IN PRAISE OF HOME PLACES—TALLGRASS, A POEM

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by Linda Rodriguez

One of my favorite places on the planet is the Flint Hills of Kansas. The Flint Hills is the largest surviving Tallgrass Prairie in the country, 4.5 million acres of bluestem and wild animals and cattle and tough people, all survivors. I went to school there, and my parents are buried there.

My computer operating system keeps showing me scenes of landscape from around the world that are supposed to be breathtakingly beautiful, and they often are. Still, I know people who drive I-70 west or east through the Flint Hills and insist that the Kansas landscape is just flat and boring. I insist that they must be lying or blind. The Flint Hills inspire me so much that I’ve written a number of poems about them, and I thought I would offer this one to remind us all of the quieter beauty that often surrounds us while we are seeking after what we consider the exotic or fashionable.

 

TALLGRASS

The prairie is a tough place.

Formed when the Rocky Mountain

rainshadow killed off the trees,

millions of buffalo grazed its big bluestem,

turkeyfoot, sideoats, switchgrass, grama, Indiangrass,

sweetgrass, prairie dropseed, buffalograss,

for millennia, but, big as a nightmare

when you encounter one up close,

the buffalo never defeated the prairie.

 

Summer in tallgrass lands is harsh—

blazing hot sun, only occasional rain in torrents.

Summer turns the plains into grassy desert,

But those grass roots plunge deep, deep into the earth,

some twelve or more feet under the surface.

The soil under a prairie is a dense mat

of tangled rootstock, rhizomes, tubers, and bulbs.

Those roots hold out against drought

and preserve the soil against thundering

gullywashers and toadswampers.

Summer never defeated the prairie.

 

Sometimes lightning strikes,

and fire races across the landscape

like water poured out on concrete,

spreading out with amazing speed and inevitability.

The prairie compensated by making seeds

that need to pass through flame to germinate.

Fireproof seeds, what an invention!

The tribes learned to set controlled fires

to bring back gayfeather, blazing star, prairie clover.

Now, ranchers burn the prairie each spring.

Fire never defeated the prairie.

 

As for winter, the waist- and shoulder-high grasses

triumph over the snow, spreading

large swathes of sun-colored grasses

across the scene, only occasionally punctuated

by a spread of snow along the meandering paths

where animal and human feet have trodden.

The prairie just absorbs the snow,

swallowing it down to build stronger, deeper roots

to withstand summer’s hot, dry onslaught.

Winter never defeated the prairie.

 

Buffalo, white-tailed deer, antelope, pronghorns,

gray wolves, coyotes, bobcats, cougars, red foxes,

black-footed ferrets, badgers, shrews, skunks,

raccoons, possums, black-tailed prairie dogs,

jackrabbits, prairie chickens, bull snakes,

and the occasional human for centuries

made trails and paths through the grasses

by trampling them down or cutting their stems.

If paths are not continually maintained

by a great deal of manual labor,

they disappear like smoke.

The prairie will always take them back.

The only thing that ever defeated prairie

was a man with a steel plow.

 

Published in Dark Sister (Mammoth Publishing, 2018)

 

Linda Rodriguez’s fourth Skeet Bannion mystery, Every Family Doubt, the follow-up to Plotting the Character-Driven Novel, Revising the Character-Driven Novel, and her co-edited anthology, Unpapered: Writers Consider Native American Identity and Cultural Belonging, will publish in 2023. Her novels—Every Hidden Fear, Every Broken Trust, Every Last Secret—and books of poetry— Dark Sister, Heart’s Migration, and Skin Hunger—have received critical recognition and awards, such as St. Martin’s Press/Malice Domestic Best First Novel, International Latino Book Award, Latina Book Club Best Book, Midwest Voices & Visions, and Ragdale and Macondo fellowships.

 

Rodriguez is past chair of AWP Indigenous Writer’s Caucus and Border Crimes chapter of Sisters in Crime, founding board member of Latino Writers Collective and The Writers Place, and member of Native Writers Circle of the Americas, Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers, and Kansas City Cherokee Community. http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com.

