book cover woman crossing london bridge at night

Awards Eligibility – The Wharf Rat Guild

I’ve never done this before, but what the heck?

I published The Wharf Rat Guild just last month, so not many people will have read it. Still, it made its way into the world in spite of COVID, so I am proud of it. It’s historically accurate, mostly, so I think of it as historical fantasy.

I enjoyed writing it, I like the characters, it kept me sane and on the balance beam of writing, and I hope it brings pleasure to someone else.

If y’all want to give me an award for not giving up, I will gratefully accept, and name all the writers who have helped get me through the past year and to this point, living and dead.

There, that’s my awards post.

The grey heron has returned

The grey heron is back, on the crest of the hill, just after the rain. This makes me so happy, as though the world was forgiving our gas-guzzling stupidity, just a tiny bit.

I know a wildlife biologist would explain it’s because the rain brings out what they like to eat.

And I know rain is the important factor. I haven’t seen one since the last time it rained. Welcome back, pointy-beaked friend, who eats unfortunate gophers. On the other hand, the rain finally returning feels like forgiveness too, so possibly both are correct.

Is it too early for the frogs to return after the apocalyptic drought? I don’t hear them in the creek yet.

“Is that your turkey?”

Friends, a turkey story for you.

I had to drive quite a ways from where I live to find a vaccination site (perfectly legit, offered by my health provider) and since the appointment time was near lunchtime, I brought my lunch and sat in the parking lot, happily eating it.

Picture 2 acres of asphalt in a corporate office park, near major freeways, a parking lot so big that Amazon stages its delivery vans there and you can watch the drivers park and change into their uniforms (I didn’t even know they had uniforms).

So I am happily munching, with plenty of time before my appointment, when I notice movement in my side mirror, and I glance that way.

Then I glance back, thinking I am imagining things. A very striking black woman, in a candy cane striped red and white wig, white stockings, red shoes, purple dress, red walker, is chasing a turkey around a bright red SUV.

Two things occur to me.

One: the turkey is one of those who attack their reflection in the hub cabs of SUVs (it has to be a large vehicle apparently) assuming it is another male intruding into their territory. But that’s the Toms, and I thought this turkey was female.

Two: This woman and this turkey are very good friends.

I cannot help myself. I open my door and yell, “Is that your turkey?”

“Yes, but he’s running away from me!” She’s laughing. She’s having fun chasing the turkey, not afraid of it at all.

I cannot tell if the turkey is laughing.

I deeply regret that they disappeared before I was able to snap a photo. I turned away to prevent my lunch from sliding into the footwell, but I am firmly convinced the turkey was coaxed into the shiny red SUV.

I packed up my lunch with the feeling that I was not living the life I could be living. I could be wearing a wig that looks edible, a purple dress, and be laughing as I drive my turkey around town in my ruby SUV.

I got in line 5 minutes early, got the jab, sat in the “are you going to die?” waiting room for the required time, and then started the drive home.

Feeling much cheered by the encounter.

A Local Mystery

birdhouse on the back of a stop sign quail mother and fledgling with birdhouse on a stop sign A birdhouse that looks like Dr. Who's Tardis

Who has been adding these wonderful birdhouses and sculptures to our local stop signs?

The main reason I live in this tiny community is because I love seeing wild animals, especially right now, as the spring migrations begin and the red tailed hawks come through.

On my daily walks I see turkey vultures, a blue heron, turkeys, rabbits, quail, falcons, crows, and the odd coyote, but lately a strange new wildlife has been appearing on our stop signs.

So far, I’ve seen elaborate birdhouses, and sculptures of a quail mother and her fledglings, as well a flock of geese (hmm).

Just recently, Dr. Who’s Tardis appeared. Apparently we are now signaling that our community is welcoming the Doctor with open arms.

Whoever the mystery person is, they’re making my neighborhood a much happier, more whimsical place.

Thank you, mystery person!

