Dawn Like Thunder

The sky was dramatic this morning. It was actually even more dramatic when I first sat up and looked out the window. But by the time I'd grabbed my camera and run upstairs in my nightgown for a better shot, it had already lost some of its glory.

The dark gray haze to the left is the fog rising from the river. And not ten minutes later, by the time I'd pulled on some clothes and was on the front porch on my way to fill a bird feeder, that fog was rolling up our holler. It envelops the house, makes the temperature drop a bit, but then, as the sun rises, burns off, leaving us today with a Carolina blue sky.

I don't know which I've taken more pictures of -- our dogs and cats or the eastern view. Both are always changing -- always delightful.

The digital camera is maybe my favorite piece of technology after the computer. I got my little camera five or six years ago -- and, oh! the sheer joy of taking huge numbers of pictures without having to pay to have them developed! The camera is incredibly easy to use (I have an Instamatic/point-and shoot mentality) and so small that it rides around in my pocket much of the time.

Viewing the photos on the computer is great too -- blow 'em up to check all those little details; use the free program for simple fixes like cropping or straightening. I admit I kinda lust after Photoshop which I got to play with it a few times. I had great fun making pictures of flower petals all twisty or altering shots of William the dog with a fish-eye lens effect, but it's an expensive piece of software for someone's who's just fooling around. (It was this brief experience with photo alteration that gave me the idea for some of the so-called Art that Elizabeth and Phillip see on the Studio Stroll in Art's Blood.)

Unfortunately, this is my least favorite time of year for pictures. In the absence of snow, the landscape is mostly gray and brown and muddy. I'm reduced to shooting the potted primroses on the dining table. But come spring my trusty digital camera and I will be ready!

Flowers for You All

"May God place a flower on your head!" as the Irish say!

This is a cyber-posy for all of you who share your stories with me, inspiring me, urging me on, adding one more tiny idea that may just blossom into a part of Elizabeth's (or Miss Birdie's) world.

Great thanks to Nancy M! She's offered to share the diaries kept by her maiden aunts who lived near our farm -- diaries that go from the 20's through the 60's and tell of daily life -- just what I need for Birdie's book!

To Pat D. who told me about her Aunt Omie and told me of her ties to our area.

To Tammy P. who has shared so many wonderful stories about her farm and her family. I've just found that, without realizing it, I had appropriated her farm's name to give to one of Miss Birdie's sisters -- Fairlight. Isn't that a lovely name for a girl?

To Kathy H. who told me a story that is going to be a major part of Birdie's book; to Tom and Karol who are helping me with details about Detroit; to Pat F. who has stories I'm eager to hear; to Pat W. and the other Pat W. and Elaine S. and Chick S. and Deb A. - but this is hopeless; there are so many of you whose emails brighten my days and give me things to think about and write about -- I'd be here all night listing everyone. Please know how much your words mean to me!

And a big bouquet to all of you!

A Warning

I used to dream vividly almost every night but now that I'm writing, it's only occasionally. I guess my imagination gets enough exercise when I'm awake. But every once in a while, a real doozy shows up -- like this one, which I turned into a kind of poem.



They lead me down the white glare of beach
To a low chair where an ancient gnome sits in the sun.
I kneel before him in the burning sand,
Struggling to fit transparent green plastic sandals
Onto his soft pink feet.
That's Nietzche, someone tells me,
You got to watch him for he's bad to shoplift.




If there's a "deeper meaning" to this little slice of surrealism, I don't want to know about it.

Blogging for Patry

Sisters in Crime is an organization dedicated to promoting the careers of women writing crime fiction. They take the sisterhood thing seriously. I recently received the following request from them and, while I don't know Patry or her book, I was moved by her situation and by the strength and beauty of the writing in her blog.


"Fellow author, Patry Francis, was recently diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer and is in a hospital in Mass. I strongly urge everyone to read Patry's blog, "Simply Wait"( http://simplywait.blogspot.com/ ) where she chronicles this difficult journey with elegance,poise, courage and humor. A "Blog Day" is being organized on her behalf. I know several SINC chapters have already joined in but here's the info on how everyone can help. Patry Francis is a talented author and lovely person whose debut suspense novel THE LIAR'S DIARY came out last spring in hardcover from Dutton. The trade paper release is January 29th,but a few weeks ago, Patry was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer. She's had several surgeries, and her prognosis is good, but given that Patry won't have much energy for promoting, a number of bloggers are banding together to do it for her.' THE LIAR'S DIARY blog day' is going to be held January 29th. Folks who wish to participate are asked to mention the book on their blog that day and link to Patry's website ( www.patryfrancis.com ) and the book's purchase page on Amazon, Bloggers are also asked to encourage their readers to buy one/buy one for a friend between January 29th and Feb 1."