 

So You Want to Write a Book – Part 5: Bumps in the Road

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by Sparkle Abbey

hands on laptop keyboard

“A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”

~ Thomas Mann

Welcome back to another chapter of So You Want to Write a Book!

This month we’re going to review where we’ve been and then discuss potential problems with getting those pages written and arriving at the finish line.

A quick recap. We started with an idea notebook and began the work around determining what kind of book you wanted to write and exploring that chosen genre. Next, we moved on to some creative brainstorming and last month we covered strategies for how you will approach the actual writing. Remember plotters, pantsers, and plansters? We hope the steps so far have helped to put you on the path to a finished book.

So, now you’re moving forward getting words on the page, right? But sometimes the writing goes great and other times it feels like you’re slogging through a swamp. Don’t get discouraged. It happens.

The reasons why writers get stuck may vary, but here on some things we’ve found helpful when you are struggling.

  1. Go back to the beginning. Pull out that notebook and remember why you wanted to tell this story. What’s the core story your book will tell? Have you lost that main idea along the way?
  2. Spend some time with your characters. You need to be clear on your main character (in fiction) and main idea (in non-fiction) and make sure you have not wandered too far away from the goal. If you’re a pantser perhaps you didn’t have the character goal completely defined when you started out. Or if you’re a plotter, maybe you’re moving forward to that goal too quickly. Or too slowly.
  3. Check your conflict. Remember most stories are about a journey. There’s something your main character wants and a reason they want it (Goal, Motivation) and also a number of reasons they can’t have it right away (Conflict). Have you provided realistic conflict/barriers? You need resistance.
  4. Examine what you have so far. Often if you’ve been writing and are struggling with moving forward, the problem is with the structure. Write out a quick sentence or two about the scenes you’ve already written. This different look allows you to see the flow of your story. You are better able to tell if you’ve thrown in unnecessary scenes that don’t move the story forward, skipped an essential scene that has created a gap in the momentum, or just plain took a wrong turn.
  5. Step away from the keyboard. If you can, walk away from the story for a day or two. Write something else, read something new, go somewhere. Fold the laundry or take a shower—don’t laugh, it works for some of us. It may be that your creative brain just needs a break and the refresh of not thinking about your story for a couple of days will allow you to come back to it with fresh perspective.

Hopefully, the words flow and you rarely get stuck as you work on your project, but if you find yourself not moving forward try one or more of the above ideas to put you back on the path.

We’d love to hear from you on what other techniques you’ve found to get you (or keep you) moving forward. And as always, if you have any questions, please let us know.

Next month, we’ll discuss what’s next After the First Draft. Until then, happy writing!

sparkle and abbey

Sparkle Abbey is actually two people, Mary Lee Ashford and Anita Carter, who write the national best-selling Pampered Pets cozy mystery series. They are friends as well as neighbors so they often get together and plot ways to commit murder. (But don’t tell the other neighbors.)

They love to hear from readers and can be found on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, their favorite social media sites. Also, if you want to make sure you get updates, sign up for their newsletter via the SparkleAbbey.com website

How Mowgli Made a Marine – T.K. Thorne

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Unhappy Boy purchased from dreamstime_xs_6525479Early in my marriage, a stepson arrived on my doorstep every other weekend as a troubled 8 year old.

A learning disability imprisoned him as poor reader and student to the point that all his tests had to be read aloud to him.  He didn’t fit in.  He knew it and acted out.  Naturally, he hated the sight of books, and all my efforts to read to him were spurned.

One day, a misbehavior earned him time-out, and I offered him his choice—either an hour in his room or sit with me while I read him one chapter of a book.  (I know, I know—it’s contrary to all behavioral advice to make reading a punishment, but I was at wits’ end.)

He considered it and asked how long it would take to read a chapter.

“Probably about 15 minutes,” I said.

Fifteen minutes versus an hour.  He wasn’t bad at math and chose the chapter.  I went to my collection of childhood books, my heart pounding. It thumped away in my chest, warning me that this could be my only chance with him.

The books, stiff and dusty in their rows, whispered of cherished hours. Which to choose?  I stopped at one, remembering pulling it from my mother’s bookshelf, hopeful from the title though the company it kept was grownup stuff. By the first chapter, I knew I had found treasure.

