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I got a brief message today on my blog from someone whom I don’t know.  This person wanted to tell me that Grayson Queen, a blogger whom I follow, had died. His last two posts told us he had to leave work because he was bleeding from his ears and nose, apparently from an infection. He was given antibiotics and sent home. As an anatomist, I know that any infection in the middle ear and nasal sinuses has a good chance of spreading to the brain. I wasn’t told how he died, but I suspect it might have been that. Grayson was young, 35, and a remarkable young man. Here is how he describes himself from his blog, Posting Tuesdays: “Grayson Queen is a full-time novelist and painter located out of Orange County, California. His artistic passions range from deeply philosophical to unusual science fiction and fantasy. In his free time, Grayson dabbles with music, sculpture, and various explorations of geek culture. He is happily married to a dinosaur, and is happily owned by two amazing cats.” Grayson’s  wife, Rara, about whom I wrote last year, is also a  blogger, an exceptional writer,and is currently doing time in a California prison for a white collar crime. She has been told of his death. I cannot imagine how awful this is for her. You can visit her blog, Rarasaur, at http://rarasaur.wordpress.com/. Grayson would post pieces sent from her on her blog. Rara will be released this coming November. I am deeply affected by Grayson’s death. He had struggled hard in the past two years with the arrest and incarceration of his wife, a low-paying job that meant he had to live in an unsafe place, and an inability to continue writing. His blog stories were amazing. I don’t know whom to contact to find out more, to send my regrets and sympathy, but felt I needed to mark his passing. Our world is poorer for his passing.   0 0

The Young Jaguar by Zoe Saadia is the first book in a pre-Aztec trilogy, and introduces us to Atolli, a teenager in the Tepenic Empire of Central America, whose father is Tecpatl, the Chief Warlord. Prior to the rise of the Aztec Empire, this Empire was strong and growing. Tecpatl’s position is very high within the social structure and he is very content, having returned from a series of successful wars, and he loves his family. His wife, Sakuna, followed Tecpatl home when he warred in her native land of the Anasazis, and theirs is a deep and respectful love that has withstood the criticism of the Tepenic elite. Atolli is a hot-headed daredevil, who climbs the walls of the palace with the skill and cunning of a jaguar, just for fun. The story begins when Atolli, his best friend Mecatl and some other adventurous boys from the warrior school that Atolli attends, roam the palace walls at night, drinking octli, a potent drink reserved for the warriors of the tribe. This is a serious transgression, but an adventure they have taken before. This time, they are discovered and chased and Atolli and Mecatl fall over the wall into one of the palace gardens. There they meet Chictli, the beautiful daughter of the second son of the Emperor, and Atolli is smitten. His position as Tecpatl’s son saves him from serious punishment, but he has to vow to support Chictli’s father in the future as one of his warriors. At the same time, the Emperor dies, making Tecpatl vow to support his first son as the new Emperor, thus putting him at odds not only with his son, but much of the Tepenic elite. Tecpatl is thus forced to choose between his duty to the new Emperor and his family, which ultimately puts them all in danger. Sakuna uses her skill with herbs and healing to deal with the crisis. I become completely immersed in Zoe Saadia’s historical novels. The characters come alive; because of her detailed research on everything involved in tribal life – customs, food, clothing , jewelry – the reader feels like they are there, amidst the action. Family dynamics, especially in this book, are very recognizable, even though the tribal dynamics are complex. Zoe makes it clear that people haven’t changed much over the centuries: they are greedy, power-hungry, loving, driven, devious, envious, bored and frustrated. These emotions fuel this story. I highly recommend this book to any lover of historical fiction but more widely to any reader who likes a barn burner of a story with great characters and lots of action. What’s even better is that you can follow Atolli on his journey to adulthood through the next book in the series, The Jaguar Warrior. Zoe Saadia is the author of two trilogies and one series (11 full-length novels), all covering the turbulent history of Mesoamerica when the Aztecs were busy coming to power. All are based on more than a decade of research of pre-contact cultures. She is convinced this history of the Americas has been completely overlooked, and she brings it to life through her writing. She has also written The Peacemaker Series of four books, stories surrounding the creation of the famous Iroquois Confederacy, one of the oldest democracies on earth. I reviewed Two Rivers, one of these books, in a previous post. When I can fit them into my copious free time, I intend to read all of these! You can find Zoe Saadia at http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5056466.Zoe_Saadia http://www.zoesaadia.com/ https://www.facebook.com/Zoe.Saadia   0 0

