Seems like…

just about the only time I write blogs anymore is when I’m up at the cabin.

Except for when I’m committing acts of shameless self-promotion, of course.

This morning is no exception. I woke to a sunrise with a forest fire palate of color, red and orange flame shot through with smoky gray –

yeah, I know. Morning here brings out the maudlin poet in me.   

I’ve come up here with the supposed intention of working on my new book. I wrote novel first, but then erased it. Somehow calling something I’m writing a novel feels pretentious. I say supposed intention because I’ve brought the manuscript up here the last three times I’ve visited and have yet to work on it.

I’m only fooling myself. 

There’s no one else to fool, and even I don’t really believe myself anymore. 

Which is kind of sad, if you think about it. Or possibly it’s just realistic. In any case, the weather has been unusually warm and the sun is out, as it has been for the last couple of my visits. I can’t possibly be expected to work under these conditions.

Absolutely honest truth?  I’m stuck. This book is so tantalizingly close to completion. Most of the corrections at this point are minor ones, places where there are a few to many words, or not quite enough. Mostly places that need expounding upon. I’m a bit of a poet when I write fiction. I tend to use as few words as possible, so that my first drafts often resemble other people’s outlines. Then I have to go back and flesh out the bones. That’s writer talk. It sounds much classier than having to say now I have to go back and describe Sally’s dress. (Or for those of you who have heard me expound upon Lynn Emanuel’s essay, I have to get Raul to the elevator.)

Finished doesn’t mean ready for the printer, of course. In this case it means ready enough to try and find an agent with it. I’ve been lucky up until this point and haven’t really needed to find an agent. Although in at least one case I probably would’ve been better off with an agent then with a publisher who took my book. Sour grapes.

The woods here are full of wild grapes. Some of the older vines are literally as thick around as my wrist. Sometimes you’ll find a tree with a vine has grown into the trunk, winding its way up from the forest floor into the branches –

But I digress.

I’m stuck because I can’t find the right voice for one of my characters. I think I know what she feels and how she acts and why she does the things she does but I can’t get the words right. There’s a couple of factors in the book that make this more difficult. This character’s not in any dialogue, which is where you can use abbreviations and spellings and made-up words that just don’t make a lot of sense on the page otherwise.

She’s not the main character, but she’s vital to the book. So I’ve got to get this right. It’s important enough that when I try to start in on it now, several months after I sent the book to my first readers, and got the same comments about her voice from all of them, I choke. I read tons of books and listen to tons of people and I think I’ve got it, but each time I try it just isn’t right yet.

I not only have to get Raul to the elevator, I have to give him a voice. Preferably one that will make you want to get on the elevator with him, and ride the whole way up. Or down.

I took a break to wander around the internet. I belong to a great page on Facebook where you can buy and sell anything in the county, from baby clothes to a `92 Mazda.

I wonder if I could buy a teenage girl’s voice there?

I bet I could. And it would be authentic as hell.

As I may have reminded you before . . .

I'm going to be doing several readings and workshops with elementary schools at the Virginia Festival of the Book  http://vabook.org/ in a few weeks. It's a crafty scheme to get Washed Up in the Waves in front of new audiences. because that's what authors do. We try and get people to read our books. 

I know, crazy, huh? I'll bet you thought we just sat in our houses (or offices or studios or garrets or curled up in bed in our pajamas) and wrote books.

You probably also thought beautiful lucid prose and/or poetry flowed out of us without effort,winging its way from brain to page with nary a correction or afterthought.

I have some bad new for you  about the tooth fairy.

My point, (and I occasionally do have them) is that a book needs publicity. More than that, it needs good publicity. And while not all of you dear gentle readers of mine happen to be book reviews for the NYT or the Guardian or even the local Supermarket Shopper rag, most of you have fingers. At least two, which is all I type with.

And here's the odd thing about the dark interwebnet- the more times your name or the name of your book pops up on it, the more often people will then be able to find you. Or something like that. My brilliant nephew attempted to explain this to me when he built my beautiful new website and embedded all sorts of mystical magical potions into the site. 

But how can I help, you may ask?

Well, I am sure of few things in life. But I do know that many more than 13 of you have read Washed Up in the Waves. I know this because I have dark mystical powers (and also the sales figures from my publisher).  

