Thought Candy

This summer, on Saturday, August 13, in Silverton, Colorado, my friend and fellow writer Blair Runion and I will be hosting a writers conference. The event is called the Writers and Scribblers Literary Retreat and you can find the Facebook page here.

Tickets are $25.00 and include lunch and free beverage of choice (coffee/lemonade/iced tea) all day. We’ve got an AMAZING number of presenters and panelists lined up already, and I have no doubt our lit retreat will be a whole lotta Hell Yeah.

In preparation to host our own event, Blair and I attended the Telluride Literary Festival this year, on May 20, 21, and 22.

Here is a selfie to prove we were there —

 

 

 

 

 

 

I drank lots of coffee and talked nonstop. Blair wore a dress covered in skull and crossbone emblems. She introduced me to poets I’d never heard of before, which she played on her phone. We listened to a lot of live poetry at the event we’d come to attend, but then we listened to even more poems on Blair’s phone.

It was a great weekend for a number of reasons, but the biggest was simply the pleasure of Blair’s company.

Plus, she bought me this Hot Dudes Coloring Book, which she found at Between the Covers, the local bookstore in Telluride, and this cemented her position as Queen of Goofball Shopping Adventures.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This book is so epic. Just look at this beefcake flexing his biceps on the title page —

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This guy says he is “Hitching a ride to your heart” —

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Or if musicians are more your style, this man promises “We can make beautiful music together” —

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This gunslinger is “Wanted: Hot and Alive” —

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A guy in what appears to be steampunk goggles says, “Girl, you’ve got my number. Call me.” —

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And for those who like the bad boys, this hottie is “Tattooed and trouble” —

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So in case any of my blog readers have been craving some stud-muffin coloring time, this book will satisfy.

Blair also bought me a copy of Peter Heller’s nonfiction book, The Whale Warriors, because we’re also in a critique group together as well as the authors group Writers and Scribblers, and Blair knows how I roll —

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was so incredibly touched when Blair picked this out for me and had the author sign it. Peter Heller was the keynote speaker at the Telluride Literary Festival this year, and in a funny twist of fate, I overheard Mr. Heller tell some folks that he met the stars of The Whale Warriors the same way I did — at the Telluride Film Festival several years ago. That was why he later contracted to write this book about them, because of seeing the same presentation I did at that festival. Small world.

I also bought a copy of Peter Heller’s first novel, The Dog Stars, which I finished reading this month —

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I thought I’d fall in love with this book, because Peter Heller is such an amazing human being. To listen to him speak, and to be around him, is to be in the presence of someone who is humble and kind, always looking for the joy in a situation, open to anything, or anyone, a man who laughs easily and often — and he knows his stuff, through and through. Peter Heller is incredibly smart, and he’s a truly wonderful guy, in every way that a person can be wonderful.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I possess a deep admiration for Peter Heller, but I ended up not falling in love with his first novel. You can find my review of the book here, if you’d like to hear more about why this book was a struggle for me. Mr. Heller’s second novel, The Painter, is also out now — and both of these books are currently being made into movies. I’ll be reading The Whale Warriors soon — at some point in the next few weeks. Since I am working on my mer novel right now (a YA fantasy set in the ocean, starring merpeople) The Whale Warriors will be useful as research as well as for the pleasure of excellent nonfiction.

The Telluride Literary Festival featured a number of brilliant authors in addition to Peter Heller —

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the far left is a woman I don’t know — I think she was one of the organizers for this event. (Like me this August, since I don’t plan to present, but just do all the behind-the-scenes work instead.) The second woman from left is Amy Irvine, whose memoir Trespass: Living at the Edge of the Promised Land won both the Orion Book Award and the Colorado Book Award.

For someone to win the Orion Book Award gives me a such a huge WOW factor. It’s like learning someone won the Pushcart or the Booker. Just WOW. Because I adore Orion so much, so very much, and here is a writer Orion loves too.

**my lil heart explodes with the joy**

I was really impressed with Ms. Irvine at this event, and I’ve been reading articles about her online, including other pieces she’s written for Orion. I’ll be reading Trespass this summer as well.

Next to Ms. Irvine is Alec Jacobsen, the Executive Director for the San Juan Independent and the former Editor in Chief of ArtsRiot.com. That guy’s brain is amazing. I think he has an I.Q. of three million. I enjoyed his comments immensely.

Next to Mr. Jacobsen is Peter Heller. Then this fantastic woman named Judy Muller, who is a professor of journalism, an NPR contributor, and the author of Emus Loose in Egnar: Big Stories from Small Towns. Ms. Muller made me laugh, made me tear up, made me nod my head in appreciation. She is freaking awesome.

Next to Ms. Muller is the zany and irrepressibly delightful author Craig Childs. Who has the most perfect surname ever — Childs — because he is like the body of a man stuffed with hundreds and hundreds of kids — kids of all sizes — all of them rambunctious and bouncing off the walls and thinking, constantly thinking. This is the second time I’ve attended an event with Craig Childs and I love him. He possesses the madness gene of humanity, plus several extra madness genes that I’m sure his parents didn’t realize they’d passed onto him.

And on the far right, beside Mr. Childs, is a woman named Chesonis, who is co-owner of Between the Covers Bookstore, the former Art Director at Telluride Magazine and co-designer of Telluride Rocks 3rd Edition. She also helped organize and put on the Telluride Literary Festival, and Chesonis even helped Blair and I score tickets to the Literary Burlesque Saturday night. She is just amazeballs and super fun, and Between the Covers is a lot like Maria’s Bookshop (here in Durango), with wooden shelves and hardwood floors and that wonderful indie bookstore vibe.

Copies of the Hot Dudes Coloring Book can be found there. Operators are standing by to take your orders NOW. “Tattooed and trouble” is waiting for you. Just bring the crayons and the colored pencils and all that epic beefcake is yours.

A big thanks to Blair for giving me the gift of some crazy for a whole solid weekend in May. I had a really great time. And we did a whole lot of planning together for our event this August. Which will be rad and will feature root beer. Because root beer.

So if you’re going to be in southwest Colorado this August — please check out the Facebook page for the Writers and Scribblers Literary Retreat and come! We’d love to see you there!

 

 

 

 

As of June 3, 2016, my husband and I have now been married for ten years. I can honestly say that my wedding day remains the happiest day of my life, a day when all of my family and friends came to celebrate the fact that I had fallen in love, and then had the courage and wherewithal to give myself a wedding ceremony. Everything planned, organized, and paid for by yours truly, and done on a shoestring budget.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Greg and I were married in Ouray, Colorado, up at the campground (pictured above), and the reception was held at the Tundra Restaurant, where I worked at the time. I never waited tables at the Tundra, having gone through many years as a server before then, and I’d told myself Never Again would I perform that job. So I worked as a hostess there, and due to the fact that I worked there, I learned that having a wedding reception at the Tundra for “no more than 75 people” would cost me $3,500.00. Alcohol not included.

That was actually the inspiration to have a wedding — watching other people have receptions in this elegant restaurant, and thinking to ask the manager one day, “How much does this cost?” As soon as I heard the amount, I realized that $3,500.00 was not an insane amount of money. The Tundra is a gorgeous restaurant, the food (at least at the time that I worked there) was absolutely delicious, and with a D.J. I hired from Telluride (for $400.00), I pulled off a lovely and extremely fun day.

I know most brides say that their wedding was “a super fun day” — and sure, I fall into that camp, even though I can’t really speak for my guests. But I did work really hard on selecting each piece of music played, and my little rent-a-dance floor was never empty. The last song played at 9:55 p.m., and my guests had to leave the building at ten p.m. sharp. Many of my guests formed a large group of strangers-turned-insta-friends and hung out at the local bar together for hours afterward, drinking and carousing until last call.

My wedding day was not a perfect day, but it was a day stuffed to bursting with gratitude and love — for my friends, for my family, for the fact that people cared about me enough to come all the way to Ouray for the whole White Dress and Tux Thing — and the sun shone, hot and bright, and the trees were a vibrant, glorious green.

Fast forward ten years, and I really wanted to do something fun to celebrate our tenth anniversary — but I spent the day moving furniture and boxes and clutter in Silverton. One of many such days I have spent this past month. I did have lunch with Greg, and that was really nice, but I still felt bad leaving him. He’d taken a four-day weekend off work so that we could drive eight hours to Boulder and visit the Prana store — because Greg knows I have this obsessive love for Prana clothing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So in preparation of our upcoming anniversary, Greg was all, “Sweetie, I love you, I’ll take you to Prana.” When really, what he wants is to have me all to himself, trapped in the car with him. When all my attention zeroes in on just him. I read to him, and chatter about philosophy and history and rocks and the nature of the universe and ask him questions about random stuff, and Greg pretends to find me super aggravating but really he likes it. Because Greg is weird. He likes to pretend he’s normal, but the truth is out there. Right here in this blog, no X-Files needed.

But our trip to Boulder was not to be. I cancelled my longed-for and much-anticipated Prana store visit. Instead, Greg and I had lunch, and I said, “We’ll go camping. To the Sand Dunes.” Because I’ve always wanted to visit the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve. So Greg said, “Okay,” and he stayed home and organized our camping supplies while I drove to Silverton and worked.

What was I doing in Silverton? Trying to make sure my sister and her newborn daughter, Serena, had a home to live in. It’s been an ongoing project for the last month, and I wasn’t about to bail out on this, even if Prana beckoned.

