The Color of the Rose: Three Short Stories

I'm dipping my foot into the digital world! We've e-published a set of three short stories under the title THE COLOR OF THE ROSE with Amazon Kindle. The first two stories are short shorts are explorations of characters I wanted to use in my first novel, ALWAYS AND FOREVER. I knew I wanted Josie and Cleo to be half sisters, one the slave, one the mistress, in a Creole household in Louisiana. These stories were my way of thinking about character, settling in on what each girl wanted and needed. Neither "Color of the Rose" nor "Afternoon Tea" appear in the book as scenes, but the budding of character is in these stand-alone stories. The third story, "Summer Heat," is considerably longer and has nothing to do with old Louisiana. Etta and Mitch are doing the best they can with all the deprivations in the rural South during the Great Depression. It's a love story, plain and simple, a romance ending with happy ever after.

We're curious about this new publishing environment. So many changes going on for publishers and authors alike, and it's coming to seem like many will be to the authors' benefit. Certainly the big publishing houses like Kensington, who published my first two books, function as arbiters of what's worth reading, not accepting manuscripts that are not really ready for the big time, but also not taking any chances on books they are not certain will be big money-earners. They are increasingly nervous in this time of recession, which has certainly hurt them, while at the same time being challenged by all the digital alternatives for publication. It has always meant lower quality in most everyone's mind to offer a self-published book that hasn't been through the rigor of filtration through agents and editors. But that's changing rapidly. In acknowledgment of these new opportunities, we though it would be interesting and maybe even fun to self-publish these short stories at the lowest Kindle price. Hope people enjoy them.

ANCIENT PUEBLOANS: WAYS OF THOUGHT

WAYS OF THOUGHT AMONG THE ANCIENT PUEBLOANS

Wouldn’t it be nice to think that in 2010, we educated folks acted rationally at all times? On the website GM.TV (Jan. 22,2008 page), I found a list of modern superstitions. People buy lottery tickets using numbers that are meaningful to them, birthdates, for example, thinking that will increase their odds of winning. People still touch wood for good luck and worry about breaking mirrors. People read their horoscopes and, alas, make decisions based on their astral profile. And people forward on chain letters like they’re s’posta else bad luck will slip through their internet connection and into their brains and then who knows what will happen.

Of course, as Professor Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire points out, we all just want to “gain a sense of control in our lives.” I would add a supposition on my part: whenever times are uncertain and seem particularly dangerous, we come up with more irrational explanations and expectations.

Which brings me to my preoccupation, the puebloan Native Americans around 1600. I’ve been researching this time and place and people for my historical novel, Crimson Sky, and found some interesting examples of superstitions (as opposed to religion) in Elsie Crew Parsons’ Pueblo Indian Religion, Vol. 1.

One habit of mind among the people Parsons studied was thinking that like causes like. For instance, when the shaman wanted to encourage rain to come, he might blow little smoke puffs with his pipe to mimic a rain cloud. So that rain will fall on the corn fields, a woman might dash water on the back of the men on their way to the fields to plant.

Some thinking was based on the principle of “much from little.” Parsons’ example was to toss a piñon nut into the house and tomorrow the house will be full of nuts. This one in particular I imagine no one believed literally but it was fun to practice and tease the children with. Ever know someone, who shall remain nameless, who told a child that if he could pour salt on that little bird’s tail, then the bird would become his pet? This little “superstition” kept one of my little guys busy on a summer afternoon.

It’s easy enough to see how people could reverse cause and effect: Rather than summer bringing summer birds, puebloans believed summer birds brought summer weather. Rather than realizing that abundant water is required for a willow to grow, they would observe that willows explain, rather than indicate, the presence of water. We do this a lot in 2010 – how many times have you seen an observation that assumes cause and effect when it is merely an example of correlation? Or merely a small piece of a more complicated explanation?

In my novel I want very much to show respect for a successful, intelligent, resourceful people and yet also give some idea of how they thought about the world in ways different from our own. That it was different from twenty-first century sensibilities makes it interesting, but that their thinking was not that far off from ours makes it essentially human.

A Novel of the Plague

Geraldine Brooks has written Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague. Brooks is a journalist and a very good writer.

The topic is endlessly fascinating. The novel is based on an actual village in England when the plague slips in (1666). What's significant about this village is that the people chose to quarantine themselves to keep from infecting neighboring villages. This meant no one would escape exposure, but then, they had the moral high ground. Over about 18 months, two thirds of the population died.

The protag is a young woman of humble means and low expectations for herself. Working closely with the minister's wife who is kind, educated, and encouraging (teaches her to read), Anna evolves into a woman of stamina, self-respect, and expectations.

There is a twist at the end which surprised me, but I won't give that away. I wasn't really pleased about this twist because it messed up my expectations, but it really is a masterful and revealing stroke. Well done!

Highly recommended even if you're not a plague junkie like I am.

The Piano Teacher

The Piano Teacher by Janice Y. K. Lee is a well-written trade paperback set in Hong Kong both during WWII and a decade after that. Some of the characters appear in both eras. I knew nothing about Hong Kong during the war and found the historical aspects of the novel interesting. But. The story of The Piano Teacher is about people who feel passionately. Yet the book is a bloodless read. I don't want to criticize the author for not writing the book the way I wish she had or the way I would have written it. I know that is unfair. Instead I'll talk about this kind of book and my own personal reading preferences. I don't get much punch from reading books where the reader views the whole story from somewhere above the mess of emotions. I want to feel what the characters feel. I want to understand their choices. But the piano teacher is as foreign to me as the Chinese citizens of Hong Kong. I don't like her and I don't find her compelling. I really don't want to write pans of books -- what's the point of that? This novel is, after all, memorable. I'm fully capable of abandoning a book at any point, but I finished this one. It has complexity and mystery (in terms of characters' motives) and that is often enough. It has its strengths and pulls.

Just read an interview with James Patterson. Apparently he works on several – not just two, but several, a big several – manuscripts at one time. Always has multiple stories going. What a mind he must have! He readily admits to not being a great stylist (in response to a comment made by Stephen King about him), but even so, his brain throws out intricate, effective plots like sparks off an anvil. I’m in awe.

Caught a glimpse of Bill Cosby in some sort of promo the other night on TV. What happened? He’s an old man now. It hurt. I don’t want Bill Cosby to get old and leave us. How can we stand it when someone like Bill Cosby dies and leaves a hole ? Can’t stand it.

Remembering the Amelia Bedelia books (in which a lovable housekeeper takes everything so literally that when she’s asked to put out the lights, she hangs the light bulbs on the clothes line) reminds me what a difficult time I had with that book. I was a volunteer tutor for an eight year old at the school down the street. He was a charming kid, labeled a slow learner, and he was. We were reading an Amelia Bedelia story together, and he simply could not see the joke. Baffling, really, how the mind works, or doesn’t. When I taught high school English, there were invariably several students in the class who missed every moment of irony. I eventually developed lessons specifically designed to “teach” irony. One lesson involved a page full of set-ups like this: “A man is terrified of flying, fearing he’ll die in a crash, so when he has to go across country, he decides to drive. Half way through his trip, he’s driving along the highway when ______.” Most of the kids immediately shout out, “An airplane falls on him!”

But some of the students looked at us blankly. Just didn’t get it. And I suspect they never will. Their minds just don’t work that way. (These were not “slow-learner” kids – just average, normal folks, missing the irony gene.)

My grandson Byron loves the Warrior series of books in which the characters are all cats. Not tigers or lions or leopards, but cats. I don’t know who wrote these books, but I certainly admire him or her. Apparently the books cover generations of leaders like a grand saga, and I believe there are sub-series within the series. Clever and absorbing books. I love it that there are so many books written for kids now. When I was a kid, I found Grimm’s Fairy Tales and Charlotte’s Web and Trixie Belden. How pale compared to Warrior cats! Even at eight I thought Charlotte’s Web was insipid. Not that I knew the word insipid, but I did think it was lame. Maybe I was too close to my grandparents’ farm lives to get excited about a stupid pig who didn’t want to be slaughtered.

Louis Sacher’s Holes is excellent. And Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. For younger kids, the Animorph series – those are great for reading aloud. You know how some beautifully illustrated kids’ books are awful to read aloud? The Animorph’s are down right funny even for adults. When my grandsons were younger they devoured the Junie B. series about a literal-minded kindergartner, who reminds me of Amelia Bedelia. I found them a little tedious, but the kids never got tired of the silly misunderstandings. Well, there are many and varied wonderful kids’ books out there. Too many to list, even if I knew them all.

Tomorrow we’ll take our two grandsons home after a two week stay. I’ll really miss them. They’re nine and twelve and the most interesting people on the planet. Now and then I come across an article about what all the electronic media exposure is doing to modern young minds. Maybe I should say media obsession. Computer games, U-tube, Play Station, television, and so on. My two don’t have phones and so are not into texting or twittering yet, thank goodness. Don’t know if they would have time for “good mornings” if they added twittering to their electronic activities. It does worry me. What about exercise, playing, talking, reflection? But those things are not absent from their lives. They have bikes. Their Pee Paw takes them fishing. Their dad takes them camping. But the proportion of those “real” experiences seems low to their virtual worlds. But, not to worry. How varied is the human experience, after all. Some kids don’t have computers at all, and that’s a limitation also. Some live in big cities, shudder, and don’t have tomatoes growing in the back yard. And you know what else eases my minor concern: they both read.

Don’t you feel you’ve come across a ruby in the grass when you find particularly fine passages in your reading? This is one of my favorites from The Empty Copper Sea by John D. MacDonald. It’s a Travis McGee mystery. A piece of newsprint has blown around an ankle as Travis walks, thinking of Gretel, with whom he’s newly smitten: “I wadded it to walnut size and threw it some fifteen feet at a trash container. The swing lid of the trash container was open about an inch and a half. If it went in, I would live forever. It didn’t even touch the edges as it disappeared inside. I wished it was all a sound stage, that the orchestra was out of sight. I wished I was Gene Kelly. I wished I could Dance.”

