'Wild Child Anthology' Deadline Extended

Vanilla Heart Publishing has extended the deadline for submissions to its Wild Child Anthology of nature writing by and for kids and teens to January 15, 2011. Edited by Smoky Trudeau (Observations of an Earth Mage), the anthology will feature poems of 50 lines or less and prose from 150 to 1,500 words that focus on any aspect of nature from flowers to critters to habitats.

Submissions, by children and teens up to 17 years of age, should be submitted as .doc or .rtf format attachments along with the child's name, title of submission, parent/guardian name, address and e-mail on the first page of the submission and in the body of the e-mail for identification purposes. Send submissions to wildchild@JuniorEarthMage.com.

For more information, click here.

The anthology will be released in print and electronic formats with a portion of the proceeds being donated to the National Forest Association.

e.com.

It's fun hearing from readers who know my place settings

I try to make the location settings and historical details in my novels as accurate as possible. Such facts not only increase the reality of a place in the readers' minds, but also help explain the feelings and motivations of the characters. Of course, some of the details are obscure because they refer to buildings, roads, people and events that are fading from people's memories and that were never part of the national consciousness.

Recent posts have included the 1960s-era highway signs in Impeach Earl Warren, the Florida panhandle legend that the Garden of Eden was at Bristol, Florida, and the general value of facts in Fiction: The Little True-Life Details as I explore the backgrounds I used in my novel Garden of Heaven.

Writers, I expect, probably tend to get more letters when the facts are wrong than when they're correct. Someday, I fully expect to get a letter from a young resident of Carrabelle, Florida, informing me that my Garden of Heaven references to Florida Panthers in the Tate's Hell National Forest are incorrect because there aren't any panthers there.

Perhaps I will have to dutifully respond that while there are no known panthers there now, they were there in the 1960s when the story in the book occurred.

When my brother Barry and his wife Mary from Florida were visiting us here this past week, he and I talked about some of the references in Garden of Heaven he had found. Among other things, he noted the stores that once lined Tallahassee's College Avenue and the parks, streets and structures in Decatur, Illinois, where we often visited our grandparents. This prompted a rather nostalgic conversation about the old days.

I hope readers will feel some of that nostalgia when they read the novel even when they're not long-time residents of the locations. That's one reason the real-life details are there. Perhaps somebody will write me and say, "Yes, I remember Schwobilt's store in Tallahassee" or "My children love playing in Decatur's Fairview Park but won't go near Greenwood Cemetery at night."

When a reader finds a place s/he knows or an event s/he remembers, that's an extra connection between that reader and the storyteller.

--Malcolm

Impeach Earl Warren

When I was in high school, I was used to seeing IMPEACH EARL WARREN signs and billboards scattered across the landscape. In today's now society, most people will openly admit to having no clue that the former three-time governor of California served as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court between 1953 and 1969, much less why anyone might want to impeach him from whatever office he was serving in.

The signs have long since faded from the countryside along with most people's memories of the Republican governor appointed to the court by Eisenhower who went on to be instrumental in a number of liberal court decisions including the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education. 

Since I grew up with the signs and the sentiments, it was natural when writing Garden of Heaven to include the sign that sat for years on Highway 319 in Wakulla County, Florida south of Tallahassee. I passed by that sign hundreds of times en route to the coast. To me, the odd thing about the sign was not so much the conservative feelings behind it, but the fact that the poorest country in the state was a few miles down the road from the state capital.

My protagonist David Ward, who grows up in Montana, visits his girl friend in Tallahassee in 1964. They drive south toward Alligator Point and the beach cottages that were there at the time. Naturally, they pass the sign. Long-time residents of Tallahassee and the surrounding Leon County will remember the sign. Students of history and government who read Garden on Heaven will see my mention of the sign as an obscure historical detail rather like the comments about historic buildings one reads in novels set in Boston and Washington, D.C.

I view the sign as synonymous with the place as it was during Earl Warren's period of service on the Court, and just as much a part of the landscape as the slash pines, palmetto bushes, and sandy white soil one sees along the road en route to a day at the beach. At the time, the county had only a monthly newspaper, no doctors, and few retail establishments.

Presumably, the sign in long gone. But the scenery is more or less still there and, to the best of my knowledge, the county is better off today than it was in the 1960s.

Writing as a disease

"Saturn is the god of mutilated people, criminals and cripples, but also of artistic and creative people." -- Marie-Louise von Franz in "Alchemy: an Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology."

What do the post office and the bookstore have in common?

