<p>Today on the Storytelling and Sound series, in which musical and verbal storytelling come together, I&#8217;m delighted to feature the work of my colleague and friend Louise Marburg. Louise and I met at the 2013 Sewanee Writers&#8217; Conference and were back in workshop together this past summer at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshops. Louise&#8217;s debut &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2017/09/28/zen-for-ten-29-the-truth-about-me/" class="more-link">Conti

<p>Today&#8217;s post features an excerpt from Chapter 4 of To Love A Stranger, paired with two short excerpts from Frederic Chopin&#8216;s Nocturne in B flat Minor, Op. 9 no. 1. The excerpt from Stranger is told from the point of view of Jeannette Reilly, one of my two main characters. Jeannette has just started working &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2017/09/14/zen-for-ten-28-chopin-and-to-love-a-stranger/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="scr

<p>Today&#8217;s post features my short story &#8220;Night Roses,&#8221; first published in Peacock Journal and featured in the journal&#8217;s 2017 print anthology. I&#8217;ve paired the story with George Gershwin&#8216;s second prelude for piano. &#8220;Night Roses&#8221; is one of my &#8220;Zelda Fitzgerald stories,&#8221; which I admit a little cautiously, because Zelda has been featured so exhaustively in &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2017/08/31/zen-for

<p>In today&#8217;s post, I&#8217;m continuing with the mix of reading and music, this time featuring my short story &#8220;Fly Away Home,&#8221; first published last year in The Bookends Review. This piece also won an Honorable Mention in Glimmer Train&#8216;s Short Story Award for New Writers competition. I chose this particular story in response to the &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2017/08/17/zen-for-ten-26-fly-away-home/" class="more-link">Continue readi

<p>Storytelling and Sound, with its new words-and-music format, will be back soon! Meanwhile, it was an honor to have this guest post featured at the wonderful book blog The Quivering Pen. Writing about one of my all-time favorite books, and the influence it had on me, was a delight. The post also gave me a &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2017/08/03/zen-for-ten-25-guest-post/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-reader-text">Zen for Ten 25:

<p>The blog is back! (For now. 🙂 ) Apologies for my long absence, and thank you for visiting again. These past few weeks have been super-busy. To Love A Stranger&#8216;s launch party on June 10 was a great success (pix and video coming soon!). The following week, I went to the wonderful Kenyon Review Writers &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2017/07/12/zen-for-ten-24-storytelling-and-sound-remix/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-reader-te

<p>&#8220;There isn&#8217;t a way things should be. There&#8217;s just what happens, and what we do.&#8221; &#8211; Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky This post feels haphazard to me, but I&#8217;ve been thinking about it for the past couple of days and wanted to try to put it together. It includes some thoughts about where &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2017/06/01/zen-for-ten-23-what-will-you-do/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-reader

<p>(Thoughts on a novel launch: how we got here, what it&#8217;s all about, and what happens next&#8230;) We have liftoff! To Love A Stranger launched on May 23 and is now available in Kindle and paperback form on Amazon. You can also get it in paperback at Barnes and Noble. Yesterday, the day after &#8220;book &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2017/05/25/zen-for-ten-22-the-bend-in-the-road/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-reader-text">Ze

<p>&#8220;Listen to the mustn&#8217;ts, child. Listen to the don&#8217;ts. Listen to the shouldn&#8217;ts, the impossibles, the won&#8217;ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me: Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.&#8221; &#8211; Shel Silverstein This will be my last post before Novel Launch Day, May 23 (and I&#8217;m running a little early &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2017/05/10/what-do-you-want-to-be-known-for/" class="more-link">C

<p>This morning, on my way home from a doctor&#8217;s appointment, I stopped at a park about a mile from my house. I&#8217;ve been there a lot: it&#8217;s a big parcel of farmland that also, at one point in its history, housed a row of kilns used to produce agricultural lime. These days, as you walk &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2017/04/27/zen-for-ten-21-for-the-wild-places/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-reader-text">Zen for Ten 21:

<p>This week&#8217;s post is all about the music. The recording is longish, so I&#8217;ll keep the words short. 🙂 I&#8217;d like to share one of my favorite &#8220;storytelling and sound&#8221; pieces, Robert Schumann&#8217;s Papillons Op. 2. Schumann belongs to the Romantic era in music history (about 1825 to 1900). He&#8217;s one of the composers in &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2017/04/13/zen-for-ten-20-flying-slips-of-paper/" class="more-link">Continue

<p>There&#8217;s something about spring. Even after as mild a winter as we&#8217;ve had here in Maryland, you feel a change in the air when the season officially turns. New energy, new light; a kind of optimism that gets in your blood with every breath you take of clean, fresh air. No wonder we talk about &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2017/03/31/zen-for-ten-19-let-the-light-out/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-reader-text">Zen for Ten

<p>(Note: the blog will be on break next week.) A couple of weeks ago, my novel reached a new milestone on its road to release. At the same time that the Kindle pre-order went live on Amazon, the e-version also went up on the online service NetGalley, where you can download a free copy of &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2017/03/16/zen-for-ten-18-rubber-meets-road/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-reader-text">Zen for Ten 18: Rubber meets

<p>Today&#8217;s post is about sending some good energy into the world, in a couple of different ways. Music first. My featured piece today is Mozart&#8217;s Sonata in F Major, KV 280. It&#8217;s my favorite Mozart to perform, and includes one of my favorite slow movements ever. It has three movements total: Allegro, Andante, and Presto. &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2017/03/09/zen-for-ten-18-positive-energy/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="

<p>A few days ago, I got a piece of advice: to write a letter to my eight-year-old self. We know that we&#8217;re shaped, as children, by the people around us. We imitate their speech and behavior, and we base our goals and dreams on what they show us. We want to be like a parent, &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2017/03/04/zen-for-ten-17-past-and-present-sight/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-reader-text">Zen for Ten 17: Past and Presen

<p>&#8220;Hello darkness, my old friend&#8230;&#8221; &#8211; Simon and Garfunkel, &#8220;The Sounds of Silence&#8221; Today I had one of those mornings where I didn&#8217;t want my husband to leave for work, because I didn&#8217;t want to be alone with myself and my old frenemy, depression. I suppose it has to be a friend because it comes &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2017/02/21/zen-for-ten-16-5-bonus-track/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="

<p>It&#8217;s hard to stay away from political commentary these days. After a while I start to feel like a four-note wonder: fear, anger, depression, anxiety, scrub, rinse, repeat. Like so many of us, I&#8217;m thinking a lot about where my place is in &#8220;all of this.&#8221; Activism doesn&#8217;t come naturally to me, but I&#8217;m glad &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2017/02/16/zen-for-ten-16-meditation-with-bach/" class="more-link">Continue reading <spa

<p>Like so many of us, I&#8217;ve spent the last couple of weeks completely absorbed in politics. Every day, when I check my Facebook feed, I get caught up in the headlines and the passionate responses to them. It&#8217;s easy to spend hours staring at the computer, seesawing between worry, fear, hope, and anger. Again like &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2017/02/02/zen-for-ten-15-mental-health-break/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-rea

<p>[Note: this post expresses political opinions.] And the three men I admire most &#8211; the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost &#8211; they caught the last train for the coast, the day the music died. &#8211; Don McLean It&#8217;s been a long, rough, crazy week. We&#8217;ve learned about &#8220;alternative facts.&#8221; We&#8217;ve watched branches of our &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2017/01/26/zen-for-ten-14-american-pie/" class="more-link">Continue readin

<p>Today is the launch day for my Kindle e-book Unraveled Souls. Celebrating with a reading from the title story. &nbsp; If you&#8217;d like to order the book, which you can read on your Kindle or with a Kindle smartphone app, you can get it here. Half of all proceeds will benefit 826 National. You can &hellip; </p> <p><a href="https://krisfaatz.com/2017/01/19/zen-for-ten-13-unraveled-souls/" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="screen-reader-text">Zen for Ten 13: