Trampled

Blogger keeps asking me to put ads on my site. Gmail encroaches on the right hand side of the screen with their eerie fingering. Facebook now takes up a third of the page with advertising. Players on the football field stand idly by for the TV time-out. Stadiums are renamed for the highest bidder. The banner ads on the front pages of the newspaper creep up and up. Content is influenced by advertisers instead of by the newsworthiness of the story. Investigative reporting is going the way of the land line.

We time our arrival at the theatre to miss the yelling and screaming of the selling. The glossy magazines shout at you from newsstands, fat with advertising. If you took out every ad from the glossies, you would end up with a slim magazine fit for your back pocket, like The Sun, an advertisement- free magazine of stories, poems and essays. You pay for your subscription and you get what you pay for. They don’t try to sell you anything else. If I could get something published in The Sun it would feel better than a front page blurb in the Atlantic. Well…..almost.

I would no sooner put ads on my blog than cut off my right hand. I wish they would just leave me alone and cut out the crap. The amped-up scheming of the advertiser during the holiday season strips my spirit like turpentine. Thanksgiving is a time for contemplation and fortification, community and church, parades and musicals, nourishment for the creative soul and the inquisitive mind. Why did we let the frenzied retailer hijack Thanksgiving? Forget the family gatherings and the euchre games and the gathering of cousins into the wee hours to catch up. We all have to go to bed early so we can get up at three in the morning to shop.

Thanksgiving is no time for manic shopping in the predawn hours, yanked from store to store like puppets on a string by the geek of the advertiser. One Day Only! Limited Availability! First 100 shoppers! Free shipping! Bullshit.

Do they think us simpletons? They raise the price and then offer free shipping. They double the price, then offer you two for one. Why is it my patriotic duty to put myself in the red to put them in the black? This marketing of Thanksgiving to the highest bidder makes Clockwork Orange look like the Ed Sullivan Show.

I really meant to talk about food. Are you a foodie? If you're still reading, let’s sit down and talk about what's for dinner.

On our Thanksgiving menu: organic turkey, stuffing, butternut squash braised in maple syrup, garlic mashed potatoes and gravy, salad greens dressed with olive oil and balsamic vinegar and apple pie for dessert. All served up at my daughter's house (first time!). She doesn't have a dining room table but she's going to pull in her patio table and put a tablecloth on it.

We’ve opted for traditional, but we have our own turkeys so it’s hard not to go down that road. What about your road? Is anyone doing something extravagantly different, like roasted duck or pheasant? Oysters on the half shell or a standing rib roast? What’s for dessert?

On our weekend slate: the browsing of bookshelves and the stringing of lights around that patio minus its table, the Columbus Museum of Art to view the Caravaggio exhibit (the only U.S. venue), the living room and conversation, the Lions Thanksgiving Day football game because that's tradition (even with the TV time outs). Any extra money I have is going for wine, beer, and books. No shopping. What about you?

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.

Keeping Things Pretty - Recommendations and Chaos

I have an award to accept and one to pass on, a couple of reading recommendations, and an observation from farm country on football Sunday.

Jon Paul at Where Sky Meets Ground recently gave me this blog award.

Thanks Jon Paul!

He is participating in NaNo and tearing it up. In fact his progress has been so remarkable he's inspired me to participate in this novel-writing month next year. Check him out and follow if you aren't already. I'm supposed to pass this award on to 15 other bloggers. At this time, I'm passing it on to five, because it takes a lot of thought and time to do awards. I do reserve the right to name my other ten at a later time. Some of these bloggers are new to me while I've been following others for a while, but they all have one thing in common: they've created blogs I return to again and again, which is my definition of a lovely blog.

Zev from Swords Into Plows is a man after my own heart. Check him out and you'll see why.

Jessica Bell at The Alliterative Allomorph is an amazing talent. Plus she sent me her CD all the way from Greece, which is better than a postcard. Thanks Jessica!

Anthony Duce draws and writes and does both exceptionally well. He strives to say a little, but not too much, and somehow he always says it just right. He gives life to the still life and still life to the living.

Ed Pilolla whose recent post "Clothesline" was absolutely brilliant, and I'm not given to gushing.