On a 1,000 mile round trip trek to Columbus, Georgia a couple of weekends ago, we passed the Gaffney Peach or the Peachoid, it’s real name, by the side of I 85 in South Carolina. We’ve seen the Peach many times as we travelled up and down I 85 on various trips. This time we noticed that it’s been repainted. It now looks more like a lemon. I rather liked it when it was “peachy.” I decided to do a little research on the structure. The Peachoid is a 135 foot tall water tower, which holds one million gallons of water. It’s certainly a unique example of novelty architecture. If any of my readers are watching the series House of Cards, you’ll recall that the Peachoid was a focal plot point in Chapter 3, where it was joked that the structure resembles large buttocks, complete with gluteal crease (butt crack). Maybe that’s why it is also called the Moon Over Gaffney? The Peachoid recently got a lift from Kim Kardashian, a celebrity famous for her backside. Timothy Griffin posted the picture on his Facebook page with the caption, “Kim Kardashian spotted in South Carolina!!!” In 1981, the Peachoid was commissioned to be built by the Gaffney Board of Public Works, and the shape of the peach was selected for the town’s needed elevated water storage because the Gaffney economy was then dependent upon peach orchards, The people of the town wanted to make clear that South Carolina, and at one time, Cherokee County alone (where Gaffney is located) produced more peaches per year than the entire state of Georgia (known as the “Peach State”). The Peachoid was built by the Chicago Bridge and Iron Company, of steel and concrete. An overlay stem and leaf were laid across the structure, an enormous “cleft” was created with steel paneling. Peter Freudenberg, an artist who worked with macro-art, painted the structure to realistically pass for a peach. Repeated cycles of freezing and warming caused the Peachoid’s paint to peel in 6-foot swaths, mostly in its cleft, leaving patches of dull yellow that Gaffney boosters saw as a blemish on the reputation of this former mill town. So in 2013, the Peachoid is underwent its first complete overhaul—$120,000 worth of sandblasting the old lead-based paint down to the steel and starting over with high-tech but finicky primer and paints that could only be applied to a dry, empty tank. Maybe that’s why it now looks more like a lemon? Anyway, folks, the next time you’re traveling south on I 85, look for the Peach!   0 0

This past month, I became a formal part of the University of North Carolina’s Southern History Program. I guess I’m that old, and if you want to know more about my life before becoming a writer, this is it! Since 1973, the Southern Oral History Program has worked to preserve the voices of the southern past, collecting more than 5,000 interviews with people from all walks of life—from mill workers to civil rights leaders to future presidents of the United States. Almost 400 of those interviews focused on the history of the University of North Carolina and created source materials for study by future generations. There were four students working on the project for the past semester, focusing on the history of feminist activism at UNC:Samantha Gregg, a senior History and English double major; Liz Kennedy, a sophomore at Duke University studying History, Environmental Science and Policy, and Women’s Studies; Holly Plouff, a freshman Anthropology major; and Bryan Smith, a senior with a Linguistics and Women’s & Gender Studies double major. Bryan interviewed me. Women for this study were chosen from the Mary Turner Lane Award winners. The award, established in 1986, is named to honor Mary Turner Lane, founding director of the Curriculum in Women’s Studies. Mary Turner (in the South, women are frequently called by both their first and middle names) was a friend of mine, and she was a formidable woman who served as a role model and mentor for many women faculty. The award is given each year to a woman judged to have made an outstanding contribution to the lives of women on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus, and I was profoundly honored to be given this award a number of years ago. Samantha, Liz, Holly, and Bryan presented the culmination of their semester’s work via a mixed media presentation, following feminist activism at UNC from the 1960s to the early 2000s. The presentation was quite simple in its concept: with visuals behind them, the students took turns reading quotes from the interviews, standing behind placards with the names of the women being quoted. The quotations drew a temporal picture of life as a woman at UNC, the challenges, the defeats and the successes. When I arrived at the UNC School of Medicine, only 4% of the 700+ faculty were female full professors and only 13% were female assistant professors. There was no maternity leave, paternity leave, proximate day care, faculty associations for women to support them in their careers, formal mentoring programs, or elder care leave. Among the things I was involved in were the founding of the Association of Professional Women in Science and Medicine, the establishment of maternity and paternity leave policies, the creation of the Carolina Women’s Center, the development of a policy to stop the tenure clock for a year to allow faculty to deal with family/personal issues, and the founding of BRIDGES, a professional development program for women in any aspect of higher education. Since 1993, over 750 women have completed the annual BRIDGES programs, and I am proud to have been part of its establishment. We even had a small informal group of senior women who met to discuss life at UNC over drinks and dinner. I named it “The Ladies Knitting and Terrorist Society!” The conclusion of the students’ program was basically “We’ve come a long way, baby” but that we have a way to go, now mostly dealing with the subtleties of gender bias. I love the idea that I will be around as part of UNC’s feminist history.   0 0

