Dear Friends,

Happy New Year! I wish each of you much happiness in 2025. As fleeting as happiness may be, we yearn for it, we hope for it, we pray for it. Let's examine our requirements for happiness. Should we be less demanding? Accept the gentleness of small pleasures and let go of the demands of larger ones? Or should we hold on to love? Full stop. Love makes me happy. Love for my family, my friends, my work, my home, and my interactions wtih strangers. This past year, I enjoyed the intimacy of strangers. Consider all those wonderful humans out there waiting for friendship. In 2025, I'm celebrating friendship. Today, I invite you to call someone. Make a plan. Spread the love.

Happy New Year!

Love,

Julie

Julie Maloney

Where is your "Third Place?" The place that makes you happy away from your work space and away from your home. Where is that Third Place where you can go to connect with the surroundings or the people or the energy. Look for your Third Place. Above: One of my happy places - The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC.

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MAKE CONNECTIONS

Whether it's the awesome bookstore manager named Kate of ThunderRoad Books in Spring Lake, NJ who I met years ago via social media; whether it's an artist named Joanne who I met when I was a child at the Newark, NJ YMCA; whether it's a group of WRA (Women Reading Aloud) writers who came to Cornwall, England; whether it's WRA writers on the island of Alonnisos in Greece. (And by the way, these writers do not always know each other.) They discover one another via WRA! Keep supporting others, cheering them on. Make the connection. Whether I'm meeting for the first time the young woman from England who worked with me all year coordinating the accommodations and dinners to make another WRA writer's retreat spectacular, I love making connections.

“The writer is always writing, always sounding words, measuring cadences, hearing, feeling, attending to, taking the pulse of . . . secret rhythms."

--Joyce Carol Oates

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Visit: www.womenreadingaloud.org

Listen up!

Listen here

Meet the incredible Grace Vanderwaal.

She is a gifted young artist. Listen to her sing THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM from Francis Ford Coppola's latest movie, MEGALOPOLIS. Her voice will seep inside your skin. Let it stay there. We need a voice like hers that sears.

WHAT MOVES ME

I am not the same woman with the dark hair pulled back into a bun when I was a professional dancer/choreographer in New York City back in the day. I do not have the same body. I am older now and allow me to say I am wiser. Things are not easier to create but I appreciate the process more these days. The unraveling of the puzzle that's in my mind. For years since I stopped dancing and discovered writing, I have said that I am dancing on the page.

It is all rather glorious.

This dance on the page.

Books thrill me. To write them thrills me. To put a poem on the page thrills me. To share it thrills me. To enter a bookstore like the world-renowned Livraria Lello in Porto, Portugal, where I was last summer, thrilled me. I felt as if I had stepped into heaven. Go to a place where there are books, art, music. Find heaven on earth.

The poem I just wrote is not real

And neither is the black horse

who is grazing on my belly.

And neither are the ghosts

of old lovers who smile at me

from the jukebox.

--Joy Harjo

Explore the power of words.

Be moved more in 2025.

Be as alive as you can be.

BE OBSESSED.

Visit my website.

HOW TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE

Lather the rough spots

Eat a beignet

Use cloth napkins

Moisturize

Go gently but do not let fear overtake you.

Each time I think of an unfamiliar destination, a different country to lead another writer's retreat, fear lies in the pit of my stomach. I know it's there and as the destination date gets closer, I am more aware of it pushing me to pull the covers up over my head. I do not give in but I want to. Once I am on the plane, bags overhead, with a shawl over my shoulders and a book in my hands, I settle into a state of quiet euphoria. In my world, an idea grows inside my head. It is more than a dream. It is a full-blooded raging idea that sprouts wings. Step 2 is how to make the idea happen with bed linens included. I do not have a team or a crew to assist me. I have no choice but to figure it out. I go step by step. Once I have established what it is I want to do, I make the changes. Figure out the adjustment. Along the way, I inevitably meet strangers who end up being my "helpers." It always happens this way. I rely on the kindness and expertise of strangers and often these same people become friends. I find beautiful humans everywhere I go. It's astounding how many are out there, almost waiting for me to ask them for help. The upcoming writer's retreat that I'll be leading in May, 2025, began with me walking by the hotel on the island of Madeira. Each day as I walked by, I thought how beautiful the facade was tucked between the mountains and the ocean. One day, I decided to walk inside, introduce myself to the conceirge and explain my idea. It took months to negotiate, figure out the details, arrange for excursions, manage the unexpected. But it is all working. I see it as a puzzle with pieces large and small to fit into a large exciting picture. I see it all as possibility. If I let fear shut down possibility, then I shut down who I am.

"I dwell lin possibility."

--Emily Dickinson

--Julie Maloney

I'm working on this. Still. I'm writing.

Still. I'm not giving up. I've started to revise again from page one.

Remember this title:

THE HORSE WITH A BLUE EYE

A Novel

by

Julie Maloney

.

Know when to rest.

Be willing to give

in so you can get up again

and get to work.

Make 2025 the year of CONNECTION.

Do not let FEAR get in the way.

WE ARE ALL AFRAID ANYWAY.

Make room.

Remember to find that

THIRD SPACE

julie@juliemaloney.net

WHAT I WANT IS DIFFERENT NOW

obsession, noun - 1. the domination of one's thoughts or feelings by a persistent idea, desire etc.

--Random House Webster's Dictionary

I am obsessed with oysters. I eat them everywhere I see them on the menu. I slurp them down without a spoon or fork. Try them. If they don't work for you, have an ice cream cone.

--JM

So many fantastic books are published every day for children. Here is a beautiful story written by Melanie Sue Bowles who founded the Proud Spirit Horse Sanctuary with her husband Jim. Together, they have saved hundreds of animals to their pastures and paddocks.

Ages: 9-13