Once again I pulled it out and took it back with me, clutched to my still thumping chest and sat with my stepson on the hard cement of the porch (part of the “punishment”).

“Here are the rules,” I said sternly.  “You have to sit still and listen.  I will read one chapter.  After that it is up to you if you want to hear more or go.”

He agreed, and I opened the book. I read my best, in honor of all the hours my Granny read to me, her voice cracking with the effort to bring the characters to life. I hoped to reach a young mind with the gift she had given me.  I read and did not look at the boy beside me, afraid to see on his face the boredom of a prisoner doing his time.

When I finished the last word of Chapter One, I snapped the book closed, deliberately keeping my voice matter-of-fact.

“That’s it,” I said.  “What do you want to do?”

There was a long hesitation—maybe it wasn’t so long, but I remember it that way—a silence so deep, you could fall into it, and then one intense word from him—“Read.”

In the years ahead of us, he would repeat that word many times.  We finished the book, Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, and moved on to many others.

He began to sit next to me, at first to see the pictures, but when there were no pictures, he stayed to move his eyes over the words as I read.  Eventually, I feigned a sore throat and asked him to read a sentence or two, and then a paragraph, and then a chapter, never criticizing as he stumbled and only offering help when he needed it.

One day, I poked my head in his room and asked if he was ready to read Part III of “our” current book.  “Already read it,” he said.

And once again my heart pounded, this time with mixed joy.  He was reading on his own, voraciously, but we were never again to have those special moments together.

Bitter-sweet.

He read a lot about ordinary young boys becoming heroes, and I think it helped give him the courage and inspiration to sign up for the Marines.  Though not a physical boy—he played in the band and was ho-hum about sports—he thrived there, and today is a successful career Marine (Master Sergeant) with a beautiful, kind, talented wife and two wonderful sons he reads to.

Semper Fi.

 

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T.K.Thorne is a retired police captain who writes Books, which, like this blog, go wherever her curiosity and imagination take her.  More at TKThorne.com

Juliana Aragon Fatula’s book review of Leslie Larson’s Breaking Out of Bedlam

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https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/69332/leslie-larson/

Leslie Larson grew up in San Diego to a working class family. After earning a degree in literature at the University of California, San Diego, she moved to London and began working in publishing. She eventually moved back to California and began freelance writing. In 2006, she published her first novel, Slipstream, which won the Astraea Award for Fiction.

Dear Reader,

I have been working with a great writer and editor through Macondo Writers Foundation this July and have just finished reading this amazing book written by my new mentor, Leslie Larson. I want you to trust me when I recommend this book for belly laughs and interesting characters and storyline. I laughed out loud and had to stop for breaks but read this page turner cover to cover in one day. I am a mystery reader snob and this is a great book, not a good book, hear me? A great book. Please give Breaking Out of Bedlam a read and you can thank me later.

Leslie will be helping me to fine tune my mystery, the Colorado Sisters and the Atlanta Butcher and teaching me how to write a page turner.

Breaking Out of Bedlam is written with humor and suspense.  The main character reminds me of my mom. Cora is a senior citizen living in assisted living. She has her flaws but I fell in love with her from page one. She writes in her journal, “I got a plan. I’m going to write down everything I ever wanted to say. I’m not holding nothing back and I don’t give a damn what anybody thinks…” She continues in her journal, “I’ve done things I’m not proud of, I lied to keep myself alive because life is hard and there’s things you got to do. But now I got nothing to lose. I’m going to tell the truth once and for all. I hope those that put me in this place read it when I’m dead, which I have a feeling won’t be long. Maybe then they’ll see…”

In her journal she writes about her past and present, “Sometimes I think I should never have had kids in the first place.” Her adult children send her to The Palisades, assisted living. She calls it the shit hole, snake pit, hell hole, lock em’ up and throw away the key jail.  “I got another reason for keeping this book…Something fishy’s going on in this place and I want a record in case anything happens to me…There’s whispering, and shifty looks, and things gone missing.”

