The Monster's Daughter: An Essay

“I gift you with healing and magic.” —Sister Faye Mermaid

“Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.” —Rainer Maria Rilke

I’ve been thinking about gifts today. And trials. Reality. And monsters.

What is real? What is true? What must we endure and what must we overthrow? 

I don’t believe in suffering for the sake of suffering. Of course we suffer. That is a given. But why cultivate it? And because someone suffers they are not holy, good, or divine. Suffering does not make us better. Lordy, no. Does suffering hone us? Make the sword that is us tougher, more magical, more efficient?

I don’t know. I’m not a sword. I’m a human being. 

If I suffer, if something bad happens to me, I am not a better human being. I’m just a human being who has suffered.

Maybe it depends upon what kind of person one is when something terrible happens. If it comes as a surprise, if it is totally and wholly unexpected suffering, perhaps we can’t rise above it. Get over it. 

I had a remarkably fortunate childhood. I was bonded to the land more than I was ever bonded to any human being. I watched for messages from the skies as I dug my bare toes into the damp earth. I fed the animals, wild and tame. I ran with the wild things.

My mother broke when I was quite young, and she never recovered. Neither did we. Is the soul of a family always the mother? As she goes, so goes the family? 

I don’t want to go there. Why? I find psychology tedious--watery--and not in a good way. I’m too old to be buffeted by childhood trauma. 

And yet.

For years as child, I had merciless nightmares. They were so bad I would fight not to go to bed each night. But doesn’t every child do that? What does it matter? When I slept, the creatures came out of the woodwork and hunted me down. Or tried to. I was runner--a marathoner--in my dreams. I could outrun any monster. 

Except when I was the monster. In one dream I smiled while I spilled my guts. Literally.

As a girl, I tried to hold disparate realities in my mind, in my body, but it was difficult. Where did serial killers fit into my wilderness background? How did the outrageous acts of violence taking place in nearby Detroit, delineated on the nightly news, fit into my childhood? And the pristine river that ran behind our house--the river that flooded every winter and froze, becoming our winter water wonderland where I skated every chance I could get--why was it now unsafe to eat any fish or shellfish taken from it? Why did I see laundry bubbles on the surface when I went down to the riverside?

I did my best. I saved other kids from bullies but became terrified one day when a teacher threatened to switch us all because she was pissed at us. I hid under the bed each morning for days, refusing to go to school because I said I was sick. Why didn’t anyone believe me?

I wasn’t sick: I was afraid. Of course, I never told my parents what was scaring me.

Perhaps fear is a form of sickness. No, it’s a protection, isn’t it? 

And when my animals began to die, I was awash with grief. My parents took me to a doctor and he gave me pills so I wouldn’t be so upset. 

Was that the message of the late sixties and early seventies? Don’t feel. But if you do, take a pill, baby. 

I read books about the coming apocalypse via the atom bomb. I fantasized about making it to the mountains somewhere out west where I’d be safe from a nuclear holocaust. 

We were all going to die from the pollution or a nuclear bomb or some psycho hunting women and if we were afraid about any of it, please don’t mention it; step to the side and take your pills, please, please.

And then I grew up. When I was still in my teens, just barely in college, a psychologist diagnosed me with post traumatic stress disorder. Only she didn’t call it that because they didn’t yet diagnose civilians with this particular disorder. She said I had all of the reflexes of a child who grew up in a war zone. 

What?

She didn’t really know how to help me, except more therapy. 

How did talking about shit that happened when I was a kid help me feel better? So what if my mother was sick and my father was pissed and we were all just trying to do the best we could? I had it fucking easy.

How long after that did some medical doctor tell me I was allergic to the world?

Now THAT really did not help.

I refused to be allergic to the world.

This is my fucking world, buddy. I am not allergic to it.

And yet, I felt like crap.

I got married and Mario and I moved to the Oregon coast. While I was researching a novel, I learned more than I could quite fathom about pesticides and the dumping of toxic chemicals in developing countries. We were also part of a peace group, helping refugees from El Salvador. I couldn’t come to grips with how seemingly cruel people were to one another. I was diagnosed again with post traumatic stress disorder. Years later, I wrote about this period of my life in a roman a clef, Forks in the Road:

Yet the reality of what was happening to the environment and people was horrific. I wondered how anyone could know the things we now knew and not go crazy. I had always been overly empathetic. (Or just plain pathetic.) As a child, I cried when they cut down trees on the lot next door to us. I mourned the loss of those trees for years. When my dog was run over by a car I was depressed for months; my mom finally took me to a doctor, and he gave me what he called pep pills. My psyche could not take the onslaught of constant horror. 

Could anyone’s? 

On the Oregon coast, I began to fall apart.

One day I heard a bird cry out. A strange call. I went to the window and looked down at the sidewalk leading to our door. On the cement, half a snake twitched. It was so grotesque. Horrific in a way that only real life can be. I stood watching it for a while, wondering how it got there, finally realizing a bird had most likely dropped half of the snake as it flew over. The snake had lost its mind--and half its body. 

Soon after I lost my mind. 

Me, middle-class white chick, began exhibiting classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. 

I thought I was going insane. I could not read for a time; the letters kept moving on the page--and besides, the ideas were frightening. I had an anxiety attack that lasted a year. I hallucinated. 

A doctor told me I was allergic to the world. 