On Saturday, June 4, Greg and I loaded up Queen Elizabeth, our Prius, and drove to the Sand Dunes. I truly had no idea what to expect. Greg had been there before, but I was a neophyte. Here is a view of the dunes right before you pay the entry fee ($15.00) for the park —

 

 

 

 

 

 

That band of light brown between the grass and the mountains is a huge pile of soft sculpted sand. If you live in Colorado and crave a beach visit, you should totally come here.

Here is a view of the entrance sign (look at that pretty blue sky!) —

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can see the mass of sand a bit better in that picture.

I took the requisite selfie —

 

 

 

 

 

 

Greg said he wanted no part of this selfie-at-the-sign business, and stayed in the car. You see what I have to put up with.

We drove to a picnic area and ate some roasted chicken slathered in garlic and rosemary, and then I borrowed Greg’s pocketknife and sliced up a mango. This particular fruit was not overly juicy, but the chewy flesh tasted like plum syrup and pine needles and smoke. The very best mangoes I’ve ever had I bought from a street stall in India, so ripe that I could easily suck the seed clean and drip juice all over my shirt. So good. On this day in the park, Greg drank a Pabst Blue Ribbon while I cut up the fruit.

After our haphazard picnic lunch of roast chicken and mango, Greg and I went to visit the dunes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

From the parking lot, you have to cross Medano Creek to access the dunes. In the distance are the Sangre de Cristos Mountains, “the blood of Christ,” so-named by the Spanish for the deep red they sometimes turn during sunset, in the alpenglow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Medano Creek is a shifting stream of water that blows to and fro with the wind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Families take toys and and all kinds of play gear with them when they visit the dunes. You can rent sand sleds and sandboards (sand snowboards) for the day. (You have to rent this equipment because snow sleds, cardboard, saucers, and plastic items don’t slide on dry sand. You can see the kids toting plastic floaties for use on the water.) The Visitor Center also rents sand wheelchairs with huge wheels that won’t sink into the ground. Awesome.

 

 

 

 

 

 

You walk about a quarter mile or maybe a half mile across the creek and over a rough base of sand to access the big, super-soft dunes — those giant sand hills perfect for sand sleds and sandboarding. The dunes are a product of erosion. Mountains have a longer life span than people do, but they still undergo birth, life, and death. The dunes are a creation of destruction, as the Rocky Mountains slowly undergo their demise. Wind and water tearing down the mighty peaks bit by bit. They make a glorious playground, and people certainly visit here to play.

Greg and I slipped off our shoes and walked across Medano Creek together — and it was completely delightful.

I laughed and giggled and splashed. The sensations of the twining water and shifting sand on my feet felt amazing, a gentle tickling full of the limitless power of nature, and I was reminded of my favorite sand pit I played in as a kid growing up. That pit is a few miles east of Silverton, in one of the canyons. I used to soak myself and ruin my clothes in that sand pit, happily flinging clay, mud, and sand and jumping around for hours. Even though I wasn’t ruining any clothes during my trip to the Great Sand Dunes, I kept telling Greg, “Wow, this is awesome!!” and letting him know how much I would’ve LOVED romping around in this place getting filthy, had I ever come to the dunes as a kid.

Then I started listing names of all my friends who have young children, people who I could rope into visiting this park with me. Because there is no better way to describe what it feels like to walk across Medano Creek and climb to the top of a super-soft dune, than to say you return to being a carefree child shrieking with joy in the sun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Later, at our campsite, when Greg and I pitched our tent for the night, Greg realized I’d forgotten to bring my sleeping bag. He stomped around the campsite all pissy, and I said, “I’ll just sleep in my coat, I’ll be fine.” Greg rustled around in the car and pulled out one of those emergency blankets. I said, “Oh cool, a NASA blanket!” But Greg was not amused. He scowled a lot and said I didn’t have the sense God gave a goose. I just shrugged and said, “Honk, honk, want to share my bird lice?” and that made Greg scowl more. He gave me his sleeping bag and he used the NASA blanket, but really, it wasn’t that cold, and I could’ve slept in my wool coat and been fine. Instead, I used my coat as a pillow, and that was super nice.

Because of our late picnic lunch, Greg didn’t need to cook dinner, but he did make me a cup of instant coffee. I brought a pack of Starbuck’s instant coffee with me. You just dump a tiny packet of crystals into a mug of boiled water, add cream, and then bliss.

In the morning, Greg cooked us eggs and bacon, and then we went for a hike up this area —

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are some tiny deer in that picture, too small to see. We weren’t following any trail, we were just aiming for a small copse of aspen. Some people Greg knows had discovered a bunch of potsherds and chert there, and Greg wanted to go check it out.

Chert is a fine-grained, very common rock that is abundant virtually everywhere, especially river valleys. Even so, I was excited to see this rock site. I tagged along behind Greg like a puppy, reading aloud from a book whenever he took breaks to sit in a chair. Greg suffers pain when he stands on his feet for too long, so he carried a camp chair with him, on a strap, and I carried our water and a book. While he sat, I’d root around in the dirt and pick up rocks.

We never did find the chert site, but we did find antler castoffs from mule deer and bear tracks and lots of pretty birds and I kept picking up rocks and asking, “Greg, is this diorite? Is this diabase? What about this one — do you think it’s gabbro?” And Greg was like, “I did not bring my glasses, stop asking me.” The rock he can identify by touch (and shoddy eyesight) is sandstone, and there was plenty of that underfoot as well. I am a lover of sandstone. That rock just speaks to my soul.

After our hike, we left the park, and drove north to a place called Joyful Journey Hot Springs. Greg well remembers the first time we went there, before we were married, because I had a conversation with a woman who had just returned from a trip to India. She’d been visiting the state of Kerala, and she pompously told me that, “India is wonderful because everyone there is happy and rich.” She was insane. In true harpy fashion, I b*tched about how clueless she was and made Greg laugh. So that’s why, all these years later, he wanted to go back. He remembered the laughter and the lunacy. Such is life.

This time, instead of just soaking in the springs for an hour, we rented a yurt. Here is a photo of the yurt we stayed in, along with Queen Elizabeth —

 

 

 

 

 

 

This yurt was composed of one room with a bed —

 

 

 

 

 

 

And a desk by the window, which of course I loved —

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We drove to the town of Salida to eat a late lunch, and then Greg took me to the local bookstores. The first shop we entered was All Booked Up, and I found jars of rocks in there that I LOVED. It turns out the owner had made those collection jars herself, and I was super impressed. I bought a copy of The Illustrated Directory of Healing Crystals because the book screamed BUY ME so I had to have it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In that photo, you can see two other books I bought on this trip (these from the Visitor Center at the park) — White Sands National Monument because I want to visit there (it’s my goal in life to become a nuclear tourist, and visit nuclear sites, including the test grounds at Kazakhstan and northern Russia and Chernobyl and Bikini Atoll) and I also bought a backpack-friendly Rocks & Minerals of the United States Quick Guide because it’s full of pictures of my favorite rocks.

The store All Booked Up is owned by a woman named Jeannie Sutherland, and Jeannie gave me two presents to take home to my sister, to celebrate her move into the home I’ve been helping clean up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first gift is a YES charm Jeannie had made, with purple paint and purple yarn, because I’d picked up the charm and had been admiring it along with her excellent jars full of rocks.

The second gift is a piece of rose quartz, which is used for love and compassion, healing and fertility, rejuvenation and strength. Jeannie wanted my sister to have it as she goes through the process of cleaning and settling into her new home.

After we said goodbye to Jeannie, the second bookstore Greg and I visited had a copy of the YA memoir Brown Girl Dreaming, but I didn’t buy it because I was trying to be good and stop spending All The Money on Books.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Greg bought his own book at the park, a copy of San Luis Valley Rock Art —

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Because Greg loves him some rock art. He is all over that stuff.

Later that evening, back at our yurt, I received a phone call from Greg’s son, who’s been living with us off and on for almost a year. He told me he’d been doing a load of laundry, went outside to talk to someone, and had accidentally flooded our house. Our washing machine is on the third floor of our home, above our living room and kitchen, and water had come pouring out of the drum (from inside the machine) and drenched the floor. The carpet was fully soaked, and water had pooled onto the floors of our living room and kitchen downstairs, raining down from the ceiling.

The phone call was a major downer, as there was nothing Greg and I could do except face the situation once we drove home.

And we did arrive safely home yesterday, and the water damage is really bad, and Greg and I will have to pay for all the repairs out of pocket. The washing machine is fine, I’ve run several loads already. The first loads I ran were to rinse the soap residue off the clothes that had been in the machine when it overflowed, because they hadn’t finished their cycle correctly after Greg’s son shut the machine off.

So we visited the Great Sand Dunes this weekend and suffered a Great Fiasco at home, but no one was hurt or killed, the house is still standing, my desktop on which I do all my work is safe, and I am super, super grateful for that. Water could’ve landed on my machine, sitting a mere six feet away, but my computer survived this mishap unscathed.

I wrote a blog post in January about my goal to say Thank You for setbacks as well as good fortune. This weekend gave me both in abundance. So here I am saying thanks, for all the positive things I have, along with the negative. Because you can’t call it life without both.

Many years ago, I worked with a young woman named Meredith. This was when I was 22 and flailing around rather cluelessly.

(Not like much has changed! But at least I have Actual Goals now. Beyond just survival. This is an accomplishment.)

I believe Meredith was technically older than me, since I remember her age as 25 or 27, but she seemed so much younger. I say that because she was fearlessly eccentric and quirky, a true-blue free spirit hipster a decade before the hit show Portlandia debuted.

(Excuse me while I go listen to “The Dream of the ’90s Is Alive in Portland“ for the 1,067th time… be right back…)

 

 

 

 

 

*jams out to Portlandia music*

*greatest hipster song ever*

*oh how I love this music video*

Like the “hot girls” in the lyrics to that fantastic tune, Meredith wore beautiful square-framed glasses, the kind made with thick, bulky plastic, and even thicker lenses. Her dense, tightly spiraled hair sprang everywhere when she didn’t weave it into an elaborate braid. I never saw her without funky tights, tall black combat boots, handmade jackets and skirts in all different colors and fabrics, paired with antique ruffled blouses or men’s shirts and old ties. Necklaces, bracelets, wristwatches, and rings always enhanced her mismatch-y outfits.

I fell in love with Meredith, though I don’t mean that in a romantic way. She captivated me, with all her crazy textures and prints, her colorful corduroys and velvets and wild cottons. She was, in so many ways, my real-life version of Tank Girl.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not movie Tank Girl. I mean the happy anarchist of the comic books, the chaotic neutral who bespelled readers with her brash unconcern for whatever the world wanted from her, and simply did as she pleased. That was Meredith.

She didn’t smoke. Or drive a tank. She didn’t date kangaroos or shave her head or blow things up with torpedoes. But in my mind, she made a certain kind of fireworks go off. I just really liked her a lot.

One day at the place where Meredith and I worked, our boss wanted to “do something nice” for her staff, so she allowed a friend of hers, a woman who read auras, to come to our job site and read our auras. For free.

I know what you’re thinking — this is just what every struggling, underpaid worker most desperately needs, when they have no health or dental insurance, survive on rice, beans, and peanut butter, and can barely afford to put gas in their car to commute to their crappy job — they long to have their aura read.

I wish I were making this up. I wish I could say this boss of mine did something that would have ACTUALLY been nice, like baked some cupcakes. Or stopped threatening to fire us over imaginary problems. Or given us a raise. We all worked for $7.75 an hour, and Meredith, like me, had a college degree. We had student loans to pay back, rent and utilities, and I never had a penny to spare. I was running a household at the time, with three extra mouths to feed. I don’t even like to think about how stressful my life was at 22. If I’d been given a free cupcake, I’d have taken it home and carefully cut it into four equal shares to pass out to everyone who lived with me. That was my life.

But instead, I got to have my aura read. So did Meredith.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now, no offense to any aura readers who might be reading this post. I don’t know anything about this line of work. How does one train for this profession? And what are people meant to gain from having their auras read? Why is having your aura read beneficial? How long is this activity supposed to take, ordinarily? All I know is, for about five minutes, I was instructed to leave my frenetic, uber-stressful work area to walk into a small empty room, lie on a portable bench, and listen to a woman in a long tie-dye robe. I thought I was there to receive a five-minute back massage. Which would’ve been nice. But no. I had my aura read.

The woman dimmed the light and waved her hands over my body. She closed her eyes and hummed. Maybe she went into some transcendental state. The requisite odors of pot and patchouli radiated from her clothing. Crystal pendants hung from her necklaces and bracelets.

I was so tired, so exhausted, I wished I could just take a nap. Or trade my life for hers, which meant I’d be free of my current line of employment. Anything but stand up in four minutes and return to my job.

I had so many bills to pay, so many people to take care of, and my stress level was so incredibly high, there is no way I could’ve ever found enlightenment, diversion, or even amusement in this bizarre, unexpected activity. I was a cold hard realist by age 22, and this woman was so woo-woo, she needed her own zip code at Area 51. Which was — interestingly enough — exactly what she thought of me.

After fluttering her hands around and wafting enough secondhand THC over my head to make me even sleepier, the aura reader proceeded to tell me I was a being from another planet, a type of alien creature called a star child, and that star children were very, very rare on earth.

Not wanting to be rude, I didn’t point out to her that I thought we were all star children, as our atoms are quite literally born in complex processes that give rise to matter and nebulas in space. I let her share her star child information without interruption, which she communicated in breathy bursts of strange woo-woo language, and then she said I could leave. So I shuffled back to my hellish job.

 

 

 

Later, when Meredith returned from her turn on the portable bench in the closet, she told me she’d been informed she was an archangel. Specifically, the archangel Michael. The aura reader told Meredith that her purpose in life was to be a “helping spirit” to others.

Meredith laughed about her assigned aura. Made it clear she thought the whole situation was foolish and forgettable. I was just frustrated about having to copiously thank my boss for this “great kindness” she’d shared with her lowly peons (*grovel, grovel*), that I’d have rather pried off my fingernails than gab about my aura.

As it turned out, all my coworkers were labeled archangels — including our boss. (And FYI, her aura reading took more than an hour.) As I realized I was the only alien creature among the entire staff, my irritation transformed into outsider alien-shame, so I didn’t tell anyone what the aura reader had labeled me. Also, I just could not with the weird that afternoon.

I don’t know if Meredith is truly an archangel or not. That is far above my pay grade as a writer. Could I picture her giving a celestial curb stomp to Satan, before spearing him in the chest? Maybe. If Michael the winged warrior wore combat boots instead of golden sandals, and sported a pair of thick glasses, perhaps I could picture Meredith ass-kicking Lucifer, rather than pouring him a cup of chamomile tea. Which was Meredith’s usual MO when someone was having a freak-out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While I have no business speaking to Meredith’s aura, I can tell you something that happened to her when she was sixteen. Something Meredith shared with me months before the aura reader showed up in the closet.

Like many American teens, this story involves Meredith riding in the passenger seat of her friend’s car, traveling at around 65 miles per hour, with her friend behind the wheel. It was night, they were on a deserted highway, and he swerved for a deer.

In his effort to avoid the deer, the driver slammed into one of those huge city streetlights. Meredith’s friend had an air bag to protect him. But the air bag on the passenger side didn’t deploy. She had on a seat belt, but the clasp opened during the wreck, and she was thrown from the vehicle, out the windshield. She landed more than seventy feet in front of the vehicle, on the asphalt.

She woke up as the ambulance arrived. The approaching siren and flashing lights jarred her back to consciousness, and before anyone could stop her, she stood and walked to the car.

Meredith had no injuries, other than dozens and dozens of tiny slices on her fingertips, like a rash of paper cuts. She’d been knocked out of her shoes and socks, which were on the floor of the passenger seat. So she walked, barefoot, down a path made of sparkling broken glass, cubed and crushed and unable to pierce her skin, back to her friend’s car, where he’d been stunned by the impact, but soon awoke and was discovered to be relatively okay, minus a broken nose and fractured arm.

Meredith had no explanation for surviving that wreck. No one did. The EMTs didn’t even believe she’d been in the car. They were convinced she’d wandered to the site of the accident from elsewhere. They had her tested for drugs in the hospital. Meredith had no drugs in her system that night. No alcohol, either. Same for her friend.

By all logical reasoning, she should’ve been killed in that crash. The fact she not only survived, but was almost completely unscathed, meant this was not a story she shared with me lightly. I can only imagine how many ways this story has been discounted over the years. “Oh, SURE you were sober. SURE you weren’t doing drugs. And your seat belt failed. And your socks peeled right off. Uh-huh. Tell me another one.”

And so on and so forth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So when Meredith laughed about being an archangel, and shrugged off the (what I can only guess had been meant to be transformative) experience with the aura reader in the closet, I reflected on this story of the car accident she survived at sixteen.

If Meredith were an incarnation of the archangel Michael, “the Saint who is like God,” and was suddenly thrown from a car, did she unfurl her mighty archangel wings that night, and fly to safety? Or did her great wings perhaps wrap around her, and cushion her body as she went rolling at high speed over the unforgiving ground?

Who’s to say? If I really wanted to answer this question, I’d go to school for aura reading.

Instead, I’ll just say that a real-life Tank Girl archangel in human form is okay by me.

I didn’t work with Meredith long, not even a full year. She escaped that nightmare job before I did, flew herself off to greener pastures — aka Portland, Oregon — where she hopefully started earning more than $7.75 an hour.

I still think of her fondly, and hope she is well. Hope the world didn’t dampen her unhinged beauty or her postcolonial steampunk charm. I would expect she still uses her wings when she needs them. I feel the same way about any of her fellow archangels who might be reading this post.

And if you’ve ever been told you’re an alien creature from another planet, and then been too ashamed to admit to your coworkers that you’re not a cool winged seraph of God like all of them — well hey, join the club! We could name ourselves The Alien Creatures Who Give Zero F*cks About Being Aliens. Because it’s important to have Actual Mottoes in life as well as Actual Goals. Part of growing up and being less clueless. Maybe.

Sometimes I wish I could write an episode of Portlandia. But set in Durangolandia. I think the world needs this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My third novel has finally been published, and is now available as an ebook!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mark of the Pterren: Book I

A project I started in 2009. When I moved to Durango in 2011, and began writing full time, I had many more working hours to devote to this novel. Five years later, the book is ready to share.

I’m extremely proud of this story. Like my first two books, Mark of the Pterren is only available in digital form, as an ebook, for its debut. Publishing a physical copy of the book will take place at a later date. Hence why I made this nifty sign, in case anyone made the mistake of looking for a nonexistent paperback copy —

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ebook, ebook, ebook

Mark of the Pterren for the WIN!!

I took that photograph approximately thirty seconds ago, right after I returned home from having my driver’s license renewed. I’ve had my current eyeglasses for three years, and I’m in need of new lenses — badly — but I managed to ace my eye test today — GO ME.

Ya’ll just don’t even know how relieved I am to have that driver’s license eye test behind me. Oh man, was I stressed I would fail. No words.

But I PASSED — the State of Colorado cleared me to keep driving for another five years, and this day is BOSS. Mark of the Pterren has been published and I didn’t fail my eye test. WOOT.

I’ll be 36 years old on Monday, and publishing Mark of the Pterren is my Best. Birthday Win. Ever.

The retail price of my new ebook is $2.99, and you can find all the links to purchase the novel on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords on my webpage right here.

Thought Candy readers, thank you so much for following my blog, and following my work — and if you enjoy reading science fiction, and have an electronic reading device, I hope you’ll give Mark of the Pterren a try! It’s a long, epic read, full of deeply flawed and heroic characters, a book that takes the reader on a significant journey. It’s my favorite project to date, above and beyond all the other drafts of every book I have written. Mark of the Pterren is the story I have poured the most of my heart and soul into, and my friends and family have gone to great lengths to help me make this book the best it can be.

I hope you enjoy it! It’s been a beautiful, crazy ride. ^.^

 

I recently learned of a woman named Iyanla Vanzant. She has a reality television series called Iyanla: Fix My Life which airs on the Oprah Winfrey Network. The show debuted in 2012.

Iyanla Vanzant gave a SuperSoul Session talk titled “You Matter,” and I love it so much. I’ve watched it twice now, and the second time was today. I was inspired to re-watch the segment after being asked, on three different occasions this month — in completely unrelated situations — some rather blunt questions about death. Which is another way of talking about fear.

“Have you confronted your own mortality yet?”

“Do you know you’re going to die?”

“Are you aware that most people only truly start living after they have faced death?”

“Are you truly alive, or living in fear of death?”

“When have you faced death in your life?”

“When have you been forced to confront your mortality?”

Isn’t it lovely when strangers want to engage you in chats about the birds and the bees and the Grim Reaper? I mean, fill up the punch bowl and rock on, my friends. This is such a great conversation starter, by all means, take notes! Who needs to eat cheese cubes and fruit kabobs when we can discuss our earthly demise?

One of my excellent party hosts even scolded me that I’m “probably living in death’s shadow” right now, too afraid to “truly live,” because, “like most people,” I fail to consider that my life has an endpoint.

I don’t know why anyone thinks a good public shaming would ever be a productive way to broach the topic of death, but to each their own.

For the record, I only know of one sane reaction to a public shaming —

At least, that is the only sane reaction that avoids curse words, burned bridges, and someone perhaps being flung out a window.

In my case, the unwelcome astonishment quickly transformed into this feeling —

I wanted to simply say, “I’m a writer,” and let that speak for itself, since depression, alcohol addiction, and shotguns seem so rampant in this line of work.

But that is really unfair to writers, to use an ugly stereotype to counter a verbal attack.

So I didn’t mention that my chosen profession pretty much guarantees I contemplate my death and Death In General on the reg.

Only later did I ask myself, “Why didn’t you just answer the question?” When my awesome party host accused me of being someone who lives in a bubble of denial and delusion, and he asked WHEN have I ever had to face my own death — why didn’t I just answer?

I actually had to sit with that question a while. It made me uncomfortable. Because my answer, it turns out, is steeped in an experience of shame, and trauma, and things it has taken me years to work through on my own, most of them while I was in college. I needed to have over 2,000 miles between myself and my family before I could mentally tackle the things that were not okay in my past.

So here is a short story about the first time I ever had to truly face my own death, or accept the fact that I am mortal and will one day die.

And a warning to everyone that this story deals with rape and abuse, and that you might want to stop reading this post at the asterisk break. It is not my intention to trigger anyone’s trauma with my blog, as my posts aren’t usually quite this dark. But there’s some darkness ahead, so if you need to bail, now is the time. Thanks.

***

My story begins in 1987, during the summer right after I turned seven. Because of the vagaries of time, and memory, I might have gotten the year wrong. I might have been six years old when this happened. But as a child, I told myself this event occurred when I was seven.

My family was spending a summer in Silverton, Colorado, in the same home my family lives in today.

I was playing across the street from the house, in the schoolyard. A teenage boy, who might have been thirteen, or fifteen, or seventeen, started to pick on two toddlers. I didn’t know the toddlers. They were playing on the kiddie swings. In the ’80s, parents let their kids play without supervision, so no adults were around. I stopped the teen boy from kicking, slapping, and hurting the two toddlers. As a consequence, he ended up hurting me instead, pretty badly, and then he removed me from the schoolyard and raped me. I told no one. I knew my mother would beat me if I told her what had happened, because my mother already beat me a lot.

After the boy finished hurting me, he gave a name for the terrible thing he’d done — he told me he’d “f*cked me” — which was a word I heard a lot in my house. Some common statements used by adults in my home — “Don’t you f*cking walk away from me!” “Look at me when I’m f*cking talking to you!” “You want to cry? I’ll give you something to f*cking cry about!”

The kind of sentences many people have heard growing up, and can serve as triggers for awful memories. I know just typing those words makes me feel ill.

As familiar as I was with the f-word, I didn’t know f*cking meant sexual intercourse. I had no language for this at age seven. And children were forbidden to curse in my house. For example, my brother Johnny once asked me how to spell the word that meant “where bad people go when they die” while we were coming home from school — and I answered “H-E-double-hockey-sticks.” I thought I’d followed the rules, and avoided cursing, but my mother seized me and punished me anyway. She took me into the kitchen, filled my mouth with Tabasco sauce, and then held my mouth shut while I screamed and screamed. She used a level of violence to make sure I not only received a burn on my lips, tongue, and throat, but that I couldn’t breathe for a time. I remember I had just started first grade.

I imagine many other people have similar stories about being taught not to curse. Needless to say, bringing up “the f-word” to my mother was not okay at age seven, which was the only word I could apply to what had happened to me at that time.

But back to the subject of this post — the facing of death. Having my mouth burned and being beaten did not make me face death. Nor did being held down and raped by a teenager as a child make me confront my mortality. Granted, I was terrified, but I don’t recall my child-mind comprehending that I could die. Abstract thinking usually comes to most children with puberty, and I don’t think I was particularly advanced at a young age. At seven, my mind was consumed with the present moment, and while I could certainly register terror and suffering, the idea of my own death was more murky.

By 1989, during the height of the AIDS scare, all I heard on the news was AIDS, AIDS, AIDS. And at age nine, the rapid, seemingly unstoppable spread of HIV filled me with terror, the same way it filled a lot of people with terror.

The word used on TV was “sex,” not “f*ck” — but by age nine, I had that deep, intuitive horror that the terrifying thing on TV was the thing that had happened to me.

I already knew I couldn’t find the word “f*ck” in any dictionaries that children had access to. So at age nine, I left the elementary school, smuggled myself into the high school building (this was really, really scary — I was breaking So Many Rules when I did this, just like a mini-James Bond) — and I found a huge dictionary that sat on its own table in the nonfiction section. I looked up the word “f*ck” — and then “coitus” — and then I had to look up “penis” and “vagina” until finally, somehow, I managed the impossible — I linked the word “f*cking” with “sex.”

At that point, as a nine-year-old who listened to the news every night, I realized the teen boy might’ve infected me with HIV. Which meant I needed a blood test to make sure I wasn’t carrying the virus.

But the only way to get a blood test was for a grown-up to take me. My mom. Which meant I had to tell her why I needed a blood test. And if I told her I’d had sex with a boy, I knew I’d receive a terrible beating. But in the state of mind I was in, this was my LIFE on the line. I could die of AIDS. I needed that blood test. I’d suffer the beating.

So I did the impossible thing — I told my mom about the horrible, terrifying thing that had happened, that “a boy had sex with me when I was seven,” and that I might now have HIV — and my mother beat me. So much worse than I could have expected. She beat me harder than any beating I’d ever had before then. My mother used objects to hit, not her hands — unless she struck the face. For this beating, I remember both. I weathered the storm because my hope, at age nine, was that I would suffer the terrible beating, and then get the blood test, so I’d know if I needed medicine or not, and hopefully not die.

But my mother told me that if I didn’t shut up, and keep what had happened a secret, she “would tell everyone” what had happened to me. Specifically, she threatened to tell my uncle John.

The idea she would tell a male family member what had happened to me was more terrifying than any mention of AIDS on TV. Tell my uncle? I couldn’t bear the shame. The horror that filled me was too overwhelming.

My mother’s threat was enough to silence me. Even years later, attending Take Back the Night events in college, I could not stand up and share this story, not even to a roomful of people who weren’t there to judge me at all. A roomful of people who had suffered their own forms of sexual abuse, and found the courage to stand and tell their stories.

That moment at age nine, when the ultimate silence descended — a silence so much more absolute than the silence I’d carried at seven and eight — that was when I first found my mortality. Because dying of AIDS was better than shame. When I learned death was easier than shame, that was the moment I accepted the fact I would die.

Some people will laugh at this story. “You stupid child! Of course you didn’t have AIDS!” But if you were raped by a stranger, wouldn’t you want a blood test to check? And I wasn’t even aware of STDs at age nine. For me, with the benefit of hindsight, I was just lucky that my rapist was young enough, and lucky enough himself, not to carry any number of diseases I might’ve received.

And please let the record show that I love my mother, and always have. I love her more, and crave her love more, than anyone else in my life. At no point as an adult have I shunned her. Sometimes, I’ve asked her questions about the things I experienced growing up, and her response is pretty standard — “That never happened.” This particular memory isn’t one I’ve ever asked her about. I have no desire to ask. I already know what she’ll say. “That never happened.” So please let the record show that you might be reading fiction here. According to my mother, I made this all up.

In Iyanla Vanzant’s SuperSoul Session talk, which is humorous, heartwarming, and uplifting, she shares the story of her grandmother. A woman who was raped at age nine, told her father what had happened, and then was beaten into silence by her father on the same day she was raped. I listened to this story nodding my head, aware of how traumatizing that would be, but also aware of how much braver Ms. Vanzant’s grandmother was than me. More courageous in every way.

She was Native American and black, grew up in poverty in Virginia, the daughter of sharecroppers. She was one of eleven children. Her mother died when she was seven. The man who raped her was the farm owner’s son. She ran home and told the only person she could tell — her father — and he beat her into silence so the family wouldn’t be thrown off the farm.

This young child had the courage to tell her father, who “ruled with an iron fist,” that she had been raped. On the same day the rape happened. I never had the fortitude to do that. This nine-year-old girl was so incredibly brave. I’m simply in awe of her courage.

At the end of the story, Iyanla Vanzant states, “when you’re loyal to people who don’t treat you well, you learn that you don’t matter.” She shares the story to explain why her grandmother, as an adult, was so mean and vicious. Not someone anyone ever wanted to be around. The experience of being raped and beaten into silence at age nine destroyed her.

I’m very, very fortunate that none of the experiences in my life have been bad enough to destroy me. I always had what I needed to avoid letting ugly things twist me into a mean, bitter person.

But I admit it’s very aggravating that any stranger would assume I’ve never confronted my own death, or accepted the fact that I am mortal, or that I must live my life “in death’s shadow” because I’m “too afraid to really live my life.”

Do I suffer from fear? Absolutely. Do I live in death’s shadow? Of course. Do I let fear hold me back in life? Yes. Not all of the time. But much of the time, the answer is yes.

But isn’t that being human? Can people not face death with courage, and still be afraid? Can people not embrace their passion and follow their heart, and still live with fear?

Why is this argument structured as an either/or situation?

Yes, I know I’m going to die. I accepted that a long time ago. Sometimes, I live my life pretty fearlessly. Much of the time, I am also deeply afraid, of all kinds of things. The list is quite endless. I don’t let my anxiety run amok, but I’d be a fool to say that facing death ever gave me a bulletproof suit.

Perhaps, the next time I’m asked if I’m “really alive” — or whatever these people seem so intent on discovering about what a scaredy-cat I am — I need to just admit that I fail to see the dichotomy. Yes, I feel like I’m fully alive. I show up for my life every day, in both conscious and unconscious ways. I’m also far from perfect. I’m not 100% courageous. And I’m okay with that. I’m okay being flawed in the ways I am flawed. Whatever this goal is — to be “perfectly healed and fearless” and achieve some kind of Superman status before I die — well, someone else can have that goal. It’s not mine.

I’ll be flawed and dirty and broken. With thin skin. My heart is easily moved. It shatters often. I cry. I get bruised fairly easily. I’m okay with these things.

My thin skin has always given me a certain kind of empathy. A radical and powerful empathy. And empathy in this life is important.

I’ve stayed loyal to plenty of people who have not treated me well. Because in the end, I understood they were far more broken than I’ll ever be.

Empathy was my superpower. You don’t have to be broken to have it. But being broken doesn’t take it away.

Fiction author Jennifer Weiner is coming to Durango on Thursday, April 28, and I am excited!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Before this month, I’d only read one book by Jennifer Weiner, her novel In Her Shoes, which was turned into a movie in 2005. I found a copy of the book in a radiation clinic in 2012, while I was taking care of my uncle and he was receiving palliative radiation treatment for the cancer in his spine. In Her Shoes was on the “freebies shelf” at the clinic, so I picked it up and read it while I was waiting for him, and took it home with me and finished it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jennifer Weiner does MUCH more than pen novels though.

In February of 2015, she wrote an essay in The New York Times that I absolutely loved, and shared on my Facebook page at the time, titled “Great! Another Thing to Hate About Ourselves: From Sports Illustrated, the Latest Body Part for Women to Fix.”

And the way Jennifer Weiner stood up for herself after Jonathan Franzen made his snide comments about her, published in a New Republic essay in September 2013 was equally awesome. “What Jonathan Franzen Misunderstands About Me“ is one of those brilliant essays that shows any reader how insightful and clever Jennifer Weiner is.

So when I learned she was the visiting author for this year’s Durango Literary Festival, I wanted to read another novel of hers, and I’m SO glad I did, because the book I ended up reading was Best Friends Forever.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I found the book at the Methodist Thrift Store in town. The asking price was 25 cents, with 2 cents tax. I paid a dollar, then said, “Keep the change!” and felt like a big spender. You can’t even park in Durango for 27 cents — but you CAN buy really good books on the cheap here.

Best Friends Forever (published in 2009) is a really good book!

Likeable/sympathetic main characters? — CHECK.

Interesting plot? — CHECK.

Good writing? — CHECK.

Did I read every word? YES. I absolutely read every word. CHECK.

The opening pages start out with a bang, and then the plot drops to a low simmer, and takes time to rev up again. For me, with my mini-paperback copy, that occurred on page 61.

What happens on page 61? The main character, Addie Downs, remembers an impromptu road trip/vacation she took with her childhood best friend, Valerie Adler, when both girls were nine. Val’s mom inspired the trip, and took the wheel. They drove from Chicago to Cape Cod and back in a couple days. They slept in the car, they went to the beach, they tried to have a seafood dinner but had no money. So Val’s mother turned on the charm, and a young man at the restaurant that night ponied up the cash for their meal.

 

 

 

 

 

Here is a quote from their supper (p.68) —

“Chris Jeffries, the shellfish constable — for that was what he was, not a policeman, as I’d first thought — had paid for a feast. There was corn on the cob and clam chowder and red plastic net bags filled with gray clams that Val and her mother called steamers. There was coleslaw and French fries and a tangled mound of thin, crispy onion rings, tall wax paper cups brimming with ice and soda, and little plastic dishes filled with melted butter. A dozen oysters lolled slick in their shells on a bed of crushed ice, and two giant lobsters sprawled over oval-shaped plates, leaking steaming pale-pink water. I watched as Mrs. Adler opened a plastic bag of oyster crackers and sprinkled them into her soup.”

There is some more description of the bounty at the table, and what it’s like to devour seafood for the first time. Addie says (p.69) —

“I ate a whole bagful of steamers and an ear of corn drizzled with butter and sprinkled with grainy sea salt. I squeezed lemon onto a raw oyster and then, following Mrs. Adler’s example, tipped the rough edge of the shell to my lips and slurped out the liquor and the meat. After my first few clumsy tries, I got the hang of the metal nutcrackers and the tiny three-tined fork, prying chunks of pink-and-white flesh out of the lobster claws and dousing them with butter, too, amazed at the taste of the meat, light and rich and sweet.”

 

 

 

 

 

The girls go on to eat until they’re stuffed, and then have ice cream while Val’s mom and Chris Jeffries smoke and drink coffee. Later, the three of them sneak into Val’s grandfather’s house to spend the night, and Val’s mother steals some money from him to buy them bananas and doughnuts for breakfast. Then Val and Addie go clamming in a canoe they borrow from a stranger without asking (p.76) —

“Val and I sat in the middle of the canoe. Mrs. Adler pulled off her tank top to reveal a blue bikini top. She pushed us into the shallow water until the waves lapped at the hem of her shorts, then hopped into the boat and began to paddle, propelling us past sandbars thick with bright-green sawgrass and cattails, heading out to where the marsh gave way to the rippling dark-blue sea.”

 

 

 

 

 

I was so enchanted with the story by this point, I was holding my breath as I read. This is the kind of scene that makes me come most alive as a reader, when I’m blissed-out and delighted by the wonder of fiction.

Once the girls have filled two buckets with clams, they finally take a break (p.78) —

“Valerie and I lay side by side at the edge of the shore and let the incoming tide push the water over our toes… then our knees… then our hips, our waists, our chests. Finally, we floated, our hair waving in the current, hips and hands bumping as the waves lifted us and let us down, until Mrs. Adler pushed the canoe into the water and told us it was time to go.”

Which totally reminded me of the scene of the two young girls in the beginning of Mira Nair’s 1996 film, Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love, when they’re swimming together, twining around each other, and then later, as grown women, they’re once again in the water together, under far different circumstances.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Which is the same theme in Best Friends Forever — two childhood friends, driven apart by a man and other crap circumstances involving sexism and violence and society, who are reunited as adults to become friends again.

I give Best Friends Forever a full 5 stars for being a fun, quirky book with interesting characters and a plot that didn’t take me to an entirely predictable ending. I admit that the kissing scene in the end did gross me out, as all I could think about was how rank the man’s breath must smell, because he was hungover and bloody, having spent the night asleep in his car before smashing his face on the sidewalk and passing out. Since Addie has to lay him “on his side, so that he wouldn’t choke on his own vomit,” before he wakes up later and starts kissing her, all I could think was “someone get that bro a toothbrush and a shower” and a whole lot of “ewwwwww” and “please tell me there was no vomit.”

So that was very un-sexy, but then, the book doesn’t ever try to be sexy. The book is all about nostalgia and complicated memories and how people survive loss and pain. The book is GREAT. Sure, it falls into some common tropes, like the pretty girl has to be a ditz and the smart girl gets to fall in love — but what would fiction be, without a few tropes here and there? The question is not how many stereotypes a book can break, the question is how engaging the story is. And I was hooked by Addie, I loved her and cared deeply to find out what would happen to her.

And for that gorgeous scene in Cape Cod, I am KEEPING this book. My 27-cent copy now has a permanent home on my shelf. Because when a writer pens a scene that gorgeous, the whole book is a win.

I haven’t read a memory-scene that rich and gorgeous since Jhumpa Lahiri’s 2003 novel, The Namesake — which was also made into a film by Mira Nair.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The scene in the book I’m referring to begins on page 152 of the paperback, and I have it bookmarked because I read this scene at least once a year, but sometimes I reread it once a month. The worse my life gets sometimes, the more I need literature to keep me sane, keep me grounded in the beauty and thrill found only in words.

For those of you who’ve read the book, it’s the scene when Gogol and Maxine drive to northern New Hampshire, to Maxine’s family’s summer home. As soon as I open the book to page 152, my heart pounds with anticipation and pleasure. I’ve reread this scene so many times, it’s my reader-equivalent of every drug you could possibly pump into your body. Bliss, bliss, bliss.

The beginning lines (all told from Gogol’s point of view) —

“It is the opposite of how they live in New York. The house is dark, a bit musty, full of primitive, mismatched furniture. There are exposed pipes in the bathrooms, wires stapled over doorsills, nails protruding from beams.”

Oh man, do those lines get my blood racing. My own nostalgia and memories rise up, my own fondest moments from childhood, from summertime, from vacations, as well as all the joy I’ve always felt reading this particular scene, the rustic appeal of this setting, this old-fashioned home in lake country.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Checkered curtains hang in the windows on thin white rods. Instead of staying with Gerald and Lydia, he and Maxine sleep in an unheated cabin down a path from the main house. No bigger than a cell, the space was originally built for Maxine to play in when she was a girl. There is a small chest of drawers, a crude night table between two twin beds, a lamp with a plaid paper shade, two wooden chests in which extra quilts are stored.”

Can you see this house and its cabin? Can you feel it?

“During the day he sits with Maxine’s family on a thin strip of beach, looking out onto the glittering jade lake, surrounded by other homes, overturned canoes. Long docks jut into the water. Tadpoles dart close to shore.”

 

 

 

 

“Some nights, when it’s too warm in the cabin, he and Maxine take a flashlight and walk to the lake in their pajamas to go skinny-dipping. They swim in the dark water, under the moonlight, weeds catching their limbs, out to the neighboring dock. The unfamiliar sensation of the water surrounding his unclothed body arouses Gogol, and when they come back to shore they make love on the grass that is wet from their bodies. He looks up at her, and behind her, at the sky, which holds more stars than he ever has seen at one time, crowded together, a mess of dust and gems.”

The scene focuses on nature, on the simplicity of their lives at this cabin, eating homemade preserves on thick slices of bread, watching the sun set behind the mountains, hanging their bathing suits up to dry on a line.

They listen to symphony and jazz on an old stereo. They play cribbage. They are often in bed by nine.

“Dinners are simple: boiled corn from a farm stand, cold chicken, pasta with pesto, tomatoes from the garden sliced and salted on a plate. Lydia bakes pies and cobblers with berries picked by hand.”

If there is a heaven on earth, this house at this lake, surrounded by mountains, has got to be it. I find heaven in this scene. The words bring euphoria, no matter how many times I have read them. The joy is only enhanced, never tarnished from overuse. The gift of a really good book.

Which was exactly how I felt reading about summertime Cape Cod in Best Friends Forever.

So I’m absolutely tickled that Jennifer Weiner will be in Durango at the end of the month!! Meeting authors and listening to them speak is JOY.

And if you have a favorite scene in a book that you return to again and again, I’d love to know what it is — especially if it’s in a book I haven’t read yet! I never grow tired of discovering my next great read, or locating books with excellent scenes — bliss, bliss, bliss.

 

Like so many people, I’ve been watching the thermonuclear war that’s begun within the Republican Party with my heart in my throat. Much has been written about the large numbers of voters rallying behind the current GOP front runner — including the overall indictment of the Left Behind Economy that is killing the middle class — and the particular brand of evangelicals that favor Ted Cruz.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Political talking points between these two candidates have been dominated by sexist comments recently, concerning these men and their wives, and who has the hotter wife, and the GOP front runner also commented that women who receive abortions ought to be punished.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Plenty of people reacted with horror, watching this drama unfold, and I’m not the only one who’s decided listening to the news has become a miasma, with radioactive clouds of hate blowing everywhere.

Then there is my personal life. Small and mundane. So far away from the events taking place between these two political candidates — but so intimately close all the same.

A man I know, a Republican who supports the GOP front runner, recently upset me a great deal. He lives in Durango. He did something extremely inappropriate. This unmentionable something involved sexual content, a phone, and the debasement of women I do not know. In my opinion, this man did something cruel, though he viewed his behavior as good fun, nothing that caused any harm. I saw the essence of his attitude being reflected in the news, and I’m sure he did too, like a sick stamp of approval.

What the man’s behavior made clear was that he sees women as objects. Brainless toys. Human beings so lesser, they exist within a frightening paradox — on the one hand, he is focused on having sex with as many of them as he can. On the other, they are so far beneath him, they are nothing at all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Which is also the ethos of modern pornography. The universe of adult films has seen an upsurge in portrayals of violent, debasing sexual acts against women. A long list of activities with names that conjure violation and shame.

I’m so alienated from the porn industry, and the plethora of new videos produced every year, that my contact and awareness is limited to what I glean from the news and my friends. My isolation is vital, a determination to keep myself sheltered from the horrors of that world, because the few exposures I’ve had to adult films just scar me for life. My empathy level is too high to witness that kind of degradation and pain. It’s the opposite of arousing to me.

Not so for this man who upset me.

He adores the porn industry, especially the proliferation of free porn. He also struggles to stay housed and employed. He drives a flashy car he can’t afford. He hangs out in bars, charging drinks.

He owns a Colt .45. And a rifle.

To look at him, you probably wouldn’t assume he lives with constant eviction, playing roommate roulette. He’s 38 years old, unmarried, childless. And still falling deeper and deeper into debt. He dresses well. He has a super nice phone. And his electronic device can transmit — via email and messaging — sexual images and videos I can only call living hell.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So today I channeled my outrage and horror into a poem. Because sometimes the only place for emotion that strong is a poem.

Violent pornography is everywhere, and it’s being consumed by children and teens as well as adults. For the young, the videos are a sex ed class. The effect of these films on our youth is as scary as the thermonuclear war taking place within the Republican Party. Both are part of a cultural matrix we’ve built for ourselves, nailed together with a warped lumber.

Which is the point of my poem. It’s telling a story about the material we use to assemble a culture. And the ugly complicity of missed expectations.

 

Masculinity

 

 

Honestly, you women have it easy

Compared to me

 

But you call me toxic

 

Me

The one who can’t ever succeed

No matter how hard I try

 

The house, the picket fence

The two-car garage someone shipped overseas

While I went on unemployment

 

I take the blame

Wear the failure

 

You complain I want you

To be skinny, with nice tits

And makeup and long shiny hair

Like the girls in the triple X films

 

And I do

 

At least you can starve yourself

Bleach your hair

Shave your event pass

The ticket I mangle and pound

To make you scream like the women

Who get paid to lie down and

Take a beating

 

But I can’t just

Explode in your face

Ruin your makeup

Watch you smile

Through my mess

 

You expected a castle

Diamonds and gold

A bloodline, a carriage that would gleam

In the sunset

You told me I needed those things

To be Charming

 

But I’m never gonna be rich, baby

Never gonna ride a white horse

 

Doesn’t stop you

Pointing your finger

Saying this is all my fault

 

You’re the one shaving

Not me

You’re the one putting on all that makeup

 

You starve, and I eat

 

But no matter how many ribs I can count

Your bones won’t alchemize into gold

 

And maybe I’m not big enough

Not hard enough

To throw down my dignity

For minimum wage

Dressed in a loud, tacky uniform

Sewn with shame

 

But I can still make you scream

 

My rage measures up

Even if the rest of me never will

 

You see my fists, girl

The bullets I load in my gun

I can spray them in your face

Just as easy

 

So don’t you dare tell me

 

I’m the toxic one here

 

You’re the one

Who made me

Listen

To the fairy tales

 

 

 

 

 

 

I received an email from Maria’s Bookshop today, the local bookstore in Durango where my two novels have — up until this weekend — been offered for sale.

The email was to inform me that my books have been pulled from the Local Authors Shelf, and the store needed to know whether I wanted to pick up the unsold books from the front desk, pay to have them shipped to me, or have them donated to an unspecified location here in town.

Of the original merchandise I delivered for sale, Maria’s has one remaining copy of The Etiquette of Wolves, and two remaining copies of Love and Student Loans and Other Big Problems. Which means I have three books to pick up.

This was not an easy email to read. It was the standard form letter Maria’s sends to all authors in my situation, the authors who don’t sell enough work for their books to keep taking up space in the shop. I read the email as such, and I knew not to take that email personally.

And yet.

Within minutes, the logical, businesslike reason that serves me so well, so often —

Well, it pretty much crumbled and tore away like paper in the sea. I lowered my head, and I stared at the wood grain of my tabletop a long while.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Because the sense of absolute failure just built and built like a storm all around me, like I’d accidentally stumbled into a hurricane that was once known as my work space, but was now the sight of Typhoon Heartbreak, also known as Guess What, You Fail.

I admit that I am at my most fragile as a writer when I am querying literary agents. Which I’m doing right now. And this Saturday, I was able to receive feedback on just how poorly-worded my current query letter is. If you are interested in seeing my abysmal query, and the constructive criticism I received to improve it, you can read that here.

I’m tremendously grateful to author Mindy McGinnis for her thoughtful feedback, delivered free of charge, for the sole purpose of simply helping a stranger attract the interest of a literary agent. Mindy’s blog is a labor of love, a light in the darkness, and I’m definitely putting her advice to work in drafting a new letter.