Larson’s writing literally lifted my pandemic blues and gave me new enthusiasm for finishing my novel. She inspired me and I’m thankful for her and her novel, Breaking Out of Bedlam. I realized that I have the skills I need to finish my novel and with a little help from my friends, it can be just as great as Larson’s story of a woman who just wants to go home and die in her own bed, not in assisted living.

Her characters are zealous and hilarious. Cora has magical mad ideas and an eye for investigating the mystery, who is the thief? She writes in her journal, “I’d lost track of a lot of those pills I saw piled in front of me but I do know I worked hard to get them, going around to different doctors and scraping and bowing and acting innocent–and I couldn’t bear to see them takin’ away from me.”

She becomes addicted to her drugs and spends her golden years in a stupor of popping pills, sleeping, and wishing she would die. She stays high as a kite and talks about being called lazy by her Missouri relatives and writes, “The God’s honest truth that a lot of the time I just can’t get out of bed…I’m here to tell the truth. I’m sick and tired of pretending I’m happy.” She trades sticks of chewing gum for Percocet and buys residents’ prescription drugs for a quarter a pill.

She has feuds with a resident, Ivy Archer, who she calls Poison Ivy. “Someone I hate more than the devil himself…She accused me of something I got nothing to do with…I got to show that I’m innocent as a lamb.”

She refers to the residents in full care, Ward B,  as pissers, droolers, and moaners until she meets Vitus Kovic. He charms, cons, coerces her into sneaking with him to smoke cigarettes even though she is forbidden because of her health issues. He brings with him a European style of speech and manners that captivates her.  A romance develops and Cora finds herself swooning and energized.

She observes and speculates about what the residents and staff are up to and who is stealing patients personal items from their rooms. Her only friend, a technician/nurse named Marcos tells her, “Senora Sledge, you have no shame, For this, I love you.” and tell’s her, “Devil! You are very naughty.” But agrees to smuggle her cigarettes and other forbidden items. His flaming gayness intrigues her and she asks him to explain his sexual preference in a way she can understand. She calls him a Mexican fruitcake he calls her a goddess, my queen. They watch Telemundos and sneak smokes in her bathroom. It’s a love of necessity, he adored and misses his mother, she misses her cigarettes.

Reviews of Breaking Out of Bedlam from the San Francisco Chronicle: “Larson is a master of details, coloring in her precise and increasingly jittery scene with tight specificity.”

Sandra Cisneros, author of House on Mango Street writes, “Larson is a writer of tales that are hilarious and heart breaking at once–no easy feat, but the mark of great storytelling.”

I workshopped with the Macondo Writers Workshop via Zoom last July and reunited with my Macondista famiy, the greatest group of writers in the U.S. It brought new energy and zest to my writing. Ooohwee!

In October I will be inducted into the Return of The Corn Mothers Celebration in Denver, Colorado at the Colorado History Center and hope you can attend if you are in the vicinity. I am humbled to be included and accept on behalf of my ancestors: Corn Mothers who went unrecognized for their work in all that is sacred and holy and unites the people with hope and love.

Marie Sutro: the next Thomas Harris?

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An interview with Paula Gail Benson

I had the wonderful good fortune this year to meet and work with author Marie Sutro on the Killer Workshop presented by the Capitol Crimes and Palmetto Chapters of Sisters in Crime. Marie is one of the most organized, resourceful, and congenial creative persons I know. When I learned her second novel was being released, I quickly purchased her first. I was surprised to read Steve Alten’s endorsement: “Marie Sutro’s debut novel, Dark Associations, may just be this generation’s Silence of the Lambs.” By chapter two, I met her psychopathic villain. Marie’s intricate descriptions and fast-paced action combined with a flawed protagonist seeking justice amid chaos keeps her readers turning pages. If you haven’t already discovered her, please join us for this brief interview, then check out her Kate Barnes’ novels Dark Associations and Dark Obsessions.

Welcome, Marie, to the Stiletto Gang!

As a San Francisco Police detective, your protagonist Kate Barnes deals with some sordid and horrifying events in life. Marie, you personally are so outgoing and gracious. How did you find the “dark” place inside Kate and how are you able to revisit it without it overwhelming you?