Pet at Pencil and Box who blogs about things like an amazing yet obscure animated movie based on a story by the late Ted Hughes and because he's well written and pops in on me from time to time. He's from Spain and I like to keep abreast of what's going on over there.

If you aren't already following these five, you're missing out on some worthwhile reading.

Now, for those recommendations: I just finished reading ORYX AND CRAKE" by Margaret Atwood. That novel will make you hate us. Would I recommend it? Well... I read it in just two days. Atwood knows how to grab you by the scruff of your neck, and she doesn’t let go until she’s finished with you. Is it farfetched in its look at the future? I sure hope so. Are there elements of truth already lurking on the horizon? Sure. Enough of them to make you shiver.

On my bed stand now is CUTTING FOR STONE, by Abraham Verghese. I was told by one of my most thorough readers that she thought it the best novel of 2010. She has her own lending library and has never steered me wrong so now I'm steering you. I knew from the first paragraph I would like it. Don't you just love it when that happens?

And, finally, an observation from where I live: It's dark now and the gunshots have receded. It's hunting season, and from dawn to dusk, shots echo through the woods and across the fields. This might strike you as harsh, but it's actually a good thing. The deer are a nuisance, causing numerous car accidents and destroying crops. So far, five have been taken out of the farm, and we're hoping for many more to be harvested. When they start cutting into your income and wrecking your vehicles, it's time for a cull. They have no natural predators as the coyote and cougar are rare and the wolf are gone. Man is their only predator, but fewer and fewer hunting licenses are issued as the younger generation has taken to video games rather than hunting and fishing and outdoor activities. Their interest is gaming indoors, not hunting game in the cold of November.

One more think before I say adieu, one more thing. It's another football Sunday and the NFL is playing patriotic. It seems to be a new theme in sports, hyping the flag and the soldier and the occupation (but not the one in NY). The God Bless Americas, the trumpets, flags, and fly-over formations, Man shed his waste on thee... but something strikes me as false because I can't forget the scene from Thursday playing across America for those who were paying attention. A woman dressed in an overcoat with long hair and a backpack was dragged down the street by police in riot gear. They lost their grip on the backpack and went for the hair. She was dragged away,kicking and screaming and nobody helped. Maybe they were all afraid, unlike the boy who stopped a tank in Tiananmen Square. Dragged through the roadblock, dragged through the cameramen, dragged out of sight. Syria? China? Greece? Some barbaric Third World country? Did you see it? Was it just my imagination?

It's dark and the shots have receded but not the memory.

The Hallway

Door one is for those with questions about their disability check.
Door two is for those who didn’t get their disability check.
Door three is for those who can’t find a doctor to treat their disability.
Door four is for those who have been denied their disability.
Door five is for those who were Sectioned Eight, no disability.
Door six is for those seeking legal advice.
Door seven is for those whose paperwork never not submitted, go back to door one.
Door eight is for those who got kicked out of the shelter for alcohol abuse, go back to door six.
Door nine is for those suffering hallucinations, go back to door three.
Door ten is for those deemed a danger to themselves by door three.
Door eleven with the red sign above it is for those who exhausted one through ten.

Reader's Reports - An Agent-in-Waiting

I’ve finished my novel BLACK RIVER. It’s complete at 105,000, a word count I’m comfortable with. The genre is mainstream contemporary with cautionary undertones. (I know, I made that category up.) Now comes the spit and shine, and to help me see the gaps and inconsistencies, I’ve sent it over to Ethan Vaughan, an agent-in-waiting who blogs here.

Ethan interned at a literary agency over the summer and aspires to one day be a literary agent. Right now he's a college student who writes readers reports in his spare time, which is pretty cool. He has posted a sample reader's report which will give you a feel for how agents critique unpublished manuscripts.

He’s looking for manuscripts to read and critique on his blog. If you’re ready for a little exposure and an independent critique, you might want to check out his site, Searching For The Story.

What have I learned this time around? I found that I can write a novel under 140,000 words. With this one I have wiggle room. If something needs to be added, there's space. If something needs to be cut, I would still end up with a novel in the 90,000 to 100,000 word count which to me is a good range.

