A HESITANT JOURNEY FROM BOOK TO e-BOOK

I admit that I had forgotten about this book, published in the ‘80s by Westminster Press and then by NAL, until that e-mail from a grandmother who explained that her grandson was doing a book review on The Lake Is On Fire. “He needs to have a song that goes with the book,” she wrote. “Can you suggest one?”

So I sat down and read my book again after many long years. It was a good read,  with a story about an angry, recently blinded boy and a suspicious, maltreated dog caught together in a forest fire. It was about danger and the redemptive force of gained trust, courage and love.  It deserved to come out of retirement. So… perhaps as an e-book?

Immediately, my Practical Self sent out shrieks of protest.

Practical Self: Have you gone totally nuts? There are a hundred thousand e-books out there. Who would ever pay attention to yours?

Me: It’s a good book. Every time I read it, I cry. People have told me that they cried when they read it, and I remember the editor who told me: ‘When you make me cry, you make me buy.”

PS: You cry too easily. You’ll definitely weep when you find out how much it cost to get a book on line. It’s a book for young people, for Pete’s sake.  It couldn’t compete on the market.

Me: Adults have enjoyed this book! My colleague in the English department read it on the subway going home one day and got so involved that he missed his station—twice! And just the other day, I read the last two chapters to a number of English teachers who were spellbound.

PS: Bah.

Me: I believe in this book. Both protagonists are angry, hurt, and they dislike each other. When they are forced to rely on each other, trust begins. The song I suggested to the grandmother via e-mail was “Stand By Me.”

PS: Humph!

After silencing my voice of reason, I sought the help of Kristine Goad, herself an author. My kind friend offered invaluable advice about the mysterious ways in which a real life book could be converted into one that sprints through the airways into kindles and nooks, tablets and computers! Then it was a matter of researching various companies and—after much hesitation, a myriad e-mails, phone calls, night sweats and palpitations— the deed was done.

So with fear and trembling I have sent my long neglected story into the world again to be found now on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CS7DZJG/ref=rdr_kindle_ext_tmb _ and soon to be available on such sites as ibooks, Barnes and Noble, The Sony Reader Store, Kobo, Copia, Gardners, Baker&Taylor,Ebook Pie, Scribd and eSentral. All of which are beyond my comprehension and all of which sound very much like black magic.

Venturing even further into black-magic territory, I’ve created a one-day event on Facebook and am offering a giveaway: anyone who downloads Lake and sends me an e-mail receipt will be entered into a drawing. Five kind souls will receive a copy of one of my (hard copy) YA books or a regency romance I wrote back in the day. Their choice!

All this is fun. But like any parent standing on a distant shore and watching her child make its way into the world, all I can do is wish it Godspeed.

Written long ago

I find the words still carry

A part of my soul.

 

 

 

 

Is Winning The Only Thing?

The other day I was notified that one of my wall hangings had been juried into an upcoming exhibition. Since I had tried in the past to have my pieces juried into shows put on by this gallery, I was delighted. After several failures, I exulted, success!

Success means a great deal to all of us and failure to reach a goal can be devastating. Such is the emphasis placed on winning that being Number One becomes all important. “Nobody bothers to ask who was in second place,” we are told, or even “Only the lead sled dog sees anything worth looking at.” Whether we are aiming for a prize or a promotion or being the winner on Dancing With the Stars, we want the prize, the brass ring, the gold at rainbow’s end!

I surely felt that way years ago when my essay got a mere ‘honorable mention’ in a high writing school competition. That was just wrong. Even back then, writing was terribly important, the thing that  most defined me. I had put a lot of my heart into the essay, had polished it till it shone. Also, I didn’t much care for the person who had waltzed off with the first prize, and his essay was… well, it wasn’t very good. I was crushed.

My entire family commiserated in various ways. My mother took me shopping. Dad dragged me off on a long walk. Uncle Joe baked my favorite pie. Aunt Juliette decided I needed to do another needlework project. Aunt Francine let me take home some of her prize roses. And as usual, Uncle Harry quoted his favorite Kipling line about ‘meeting Triumph and Disaster just the same.’

But while I appreciated their kindness and love, my ego remained bruised. Thinking that my English teacher would at least say something helpful, I confided my sorrows to him. He heard me out and then asked, “Did you do your best?” I assured him that I had. “Well, then,” he said.  Well then, what? “Not everybody can win all the time,” he said, mildly. “You’ll be doing a great deal more writing. I know,” he added, “because you have an almost frightening imagination. If you always do your best, the writing will grow with you. Just try not to compete with anybody but yourself.”

Back then that sounded like pretty weak stuff, and slow learner that I am, it has taken years of trial and error to understand the wisdom of it. The real prize, he was trying to say, is in the doing.

It’s true. If I put heart and soul into something I create or imagine, something in my work is enriched. And though I love to succeed and would like to slide into that #1 slot every time, I have come to understand that personal growth is the only yardstick with which to measures true success.

Success is fleeting

But the love that shines in work

Lives on forever.

“If You Could Be a Rose…”

My knockout rose is in bloom again, bold and bright as it joyfully turns its face to the sky. I am pausing to admire when I realize that it looks several shades darker than when I planted the bush last year. Could it be the soil? The weather? Or perhaps the rose itself has decided it needed a different look?

Change is a fact of life, I think, and then I remember the game of ‘roses’ that my book club—a wonderful group that has been together for over forty years— played so many years ago.

On that long ago evening we were given paper and pencil and instructed to answer the question: “If you were a rose, what kind of rose would you be?” Decades younger when the game was suggested, energized by a spirited discussion of that month’s book and made mellow by the hostess’s decadent dessert, we all agreed. So, chuckling good naturedly, I scribbled that I would be an apricot climber growing on a rocky cliff that overlooked a waterfall.

What a drama queen! And some of the others’ answers were revelatory of character, too. The ‘rose’ I remember most was that of one friend’s unopened bud. “Will the bud ever open?”  We asked, but she only shrugged and said time would tell.

Years later, I played the game again with a different group, and my rose had changed dramatically. No waterfalls and no rocky cliffs for me—I was now a pale pink Peace Rose in a garden full of flowers.

How the times have changed

And the re-invented self

Seeks different light.

I don’t know which rose you would have chosen to be back then or choose to be now (try it—it really is fun!), but I do know that as the years pass we re-invent ourselves. For sure I have done so more than a few times.  Life experiences have shaded my perceptions of the world; of choice or necessity I have put aside some goals and found new ones. I suspect it is the same for most, if not all of us. If we are lucky, the years that have shaped our characters have been gentle, but even the raw, bitter times may have stiffened the spine and fostered both understanding and patience. We all know friends who have mellowed and grown wise through the years so that to be with them is a delight and a nourishment for the spirit. Other friends have become brittle and bitter; their petals, once fragrant and full of the joy of life, have been shriveled with frost. Their thorns keep us at a distance.

For myself, I look across the years at my young and self-important self and smile. The rose that I once was may hold my deepest essence, but it has had to change in order to grow and prosper. Now, knowing all that, I hope that time and change will always find me rejoicing in life’s garden like my knockout rose.

Though summers have changed

The bright sun is always there

To warm the spirit.

 

 

 

Who Are (were) You?

Perhaps, like me, you have looked into the night sky and wondered if somewhere in that great cobalt circle someone was looking at earth and wondering… who are you? What are you like?

These days, the mysteries of the universe seem even more fascinating. Imagine—the astrophysicists have discovered a galaxy so very distant that the light from Galaxy MACS607-JD needs to travel 13.3 billion years to reach us. What really boggles my mind is that 13.2. billion years is 97% the known age of the universe! We’re talking about reaching into the beginning of time!