At the risk of English-teachering it to death, I’ll mention a few of the perfections in the quote. I love “walnut size.” Concise, visual, useful phrase. “Trash container” is used twice in close proximity, a writing-book no no, but it works and I like that MacDonald doesn’t fret over such trivialities. “If it went in, I would live forever.” Wow. Such a recognizable feeling over-stated without apology or explanation. The last two sentences of elaboration are pitch-perfect – all bringing to mind the magic of a Gene Kelly movie dance, maybe Singin in the Rain.

It’s been ten years since I read that book, but I haven’t forgotten this image. (I have a Bits I Admire book I write quotes in, but I don’t think I’ll forget this one.)

I’ve been thinking about literary fiction. As opposed to mainstream, which is what most of us read. I was an English major and then an English teacher and you would think I would be big on literary novels. Well, I am, somewhat. I read those too and admire them. Guess I should give some examples of the literary genre I have liked: Olive Kitteridge by E. Strout; The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd; anything by Anne Tyler; A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by D. Eggers. Wally Lamb. Alice Walker. Marilyn Robinson. And so on. But what I gravitate to are genre novels, especially dark crime books. I’ve loved J. D. Robb’s In Death series. And the Brotherhood vampire series by J. R. Ward. And the Sebastian St. Cyr mysteries by C.S. Harris. Some romances are delicious too – I particularly appreciate Judith Ivory’s historicals.

So what does it say about readers who prefer the lower brow –not all the way low-brow, but according to the Elite Reading Police, lower than literary? Do we want a less cerebral experience? Or simply a greater distance between our own lives and the fictional world so that our escape from reality for a few hours is more complete?

One criterion for literary is a fineness of language. More beautiful flow. More sophisticated syntax. But I’ve read some lovely, memorable passages in genre fiction too. Maybe it’s all about marketing.

My aspiration as a writer: to write literary quality in genre fiction. So there. It may take me until twenty or thirty years past my death, but I’m a trying.

I’ve just finished reading Brad Meltzer’s Book of Lies. The plot intricacies and hints of the occult and the cult remind me of The DaVinci Code. Though many readers loved loved loved, the DaVinci Code, I did not. Yeah, it was a cool premise and lots of plotting going on, but it had no depth and little character development. Kinda flat. Anyway, The Book of Lies is well written and the characters do have three dimensions, always better than flat cut-outs.

I came across this passage in Rob Goolrick’s A Reliable Wife. pg. 221. “It seems to me that everything in the light and air ought to be happy. Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave, let him know he has enough.” Googled it to find it’s from old friend Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Kudos to Goolrick for working it into to his story. It’s perfect for this character’s musings. Not that he presents it as anything other than a quote, but he doesn’t identify the poet.

This is not a review of the book, though it is very good and very interesting. Memorable plot and characters. What I’m interested in today is the quote: “everything in the light and air ought to be happy . . . he has enough.” One of those How True in the margin moments. Too bad we can’t remember this idea more often. Also reminds me of Abe Lincoln’s comment that folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be. And of course, while on the subject of happiness, the old saw that Happiness is not a goal but a byproduct of striving for your goal.

I’ve just finished reading J. D. Robb’s Kindred in Death, no. 29 of the In Death series. A remarkable achievement, these 29 books. (There’s a 30^th out in hardcover, but I’m a paperback kind of gal.) The plots are intricate and diabolical, which I like. But the real heart of the series is the love affair between Detective Eve Dallas and her husband Roark. They are both wounded souls, intense, driven, and of course sexy. Their finding each other, feeling their way to an emotional intimacy neither has shared before, digging deeper into love and commitment is what has kept me reading through all these books (29!). The only other series of books I’ve read from # 1 to the last is Patrick O’Brian’s nautical novels featuring Jack Aubrey and Steven Maturin (Russell Crowe played Aubrey in the movie Master and Commander). O’Brian is a remarkable writer. But this is about J. D. Robb. Secondary characters Peabody and McNab have a thing going too and they’re good characters. The young woman who plays Zoey on Nurse Jackie is who I think of as Peabody whenever I’m playing Cast the Movie. Great wry humor.

As a writer, I’ve also profited from observing how Robb does it. Especially her love scenes. And they are love scenes, not sex scenes. Yeah, they’re having sex, but it’s emotional and lovely and you don’t have to know where anyone’s hands are at any particular moment, for the most part. Not too much information, and I bet you know what I mean. Pacing is perfect. Plotting is perfect. Characterization is really good. Just how good? One day when I was feeling maudlin, I imagined how truly awful it would be if either Roark or Eve were to die and leave the other bereft. Broke my heart thinking of their grief. Well, I was maudlin that day.

Oh. Another series I’ve almost read all of is J. R. Ward’s Brotherhood series about really noble, sexy, civilized vampires.

One more point. The last few of the In Death novels have been less wonderful to me because the relationship between Eve and Roark seems stalled. Not working through anymore anguished marital crises, not evolving. Just a loving, though very interesting, marriage. Not that I would wish any anguish on my buddies Eve and Roark.