Maybe not all who have purchased have read. Although, come on, people, it's 28 pages and half of them are pictures.

So do help me out here. Click on https://www.amazon.com/Washed-Up-Waves-Margo-Solod/dp/0983556539/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1488810856&sr=8-1&keywords=margo+solod

You don't have to actually write a review. Just gimme some stars.

Of course if you want to write some thing like "A heartbreaking work of magnificent brilliance," or "I laughed, I cried, I went out into the multitudes and did good works,"
that'd be ok too.
Or you could just copy and paste the above.

xxoo
me

p.s. If you are on Goodreads please feel free to star me there too. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29662775-washed-up-in-the-waves?ac=1&from_search=true
And we thank you in advance for your support.

Memory . . .

Is an odd duck. 

In my 30’s I traveled a great deal, crossing the country numerous times. Always alone or with my shepherd mix Jessethedog, (to distinguish her from Jessie the girl or Jesse the boy, naturally) I drove the back roads, farm roads and ranch roads of America looking for the unusual and the absurd. Sometimes just looking.

To harken back to ducks for a moment, my first car, a red Datsun B-210, had a line of duck decals on the bumper. I placed them there so I could truthfully say that there was one place I had my ducks in a row. That car also had an Anderson for president bumper sticker. But I digress-

One of my early trips involved a southerly route, for no better reason than I wanted to visit Joshua Tree National Monument. A fine reason in and of itself, I felt, and after admiring both the trees and my favorite part, a series of signs at the entrance to the park- YOU ARE NOW ENTERING JOSHUA TREE NATIONAL FOREST, then immediately afterward- JOSHUA TREE NATIONAL FOREST, and literally five feet after that, a large sign with an arrow pointing to the only type of vegetation visible for miles,

 -> JOSHUA TREES.

Astoundingly enough, that was another digression. You see, the more I type, in an odd duckish way (is duckish a word? And what is an odd duck anyway?) the more I remember other things. But . . .

To get to the point, (Oh, please, Margo, get to the point!) after getting my fill of the wondrous twisted alien creatures that are Joshua trees I decided it only made sense to continue my southerly route by heading towards and through Death Valley.

After all, it was winter, and I had a jug of water. I also had almost bald tires and an odd clattering noise coming from somewhere in the chassis but fortunately that was before cell phones. plus I’d been camping the last few nights so hadn't heard a weather report and had no way of knowing this was a freakishly hot week with strong winds. 

Don’t worry. I did not break down and die a horrible death in the desert. That’s yet another story. Years later.

I was, however, engulfed in clouds of borax whipped from the old mines by sirocco winds, thick dust that rapidly overtaxed my air conditioning filter. A lucky twist of fate as without the need to wait out the blowing clouds it’s unlikely I’d have ventured into the tiny town of Death Valley Junction.

Although once there, I couldn’t pass up the chance to visit the Amargosa Opera House.  If only because this was a town far too small and quiet to have a movie theater, let alone an Opera House.  Basically pre-Internet, I had no way to Google any information, so had to explore on my own, with my actual feet and my actual eyes.

Thank heaven for clouds of borax. 

There was no performance  at the opera house that day, but the lobby door was open.  I could just glimpse the lavish, faded interior from a bygone era and the mural filled auditorium walls. It looked as if a bizarre, colorful audience had been painted in, patiently waiting for something to happen. I wished I could join them, and almost stayed around. But it was hot, and there was no place to camp. So the dog and I moved on, heading toward the bright lights of Vegas, or at least some place with a Ford dealership.

Several years later I happened upon a documentary about Marta Becket and realized what I'd seen, or almost seen.

I wrote a poem about the experience. I’ve unearthed and present it here. I made some corrections, as it was an early and not very good poem. (It’s still not a very good poem, but it’s better than the original. Trust me.)

         The Diva Of Death Valley Junction

You’re almost embarrassed for her,

this pretend prima in her own ghost town,

until with a grand gesture

she unveils her scrapbooks-

yellowed programs, curling 8x10's

herself,so much younger,

nearly famous.

Not a star, but

if she’d stayed in the City. . .

Look past her mask-like makeup,

flesh out the skeletal body

over which her best costume’s draped, and

you almost feel

you should remember her name.

So you keep watching,

a part of you

dances with her as the camera

follows her down the hall.

