Dear Friends,
Howdy! A few things: Please check out a new slideshow of my Road to Paradise tour in media. Photos of my cross country trip are coming shortly. Also, if you haven’t seen it yet, on the news page there is info about the upcoming book. I’m feverishly writing it now, and we’re publishing in the fall of 2012. I also posted some little tidbits on the Red Leaves page, including the song I obsessively listened to while writing that book. I will do that for all my books, song by song, let you hear what I listened to while I wrote the books you so kindly read.

Just two weeks until the publication of THE SUMMER GARDEN in the United States. We are so excited!

This fall in Australia/New Zealand, there will be a special Christmas gift edition of TBH with a beautiful new cover, and a new “deleted scene” chapter from yours truly that shows us a little bit of the new unspoken love and also a little bit about BELLAGRAND, the new book.

I will very shortly update everyone on TBH film option situation.

And finally, to the right is the new addition to our family, a female German Shepherd puppy named…ta-dah! Nikita. So that when we reprimand her, we can reprimand her by telling her not to stop hiding our socks but to stop declaiming Stalin. We are picking her up today. The kids are beyond themselves. Bunny, our Golden, however, couldn’t be LESS excited. She knows her reign as canine queen of the house is about to end. K9 is coming!

Watch latest news for fun announcement for my readers, to be posted imminently or any hour whichever comes first.

Write again soon, be well,

Paullina

Dear Friends,
I think it’s time to update our blog with a brighter entry, don’t you think, because judging by the last three this space almost reads like a Death Blog. I only write when someone dies. I feel this somewhat defeats the whole purpose of happily communicating with readers.

This is better.

I hope you enjoy my new website, it’s easy to navigate, is pleasing to the eye, and you can load it quickly on your mobile device like the glorious iPhone. Check out some of our new content, my Summer Garden video, and slideshows of my past tours. Perhaps some of you in Australia and New Zealand will spot yourselves!

We’ve got more tour slideshows coming, one from 2007 and one from 2009. And we’ll also be uploading photos from my trip across the U.S. for “Road to Paradise” and photos of Summit, New Jersey and the Australian outback for “A Song in the Daylight.”

I’m thrilled to continue my longstanding partnership with HarperCollins for the next five novels. One of the things we’ve worked on to accommodate my readers is an enhanced publishing schedule that will ensure a Paullina book once a year. And not just in Australia, New Zealand, and England, but globally, including the United States.

I know I’ve written elsewhere about the subject matter for the next book, indicating its lovelorn roots and its Bostonian/Ukrainian setting during the Great Depression and the Stalin purges. And believe me, that’s coming, and not in small doses either. But first, you are going to get a different book for your (I hope) enjoyment. I think it’s so delicious it requires its own (imminent) post.

Regarding news of Bronze Horseman film adaptation: I’m not being cagey, but we’re at the cusp of either moving forward or going in a different direction. I’m going to know more in the next few days. I know you’ve all been super (im)patient(!), please bear with me. No one would love a beautiful epic Tania and Shura film more than me.

Signing off for now, more very soon.

PAULLINA

My mother always looked for paradise in every place she lived.

And it wasn’t easy to find it in the Soviet Union. It wasn’t so easy to find it anywhere. She was born on the other side of the world in Khabarovsk, near the border of North Korea, and somehow made her way five thousand miles to Leningrad, and into my father’s heart. Eleven years later when we were in Rome waiting to enter the United States, and my parents were going out every night just the two of them walking the Eternal City, I asked my dad why they did this, and he replied, “Paullina, because here in Rome is the honeymoon we never had.”

Many years later, they moved to Hawaii to search for glory there also. There was no middle ground, no fallow ground for my vulnerable, intensely feeling mother. She wanted all the flowers to be always blooming.

When my sister and I went to North Carolina to bring our mother back to New York to be among her family and friends, we came to a house that was filled to the brim with all the things she loved. My father was in it. Now we were in it.

Every letter anyone ever wrote her, every card anyone ever sent her was in it. Every picture taken of her family was on full display in her house, beautifully framed, dusted, polished, shined, placed just so. In her quest for comeliness, for youth, for beauty, her cosmetic counter put the Bloomingdales makeup department to shame. She loved to look beautiful, because she was beautiful…with rings on all her fingers, and combs to buckle her hair.

Everything my sister and I know about being a woman, being a mother, we learned from our mother. When she was happy, she lit up the room, when she sang, it was like the angels sang.

Everything my sister and I know about being Christian, we learned from the woman who loved and feared God. In her house she had icons on every wall and candles to light underneath them and Bibles to the right of every place she sat.

Through 33 years of her life in Russia she carried Christ inside her pious heart until she could worship freely in America, could love God freely. She taught my sister and me to stand up for Christ, and how loudly we complained when we were younger, and yet how straight our backs are now when we cross ourselves the way our mother taught us, when we pray the way she taught us.

In my mother’s torn and weathered New Testament, published 21 years before she was born which I hold in my hands right now, I read the words she underlined—twice so I don’t miss them—as if still speaking to me about the things that matter most. In it, are marked the words of the imperfect yet perfectible sinner who turns to the Lord on the life-giving Cross and says,:

помяни меня, Господи, когда приидешь в Царствие Твое!
Remember me when you come into your Kingdom.