I was honored to be asked by Joanne Guidoccio to participate in her Second Act Series. My contribution: From Human Anatomy to the Anatomy of a Murder, was posted today and can be found at: http://joanneguidoccio.com/2015/05/08/ So if anyone out there is wondering more about my life (so exciting, so riveting!), read on! And my thanks to Joanne for asking me. 0 0

Bob enjoys a cup of good black coffee, so over coffee in my kitchen, I pried some answers out of him about his background, writing career, and his plans for his next book. Oh what the heck, I brought out some cinnamon rolls, too.    Where did you grow up, Bob? On a sheep farm in North Carolina. My father was a civil engineer, but ran the family farm. No one around had sheep, but he very much liked the idea of living the life of a country squire, so by the great horn spoon, he got some sheep and learned how to raise them. He was moderately successful at it, but it was a lot of work. Watching him do that when other folks around were not doing anything with sheep was very instructive. It’s possibly where I got my stubborn streak and my determination to make my work completely my own, rather than copying other styles.  Why did you start writing? The first writing I did was at about 8 years old on my dad’s old 1947 Woodstock typewriter, pounding out little James Bond short stories because I had these ideas I thought were better than those in the movies. Little did I know, of course, how much there was to learn.  How long have you been writing? That would be … uhh … over 50 years. Gosh, I now officially feel old. What sparked the idea for your book (The Fur, Fish, Flea and Beagle Club)? It was originally a short story about the two boys working in the saw mill that I expanded into the book. I was working on a piece that was much too long for my head to hold without exploding so I decided to drop that one for a while in favor of a nice little short book. I limited myself to the time period of the summer of 1936 in order to keep it short and sweet. The joke was on me, as the book ended up being 180,000 words, though I’m told it is a fast read.  Which character, if any, has a personality that most closely resembles yours? That is a very difficult question, because all the characters have elements of me. Jamie is a romantic who is good with his hands, Ned more of a mystic who feels the most alive surrounded by nature, the fly-fishing and philosophy of Sabastian, the woodworking of Tom Parsons and so on. All of them are me.  Which character was the hardest to write and why? I think perhaps the women, because I’m not a woman. To write them I just held in my head that women are just as strong, just as silly and just as intelligent as men with the same feet of clay, and let their characters write themselves.  What’s your next project? It’s a light-hearted romantic mystery set in 1936 on the coast of North Carolina. The working title is at present ‘Suzy and Dodge’ and it has a set of quaint and quirky characters that entertain me every time I enter their world. Hopefully they will be as entertaining to my readers.  Is there one place where you find writing the easiest? In the early morning just as the world turns from black to charcoal, at the beach whilst it’s quiet.  Do you prefer e-books, hardcovers or paperbacks to read? I prefer the actual book in my hands, whether hardcover or paperback. I do read e-books whilst I’m traveling or waiting in line for take-out at the local Asian restaurant.  Whom do you admire and why? This is a tough one. As writers, I admire Mark Twain for his expression of the optimism of the young and his feeling and grasp of mirth. I admire J. D. Salinger for the cleanliness of his prose. The third writer I admire was a remarkable woman by the name of Beryl Markham who was a famous aviatrix. She was the first person to fly across the Atlantic Ocean the hard way, against the head winds. She wrote not only of her experiences flying in the classic West with the Night, but her experiences as a horse trainer in Africa (she was a contemporary of and knew Isak Dinesen of Out of Africa fame) bore fruit as well, in a collection of some of the best short stories I’ve ever read, called The Splendid Outcast.  Where can readers find out more about you and your work? Right now on my blog, Byrdwords.wordpress.com, and on Amazon and Goodreads. I’m working hard on the new book and hope there will be much more for my readers to follow later in the year. Thanks so much for reading; I do deeply appreciate it. *** Thanks to Bob for the interview and the excuse to eat a cinnamon roll. You can find his first book, The Fur, Fish, Flea and Beagle Club on Amazon at: Check out Bob’s blog: https://byrdwords.wordpress.com/  For the A-Z challenge, he posted about all things nautical, so if you like the sailing and/or the ocean, stop by. He covered everything from grog to pirates.   0 0

