learn the news of the Foot Hood, Texas shooting and the deaths of 12 soldiers at the hand of one of their own. While the details and motive are still being determined, the news brings to mind a conversation we had two nights ago with Apo, young man we met.
Apo spoke of his life, friends and family who lives in the Adana region further south on the Mediterranean Sea where his father raises cows, grows crops of beets, carrots, potatoes beside orchards of lemon and oranges. “From our house you can only see this land, nothing else,” Apo says.
He mentions a friend whom he met during military service and who he will see later that night (Turkey has a mandatory two-year military service requirement), which leads us to ask more questions. Other Turkish friends and acquaintances have had military jobs from baklava baker to pigeon keeper (one friend boasted of having his men build a swimming pool for him on the base), so we never know what career opportunity the Turkish army will create.
But Apo’s army work was not what we would have expected from such a gentle person. “My eyesight was very, very good,” he says. “So, they gave me the job of look-out person and gun operator in the turret of a tank.”
Apo says that he was stationed in the far eastern city of Van, which we know from previous travels to be a hot bed for PKK (a Kurdish separatist group considered a widespread terrorist organization). In Van, the government and army are very heavy-handed with any suspects. Then Apo tells us a story.
Near Hakkari along the border with Iran, his troop encountered a village known to have sheltered PKK insurgents. One man ran out of a house with a gun and was told to stop or be shot. Apo was directed by his captain to shoot the man if he didn’t stop running.
“He said that if this man lived and killed one of our men, it would be my fault. I was so scared, and kept yelling for the man to stop. I pulled up my gun to shoot and just then the man stopped running and put up his arms in the air like this.” Apo held up his own arms in the surrender position.
“You can not imagine how I felt. I asked him, ‘Why did you not stop? I would have killed you, and how do you think I would feel?’ I even hit him because I was so mad that he made me come so close to killing him. And can you believe it, he apologized to me.”
Apo spent several weeks after this incident talking with the army psychiatrists and had nightmares that lasted for the following six months. But it was his last remark that seemed to sum up what happens to soldiers stressed by having to witness or engage in acts we find unfathomable.
He stood on our doorstep and smiled softly. “When my last day in the army came, I woke up and said, “Today to sun rises only for me.”
http://www.wildriverreview.com/wrratlarge/
2 Nov. 2009 - Cyprus Update... without good internet connection on the island of Cyprus last week, we got to fall into the rythmn of this island in constant flux. Northern Cyprus, under Turkish control since the 1974 and saddled with a trade embargo, still has regions without electricty. Naturally, that's the first place we headed...the beautiful, remote Karpas Peninsula. We walked across the "Green Line" in the city of Nicosia which separates north and south changes from Turkish to Greek culture.
Byzantine church ruins at Ayflion on the Karpas Peninsula, Northern Cyprus
Krenyia Harbor, Northern Cyprus
Settled in our cave hotel in the village of Goreme, Turkey in central Anatolia, we awoke to the first snow fall of the season, and are nesting for the week to write and hike.
Check out our Facebook sites and Wild River Review @ Large blog site for more....
http://www.wildriverreview.com/wrratlarge/
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/profile.php?id=1301469160&ref=profile
22 Oct. 2009 - We Arrived!
ISTANBUL FREINDSHIPS
We we're in Istanbul less than 24 ours before we connected with friends.
Here's a photo taken last night in the Cirhangir neighborhood where Shellie (next to Angie in the front) runs the beautiful cafe, Kahvedan (see Kahvedan logo on Joy Stocke's Facebook page). Dany flew in from San Francisco (on the right), Joy, in the back row with the talented chef, Eveline, who also lives in Istanbul and runs "COOKING ALATURKA."
Not only are we enjoying this cosmopolitan, quirkie city, we are reafirming why we are writing our book: the soft sea light and air, generous people, amazing food, and the neverending stories that come out of nowhere, or so it seems...
Tomorrow we fly to Cyprus to experience the Turkish/Greek duality.
Gule, gule; kalo taxidi (happy trails),
Joy and Angie
What we are reading:
"Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will- whatever we may think. They flower spontaneously out of the demands of our natures - and the best of them lead us not only outwards in space, but inwards as well. Travel can be one of the most rewarding forms of introspection..."
- Lawernce Durrell, Bitter Lemons
" I walked through utter stillness, while the afternoon wore old. By the time I had reached the summit these savage ranges had paled and softened on a sallow sky...The ancients imagined this peak to be a meeting-place of the gods. They called it Mount Olympus and crowned it with a temple to Aphrodite. three centuries after Christ, run the traditions, St. Helena, the mother of Constantine, returning from Jerusalem with the cross of Dismas the penitent thief, built a church here to enshrine it and set in its heart a fragment of the True Cross of the Saviour."
- Colin Thurbon, Journey Into Cyprus
We spent 48 hours in the aftermath of Istanbul’s quake where millions of Istanbul’s citizens, as well as most of our fellow hotel guests, slept outside in parks and gardens. Fear gripped the city. Everyone wondered what the future would hold and laid blame on shoddy construction and greed. But time does heal. Last November, when Joy and I visited Istanbul, there was no trace, physically or emotionally from the earthquake ten years prior. The city was celebrating its’ founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and scheduling the many cultural events in preparation of a year as the 2010 European Capital of Culture http://www.en.istanbul2010.org/index.htm.