Rolling Along

Finished: 1 Issue typed and sent to Editor; 1 Issue handwritten

Today’s Goal: 2 Issues typed and sent to Editor; 2 Issues handwritten

I think I now have a handle on the serial. I kept my word about discipline and yesterday I typed and edited Issue 39 and sent it off to the editor. I also wrote all of Issue 41 and a portion of Issue 42. I know I must write faster, but I need to make sure the story is quality.

I must forego the goal of working on my novel this week. There are no activities tonight so I can get started writing at about 7 pm and write until around 11 pm. I have to work tomorrow but I’m sure I can find time to type and edit Issues 42 and 43.

I’ve created a tracking spreadsheet just to keep my head above water. I’m now three issues ahead and need to be 9 issues ahead. If I type and edit two issues today, I’ll be 4 issues ahead as Issue 37 will be sent out tomorrow.

I watched the Frank McCort interview AGAIN last night on the Ovation Network while I worked on Issue 42. I could sit and listen to his Irish Accent all day long and the man has a most depressing yet fascinating past. He was able to draw on that to write two of the best memoirs I’ve read (not that I’ve read a ton). I believe it is the honesty and purity of the prose. They said the folks in Limmerick weren't too thrilled with the way their city was portrayed in the book and accused Mr. McCort of fabricating much of the hardship. I don't even believe it was portrayed in a negative light. Every city has their blights, pockets of poverty, homelessness and utter despair.

I also love The Diary of Anne Frank. I saw on a 60 Minutes show where North Korea is using The Diary of Anne Frank in their schools for Anti-America propoganda. Not sure how they're twisting that one, but I did find it unnerving and sad that the children interviewed were kept calling the US "the Nazi-Americans". I wondered how they got so far off base and I wondered if any covert operation by the US Government prompted this hatred. But I could be way off base and I hope I am.

I thought about how much of my past is written in my work. I write primarily about the Appalachians. My first novel, Hope River, is set in modern Appalachia, my second novel, Strange Fruit, is set in Birmingham, Alabama (not the Appalachians but my dearly beloved South) and my serial (perhaps one day will be a YA fiction series) is also set in the mountains. The setting in my third novel, tentatively titled Mattie's Song, is also those hills, but it will be during the Prohibition Era (ummmm… I see moonshine in this one!).

In Blood on an Appalachian Sunset, the farm I write about is actually my grandfathers but is a little north of Droop Mountain. The part of the hidden room in the cellar is real (but not on my grandfather’s farm) as well as the accumulation of gold coin during the war. The caves are real but could never be seen from the farm as it is actually on the other side of the mountain. Marlins Bottom is a real town which was renamed Marlinton sometime after the war. Renick is also a real town just on the south side of Droop Mountain, but I doubt it had the mercantile as I’ve written.

I’ve drawn on much of my experience with farming and growing up in such a rural area but I have to be careful to remove any machinery that didn’t exist in 1861. I can visualize the wood cook stove in the Holcomb kitchen because my grandmother cooked on one until she was no longer able to (I’m guessing the year 2000). She had a gas stove too but refused to cook on it unless she had no choice.

On the north side of Droop Mountain there is a little known treasure. It is the Pearl S. Buck Birthplace and probably the start of my writing aspirations when I was in kindergarten. It is a simple white farmhouse and the Sydenstrickers were rarely there because of their missionary work. I love her middle name of Comfort and her father’s name, Absalom.

There is a step inside the house that opened, similar to a wooden box, and all the family valuables were hidden there for safety during the Civil War. This family was not the Sydenstrickers, but this step has stayed with me and I even used it in my first novel.

It’s odd that I spent my childhood dreaming of other places and now that I’m older, the very place I fled haunts my every thought.

BK