Pirouetting around a pile

of fallen plaster,

exposed water pipe for a barre,

she leads her audience

into the ancient, crumbling opera house

A Grand Entrance

onto her personal stage.

Twice daily she'll perform here

for passing tourists or alone,

and you'll think of her

each day at two o'clock,

dancing  for the bright murals

she has painted on three walls.

Her vision of the perfect audience:

nuns, conquistadors, her ex-husband

as the King of Spain.                        

The point of this whole story is that this memory was triggered by a sad news story this week. Marta Becket, the Diva of Death Valley Junction, died last month at the age of 92.
I wish I'd stayed around a day.

Find out more of the story at:

http://www.denverpost.com/2017/02/01/marta-becket-ballerina-mojave-desert-obit/

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marta_Becket

Big news . . .

Washed Up in the Waves has been selected for the Virginia Festival of the Book! http://vabook.org/

It’s not all the way super exciting in that I won’t be reading at one of the bookstore venues. So don’t rush to buy those plane tickets and make your hotel reservations. Save that for the seats to the Broadway musical which I am sure will come along any day now.  Admit it, I’m at least as singable as Dr. Seuss.

 Spell check informs me singable is not a word. Spell check has obviously not heard my morning songs to the dogs. I am every bit as singable as Sondheim.

But I digress.

I will be doing a minimum of four classroom visits over 2-3 days. Possibly more, and the book will be on the website and available at all venues in Charlottesville. Which will be lovely. I am also trying to get my publisher to take a table at the Saturday publishing venue in the Omni. Feel free to hound and harass them to do so. marinermedia.com

Of course he could also be persuaded by book sales. Apparently, (astoundingly enough) not all of you have purchased this book yet. Now, you may be thinking, “But Margo, I don’t have a small child 2-10 to give this book to.” Or even, “To whom to give this book,” because I know some of my friends are grammar control freaks.

And I will grant you, it is a pricy paperback to buy just because you adore me. Although that is certainly a fine reason in and of itself. (Yes, grammar check, I know that is a sentence fragment.  After all these years  of typing together,you don't know me well enough not to  bother pointing those out? I am deeply hurt, spell check)

But really, have you checked out the E-book price? 3.99! Less that a double skinny mochachino or whatever it is you drink with all the foam on top.  I see you, frothy drink buyers-

So go buy the book. If you have prime on amazon it’s practically free. Maybe it is free. I don’t usually buy my own E-books.

Buy the book. Send Margo to camp. 

Oh, wait. That’s a different campaign.

Anyway, go buy it. If you don’t like it tell me and I will refund the purchase price and send Vinny over to erase it from your mind.

We thank you for your support.

By the way, Calvin never did come through. Will trade books for venison.

I couldn’t make up my mind

What to call this blog, vacillating between “Calvin, if you are reading this” and “I hope next month is kinder to you.” Then I realized there’s not a chance in hell Calvin reads my blog, and for a few (very few, mind you, but a few) of my readers, November was just fine.

Plus, neither of these topics is really what the blog is about, at least it doesn’t seem so at this point. Although I freely admit I never know at this point where a blog will end up. Or how it will get to wherever it is going.

I am up at the cabin for a few days for the first time in too long. And it’s raining, a deep, heavy rain, also for the first time in too long. I’m not even unhappy about being kept mostly inside, as this rain is a godsend to firefighters across the southeast. We were not burning here, but across the mountain huge swaths of Amherst county blackened. Fires elsewhere in Virginia and North Carolina raged across tinder dry forests. And my beloved Smokey Mountains burned out of control Monday, devastating the towns that hold many of my fondest childhood memories. These towns grew exponentially in intervening years, and what was there on Sunday, I know, bore not the slightest resemblance to the small towns of my youth.

Now it bears no resemblance to anyone’s.

This rain may runnel the road, may force us to spend even more money and time smoothing and shaping, clearing ditches, making pretty for any potential buyer. Our mountain home is still on the market with no serious inquiries, something that both saddens me and makes me happy. We will have it at least though the spring, so I don’t have to say a final goodbye just yet. And yet, this drawn-out farewell takes its toll in more than money and time. It’s a slow wearing down in my soul. The decision has been made to leave it behind, now I am anxious to move on. That’s the way I have always been. I loathe leaving where I am until I go, then I have little desire to look back.