A look at the latest news about books and mail suggests that the answer is nobody is going to either place any more.

I have an alternative answer in mind: Post offices have a most-wanted list showing the worst and the ugliest of society's current criminals. Book stores have a bestseller list showing the best and the brightest of society's current authors.

But for mere flukes of nature and nurture, the same people would appear on both lists. Correct me if I'm wrong, but in many towns, nobody trusts either the criminals or the writers, though the criminals tend to get a little more acclaim and respect.

Society has been slow to accept the hypothesis that criminal activity and writing are both symptoms of a disease. Criminals and writers alike dive a bit too deeply into the unconscious only to return with unconscionable activities and plots. We have made some attempts to rehabilitate criminals, though we have yet to embrace any psychological or medical modalities to rescue our writers from their unseemly lives of daydreaming, fantasy and playing God and then committing the whole outrage to print.

My suggestion? Writers Anonymous

The only solution for hardcore writers is total abstinence. While social writers, as individuals not under the influence of Saturn, can get away with an occasional paragraph or two in e-mails and greeting cards, those infected with this dread disease can't even jot down a syllable without "falling off the desk." Soon they are crafting sonnets and short stories and steamy novels about lust and other unspeakable adventures.

There is no cure for alcoholism or writing, and many say also that a hardened criminal can really never be rehabilitated. The best we can do, then, is manage the problems. I have campaigned for years for a Twelve Step Program for writers. But to no avail.

Recently, I saw a list of the top ten money earning writers. See, this kind of thing is a lure--more than an attractive nuisance, I would say. Every day social writers are brainwashed to think that with a bit of perseverance and luck, they too can become famous writers and go out to dinner with King and Rowling and Patterson and get special tables at restaurants and have a cat's pajamas kind of life supported by their loving fans.

I'll confess here that I have had such dreams.

Like a wino in a gutter with a bottle of cheap red wine, I have spent countless hours out of touch with reality chasing the word-induced figments of my imagination while friends and family could only stand by and hope that some god or demon produced a miracle that might fix the problem. Words are more addictive than crack and more exciting than sex. Need we ask why there is no cure for them?

One day, perhaps I will talk into of like-minded scribes under the dark influence of Saturn who are all working their way through a Twelve Step Program. We begin by admitting that we're powerless over writing and that our lives have become unmanageable.

"Hello, my name is Malcolm and I'm a writer."
"Hello, Malcolm."

If there's anyone here today who would like to step forward and tell his or her story, we are ready to listen.

Housekeeping: uncluttered is boring

With out-of-town company arriving in several days, we're devoting scattered hours to housekeeping. Not routine stuff, but unique stuff, the stuff my mother and my wife's mother did every week, but when it came to us, we said to hell with it, so now it's all built up into a major task that includes washing windows and dusting blinds and brushing more of the cat hair off the chairs.

I've thrown out several leaf bags filled with clutter. Old catalogues, the envelopes Christmas cards came in, boxes we kept because they looked handy but turned out not to be, notes to myself such as "write novel about the code in Leonardo's paintings" (that one's been around for a while) and "buy more Kleenex."

Frankly, lack of clutter in a house bothers me. I see pictures of high-end homes in "Architectural Digest" and wonder "where do people keep their stuff?" Maybe fancy homes have full attics, full basements, and several thousand square feet of closet space for stuff. I swear, some people's offices are so clean, they must have to go out to the office supply store if they ever need a stapler or a box of rubber bands or another sheet of paper for the LASER printer.

I equate clutter with intelligence. I like to think that Renaissance men and women have minds filled with clutter because they're interested in everything. People with one track minds don't have any clutter in their brains or their offices. When I see an office with no stapler in it, I think, "now here's a person who never sees the connections between things."

So the house is looking better. Meanwhile, I'm becoming a little ill at ease and a bit bored as I survey the unused space.

Malcolm

Currently Reading

In her latest Over Coffee post, Sia McKye asks "How Can you be a writer if you're not a reader?"

When I ask this question, I hear the usual excuses:

(1) I'm too busy writing my own stuff.

(2) When I'm not busy writing my own stuff, I'm working a day job to pay for the bills while waiting for readers to discover my stuff.

(3) The dog ate it.

(4) Reality TV has lured me away from reading because it has a lot of symbolism in it about the human condition.

My "condition" is getting the shakes when I can't find anything to read.

I just finished Ivan Doig's This House of Sky. It's been on my shelf for years, and I just now got around to reading it. Should have done it sooner. It's an excellent memoir.

