HOTEL MOSCOW- The Real Story

THE ADVENTURE

Oct. 1993-During the uprising: The Kremlin
and deserted Red Square behind me

In 1993 I ran my New York-based marketing consulting firm whose clients were Fortune 500 companies. I was also a volunteer counselor for the Small Business Administration for women's programs, when I was asked by the U.S. Information Agency to travel to Russia shortly after the fall of communism to teach women entrepreneurial skills.

On my second visit to Moscow, in October 1993, I was caught in the uprising of the Russian parliament against then-president Yeltsin. In the mayhem, I was chased by the militia and was threatened with jail ! 

THE FLIGHT FROM MOSCOW

​The night the American Embassy ensconced me safely in a hotel--before I caught the first flight out in the morning--I wrote a 23-page report to the USIA. Upon returning home, (pre-Internet) I mailed hard copies to all my concerned friends. A month later, at a lunch with a journalist friend, she said, “All it needs is hot sex and you have a novel.”

And thus, on November 3, at 2:48 PM, my writing career began. 

“HOTEL MOSCOW” – THE NOVEL

HarperCollins,
June 2015

That novel, celebrating the valiant Russian women I had met, was never published. However I had done extensive research, and years later, while on book tour for my third published novel,

JERUSALEM MAIDEN, I decided to use the material in a new novel I was penning.

Set in Moscow in 1993 during the uprising of the Russian parliament against Yeltsin, HOTEL MOSCOW is both the story of Russians struggling through transition after the fall of Communism and the personal journey of a visiting American woman who becomes embroiled in investigating a business crime in Moscow. She soon must come to terms with her parents' Jewish legacy in a country steep in anti-Semitism—and her own personal secret that might compromise her future.
          
Pre-publication, the novel has just received endorsements from the greatest suspense authors of our time!  

Here is what Nelson DeMille writes: "... HOTEL MOSCOW is a finely-drawn tale of a country emerging from its dark Soviet past into a present overshadowed by a new kind of terror and lawless corruption... that will keep the reader mesmerized.... A wonderful evocation of time and place and an insightful post-Cold War thriller which reminds us that in Russia the more that changes, the more that stays the same.” 

Tami Hoag writes: "Talia Carner sweeps us away along with her brave and determined heroine to an exotic and complex time and place, and keeps us riveted with the tension and dangers of international intrigue. A real page-turner!" 

(Read more accolades from best-selling authors, and/or read the first chapter.)

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DON’T MISS WHAT’S COMING UP!

There is no greater pleasure for an author than to share her work with an appreciative audience. Many readers have enjoyed learning more about the background of each of my novels. For HOTEL MOSCOW, I have fascinating tales to share.

I will mail my newsletter monthly. I hope that you will subscribe (please write to MecoxHudson2@aol.com) and choose to take the journey with me.
  In the meantime, you may also: 

• Pre-order HOTEL MOSCOW now at a great discount on Amazon, B&N, or your indie bookstore. (My novels are published in paperback format to keep the price down.)
• Suggest to your organization, local library or charity to invite me to speak at your events--or check my tour schedule and plan to attend any of my talks in your area, 
• Forward this newsletter to others so they may subscribe directly.

Thank you, former readers and future friends. I am looking forward to hearing from you,

Thank you,

Talia Carner
www.TaliaCarner.com

No "Spring" for Saudi Women

This article appeared in the August 2011 of Digital Journal. Today, as Saudi women are claiming the roads in a pre-organized protest, here are my somber thoughts:

By Talia Carner

            Earlier this year, the world watched with bated breath as Egyptian women took to the streets alongside men to protest Mubarak’s rule and demand democracy. Cynically, men encouraged women’s participation—only to betray them once Mubarak was removed. Merely a few months later, Egypt—formerly the more modern among Muslim nations—has regressed into gender apartheid the like of which the country has not been seen in decades, and “modesty squads” roam neighborhoods in search of errant women whose appearance or behavior defy the Extreme Islam’s dictates. 
            Does anyone believe that Saudi women will fare better in their quest for the right to drive? In 2010, the Global Gender Gap Report ranked Saudi Arabia 129th out of 134 countries for gender parity (down from spot #114 in 2006.) Islamic patriarchal system has kept Saudi women not just from driving, but from traveling, working and even signing medical forms without the permission of a male guardian—any male relative, even their own minor child.
            Gender apartheid is the basis for the entire Muslim social structure. The Arabic word “fitna” means both civil disorder and beautiful woman. In his 2004 article, “Female Desire and Islamic Trauma,” Islam scholar Daniel Pipes explains: 
            “The entire Muslim social structure… goes to great lengths to separate the sexes and reduce contact between them. This explains such customs as the covering of women's faces and the separation of women's residential quarters, or the harem. Many other institutions serve to reduce female power over men, such as her need for a male's permission to travel, work, marry, or divorce. Revealingly, a traditional Muslim wedding took place between two men – the groom and the bride's guardian.” The reason, Dr. Pipes explains, is rooted by the view that a woman’s sexual desire is so great, that believers are obsessed with the dangers posed by her presence. “So strong are her [sexual] needs …she represents the forces of unreason and disorder. …She must be contained, for her unbridled sexuality poses a direct danger to the social order.” 
            For that reason, in 2002, in Saudi Arabia, religious policemen prevented fourteen-year-old schoolgirls from leaving a burning school building because they were not wearing their headscarves and abayahs. Fifteen girls died. 
            The Quran was written long before automobiles were invented. Therefore, it did not specifically prohibit women from driving. It did not even forbid women from riding horses or camels.  And in a society obsessed with the modesty of women’s dress, cars actually hide women better than any other methods of transportation. Saudi Arabia’s leaders’ explanation that women driving is unsafe and leads to sexual impropriety is entirely false, as women are routinely pinched and groped through the chadors when walking in the streets, and are often sexually harassed by taxi drivers—or even raped by their own chauffeurs.
            On the other hand, driving women around has created a source of income for many Saudi men: there are hundreds of thousands of chauffeurs in Saudi Arabia. Removing the religious fatwa against women driving would deeply affect an entire profession.
            Phyllis Chesler has written extensively that subjugating women is behind the brutal misogynistic Islamic practices such as female genital mutilation, stoning and immolation of women, beatings, forced marriages, child marriages and polygamy.  Now that Muslim feminists are taking to the streets in protest for the right to drive, they are beaten by mobs, yet have no legal protection even in cases of barbaric assault or rape. Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, commented at FoxNews.com  "… [Saudi] women's rights activists have very little [legal] protection for their physical well-being …This is the problem in a corrupt society…. Republics of fear oppress and repress their citizens by allowing criminals to do the dirty work of the government. It allows the government to keep [its] hands free."
            Saudi Arabia is the only country that prohibits women from driving. But viewing the protesting women in context of the men’s dread of female power to cause civil disorder, it is clear that breaking any taboo carries the unthinkable threat of women seeking rights for representation in government, in marriage and divorce, or in property ownership.
            In the midst of the Arab awakening, women fighting oppression—in Saudi or any other Muslim nation—is doomed to fade away into a dark night, because the power to relinquish control lies in the hands of their oppressors: men, government, and Islamic religious leadership.           

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            Author Talia Carner’s novel, JERUSALEM MAIDEN (HarperCollins, June 2011) deals with a woman’s struggle for individuality against her society’s strict religious dictates. www.TaliaCarner.com 

Baby Production Unlimited?

A crack baby

[Note: I wrote this essay a decade ago. My views have not changed. In these pre-election days, I cannot identify with either party’s views—which is why I am a registered Independent.]

