Like any one of Tennessee Williams's characters, Mississippi is a complex, brooding, neurotic, conflicted, embracing place of sultry warmth and inimitable hospitality. And in these postcards, I will present Mississippi as I encounter her, as I journey deep into her soul. She has already captured me, and here I intend to seduce you into her embrace.
Fall is my favorite time of year, even though the turning and falling leaves hints at the winter to come. It is also the beginning of the end of the year. And yet, this year, when summer wouldn't end, until it did, fall weather never made it. We've gone right into winter weather that requires the heater being on in the house; temps will plummet when the first arctic blast moves south across the United States by tomorrow. And yet, fall is my favorite time of the year when I want to write and think and read and snuggle down into my house.
I've been on the phone with Cliff in the last couple of days, sharing our ideas on my next writing project, which I finally got around to starting. I usually start with a concept and then I flesh out the ideas as it takes shape as I write. This new book is one of the spin-off novels I've been thinking about from the Common Threads in the Life Series, titled Granny Mack and the Gas Station at the End of the World, Cliff has outlined Part One of the three parts that will be in this book, and once I finish the Prologue, I have some initial research to do all the way back to the 1920's, 30's, 40's, and 50's. Granny Mack made an appearance in Book 5 of the Common Threads series, and since then I've been wanting to create a book around her life story. Stay tuned, I am tentatively setting a time line for sometime in 2020 for this book.
Some of the other writers in the writers group have accomplished projects and here in Columbus, a rather literary city in the Mississippi writers tradition, I attended the first book signing for Jeannette Basson from the group. It was held at the Columbus Arts Council building on the corner of Main and 5 St. from Noon to 2 p.m. Stranded in Alaskais Jeannette's first book, and while she's spending a lot of time promoting her book, she is also keeping her mind on her next book, Thunder Over Missouri. Like Stranded the new book will center around strong female characters, and I look forward to getting snippets of her new work at the Writers Group. The Arts Council building was buzzing with activity, not only for those who came to hear Jeannette read and sign books, but also those who usually drop by whenever there is a new art display on hand. The book signing was a success as people came and went during the two hours. At around 1 p.m. people gathered for her reading. The audience found both humor and suspense in Jeannette's reading, from the Moose that ate the main character's clothes while she was bathing in an inlet of the river near her camp, to returning home and keeping an eye out for the various threats the Alaskan wilderness posed. A lively period of Q and A followed her reading.
Dottie Porter's book, which she finished and published about a month after Jeannette's book came out, is now available, and we hope that we will get a reading from her in the weeks to come. Dottie's book is titled Out from under the Bed Pan into Cyberspace Nursing, which chronicles Dottie's sixty-year career as a Nurse and healer. She now works with women in the jail system in Columbus and doesn't seem to be slowing down even though she is in her 80s.
But just like Jeannette, Dottie is not stopping at this one book. She has promised me that she is already hard at work on her next project. I will continue to urge writers in the group to follow the pioneering lead of Jeannette Basson and Dottie Porter in finally finishing their books. We have a few more truly aspiring authors in the writers group, and now that it's Fall, it is a good time to get some of those more sedate activities into high gear.
As usual, I try to include a video about Columbus or Mississippi. Year round, and not just the fall or spring, there is always something to do in Mississippi.
The last time I posted on this blog was August, in the middle of the oddest summer I have spent here in Columbus, Mississippi. It was my fourth August, counting the first one in 2016, three months into living here. That summer, it was miserably hot and dry and near drought in much of the state. So dry, in fact that the pavement was rising and cracking and I stayed quiet around what few people I knew, afraid that I had brought New Mexico dryness with me.
But in 2019, this summer and now into fall, we've had rain, epic rain, flooding rain, so much rain that the Riverwalk Theater on the west side of Columbus was flooded and stayed that way for days, because there was nowhere for the water to go.
Yes! This is my backyard...er...uh...honest!
But this past August and in fact most of the summer of 2019 was wet and rainy and my back yard became a monster and I haven't tamed it yet, and it's already November. Even by the middle of October it seemed that the summer would never end, and then when it did turn, and I thought we were in for some nice fall weather (my favorite time of the year) it went straight from summer into winter. And the rain has not yet abated, and my backyard is still a monster. I'm having to investigate some real power tools beyond the mower and trimmer—neither are capable of taking down the 10-foot high bushes with 1.5-inch branches that have sprung up this summer. I can't even get out my backyard door! I didn't realize that the bushes had encroached on the house in the northwest el-shape of the house.
I can't hire anyone either, because I'm on a fixed income, and Cliff smiles over the phone when I talk about my home-ownership woes, and he reminds me that home-ownership was something I might not have been too wise about wishing for. Hahaha...he's right, but I love my house and I must, absolutely must, knuckle under and get out there with my elbow-grease-powered hand saw and clippers and pocket knife (?!?) and try to uncover my back porch stoop. And get the vines off the house, which I thought I had under control two years ago—they're ba-a-a-a-ck! But I've settled on a plan. I'll invite friends and relatives to come for a vacation (especially those from the desert who might like a little rain and green and Southern cooking, and I'll get them like Tom Sawyer did to paint my fen—I mean cut my bushes.
But make no mistake. I still love it here. I've only begun to scratch the surface of what it is to live in Mississippi, and alas, but ah-well, now that I'm living by myself with my two calico girls, I'm revamping my stable of books. I have just issued a 30-year-anniversary edition of Common Sons, because it had somehow fallen through the cracks at my publishing partner lists and wasn't available for several months. So I took the opportunity to revamp the format and the look.
And now that I'm aware that my titles are in disarray on the publisher's lists, I'm revamping several others—all to bring them into the new format. I'll no doubt post those new formatted books here for anyone who might be interested. It's interesting here in Columbus, at the writers group I belong to, I'm surrounded by church goers. I think 90 percent of the people in this small Southern city attend churches regularlarly, and even though my work is meant for an LGBT audience, several of the members of the group have gotten copies of my work and when I'm called on to read passages from my projects, I try to find those passages that delve into the deeper aspects of my characters, without subjecting anyone to something a bit lgbtq-ish...if you know what I mean. Being on my own, as it were, I can write and create to my heart's content, and I do, and it's time for me to think about finishing several projects. I am, after all, in Mississippi, the heart of Southern letters!
Here's the Ten Commandments of Writing...at least one author's rules.