Thank you, mystery librarian

I discovered recently that my book, which is available to libraries as an ebook through Overdrive, is now part of the collection at Oakland (CA) public library. This makes me so happy. I have been a patron of the OPL libraries for most of my adult life. Also, for reasons I don’t fully understand, it seems to be having a positive effect on sales.

So thank you, anonymous librarian who added me to the collection! Maybe I met you at a conference and don’t remember. Drop me a note if you see this so I can aim my gratitude to the right person.

I also love bringing my used books to the Bookmark Bookstore, run by Friends of the Oakland Public Library, because I know they will find good homes, AND that those sorting through them will recognize good stuff to add to the collection (not always a sure thing.) You can contact the Bookmark Bookstore at 510-444-0473 or visit them at www.fopl.org. Donations support library collections!

I first moved to Oakland when I was an UG at Bezerkeley, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. I’ve lived there off and on, but always seem to return. I love Lake Merritt, and the amazing wildlife, human and animal, that hangs out there.

Did you know Lake Merritt is the oldest wildlife refuge in California (1869)? Amazing birds. And bonsai garden. And a sensory garden, And a Japanese garden. And a palm garden. And gondolas. And…geese.

So yes, I am familiar with the less savory attributes of geese, dear readers.

Could my parents have been undercover spies?

This is going to be a slight ramble.

There needs to be a special word, german or otherwise, for that sensation when something triggers a vague memory from the past. This usually happens to me in regard to my childhood, which is separate geographically, as well as in time, from the rest of my life.

Last night the local PBS channel showed a documentary on Jens Jensen, the founder of landscape architecture in this country (okay, I guess there was Olmsted, too). I didn’t recognize the name, although as the documentary went on, I kept thinking — “Hey, I’ve been there!” I watched the whole thing, amazed I’d been ignorant of this man who’d designed so much of the landscape around me in childhood.
Jens Jensen documentary

It’s possible he’s responsible for the existence of the park where we did our “wilderness” and eco training in 6th grade. (For any Chicagoland people reading this, it was Camp Reinberg. Picture me in the rain with a compass trying to find my way back to camp with only a garbage bag with holes cut in it for a rain parka, with the monsoon rains sheeting down…)

Who knew? And I am sure I must’ve been in the Garfield Park conservatory (pictured above), only I have no clear memory of it, and I never had any luck asking my parents about my childhood. Unless they decide to spontaneously tell the story at some awkward social occasion.

Which is why I suspect them of having a secret life.
Bootleggers? Running guns to Canada? Working undercover for Interpol?

There were stories (and sometimes pictures) of places I have no memory of being. Some were cute (me posing as a lion at the Biltmore estate) some were just odd.

For example, I never learned anything more about this one:

“You were so taken with that parrot in the restaurant, do you remember?”

No.

“The owner said you were the smartest baby she’d ever seen.”

No Mom, I don’t remember. How old was I?

“You would’ve been about 2 or 3.”

And where was this?

“Louisiana.”

What the heck was I doing in Louisiana?
What were you doing in Louisiana?

“That’s none of your business.”

See what I mean?

Any question about what these 2 people were up to before they had kids got this response:

“That’s my life, not yours.”

“We’re entitled to have our own private lives, it has nothing to do with you.”

Nuh-uh.

Nobody else’s parents were secretive about their past life. Nobody on tv behaved that way. AND my Dad was always reading spy novels.

Suspicious, right?

Let us ponder what mischief might occur in Louisiana, even with a 2 year old in tow. Anything can happen during naps.

A ghost story for the dark of the year

The shortest day of the year, the Winter Solstice, is tomorrow. That makes it the perfect time to review a horror novel I read recently. The story climaxes at the dark of the year, when the forces of darkness overwhelm any trace of light in the arctic night.

Michelle Paver’s Dark Matter: A Ghost Story is an old-fashioned horror story, in the tradition of M.R. James, who in my book was the most frightening of all the British 19th-century horror writers.

I don’t want to give any spoilers away, but I found the twists and turns that built up the suspense quite satisfying.

