The fate of a rose planted by my grandmother a hundred years ago released by Flapper Press
The Flapper Press is a literary magazine of Useful Words, Inspiring Stories, and Eclectic Perspectives and I'm very happy to be a part of it.
Also shared with Poets and Storytellers's "Lasting Impressions". No one makes more lasting ones than mothers and grandmothers.
Some of you may remember the G-Man and his Friday Flash 55 challenge to write fiction with a plot in 55 words. He inspired me to write flash poetry. You could say, in a convoluted way, that he inspired me to write Let Evening Come.
The birth of a novel in 55 words.
With
the transubstantiation of altar bread and wine
there’s
a rush from the back for the body and blood.
Confused
at the lack of decorum
(do they fear the chalice will spring a leak?)
we ease
our way into the jostling line of supplicants
like
automobiles jockeying for an off ramp.
With a finger
dipped in the font at the door
we exit
into the misty morn of a cash-strapped city.
Beggars
await us on the steps with their outstretched cups.
Father always
dropped a five in the tin can of the gaunt man
who sat wrapped in wool at the top of the exit ramp
on trips into a different city.
We walk
back to the hotel
past
darkened storefronts and empty streets.
Silent except for the rustle of newspapers.
Waking up in the lowlands with the murmur of the teakettle, a pour-over coffee, and a ticking clock. Within a short drive of Lake Huron and a stone's throw of the creek that trickles into the Black River that flows into the big lake which rushes to the ocean.
Contemplating this business of publishing, royalty gigs and division of the pie with so many forks, and me with nothing but words in my head, phrases and ideas, passion and pain, spinning, weaving, plotting, scheming.
Why do I wake up in the middle of the night? Thinking about the old man on the tractor and the woman with the broken broom, the man who trekked over a mountain with his youngest on his back to stay ahead of the soldiers, and the teen who enlisted for glory only to stowaway on a boat for foreign lands. Then there's the biologist who lives in a tent and studies the die-off of amphibians, and the reporter who only wants a story but comes face to face with a second chance at love.
One story I wrote that's out of my hands but still won't let me sleep is about an Indigenous son who lost home and family and a motherless farmgirl who is simply lost.
The time span between a preorder being announced by your publisher and the actual launch date is filled with angst and self-doubt. Waiting for advance reader copies, waiting for the data to be disseminated to libraries and bookstores, waiting for reviews (for a star🌟🌠), waiting for your fingernails to grow back as your hair turns gray. With the winter weather that gripped most of the country last week, I reckon my ARCs are still somewhere between Portland and Michigan.
In the meantime, I have a Universal Book Link This is a truly remarkable invention, a link that will take a reader to their preferred digital store, from America to Australia and all points in between. Like magic, the digital age at your fingertips. Check it out. This is also a great tool if you are self publishing.
I mentioned Shepherd before, the new site for discovering and sharing books. My page just went live today! I chose the template for my three favorites of the past year. If you want to give your three favs a shout-out (with a spot for your own published or soon-to-be-published book if applicable), they are taking submissions until July of 2024. As a Goodreads Author, I'll be doing a giveaway to celebrate the book's launch, and if you follow me or have added my novel to your Want-To-Read List you'll automatically be notified about the offer. These actually work. I received a free book in the mail last week. speaking of free, if you are in a book club and you choose my novel, you will receive a free autographed copy, bookmarks for everyone, and a box of my homemade truffles.
Finally, I have an interview online here by the Awesome Gang. I tried to amend an, ah, inappropriate word but didn't have the opportunity to do so before it went live. I still like the interview overall so decided to share it, but hope I don't offend anyone with my off-the-cuff comment.
Thanks for reading. I am deeply grateful.
dVerse (the pub where the poets hang out) has asked for a city-inspired verse.
Turning Down The Linen
The lost sunrise, rare coin, I now lament.
So too, its flaming slide at end of day.
I can’t escape my farm girl sentience.
Unleash me over those fields of fresh mown hay,
Not here, where brick and steel climb up the sky,
Where wren and hawk have flown a quick retreat.