For years in my travels I tried never to take the same route twice. And when I landed someplace I was there, roots down, firmly entrenched. Until it was time to leave. The older you get, the more constrictions you place, or have placed on your life. And the harder it becomes to just pack up, pick up, and go.

The rain is slacking now. I might be able to get out for a walk in a while. Just down to check the drive, staying on the road. It’s hunting season, and even with my red cap I am not fool enough to wander the woods.

I stuck the computer in the doorway to try and take a couple of pictures without drenching it. The woods might not wear the bright colors of earlier in the fall, but to me, they have their own stark pre-winter beauty. And the scent of wet leaves. I wish this camera could capture smells. If it could, I think my joy at this moment might make more sense to you.

There hasn’t been a lot of joy for many of us this month. The bitterness and innate fear and racism brought out by the election, the ongoing confrontations at Standing Rock, these are two of the situations causing deep emotional wounds in my household, my town, my country.

And yet there are moments of beauty.

Hey, Calvin, what’s up? It’s getting late in season. Where are you with what may possibly be the last deer I ever butcher from this property? I need the taste of this mountain to carry me through this next month, this next year.

And, to everyone: may your December and the year to come be the best possible time it can be. Never stop trying to make it better. Never stop trying to be better.  It’s time to go. Let’s move on.

I wanted to write...

a blog about the asparagus. Here's what came out- my first poem in ten years.

Transplantation

I.

Nothing but slick leaf litter on the gravel road

we drove the pickup cautiously down, 5 gallon

buckets of corms nestled among shovels and garden forks.

Tools loosened this black dirt packed tight inside 1x12 boards

that used to be a garden bed, wood rotten

enough to crumble in our hands. The soil held

fast to itself, a tight rectangle formed from years of threadlike

roots weaving themselves crosshatched through compost.

We scent this like animals, our work‘s done on hands

and knees or stretched flat, bellies against the cool damp.

These corms are tangled, intertwined, we work in past our wrists,

fingers pricked and torn by long forgotten ratwire stretched tight

under all the  beds years ago in hope of thwarting 

ground squirrels and voles tunneling under fencing to decimate

tender young beans and lettuce. I learned at first harvest the discordance

between ratwire and root vegetables, but never disturbed these asparagus,

the wire underneath them forgotten till they outgrew their restraints.

until this morning, when we become the tunnelers, burrowing

under sharp wire and around the twisted roots of trees

long gone, these roots that keep on even though

there’s no tree waiting for the nourishment they send back.

They don’t stop, nor do we, disentangling corms that

weave together so tightly they appear at first as one lone

giant entity, torn from the ghost of a bad horror movie,

alien in our hands.

II.

Back home in town, our new home, soon to be the final

resting place for these asparagus, a bed made one last time.

I’d like to claim we dug the old bed out to save the corms, but

honestly I wanted some small piece of mountain here, just

a bit of height in this low lying yard, a lot that’s sited

so far down the city placed town culverts in our lawn. A beautiful

asparagus bed’s situated in the garden, two foot high sides, corms spaced

precisely so and dirt-covered just the way the chart inside their box specified.

But these aren’t city plants we’re bringing down the mountain, though they

may have started out inside restricted quarters they didn’t remain that way,

their escape from captivity began long before we happened by

to aid in their emancipation. They can’t go back into a bed, re-placed

in with tame plants, ordered rows inside a stricture  now they’ve wilded,

we plant them accordingly, dig up stray patches- in the garden,

in the yard, a few plants by the kiwi, some where the tomatoes used to be,

another group around the corner nestled by black raspberry.

I’ll try not to remember where we put them,

like I try to forget home, hope that next spring I’ll have a yard

full of surprise, feast of House Mountain, rising.

So I missed all the fun

of TrumpSeussing on twitter, 
I could cry, I could wail, 
could protest I'm not bitter –  

Okay, I'm a bit miffed, 
it was right up my alley 
but you see, I've been busy, 
writing Andrew and Talley.  

They're two of my characters 
in my new book – 
I've been writing so hard 
I've not had time to look 

at the book of the face, 
at the Instagram pages, 
and as for the twitter – 
I've not tweeted in ages.  

But the book's going great, 
or so it seems to me, 
written drafts one and two, 
I'm almost done with three.  

So this may be the last 
you'll read here for a while 
but I'm having a blast 
with this new juvenile.