Whatever that meant. 

The world was poison and my body was like a map of those poisons--or a container for poisons, he said.

No, no, I screamed silently. The world is more than poisons; I am more than poisons.

“You are like the canary in the mine,” he said.

No. I refuse to be a fucking canary, singing the blues before dropping dead in my cage, feet sticking straight up to the sky.

I looked over at Em as we sat in the natural foods co-op in Nebraska. What if we had never lived on the coast, never worked at the co-op, or joined the peace movement, how would our lives be different? 

I doubted I had affected any change as a result of my actions in the peace movement. I gained knowledge. And got sick. Were the two related? 

Maybe when the biblical Eve ate the proverbial apple--acquired knowledge--she got sick. She left paradise because she could not bear to live in Eden when so many people outside suffered. 

Or she ate the apple, gained knowledge, and lost faith. She no longer believed in an omniscient, omnipotent God. How could she? If he was omniscient and omnipotent, how could he allow such suffering? And if he did allow it, he was a mean evil sonofabitch. She wouldn’t want to believe in him. 

So she swallowed the apple, threw up ignorance, and slithered away to be her own goddess--and became a pariah of the dominant culture. 

Had she ever wondered what would have happened had she stayed in paradise? Could there be paradise with ignorance? Or was paradise only possible with ignorance? 

Had Eve ever wondered about her choices?

I broke during that period of my life. Just like my mother had. Like her, I never recovered. And soon my life completely revolved around getting back to what I had been. Getting back to who I had been.

But that was an impossible task. We can never be what we were. Every single one of us has to endure something we wish we could avoid. 

I am a different than I would have been because of what has happened to me. Before, I was brilliant. I was beautiful. I thought I could do absolutely anything. I was going to save the world.

After I wished the world would save me. I am no longer brilliant, at least not in the way I was. My mind isn’t as quick as before. I was an amazing short story writer before. Now I can’t seem to go to that deep place in a short piece of writing--it’s too painful. I need to build up to it, which I can do when I write a novel. I would have never written The Jigsaw Woman before. Or The Church of the Old Mermaids. Certainly not Ruby’s Imagine.

I knew more people before. I was better at relationships. Better in crowds. 

Or maybe I wasn’t. Who knows?

It doesn’t actually matter. 

Lately I’ve realized I have been focused on my wound. I thought because I tried to ignore it, because I didn’t talk about it to family and friends, because I only wrote about it for people who were mostly strangers, because of all that, I figured I wasn’t someone who was wallowing in my wounded-ness. I didn’t blame my parents or my childhood. I felt angry and sad for moments of time, but then I would stuff those feelings as far down as I could. 

I mean, really, what good would it do to feel anything?

Don’t go deep, just stay in the shallows.

I’ve been wondering lately if perhaps as a culture we just don’t go deep. We stay in the shallows. Because it is unseemly to feel things. And especially to feel things and then talk about them.

I’m not sure I feel much of anything these days except bad.

And that ain’t good.

I hear this from many people.

Many beautiful things happen every day of my life. It seems stingy not to feel joy at my fortune. But I think feelings just got in the way: How many years can one feel BAD. If we give away one feeling (the bad feeling), maybe the others go away, too? 

Perhaps that is the greatest journey, the greatest task, to find again the treasure of our feelings.

Or at least my feelings.

When I was young, I believed I was put on this earth to love. I knew this was true because I was so good at it. Good at loving. 

I’m not sure how good I am at it any more. Yet when I do feel that rush of love now, I feel completely WELL. Whole. Holy.

Some days I’m not sure how to put one foot in front of another. When I have no answers. When I can’t let go and just be. I am so uncomfortable. 

Perhaps I need to feel love for my suffering. Perhaps suffering is like some kind of monstrous parent trying to help us get through life.

Pick another way, strange parental unit.

I am tired of my wound. I don’t want to pick at it any longer. I don’t want to focus on it. 

Perhaps I will go treasure hunting instead. Maybe learn to find treasure within. 

And without.

Today I found some kind of aloe vera plant growing near the house here. I love aloe vera plants. I can’t count how many times this plant has healed a part of my body. This particular plant, or bunch of plants, was blooming. I had never seen an aloe vera plant blooming and I was impressed. Coming up from the plump succulent leaves was a stalk and then apricot-colored trumpet-like blossoms fell away from the stalk. This plant was decidedly sexual. I grasped the closed blossoms in one hand and I could feel a kind of pulsing—throbbing? I smiled. Yep. I leaned over and felt the plump dark green leaves, carefully avoiding the tiny spikes on the edges. 

I went and got Mario, and we stood together next to the plant. While we were gazing at the plant, we heard the unmistakable whirr of a hummingbird, but when we looked toward it, it flew away and sat on a nearby cholla tree. She watched us, her head going back and forth, back and forth. I leaned against Mario, and without a word, we stepped back a bit, giving the hummingbird a clearer view of her intended: the aloe vera blossoms. Then we stayed very still. I closed my eyes and told her we intended no harm. We were peaceful, peaceful, peaceful. 

Several minutes later, she flew toward us and the aloe vera blossoms. She dipped her beak up into this blossom and that blossom, her iridescent green feathers catching the sunlight on this cold morning. I stayed close to Mario, feeling his warmth and familiar heft. I listened to the hummingbird’s wings—brrr, brrr, brrr. And I felt such joy and love. Love for this powerful little bird, for the sensual plant, for the earth beneath my feet and the blue, blue sky above, and for the man next to me. 