While this one is out with a couple of readers, I will compose my query letter, hopefully with help from Mindy McGinnis at Writer Writer Pants on Fire, one of my favorite people from Agent Query, the top spot for query assistance, and anyone else I can impose upon. Then I have a couple of short stories with a deadline fast approaching and then.....I concentrate on Will. Oh, I love the dark and desperate, the hurt and conflicted, those characters who love and lust and make mistakes.

Anything For Will

She longed to feel him inside of her again but was beginning to wonder if she ever would. The memories were fading, like the pictures he sent. His helmet was etched with anti-war dogma, but he did what he was told. His letters filled a drawer but held nothing of what he was told, and he wasn’t sending pictures anymore.


Write a flash fiction piece in 55 words, post it, and then let the G-Man who is Mr. Knowitall know. It's easy, it's fun. It's Friday.

My 55 this week is a passage from a work-in-progress that is working it's way back up to the top of the stack. It's been bothering me. I can see it in the corner of my eye, getting dusty on the filing cabinet. Oh, the injustice! I had to bring Will back up on my screen this morning. I have to look him in the eye and decide what to do with him.

TGIF
Peace out

Unraveled

If the sky were any prettier it would kill me. My incapacity to process it would overwhelm and cripple. The sun colors the sky best just before it breaks the horizon. It turns each wisp of cloud into a trailing kite. It enhances the tree in the fence row clinging to its last wind-torn leaf. It’s bigger than a barn from afar, this tree, and I don’t even know its name. Bigger than the tool shed and the barn put together. How come I’ve never stood underneath that tree with the birds’ nests unraveling in the wind? I’m too lazy. I haven’t walked through an adjacent field to stand under a tree bigger than a barn and older than the farm. My capacity to feel small is undiminished in the light of day. As the sun travels its low arc across the southern sky, I finish out the day in a multitude of smallish ways.

What's Under Your Sink

I would like to share a post from Zev, an activist farmer that could enhance your life and your health, maybe even save it. As Zev shows us, everyone can be an activist. If you think you're too small to make a difference, you've never been bitten by a mosquito.

Hey....I just realized this is my 200th post!

Fitting it should be about something so important, something I would climb on the soapbox for.

Am I supposed to have a contest or a cyber cocktail party or something? No, I think I'll save that for when I reach 200 followers or nail an agent.

Like next year for sure!

Should You Have a Fever . . .(Teaser Tuesday)

This week I've decided to participate in Teaser Tuesday, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading, wherein you open a book you're reading to a random page and post two teaser sentences.

So, here goes....

"My mother was too sleepy to take his temperature, but it's a fact that he had a fever, and that his fever led him to a night in my mother's bed-in her arms.

"My grandmother always claimed she could hear the electric meter counting each kilowatt; as soon as it was dark, she followed my mother through the house, turning off the lights that my mother had turned on."

Anyone know what novel these two sentences are from?

This is not a new release, and I know many of you have read it. I did when I was young and inmature. Something told me it deserved another go and I have not been disappointed. I missed so much the first time, like THE PLAGUE by Albert Camus, which I read as a young adult and didn't understand.

The rules say I must tell you, so without further ado,



the novel is A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY, by John Irving, one of my favorite authors.

Click the link above if you want to share a couple of teaser sentences from a book you're reading and can recommend to a host of readers.

Thank you for reading mine!

Guardian Dear

I’m going to hell.
It’s on page eleven
of the Sunday Visitor
circled in red by my mother.
My mortal sins number in the thousands.
Does God keep a stroke count?
I don’t want to go to hell.
I’ve read Dante’s Inferno.

If I make her breakfast will it erase one?
How about if I put clean sheets on her bed
and flowers in her vase?
None of this matters if I miss mass on Sunday.
It’s on page eleven.

But she likes flowers.
She used to tell me that if I fell asleep in the middle of the rosary,
my guardian angel would finish it for me.
I believed her.
If I die in my sleep
before atonement is complete will my guardian dear
take it on the chin for me?
Mother, will you?
And about all those rosasires I never finished . . .
did they ever count?

Where Did It Go?

