O-si-yo lovelies!

I hope as this email is delivered that everyone is having a wonderful solstice and Father’s Day. I’ll be making the drive over to Decatur today to leave my usual bouquet at my dad’s grave, even though my relationship with him was complicated-that is putting it kindly. Still, whose isn’t, right? If every relationship we had with our parents was just peachy-keen, we’d probably soon run out of ideas to write about.

As June winds down, I am facing some of the most serious health challenges I’ve had in awhile. I’ve been referred to an oncologist on the recommendation of my gynecologist, and a hysterectomy is looking likely. I’m scared on the one hand but also looking forward to the relief the surgery may bring. My womb is nothing to me now but an ever constant source of pain and anxiety, so maybe having it gone will be the best thing for me. I will appreciate all of your prayers and well wishes as I navigate these challenges.

June Ramblings

Summer is vacation time for most, but for me it also carries the irony of being my brokest time (my teaching load is reduced or sometimes non-existent) so my summers tend to be spent close to home, with traveling reserved often for the fall and spring. I don’t mind, honestly. I love having the quiet time to write, to catch up on reading and my life, puttering around the house and using this time to explore my own fascinating little nook of the globe. This week, I’m excited to be heading once more to Court Street Books in Florence for the book club discussion of Barbara Kingsolver’s Pulitzer prize winning novel, Demon Copperhead.

It’s a bit of a drive for these book club discussions so I only sign up when: A: It’s a book I’ve read and loved, B: A book I’ve read and hated (passionately enough to vent about it), C: A book I’m reading and loving, D: A book I’m reading I just might DNF and feel the need to analyze why (lol); or E: A book I plan TO read in the foreseeable future (for the record, I don’t mind spoiler discussions at all; this is because I tend to read books as a writer more than as a reader, and I’m always more interested in how writers tell a story—i.e., the journey—rather than the destination).

Anyway…I haven’t finished Demon Copperhead but I’m roughly about 200 pages in. Now I’m feeling like I need to go back and read Dickens’s David Copperfield since this is supposed to be an Appalachian parody of it. I’ve read a lot of Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities being my favorite with Great Expectations close behind, but David Copperfield is one of those I just never got around to it. Now Demon Copperhead has really stirred my curiosity…just how easy is it to supplant Industrial London to Wal-Martville, USA in the Tennessee hills? A scary thought, actually.

Oh yes, and the drive to Florence is going to give me a great excuse to start my snooping for Rocky Hill Castle (see last month’s newsletter) https://buttondown.com/LindaRaven/archive/tales-from-the-singing-river-may-musings/ since its historic location is on the same route. Hopefully I’ll be able to make a good reel out of it. If I do, I’ll post on my Instagram account (see link below).

What Else is in the Reading Stack:

This month, I’ve started Amy Jo Burns’s Wait For Me, a wonderful (and ghost-y) magical realism story that combines music and Appalachian lore to weave a story about a country/folk singer, Elle Harlow, who disappeared at the height of her popularity, and the mystery of a girl named Marijohn who might (or might not be) her daughter.

There is such a delicious and mysterious Bobbie Gentry sort of vibe to this story (and if you don’t know the legend of Bobbie Gentry, here is a great place to start:

I’ve also discovered Wait For Me might be a great comp title for my own novel, In the Place Where Frank James is Buried, Just North of Here. I’ve discovered great comps don’t have to be books exactly like your own—they just need to have enough elements/themes in common to make a valid comparison in the marketplace (i.e., readers who love X will love Y). In this case, the entwining of music and its ability to heal, the generational curse of parental mistakes, the idea that spiritual guidance can sometimes intervene to heal, are all similar enough themes that I’m considering asking my agent to use this as one of our comps.

What I’m Working On:

I’m in a bit of a lull right now, that down time I usually take between major writing projects. I finished my first draft of The Kids of Crossroads last December, and that was an exhausting feat (all 540 pages, 150k words of it!) and in July will turn my attention back to editing it into two volumes for The Kids of Crossroads series. It’s actually based on my own experience in a juvenile alternative school in the 70’s—highly fictionalized, of course (kind of Stranger Things meets Harry Potter).

Well, as part of my “training” for writing a book series, I’ve been doing a lot of brushing up on some other—cough—well known speculative book series, including this one you might have heard of.

