Tal Boldo was born in Israel in 1968 and was educated in England, Israel, and Canada. She has a Bachelor's Degree in Literature from the University of Haifa, Israel. Her first novel, To Sculpt a Living Statue -- a dramatic tale of lost innocence, love and deadly affection, was published by Books Unbound. Her children's story, The Dragon and the Drought, will be published in 2004. She is also the author of the literary novel, Peeking Through Keyholes, and several short stories. Currently, she is working on a literary fantasy novel. Ms. Boldo lives in North Carolina with her husband, son, and two dogs.

I wrote poetry as a child, and even one short story that is still tucked somewhere between the pages of an encyclopedia, hidden so well that I never again found it. I remember that my poetry teacher used to make a great fuss about my poems, interpreting them in all sorts of strange ways.

Every year my poems were published in the school paper. "What dazzling success...." Still, I could not have been very impressed, because I did not grow up thinking I would someday be a writer.

That decision came years later, when I was 24 going on 90. In preparation, I began to study Hebrew. "Why Hebrew?" Because it took me two more years to come to the conclusion that I wanted to leave the land of my birth for a freer, more rational nation, and there to write in the richest language of all languages.

It was then that I began studying English, grammar, philosophy and literature. Lastly, I learned how to plot and create characters.

My first novel, To Sculpt a Living Statue, was completed seven years after I determined to be a writer. Perhaps, if I had known how long a process it would be, I would never have ventured. I like to think I would have anyway, though not from heroics so much as an inexorable need to write well.

As to the many rejections I had to endure -- some polite, some creative, some insufferably arrogant, some not to the point -- I learned from them all: about human nature, about my craft, about how maddeningly committed I was to attaining that elusive professional status of published writer. I have come to see rejections as simply part of the business, as are the glorious moments when an idea finds form in words that flow together like music.

Learn more about To Sculpt a Living Statue at http://www.tboldo.com. 

To Sculpt a Living Statue 
genre: Other Fiction: general fiction
A dramatic tale of lost innocence, love, and deadly affection. At its heart burns a series of unusual love stories filled with devotion and disappointment. In the peripheries hide the manipulators: parents who try to sculpt their children into reflections of their own lost hopes. In this setting, the young must learn to trust their own judgment and embrace life without fear, while the old must come to respect the right of every individual to his own life, or else lose their own.

This dramatic, character-driven tale will draw you in with its mystery and romance, and change your view of innocence forever.
http://www.tboldo.com  
ISBN: 1-59201-021-0 (electronic)
publisher: Books Unbound