Ahhh.

What a gift. 

It felt good.

  

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A Year and A Day of Living the Old Mermaids Way

I've got another post up on living the Old Mermaids Way.

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Old Mermaids Journal

Don't forget to check out the Old Mermaids Journal blog now and again. I'm trying to be better about posting there regularly, especially now that I'm doing A Year and a Day of Living the Old Mermaids Way.

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The Rift is Published!

I'm happy to report that The Rift is now published in e-book form and will soon be in print, too. Here are some FAQ, including how the book came to be. Enjoy! 

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Beginnings

Here's a new post.

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Visions of...Old Mermaids

I am asking more than usual this question: What would the Old Mermaids do? I asked that after I came home exhausted from looking for a car. I said, "What would the Old Mermaids do?" And I got an immediate answer: “They wouldn't have a car." I grumbled about how unrealistic that was, given where I live. But reality is: I like driving. I am rarely as happy as I am when I'm in my car, alone, driving down the highway. My happiest moment in recent years was when I drove from Santa Barbara to Phoenix. I was free of any anxiety: I knew everyone I loved was safe for the moment and I didn't have to save anyone or anything. I drove along the ocean, alone in the car, ecstatic.

Remember in Koyaanisqatsi when they showed the highways and biways and people running to and fro and we were supposed to think that was ugly and out of balance? I didn't think it was ugly. I thought it was beautiful. I thought the nature scenes were beautiful, too. I think our human need to create is natural and glorious human, but once we recognize our creations are a little bit too Frankenstein's monster, we have an obligation to the world to change what we've created—or destroy what we created.

This is the long way of saying that after a few days of grumbling about how unrealistic the Old Mermaids were, I was walking around town, up above the river, breathing in autumn, and I had a vision of the near future. I thought of all the books I’d written and stories I told. Most of them are about finding home. (I think I ended three books with the word “home” without consciously knowing it.) I imaginatively build amazing structures and communities. I am creating home with my novels.

I love to drive because I am on the move, always on the move. Because I am searching for home. I am not comfortable in my body, my house, my place in the world. Sometimes I think it’s because when I was a girl—a wild child, nature’s child running in the woods barefoot and disheveled most hours of the day—my grandparents sold the land next door to us, the land where my Lullabye Forest grew.

The new owners came in and cut down my woods. I was bereft. I have no conscious memory of the destruction, by the way. I just remember my life before and after. And after I felt homeless. But this may just be a story I tell myself. I was probably born this way: squirmy, crying out in raw unexplained grief when I was only an infant, always asking, asking, asking too many question. Railing against injustice like a little Irish Don Quixote, my Rocinante my dog—who got run over by a car when I was 12. (And I was in such terrible grief over his death that my parents took me to a doctor and he gave me tranquilizers.)

It doesn’t matter why I felt homeless or why I’ve felt homeless for much of my life. It is a modern ailment, I suspect. We have lost the songs of our ancestors, perhaps. Maybe when my relatives came to this land, we left behind our faeries—or the spirits of our ancestors. Maybe we’ve gone deaf to the songs of the land all around us. Perhaps we can’t hear our own siren songs any more. I don’t really know.

But as I was walking around my town, I had a vision of the near future—a future where I wouldn’t need a car, at least not often. I could see a home, a place, a purpose, and I suddenly felt completely at home with this vision, this idea. As if all of my life had been heading toward THIS. When I told Mario about it, he said, “Don’t tell anyone yet. Don’t research it. Don’t study it. Just dream it for a while, the way you would dream a novel.” Aaaah, exactly what the Old Mermaids would do. (I am so fortunate that my sweetheart is an Old Mermaid.)

Now I sit looking out into the cloudy day. Sunlight edges the clouds like a glorious silver white lining. I’m listening to Train sing Drops of Jupiter. About a woman flying through the stars. I am no star being. I am of this Earth. I have been chronically ill for a long time. I am sick of it. Truly. Someone once said that all sickness is homesickness. In my case, I believe this to be true. I know where my home is. It isn’t the stars. It isn’t even in my imagination. It isn’t someplace ELSE. I can see it now, feel it now—more than ever. This Earth is home. It is my place. It is my Beloved. Each of us is the Earth. Walking, dancing, singing, loving Earths. Each of us is the Beloved. Each of you is my Beloved.

As for my vision of my future? Well, it is still in the dreaming stages, and I will share more as time goes on.

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The Making of Whackadoodle Times

(I continue here with my series of "the making of" my novels, taken from my Weird and Wonderful Gazette. Enjoy!)

Whackadoodle Times was originally born out of my frustration over the state of the world and the apparent obliviousness of most of the population about what dire straits we’re in. But, of course, I can’t write novels from a soapbox. Can anyone? Still, I thought it would be fun to write an allegory or satire or blend them together to have an allegorical satire. In any case, we don’t have to label it. Let’s just call it a novel. I was initially poking fun at our culture’s obsession with celebrities and the apparent obliviousness of the rich to the plight of almost anyone else, but in the end what happened was that I wrote a story about Brooke McMurphy, a woman in trouble.

