First snow, picture taken this morning, mid-November 2014, with dark purple pansies peeking through
(Excerpted from “Snow-Flakes”)
“Out of the bosom of the Air,
Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare
Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
Silent and soft and slow
Descends the snow.”
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
So, in the weeks leading up to the release at long last of my five-years-in-the-writing novel Moose Tracks on the Road to Heaven (which is scheduled for pre-order in mid-December, with publication February 3, 2015!) I’m going to be posting the cover (coming soon!) along with a few snippets and sneak peeks from the book itself.
This first sneak peek comes from the Prologue and centers on the main character, Elena, during one of her childhood brushes with Death (not as ominous as it sounds, since the novel is a humorous, quirky, poignant story about family, friendship, love, loss, and coming to terms with what it means to live when someone you love dies).
This bit of scene was inspired by an actual event at an actual place from my childhood – The Enchanted Forest in Old Forge, NY (now it’s advertised as “The Enchanted Forest Water Safari” – where the fun never stops!) Back then it was only a “fairytale” based theme park with lots of little tableaus, live entertainment by way of animal shows and acrobats, and a few rides.
One of the rides I loved when I was four or five was a “pony” ride like this one, where you could sit on a real, live pony and ride around in a circle seven or eight times. I’ll let the sneak peek fill in the rest:
From Moose Tracks on the Road to Heaven, by M. Reed McCall
“Let’s go back to the subject of Death.
Elena’s two youthful run-ins with the Reaper hadn’t caused any permanent emotional scars (though there were a couple of physical ones); instead, she’d carried with her a bone-deep awareness of life’s impermanence, along with a tendency at moments of deep fear or distress to murmur a phrase that broke her father’s heart and earned teasing from certain of her sisters each time she uttered it: “Am I going to die, Pa?”
The first brush with Eternity happened the summer after she’d turned four, at the bustling Adirondack theme park called Fairytale Adventure. She’d been bucked off the live pony-ride – an attraction where children rode tethered ponies round and round a circle for a pre-set length of time. Unbeknownst to anyone, Elena’s pony had been in the harness for too long. A sore had developed near the edge of his saddle. An insect might have landed on the raw place, or perhaps Elena had accidentally touched it. She couldn’t remember.
Whatever it was, that instant had been followed by a jumble of sights, sounds, and not very nice feelings as she’d sailed through the air and landed with a crunching thud a dozen feet away. She’d later learned that her skull had narrowly missed a rock when she’d finally reconnected with earth. She didn’t know any of that at the time, though. She only knew that her shoulder ached something fierce, her collarbone having snapped upon impact.
However, if all else was muddled, the memory of looking up and seeing the worry in Pa’s handsome face had stuck with her, vivid as blood upon snow. He’d scooped her up and carried her tucked against his chest all the way to the park entrance, where they would find their van and go on to the hospital.
As he moved her swiftly through the crowd, that desperate question had slipped out in a whisper. Pa had met her gaze, his striking blue eyes filled with such love for her, and he’d answered in a calm and reassuring voice that no, she wasn’t going to die. And so Elena had nodded in grave acceptance, blinking away any lingering tears. He was her Pa – the best Pa in the whole world – and he always told her the truth.”
There you have it: Sneak Peek #1. Stay tuned for more snippets in the coming weeks, posted ONLY on this blog, for you, my wonderful followers. 🙂
I’m at it again tonight…and last night, and tomorrow night, and the night after that. Cinderella once more, likely up until at least midnight all these nights, trying to get caught up with paper work.
Spread over my dining room table is my stack of research papers. There are 50 of them. It’s important, necessary work for students…a process they need for college, to write the papers their professors will require, for presentations their careers may demand, and even life in general, when they need to know how to ferret out meaningful information from the piles of dreck on the inter-webs, read it, understand it, and use it in meaningful ways.
But it’s exhausting to assess and grade.
It takes me at least 20 – 25 minutes per paper, because I have to check what’s written against the sources used, to ensure it’s used properly and well, without plagiarizing etc. And it’s not the only paperwork I need to accomplish before quarter averages can be tabulated.
I think I’ve figured out how I get so behind, so that each five week period I end up having to sink at least five nights of 6 – 8 hours of grading into my personal life, after work hours. I’m usually just too drained when I get home from my 8 hour school day working with 92 teenagers to manage a grading session once supper is made and cleaned up, laundry is thrown in, a child’s sporting event is attended, and one-on-one parent/child time is eeked out, among other things.
This Cinderella is getting too old.
Love my students (really, really do). Love teaching and feel incredibly enthusiastic about facilitating their insights, inquiries, and learning.
Can’t hack the paperwork anymore.
Such is life, though, until I retire in another seven years or so.
For right now it’s my lot to turn into a pumpkin on a regular basis. 🙂 I have the will, but now I just need the energy and the time…
Happy Sunday, all. Catch you on the upswing tomorrow when I’m more properly caffeinated.!
I love revisionist texts – you know, the kind of text where the current artist reworks something from an original, often well-known or beloved text and produces something entirely new.