Why between those dates? I guess it's in hopes of giving the book a bump in the ratings -- a nice spot of encouragement for someone at a low point.

Were You Raised in A Barn?

My older boy is able to answer that question affirmatively, if not entirely accurately. He did live with us in this barn for three summers -- the last summer stretching till the end of October.

The first summer was 1973. Our son was not quite one, not quite walking. We had just bought our farm and were camping out in the upper part of the barn, getting to know the place and our neighbors. The following summer my husband and a friend were building our house -- getting it to the 'dried in' stage before we had to return to our teaching jobs in Florida. And the third summer, we were back with all our belongings and various helpful friends and family, making the big push to finish the house before cold weather.


Unfortunately, it began to get cold toward the end of October and when we awoke one morniong to find snow on our sleeping bags, we moved into the unfinished house where we at least had a wood stove. What bliss!

It was a wonderful experience though, living like in the barn -- cooking on a Coleman stove, bathing in the branch or in a washtub, the big entertainment at night watching the lightning bugs. When we moved to the house we actually said that we should move back to the barn every summer -- but of course we didn't.

I made use of the experience in Old Wounds -- the barn that Elizabeth's family is living in is based on our barn and that dark rectangle there on the front is a shutter which, when pushed up is the window Rosie sat at to watch Miss Birdie and Cletus come up the road.

And my older son has an excuse for all time for any less than polite behavior he may commit.

The Kindness of Margaret Maron

Whoopee!!! I just received a wonderful cover quote for In A Dark Season.

Margaret Maron is past president of Mystery Writers of America and also of Sisters in Crime. More importantly, she's a native North Carolinian and the author of the North Carolina based Judge Deborah Knott mysteries. I've long admired this series, from the first book -- Bootlegger's Daughter, which won all four major mystery awards when it was released -- to the latest, Hard Row, the thirteenth in the series. Margaret knows whereof she speaks when it comes to North Carolina; that's what makes her commendation of my new book so sweet.

******Vicki Lane writes of Appalachia as if she’d been driving up our hills and through our hollows her whole life. In a Dark Season richly blends past and present into a suspenseful tale of love and lust. In showing us how memory lingers like a smoky mist across the mountains, Lane reminds us again that the past never completely dies. ***************

Asking a busy writer (and in Margaret's case, a writer I've only met briefly) to take the time to read an Advance Reading Copy with all its typos and uncorrected errors is painful in the extreme -- but just part of the unending business of getting a book noticed. When my first Elizabeth Goodweather book came out, Sharyn McCrumb, another of my favorite authors, very kindly gave me a blurb and I don't know how many people have told me that seeing her favorable comment on the cover was what convinced them to pick up this book by an unknown author. So I grit my teeth and write a letter or an email and once again, rely on the kindness of (comparative) strangers. Fortunately, mystery writers seem to be an extremely generous and supportive community.

I'm eagerly looking forward to seeing the book cover when it comes out on May 20 -- with a lovely quote from a writer I deeply admire -- Margaret Maron.

http://www.amazon.com/Hard-Row-Margaret-Maron/dp/0446582433/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1201473037&sr=1-1

Birthdays

My younger son was born in '78 and I can't escape the fact that he's turning thirty. As I'm cleaning house and getting ready to prepare a birthday dinner, I'm remembering him as the beautiful little baby who was the cause of at least three pregnancies in my group of friends.

Wait! I can explain. But I have to tell you this story.

My husband was at the hardware store about a year after this child's birth. One of our acquaintances, an imposing figure of a man, approached and loomed over him. "My wife's pregnant and it's your fault," he said, pointing a menacing finger.

My husband was speechless, his mind racing furiously. He certainly had never . . . . Then the other fellow grinned. "That baby you all had was so damn cute, she decided she just had to have another one." As time went on, two more friends told me the same thing.

He was cute. As was his older brother. And now they're handsome. And I am the luckiest of mothers in that they've both chosen to live on our farm.

Looking Old

One of my favorite emails about my books was from a woman who said, "Elizabeth makes me want to quit dyeing my hair and be who I am."

Back in high school I had dyed hair-- my mother's attempt to make me more glamorous -- just to 'brighten up' my rather ordinary dark brown hair. Then I got into it -- in college I was various shades of strawberry blonde; when I got married, I could be fairly, if somewhat romantically, described as 'raven-tressed.' Then I got over it. What had been fun became tedious. Touching up roots was a real drag. So I got back in touch with my inner brown-haired girl just in time to watch her begin to go gray. (We gray earlier in my family -- except for my mother who became ash blonde.)


The encroaching white hairs never bothered me -- and for quite a while they were limited to a streak or two at my temples. By the time I first heard someone describe my hair as salt-and-pepper, I was the mother of a toddler and teaching full time with not a spare minute to be looking in mirrors. And then I was moving to a farm and milking a cow twice a day and having another baby and raising a garden and still not looking in mirrors. Somehow, by the time I'd taught both sons to drive on our narrow, winding, guardrailless mountain roads, my hair'd become mostly white. Imagine that!