Thank you for the compliment. I use the same tool to find my way into the dark as I do to find my way into the light. Trying to empathize with the character opens doors into feelings, motivations, and behaviors that at first blush may be entirely foreign to me, or (in the case of a villain) morally repugnant. Once the door is open, research provides the context to put everything into proper focus. One of my goals is to try to shine spotlights on the darker sides of humanity so we can learn from it. That process starts with empathy for our fellow human beings.

Like all lofty goals, it can come at a price. Delving into the darkness repeatedly takes a toll. I’ve learned the value of establishing limits on how much time I spend on dark topics (whether researching or writing). When I near my limit, I’ll get up and take a walk, watch a cartoon, play with my cats, or even run to the store. By focusing on the end goal and managing my exposure, I can keep the darkness at bay.

In both your books, Dark Associations and Dark Obsessions, you use juxtaposition and surprise to bring the readers into Kate Barnes’ world. Dark Associations begins with “the Big Bad Wolf” viewing a beautiful blonde woman. A reader might expect this is the mind of a perpetrator, but in a few paragraphs you reveal it is Kate, who has resisted becoming a mentor for this enthusiastic student. Through juxtaposition, you develop Kate’s character as well as showing the relationship with the Tower Torturer, the serial killer she is attempting to catch and stop. Similarly, in Dark Obsessions, at first Kate appears to be in danger of getting a traffic ticket when she actually is about to be asked on a date. How did you decide to use surprise and juxtaposition to introduce your characters and begin your stories? What advantages did it give you?

Juxtaposition and surprise are great ways to introduce characters and subplots in a detective driven mystery. They give me the ability to immediately tell the reader to expect the unexpected and to be ready to consider facts from different angles while panting seeds for future plot twists.

In Dark Associations readers are encouraged to question whether Kate really is a hero. Like most of us, she is a flawed human being but she has been brutally ravaged by life experiences. The question of what makes one person who faces extreme adversity into a hero, while another is made into a villain is fascinating to me. Juxtaposition and surprise allowed me to plant doubt about Kate’s hero status and whether she can maintain it.

Dark Associations takes place in San Francisco, while your new Kate Barnes novel, Dark Obsessions, has Kate traveling to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. The first has Kate facing a professional dilemma, while the second starts with her confronting personal demons. Did you know from the outset this would be Kate’s journey or did it develop as the plot of the first book progressed?

Originally I conceived of Kate’s story in a three-book arc. The second book was intended to focus on her attempt to confront the personal demons that threaten her ability to do her job as well as her ability to connect with others. At first the story was going to be set in Seattle, but the more I thought about the nature of the issues she needed to confront, I realized there was no better setting that the dark reaches of the Olympic Peninsula. Pulling her from the hustle and bustle of San Francisco and dropping her into a small community where she only knows one person was the best way to challenge her professionally and personally.

On the cover of each book, there is a symbol. Could you tell us about each, how they were selected, and how they impact the stories?

The symbols on the covers are the first puzzles the reader is exposed to in each story. In Dark Associations the epigraph includes the symbol as well as an ancient Norse poem, which sets the tone for the book. The symbol is soon revealed to be a Norse Thorn. It is an ancient Nordic rune used as a calling card by an insidious serial killer known as the Tower Torturer. He chose it for two of its many meanings, which are male power and dominance.

In Dark Obsessions the cover symbol is an original design based on ancient concepts pivotal to the final reveal. After lengthy research and considering different possibilities, I designed it on a cocktail napkin while having dinner with my husband.

What do you see in Kate’s future?

As previously mentioned, I had originally conceived of Kate’s story in a three-book arc. Yet, reader response and my own journey revealed she is definitely a character with legs. I am currently writing the third book in the series, but Kate is persistently whispering she has a lot more to offer.

Marie, thanks for joining us and best wishes with your continuing series!

Brief Biography:

Marie Sutro is an award-winning and bestselling crime fiction author. In 2018, she won the IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award for the Best New Voice in Fiction, for her debut novel, Dark Associations. Her second novel, Dark Obsessions, was released in April 2022. A member of Sisters In Crime, she also volunteers with California Library Literacy Services.