Several weeks ago, I roared through a pre-release copy of a magical young adult book called Fins, by Ashley Knight. I hope a lot of readers find this one! (And I liked it for more than the fact that it's set in Florida!)

I'm currently reading two books:

FICTION: Lee Libro's Swimming with Wings about a free-thinker teen who imagines she has wings. Kiki Howell, in her review, writes that "he exploration of spirituality is immense. In fact, the quirkiness of the characters in the beginning when they are younger evolves gracefully into a great philosophical investigation into spirituality without preaching." I agree!

NONFICTION: Marie-Louise von Franz (1915 - 1998) was a Jungian psychoanalyst and scholar. I have always found her commentaries on Jung to be among the best and the most accessible. Her book Alchemy: an Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology was on my to-be-read list of years. Finally, I'm reading and enjoying it. My interest in the hero's journey brings me to the work of Jung as well as to inner alchemy.

FICTION ON THE HORIZON: I have no interest in vampire books in spite of the current NeckBiteLit fad. But, a "fang-in cheek" spoof of vampire books. That's something else. I'm really looking forward to Rhett DeVane and Larry Rock's recently issued Evenings on Dark Island. The web site promises me it's a book I can really sink my teeth into. The spooky, swampy book trailer was shot at Wakulla Springs, just south of Tallahassee, Florida, where I grew up, and where Rhett lives now. I recognized the setting immediately. This one is going to be fun.

It you're a writer, are you reading multiple books at once--not counting those you pull off she shelf for research? If so, what have you been reading lately?

Malcolm

Fiction: the spiritual dimension

I enjoy reading fiction that is secular in every sense of the word. Yet, other than my "Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire" satire, the spiritual dimension is very prominent in my writing.

In my post Finding Your Sacred Ground, I write about tuning into places that bring one serenity and inspiration, and in being open to what the place has to say. One cannot love a mountain, lake or section of seashore without sensing its spiritual dimension and that there is more depth there than humans bring to such places when they visit.

Both "The Sun Singer" and "Garden of Heaven" focus strongly on place and show the characters interacting with their environment while being challenged or changed by it. This is one aspect of the spiritual dimension in storytelling as I approach it.

Another aspect comes from my appreciation of the hero's journey mythology and schema as more than a plot device, but as a way of life. My characters face trials and have an opportunity of transforming themselves into "better" human beings by effectively meeting (and even failing at) their challenges.

The hero's journey is always an inner journey. Within that context, it is in my opinion a spiritual one. Some call such a journey Kabbalistic; others refer to it as inner alchemy; others see a lot of the ancient Huna wisdom in it. Jungian psychology looks at the "work" or the "journey" or the lifetime "process" as making more and more of the unconscious conscious.

Readers who have encountered such views before, will find keys to them in my work. On the other hand, readers who aren't familiar with such symbols and concepts will definitely NOT find my fiction to be a tract or a statement of belief on behalf of any of those spiritual, psychological approaches. What they will find, I hope, is a good story with spiritual overtones which they can accept or reject without diminishing the plot, puzzles and mysteries in "The Sun Singer" or "Garden of Heaven."

The spiritual dimension in my fiction is, quite simply, the way I look at life itself. I cannot imagine myself moving through my life without considering the spiritual dimension of living, and so it is, I view the seekers on the path in my fiction the same way.

Malcolm

Keeping silent is hard to do

Anis Shivani's essay in The Huffington Post, "The 15 Most Overrated Contemporary American Writers" is causing more people to say, "aw, it's just sour grapes" rather than seriously looking at the state of American novels today.

En route to naming names, Shivani says (and this isn't new) that MFA writing programs are teaching students to imitate writers who are already in vogue and that big publishers are happy to facilitate that.

I said something like that ten years ago, but luckily my words didn't get into a national publication. I say "luckily," because writers who are not well known are supposed to remain silent. It's hard to do. Nonetheless, we're told not to blog about controversial subjects, take potshots at the vicissitudes of the publishing industry or say anything else that might give the impression we're anything other than positive and happy people 24/7.

Truth be told, I have rather volatile opinions about a lot of things and that includes teaching people to write by suggesting that they ape the monkeys who are getting all the acclaim. Uh oh, maybe I shouldn't have said that.

Prospective writers need to read a lot more than they do. But they need stronger teachers, teachers who aren't in bed with the status quo. A creative writing teacher once asked me why I always had to be different. I told her it was silly to do what had already been done. She said, "Malcolm, why waste time re-inventing the wheel." I said, "I don't want to re-invent the wheel, I want to stop using it."