Gray smoke and stacks alike tarnish surprise,
Over a city that rumbles beneath my feet.
This busy beast that swallows every sound
With clotted breath. To water’s edge I’m drawn
Where stars appear from out the black surround.
Like fields of wheat, waves undulate in song.
And then there’s you with power to part the night.
You turn the linens down and dim the lights.
That's the only sonnet I've ever written. Now, living where I do, I have to say this cold country sky is on fire!🔥 Streaks of crimson flood the windows, coming in from all directions, a sky made more beautiful by the dark sentinel trees and the white ground beneath. How is such a thing possible on a dark winter morn in the northern hemisphere? Window to window, I draw back the curtains. A blue jay is rocking it in the bare branches of the maple tree, and the fleeting shadow of an owl escapes over the shed. A quiet house, a cup of coffee, jays for company, a rural morning.
To go with the gift of a new day, my novel is on Barnes and Nobel!! It's also now on Amazon but somehow the B&N makes me more excited. Maybe it's the brick and mortar? I feel like they've given me an early Valentine's gift. 💝💘💕
I am also now officially a Goodreads Author. Please consider signing up for my newsletter where I'm sharing what I've learned on this journey from idea to draft to an ISBN. I will have a drawing for signed copies from the subscriber list on April 2nd to celebrate the launch of
In closing, I just want to say thank you to all old and new friends and followers who have been so kind and supportive. You who have been generous with sharing your own writing and expertise, especially those at dVerse and Poets and Storytellers. I wish I could have you all over for a drink. The house is small but I'd make it work!
In awe of an expertly bound book, I ran my hand across the smooth surface of the Milkweed edition of Indian Horse, the feel of it a tactile pleasure. From front to back, I fanned the pages, intrigued by the page numbers elegantly printed in cursive on the bottom left, and the smell of print. I leafed through them—I couldn't seem to stop—the promise of a story captured between the covers of this book.
Indian Horse is the beautifully written story of the Ojibway youth, Saul Indian Horse, who is trapped at an early age in Canada's residential school system. The story is an affirmation of Saul's perseverance and resilience as he struggles to survive the horror of the school and the demeaning actions of those who felt compelled to subjugate and drive the savage out of the Indian. In testament to the endurance and spiritual wisdom of his people and the grandmother he remembers, Saul battles to reclaim the dignity he was endowed with. I loved him and cried with him.
I just realized there was a movie made and it's on Netflix. I recommend it. But read the book first, if you can.
Gifted to me at Christmas, owning and reading this novel has made me realize how personal books are to me. Books have been my best friends since I learned to tie my shoes. Stages of life bookended by the books I read.
Now we have eBooks, the epitome of inanimate. They aren't books—I would argue—but devices. They are screens that need battery power to light up. They need electricity to turn the pages. They smell like nothing. But they are cheaper than print (and friendlier to the environment), thus the way of the future.
I gave up my eight tracks for cassettes and my cassettes for CDs. I confess to the convenience of Alexa sitting on a shelf, devoid of rizz even when she's plugged in, but she has her place, like an electronic reader on an airplane or in the dark of bedtime. But my bookshelves sag with that which I will never give up. Books that remain readable when the power goes off.
It's early in the year, but it will be difficult for any novel to unseat Indian Horse's number one position on my shelf.
Poets and Storytellers, invited us to "de-retro" our vintage vocabulary with a post, including the Oxford word of the year for 2023 - Rizz, an informal noun defined as style, charm, or attractiveness; the ability to attract a romantic or sexual partner.
I stuck it in above. Did you notice.
Everything must have a beginning … and that beginning must be linked to something that went before. – Mary Shelley.
This Friday's prompt from Poets and Storytellers is to let the idea of Beginnings inspire us in our responses. For me, 2024 marks the beginning of being a published novelist, the birthday year for LET EVENING COME
This beginning is linked, as Shelly says it must, to all the years of reading that went before. From Island of the Blue Dolphins and Ramona to the latest novels on my nightstand, which somehow, somewhere along the line, gave me the impetus and courage to write a novel of my own.