            Recently, a lawyer from Illinois wrote in The New York Times about a woman who gave birth to 13 children, six of whom where born with cocaine in their systems, three with syphilis, and four were HIV positive. At least one of the children was beaten to death by the mother’s boyfriend. Others were physically abused and tortured.
            Promptly ruling out sterilization of the mother, the lawyer argued for the need to protect the unborn—two views I do not share. 
            Yet, I curiously found myself siding with him in his outrage that this woman—ill equipped to deal with life, her body, her emotions, and her addictions—is permitted to produce children as long as her body is capable of beginning the process of pregnancy and continues with little awareness on her part until a baby is born.
            Liberals in our society see any imposed meddling in the process of pregnancy a challenge to the woman’s civil rights. Blocking her ovary-production after two, three—or even six—children is unacceptable to them. What I find interesting here is that a conservative man such as the lawyer who wrote the piece joined the liberals in the same conclusion, albeit reaching it from a different angle.
            I believe that these children should not be permitted to be born. By allowing them to come into the world, we as a society midwife them into unimaginable misery. Passively, we stand powerless as more babies are dropped into our arms and become our responsibility via the myriad services they require from us. Helpless, we face staggering costs that devour our resources and trump other priorities. We assume the cost of lifelong medical care, foster care, and special education—all of which fail to raise the needle on their happiness meter.
            If this mother’s children reach maturity—which they often do due to medical care that is denied children of more functional families—they are likely to engage in violence and crime, often against us. We raise them in our midst only to endanger our own safety. We must engage more law enforcement personnel, prisons, security systems, legal defense and social workers. We pay for rehabilitation programs (for the criminals—not the victims) that are most likely to fail.
            While we are busy taking care of this mother’s children, she will continue to send more sick babies our way. She does not mean to do it. It happens to her. It happens to her body. She is ravished by illness. She has no way to control her destiny because her mind is fuzzy in a confused soup of drugs.
            Why not take a stand and say “No more!” Why not sterilize her?
            As a feminist who supports a woman’s right to her body and to choose abortion if she and her doctor agree, as a person disgusted by the notion that any citizen—including a bartender—is allowed to tell a pregnant woman that she may not drink alcohol, my boundaries are clear: Society ends where my skin begins.
            But what about the reverse situation? What about a case when a woman’s body abuses and exploits society? Where do I draw the line between the right of a woman to her body and my right to protect and defend myself and my resources against the consequences of her irresponsible actions?
            Where does liberalism start and conservatism begin?
            There are times we must cross the line, times when we must be allowed to stop the process of pregnancy before it begins. We are not placing a chastity belt on the woman--she can still have sex. We are not tying her down and removing a kidney to be donated to one who needs it. Irreversible sterilization needs not be the first step. We can start with enforcing birth control such as the five-year Norplant II (or its newest version.) It will give the mother a chance to clean her body from drugs, to get her act together, and to show responsibility toward the children she has already borne. Sterilization may be the answer if the first program fails.
            “Three Strikes” has been the buzz word for repeat offenders. We can stand up to other kinds of offenders and in the process save thousands of children the misery of being born.

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Author Talia Carner’s latest novel, JERUSALEM MAIDEN, (HarperCollins, 2011) is set at the end of the Ottoman Empire rule of the Holy Land. www.TaliaCarner.com

Saving Rivka

At the Western Wall, circa 1870

Rivka was fourteen. A Jerusalem maiden, she was already married, building a home in God's Holy City according to the mitzvah to hasten the messiah’s arrival.

Alas, Rivka's young husband died, leaving her no longer a virgin but neither a mother.

Thankfully, to her rescue came the ancient law that would ensure saving her womb from this fate, a law that would help her bear children in her husband’s name.

No frozen sperms in a bank. Familiar only with the old-fashion route, the law simply required that Rivka's husband’s brother would impregnate her on his dead brother’s behalf, thus ensuring the closest proxy of the dead man’s seed. Yibum, the rabbis called this brilliant scheme, as thus saved, Rivka would not be deprived of the privilege to contribute her share to hastening the messiah’s arrival

But wait! There were problems: Rivka's brother-in-law was merely a boy of eight, and he lived in Russia, Yishmor Hashem.

Poor Rivka was condemned to a lifelong widowhood, except that another Jewish law, a more modern one, came to her rescue. This law demonstrated the sages’ enlightenment by undoing the archaic law of Yibum. According to this more progressive law, called Halitza, the deceased man’s brother may relinquish his sacred obligation to his brother’s memory—but not without a great shame.

Disdained at her brother-in-law’s refusal to impregnate her, Rivka must humiliate him publicly by removing one of his shoes and spitting in his face.

Armed with this practical solution to her plight, at age fourteen Rivka set out alone on the road to Russia, on foot and on horseback, through snow-capped mountains crawling with bandits.

It took her two years to make the trip there, and two more years to return to Jerusalem, a free woman.

The messiah, who’s forever tarried, waited until at age eighteen, Rivka was finally permitted to remarry and fulfill her duty to hasten his arrival.

Rivka was my grandmother’s grandmother. I learned from her determination and courage. I also took another lesson: I stopped worrying about the messiah’s comings and goings. Then, no longer burdened with carrying the weight of the world’s fate on my shoulders, I’ve become my own messiah.

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Talia Carner's next heart-wrenching suspense, JERUSALEM MAIDEN, will be published by HarperCollins in June 2011. It is the story of a woman’s struggle for individuality against her society’s religious dictates.