An amateur arctic expedition journeys to the arctic circle to take scientific readings and right away we feel the echoes of failed expeditions looming over this one. But there’s another threat hinted at from the beginning. It won’t be just amateur planning, overconfidence or the hidden demons of the members of the expedition that will doom it to fail.

Hardened sailors fear the place the expedition will be based, and one finally comes out and explains that the place is haunted by something that happened there years ago. Of course stalwart British upper-class adventurers, intent on doing science, laugh at such notions.

The narrator, who is not upper class and has something to prove to the others, is left there alone by a series of accidents. We suspect that something terrible must happen to him, but the actual day by day accretion of fear, and the growing dark, maintain the suspense. Paver’s use of a sled dog as a pivotal character who adds to the terror, is wonderful, and in keeping with her other works that featured a knowledgeable depiction of wolf behavior.

That would be the younger YA series Chronicles of Ancient Darkness. They’re fast-paced and suspenseful, and I highly recommend them too, especially for reluctant readers.

Scare yourself with this winter’s tale of ghosts, solitude, and darkness.

If it’s not a book, is it really even a gift?

If you’d like to give a paperback copy of The Third Kind of Magic to as a gift, (do you know someone who’d love the story of a smart and independent girl?) I urge you to buy it from your local bookstore. Many of them have fast shipping.

It’s also available online from Kobo and B&N. All of these outlets get their copies from Ingram, a wholesaler who ships right away.

I am posting this so you can get the book in time for the holidays.

The paperback is available at your local bookseller

Why local bookstores?
Three reasons:

It’s important to support local stores so they’ll survive, especially bookstores which add so much to the community and our reading lives.
Browsing at a local bookstore makes you look infinitely cool, and demonstrates you are not becoming completely virtual. Besides you might find something wonderful (a gift for you, perhaps?)
Because the ‘Zon has just listed my book as being unavailable for 8 days. Just in time for holiday sales. Thanks, robot masters!

(Tip o’ the hat to Greedy Reads bookstore for the chalkboard image.)

Artists at work

NYRB is publishing translations of Tove Jansson’s writing that haven’t been available before in English, and we’re so lucky.

I loved the first memoir I read, The Summer Book, reflecting the memories of a child. Now I’ve read her adult memoir entitled Fair Play. The books are very different, written in differing styles, but they form parts of a while.

The first is a wonderful retelling of the feelings, images, and myths of childhood. The second is a matter-of-fact recounting of how two artists live and work together — and the give and take required to make that work.

“Fair Play” here means balancing needs, creating companionship without getting in each other’s way – and not using weaknesses against each other.

The stories illuminate the understanding, civility, silence, distance and patience between these two women, and the quirks that must be allowed for.

My favorite passage was the story of the chaos her partner creates when rearranging artwork on the walls and then the amazing change it makes when she’s finally completed her work and the juxtaposition of pieces changes their impact and meaning. The scenes set in a hotel in the USA while they traveled cross-country on a Greyhound bus were funny and interesting too, rather like one’s own travel journals, strange and interesting things happen, but is it a story? Does it round itself off? Perhaps it’s simply an anecdote to retell years later.

The tension of trying to be there for your partner, while focusing on your art wholeheartedly, touched and inspired me.

Brontë action figures! You know you want them

In honor of the bio-flick on tonight on the local PBS station – all the Brontës — all of them! I bring you one of my all time favorite U-Toob videos.
For that Gothic Transformer kind of mood.

Follow up 9/23: I watched the film and it was a horrible disappointment. I wasn’t too surprised, considering the anti-feminist writer they thought suitable for the job (she did the *Amazing Mrs. Pritchard* which set back women in politics by about 50 years, and no, it wasn’t even funny.). Amazing how they always choose the woman who won’t threaten patriarchal assumptions too much (“of course the brother is more important”).

Instead of examining how the shared imaginative lives of all the Brontë children created a unique imaginative and literary education, the film fed us scene after scene of Branwell’s self-destruction, unending and boring stupors and rages, once again relegating the 3 most astonishing British writers of the 19th-Century to secondary characters in the story of their feckless brother. Even now.

Honestly, the action figure clip is a better introduction to their writing.