TIN STAR TOWN

I have a new piece up at K. C. Ball’s 10 Flash, issue 2, called Tin Star Town. It takes place in Globe Arizona, one of my favorite towns on our way to Sprucedale. No idea why I find it so evocative but I do. “Monsoon,” a longer story, also features a paragraph about Globe.

I think jewelry plays a part and all those shows Tim and I watch on cable, “How It’s Made” and discussions of steel, copper, bronze. Globe is a copper mining town at the foot of the mountains just east of Phoenix. And one of the metals I like to work with when I bead is copper. I love the look of it and I’ve learned that it’s an indispensible commodity in our world. Copper is used for communications, as an alloy ingredient. I don’t want to look all this up, so this is just off the top of my head. Let’s just say that for me metal rocks.

VERMONT

So I’m here and working. And it’s been raining almost every day since I arrived. It’s a good thing, I suppose, since that means I stay in my little studio room and write instead of getting out with my camera, taking pictures. But it’s all good. It can’t possibly rain for the whole four weeks, can it?

Since I just wrote a piece about what to do when your car goes off a bridge, I’ve got my eye on the river outside my window. Picked a marker rock to see if the water rises. In Arizona this can happen in an afternoon (again referencing Monsoon!), and I can tell by the steep banks on both sides of Gihon that it’s likely to rise with the rain. Regardless, it is beautiful and I feel truly blessed.

Every Day Fiction’s October Calendar is up at FFC. Here’s what’s coming up.

Oct 1 K.C. Ball /Canticles
Oct 2 Alexander Salas /The Hungry Squirrel
Oct 3 Donna Gagnon /Ilker Drennan
Oct 4 Scotch Rutherford /Harvest Moon
Oct 5 Matthias R. Gollackner /Real World Heroism
Oct 6 Harry Steven Lazerus /We Had No Right
Oct 7 Megan Arkenberg /Grown from Man to Dragon
Oct 8 Jim Steel /Enemy of the Party
Oct 9 Mickey Mills /Trajectory
Oct 10 John A. Mackie /Destination: Beach
Oct 11 Rachel Lim /Water Bottle Musings
Oct 12 Fred Meyer /Blind Spots
Oct 13 G.T. MacMillan /Evidence
Oct 14 Sarah Hilary /Invisible Mend
Oct 15 Essie Gilbey /The Love Stone
Oct 16 Erin Ryan /Fark Those Takkloving Aliens
Oct 17 Wayne Scheer /Stripped of Innocence
Oct 18 Martin Turton /A Song for Cara
Oct 19 Krystyna Smallman /Miss Flossy and the Ferals
Oct 20 Karl El-Koura /Beat-Down
Oct 21 C.L. Holland /Beauty Sleeping
Oct 22 Eric V. Neagu /The Vegetarian
Oct 23 Shelley Dayton /Identity Crisis
Oct 24 Kendra C. Highley When Mom’s Sick
Oct 25 Sharon E. Trotter /The Haircut FIRST PLACE WINNER OF FFC’S STRING-OF-10 FLASH FICTION CONTEST
Oct 26 Karel Smolders /Brains
Oct 27 Stef Hall /Fingers
Oct 28 B. J. Adams /A Hearty Breakfast
Oct 29 Patrick Perkins /Feeding Time
Oct 30 Barbara A. Barnett /Dumping the Dead
Oct 31 Stefan Bachmann /The Pale Lean Ones

Sarah Hilary’s After a Long Illness, Quietly At Home at Right Hand Pointing.

Robert Swartwood’s Phantom Energy at Wigleaf.

Jonathan Pinnock’s Mid-Life Crisis at Boston Literary Review.

Alexander Burn’s Twit-Tales at Twitter.

Erin Kinch’s The Wall at Hypersonic Tales. (Podcast!)

K. C. Ball’s Tin Man at Big Pulp.

One whole week with writing on the menu? No dry cleaning to pick up, no salads to toss, no television to distract, what else could a writer ask for?

Nothing really, but I got more. MORE in caps and bold. A terrific writer in Joan Clark, as available, knowledgeable, and wise a mentor as anyone could ever want. A workshop setting between gorgeous peaks to stir the imagination. And peers with skills, ideas, and a desire to help. I cannot begin to explain how important these few days in the Canadian Rockies have been in putting me on the course to finishing my long unrevised novel. I finally feel capable of and joyous about the task.

The site itself, of course, is amazing. The Banff Centre sits on a mountain maybe a half mile or so above the little village of Banff. It’s a large complex with lodgings for artists of all kinds, several places to eat, comfortable classrooms, and access to many trails, activities, and resources.

My room was a nice-sized hotel kind of thing (blond, modern, clean lines) with so much storage I could have stayed a few months before I filled up every cubby hole. King-sized bed, long sleek desk, a breakfast table, A COFFEE POT, and in my case, a very short walk over a pedway into the dining hall.

Buffet set up with food for every imaginable picky appetite, veg, vegan, non-dairy, bland, spicy. Made to order omelettes every morning. Banquet every night. Fabulous views courtesy of floor to ceiling windows all around. Easy to eat there. No money needed. Just slide your “artist’s card.” My meal plan made it through the whole week, with only breakfast the last morning having to charge to my room.

The program.

In our building, the writers in the Writing with Style Program have their own lounge. This is Workshop Central with mail slots for each writer. Two computers and a printer available 24-7. This is where readings are held (8 slots each night, unbelievable quality of material) Tue-Fri nights at eight. Welcome party and so-long party also fit nicely into the space.