That still doesn’t mean realizing how flawed my letter is becomes any easier to hear. I thought that was my best letter yet. Turns out, I’m still no better at querying than I’ve ever been, maybe even worse, which explains the rejections and silence from lit agents concerning my newest novel.

 

 

 

 

 

The manuscript is still under revision, as the entire book has only been read by two people — my alpha-reader, April, and my #1 beta-reader, Adriana. As a writer, I’ve learned you have to choose people who have a huge amount of forgiveness for being forced to read severely flawed drafts. April and Adriana forgive me a LOT.

Adriana finished reading my newest novel about ten days ago, sent me all her feedback comments, and I spent all of last week writing nonstop, trying to fix the entire book. While I didn’t need to scrap the entire manuscript, the way I did with the first draft of my mer novel, this book was still so deeply amiss from what I’d intended to write, that I felt massive embarrassment. The kind of shame that makes it really hard to forgive myself, how I’d failed so hard at something I put so much time into, that I would need approximately 98 hours of writing time to fix it. (No exaggeration on the number — if anything, I rounded down.)

This past Saturday, I completed my edits, then sent the book to my second whole-book beta-reader, Jen. And when she’s finished reading, I’ll have her feedback, and a new editing process will begin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So here I am, with a flawed manuscript, a horribly flawed query letter, and a critique partner who sat me down over the weekend to tell me the following —

“Look, Melissa. I hate to have to tell you this. I don’t want to tell you this. But you need to know. Your writing just isn’t good enough to sell. Your stories are boring. You’re just not good enough to make it. Why don’t you do something you can actually be good at? Like copyedit? You’d make a good copyeditor. Why not do that? Because I just… well, I’m sorry. I know you think you can make this work. But the truth is, it’s just not going to happen for you.”

Which felt a LOT like being Elle Woods in this scene from the fabulous movie, Legally Blonde — the scene in which Elle realizes the love of her life, the smug and supposedly good-looking Warner, still views her as someone who isn’t good enough to date him. (You can watch that scene here — and sorry I couldn’t embed the video in my post — that capability was disabled for this particular clip.)

The truth hits Elle hard, as she faces what she hadn’t wanted to face when Warner originally dumped her. After a moment of stunned silence, she says, “I’m never gonna be good enough for you, am I?”

The audience knows Warner isn’t good enough for Elle, not the other way around. But from Warner’s point of view, he thinks he’s being kind to Elle. “You’re not smart enough, sweetie,” he says. You’re never going to make it. Give up now, baby. “You can do something more valuable with your time,” he insists. 

Anyone who’s seen the movie knows this is the moment when Elle really grows, as a young woman, as a human being, as someone with a higher purpose in life than pursuing a love life. The moment when Elle stops wanting Warner, and starts to want something bigger and better — it’s the moment in the film when Elle makes a new dream.

And it’s a pretty badass part of the movie —

 

People love this moment in the film, for good reason. Because the movie cannot end with a victorious Elle if she had taken Warner’s advice and done “something more valuable with her time” than go to law school.

The email I received from Maria’s Bookshop today hit me at a time when I felt very much like everything I’ve done so far as an author has added up to a whole lot of nothing. Like Elle, who’s gotten into law school, only to find that Warner STILL has no interest in her — that was me with my books at Maria’s. “Nope, people still don’t want these books, come pick them up or we’ll drop them off at the thrift store.”

Do I let Warner tell me I’m never gonna be good enough, or do I say, “I’ll show you how valuable Elle Woods can be!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

We all face these moments. Elle loses only when she gives up. Failure doesn’t make her a failure. The choice to give up or not was the only moment that mattered. The big happy ending is cake. Watching her sweat and struggle is what makes the whole movie so great.

Typhoon Heartbreak sucks. I came so close to crying today. And I hate — HATE — crying over my author failures.

But a louder voice in my head than “Guess What, You Fail” said, “Pull your sh*t together right now. This isn’t the end of the road. This isn’t the end of anything. Dream bigger. Dream better. That door is closed now. Leave it closed. Find the window.”

“And keep dreaming.”

So that’s what I did.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve been in a philosophical mood lately, so I’ll start today’s post by sharing a fairy tale. Because nothing is more closely bound to philosophy than a fairy tale.

***

Once upon a time, a man and woman married and had a daughter, and they didn’t know what to call the child, so the husband told his wife, “Let’s name the child after you.”

His wife was charmed. The husband and wife were still deeply in love in those days, and the idea of a namesake for the purpose of romance was delightful. And so the child was named for her mother.

***

That is one version of the fairy tale. Here is another —

 

 

 

 

 

Once upon a time, a man and woman married and had a daughter, and the wife asked her husband, “What shall we name the child?” and the husband said, “I don’t f*cking care! Name her after yourself. I have more important sh*t to worry about than this. Don’t ask me again.”

And so the wife named the daughter after herself.

***

People don’t usually swear in fairy tales, but this is the modern world, and some stories just have the cussing.

A third version of the same fairy tale is told in this way —

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once upon a time, a man and woman married and had a daughter, and the wife asked her husband, “What shall we name the child?” and the husband didn’t answer. He left the house, went to the bar, and came home stinking of alcohol two days later. He did not want a child, and at the sight of his wife’s growing belly, he told her, “I wish I were dead.” They had a terrific fight then, a bitter screaming feud, and to make amends later, and thereby sweeten his wife’s feelings toward him, the husband said, “Let’s name the child after you. She’ll look like you. I think it will be nice to have a little you in the house.”

And so the wife’s feelings were sweetened, and she named their daughter after herself.

***

These are three of the fairy tales I’ve been told about how I came by my birth name, Melissa Gillon. Each version was shared by my mother over the years, to explain why we had the same name. I’ve been told other forms of this story, but these three versions are the only ones I can tolerate. So I deleted the others from all my mental software. Maybe the other versions still exist on my hard drive. Some would argue they do. I prefer to think of them as permanently deleted though. Wiped out forever. I like to give myself that power, that magic, over my own mind. That I could permanently delete something too painful to keep.

 

 

 

 

 

Due to the constant presence of bitter screaming feuds in my house, verbal assaults waged between my mother and father, I grew up hating my name, as well as my nickname, Missy. I hated my name with such passion, I could have penned a hundred books of poetry to memorialize the intensity of my loathing.

In those poems, I’d capture the whine of my father’s voice as he expressed fierce contempt, the loud bellow of his scorn, the whispering slide of his icy fury, and most often, the pitiless tone of his voice whenever he spoke my name and my nickname during his fights with my mother.

I’d recreate the hatred and bitterness in his mouth, shaping those syllables. I’d craft the terror of other sounds in the harmony, the smashing of dishes, the explosion certain large objects make when they shatter.

Those would be the lyrics I’d pen in my poems. Had I written them.

Because my name was my mother’s, I heard my name often, though I was seldom the one being addressed.

So I ended up fighting a war. A series of battles as long as all the Crusades. Though instead of dragging around a sword and searching for Saracens to slay, I wanted someone to love me. From one camp to another, I waged my campaigns, and I amassed love, in abundance.

 

 

 

 

 

And finally, decades later, when that name had been spoken more times in love than I ever heard it spoken in anger, the war began to turn in my favor.

By the time I turned 26, and changed my last name to Stacy, I was well on my way to victory. Ridding myself of my surname brought grace. And by the time I turned 33, and published my first two novels, I knew the last battle had been fought. My name was mine now. Mine. I owned it. Melissa. Missy. I’d claimed the sounds, finally, as syllables I could honor and respect.

So now I’ll switch gears. From fairy tales to philosophy. To the reason I’m writing this post.

I attended a Pagan meeting last week, in which everyone participated in a guided mediation for spirit names. I have friends and acquaintances who use only their spirit or shaman names as forms of address, such as Shining Mountain, Dreamweaver, Keeper of the Keys (who goes by Keep), Stardancer, Bright Star.

I love spirit names, shaman names, secret names. Names we choose for ourselves. Names we are bequeathed by the universe, in visions and dreams, by lovers and friends, mentors and gods.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maybe at some point in my life, I will want a spirit name. But I have no desire for one now, and never have. What I always wanted was my name, my given address, to mean something that didn’t hurt. And I fought a war for that name, a desperate and hardscrabble war, one I was sure I would lose for most of my life. One I was sure I HAD lost for most of my life.

New studies in children’s psychology are revealing that it is more painful for a child to hear one of their parents call the other parent “a worthless piece of sh*t” than for the child to be directly told by a parent, “YOU are a worthless piece of sh*t.”

In other words, when parents verbally attack each other in front of their children, this registers in the child as MORE painful than to be verbally attacked themselves.

Which is fascinating, isn’t it? Human beings have such a tremendous capacity for empathy and love. The fact that this research concerning verbal assault holds true for young children as well as teenagers is certainly proof of how deeply our sense of self, and our empathy for our parents — as well as our immense gratitude to them for our lives — truly runs. Whether we know it or not, whether we feel it or not, whether we consciously acknowledge it or not. We are born to love our parents. We are born to hurt when they hurt.

My name is my mother’s, and my name carries my history. But only sometimes. Our pain is not our destiny, or our future. My name is armor, or a gown. A lullaby, or a curse. Something powerful, something weak. I’ve learned to slip in and out of meanings because I create and destroy meaning all the time, with words and with sound, that’s my blessing as a writer. It’s something we all do, in our personal narratives, whether we record them or not.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve walked a particular path, and I’ve fought a particular war. On the other side of hell, I found glory.

There is peril in a name. And redemption. Though our lives are unique, we all walk ancient paths, and fight ancient wars. Melissa or Missy, Bright Star or Dreamweaver, Keeper of the Keys, Shining Mountain, Stardancer.