Now it's time to say, I’m proud of this thing! This is hard because, like most writers, I’m humbled by the process of putting my writing out there. Humbled that people would want to put down hard-earned money to read it. There are no words to express the gratitude I feel.
The sign up form for my mailing list is here . Thank you for your trust and support.
Finally, I'd like to plug an author's two best friends. The library (this is me recently at the one in Rochester) and independent bookstores. Both form mutually beneficial relationships with authors, readers, and their communities.
To new beginnings in 2024!
Good Night Irene by Luis Alberto Urrea is the untold story of the Clubmobile women of WWII. Though their official assignment was to make coffee and donuts in their kitchen-outfitted clubmobile truck, they drove the front lines, from Normandy to Bastogne, Belgium (the Battle of the Bulge) to Germany itself. How did someplace so gorgeous come up with something as ugly as they did? They saw combat, brandished rifles and tommy guns, dodged bullets, and suffered injuries and loss like the men they stood beside, comforted and bandaged. Sometimes the dearest thing to a soldier is a hot cup of coffee and a little friendly banter.
These are your sisters and the GIs are your brothers and we expect you to treat them as such. Win this war with your decency. Because we are Americans. And this is what Americans do.
In contrast to the horrific scenes from Buchenwald when the allies first entered the town, (the stench was unrecognizable and visceral) Urrea has composed the most beautifully written love scene between Irene and her pilot while in the south of France that I've ever read. From here, can you smell Africa? Spain?
Even if you've read accounts of the European theater and the brutality of the Nazi regime, Good Night Irene is a singular accomplishment that sings of the unsung female heroes who may not have received purple hearts but were as deeply wounded, physically and mentally, as any American GI.
This is my five-star read of 2023. On my bedside table now are INDIAN HORSE and THE HEAVEN AND EARTH GROCERY STORE, and in the works is LET EVENING COME, my breakout novel. 😊 Which I hope will soon be on yours.
Over and out and into the New Year wherein the idea of peace and prosperity beckons like a steaming cup of coffee and a donut, or as mother called hers, friedcakes!
call to the butterfly
to come among the blooms
with downy stroke
and the bee to drink from
what was fermented in the night
while thrushes forage for seeds
A Ghost Story Molly grasped the railing for balance. In the dim of the hallway light, the family portraits that lined the stairwell hung curiously ajar. She straightened her grandmother and descended the stairs, realizing they'd all been moved.
Perplexed, she hung them back where they belonged. The next night it happened again—ancestors jostling for position. Only her baby picture remained unmoved, the curly-headed likeness gazing intently at the camera. Then, on the morning of the shortest day, they were stacked at the bottom of the stairs. Hand to her throat she stared at the only one still hanging by a nail.
__________
In keeping with an old British tradition of telling spooky stories right before Christmas, I wrote this 100-word story for Loren Eaton's Advent Ghosts storytelling event at I Saw Lightning Fall.
__________
For Christmas present..... my novel, Let Evening Come is available for preorder. (I actually have an ISBN which made me as giddy as old Scrooge on Christmas morning!) The description and bio is now up on the publisher's site.
Thanks to all and a happy winter solstice (the joyful return of the sun) and loving holiday season to all. Especially to all the poets and writers at The Storytellers. Now for a brandy ball, a snort, and a little fresh snow.
Yvonne
yvonneosborne.com
This is a Quadrille (a poem of exactly 44 words) written for the challenge at dVerse to write one including the given word, snow. Twas easy to do. Even though we don't have any . . .
I remember when it was otherwise. And the poets at What's Going On are asking us to share a poem about looking back.
The Pet Peeve #3
December rains flood the bird feeders—how
will they eat?—but doesn’t wash the blood off my porch, the carnage scattered from
door to window; tuffs of fur, a chewed-off leg, entrails, a tail. My dear husband
cleaned it up with his shop broom and what all. But what, you ask, does this
have to do with the rain the rain, the rain?
