Skip to content
Facebook page opens in new windowTwitter page opens in new windowMail page opens in new window
Search:
Miriam Herin, Author
Tips for Fiction Writers, Publishing Novels, Blogging and Publishing
Miriam Herin, AuthorMiriam Herin, Author
  • Home
  • Meet Miriam
  • A Stone for Bread
  • Absolution
  • Buy
  • Short Stories
  • Blog Posts
  • Events
  • Contact
  • Home
  • Meet Miriam
  • A Stone for Bread
  • Absolution
  • Buy
  • Short Stories
  • Blog Posts
  • Events
  • Contact

Barrels

My Uncle Grattan, my father’s oldest brother, was a brilliant man. He spent a couple of years in New York City in his twenties studying art before he returned to his native South Carolina. He then lived out the remainder of his life on the coast at Murrell’s Inlet, and for many of those years managed the small zoo at Brookgreen Gardens. He continued to paint there and was also a public speaker who seemed to know just about everyone along the coast, Mickey Spillane, the famous detective writer, wealthy winter residents, restaurant and business owners who hung his paintings on their walls. He was also, my father said, a Rosicrucian, a member of that secret mystical society dating to the Middle Ages. Too bad he died before author Dan Brown came along.

My father said my uncle told him that he and other members of his particular Rosicrucian order had reached such a high level of consciousness that they conducted their meetings by telepathy. Yes, this sounds a bit loony, which might seem appropriate for a zookeeper. But I knew him growing up, and he seemed a perfectly sane man, tall and thin with distinguished white hair, a delightful wit and an enchanting repertory of tall tales and stories.

He was also apparently a popular speaker at local civic events and organizations along the coast, although he told my father that he never prepared a speech in advance. “The mind is like a barrel,” he said. “If you fill it up, anywhere you poke a hole, something’s going to come out.”

When I discuss the craft of fiction with writers, I often share this quote, because this metaphorical barrel is a writer’s most precious resource. Each of us brings to our work a unique repository that’s chock-full of the many experiences of our lives, the good and bad, happy and tragic, as well as the knowledge we’ve gained from these experiences and from our education, reading, research and the people we’ve known.

We can be our own best creative resource if we let ourselves poke around in this amazing memory bank. Even better, as my Uncle Grattan understood, this is one resource that goes with us wherever we go.

Post navigation

PreviousPrevious post:Why We WriteNextNext post:Necessary Arrogance
Buy Miriam’s Books

A Stone for Bread by Miriam Herin

Recent Posts
  • On May 11, 2020, Miriam’s second novel A Stone for Bread won the 2020 Eric Hoffer competition Legacy Award, which placed the novel on the short list for the Eric Hoffer Book Award Grand Prize. Prior to publication, the Stone for Bread manuscript was a top-ten finalist in the 2014 International Faulkner-Wisdom Creative Writing Novel Competition. In 2016, it was nominated for North Carolina’s prestigious Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction. Published by Livingston Press of the University of West Alabama, the novel received a starred Kirkus review through the Kirkus Indy program and was cited by Kirkus as an Indy Best book of the year for 2016. It was a 2017 Finalist in the International Book Awards, Literary Fiction category.
    February 21, 2022
  • Coming Soon: THE BASILISK, a novel of 12th Century France
    February 21, 2022
  • Coming Soon, Miriam’s medieval novel THE BASILISK
    February 17, 2022
  • 1. Lucky, The Backstory: A Grassy Field and a Basketball Goal
    April 9, 2019
My Readers Say

With a sharp eye for detail, Herin weaves a riveting and compassionate narrative out of lifelines that have echoed across the decades and become part of my own.

L.C. Fiore

This is a supremely ambitious book from a thoroughly gifted writer.

Joseph Bathanti

But here’s the main thing I have to tell you: A Stone For Bread is an irresistible page-turner.

Judy Goldman
Contact Miriam Herin
Miriam Herin on GoodReads

Find us on:

Twitter page opens in new windowMail page opens in new window
© 2022 Miriam Herin, All Rights Reserved