No matter what we are called, we are the universe in motion, the darkness and light in our breath, and the salt in the stars runs in our blood.

The world is a hymn and we all know the harmony, lyrics that resound in a place far beyond words, but echo through each of us, distinctly.

***

In writer news, I’ve finished a fantasy novel titled Bloodshade of the Goddess, and am now in the process of having the manuscript beta-read. I’m also sending out query letters to literary agents, to see if there might be any industry interest in the book. In the meantime, I’ve returned to work on my mer novel, a fantasy story starring mer-people titled The War in the Sea, and I’m finishing my final proofread on my e-book for Mark of the Pterren. Hopefully, I’ll have that done soon! 🙂

 

There are writers, and then there are writers. We all know this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And we all know that “good writers” don’t need to be our favorites. In the eyes of the audience, the quality of a story is relative. Who is doing the judging, and what they want from their reading, are just two of the big questions that immediately erupt anytime we start separating writers into categories like “good writers” and “hacks.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The beauty of books is that we all get to judge. Much like picking political candidates, readers get to decide for themselves who holds the magic sauce of self-revelation, gripping plots, and characters with magnetic appeal.

Like many people, when I talk books with a stranger, I tend to hold back on opinions until I get a sense of where other people are in their thinking. I don’t always do this, since I’m well-acquainted with the taste of my feet, and chew my toes often when I blurt out something I shouldn’t. Social anxiety is easy to be victimized by, and I most often cure it by remembering, “Life is too short to be stressed out by stuff no one cares about anyway. You’re going to die. Maybe one day quite soon. So let it go.”

Except it’s hard to let go and not care. That’s always the hitch. We care about the stuff other people have no reason to care about, because our egos often run the show.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So we go around judging. First ourselves, then other people. But the first judgment is always within. Our perception of self provides the glasses we put on to gaze out at the world.

Not that I’m saying anything anyone doesn’t already know here — because duh.

But self-judgment and its impact upon a person’s judgment of art — specifically, the art of writing — are fascinating topics.

I was at a gallery show for a friend this past weekend, and I was talking to other people at the event. My friend started telling people I was a writer, which is something I take massive pride in, and also something that immediately opens me up to delightful questions like this —

“How much money do you make?”

“What’s your yearly income?”

“Have any of your books been made into movies?”

“How much money are your books worth?”

And so on and so forth.

Because when I shake hands with an accountant, or a real estate agent, or a chiropractor, I *always* immediately ask, “How much money do you make?”

Doesn’t everyone?

No?

I confess that being asked, “How much money do you make?” by strangers is not something I relish. It’s the kind of situation that just makes my social anxiety even worse.

But over and over, I have to face the fact that these questions will never go away. They are just my opportunity to smile and nod, while my eyes slide into the middle distance, and my brain does a little what-the-f*ck jig, which is like Irish stepdance, only more what-the-f*ckery.

 

 

 

 

 

These questions are made even better by the fact that they are almost always followed by this enthusiastic declaration from the person I’ve only just met: “I’ve always wanted to write a book!! God, I hate reading, but any hack can write a bestseller! I know I could make millions, and have my book turned into a movie — because if those idiots can make millions on crap, anyone can! Anyone can be a writer!”

As to the last sentence of that declaration, I agree that this is a great sentiment to have. Because YES, anyone can be a writer. Absolutely.

But are successful writers all hacks?

I’d say no. Even writers I don’t personally admire, who find financial success and can support themselves on their writing income — they’re doing a lot right with their work. They’re doing something that not just “anyone” can do.

I certainly judge art, and I’m highly judgmental of books. To me, even someone who’s being dismissed as “a hack” has something to teach me about how money chases a story. Learning what people will spend money on, and why, is useful knowledge to have.

When I look around at the list of financially successful writers, I don’t see an ocean of “hacks” cranking out “crap.” (Although this also falls under the message: seek and you shall find. If you want to see an ocean of hacks, you’ll see them. But the landscape looks very different to me.)

I see a lot of excellent writers out there, authors who set a high mark, and my sentences had better measure up, or forget it. The bar isn’t low, it’s really, really high. And damn if I don’t want to jump till I reach it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So for me, the question is: can anyone be “a good writer”?

And I believe that anyone who tells me they “hate to read” or that “books are boring” or that “no one has time to read anymore” is NOT going to ever qualify as a good writer.

I think of these I-hate-to-read writers like fourth grade kids who learned to play the recorder in school. Like all the other kids exposed to this valuable skill, they really enjoyed tooting the melodies of “Three Blind Mice” and “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and “Ba Ba Black Sheep” because thrilling.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So they say to themselves, “I know everything about music now! Because I can play a recorder!”

And then this thought follows: “I can make TONS of MONEY playing recorder music!!”

 

 

 

 

 

So they book some studio time, and record an album of their uber-awesome recorder songs. All-time favorites like “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” and “Hot Cross Buns” definitely make the list. The finale is a rousing version of “Ode to Joy” that these savvy entrepreneurs are sure will make any listener’s heart soar.

Quick as snapping their fingers, the perfect album is ready for sale. Let the millions of dollars rain down from above!

 

 

 

 

 

Such is the thinking of an I-hate-to-read writer. They are so ecstatic about playing their fourth-grade level recorder music, they fail to understand that when people spend money on albums, they’re not buying collections of fourth-grade recorder solos.

They’re buying something far, far more sophisticated than “Ba Ba Black Sheep” tooted with the skill of a novice.

For an example of literary genius, I’ll share a paragraph from Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer. Here is a great writer. Someone who doesn’t rent studio time to make a CD of recorder music. Jon Krakauer is a Yo-Yo Ma with his words. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.

This paragraph appears on page 63 of the 1999 trade paperback of Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer’s account of the 1996 climbing disaster atop Mt. Everest —

“The ad hoc village that would serve as our home for the next six weeks sat at the head of a natural amphitheater delineated by forbidding mountain walls. The escarpments above camp were draped with hanging glaciers, from which calved immense ice avalanches that thundered down at all hours of the day and night. A quarter mile to the east, pinched between the Nuptse Wall and the West Shoulder of Everest, the Khumbu Icefall spilled through a narrow gap in a chaos of frozen shards. The amphitheater opened to the southwest, so it was flooded with sunlight; on clear afternoons when there was no wind it was warm enough to sit comfortably outside in a T-shirt. But the moment the sun dipped behind the conical summit of Pumori — a 23,507-foot peak immediately west of Base Camp — the temperature plummeted into the teens. Retiring to my tent at night, I was serenaded by a madrigal of creaks and percussive cracks, a reminder that I was lying on a moving river of ice.”

That paragraph is the product of a highly organized mind with a beautiful vocabulary. Yes. But more importantly: Jon Krakauer can VERB. He uses ALL ACTIVE VERBS in his sentences and they make his writing AMAZING.

Just look at those wonderful verbs: draped, calved, thundered, pinched, spilled, flooded, dipped, plummeted, serenaded.

My favorite phrase in the whole paragraph is a tie between “calved immense ice avalanches that thundered down” and “serenaded by a madrigal of creaks and percussive cracks.” The ending phrase — “a moving river of ice” –gives the entire paragraph such a beautiful power. This is prose fueled by poetry. The very best kind.

Someone who claims they have no time to read, or that reading is boring, will probably never encounter that gorgeous paragraph — and if they did read this exquisite book, they wouldn’t bother to try to understand what makes the writing so damn good. And that’s what separates someone tooting recorder music and squealing, “I’ll make MILLIONS on this CD!!” from Yo-Yo Ma.

The writers who are out there making a living from their work are doing a lot right. And Jon Krakauer is so utterly brilliant, he’s a deity in my brain. One of those writers I have a mental altar to who compels me to worship in an attitude of gratitude and awe for his works of creation. Some people worship at the altar of NFL superstars and musicians and singers and celebrities and politicians and mountain climbers and you-name-it. I worship at the altar of writers. The great writers. The ones who are also great human beings. And Jon Krakauer is definitely one of them.

When I’m out at a social event, managing my Party Awkward, I always know a non-reader from a reader by how they respond to the news of encountering a writer. If their first question is, “How much money do you make?” then I know I’m talking to a non-reader who dreams of bestseller stardom. If their first question is, “What kind of books do you write?” — then I know I’m talking to a reader. My eyes don’t slide off into the middle distance, and I don’t feel the need to flee.

Readers, like music-buyers, don’t flock to the store to purchase albums of solo recorder tunes once sung in elementary school.

A statement I make because I also say THIS: I heartily recommend that *everyone* write.

But there is writing that you do for yourself, and writing that you do to make money. And the two are very, very different.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now I’ll totter off to pen my next bestseller: “The Dead Cat: A Mystery” because BRILLIANT.

Followed by: “The Desperate Writer Who Wanted a Book Deal So Bad She Sold Her Soul to the Devil to Sell a Manuscript to Random House — Based Upon the Made-Up True Story of Nonsense.”

Anyone want a CD full of my recorder solos? I’ve got a great hit album I’m sure is worth *millions* — email me, k? This music will change your life. Oprah will be inviting me to play any day now, because once you hear me belt out “Ba Ba Black Sheep” your life will be TRANSFORMED.

Or you could go buy some cheese. I like cheddar cheese.

Here are some books I bought on Sunday during the Super Bowl Halftime Show, because Maria’s Bookshop ran a Super Bowl sale (shop during the game and you received 18% off — SCORE!!) —

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Because this is me when I feel like a ROCK STAR —

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In case you can’t read the small print — she’s spending just the minimum amount on groceries, clothes, and household items, but throwing the money down at the bookstore. Of course.