As a teacher, I often work with my students through texts that are revisions of earlier, “original” works; among them: Jane Smiley’s Pulitzer Prize winning A Thousand Acres, which is a revisionist text for Shakespeare’s King Lear, Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea, which is a prequel and revisionist text to Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, and John Gardner’s Grendel, which is a prequel and revisionist text of the original Anglo Saxon epic Beowulf.
Of course there are revisionist film texts galore – re-workings of (sometimes beloved) original screen or other stories. Some have a very light and “fun” vibe – like all of the Shrek movies, which are compilations of original fairytales with satirical elements applied (I teach a unit on that too) 🙂
There are also some for the stage: Wicked, the revisionist text for the Wicked Witch aspect of the original Wizard of Oz film and book springs to mind.
Not as often, I hear/see revisionist musical texts – though usually it’s an “updating” of an old classic, such as “Unforgettable” with Natalie Cole, singing along with her father’s original version of the song.
But here is an example of a song that’s been revised backward…to an older style that was undoubtedly its long-lost relative anyway. It’s a cover of “All About That Bass”, done by Kate Davis; I love it, maybe even better than the original text by Meghan Trainor (of course my predilection for 1940’s music may have something to do with that too, LOL). Some of you may have seen it already, since it made its way around Facebook and other social networking sites, but I’m sharing it here, since I think it’s worth the listen, either way.
Anyone have any revisionist texts – written, film, musical, or otherwise that they enjoy? Please share in the comments, if you’re so inclined. 🙂
A sweet book from a simpler time
When they were in elementary school, this was a favorite book for both my girls, especially around this time of year. It has some lovely black and white, soft-edged illustrations by Deborah Kogan Ray, and it was originally published in 1985, purporting to be based upon a slightly spooky but also sweet and ultimately positive experience had by the author, Emily Herman, when she was little.
My younger daughter so enjoyed the details and descriptions in the story, that from the very first time I read it to her, she begged for us to have “spaghetti and meatballs” for supper that Halloween, since that’s what the narrator and her family have in the story on that night.
We’ve been having spaghetti and meatballs for Halloween supper ever since. 🙂
Here’s the book’s description:
“Every Halloween, Hubknuckles pays a visit to Lee and her younger sisters and baby brother. The children watch the ghostly figure from the safety of their warm kitchen, experiencing delicious little tickles of fear.
But this year, Lee has decided that Hubknuckles isn’t real. “Hubknuckles is just a sheet and a flashlight,” she tells her sisters. “Either Ma or Pa makes him dance.” And she is determined to prove it.
What Lee discovers after an eerie dance on the lawn with her silent, shadowy partner is sure to delight young readers, who will be enchanted by the softly glowing illustrations of this unusual Halloween happening.”
I recommend it highly if you have or know of young children who enjoy reading or being read to, say from kindergarten age to age 9 or so. It remains one of my older daughter’s favorite stories. And my younger daughter, who is a decade older than she was on that long-ago Halloween when we first read Hubknuckles together, is now an avid reader in own right, in large part due to the way books like it triggered her imagination. This story is available for kindle or in hardcover (though the link I’ve provided in the title here leads to the hardcover version at amazon.com).
One of the things I miss, now that my girls are no longer so little, is the loss of those opportunities to read to them like I used to. Seeing this book brings back many happy memories of times together, snuggled up and enjoying a good tale. But I’ve ordered copies for both of them, so they maybe they will be able to recreate that magic when they read it to their children one day.
Contemplating, reading, imagining, and living various lives through the pages of books as verbalized by some notable authors…accompanied by lovely illustrations by the incomparable Norman Rockwell. What could be better on a cool autumn evening? I think I’ll light a few candles, brew a hot cup of tea, and do some reading myself…
Boy Reading of Adventure by Norman Rockwell
It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it. ~Oscar Wilde
Boy Reading from 1920 GE ad by Norman Rockwell
Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. ~Mark Twain
Most Beloved American Writer by Normal Rockwell
In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time: the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream. ~Thomas Carlyle
Books are one of the great loves of my life, first introduced to me at the knee of my mother and father, as they read to me day after day, and then serving as a faithful comfort in times of joy, turmoil, happiness and distress. They whisk me to other times and places and allow me to live vicariously through the characters and places they inhabit. It’s the only form of time-travel accessible on a regular basis (for all our interest in the activity as espoused by shows like Dr. Who and Outlander) How about you? Do books hold a special place in your life? Any favorite titles?
Misty rain outside my window this morning
“The rain to the wind said,
‘You push and I’ll pelt.’
They so smote the garden bed
That the flowers actually knelt,
And lay lodged–though not dead.
I know how the flowers felt.
~Robert Frost
While poetry is not my usual choice of writing form (I tend to write too “long” to craft any good poems, LOL), I enjoy reading it…especially poems that evoke images, both sensory and emotional. Robert Frost is one of my favorite poets because he combines that with another of my great loves: Nature.
This poem seemed fitting to me today. I, too, know how the flowers felt, and yet there is something beautiful in that.
Without the more violent “pushing and pelting” in life, we would never fully appreciate our moments of sun-dappled peace.
Without the bitter we would never taste the sweet.
M. Reed McCall, Author 