And Jesus replies to the fearing and the faithful:
истинно говорю тебе, ныне же будешь со Мною в раю
Verily I say to you, today, you shall be with Me in paradise.

Maria Handler 1911-2009

A beautiful life has come to its earthly end.

And though my grandmother, Maria Handler, was 97 years old, it is never the right time, a good time for someone you love to die.

She lived a remarkable life, because she was a remarkable woman. She endured a revolution, a civil war, a world war, evacuation, famine, illness and tragedy. And yet you would never know she had borne any hardship at all from the way she carried herself: she was a good happy person who loved sweets and her friends, who loved her sons and her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, who took care of me and my sister and my cousin when we were young and maintained that one of her regrets was that she wasn’t strong enough to take care of the great-grandchildren also.

When you were in her home, you felt loved. You came in, you sat down, she served you, she cleaned your plate, and then she sat across from you and wanted to know all about your life. This is how she treated everyone, not just her family. She was curious about everything. She understood everything. You could count on her to have a righteous reaction to sorrow, to joy, to heartbreak. To your every success and failure she bore an empathetic and enlightened witness. She gave you always what you needed.

When you were hungry, she fed you.

When you were thirsty, she gave you drink.

And then you went away and lived your life, and she went on merrily and lived hers. She loved TV, and her newspapers and her books, and my grandfather, not necessarily in that order. She lived joyously until she saw you again. Sometimes she complained you didn’t call her as often as you should have, but it was a superficial complaint, because you knew that you were profoundly loved.

She remembered salient details about all the relatives, she had the memory of Matteo Ricci and the intuitive understanding of a sage, and she gave you all of herself, freely, liberally, always.

For seventy five years she lived side by side with my grandfather. The two of them came to America in 1979, seemingly in the twilight of their life and yet we were fortunate enough to have them bring us joy, and food, and conversation and love for thirty more years. That is astonishing, and I never forget how blessed I feel having had her in my life for this long. Still, it wasn’t long enough. It never is.

She brightened every room when she was in it, you felt yourself striving to be a better person in her sainted presence, led by her example, and the world is a smaller, darker place with her gone. Like my grandfather, my grandmother had every gift, including the gift of a long and magnificent life. She died peacefully, at home, in her bed, in her sleep, unsuffering, surrounded by people she loved. In a struggling, conflicted world, she, as my grandfather, died as they had lived, simply, and yet extraordinarily.

“And we who are alive and remain,
Shall be caught up together with them, in the clouds,
To meet the Lord in the air,
And so we shall ever be, with the Lord.”

My dear readers: Hello! How have you been? Someone really must teach me the definition of blogging. Blogging: website, usually maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material. Emphasis on “regular”. Would you call one entry a year “regular?” I didn’t think so. Honestly, you’d think I was writing a book or something. And losing my babysitter. And raising four kids, including the near 22-year-old, who’s back home after a successful college career. And trying to lose twenty pounds. And desperately trying to finish the Bronze Horseman screenplay. And getting ready to return to Australia and New Zealand in November. But still. I find it inexcusable that I couldn’t find time to write and apprise you of my goings-on. I promise to do better in the future.

In the meantime, another book, the ninth novel, is finished. Whew. It’s called A SONG IN THE DAYLIGHT. It’s a story of a woman in the middle of her happily-ever-after life gradually embroiled in a passionate mess of her own making. I can’t wait to have you read it and to hear what you guys think of it. To celebrate its arrival in the stores in New Zealand and Australia on October 27, 2009, (with England to follow in the spring of 2010, and the U.S. a little later), I will be returning to the Land of Oz and NZ for three weeks in November. I’m excited about seeing you all. I hope you come to my shows, readings, signings. Details to come shortly. As soon as we have a definite itinerary, we’ll post it either here on in News. But I know I’ll be in Auckland, Christchurch, Queenstown, and Wellington, in New Zealand. And in Australia, we’ll visit Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Hobart (!), Adelaide and Perth. I do hope you all can join me for some wine and talk. I’ll try to bring pictures and music, like last time. Do you know how hard it is to work without a babysitter for your kids? Pavla was like a wife to me, but after six years she left me home alone with the children. It was like a divorce, amicable, but no less heartbreaking. And all the things she did for me, picking up the little one from school, carpooling the older ones, doing homework, laundry, food-shopping, all the little errands, the dry cleaning, the post office, suddenly was placed squarely in my overburdened lap, and meanwhile my editor is emailing me every day, saying, Paullina, done with the book yet? What about now? And what about now? Done now? So the day was halved and stressed, and the work was doubled and stressed. Is it any wonder I’m just coming up for air now. The children have started school again, today, but I see that it’s almost time to pick up the little one from school again. What’s funny is, this is what most of you have to live through every day. I know that. I always knew it. I didn’t know how you had time to read my books. But I had been so lucky, because since I finished Tully, I’d never been without some domestic help. At first it was for four hours, then six, then a full day, 9-5. I’ve been with 9-5 help for the last thirteen years. Imagine my shock last March. We tried to find someone great, but failed. No one could be as great as the girl who left me. I must run, the third-grader is waiting, but I will write more tomorrow, and I will tell you about Jindabyne, and also about my beloved grandmother.