Her father, grandfather and great-grandfather all served in the San Francisco Police Department, collectively inspiring her writing. Marie resides in Northern California and is currently at work on the next book in the Kate Barnes series.

Back to School Again

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Read more

So You Want to Write a Book – Part 4 Ready for Take Off!

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“If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” 

~ Toni Morrison

Welcome back to So You Want to Write a Book!

Remember that notebook? It’s time to pull it out and review our progress. We’ve spent the past few months talking about prep work: defining the type of book, getting to know your genre, and creative brainstorming about your books. Now, it’s time to start moving forward with the actual writing.

We like to think about writing a book as a journey and step four is where you take off into the unknown. Sound scary? It’s not really. Your bags (okay, actually your notebook and your brain) are packed with all kinds of helpful information and you are ready!

But before you take off it’s important to know how you’re going to travel. Have you heard of plotters and pantsers? How about plansters? Basically, most writers fall into one of these three categories. There are the pantsers who write “by the seat of their pants” and plan very little. Then there are the plotters who plan their book before they write it. And finally, there are the plansters who are a combination of the other two and do a little of both. So which are you? It’s simple to determine. Consider the three options and determine your comfort level with each and bingo! That’s you. (At least for this project anyway. The more you write the more you’ll begin forming your own individual writing style.)

Pantsers

If you’re a pantser, this is it. Go! Get writing. You may have to occasionally pull out that notebook to remind you of where you’re going but just keep moving forward. Write, write, write.

Plotters

Plotters, you’ve got a little more prep before you take off. There are several plotting methods, and we won’t detail them all but here’s our top 7. Find the one that you think will work for you and try it out. Make adjustments to the method as you like. This step is simply getting down the story route from beginning to end.

  1. Synopsis Approach – An overview of the story from beginning to end with the hook, inciting incident, plot points, and resolution.
  2. Detailed Outline – Used to create an outline of major plot points, summary of each chapter, and a detailed scene list.
  3. Snowflake Method – Developed by author and physicist, Randy Ingermanson, where you start small, then build your story.
  4. Story Grid – Created by editor Shawn Coyne using problem-solving methodology and most useful on 2nd drafts but can be used for an initial work plan.
  5. Three-Act Structure – Tried and true this method can be more or less detailed depending on your writing style and it works great for most genre fiction.
  6. The Hero’s Journey or Heroine’s Journey – In his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell broke down the 17 steps of the hero’s journey. We’ve also recently read Gail Carriger’s The Heroine’s Journey and would recommend taking a look at it.
  7. Writing from the Middle or sometimes referred to as In Medias Res – James Scott Bell, an award winning and best-selling author explains it well in his book, Write Your Novel from the Middle.

Plansters

If you’re a combination of the two, meaning you like to plan a little and then write forward. There may be some of our favorite methods that seemed appealing to you. Try them out, use what works, and maybe even do a mash-up of the parts that inspire you.

Non-Fiction

If you’re writing non-fiction, we didn’t forget about you! Here are a couple of methods that you might find helpful.

  1. Mind mapping Author Rick Lauber shares outlining tips on the Writer’s Digest website.
  2. Scribe Book Outline walks you through the same process they use with their authors on how to outline a book.

The main thing is –  it’s time to get moving!

Next month, we’ll talk about bumps in the road and how to deal with them. Until then, happy writing!

sparkle and abbey

Sparkle Abbey is actually two people, Mary Lee Ashford and Anita Carter, who write the national best-selling Pampered Pets cozy mystery series. They are friends as well as neighbors so they often get together and plot ways to commit murder. (But don’t tell the other neighbors.)

They love to hear from readers and can be found on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, their favorite social media sites. Also, if you want to make sure you get updates, sign up for their newsletter via the SparkleAbbey.com website

Clicking Our Heels – A Day at the Movies

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Clicking Our Heels – A Day at the Movies

The past few weeks have been so hot that people have been looking for air-conditioned places to hang out – like movie theaters. In our personal lives, we each have favorite movies and television shows with varied reasons we like them. As authors, we think about movie, television, and other visual media from the perspective of how it impacts our writing. Here’s what members of the gang think:

T.K. Thorne – As Good as It Gets with (Jack Nicholas and Helen Hunt). The characters and dialogue are so amazing, that I hunted down the script and studied it. I hope it impacted my writing!