It’s my opinion that if it were snow
falling gently from these iron-gripped skies to pile up in fluffy banks around
the porch, drifts swirling and forming barriers along the drive, then
perhaps these nocturnal creatures, whatever they are, would eat their dinner in
their riverbank burrows, cubbyholes, and woody enclaves, (I want no Invitation to the Party!) instead of spreading it
across my front porch for the UPS and Fed Ex guys to look at askance, as at the
scene of a murder, checking the soles of their boots before climbing back in
their trucks.
So, call it what you want: global
warming, climate change, or normal fluctuations in weather patterns, I want my
winters back. I want the cardinals and the juncos to flit among snow-laden
boughs instead of flapping their wings like ducks in the newly formed ponds where
there was once a yard. And I don't want dead things on my doorstep.
For Poets and Storytellers and their Seasonal Writings, asking us to include the title of a book we're reading this December in a piece of poetry or prose. An Invitation to The Party was a perfect fit!
THE OFFER
As those of you who are familiar with my blog know, I have long been on the winding road to publication, ever since the Indie publisher, Unsolicited Press first notified me back in September of 2021 that out of thousands of submissions, my manuscript was selected as one of 40 projects to fill out their 2023/2024 list.
From that initial euphoria to signing a contract, to multiple angst-filled edits and settling on a cover, to the gally proof I now have in hand, it has been an arduous process. But, all of a sudden things are happening. Fast! So I come back to you with an update and the big news that Let Evening Come is now available for pre-order!
A BRIEF SYNOPSIS
Let Evening Come is the love story between the son of an Indigenous family displaced from their ancestral home on the Tar Sands of Canada and a motherless farm girl from Michigan who struggles to overcome loss while navigating the pitfalls of young adulthood. Together they combat suspicion and bigotry on both sides of the border and the cultural differences that separate them.
PREORDERING
Preordering helps the author like this: When you preorder a book, it seeds excitement. It tells bookstores people want this book, which makes them typically stock more copies of the book, which of course means more people see it and buy it. Not only do publishers look at preorder numbers to determine their print run, but early sales are key. Experts say the first two weeks of a book's shelf life are the most important.
So, if there is a book coming out from one of your writerly friends 😊 via traditional publishing, or one that sounds interesting and you plan to purchase it anyway, the best way to support them is to preorder.
I never used to know any of this. I never knew anything. And yes, I'm shamelessly groveling.
I appreciate all of you who make up this vibrant blogging community and, truthfully, I would have faltered on the path if not for the ongoing encouragement and generous sharing of time, support, and ideas.
Thank you,
Yvonne
Human
(Because in these times I think that needs to be said.)
P.S. I have a newsletter sign up form on my website and there will be a drawing from the first 50 subscribers for free signed copies!! 💖💖
P.S.S. The Friday prompt from Poets and Writers is to be inspired by Don McLean singing Starry, Starry Night, his lovely song about artist Vincent Van Gogh. There might be a heavy cloud cover overhead but it's a starry, starry night for me and I hope for you, as well.
I loved this book. The author, a former park ranger, earned a doctorate in biology and zoology then built a small cabin on an isolated piece of land in Montana and plotted her next move.
As she accepts research projects and teaches field classes and leads groups of undergraduates through the Wilderness areas surrounding Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons, we tag alone to learn things about the natural world that couldn't be taught inside a classroom.
But the main focus of this astounding book is her unlikely and inexplicable friendship with a red fox who visits her isolated mountain valley cottage at 4:15 every day. With traits that only humans should have, you will never view these small creatures the same again.
Fox & I is on my list of best reads of 2023. My other top five to date (of course you're interested!😀) are:
1. The Slow Horses Series (Mick Herron)
2. The Only Good Indians (Stephen Graham Jones)
3. Lessons In Chemistry (Bonnie Garmus)
4. Bear Town (Fredrik Backman)
5. An Invitation To The Party (MJ Werthman White)
Tis the season for reading and writing and gift giving. I'd like to hear what some of your favorite books of the year are.
Dear Mom,
I have finally learned to appreciate your favorite vegetable—sweet potatoes. I’m making a shepherd’s pie with a sweet potato topping for dinner tonight. Remember how you always asked us to check to make sure you had sweet potatoes in the cupboard where you kept your onions and potatoes while making out your grocery list? I regret rolling my eyes, wondering what the big deal was. On the list they went, price circled, so we wouldn’t mess up. Those were the only times I ever bought sweet potatoes.