Years ago a visiting friend told me that she'd like to quit dyeing her hair but in her job, she needed to look young. This puzzled me -- but I'd been out of the work force so long that I didn't argue. Now today, I read this article in the NYT about a best-seller How Not to Look Old -- aimed at women over 40 worried about "professional obsolescence and economic vulnerability."

Oy! Why should looking young matter to a professional (unless you're in show biz or a hooker, maybe). Shouldn't it be about how well you do the job; not whether you still look like you're capable of bearing children? And why is it more acceptable for men to age?

Oh dear, this could turn into a rant. But it's a conversation Elizabeth and her sister Gloria are slated to have in book six -- just you wait!

Here's the link to the NYT article -- and the comments are worth reading too, especially number ten, from the man at Attica State Correctional Facility.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/24/fashion/24skin.html?em&ex=1201410000&en=06b6899885b3f203&ei=5087%0A

Waiting for Birdseed

We were surprised by several inches of snow today and as usual birds lined up on the crabapple tree to wait turns at our three feeders. We go through almost a hundred pounds of sunflower seeds a month, year round, not to mention a fair amount of thistle seed for the finches. Filling the birdfeeders is the first thing I do every morning -- even before coffee. But what a reward! Mourning doves, juncos, sparrows, nuthatches, chickadees, blue jays, goldfinches, purple finches, titmice, wrens, and cardinals are our most enthusiastic customers at this time of year. A few days ago there were fifteen male cardinals in this tree at one time. They're usually very territorial birds, to the extent of fighting their own reflections in the side mirrors of our parked vehicles. But snow and hunger seem to call for a truce.

The occasional crow scavenges around the base of one birdfeeder, as well as, on warmer days, squirrels, chipmunks, and field mice. There are thrashers and woodpeckers too -- the red-bellied and the downy. And yesterday a huge Pileated Woodpecker took over one feeder -- no other bird came near as he flared his bright red crest and brandished his long beak. What a dramatic bird! When at last he flew off, it made me think of a pterodactyl. No wonder he and his possibly extinct cousin, the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, have both been called the "Lord God Almighty" bird. When you hear the clatter of strong wings and the raucous laughing call, or see the damage that big beak can do to a dead tree -- or the side of your wooden house, for that matter -- you can only shake your head and say, "Lord God Almighty, what a bird!"

The Gateway

The internet is an amazing gateway to . . . well, almost everywhere. And everywhen, as well. I'm at work now on my book for 2009 -- what I think of as Miss Birdie's book even though it's tentatively titled The Day of Small Things. I'm trying to summon up the girlhood appearance of Aunt Belvy -- who was in her eighties when I wrote about her in Signs in the Blood -- so I Google 1930 - hairstyles - clothing.

And hey, presto, there it is! The bob, the Buster Brown cut -- just like pictures of my mother when she was a girl. I have the look I needed to write the character.

For this book I'm going to need to know about logging in the twenties, moonshine (called 'blockade' around here) in the thirties, rationing in the forties -- and for all of these, Google is my friend. I have lots of reference books on this area and I read them to lay down a base of knowledge. But for the odd question that pops up while I'm in mid-chapter --What, exactly, do brogans look like? -- the answer is literally at my fingertips.

While I'm on the subject, here's a link to the website of a friend and neighbor of mine.

www.robamberg.com

Rob's a well known documentary photographer who's spent about thirty years photographing the people and places of our county -- the inspiration for Elizabeth's Marshall County. (There's even a picture of and interview with Kathy, the woman who's the inspiration for Sallie Kate, Elizabeth's realtor friend.)

It's an amazing tool, the Internet. From Gypsy cobs and caravans, mountain curs and Cherokee magic to Polari and palmistry -- the only danger is in finding myself following link after interesting link till I've forgotten my original question.

The Kindness of Strangers

Like Tennesse Williams' Blanche DuBois, "I have always relied on the kindness of strangers." So when my car door accidentally shut and locked this morning at the recycling center, leaving me on the outside and my keys, cell phone, and wallet with spare key and AAA card on the inside, I looked around for help. The man who guards the dumpsters was in his little building and I sought him out. He had no phone, but did have a CB radio and and offered to call the police to get someone to bring a Slim Jim -- that flat metal thingie they can slide between the window and the door to open the lock. I wasn't sure; I thought I remembered from the last time this happened (maybe seven years ago, at a different location) that the locksmith who came said that the Slim Jims could damage these newer electronic locks.