Kathryn Lane –  Gone With the Wind – I’m a hopeless romantic! In my writing, I want readers to feel they are in that location with my protagonist – a concept surely influenced by television!

Meri Allen/Shari Randall – It’s too hard to pick one! I’m in love with the classics, everything from The Thin Man to Singin’ in the Rain. Movies and television have definitely impacted my writing. Any art that a writer comes into contact with becomes (consciously or unconsciously) part of their tool kit. I feel I’ve been influenced by everything from Murder, She Wrote to Fargo.

Donnell Bell – I love Overboard, the Goldie Hawn. Kurt Russell version. Dave, an American President (guess I’m a dreamer that politics can have a happy ending.) I saw there’s a sequel to Top Gun coming out where Tom Cruise plays the Tom Skerrit flight training character, and Val Kilmer who played Iceman recommends Cruise character for the flight trainer. I would definitely go see that. I loved Hidden Figures, In The Heat of the Night in honor of Sydney Poitier’s passing. Clearly, I haven’t seen a new release in so long!

Debra H. Goldstein – My favorite movies is Giant. Besides having Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, James Dean, and a cast of well-seasoned and then newbies who now are well-known, the way social issues are interwoven with the landscape and language makes me watch it anytime I find it on TV.

Lynn McPherson – I love Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Knives Out. My favorite thing about each of these films is the characters. They are a big reminder for me that great characters are essential for great books!

Debra Sennefelder – Tough question. I really don’t have a favorite movie. Movies/televisions shows can spark an idea for a plotline, location or character. Inspiration is everywhere.

Dru Ann Love – Gone With The Wind.

Lois Winston – It’s too hard to choose one, so I’m going to break the rules: The Greatest Showman, LaLa Land, Casablanca, and Shakespeare in Love (not necessarily in that order.)

Linda Rodriguez – It could be one of many, but at this moment, I would say my favorite movie is The Only Good Indian, with the fabulous Wes Studi. It’s a well-researched historical movie, set at the horrible residential boarding school, which became the university at which my son teaches.

Saralyn Richard – I’m a movie buff with many favorites, but since I can only name one, I’ll say, Casablanca. That movie has it all–great dialogue, superb acting, brisk pacing, and the right amount of ambiguity to keep audiences intrigued and enchanted. Casablanca and other movies deeply impact my writing process. When I write, my characters take their places on the screen of my mind, and begin acting. All I have to do is type the cinematic scenes playing out before me.

The Cow Jumped Over the Moon by Lynn Chandler Willis

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Back when my now-adult daughter was in kindergarten, I excitedly attended her first parent-teacher conference, anxious to hear the teacher’s impression of how hard I’d worked––um, I mean, how hard my daughter had worked at kindergarten preparation. She could spell, write, and read her first and last name, address, phone number, mom’s name, where her mom worked, etc…She knew her colors and shapes. She recognized the alphabet letters and numbers to 1000. Out of sequence. Okay, I might have exaggerated the numbers a little bit. I was not expecting her teacher to tell me my daughter was having trouble recognizing her farm animal sounds.

I smiled politely and said in my pearl-wearing, sweet tea drinking best southern drawl, “Oh my goodness! Well, we’ll work on that tonight.”

I left that elementary school seething. How dare that teacher say my child couldn’t recognize an oink from a moo and the animal it went with. My child. She knew her farm animal sounds as well as she knew her numbers. We had a See-N-Say at home.

A few days later, I was driving home from somewhere with my daughter strapped into her booster in the back seat. We passed a couple of farms along the way and I spotted some horses grazing in a pasture. I seized the teaching moment, or at least the moment to prove the teacher wrong, and said, “Look, Nina––what does the horsey say?”

My daughter happily waved to the horses and said a big ‘ol “Mooooo.”