It must have been the sweet potato casseroles of old with marshmallows on top—though that was never your way—that charred fluffy topping cemented my revulsion to the lowly sweet potato. I’m not sure at what point I got over that, but I wanted you to know, the Irish in me has finally taken hold.
I’m using lamb in the shepherd’s pie tonight instead of hamburger, and I know you loved lamb. (Those patties stuffed with feta, served with mint jelly on the side?) Finally, of course there’s dessert. Baked apples with whip cream.
It’s cold and wet tonight, but there's an empty chair with a cushion on it by the heat register. I just wanted you to know how much I love sweet potatoes. I guess what I really want to say is I wish I had another chance to tell you I love you.
Love,
Yvonne
The challenge today from Punam at d’Verse - For The Love of letters is to write one. "Before the onset of the digital age," she says, "letter writing was the only way to communicate long distance. (Long distance phone calls were expensive). Thus, learning how to properly write a letter was part of any young woman or man's education."
In the present age it is so easy to keep up with people. Yet, we lose something important. The personal touch! Letter writing delivers something more to the recipient than just the words on the page. The act itself shows how much we care about a person. It's the intimacy, the information we impart by way of our handwriting, our choice of pen and paper, that connects us with the recipient in a way that cold computer screens can't."
But when was the last time you wrote one or received one? So, in the spirit of participating in this challenge (appropriate as we enter the holiday season), to rekindle and revive the dying art of letter writing in my own small way, I wrote this letter to my mother,
Opening day was hunters in camouflage jackets
and canvas vests lined with little pockets
to store bullets in. Traipsing in and out
the back door to sign in on dad’s clipboard
hung on a nail beside the dryer.
They would carry their birds back up the lane by the
feet
stopping first to report in and get a friedcake.
A
snapshot of one of the regulars
Eddie in his bulging vest with his bird
And
a grinning preschooler full of indulgence in a fuzzy sweater.
What beautiful birds those ringnecks were.
1957
Gunshots echoed across the fields
The kicking up of leaves in galoshes and wool socks.
The warm kitchen smelling of hot oil and cinnamon
Friedcakes dripping frosting cooling in the pan.
A jostling around the counter to duck and grab
Mother in her apron and dad in his coveralls
Talking up the hunt and the camaraderie of neighbors.
2023
A Kindred Need
Chaff in the wind, grasshoppers on the fly,
the gathering up and the laying down.
Combines creep across the field
where sparrows hover and hide
in the dry rustle of the corn
storing up energy in their hollow bones
for fall portends winter,
when they’ll swoop over the land in concert of wing
for they need their kind come winter.
I heard a pheasant this past summer.
Never saw but
heard the truncated chortle,
the two-note song.
Was that a tail waving in the Queen Anne’s Lace?
I thought I heard a pheasant this past summer.
Can't resist linking this to Poets and Storytellers with their prompt in favor of adjectives, reaffirming my belief that there are exceptions to every writing rule. And in answer to the prompt at What's Going On? what do you love?, this post might only scratch the surface but Opening Day, then and now, are right near the top.
This is an old poem I wrote while my parents were alive, but given the world's current sorrowful state and d'Verse's tribute to Louise Gluck (recipient of the 2020 Nobel Prize for literature) who was known for her insight into loneliness, family relationships, divorce, and death, I thought it an appropriate time to share.
My father and I say the
rosary on the drive home
from the
hospital.
I forget a line
in the Our Father
and mumble my
trespasses.
He finishes for
me.
How could I
forget
that which was
memorized at the knee
of Sister
Severe?
Swimming
upstream in his wake,
I navigate the
mysteries,
the joyful and the sorrowful mingling like water and salt—
Let it be known that no one who sought
thy intercession was left unaided.
He stumbles on
the words,
they fall into
his handkerchief.
I finish for
him.
The miles pass
unnoticed
and the mysteries come to an end
but the road
continues and the day approaches
when there
won’t be anyone left
to remember
what is forgotten.