Yesterday, we pulled the soaker hoses and the tomato cages. I cleaned the greenhouse and mounded dirt around the pepper plants. They need a lot of tender care and we dropped the sides and shut the doors and watered them properly so we will have peppers at Christmas time. Red and green and yellow and orange. Like a Mexican Christmas, but we are here in Michigan, and the night approaches,

and the sun doesn't set where it used to. At the height of day, it is no longer where it should be. It doesn’t touch the front of the house, it doesn’t touch the mums in full dress. No wonder they stretch and stretch and turn leggy, reaching for the sun which slips further and further down the sky. It slips towards Detroit and the Detroit River. It’s falling into Lake Erie and over Ohio. It's falling towards Mexico where they can grow peppers in winter. Falling falling falling like the leaves from the maple and the oak we named after his parents. Strong and resilient, planted to survive and thrive long after we’re gone. Like the oak that was big when my father was small. Planting a tree is an unselfish gesture. It’s one of the best things we can do.

The Storm and the Hired Man

The wind blew the muck out of the peatlands,
and blackened the sky like Gethsemane.
It billowed around the landmark oak
and advanced up the lane.
Germaine dropped everything and ran for the house.
The cattle lowed as the barn disappeared,
and though she pleaded
with him to stay,
he left to check on the herd.


If it's Friday, it's time for a little flash fiction, and if you can do it in 55 words, tell the G-Man of Friday Flash 55 fame.

Enjoy the weekend, whenever it starts.
Peace out.

The Occupation

In the fifth week of the Occupy Wall Street movement, the wealthy are grumbling and pushing back. The grumbling started in Washington where the House has its own millionaires club. Now some of the wealthy individuals running for president are calling the protestors unpatriotic, un-American and nothing but a mob. In the Civics class that is no longer taught in high school, we were told just the opposite: that not only was protest and involvment patriotic, but that it was a necessity for a democracy.

Last week, someone posted a sign in the window of the Chicago Board of Trade where the street protestors could see it saying, "We Are The One Percent".

I wonder if it's still there. The protestors are.

Cock And Hen

The chickens murmur and coo while I fill their watering cans.
They cluck appreciation for hand-tossed grain and dart to and fro on spindly legs.
The ebony rooster with a red comb fluffs his feathers against the October sky.
He cocks his head and eyes my approach, runs and hides in the tall grass, like a fledgling.
He’s shy, this flamboyant rooster with the gallant tail feathers.
When he doesn’t think we see, he stands quietly midst his flock, head high.
They peck at his feet and pay homage to his plume.

One hen from another flock,
new to the coop and confused,
escaped under the poultry fence
and nested under the Russian sage beside the house.
I find eggs under the purple foliage.
She likes it there.

Pay It Forward

I'd like to give a thumbs-up this morning to a progressive who finally knows how to fight back hard against the ridiculous "class warfare" charges from the GOP. In one fell swoop, Elizabeth Warren, candidate for the US Senate from Massachusetts, delivered a powerful knock-out blow against this GOP nonsense.

"I hear all this, you know, 'Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever,'" Warren said. "No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own -- nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory -- and hire someone to protect against this -- because of the work the rest of us did.

Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless -- keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along."

I've been in third world countries where armed guards stand outside banks and soldiers with machine guns guard the teller windows, because there is no viable police force funded by public dollars. The government is the police force and the people are so poor, the fear is that one of them might resort to robbing an unguarded teller. I've flown into these places with anticipation only to be met at the airport by men in boots with barrels pointed up and out. At me. That, for me, exemplifies the difference between a country that feeds on the poor and one that pays it forward.

If all politicians elected to serve the common good were more widely traveled, better read, and versed in history, maybe they wouldn't be so eager to gut the public sector.

If you were given a chance to vote for an Elizabeth Warren, would you? I don't want to live in a third world country. In a third world country, 99pct of the people are crackerjack poor and 1pct are wealthy. What are my chances of falling into the lucky 1? What about you?

Tell Me This

Suzanne Casamento of the clever Question of the Day Blog
recently asked:
"What do you love about where you live?"

This set me to thinking, as her questions often do. I started blogging in the fall, and I believe there's a reason for that. It's the season of contemplation, of hunkering down and storing up. For the writer, it's the season of the run-on sentence and the convoluted paragraph and the crowded journal page, writing that leads to old memories and new ideas, new poems and new novels. Fall is the season of the writer. But what else do I love about fall in Michigan?