I wrote the first chapter several years ago. I loved the first chapter—just as I had with Butch. And just like with Butch, I got scared. Could I keep going and maintain the quality? I was also worried about length. As I’ve mentioned before, I believe the story should dictate the length, not the publisher. I tend to write short novels. I knew if I wrote a short novel, I probably couldn’t get a traditional publisher to publish it. But the world changed between the time I started Whackadoodle Times and when I finished it. I was now an indie writer with a publisher who didn’t care about length. Yes!

The novel begins when a bag lady comes to the house of two screenwriters and says she will do one great thing a day for them if they’ll let her stay in their guest cottage. When I started the novel, I was going to have the story revolve around that one great thing a day. After I wrote the first chapter, I began to worry about how I’d come up with one great thing a day. That was another reason I put the novel away for several years. When I brought it out to continue working on it, I just let the story evolve—which is what should always happen. The “one great thing a day” became an integral part of the story, not the focus of it.

Except for the first chapter, I ended up writing this novel at our winter retreat in Arizona. About eight years ago, I put out a call to friends to find a place in the Southwest where Mario and I could spend part of the winter writing and soaking up some sun instead of getting soaked by the Pacific Northwest rain. Terri Windling responded and told me about a retreat near Tucson, Arizona, for writers and artists and other creatives. That winter, we packed up our car and headed out to Tucson.

Going to this retreat has saved my life in so many ways; I don’t have the words to express my gratitude for its existence. Every part of it was designed with purpose, in beauty. When I’m there, my prayer every morning is a version of the Navajo Beauty Way; I often chant, “I walk in beauty before me, I walk in beauty beside me, I walk in beauty behind me, I walk in beauty all around me.” In the last few years, I have had a creative opening, and now stories flow very quickly from me. I believe being on retreat in Arizona every year is responsible for that, in part.

The second year I was at the retreat, I wrote Church of the Old Mermaids. This novel changed my life and continues to change my life because 13 of the characters—the Old Mermaids—are now a part of my everyday life. They are more like guardians or spirit helpers than characters in a novel. I’ve now written several novels where the Old Mermaids and kin make an appearance. (Besides Church of the Old Mermaids, there’s The Blue Tail, The Fish Wife, The Desert Siren, along with The First Book of Old Mermaids Tales and the as yet unpublished An Old Mermaid Sanctuary.)

I digress. We were talking about Whackadoodle Times. I wrote Whackadoodle Times while I was on retreat in Arizona. Once I had the characters, the story began flowing. At first, the tone was different from anything I’d done in a long while. Brooke isn’t a happy person. Her wit can be acerbic, but she was so funny that I didn’t care. The story was at times sexually graphic, too. I’ve written sexually explicit scenes before, but what happens in Whackadoodle Times is more realistic than romantic, so it could seem crude and rude to some. But that was what made it funny to me.

I never laughed as much as I did writing this novel, and in the end, I never cried so much. Although my life couldn’t be more different from hers, I understand her: I understand getting to a place in your life and wondering how the hell did I get here. 

I also understand her life because she’s in the entertainment business, and so am I. When the studio head (the stud) is trying to convince her to script doctor Zombie Town and make zombies sexy, I’m laughing at the absurdity, but I’ve been a part of very similar conversations over the year. I often think of the scene in Gypsy where the strippers are telling Gypsy “You Gotta Have a Gimmick.” Yep, sexy zombies are the gimmick the studios want from Brooke. Writers are often asked to come up with some kind of “gimmick” in order to get their work published. It’s not a particularly inspiring way to create!

Anyway, I had fun writing this novel. I hope you enjoy reading it. I plan on writing two more novels in the Whackadoodle Times universe. The second one will probably be called Whackadoodle Times Two. I’ve got the story. Maybe I’ll write it when I go to Arizona this year, knock wood.

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The Making of Butch

I don’t remember exactly where I got the idea for Butch. She just came to me, like characters often do, ready to tell me her story. 

I love New Mexico. I often think of it as my “soul home,” so I was thrilled to be able to tell a New Mexican story again. (Much of Mercy, Unbound takes place in New Mexico.) Here’s a secret about Butch that I think is funny. I originally thought Butch would have lots of sex scenes. Butch is a sensual woman. She lives large: lots of booze, lots of lovin’, lots of trouble. The book went its own way, however, and most of the sex is off stage! 

But that’s getting ahead of the story. I had the idea for Butch. Then I wrote the first chapter. I loved it. I thought it was one of the best first chapters I’d ever written. I got scared. I wasn’t sure I could make the rest of the book stand up to that first chapter. (See what I mean about having self-talk that is not helpful.) 

A few years went by. I kept wanting to get back to it. Then I decided the real reason I wasn’t working on it was because I didn’t know enough about Taos, New Mexico, which is where the novel was set. I had to go back to Taos. (What a great excuse, eh?) 

I didn’t have enough money to go, so I decided to try doing a kickstarter. (They help fund various artistic projects.) I am notoriously bad about marketing my work. I loathe advertising. I could talk about my novels all day long. That’s not the problem. But I don’t want to be constantly shilling. For one thing, I haven’t found any method for selling books that works except one: word of mouth. When readers tell other readers about an author or a book they like, that sells books. Anyway, long way of saying that I didn’t get the word out. (I just don’t know that many people!) And I didn’t get enough pledges to fund the kickstarter to go to Taos. But the enthusiasm of those who did pledge helped boost my confidence. That helped open the gates of my imagination which allowed this creative thought to flow through: “You’re a writer, Kim. You make stuff up. Why be attached to a ‘real’ particular town? Remember Sosegado, Arizona.” 