In another mind-blowing discovery, these learned sky-watching folks have found a ‘goldilocks’ world many light years away which is so situated that life is possible there. Life, yes— but what kind of life? Who are you? I would like to ask the inhabitants of ‘Goldilocks,’ but it is unlikely that we will ever know the answer. Instead I must be content with contemplating mysteries closer to home.

So here is a near-at-hand mystery. In the foothills and mountains of South Carolina, there are apparently some hundred sites where—archeologists believe—ancient people carved their messages on stone surfaces and painted them with clay. One of these pre-historic carvings is the Jadaculla Rock which is to be found in a park near Cullowhee. Also, I have read that another archeological find—discovered very recently— is a 30×40 foot boulder soon to be on display in a two-room edifice built by the Pickering CountyMuseum. The thirty one images on the flat surface of this boulder have been so faded and eroded by time and by the elements that on a sunny day they could not be seen. If an archeologist had not studied the boulder on a rainy day, the carvings would have been lost for all time.

Who were these people who lived here so many millennia ago? What did they think as they chiseled their stick figures and animals onto stone? Perhaps they were telling a story or recounting an adventure, or giving directions to the best place to hunt. Or—and this is the explanation that I like most of all—perhaps they wondered as they chipped away at stone who would view their art. Perhaps they puzzled—as I puzzle now—what the world would be like in untold ages to come and asked the universal question: who are you? what will you be like?

In the faded rock

We see shadows of ourselves,

Our past and future.

 

“Reach!”

The Chipped Vase

Wisdom can be found in the most unexpected places. Glancing through the Astrology column the other day, I read that one should never despise a gift—no matter how poor—since it might be the only thing that the giver had to give.

Most people would agree. But, I wondered, isn’t it human nature to be more delighted with the more elegant, the more elaborate, the ‘better’ gift? Though we are taught to value each present, what birthday child treasures a small gift as much as some special thing he has always wanted? And though we exclaim with delight over all that we are given, perhaps our inner response is not the same for every offering.

Then, still wondering, I remembered something that happened had long ago. In that memory I was a child watching my mother arrange flowers in a new vase.

Actually, it wasn’t a new vase at all. It was so shopworn that the flowers that were painted along the side had faded, and there was a big chip at the top. My mother had a very large supply of every kind of vase, so why this one?

She smiled  at my question. “It’s from Mrs. Kono,” she said.

Even more curious! Mrs. Kono was the rag picker lady who passed our house each day. Neighbors whispered that she was homeless, that she seldom bathed, that she was always drunk. Nobody had a good word to say about her, but Mrs. Kono owned a much loved dog, Shiro, and she and my mother had bonded over their pets. They had many long conversations, and often Mrs. Kono would go on her way with snacks for Shiro and a bouquet from my mother’s garden.

“She knows I love flowers,” my mother explained, “so she wanted me to have this vase. She found it and thought I would like the pretty thing.” But, I protested, it was old, cracked, and not pretty at all. Why give such a thing as a present?

My mother explained that Mrs. Kono was very poor. “But she thought of me. I think that was kind, don’t you?” Then she carried the chipped vase to the living room and set it in a place of honor.

I remembered the sunlight that slanted on the chipped vase and on my mother’s face as I recollected the truth of a lesson learned long ago. In our too often materialistic society, the gift can easily become more important than the giver. It is in honoring both that we realize the value of our own humanity.

Arranging flowers,

Sunlight golden on her face

And on the old vase.

The Healing Camera

Usually I prefer the same route on my morning walk, opting for  the comfort of a known path. But the recent tragedy in Boston has lain heavy on my heart, and I know too well that the world is not always comfortable. So in an attempt to let the natural world heal this darkness, this morning I am taking my camera with me.

For the past few days I have walked at a steady clip lost in my own dark thoughts.  Today, though, the camera commands attention. Stop, it says, look at that tree full of brand new leaves! Those leaves will not stay that soft green for long.  Stop this very minute and take a picture!