So having jumped into this deep dive of the often-maligned Twilight, I’ve come away with a new respect for Stephanie Myers. I’m just going to use this space to say: It’s time to STOP the nonsense of putting these books, and this author, on all those “Worst Writing” lists. Sure, these books aren’t literary masterpieces and no, Myers isn’t going to be winning any Pulitzer awards soon, but let’s be real. There was a legit reason these books were so hugely successful. From the get-go, Myers knows how to hook a reader and how to construct a narrative that builds momentum and tension. Consider this opening from the first book, which you can read here:

First Pages: Twilight — Dr. Bookworm

As promised, Stephenie Meyer's Twilight is the second book in our first pages study session this month in honor of National Novel Writing Month. Why?  Again because both the Harry Potter series and The Twilight Saga were instrumental in changing the face of children's book publishin

Honestly, from what I’ve seen, there is a tendency to pick on Myers’s prose for some of the silliest, most absurd reasons, like this often maligned example:

“My mother drove me to the airport with the windows rolled down.”

I recently watched an entire writing vlog that spent minutes ripping this line a good one, an example of Myer’s “poor writing.” Yes, technically, the sentence is grammatically incorrect. Yes, it “implies” it’s the airport that has its windows rolled down, not the car.

And my response to that as a reader is…so fricking what?

Seriously, I could practically feel my eyes rolling out of my head when they pounced on that line to rip apart.

Yes, it’s technically incorrect but…are we really confused? No. Not if you have common sense, which I assume most readers do. It’s how real people talk. And this is a first person POV. From a seventeen-year-old girl. Good grief, we know she means the windows are rolled down in the car, just like we would be able to interpret that sentence quite clearly and capably if Bella was actually speaking to us-which she is.

Since when are we demanding perfectly spoken/written grammar from FIRST PERSON POV’s?

Okay. Writing rant for the day over. What else…

I’m still finishing up edits on “In the Place Where Frank James is Buried” and hopefully it will be ready—at long last—to go on submission this fall. In the meantime, Elmer & Leonard, my paranormal love story/road trip odyssey, is off on a fresh round of submissions with a newly tweaked opening chapter. Wish me luck! These were the editors who specifically requested it after pitch sessions at both the Atlanta and Tennessee Writer’s Conferences, so I’m feeling hopeful.

In the interim, I went back and did some final brushing up on my verse novel, A River Diverted: The Essence of a Life. That project is a bit of an outlier, but it’s a work I’m very proud of, inspired by the short and tragic life of River Phoenix, a project I felt inspired to write when it was approaching his 30th death anniversary. The energy around that particular anniversary was just incredible. Speaking of which, I just have to comment:

I was thinking about River the other day, and it occurred to me that out of all his movie roles, this scene right here from Running On Empty is my absolute favorite; in fact, it just might be my all-time favorite River Phoenix moment. You can watch it here starting at 0:56.

In this scene, River is a high school kid named Danny Pope. He is once again adjusting to a new high school because his parents—hippie activists who are on the run from the government—are constantly on the move, starting new lives in a new community every few years. In this scene, Danny has already checked out. But his new music teacher, Mr. Phillips, is explaining the difference between pop songs that are simple, 4/4 time and classical music that can vary between very intricate times and patterns. To illustrate his point about 4/4 time, Mr. Phillips plays Madonna’s “Lucky Star” All of the kids, recognizing the song (it’s 1988, after all) are excited, clapping along—except for Danny in his too-cool-for-school specs, holding back, hiding inside himself, unimpressed. Then something happens as Mr. Phillips demonstrates that difference between 4/4 and classical time. We see that moment when something shifts in Danny, a spark lit. The posture straightens. The glasses come off. I recognize that moment because it’s that moment every teacher cherishes; when you see the light bulb go off. When you realize something you’ve said, something you did, has made a difference, reached a kid somehow.

It’s the moment every teacher lives for.

And River captures it beautifully in the scene, that essence of a young mind allowing itself to open for the first time, the realization that maybe there is something left to learn. I just adore that scene. Maybe because I spend my days fighting against a tide of faces glued to phone screens. I think I can speak for all my colleagues when I say there is a part of each of us that longs for the “Danny Pope moment.”

I hope your Father’s Day continues to be a blessed one, please hold Dad close if he’s stll with you, and take some time today to remember him if he’s not. Do something special that links the two of you in spirit. Remember, even if your relationship is as complicated as mine was, there is a reason The Creator made this man-out of all the men in the world-your dad. Listen, my dad was born the exact same day, same hour as Paul McCartney! I’ve thought about the irony of that every day for years. Two baby boys born the same time, opposite sides of the pond—one destined to be a Beatle, a millionaire, one of the greatest songwriters of our time; the other destined to be…simply my dad.

Some religions say we choose our parents. I don’t know if that is true, but somehow even through all the trauma and the up’s and down’s, I always knew I’d never have chosen differently.

On that note, until next month…

Donadagohvi (Till we meet again…)