My husband has a spare key to the car -- but he was at work in his woodworking shop back at the farm -- no phone. Both my sons live a stone's throw from the shop and one works at home -- all I needed was to call and ask whichever one I got to go explain to his father that his mother had done a really dumb thing and needed some help -- in the form of the spare key. So, accosting a man who was dumping his garbage, I explained my situation and asked to borrow his cell. No problem; glad to be of help. Unfortunately, all I got were answering machines -- on which I left weird semi-coherent messages. Meanwhile, another man was eyeballing my car door -- which, though locked, had not closed tight. "I can get in here," he told me, wiggling his fingers in the crack. "I just need a coat hanger." Luckily, this being the dump and recycling center, a coat hanger was available.

A little fiddling, a little re-shaping of the coat hanger to provide a loop at the end, and he'd done it! I asked what I owed him (the standard thing to say around here) and he said, "You don't owe me a thing (the standard response). Then he narrowed his eyes. "You're not from here, are you?" he asked. I admitted the truth -- I'm one of those damn Florida people; I've only lived here thirty-two years.

We had a great conversation -- he grew up here but lived in Louisville for many years. Now he's retired, back living on the old home place, and raising mushrooms. When I told him we had a few shitake logs and my husband had just ordered spawn for oyster and chicken of the woods mushrooms, he gave me his card and invited us to come see his farm. Turns out he knows my web mistress, who also grows shitakes commercially, and, what's more, he's her husband's second cousin. We had just finished our chat when a pickup truck from the fire department arrived, in answer to the dumpster guardian's call. I waved my thanks from inside my car where I was leaving fresh messages on my sons' phones, telling them that I'd been rescued.

What started as a major hassle and waste of time, turned into a really pleasant experience -- the rewards of life in a small county. And many thanks, Mr. Treadway, we'll be over to see the mushrooms soon!

A Packrat's Reward

"Where do you get your ideas?" is a question every writer hears. My usual boring answer is "Everywhere" but today I have a very specific example.

Last night, in tidying up my workroom -- that packrat's trove of assorted stuff -- I came across some old books Dessie Wilson gave me back in 1975, our first year in the mountains. There were several old hymnals and a textbook -Everyday Science -- inscribed with Dessie's maiden name and the date 1922. Inside the book were the things you see in the picture.

I only saw Dessie twice -- she was the friend of a friend -- and in '75, elderly and ailing, she and her husband Walter moved from their lifetime home to the middle of the state where a son was going to take care of them. Nonetheless Dessie's one of the prototypes for many of the older women in my books. And now I have a little glimpse into her earlier life (mouse over the photo and left click to read it yourself) -- she ordered chicks from Sears Roebuck in '45, in '37 she was considering a wrought iron range from St. Louis, there's a post card from a brother-in law in '45 mentioning ration books -"a shoe stamp.' And the fact that he sent a post card, when they were both living in the same area, reminds me that telephones were rare.

But the best part is the inscription on a blank page near the front of the book. In faded ink and in a different handwriting than Dessie used for her name, it reads: My life is all I have to give you My days on earth may be but few. I hope to spend them all with you. Only, guess who? And here, penciled in Dessie's hand is the word Walter. Then the inscription continues: When in some far and distand land You see the writting of my hand Altho my face you see no more Meet me at Heaven's door.

Do you think that some of this might just find its way into my work in progress, the book about Miss Birdie? I'd say it's a safe bet.

And even more intriguing is a penciled sentence on another page: There is all ways some body ready to point a finger of scorn at me. Guess who.

Oh, boy, I can't wait to use this stuff!

A Room of One's Own

At the library in Albemarle the other night, someone asked about my 'writing room' and I had to admit that it probably wasn't what she imagined. If you want to see a serious 'writing room,' follow this link to see Sue Grafton's home office --

http://suegrafton.com/suegrafton/office.htm

Nice, huh? Of course, she's sold a gazillion books and she's earned that space.

What I have is more of a writing corner: a comfy chair and ottoman for me and my laptop in the corner of an upstairs room that's also home to my cutting table, fabric collection, sewing machine, quilting books, crafts supplies, easel and paints, finished and half-finished canvases, painting and art books, research books, my grandmother's treadle sewing machine, dried gourds -- some decorated, some not, old favorite books, gift wrapping supplies and an embarrassing amount of junk that I can't make myself throw away (the wasp nest and shed snake skins aren't junk; I consider them as something between decoration and talismans.)

Mexican votive candles, a dog's skull, pottery from Nicaragua, postcards and gourds, a rock from Scotland, shells from Cape Lookout and Apalachicola, white deer bones, a few houseplants, a soapstone frog, a porcelain dog I've had since childhood, a sepia-toned photo of the House of David ball team, a poster of the Lady of Shallot, lots of old mirrors, and a bumper sticker that says "Member of the Ladies Sewing Circle and Terrorist Society" -- these are a few of my favorite things.