            So I stop and look. I have always loved the first leaves of spring… they have a color that’s almost translucent green, a fragile beauty that promises hope and new life. They make me think of Frost’s lovely poem, “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” I have seen these leaves so many times before, have read the poem often, and yet each seems to take on a deeper meaning today.

The new leaves of spring

Are like each golden moment…

Precious and fleeting.

            When I start to walk again, I do so under a rain of cherry blossom petals. Most of the flowers have gone, but the few that still remain have their own beauty. Ordinarily I would glance at them and walk by, but today I realize that these are brave survivors of rain and wind. Their time in the sun is over, yet they dance as they send their petals earthward.

Their life, so fleeting

Is like the first touch of spring

A promise of life.

Have I been walking blind all these years? It seems so. I take photographs of the way trees spread their branches, the rugged details of their trunks. A bluebird on a mailbox begs my attention, and the camera obligingly captures the moment. And there… a yellow and black butterfly is fanning itself on a patch of daffodils. It is half hidden, yellow against gold, and I might have missed it if my camera wasn’t with me.

But of course there is a camera that is always with me—only I don’t use it as much as I should.  My eyes are cameras, my mind is (or should be!) far sharper and more powerful than the Nikon in my hand. Be aware in the moment is something I have heard often, and at times of trouble the moment seems even more important. Though there is darkness, there is surely light—like the light that filters through branches brave with new leaves.

A soft breeze has set these leaves dancing and I stop to admire them once again. Not with my camera this time but with my whole concentration. For I know that this golden moment cannot stay… except in memory.

If sorrow returns

I will still hoard these treasures

That can heal my heart.

“Hello!”

Seeing the Face Inside the Stone

I’ve read that Michaelangeo ‘saw’ a completed sculpture inside each new block of marble. The figure was there, he said, he had only to chip away the stone and free it.

I believe it. The eye of a true artist can see what few can. Naturally it takes a combination of hard work, technique and artistry to produce art, but the eye is what makes us see the face inside our personal blocks of stone. Not that the eye always cooperates. When I face a piece of fabric which I hardly remember buying or face the blank computer screen which practically sneers at me, I have the greatest desire to chuck the dreadful thing out of the window.

I suspect that we all have been there. There are times when we question the clarity of our vision and wonder why we even bother. No doubt even the great Michaelangelo had such days.  But sometimes everything falls into place; a line in a newspaper or a slice of conversation catches the mind and a plot leaps into life and proceeds to practically write itself. And sometimes I will look at a piece of fabric and know exactly what  it will become. No pastoral scene here; this bit of cloth will become a far-away planetary system with binary suns and a frozen moon! I don’t know about you, but I live for those days when the eye is in full throttle.

But I’ve learned that the eye is not confined to art.  One evening Mike and I stopped in at a small restaurant after the theater. The play had been charming, but the elderly waitress who served us was anything but. Her expression would have soured milk. She snarled out a demand for our order, practically threw down napkins and silverware, and stalked off muttering to herself. I wondered whether we should leave and said as much. Mike said that since we were there, we might as well stay. “Perhaps,” he added, “she’s had a bad day.”

No wonder, with that attitude! I almost wished that she would forget about serving us—but a few moments later she came marching along with our drinks and dessert. As she slapped them down in front of us, Mike asked peaceably, “Hard day for you?”

She looked surprised and then everything changed. Her mouth softened, her shoulders—so stiff a moment ago— slumped. And standing there she told us of her child’s illness, her inability to pay for treatment, and the worry she had kept within herself all day. As the words tumbled out, her eyes filled with tears. “You’re the only ones who asked,” she whispered.

And I understood that I didn’t need to create great works of art or write the best novel of all time. To have the eye one only needs to see inside the stone that too often hides the human heart.

Imprisoned in stone

Lies the greatest masterpiece…

Now, work to free it!