(Sosegado, Arizona was the setting for much of Coyote Cowgirl. I’ve had quite a few readers ask me where it is so that they can visit. Sosegado is Spanish for peaceful, tranquil, etc. Although I “made it up,” I am convinced the town is out there somewhere.) 

Of course! Butch needed her own town, one that wasn’t tied to so-called reality. The town immediately came to me, just like one of my characters: Santa Tierra, New Mexico. Although the name literally means “saint earth,” I translate it to mean “sacred earth.” 

Like many of the places in my novels, Santa Tierra is a vital and important part of the story. It is a character in the novel, and it certainly has its own character. 

Once I had the town, I was ready to start again. I enjoyed writing this book immensely. In the novel, Butch has many mysteries to solve, but the greatest mystery is the one of her own origins. She is not a very reflective person, so trying to figure out her life is problematic for her. I was quite moved to learn the truth of her life. She endured a rough childhood. She had to make some tough decisions when she was still a girl. I admire her and would love her for a best friend. 

I intend to write several other Butch novels. I want to spend more time at Wayward Ranch with TomA and Patrick and their daughter, Hunter. I want to ride through the Blood Mountains with Butch and George. I want to eat breakfast with Marigold and Butch while they flirt with one another. I want to know if Jezebel will show up again. (I want to know about all kinds of things that I can’t mention here or I might spoil the story for you.)

Wayward Art Spectacle

One of my favorites parts of Butch is the Wayward Art Spectacle. Every year in Santa Tierra, after the ditch cleaning is over, TomA and Patrick (Trick) sponsor the Wayward Art Spectacle on their ranch. Everything in the novel leads up to the Wayward Art Spectacle, but I don’t have a lot of description of the actual Spectacle. Originally I had a couple of pages of description, but it stopped the narrative cold. So it got cut. Now there’s just a couple paragraphs, but I’m hoping it’s enough to give the flavor of the Spectacle. 

Every year, artists from all over the area bring their art to Wayward Ranch. The art is displayed around the ranch—mostly near the house and barns. Some of the art is hung inside the house, but most of it is outside. There are wooden mobiles hanging from trees. Quilts are draped over bushes. Metal sculptures are scattered throughout the pastures, like frozen wild animals. It’s magical and mystical and earthy. 

The genesis of the Wayward Art Spectacle was probably my own Hallows Art Show which was sponsored at our house. (We renamed our house The Little Yellow House Art Gallery for a month.) 

I came up with the idea for the Hallows Art Show after feeling as though my art had been rebuffed at an art show here in town. I decided to turn our little rental house into an art gallery for a month. It was part of my nearly lifelong effort to gatecrash and thumb my nose at gatekeepers. I believe everyone is creative, and art is in the eye and heart of the beholder. I don’t want a couple dozen people in New York (or anywhere) deciding what the rest of the country reads, and I don’t want a couple dozen people anywhere deciding what is and isn’t art. 

So I invited people from all over my community (and beyond) to participate in the Hallows Art Show. The theme was Hallows (Halloween, honoring the ancestors, death and rebirth). People brought their art to my house. I “hung” the show, and then we had a gallery opening. The show stayed in the house for the month, and people could come and walk through the “gallery” by appointment. 

We had jewelry hung here and there, alongside beautiful scarves. One artist created a Day of the Dead altar in my room. In another room, we had a long dinner table that was set for a Dumb Supper. Different artists created different place settings for it. (That was AMAZING!) My father made a gorgeous Halloween quilt, and my mother made a matching beautiful Halloween pillow. We had paintings all over the house, too. 

It was one of the most amazing events of my life. At the end of it, one of the artists—a local retired dentist—gave us a piece of colored glass we still have hanging in one of our windows. A weaver gave us one of her baskets. And I curl up under my father’s Hallows quilt nearly every day. (In fact, it’s getting a little frayed.) 

So that was partly where the Wayward Art Spectacle came from. But also, it sprang up from the New Mexican soil. When I think of New Mexico, I think of beauty and art. 

I first visited New Mexico many years ago when I was in the midst of a heated battle with the county and some of my neighbors over pesticide use. I felt like I was surrounded by people who didn’t care about the land or nature or beauty or art. I was exhausted from the fight. Mario and I decided to visit New Mexico during this time. 

We arrived in Taos after a seventeen hour drive from Kingman, Arizona. (I don’t remember why it took that long.) It was dark when we drove down the dirt road toward the Mabel Dodge Luhan House. Our headlights skimmed over a painted adobe fence and I glimpsed a mermaid swimming. (My first mermaid in the desert.) A few moments later, we reached the house, found our room, and fell to sleep, exhausted. 

In the morning, I stepped out into the bright day and looked up at the bluest sky I had ever seen. I walked across a courtyard where Georgia O’Keeffe, D. H. Lawrence, Frieda Lawrence, Ansel Adams, and so many others had walked. Huge cottonwood trees towered over me. My knees nearly buckled. Everywhere I turned, I was surrounded by beauty. I could hear the whispers of artists, writers, and intellectuals. Here they talked about things that mattered to me. Here they honored beauty, nature, and art. 