The classrooms are located across the street–well, a new building is being built in the middle of that street, but somewhere beyond the backhoe are the classrooms. And as is perfect for writers, “The Kiln” coffee house is right there in the building, lattes and sandwiches available until 7:00 every night with the swipe of that card.

The people.

Robert Kroetsch. Writer in Residence. Making sure you felt as if he’d been waiting for YOU to walk through the door.

Edna Alford, retiring director (and founder too I think) of Writing with Style program. What a wonderful, supportive, passionate woman. She made certain that every writer felt comfortable and respected.

And of course, Joan Clark, an extraordinary mentor. Funny, casual, down-to-earth, with-it-attitude, in addition to being a pioneer for Canadian literature and an inspiration to all writers. I sound a little star-struck because I am.

My fellow writers in the historical fiction group: Helen, Jane, Alanda, Voula, Chandra, and Doug. Amazing talent, intelligence, and sincerity. Love you all.

It was a terrific experience for me. I feel now that I can actually get my novel What Came Before into the kind of shape it needs to be to begin sending it out. This is my goal and now I feel one step closer to achieving it because of my time at Writing in Style.

No time to write about this extraordinary adventure right now because I do have to pack which I am avoiding by uploading pictures, cropping them, auto correcting, and well, just staring at them.

BUT….I’ll just get them up here, a couple, and move on with my morning. More later on the “week that was” and all the amazing people I’ve met.

I do miss Tim and I will be happy to be home for a week until my next adventure. Next week: Vermont.

When I signed up to come to Banff to write for a week and get some guidance on my novel, I did it somewhat blindly. There wasn’t much information on line about the offered Program, Writing in Style, and even less about the specific workshops offered. My choices were poetry, memoir, short fiction, and historical fiction.

Poetry, uh, no. And memoir? Impossible! I can’t remember any thing from before I was 45. That left short fiction and historical fiction. I know I have a lot to learn about writing short, and I would certainly benefit from such a session, but that wasn’t my goal in seeking out a residency. My goal was and is to finish my novel, so that left me with historical.

Not really a bad choice for me since I’ve written a couple shorts that fall into that category, but since there is an historical element in my novel, the fit seemed perfect. So I signed up and here I am. I didn’t know what to expect.

I knew very little about the Banff Center–er, CENTRE, I’m in Canada don’t you know–but the program offers a room, wi-fi, printer service, and food available that I don’t have to cook, so I was good to go, up for anything.

I feel very lucky. Who I got was Joan Clark. She’s written several books, including The Victory of Geraldine Gull,The Dream Carvers, Latitudes of Melt, and An Audience of Chairs plus a new one just coming out. I don’t know the title, but I’ll find out.

So thrilled to see Chalk Dust up at Night Train today. If you get a chance to stop over and read it, that would be terrific. Here’s the link: Chalk Dust.

Sep 1 Jonathan Pinnock Hidden Shallows
Sep 2 Sarah Hilary Burial of the Bells
Sep 3 Clinton Lawrence The Old City
Sep 4 Joel Willans A Friggin’ Star
Sep 5 Margaret Karmazin Diamonds in the Rough
Sep 6 Ellie Tupper Mandala: A Dish of Lime-Vanilla Ice
Sep 7 KM Rockwood Shredded
Sep 8 James Hartley Breakfast
Sep 9 Gargi Mehra The Beauty
Sep 10 Ben Loory The Wall
Sep 11 Melody Beacham Under My Skin
Sep 12 John Jasper Owens Mute Point
Sep 13 Fred Warren Weightless
Sep 14 Sheila R. Pierson Steak and Potatoes
Sep 15 Krystyna Smallman Consuming
Sep 16 Martin Turton Minding Matthew
Sep 17 Lori Simeunovic In the Cards
Sep 18 Anna Sykora Your Guarantee of a Human Bean
Sep 19 Aaron Polson How to Burn a House
Sep 20 A. S. Andrews Alien Life
Sep 21 Garry Grierson The Bull and Bucket UFO
Sep 22 Eric Del Carlo Frankly
Sep 23 Lossie Reeves Addie and Boog
Sep 24 Ann Wilkes Grey Drive
Sep 25 Cathryn Grant So Lucky
Sep 26 John Wiswell Frankenstein’s Monsters
Sep 27 Cate Gardner Strange Tooth
Sep 28 Debra Easterling Annapolis Eyes
Sep 29 Lee Hughes The Backtrack
Sep 30 Oonah V Joslin The Devil’s Within

It’s August 31 and all hint submissions need to be sent to Robert Swartwood, editor of the H.H. Norton Anthology of Hint Fiction by midnight EDT tonight. The link to the guidelines is here. Check it out and get to work.

Rodeo had a Dog Party yesterday. The guests included Harley and Ian, two wild and wacky Weimaraners; Lucy, whose provenence is cloaked in shady secrets despite her grand dame manners, and Sky of the azure blue eyes who conjures up summer ranch adventures since that’s where she came from. These aren’t great pictures since the dogs were roiling all over the yard, in and out of the pool, dashing in circles as if there was a rabbit on a stick somewhere about 10 feet in front of them. But I have to share because, well, it was hilarious and Hillary (Rodeo’s MOM) wasn’t here.

Yes, Danielle, I’m getting back to work.