The Fur, Fish, Flea and Beagle Club is a fantastic first book by R. M. Byrd, who writes with evident affection about two boys, Jamie Gareth and Ned Custis, spending a hot summer on a hardscrabble farm in North Carolina in the late 1930s. Jamie’s father is opening a saw mill to supply wood to the US Army, and Jamie has been looking forward to working with his father. When Ned Custis, a boy he barely knows from school, is brought by his father to work at the mill, too, Jamie is none too happy. It doesn’t help that Ned has no experience in doing farm chores and that Jamie’s dog, Toby, takes a shine to Ned. The book is richly populated with wonderful characters: Jamie’s parents and his bossy sister Goria, who Jamie is convinced gets special treatment; Gramma the cow; Nathan Ichabod Hindmarsh Norris, the mailman and a Peeping Tom at the widow Morrison’s house; Sebastian Wood, a WWI vet nicknamed the Ghost because he’s seldom seen and doesn’t speak; and the Right Reverend Costigan Analicious Cramphorne, the pompous, self-righteous and greedy minister of the church the Gareth family attends. The hard working men who populate the saw mill are equally memorable, among them: Snow, the black man Grant Gareth chooses as his foreman; Cyrus Conner, a Native American and ex-shaman from the Northwest; and Eueas Canfield, a nasty man who makes Gareth’s stomach crawl but who has papers to prove he was a vet and gets hired. Eueas becomes Jamie’s and Ned’s sworn enemy when he takes a swipe at Toby with a sickle. Each character has a fully developed and fascinating backstory, and through them the boys confront good and evil for first time. Both get into all sorts of mischief, the kind you can imagine in a rural setting before the digital era. Hint: think skunk in a mailbox. Jamie also gets to experience love when he meets the daughter of an Irish migrant worker. The period is described in perfect detail, and Mr. Byrd’s writing has a wonderful, lyrical quality. There were many places that were laugh out loud funny and others that made me cry. There’s a Tom Sawyer sense to the book, with elements of To Kill a Mockingbird, but this book stands uniquely in its own right. A great book for adults, teens, and a one to read to your children. Tomorrow, I’ll post an interview with the author. This is an excerpt from a chapter called Holiday, which I think you’ll enjoy. Fourth of July meant a day off at the mill. Except for Jamie and Ned. “This was supposed to be a day off?” Jamie heard Ned mumble behind him as he drove the bucksaw through another slab. Jamie smiled at him. “Only if we want to eat. We gotta grill the hot dogs and all those hamburgers Momma was patting out last night somehow.” “You grill hot dogs?” Ned lifted another slab up onto the crossbuck. “Mom boils ours.” “Yuck.” As he set the bucksaw on another piece of wood, Jamie watched his father and Snow set up a section of iron grating on top of support bricks outside the office cabin near the well. They laid in a fire underneath the back side and set out a couple of garden hoes to push and rake the coals around underneath. The two men had no sooner nodded at each other in self-congratulation on their grill when Jamie’s mother drove in. She was in full brigadier general mode. Jamie studiously applied the bucksaw to the slab as he watched the soundless faraway pantomime of his mother pointing with full extended arm at his father and Snow, directing them to set up tables against the cabin with sawhorses and broad sawn boards. Between sawing strokes his heart wanted to grin as he saw someone else at the business end of her pointing finger. She paced right along behind his father and Snow, mouth in motion, as they unloaded the cardboard boxes of hot dogs and hamburgers from the back of the car. “Saw faster.” Ned’s voice under his breath as he heaved another slab up onto the sawbucks. “What?” “If we don’t look busy she’ll have us over there quick as Beauregard said ‘Boo.’ ” “Already there.” # A little before noon Marshall rolled in in his pickup, followed closely by the flatbed migrant truck chock full of laughing folks bouncing up against the sideboards. The men helped their wives get down out of the back, and then carried to the tables their pot-luck dishes of green beans, baked beans, cornbread, Cole slaw and buckets of mashed potatoes with gravy and butter. Mrs. Lowery, Lowell’s wife, got Marshall to help heft down two huge pots that turned out to be lemonade. Out of the back of Marshall’s truck came four washtubs with blocks of ice covered in hay for the hand-crank ice cream freezers. Jamie remembered the smell of the cream and the peaches and ingredients his mother had gotten together last night. He could almost taste it already. Also out of the back of Marshall’s truck came Dancin’ Charlie. He eased down, glancing back and forth, a huge watermelon in his arms and a huge grin on his face. Jamie felt his father’s hand press on his shoulder and heard his father’s voice deep in his ear. “You two stay away from Charlie’s watermelon, you hear me?” “How come?” “Because he’s got a smile on his face. That’s all you need to know.” “Yessir.” “We got enough firewood for now, so why don’t you two go get a half-dozen five-gallon buckets from the storage shed. Fill half of them with water and the other half with sand and put them over there next to the grill.” “Yessir.” As Jamie watched his father walk back to the grill, he heard Ned’s voice in his ear. “I’ll bet you ten ways to Tuesday Charlie’s got that melon spiked with moonshine.