That was my first encounter with New Mexico, and the spirit of that encounter carries over into the Wayward Art Spectacle—and into all of Butch.

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The Making of Jewelweed Station

(This was originally published in Kim's Weird & Wonderful Gazette. I write about each of the books that were published over the last six months. I do have a FAQ page for Jewelweed Station, but here I write in a little more depth about what was going on as I began to write this book. Enjoy!)

Jewelweed Station was inspired by the Scarlet Pimpernel which was a favorite book of mine when I was young. For one thing, I was impressed that this man could let himself be seen as a fool when he was really a hero. I never liked appearing foolish. I still don’t. Yet for a greater cause, he was able to pretend to be someone he wasn’t—someone who was pretty loathsome.  I wanted to write an American version of the Scarlet Pimpernel only I wanted the main character to be younger, maybe even a teen. When I asked myself what was the American equivalency of the Reign of Terror, I immediately thought of slavery.

I had studied the Underground Railroad in depth on other occasions. I knew there was no historical evidence that white Southerners participated in the Underground Railroad. In fact, most of the participants on the Underground Railroad were freed and escaped slaves, as far as historians know.  

History is an avocation of mine. It was one of my minors in college. And this is what I know for certain: We know only a fraction of the truth about history. Even our own history. Think about your own life. If someone were to write a history of your life, just what you did over the last month, what would they write? They’d have to trust what you told them, first off, and you’d  probably only tell them about the big events—if there were any—and you’d probably only tell them about the big events you thought were socially acceptable.

In other words, most of our history is left out of history books. As a writer, I do research, but then I let my imagination take over. And there’s no one alive who can contradict me in the case of Jewelweed Station. If things were done in secret, how would we ever know? If a person in the South wanted to help slaves escape, she would have to be extremely secretive because to do otherwise would put herself and her family and descendants in jeopardy.

So Calantha “Callie” Carter was born. She wasn’t as young as I originally thought she would be, mostly because she’d have to have some maturity to be part of the Underground Railroad. Plus I wanted her to be old enough for a romance with a young man, not a boy. 

Originally I wanted this book to be a fun adventure. Callie would pretend she was stupid while she was really doing great things behind the scenes. I soon realized that realistically Callie would be under some very tight restrictions because her parents were dead and because she was a young Southern woman with very little autonomy. So this wasn’t going to be easy for Callie.

She was young and inexperienced and used to getting her own way. I wanted her to try many things and fail. That seemed realistic to me. Naiveté can be a dangerous thing.

There were other reasons it couldn’t be a fun adventure. Slavery is not an adventure. The more research I did, the more the realities of slavery turned my stomach. For a time, I didn’t think I could write the book. I didn’t want to make slavery “entertaining.” I didn’t want to be exploitive.

Eventually, I realized I could write the book if it wasn’t a simple adventure story. It became a complex story about a young woman finding her true self and coming to terms with her family history and the terrible history of her own community. She has to decide—just like I think we all have to decide—how to deal with injustice: Does she stand up or does she fall down?

She tries to stand up for a long time and she keeps falling down. But she won’t let people be abused in her name. She has to learn to be strong and humble at the same time.

This story had twists and turns in it that I didn’t expect. This always happens when I’m writing, and I think it’s one of the reasons I love to write so much. I won’t tell you about those twists here, of course, since I don’t want to spoil to the story for you.

Although Jewelweed Station is a complete story, I am planning two other books with these characters. We’ll see how it goes!

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A Year and a Day Living the Old Mermaid Way

I'm going on a pilgrimage. Would you like to join me? Check out what it's all about here.

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The Old Mermaids Book of Days and Nights: A Year and a Day Journal

We love The Old Mermaids Book of Days and Nights so much that we decided to make a companion for it: a BIG sumptuous luxurious "a year and a day" journal. This 8.5 x 11 book has the same cover as The Old Mermaids Book of Days and Nights: A Daily Guide to the Magic and Inspiration of the Old Sea, the New Desert, and Beyond, but we've removed the dates so you can put in your own and we've made one journal lined and one unlined; you can use both for journals or use one for a journal and one for sketching or mix and match. A Year and A Day is a traditional period of time set aside for study or initiation: and you can begin any time. We hope you will find these journals inspiring and beautiful. Everyone who has seen it just oohs and ahs over it. This is a perfect place to tell your own story and find your siren song.  unlined • lined

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What's New?

I updated my "what's new" page here. ;-)

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Ruby's Imagine

I am pleased to announce the publication of the reprint of Ruby's Imagine which was originally published by Houghton Mifflin. This book was inspired by what happened during Hurricane Katrina. I researched the event for nearly a year before writing the book. (I was born in Louisiana.) The FAQ and the first chapter can be found here.

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The Old Mermaids Book of Days and Nights

We are so happy, elated, ecstatic, and happy (did I say) to announce the publication of The Old Mermaids Book of Days and Nights! We found 365 quotes—one for every day of the year—from the Old Mermaids novels (and from my other novels) to create this inspirational, sometimes humorous, sometimes mystical, always mysterious collection. It's available in print or as an e-book (at all your favorite e-book sites soon). Even if you get the e-book, I hope you can get the print book. We just love this book! 

From the cover: Kim Antieau guides you through a year of wisdom, humor, beauty, inspiration, and love in these daily quotes from her own writings featuring the Old Mermaids and some of the other wise and mystical characters from her books and stories. See what gifts Grand Mother Yemaya Mermaid, Sister Laughs A Lot Mermaid, Mother Star Stupendous Mermaid, Sister Sheila Na Giggle Mermaid, and others have to share with you all year long. (Cover art by Nancy Norman.) You can read FAQ and some excerpts here.

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The Desert Siren

My new novel The Desert Siren is out and about in the world. The e-books are up and the print copy should be available in a few days. You can find out more about The Desert Siren here.

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Whackadoodle Times

I'm so happy to announce the publication of Whackadoodle Times, one of my favorite novels. (No, I can't say it's my favorite ever because there's my gal Butch and Church of the Old Mermaids and The Fish Wife and...Well, you get the idea.) But I do love this book. I loved writing it and I loved reading it again and again. It's funny; it makes me laugh. I also cry every time I read it. It's honest and irreverent, poignant and impertinent. (It's also sexually explicit in some scenes.)

Anyway, I love this book. It's about love and loss and movies and the apocalypses we create--intentionally and unintentionally--in our lives and our world.

(By the way, the cover is much more vibrant in "real" life and on the e-reader. I can't figure out why it's not copying well on any of my websites.)

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Whackadoodle Times

Some of my favorite novels are now being published, and I am so happy. I love, love, love Butch and now Whackadoodle Times has arrived, on its own tattered red carpet. I loved writing this book. Brooke McMurphy, the main character (and narrator), is naughty and not nice, and I love her. She's got her own reasons for every crappy (and wonderful) thing she does. To me, she's the greatest kind of hera: all screwed up but trying to do the best she can. She's in la-la land, after all; things are not always what they seem to be.

(By the way, like some of my other novels, this one is sexually explicit in places. It is an adult book, for adults. It is funny in places, too, so you might laugh out loud, so be forewarned.)

You can get the book for your e-reader or in print. Have fun!

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Diving Deep

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
—Adrienne Rich from “Diving the Wreck”

I’ve been away from the outside world. Or at least trying to be. Diving deep into the imaginal realms.

That is what I do.

When I was young, I didn’t want an ordinary life. I don’t think I understood what the reality of that would mean.

For one thing, I still wanted all the accoutrements that went with an ordinary life: a house, home, land, enough wealth to be comfortable, good health, a partner.

I drew pictures when I was in elementary school. When I was five, I won first prize for my age group for drawing the Man in the Moon. I was impressed with the prize. I liked being the best. I liked being noticed for my talents, but I never tried to be the best at anything. I didn’t work at it. In my mind, that was akin to cheating. Let everyone just be themselves and then let the best girl win.

Or something like that.

I loved to draw. But I loved stories more. When I was five, I created my first book. On each page was a drawing. Put all the drawings together in a sequence and they told a story.

At some point when I was quite young--still in elementary school--I decided I couldn’t make a living as an artist. I’d have a better shot as a writer.

I laugh whenever I remember this.

What was I thinking?

But...

This was the life I chose. This is the life I wanted. It is different from what I expected, but it is my life. I am fortunate in so many ways that I can’t even articulate.

What is it to live a life dedicated to art?

Yes, that’s what I do. Storytelling is an art.

I have friends, other writer friends, who would laugh at the idea that writing is an art: It is a business, period. I have other friends who would laugh at the idea that what I do is art because they believe I am writing for the masses: I am merely a peddler.

I don’t care what they think or why other people write or create art. I know I do it because I am drawn to it, called to it, because it is what I do best in the world.

Lately, it is almost all I want to do.

Perhaps I am no longer a visitor to the imaginal worlds. Maybe that’s where I live.

I never wanted to be one of those reclusive writers who couldn’t bear to be in the world. I wanted to be a contributing member of my community. And I was, for the most part. I was an environmental and social justice activist for most of my adult life.

Most of the time I felt as though I was butting my head up against a brick wall.

Lately, I can’t make myself step into the fray. Too much shouting. Too many people with their heads in the sand, pretending nothing is wrong.

Now all I can do is dive deep into the imaginal realms and see what stories there are to tell.

Maybe that will help.

Storytelling is all about truth-telling, isn’t it?

A way for people to see the truth?

All of art is about the truth. Truth and beauty.

Or are they the same?

Lately, I feel raw.

Maybe since I was born.

My friend Stephanie Lillegard says that “good creative effort is always spiritually exfoliating--and so it's our raw selves with no skins we take out into the world then.”

I dive deep every time I write. I am listening, communing, becoming. I am finding the place, the sweet spot, where I can trust the creative flow, be the creative flow. I just am, while my fingers move, translating what I hear, see, feel, recollect.

I used to write a book a year. I’d write it, and then the rest of the year, I lived an ordinary life, doing what everyone does. Or doesn’t.

Now I have times when I cannot stop writing.

Sometimes it hurts.

This fast way of writing began about eleven years ago. I went to Michigan to visit my father who was ill at the time. It was an awful visit in ways that I don’t need to delineate here. Suffice to say, by the time I returned to the Pacific Northwest, I felt as though I have been emotionally flayed.

For the first time, I decided to write a novel based on my experiences--a roman à clef. For a little more than two weeks, the novel poured out of me. The words came so fast that some days I wept as I wrote it. I was writing longhand and I could barely read my own writing.

Not long after that, I began writing Swans in Winter. Again, it flowed from me so quickly that it was physically draining. I wrote all day for seventeen days. Some of those days, I wept from sheer exhaustion. But I had a novel at the end of it.

I knew I couldn’t sustain that pace. It didn’t feel healthy. I didn’t like it, actually.

I wrote my next few novels at a slower, more sustainable pace. But I was still writing quickly. Something had opened up in me, and I had to figure out how to go with it.

In the meanwhile, I got physically healthier. I also got a laptop. I wrote nearly all of Mercy, Unbound on the computer. This was new for me. After a lifetime of writing my first drafts on a yellow legal pad, I was now writing while I sat at the computer.

I started writing all of my novels on the computer. And then we began spending part of our winters in Tucson. In the second year we were there, I wrote Church of the Old Mermaids in less than a month.

I loved every minute of it.

This last winter, I wrote two and a half novels during our month in Tucson.

It was fun. It was exciting.

And it was exhausting. Once again, I had opened up those creative floodgates a little too wide.

It has taken me quite a few months to come back from that.

Does it mean I dove too deep?

Or did I work too hard?

Is it the job of every creative person to figure out how much is too much?

Lately I have been struggling with my own demons which seem to crawl out of my own private woodwork whenever I stop writing for a time.

When I work, when I create, when I tell stories, perhaps I “subdue the demons with splendor,” as the old Tibetan Buddhism texts say.

Or maybe I’m like Shahrazad, telling stories night after night to save my life.

A few days ago, I began putting together The Old Mermaids Book of Days and Nights. I’m collecting quotes from my novels--mostly those novels in the Old Mermaids universe. I have one quote per day of the year. I love doing this. I feel like I am in the Old Mermaids Sanctuary, and beyond, and all is well in the world. I’m not certain if I started to feel better and then I was able to begin this project, or if when I began this project, I subdued the demons with the splendor of the Old Mermaids.

Who knows?

This is my life. Sometimes it is a slog. Sometimes it is wondrous.

Do you remember the Irish fairy tale sometimes called "The Enchanted Heart?" A young woman has left her home and is traveling the countryside, looking for adventure. She stops one night in a village where the villagers are mourning the loss of a young man. The villagers are very hospitable to her. They give her food and invite her to stay. She asks if she can do anything to help. The parents and community members are tired from their grief. So they ask if she could sit with the body of the young man for a while so that they can get some sleep.

She agrees. They put a chair for her near the body. She can see the man’s face in the torch light, and she’s sorry for his death. He’s a handsome man, and he looks like he was a good-hearted soul.

Around midnight, the young woman is startled when the young man suddenly sits up and says, “I’m not dead! I’m under an enchantment. Can you help me?”

“What can I do?”

“If you will agree to go over the quaking bog, through the burning forest, and into the raging sea with me, I will be released from this enchantment.”

“Of course,” she says. “I will go with you.”

They clasp hands and immediately a whirlwind comes and carries them away and drops them down onto a quaking bog. They have no magic to help them. They only have each other. They make the perilous journey across the bog, somehow not falling in and drowning.

Next they are face to face with a wall of fire. They have no idea how they are going to traverse the burning forest. Then they see a stag running through, so they follow his trail. They barely make it out of the burning forest, but they come out of it and are standing at the edge of a cliff. Below them is a storm-tossed sea. They don’t know what to do. It seems impossible, but they hold hands and jump into the ocean.

Once in the icy water, they see a green light beneath the ocean waves. They swim toward the light--even as their limbs begin to freeze up, they swim toward the green light. They finally reach the green light, which is part of fairy land, and the enchantment is instantly broken. The whirlwind returns and takes them back to the man’s house. The young man and young woman fall in love and marry. The entire village celebrates at their wedding. The couple live long and happy lives together.

I often think of this story as a template for the life of a creative person.

Or maybe I think of it as a story of my own life.

The young woman leaving home on an adventure is the young creative person following the call of the wild. She soon enough meets someone in trouble. Maybe it’s the part of herself that is enchanted or dead to the world. Can any of us create if part of us is dead?

Or when she clasps the young man’s hand, is this when she truly begins her life as an artist? She has stepped out of the mainstream. She will go where the story takes her. She will go any place to awaken that which is dead. She will go anywhere to follow her heart’s desire.

And finally, they have to dive deep to release the enchantment. That is the most difficult part of the journey. They have to swim deep into the ocean to that green light.

I decided long ago to go on this journey. I clasped the young man’s hand. I agreed to do whatever it took to release the enchantment--to live a heartfelt life, a creative life.

But some days I feel bogged down.

Other days, I feel like I’m trapped in the fire. Will I ever find a way out?

Other days, I am in the icy ocean and I’ve lost sight of my true love and my goals.

I’ve lost sight of the green light.

But wait, there it is.

The light at the beginning of the fairy tale.

The connection to the divine creative flow.

Some days I feel close to the green light. Some days I am in the green light and any moment, the whirlwind will come and take me back to my community. Once there, I can celebrate and be a part of that world again.

Until then, I am diving.

I am diving toward that which is calling to me: the words are purposes, the words are maps, taking me to the story ready to be told.

I am not diving for the wreck. Especially if that wreck is me. I am diving for the divine. For creation.



Photograph taken at night (by me) by the Old Mermaids pool at the retreat in Tucson.

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