Flash forward a few years and my now married daughter had her own baby. I had offered to babysit one day while Nina had to work and she was going to drop him off at my house on her way. All is fine until about 5:30 in the morning and I get that phone call no parent wants to get at that hour. I spring up in bed and grab the phone and Nina’s on the other line, crying, screaming, nearly hysterical and she shouts, “Mom, I had a wreck!”

My heart racing, I jump out of bed and quickly get dressed with the phone in the crook of shoulder and neck. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she cries.

“What about the baby?”

“He’s fine, too.” More sniffles and gasps for breath, then, “We’re both ok but I think the cow’s dead.”

It took me a minute. I bit my tongue. I would not ask her if she was sure it was a cow.

I asked her where she was and told her that her brother and I would be there in a minute. We got to her about the same time the Highway Patrol did. In her defense, she was not speeding. It was still dark outside, rainy and cold and she was on a curvy, rural road and we don’t have street lights on rural roads around here. It turns out that one of the local farmer’s fence had fallen into disrepair and the bovine trekked across the street to greener pastures.

Except it wasn’t just one cow. It was a HERD of cows. A herd. A follow-the-leader line of cows crossing the road on a rainy, dark morning.

After she gave her report to the trooper, she turned to me, still crying, and said, “It was awful, momma. Cows were flying through the air like bowling pins.”

The trooper walked away at that point. I suspect he might have been laughing.

The Unpackables

/in /by

By Barbara J Eikmeier

I was prepping a sheet pan for a dinner of oven roasted veggies when I ran out of non-stick spray. Shaking the container I didn’t hear or feel even a drop sloshing around in the can. In 38 years of marriage, I’ve rarely emptied a can of Pam. It isn’t that I don’t use it often, and it isn’t that the spray nozzle is notorious for breaking before it’s empty, although that has happened. It’s more about the amount in the can. It’s too much to use up in 2 years.

As a military family we moved often. When the crew came to pack our household goods and load the moving truck, they’d give us a list of things they wouldn’t pack. In the end there was a small cluster of bottles and cans left on the kitchen counter: Pam, vegetable oil, and Worcestershire sauce. Sometimes there was an opened bottle of tequila or whiskey among the unpackables. Hair spray and shaving cream were left in the bathroom. Charcoal lighter and briquettes were left on the patio. Sometimes we’d use the briquettes and throw some hot dogs on the grill to feed the movers. When they were gone, often after sunset, we would toast farewell to our former home with a margarita, or when lacking margarita mix, a shot of tequila, or when lacking a glass, we’d just pass the bottle. If our neighbors weren’t also moving (with their own box of unpackables to deal with) we would gift the last of our liquids to them. It is possible that the same bottle of Worcestershire sauce has been passed from house to house in the same neighborhood for many years. Maybe I should write a story from the Worcestershire bottle’s point of view! It could be my version of the Traveling Pants story!

In 2008 my husband retired from the Army. We haven’t moved since and recently celebrated 14 years in the same house where last winter I actually emptied a bottle of Worcestershire sauce – until then I didn’t know that it gets kind of icky near the bottom of the bottle. There were other unexpected things I learned when I stopped moving: Such as the need to wash curtains and clean the carpet every now and then.  And after a lifetime of absentee ballots I’ve been delighted to learn that the volunteers at my local polling station know me by name.

In a writing workshop an instructor taught a technique of zooming in on a small detail, then zooming back out to see what you can write about the detail.

While changing from a nomadic lifestyle to living in one place my perspective continues shifting – even 14 years later! As I’m zooming in, then zooming back out I notice small things in my environment – like the magnolia tree doesn’t bloom at the exact same time every year, and perennial flowers take years to get perfect – military wives prefer annuals because we don’t stay in one place long enough to see perennials mature. And an empty can of Pam doesn’t make any noise when you shake it.

In my writing I’m continuously working on character and point of view. Zooming in helps. If your character is moving, what’s left on their counter? What do the unpackables reveal about your character?

Barbara J. Eikmeier is a quilter, writer, student of quilt history, and lover of small-town America. Raised on a dairy farm in California, she enjoys placing her characters in rural communities.