I have been accused in some of my writing of trying to deconstruct the language. I took that as a compliment. I don't want readers who are going to finish my latest book with a yawn while saying, "been there, done that, already got the tee-shirt."

Those tee shirts are comfortable, I know. Everyone's wearing them.

Goodness knows, I'm not going to name names, for that sounds so unfriendly and I wouldn't want Twentieth-Century Fox thinking, "aw, it's just sour grapes, so we'll pass on making The Sun Singer into an Oscar-winning film."

If Shivani wants to name names, then he's on his own recognizance. I'm not going there because I've said too much already.

Malcolm

Setting the Tone of a Book

When I read the first two lines of Ivan Doig's This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind, I knew immediately I was starting a stark, unemotional journey into the past.

"Soon after daybreak on my sixth birthday, my mother's breathing wheezed more raggedly than ever, then quieted. And then stopped."

Here we have just the facts, simply and dramatically stated without evaluation. As Doig looks back on his 1940s childhood in White Sulphur Springs, Montana, he follows those initial lines with: The remembering begins out of that new silence.

For me, the silence felt palpable, for I had picked up the book late at night, and the book rather defined my moment and I could easily imagine a house in which my mother's breathing defined every moment until it ceased.

A paragraph later, as Doig looks back across the years and thinks of "my father's tellings" about "these oldest shadows," he speaks of a summer on the mountain slopes where "the single sound is hidden water."

Silenced breathing to the sound of water. The symbolism of these simple lines is carried throughout This House of Sky just as surely as the author's unwavering attention to unsentimental detail. It would be simplistic to call Doig's style "understatement," because his words follow the spare and beautiful land where his parents herded sheep, and that land is not without its utilitarian power.

I'm not here to review This House of Sky, only to note how strongly it begins, for such a beginning is a talent writers often find it hard to learn. It takes confidence. This is not to say that all novels must begin with a defining moment. But they must, I think, begin by quickly establishing the tone of the story rather than backing into it some pages down the road after the small talk has been cleared out of the way.

The synopsis for This House of Sky on Doig's website includes this comment: "The prose of this memoir is as resonant of the landscape of the American West as it is of those moments in memory which determine our lives." I felt this before I finished the first page.

I have often thought that writing classes should spend more time with the first pages of novels and memoirs to drive home the importance of a story's tone and of not wasting any time communicating to the reader just what that is.
-

Other Recent Posts

Good writers are a dime a dozen

Writing Exercise: First find a lousy movie

Charlie Foxtrot Fired for Making Bad Cereal

Montana, The Magazine of Western History: Glacier Park Issue

The Freedom of a Blank Page

--Malcolm

Recent Revelations

Lily Bart in "The House of Mirth," Dorian Gray in "The Picture of Dorian Gray" and Holly Golightly in "Breakfast at Tiffany’s" are among the top ten best-dressed literary characters (according to flavorwire).

Silly and absurd status comments on Facebook get a lot more comments than serious status comments I really care about.

Mary Hart, who is leaving "Entertainment Tonight" after the upcoming season, only planned to stay with the show for three years--not 30.

In this summer's heat wave, I can only mow about 1/3 as much of the yard at once as I could mow during last summer's heat wave.

James Bond, as a movie franchise, might be finally dead and gone. Frankly, I think it's because the "Bond Girls" who used to attract so much attention are--in fact--wearing more clothes than a lot of the people I see in Wal-Mart.

Oxford University Press has a secret vault filled with thousands of words that didn't make it into the dictionary. I'm not surprised "Accordionated" (the ability to simultaneously drive and refold a road map) didn't make it. Who still uses maps?

When I tell people I'm a writer, their eyes glaze over the way my eyes used to glaze over when people told me they sold life insurance.

Barnes & Nobles' bricks and mortar appear to be less substantial than they originally appeared. If you need a drink after reading the recent news about B&N being for sale, here's a suggestion:

BARNES & NOBLE ON THE ROCKS

1 ounce 20-year-old, oak-aged printers ink
1 ounce bog water
2 ounces 151 proof everclear
...dash angostura bitters

Rub rim of old fashioned glass with kumquat rind, then dip rim into shaved brick and mortar mixture. Shake ingredients with ice and strain glass. Garnish with large pickle.

Okra doesn't keep in the refrigerator as long as you think it will.

Copying and pasting platitudes into Twitter is a good way to tweet a lot without having to actually say anything.

Have you learned anything strange or wonderful lately?

