A Random Life!

A Random Life by Sleam

A synopsis!

 A RANDOM LIFE is a collection of essays, anecdotes, and monologues, written whilst exploring differing countries, cultures, and lifestyles. The rambling conversations follow the years Sarah Leamy spent traveling both alone, and sometimes with Daisy (the Duchess of a dog, a slightly overweight Border Collie).

Sarah Leamy has a history of traveling across the States and Europe on her own, talking to and living with the locals in small communities, but she’d put all that aside in her thirties to follow a dream of building herself a straw-bale home in Northern New Mexico. A few years into the hands-on messiness of building adobe bricks one by one, working as a landscaper by day, and with very little by the way of adventures, all that changed suddenly.  A dramatic ending to her relationship forced Sarah to face the loss of this dream.

A year later, she met Athena, and a mutual fiery crush lit up between them, both energized by stories of their creative lives. With Athena’s inspiration, Sarah woke up to herself as once again being spontaneous, adventurous and playful. The home front was still painful, with rage and rocks thrown at her by the ex and Sarah had been drained by the drama. So with a crush in her heart, off she went with her faithful dog Daisy, the slightly overweight Border Collie, and drove up to Southern Colorado and into the amazingly beautiful rugged national forest roads. Whilst camping out of her truck with Daisy, Sarah remembered some of the lovers come and gone, seeing clearly finally the patterns and roles of each. Lighthearted she returned briefly to her home in Ojo Caliente, before once again setting out, this time on her 1976 Honda 750cc motorbike. She took the back roads across to northern Michigan, stopping on the way in Madison, Wisconsin, where she had once stayed those first months from England.

During that summer’s travels across to festivals, mountains, and lakes, Sarah understood more and more the meaning of creativity and community in her life. The stories reflect an intense curiosity in how others live and an openness to experience that with them. She offers random memories of living and studying in Germany, clubbing in Russia, hitchhiking and the various motorcycle rides taken on her own in Europe. It wasn’t an easy choice to make, but after some years back and forth between the two continents, she applied for a green card, only to be deported a few months later. Her humorous accounts of the immigration confusions she’d experienced over the years comes out in a chapter written whilst living in an Anarchist commune in mid-Tennessee! In North Carolina too, Sarah found more communities to live amongst. She was still trying to come to terms with the loss of the home she had built by hand, and she discovered again the freedom of traveling, performing, observing, and then writing, and how it gave back her laughter and curiosity.

After months on the road, she returned to New Mexico, this time laying down her roots in Madrid, a small artist town south of Santa Fe, a place she had lived once before. Living in a converted green 1948 school bus in the mountains healed her heart, and gave her the strength to follow a little acknowledged dream, to become a professional clown. She traveled to Guatemala with a small case of props and costumes, clowned around with the Mayan kids and worked in a small village store to pay her way for those five months. A year later, Sarah moved to San Francisco, and started studying at the only yearlong professional clown school. She turned 40 years old the month she graduated as a certified fool. 

A RANDOM LIFE follows her journeys, internal and external, that brought Sarah from small town England to the mountains of New Mexico, and the communities she connected with on the way. 

Writers Literary Agency, New York represents this manuscript.

Testimonials include the following;

• "A RANDOM LIFE is a very marketable story.  It has all of the necessary elements:  good characterization; interesting (and well-described) settings; authentic-sounding dialogue." Writers  Publishing Company.
• "Clowning around in Central America is very moving and very readable." Carol Carpenter (English Professor at the College of Santa Fe, Author of five young adult novels, screenplays and numerous articles.) 
• "I very much enjoyed your article on “Clowning Around in Central America.” What a wonderful thing you are doing for the people, especially children, of the world. My hat (don’t have a top hat at this point!) is off to you. Thank you for the work/play you do. It is an important contribution to the challenging world we find ourselves in today."  Barbara Doern Drew (Editor at the Eldorado Sun).