Hunting season, fried cakes, and pheasants,
the badgering of the crows
and the flocking of the starlings.
Crisp mornings laden with dew
after the night of the falling-leaf moon.
Apples on the ground and cider in the fridge,
pie in the oven and candles lit.
Drafty doors and tinkling chimes,
alone in the house
alone on the road
gravel roads and empty roads
Robust people in outdoor gear.
A basket of seed garlic,
planting garlic.
A wheelbarrow of beets,
eating beets-
pickled beets, roasted beets, beets with feta, beets with butter.
Beets.
The gunmetal sky, the changing sky,
a violet cupcake cumulus sky.
Moving water and great big lakes
the ice-encrusted dangerous lake.
Shanties, pasties, and pantries,
mums and wooly worms and fetching dogs.
Gathering eggs and harvesting squash-
curing squash and storing squash,
eating roasted golden squash.
Stately trees and scrappy foliage
turning color, surprising color-
modest yellow and outrageous orange,
stoic russet and flat-out red.
The harvest moon and the harvester,
billowing dust and jumping grasshoppers,
hopper wagons filled with grain,
golden grain and drying grain.
Men at work with gnarled knuckles and practical pants.
Men in hats who love to work.
Women in boots who live to work.

This is my Michigan in October.
This is where I live.

Where do you live?

He Lost A Foot

and then a hand for a loaf of bread for another man’s crime.
He’ll hang by the neck; he’ll cook in a chair,
he’ll take the needle from an unsteady hand.
We’ll ogle and cheer the final throes,
proclaim our dominion and safe secure shores,
then tape shut his eyes and lock all our doors.


If you have a flash for Friday you can tell in 55 words, post it and then tell the G-Man where it is.

Shock-Resistant Shit Detector

Do you engage your S.R.S.T. when you sit down to read a novel? Do you slip it into high gear when you're writing one? Are you empathetic and compulsive and fascinated by words?

This much I know: nothing else gets done when I'm caught up in the make-believe world of my novel. The greenhouse is a mess. There's a knee-high thistle in my hosta bed, cobwebs on the porch, cukes and tomatoes going to hell on the vine, garlic that needs to be sorted and stored in a cool dark place. These things bug me but here I sit with novel #2 spread out around me with pencil edits and crossed-out chapter breaks, unable to care about anything as much as I do it.

All I can think about is Boyd and his dangerous attraction to the migrant worker's daughter and why would he hide a gun there and a body here? What was he thinking? And why doesn't the ground stay frozen like it used to and the ice thicken on the lake enough to walk out safely on? Why do the creeps always have the upper hand? Why does his co-progatonist cut her hair to change her appearance and run away instead of standing up for herself and for him? Why do I care more about this than the weeds in my own life? Is this what John Gardner, teacher and writer, means by creating a vivid and continuous dream? Our own lives become a shambles as the dream on the page takes shape? Or is this the trance our readers are supposed to fall into, not us?

There are so many solutions to the problems our characters get into. As Gardner says, "Problems in novels are unlike problems in algebra which have one solution." Likewise, there's only one thistle to be pulled, and a set number of garlic to store, and one greenhouse to tend to, and I can knock the cobweb down with a broom. These things are easy and have one solution. A novel has any number of solutions, but, alas, I fear only one will be good enough. Only one will be brilliant.

A writer must have what Hemingway called the "built-in shock-resistant shit detector." In concert with the writer’s eye, (the ability to see how things really are and to write it down without falsification) and the appetite for compulsive revision—killing your darlings with a heightened intuition for the silly and the abstract—is the writer’s “special intelligence”.

We have to keep at it with daemonic compulsiveness until we can say, "It's as good as I can make it." And that will be good enough. Trust your unconscious. As Gardner says, "The unconscious is smart."

The pages are piled around me, numbered and full. The hum of the refrigerator is the only sound, and the sun colors the eastern sky like autumn sedum. I imagine these literary sages standing guard, daring me to try.

If I Could Be Anyone...

