Rejoice

Today I realized I had been blogging for more than ten years, first on Furious Spinner and then here (and at the Old Mermaids Journal). I’ve put up more than 2,300 posts during that time. It averages out to about 5 posts a week for ten years. And these were often very long essays. (This figure doesn’t include my Facebook posts.)

Anyway, today I saw that I hadn’t posted anything here for a long time. I barely wrote any nonfiction while in Arizona for our writing retreat this year. I didn’t write about our last month at the sanctuary. I didn’t write about my grief at leaving behind the sanctuary. Maybe after Under the Tucson Moon came out, I unconsciously figured I had said all there was to say about my time in Arizona.

And since I’ve been home I haven’t written much nonfiction. I lost my voice for a while after I got home (literally). It’s back now, but I still don’t feel like writing about my life or my opinions. (That might be a relief for many people.) 

When I write nonfiction, it’s almost always deeply personal. It’s always a great leap of faith on my part when I post my essays. Faith or a leap of something. I’m not sure what to call it. One of my sisters once suggested it was narcissism. I told her, “No, it’s what writers do. We’re interested in the world, including our own world and our own lives.” But her criticism stung—probably because I’ve always felt vulnerable writing about my own life. It's natural to question whether one's opinions count. It's natural to wonder if what you've said is coherent. I did it because that’s what I do, and I believed my experiences might be helpful to others. (Judging from the letters I get, that’s exactly what has happened.)

But...for many reasons, I’m ready for a break. I need to be quiet for a bit and find my voice again. I’ve got lots going on this year. Several books are coming out, and I’m in the middle of editing and writing several books. So I’m not going anywhere. I’m just going to be a bit quieter here as I plot a revolution or my next novel. Maybe both. This might be a day or a week or a month. Who knows? I may still post on Facebook, and I will definitely post announcements about upcoming publications here.

And probably when I’m finished with this break, when I’m finished recreating, retreating, relaxing, revolutionizing, rejoicing—whatever it is I’ll be doing—I’ll write about it.

Or maybe I won’t. We’ll see.

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Ready to Rumble

I'm back from vacation and I'm ready to rumble. If you're in the area, come on down for my writing workshop. It's going to be grand! Go here or here.

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Stymied No More!

I've been stopped in my rewriting of The Old Mermaid in a way I'd never been stopped before. I had to get (a pregnant) Sara from New Orleans to Mexico (back in the olden days). I wrote this long passage that was so gag-me boring I couldn't stand it. And then I realized I knew too much and me knowing too much was impeding the story. This was a magical tale. And so, I let the entire travelogue go and let the magic seep back in. Below is what it became. It's the last part of Chapter 14 and the beginning of Chapter 15. New stuff, so I haven't even read it a second time.

Monsieur Fontenau kicked his horse forward. The other horseback riders followed him. Juan slapped the reins and the horses jerked the wagon forward.

Sara did not look back. Those who were paying attention said later that a whole string of invisibles followed the wagon. Some recognized the good people—the faeries—and others said some of the loa followed. And they all danced. What a ruckus they made.

Those that weren’t paying attention didn’t hear or see a thing, except Irish Sara riding in the wagon with a Mexican-Indian, following two light-skinned Black people and two Frenchmen. They didn’t even see the horses or their bridles covered in faery bells.


Chapter Fifteen

At first, they encountered little more than dragons. Juan was good at steering them around these long-limbed creatures that curled up in trees, along shorelines, around hills. No one seemed to notice besides Sara and Juan, and they said nothing to one another, although Sara sometimes pointed one out to him in case he hadn't seen it, and then Juan would turn the wagon away from the dragons.

They often camped by streams or rivers. River maidens stared up at Sara from their watery homes. When Juan stood beside her and saw them, too, she knew he was a kindred spirit.

She said, “You can always tell a river or sea maiden from a real human woman after they come ashore. Some piece of a river maiden's clothing is always wet.”

Juan touched her sleeve. His fingers came away wet. “You mean like this?” he asked.

“Aye,” she answered.

After a time, the dragons gave way to wolves who ran beside them sometimes as men, sometimes as women. Sara ached to run with them. When Gabriel raised his gun to kill one once, Renaud shouted, “Don’t kill beauty, Gabriel. It will come back to haunt you.”

Later a bear man asked them to join them for dinner. Juan said it would be impolite to refuse. So they sat around the fire while the bear man told them stories.

The next morning, only Juan and Sara remembered the bear or the man.

Sometimes monsters came in the form of men with shotguns. Once they tried to buy Renaud and Madeleine. Madeleine would have killed them if a crow hadn’t called out. Gabriel made the men go away. Sara decided she needed to learn how to take care of monster men the way Gabriel did.

Gradually the land began to change. Or maybe it happened overnight. Sara was never certain. One day they were surrounded by green. And then they weren’t.

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