BookBuzzr interview and other cool stuff

You've probably noticed the little widget on the right-hand side of the screen: it's a preview of one of my books on BookBuzzr. Occasionally one gets featured or an author is asked about the story behind the story or presented with some interview questions to which s/he tries to respond without being libelous, profane or downright stupid. Click HERE to see if I was successful.

Selling Used Books on Amazon

Many of us have debated the notion that used book sales on Amazon help new book sales. I feel bad when I buy a used book written by an author I know, but worry less about it when the book is really expensive and/or old and/or written by somebody I don't know.

For better or worse, I re-sell some of the books I buy on Amazon. This helps support my reading habit, though--for non-volume sellers--there's not a lot of money in it unless you have a true collectible. I include a bookmark from "The Sun Singer" in each book I send out. No, it's not like a full page in the New York Times, but maybe the right person will take a look at it and say, "I'm giving this book to all my Facebook friends."

Glacier National Park Centennial


Unfortunately, I won't be attending the West Glacier, Montana reception today for the park's centennial book of memories: 100 Years 100 Stories. Too far from Georgia for a viable road trip, though it would be fun to be among the authors sharing their memories of the park.

My latest Malcolm's Round Table post, "Glacier by the Grace of God and the Great Northern" takes a look at the railroad's influence in creating and developing the park. I include references for those who want to learn more.

The Call to Adventure

The hero's journey--or hero's path, as Joseph Campbell referred to it--begins with the call to adventure. When a mythic hero or a movie hero refuses to heed this call, we look at him with disdain. Yet, the path is not a simple tiptoe through the tulips. To the extent one is successful on the journey, s/he loses much of life as s/he knew it, and that includes old friends. See "Think twice before listening to the ‘Call to Adventure.'"
-

We've had a hot, dry summer in Jackson County Georgia. But this morning, it's raining for the third time in three days. The temperature is only 78, a fifteen-degree improvement over the late-morning sizzling of the past several weeks. I got a bit wet when I went to the post office to mail out another book sold on Amazon, but I didn't mind. Plus, I could think, "there goes another 'The Sun Singer' bookmark out into the great unknown."

--Malcolm

The Great Mother Character in My Novels

Readers of both The Sun Singer and Garden of Heaven are introduced to a character named Binah who owns a retail shop with a sign over the door that says: BINAH'S BAKERY: Rolls and Other Conceptions.

Here is David Ward's initial impression of the bakery in Garden of Heaven:

Sweet chaos, long loaves of sourdough bread hustled into bushel baskets, peanut butter cookies stacked on trays like hoarded coins, well-creased Parker House rolls lined up on large squares of wax paper, pecan tarts and cherry pies on pedestals, rows of doughnuts, random bear claws. The warm glow from the door lamp puddles around my feet like spilt Indian summer sunlight.

When David steps inside the adjoining restaurant where multiple dining themes await him, Binah says, "I cannot advise you, for I kill the dreams I bring to life—as do we all."

While this statement may appear on the surface to be grim and cynical, I don't mean it that way. Binah, as a dimension (sephira) on the Tree of Life is often characterized as the Great Mother or archetypal womb of creation. Raw ideas and souls prior to incarnation are immortal. The conversion from the world of spirit to the world of form occurs in Binah.

But form is a temporary manifestation. This gives rise to the statement that everything born of Binah will ultimately die.

What a bittersweet aspect of love and experience this is. We desire the experience of living in the temporal world, but we do so knowing it cannot last. I use the Binah character in my novels to symbolize this theme.

I have been strongly influenced by the many Seth books written by Jane Roberts in which a primary theme is that humans are co-creators of the universe as they know it. I thought of the Great Mother and my Binah character this morning as I read Lee Libro's post about the influence of The Pearl Diver statue in her novel Swimming with Wings.

Benjamin Paul Akers, the sculptor who created The Pearl Diver believed that artistic expression is co-creation. I see all of life this way. Our ideas--whether for the fiction we want to write or the life we want to experience--are immortal as long as they remain ideas. To experience them, they must be born into a world in a temporary form, rather like a candle one lights for an evening that spends itself before the dawn.

I see no limits to what is possible. Probable worlds and possible futures lie before us for every possible adventure, challenge, love affair, lifestyle, and seeker's journey we can fathom. There's energy everywhere waiting for its moment in a world of form. Binah, on the Tree of Life and within our minds, is where the magic happens.

And so it is that I visualized Binah in my novels as a baker and a restaurant owner where every pastry and every meal anyone might desire is on the menu.

Malcolm