Just released! Tour dates for The Map of True Places. Click here to view the schedule: http://bit.ly/dkMmv6 Hope to see you on the tour.

Released May 4, 2010

The story you write, you live.

from Rickie Lee Jones’, Wild Girl, (Balm in Gilead CD)

I lived in LA in the early eighties when Rickie Lee Jones’ first album appeared and changed my musical tastes. Everything she described I understood on a level that I could not put into words. I was an LA transplant from back east. She was from Phoenix. The street was foreign to me, and yet. . . . This was Los Angeles, its essence, the place I both loved and hated at the same time and the first place where I had ever felt free enough to be my sometimes terrifying self. My experience of LA may have been different from hers, but she captured the feelings I was having about the place where I wasn’t raised but where I finally grew up.

As quickly as I discovered her, Rickie Lee and I lost touch, or rather I did which I realize in retrospect was a huge mistake. It left a gap, one that was not only self-punishing but pointless. Rickie Lee has consistently been making innovative music and evolving as an artist. Both Pirates and The Magazine are wonderful CDs which I have just recently discovered. I don’t know why or how I missed those works. I will mark it down as one of life’s enduring mysteries.

So, when I had a chance to see Rickie Lee last December at the Berklee School of Music in Boston, I took it as an opportunity to not only hear a great performer but to revisit my former self.

I have to say that her concert had the same effect on me that her first album did. She has grown. She has changed. Life has happened. His Jeweled Floor, the song she wrote inspired by her mother’s death, is meant to ease a soul from one life to the next. I had heard the song the week before without realizing it was hers. Just hearing it had sent me into tears for my mother, whom I lost over a year ago. Rickie Lee had written the song that connected me to my most heart opening experience.

And then there was Wild Girl, a song written from Rickie Lee to her daughter on the occasion of her 21^st birthday. I don’t have a daughter, though, over the years, my two nieces have done an admirable job as stand-ins. But I remember my own wild girl, and my next book, The Map of True Places is the story of a wild girl who has been temporarily tamed. And so, as once before, Rickie Lee, you are speaking directly to me. I promise not to lose touch with you again.

Dear Faithful Readers,

I set my novels, The Lace Reader and The Map of True Places, in Salem, MA because it is my hometown, one of the places on earth that I know best. As a small city, Salem is rich in history — it has lived through prosperity as a shipping town, through notoriety as the epicenter of witch hunts, and it still enjoys a literary burnish as home to Nathaniel Hawthorne and others.

Now, I invite you to enter The Map of True Places sweepstakes for your chance to win a trip to visit my city. Destination Salem and William Morrow are sponsoring the sweepstakes, and many local shops, restaurants, and museums have stepped forward to build a fun and interesting weekend for you in my town!

So enter the sweepstakes today — and please tell your friends they can enter, too. I hope to see you soon in Salem! In the meantime, head over to my website to download excerpts from The Map of True Places.

Best of luck,

Brunonia Barry

Cover for "The Map of True Places" by Brunonia Barry

Chapters One and Two are now available for download. Just go to www.MapOfTruePlaces.com. The book will be out May 4th. Enjoy!

Brunonia

It’s been such a hectic past few months! The manuscript for the new book went in at the end of December, so I’ve been busy tying up loose ends.

January came in bearing many joys for me. The Lace Reader continues to create awe-inspiring hubbub. The Lace Reader won the General Fiction contest in the New England Book Festival, which was hosted down in Boston a couple weekends ago. It’s also the January Book Club Pick, and was selected in Reading Group Choices 2010. Successes continue to be humbling.

Hope you all had a restful and fulfilling holiday season. A very Happy New Year to you and your families (though at this point, my wishes are a month late). Winter is considered a time of death and hibernation, the time of slumber before spring and the earth is reborn. I continue to work hard for the release of The Map of True Places on May 4th, just in time for spring. You can check out the website via the link, if you haven’t already, to read an excerpt from the book. Spring is, in my opinion, the perfect time for a new book. I am just so excited.

Cover for "The Map of True Places" by Brunonia Barry

Keep an eye on the blog, as well as my Facebook and Twitter pages, as I’ll be posting upcoming events. I’m headed to Florida soon for vacation, but once back, things should be slingshotting into motion again. Always on my mind, those in Haiti. My warmest thoughts go out to them during this horrific trial they must live through.

Dear friends,

Starbucks has enabled their 10,000+ North American stores to receive donations at point of sale that will be given directly to the RED CROSS in support of Haiti relief efforts. WYCLEF JEAN has joined to help, kicking off the campaign with his PSA and announcing STARBUCKS’s $1 Million donation.

Join Wyclef Jean by donating to the Haitian relief effort at participating Starbucks.

With your help, we can make a significant impact on the devastation in Haiti.

Cover for "The Map of True Places" by Brunonia Barry

My new book, The Map of True Places, will be available on May 4th. In the meantime, you can read excerpts from it starting today and in the weeks to come. It’s a story about relationships and family and finding your true place in the world when you have no map to follow. If you’d like to read the first part of the book now, please click here. I’d love to hear your thoughts so feel free to post something on my blog or on Facebook. There’ll be two more excerpts released soon so stay tuned.

I’ll be at the Cary Memorial Library at 7 PM for a reading & signing for The Lace Reader. All are invited.

11/29 Sunday – I’ll be at the Duxbury Free Library in Duxbury, MA from 2 to 4 PM for a reading & signing. You can get more information about the library here and about the event here.

12/1  Tuesday – I’ll be at the Cary Memorial Library in Lexington, MA from 7 to 9 PM for a reading & signing. YOu can get more information about the library here.

Both events are free to the public. I look forward to seeing everyone.

Exeter, NH Public Library – 10AM to 11:30AM. Reading & book signing for The Lace Reader

Groveland, MA Langley-Adams Library – 6:45PM to 8:45PM. Reading & book signing for The Lace Reader

If you can get to either of these locations, please stop by. I’m looking forward to meeting everyone.