I received a wide range of guesses about what sites of the ones in my A-Z Challenge I would visit this summer. No one hit the nail on the head, but Alex Hurst came the closest when she guessed something ON the water. The places I plan to visit are: the Kennebec Arsenal (a rather creepy site and history  – it could be a good place to have in my fourth or fifth book) and Eastern Egg Rock, to see the puffins. Since Alex guessed somewhere on the water, and Eastern Egg Rock and its puffin colony are on the water and I have to take a boat to get there, she wins! Alex, send me your address (sailingawayng@gmail.com) and your book is on the way! And thanks to everyone else for their guesses. 0 0

My thanks to everyone who visited me during the A-Z Challenge! I made some new friends this past month, and even though it really was a challenge, I had way too much fun writing about Maine. I’ve only had two guesses on where I might go this summer when I’m in Maine. So c’mon people! Take a chance, give me some guesses. There’s an autographed book hanging out here, waiting for an owner. 0 0

Congratulations to everyone for making it through our Challenges. Don’t forget to give me your best guesses as to which two I will visit of all the places I posted about – a free book is the prize! The Zebulon Smith House was built in 1832, by silversmith, jeweler and watchmaker Zebulon Smith. It is one of the earliest known temple style Greek Revival houses in Maine. The style, inspired by ancient Greek architecture, gained popularity in the late 18th century in England and spread to the United States in the early 19th century. It peaked in Maine from the 1830s to the 1860s. The architect of this house is unknown. I found an aerial view of the house, and it is currently nestled among parking lots and car dealerships, businesses and the waterfront park, a final vestige and reminder that in downtown Bangor there were residential streets near the waterfront. This sole remaining house embodies the neighborhood’s gracious past. The house has four bedrooms, a dining room, a living room, two sitting rooms and a small kitchen in the ell. There are nine fireplaces, with slate mantels downstairs and wooden mantels in the bedrooms. The house looks much as it did in photographs from the early 20th century. The portico retains its original lunette (half moon) window, and the Ionic pillars still stand. It has been painted red for many years, a curiously inappropriate color for a house inspired by Greek temples. The current owners suspect it was originally white. I searched for quite a while to find other pictures of this house but was stymied! James and Elizabeth Buckley bought the house in 1919 and it has been lived in by their descendants ever since, despite the fact the neighborhood was changing, with stately homes on the block either turned into apartments or demolished to make way for businesses. The father of the current owner, Eugenia Franco, held out, and after he died, her mother had no desire to move. Mrs. Franco and her husband consider themselves the keepers of the home, which was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. I’m giving a huge sigh of relief, along with a little sadness, at having come to the end of this year’s A-Z Challenge. I hope anyone who visited my blog enjoyed posts about Maine as much as I liked writing them! 0 0