It's launch day for Talli Rolland's WATCHING WILLOW WATTS. To help celebrate the event, Talli's hosting a blog party and asking the question, "If you could be anyone, who would it be?" Go here for the lowdown, prizes and more.

And about that question? I would be my great, great, great grandmother who busted her husband and brother-in-law out of prison in Alsace-Lorraine after the collapse of Napoleon's army, squirreled them away in a horse-drawn cart under a load of hay and helped them stowaway on a ship bound for America. And here I am today.

Congratulations Talli. Here's the link to Amazon

MONARCH

I signed up to receive an Advance Reading Copy of Michelle Davidson Argyle’s new novel, MONARCH. I’m part of her blog tour and today’s my day.

MONARCH entertains diverse issues, from the plight of the Monarch butterfly to the underground network at the CIA (protagonist Nick's home away from home) and their global reach in the so-called War on Drugs. What, you ask, could these two things possibly have in common?

The migration struggles of the monarch and the natural world are central to the theme, tied to the illegal logging activities in Mexico. That, to me, was interesting, and I would have liked it explored in more detail. The connection was murky, but we're left with a feeling of hope. Whether realistic or not, that is up to the reader to determine.

From the opening scene, there's no shortage of murder and mayhem. The main villain is portrayed as the drug lord, Ferreira, but he is faceless—we never actually meet him. Having a faceless antagonist makes him less real and not a serious threat. The real antagonist, in my opinion, is Nick’s adversary, Kyle, and while he is a dispicable guy (an antagonist you love to hate), his character seems forced and contradictory.

There is a sharp focus on relationships in MONARCH, with conflicting results. Some were of no concern to me, while others of more interest weren't fully developed. For instance, I just began to take an interest in Nick's relationship with Lilian (the keeper of the Monarch Inn and romantic interest from his past) when I was suddenly whisked off to another hemisphere to explore his ambiguous relationship with the drug lord's wife, Catarina.

There was a lot of juxtapositioning of characters, back story, and location: from San Diego to West Virginia to Brazil, but after instilling some serious doubts in the reader, the author secured all loose ends in a satisfying way.

I especially like the cover, which was developed from Michelle’s own idea.

MONARCH is due out September 15th from Rhemalda Publishing.

Michelle's website is here, where you can find a list of upcoming dates for readings and signings.

She also blogs at The Innocent Flower and coauthors The Literary Lab with Scott G. F. Bailey and Davin Malasarn where she helps edit and publish "The Literary Lab Presents..." series of anthologies, an annual nonprofit publication that donates all proceeds to charity. Their most recent publication was NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND ANTHOLOGY, a collection of stories and poems from 24 different writers, and I can attest to Michelle’s tireless work and keen insight into the world of editing.

This is the first time I've received an ARC and it was exciting to be part of the process. Michelle's next novel, THE BREAKAWAY, comes out next year.

Congratulations, Michelle!

Who's Visiting You?

I recently added a flag counter to my blog and have been amazed at the number of countries represented. I don't know how accurate it is, but I wish I would have done it sooner. If you're just starting a blog, I would recommend adding one. It's easy and fun to see where your readers are coming from. It makes the world seem intimate and small, which in the grand scheme of things, I guess it is.

It's a very foggy morning in the thumb of Michigan, a sure harbinger of fall, but summer temperatures are still with us for the Labor Day weekend. I hope to have time to visit "our" lake. Lake Huron is beautiful still, at least on the surface.

There are disturbing reports of pollution from coal-burning power plants and invasive species lurking in the depths and I hope that the people in charge of our environmental protection agencies know what they're doing.

I say "our" because the lakes are public as are the shorelines and beaches. The public is entitled to access up to the high water mark (an ambiguous boundry, I admit) but private landowners like to discourage the public from enjoying the access they are entitled to. They think of the lake in front of their property as theirs. The lakes belong to all of us and I encourage people who live here or are visiting here to feel free to walk the shoreline. Find an access point and walk.

To not spend time on or beside these basins of beauty is a sacrilege. Fish, skip stones, swim, hunt for shells and driftwood and collect pebbles, capture the beauty on your camera or canvas. All any of us would ask when you visit is that you leave nothing behind to show you were here....except something like this: