Talent

I picked up Trainsong by Jack Kerouac's daughter, Jan. Her writing is about topics similar to her dad's and technically flawless. It's good writing, but instead of being magical, it's just sad. She didn't get whatever her dad had. 

Personal Essay

 I just submitted what they call a "personal essay" to the Sun.

Query letter: 

Dear Sun editors:

My personal essay, Bird, is a 1068-word reflection on how workplaces have changed over the years and what it’s like to be 50 and looking unsuccessfully for a job for a long time, then what it’s like to finally get hired after fearing you might never work again.

This story will appeal to readers who identify with being a part of the American work force for the past 30 years, especially people who have had a lot of jobs.

I have a bachelor’s degree in English and have published several newspaper articles for the San Diego Union-Tribune and the Bellingham Weekly and a short story in red. literary magazine.

Thank you for your consideration,

 Kelly Clark

Hemingway talks to me

Not like a voice in my head, but more like all the books of his and about him that I've read are coalescing. All the information I've been feeding my brain about writing for 50 years is shifting around and becoming something. It's exciting to watch and experience.

Hey! Look at that flower

Near the end, poet Gary Snyder says, "Art makes you see things you should have seen anyway ... You don't have to be a genius to look at a flower but somebody has to tell you, 'Hey! Look at that flower!' sometimes."

Snyder talking

Loose

I wrote a short story to submit to magazines, hoping it might lead to publishing opportunities for Desolation Ghosts, but it's going into the vault. It was sort of inspired but sort of forced (though, in my experience, all writing is forced in that you discipline yourself to put the words on the paper and make sure they're the right ones), but I'm shelving it because I didn't enjoy writing it and I didn't feel good about it during or after the process. I guess I just needed to write it for myself, and practicing is always good. I don't spend enough time in the woodshed.

Verboten?

I just wrote something I'm not sure is supposed to be written. I'm guessing tragic child deaths in first person are probably verboten. It's disturbing for sure, but I sort of feel like anything God can stand watching deserves to be written. Whether anyone can stand reading it, when I could barely stand writing it, may be another matter.

Then again, The Lovely Bones is beautiful ...

Moss.

https://mosslit.com/

Bookstore

In my fantasy world, Jeremy and I buy a building between Easton's Books and Steve the old hippie (who knew Di Prima and Burroughs) in Mount Vernon, WA, where we live upstairs with our beagles (and cats) and run Books Off Jameson downstairs, possibly augmented by a small coffeeshop or automat-drink-serviced reading area. Jeremy putters around the bookstore during the day, while I walk a few blocks to my new, exciting job (which I actually have) helping advocate for the voiceless invisibles, then come home at lunch to eat with my man and walk the dogs along the river revetment and downtown. My best friend, Rob, who works for a cool bookstore in San Diego moves up with his husband, who, like my husband, has a career in computers, and manages the bookstore. He knows everything about book retail. More importantly, we get to workshop our writing together, like we did in the old days; we get to talk about, breathe and live books. 

And maybe we publish our own books and the work of our friends, like the amazing poems of my other best friend, Sarah, that are sitting like Emily Dickinson's in drawers and journals and computers, unread, when they are truly, unbiasedly some of the most breathtaking poems I've ever read. I've never read one and not gotten the chills, and I am cold-hearted when it comes to feelings. They would probably make normal people wail.

And this is how it was done by the Beats and City Lights and the Lost Generation and Shakespeare and Company. Granted, someone had to get credibility the old fashioned way first, through legit or semi-legit publishing and hype ... and sometimes through dubious magazines and infamy. Kerouac initially carried the Beats via Sterling Lord, Hemingway had Charles Scribner, and Fitzgerald had Maxwell Perkins. It's hard to imagine the three of them sitting at their desks writing pitches and mailing off pages, but I guess they must have. 

I know agents and publishers are as important as writers. They are. An unpublished book is just scribbles on a page going nowhere. And I know I'm not Kerouac, Hemingway, or Fitzgerald, but I can still sniff along their trails, following the best I can, just in case I've put some words together in the right order to capture some ideas or emotions or information that other humans might identify with and need to hear.

Publishing Perspective

The thing I have to remind myself of is that Desolation Ghosts was given to me as a gift. If it's supposed to have a life in the world, all I have to do is take some basic actions to make it available. I don't have to run around in a chaotic world (publishing via agent) that clutters up my head and feels yucky. Self-publishing, at this time, doesn't feel right. Paying someone else to "self-publish" it is definitely off the table. Trying too hard to get an agent is out, but I can use QueryTracker to occasionally look for possible matches and send out some queries, even if it feels like it's not enough or like it's a waste of time. And I could research some magazines and write some short stories and send them off. That feels pretty clean, but only if I don't force the work. I'm interested to see if the wind of inspiration might return for some short stories or if it was a one-time deal. It is also possible DG just needed to be written - to exorcise ghosts, to validate a friend, to keep me sane during Covid - not actually published. And I need to remember that, too.

Scavengers

Back in the eighties, my best friend from high school got sucked into Faces International, where she paid a significant amount of money for the chance to be discovered as a model. Someone I know now has fallen for a similar scheme to get her book published and has set up a Go Fund Me to do it. The hype I see around getting an agent - seminars, conventions, books and trainings about how to write books and queries, books and trainings about how to get published - it all feels pretty close to that lower level of production/scamming. But my husband reminds me that no matter how good (or bad) what you have to offer is, it still has to get noticed by the right person to get born and introduced to the world. It's all pretty overwhelming and foreign.

Wit

While reading all of Fitzgerald's novels in the past two weeks, I noticed how much he talks about epigrams. I wonder how he would feel in today's social media environment, where the quip is king. Pretty comfortable, I'd guess, but I don't think Hemingway would like it. Was cleverness always so important in publishing?

Pitching is not my strength, but I can write a little, just like I'm not good at job interviews, but I'm a good worker. At least I don't have to perform what I write, because I'd be even worse at that than pitching it. I'm excited to see Henry Rollins perform May 17th at the Neptune for the first time in years. What a talent to be able to tell stories audibly like that. What a mind.

Excerpt 5 - Rattlesnake Wrangling

Machris remembers her first interaction with a visitor struggling with mental health issues. Her duty station the first time she came to NOCA was in the remote town of Stehekin, on the east side of the park, accessible only by foot, ferry, or float plane, where the climate transforms from rainforest to a drier, less dense, Colorado-like environment with pine trees and fat rattlesnakes.

An interpretive ranger at the Golden West Visitor Center had called to report yet another rattlesnake sunning itself not far off the deck of the lodge. Protecting visitors by wrangling rattlesnakes was not what Machris had signed up for, but she left her quarters and jogged down to the Hilton, which was what everyone called the seasonal rangers’ and transient fire technicians’ housing units, to pound on Dirk Talbot’s door. She needed the other ranger for back-up in case the snake evaded her. She was really very afraid of them, but she would never let it show.

At the lodge, Talbot grabbed the garbage can and Machris took the rake. Still unable to believe she was doing it, Machris maneuvered the rake a little below the snake’s head, using the tines to scoop him up as he snapped at the handle, then quickly flipped the rake twice in two directions so the snake’s body briefly wrapped over the rake in two places before she shook him off into the upright garbage can and Talbot slammed the lid shut. 

“There has got to be a better way to do this!” she said for about the sixth time that summer, shivering in disgust. Worst dance ever.

Talbot laughed, like he always did, and good-naturedly grabbed both handles of the garbage can to carry it up the hill to their snake-release spot away from the lodge and the ferry landing and the rest of “town.”

As the snake streaked indignantly under a log, Machris yelped when she backed into a blonde girl, about 16-years-old but younger-looking because of her spaced-out expression. The girl shrieked in return, and muttered indecipherably but vehemently. Machris could make out a few words like “devil,” “sin” and “blood,” but the girl didn’t seem to see her. 

Talbot mouthed “cuckoo” behind the girl. Machris gestured for him to stop and spoke gently to the girl, “Hello. Hello? Can you hear me?”

The girl looked up toward the sky, seeming to see something, then swiveled her head as if watching the thing float, but there was nothing there.

Talbot flicked his fingers above the girl’s shoulder, casting shadows onto her chest, and she turned fast, but he’d withdrawn his hand quickly, and she searched again for something that wasn’t there.

Machris glared and shook her head at him, glancing around to see if there was anyone nearby who might be with the girl, but there wasn’t.

“What’s your name?” She asked.

The girl’s head suddenly whipped toward her, and she directed a burning stare into Machris’s eyes, chanting in a low voice that increased in volume and intensity, “Do you dare speak to me? Do you dare? Do you dare? DO YOU DARE, HERETIC?”

Machris shivered, and Talbot covered his mouth, obviously trying not to laugh. Then Machris made a mistake, one she never repeated.

“Hey, let’s, um, let’s go find your parents,” she said carefully, reaching out a hand to guide the girl toward the lodge. When her fingers touched the girl’s arm, the girl released a piercing, inhuman howl and started seizing. 

“Run get the paramedic!” Machris ordered Talbot. He took off, and Machris searched around for something to put in the girl’s mouth to keep her from biting her tongue off. 

She found a small stick but was as afraid of the girl’s mouth as she was of the rattler’s.

A firefighter appeared within moments, followed by Talbot and a scared man and woman, who had been looking for the girl when they heard Talbot’s calls for help.

Whatever that was, psychosis or something more sinister, Machris had not run across anything like it since, but she’d learned to approach situations where people may not be in their best states of mind with respect and caution.

Short Stories

Now that I've pulled my posts about writing DG from Facebook onto this blog where they can all be in one place, I can continue talking about the selling process, which is a lot stranger to me than the writing or revision processes were. Revisions, of course, continue, but I think I'm done with the major ones.

I've sent 31 query letters, each one adapted a little as I learn more about how to get an agent. It's kind of gross because you have to take something that feels real and true and original, package it into something artificial and gimmicky, and try to fit it into a bunch of categories that suck the freshness right out of it. 

The whole thing feels kind of backwards to me, trying to find someone who is looking for exactly what you have to sell and hoping they'll take a tiny peek at it to see if it fits their interests. I do get that they need to be excited about it in order to sell it, but I feel like the way the product and pusher connect is askew. My husband says it's just like finding an agent to sell your house, but it's not. You don't research all the real estate agents to figure out who's looking for two-stories or only wants to sell houses with Jacuzzis, etc. 

I'll keep researching and querying agents, but I've been thinking about the back door, which was suggested by a lovely couple who let me describe them and their work in the book with their real names. They suggested pitching parts of the book - which does have a number of adventure stories that can be read independently from the novel - to magazines, where maybe someone would see my short story and want to read a whole book.

I like the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the Sun. I decided to research what kind of fiction they publish. I started with this short story The Missing Limousine by Sanjena Sathian, and it was so good, I was completely demoralized and embarrassed at my effrontery in thinking of myself as a writer.

However, there are different kinds of writing, and I do think my book has value and might be publishable. Six people have read the whole thing and are very supportive, but they're family and the most loyal of friends, some people have read parts and claim to love what they read, but there were bunches of other people who were excited to read it and asked for access to the whole thing. Then, after sharing it, I never heard a peep from them, which, you know, isn't good. So I'm aware it may not be grabbing the majority of people who have a look. On the other hand, everyone has their own tastes, and you can't please everyone. It's just impossible to know if you have something really good or if you've written a lemon and are too close to see it. So you go on faith and instinct and hope you're not deluded.

I did use some fancy writer tricks in the book, like symbolism and repetition and foreshadowing and all that fun stuff, but it's mostly simple, straightforward writing, so maybe the literary magazines won't be the right fit for the small adventure stories inside Desolation Ghosts.

Which means I have a pile of short story collections to study, more magazine short stories to consume, and possibly more writing to pursue if I want to try publishing DG via getting noticed in a magazine. I liked writing short stories in the past, but it's been a long time and I've only written one I'm actually proud of. Maybe I'll try again.

How and why Desolation Ghosts was born

In the winter of 2020-2021, a man with mental illness left a suicide note in his car and disappeared into the woods in the Pacific Northwest. He was known to be paranoid, probably dangerous, and carrying a gun, which affected how his search was handled. Should it have changed how emergency services responded or should he have gotten the same resources as someone not in the throes of a mental health crisis would have?

In February and March, 2021, a book on the subject - Desolation Ghosts - exploded out of me, based on my experiences working as a dispatcher at North Cascades National Park. The majority of the book turned out to be a love letter about the park itself, as well as fictionalized word photos of people, events, animals, and places I experienced there. 

Outdoors + Social Justice

 In case anyone else tries to sell a book, here's somewhere agents post specifically and concisely what they're looking for.

https://mswishlist.com/

My book boils down to: Outdoors + Social Justice, which is a hard, specialized combo, but I think it's original, not just the same old story dressed up in different clothes.

Old Hippie

Yesterday was great because it was a 2-dog day (not counting my own) and I met an old friend of Diane di Prima and Brion Gysin, who introduced him to William Burroughs in the 60s. He also helped paint the Merry Prankster's bus. Now he is retired and selling books in Mount Vernon.

Today is already a 2-dog day since I met two corgis running in the street in front of SWHS. I was on my way to work, so a teacher who stopped to help catch them took over getting them home. I have a few techniques for catching loose, stranger dogs (while keeping them safe and out of the street), but she taught me a new one. She just told the dog to sit. I've had luck getting them to take me to their homes by telling them in a certain tone of voice that it's time to go home, but I will definitely add "sit" to my toolbox for when I need to catch them for some reason.

Transgressive Portland Writing Group

Does anyone know what Chuck Palahniuk, Chelsea Cain, Lidia Yuknavitch and their writing group in Portland are known as? Do they have a name yet like the Beats, the Bloomsbury group, the Algonquin Round Table, Lake Poets, Stratford-on-Odeon? It is very cool to have such a great, dynamic group of writers so close in space and time. If I had to guess, I would bet they go by the Transgressives.

Pitch

I'm being boring and talking about my book too much, but you don't have to read it.

I think I finally got my pitch right. It took me a minute (or 25 queries) to really get what they need. Here it is, if anyone is (still) interested:

I wrote a 57,700-word adult literary fiction novel called Desolation Ghosts. It is set in North Cascades National Park and is about park rangers battling over how much effort should be spent to locate a missing traumatized and suicidal female veteran with alcohol and relationship addictions during the Covid-19 pandemic and the beginning of law enforcement reforms following the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.

This book will appeal to readers who are interested in national parks, outdoor recreation, the Pacific Northwest, and the controversial issue of how emergency services treat people with mental health challenges.

It includes exciting stories, based on real-life events, about using rock climbing and short-haul helicopter techniques to rescue a pack string mule who fell off a trail and a climber who fell off a mountain, a shoot-out and its impact on park rangers, a couple drownings, an aquatic body recovery and other sad outdoor tragedies, and funny and scary encounters with bears and other wildlife.

Desolation Ghosts is my first novel. My realism style has similarities to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pete Dexter, James Dickey, and Jack Kerouac, whose experiences in the North Cascades serve as a historical backdrop to the story. I have a bachelor’s degree in English and have published several newspaper articles and a short story. I wrote obituaries during the decline of newspapers, served as a cop in the U.S. Air Force, worked on a crisis response team, and dispatched at North Cascades National Park.

***

Somewhere the right agent is looking for this book. We just have to find each other ...

Agent

Stephen King

Contemporaries

 "It seemed strange and oddly romantic to Gloria that she and this woman [a civil war widow] had been contemporaries." - from The Beautiful and the Damned. Glad to read I'm not the only one who likes to look at who was alive at the same time. Just made a database of my artistic influences so I could look at them in chronology. Here's a small Gantt chart of some of the writers (and Picasso!) I like who have been or are alive during my lifetime. Lit-nerd! I know.

Beautiful and the Damned

Just burned through Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and the Damned. Who knew the battle of an alcoholic against fate to remain idle in the leisure class while his money runs out could be so suspenseful? May be my favorite ending ever. Now I get to reward myself for getting through his three harder novels by basking in Gatsby for the next day. Trying to cram in as much leisure pleasure as I can before MY idle time runs out (but still sending out query letters to agents to represent Desolation Ghosts). It's a true luxury to read a book all the way through in big chunks instead of small pieces.

Contemporaries

"It seemed strange and oddly romantic to Gloria that she and this woman [a civil war widow] had been contemporaries." - from The Beautiful and the Damned. Glad to read I'm not the only one who likes to look at who was alive at the same time. Just made a database of my artistic influences so I could look at them in chronology. Here's a small Gantt chart of some of the writers (and Picasso!) I like who have been or are alive during my lifetime. Lit-nerd! I know.

This Side of Paradise

Everyone knows The Great Gatsby is the prettiest and best book ever written, but it's the only one by Fitzgerald I had read until this week. I've been saving him up, and I just spent two more of his four completed novels. The elitism and social climbing were off-putting through Tender is the Night and on until the second half of This Side of Paradise, where the protagonist's evolution picked up and he ended, unexpectedly, as a dharma bum, speaking compellingly for the spirit of an entire generation, not just a privileged piece of it. I don't recall being so pleasantly surprised by a book. Glad I forced my way through it. Why Paris has been on my mind, and a lovely way to end the early "retirement" of looking for the right job before getting back to work!

Rejection

Got my first actual rejection from an agent query (usually they just ghost you). I'm not discouraged. I've heard how many rejections even famous writers have gotten. Trying to get an agent seems harder than writing the book. I've queried 21 but expect to query a couple hundred. Each one takes a surprising amount of time to find the right agency and agent within the agency and personalize the query letter. Each has different requirements, so I have different sized synopses, etc. I just changed my basic query letter because, as my friend, Mary, says, if an ad isn't working, pull it! If anyone feels like giving me feedback on my query letters or telling me which is better, it would be most welcome!

Autumn in Skagit County

Okay, Skagit County friends, here's your writing exercise if you want it: what makes Sedro-Woolley (or Clear Lake, Rockport, Concrete or Hamilton, etc.) such a fantastic late October town? Can you capture it with words?

Polidor

The last time I went to Paris, I reserved rooms via fax at an inexpensive hotel in Paris 6. We were excited to learn Rimbaud had stayed in our room at the Hotel Stella in the late 1800s. What the hotel proprietor and our Let's Go Paris 1998 didn't tell us (and I just learned from the internets) was that the restaurant (Le Polidor) in the bottom corner of the hotel had been popular not only with La Belle Epoque writers, but with Hemingway, and therefore all the Jazz Age ex-pat writers and artists we spent 8 days death-stalking through Paris, as well as the writers of the next generations (Miller, Kerouac, etc) who followed them there. Tragically, we did not eat there!

Duluc Detective

 Found out this detective agency I walked by every day when I was in Paris for a week one July opened in 1913. Looks like it closed recently, but it was run for over 50 years by a real-life Veronica Mars, who took the business over from her dad. Woody Allen used the agency in Midnight in Paris, which was hilarious the second time I watched it (tonight). Best line: "You may fool me, but you can't fool Hemingway."

Books Off Jameson

We bought the contents of a bookstore a couple years ago, which has mostly been in storage. If we find the right place, maybe we'll open a live bookstore someday, or maybe we'll sell everything online. We are now official (on Amazon only) and just sold our first book! ... unfortunately, I listed it for $4 without seeing that the nearest competing offer was $15. Little bit of a learning curve to overcome! And still a lot of organizing and inventory to complete a little at a time. Here is our "bookstore" in its current condition. Most of the books are in boxes. Yes, that IS a Lego Millenium Falcon on the display case.

Police reform

 

Changes in police response

Monday 9/27, 5 p.m., East County Community Resource Center (45770A Main St, Concrete), Skagit County Sheriff's Deputy Wolfe will be making a presentation on the changes in police response to incidents involving mental health. Open to the public.

Uncle Tom's Cabin

Picked up this little gem at Easton's today

Thunder Knob, August 2021, and the Chief

Thunder Knob was beautiful today. Didn't mean to hike the whole thing, but weather was perfect and there were no mosquitoes. How could I resist? Also found this ancient guardian at the Environmental Learning Center that someone told me they remembered from 30 years ago when the ELC was Diablo Lake Resort. He is still there.

Books

 

BLM

When you act threatened by Black Lives Matter, regardless of what you say, all I hear is "Black lives don't matter."

Kerouac in Sedro-Woolley 1956 #7

"Okay, I cut off - back down to the highway, over the tracks, and out on the bend getting traffic three ways" [Sounds like Ferry/ Hwy 17-A (now SR-20)]

Kerouac in Sedro-Woolley 1956 #6

"Squat against a wall and light a cigarette and dig the little afternoon city, there's the hay and grain feed silo outside town, the railroad, the lumberyard" [Probably talking about the Janicki building, but this north side of the Wixson Club/ Mestizo is more colorful than Janicki building.]

Kerouac in Sedro-Woolley 1956 #5

"I go out to buy my shoes - main street, stores, sporting goods, basketballs, footballs for coming Autumn ... I go in a store ... and the kid gives me blue canvas shoes with thick, soft soles ... I buy em, leave the old shoes there, and walk out -" [Likely Al's Sports Shop, 711 Metcalf and Black's Quality Shop, 713 Metcalf, now the Janicki Building]

Kerouac in Sedro-Woolley 1956 #4

"I go out to buy my shoes - main street, stores, sporting goods, basketballs, footballs for coming Autumn ... I go in a store ... and the kid gives me blue canvas shoes with thick, soft soles ... I buy em, leave the old shoes there, and walk out -" [Likely Al's Sports Shop, 711 Metcalf and Black's Quality Shop, 713 Metcalf, now the Janicki Building]

Kerouac in Sedro-Woolley 1956 #3

"My first stop will be the bank, there's a bank ..." [Skagit Valley State Bank, 631 Metcalf, SW corner of Wixson Hotel building, now JC Speedee Tax Services]

Kerouac in Sedro-Woolley 1956 #2

"The three old geezers ball me down to outside Sedro-Woolley ... I walk across the hot road towards the town ... first I comb my hair in a gas station ... then I start off-across the curving road is a factory plant ... I keep moving ... out across tarns and oil-meadow ditches ... and come out and lope ... into Sedro-Woolley proper" [Herb's Chevron, 224 W. Ferry, same building but likely different owner]

Kerouac in Sedro-Woolley 1956 #1

Jack Kerouac wrote in Desolation Angels about a quick stop he made in Sedro-Woolley in 1956. After doing some research, these are the places I think he was writing about, but I could be wrong.

Cheap Motel

Visiting family in Coeur d'Alene, where all the motels are full for no apparent reason, I drive past the jail, then the bail bondsman and pawn shop to the Rodeway Inn, which sends me to its annex across the street, a matching building, recently repainted, but still crowned by the utilitarian "MOTEL" sign on the roof that indicates its vintage (old) and quality in the past. In the parking lot, a hairy man with the glow of someone a week or two into detox leans into the window of a beat-up car. The bespectacled, young man in the driver's seat keeps the motor running. The hairy man delivers a monotonous but earnest stream of words as I try to check in too early. When I return later, nothing has changed. The man drones on. He continues in the room next door all night. An overpowering wave of years upon years of cigarette smoke overwhelms me when I enter my room. The stovetop is scratched and ruined from years of scrubbing it with overly aggressive cleaning products. There's a black scar that looks like a burn in the porcelain of the sink, and some of the white on the toilet seat has been scratched off in ragged strips, revealing the material underneath. At first, I am depressed and afraid to touch anything, but then I look closer. The light yellow paint on the walls is lovely and fresh, the towels are clean and soft, the floors are a newish and clean vinyl in a light-colored wood pattern. It has good furniture and all the basics. Now I kind of love this room. It reminds me of something ... or someone ...

Loggerodeo

Loggerodeo ad from 1956

Thoughts at 4:30 a.m.

One day you realize the cars of your youth are missing from the roads. That Volvo 122S you learned to drive on? Gone. Haven't seen one for years.

When we were young, we didn't know that everything we consumed would make us who we are, that the Dickinson, Tennyson, and Shaw would be more meaty in the long-run than Happy Days and the Brady Bunch, though those sugary concoctions would have their uses, mostly as anchors to a specific time and place and the people who inhabited them with us.

Wrong Guess

My guess is Kerouac went from Herb's Chevron at 224 W. Ferry St (became Herb's Chevron in 1959 but sounds like it was a gas station prior), to the Bingham Bank at Metcalf and Woodword if the building next door - 806 Metcalf - was a bar? Haven't been able to find its history yet. Anyone else have guesses about which gas station, bank and bar Kerouac would have gone to in 1956?

Desolation Angels - Sedro-Woolley, 1956

Here's Kerouac's description of Sedro-Woolley in 1956: He gets dropped off outside, then "I walk across the hot road towards the town ... first I comb my hair in a gas station and come out and there's a goodlooking woman busy at her work on the sidewalk (arranging cans) and her pet raccoon comes up to me ... then I start off - across the curving road is a factory plant ... I keep moving ... out across tarns and oil-meadow distches between superhighway macadams, and come out and lope ... into Sedro-Woolley proper ... there's a bank ... there's the saloon next door... I get a beer at the big shiny bar and sit at a table, back to the bar ... I go out to buy my shoes ... Main Street, stores, sporting goods, basketballs, footballs for coming Autumn ... I go in a store and clomp to the back and take off the clod-hoppers and the kid gives me blue canvas shoes ... I buy em, leave the old shoes there, and walk out - ... Squat against a wall and light a cigarette and dig the little afternoon city, there's the hay and grain feed silo outside town, the railroad, the lumberyard ... I cut off, back to the highway, over the tracks, and out on the bend getting traffic three ways ..." Desolation Angels

Desolation Angels - Concrete, 1956

Jack Kerouac's description of Concrete, WA, driving through in 1956: "Here we come into old Concrete and cross a narrow bridge and there's all the Kafkaean gray cement factories and lifts for concrete buckets a mile long into the concrete mountain - then the little American parked cars aslant of monastic countrified Main Street, with hot flashing windows of dull stores, Five & Tens, women in cotton dresses buying packages, old farmers pitting on their haunches at the feed store, the hardware store, people in dark glasses at the Post Office..." - Desolation Angels

Thunder Knob, April 2021

Penny's a model!

Charles L. Jackson

I think I should have started a blog to put stuff like this in when I started writing my book, but it's too late now.

Charles R. Jackson published The Lost Weekend in 1944. It was made into the great Ray Milland movie of the same name in 1945, which was maybe the first movie to depict the realities of alcoholism.

Yesterday, by chance, I found a 1950 paperback collection of Jackson's short stories called The Sunnier Side, which I had missed when I collected his other books, one about a married, gay man in the closet and the other about a nymphomaniac woman. The story The Sunnier Side appears to have been inspired by a letter asking Jackson why he chose topics from the darker side of life. In a 69 page response to the letter, Jackson explains how all lives have dark and sunny sides and when you write about life, you have to write about both, so that is why he chooses his topics: they're real.

My book does have a lot of the darker side, but it's written specifically to bring light and understanding and hope to those places.

Here are most of the topics included: Alcoholism, Animal rescues and fatalities in national parks, Animals, Armenian holocaust, Bears, Beat writers, Body recovery, Breast cancer, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Climbing, Covid-19, Death, Demonic possession, Difficulties of missing bodies, Drowning, Grief, Human rescues and fatalities in national parks, Losing a loved one to suicide, Meditation, Mental health barriers to services, Mules and pack string, North Cascades National Park, Outdoor safety, Park Rangers, Park Ranger trauma and suicide, Psych meds, PTSD, Rape, Rattlesnake wrangling, Recovery, Relationships, Religious disillusionment, Search and Rescue, Search and Rescue attitudes, Search and Rescue techniques, Self-soothing techniques, Sex and love addiction, Shoot-out, Sisterhood, Spiritual experience, Spirituality, Suicide, Therapeutic techniques, Veterans, What happens after death, Women in the military

In The Sunnier Side, Jackson also wrote several pages about the complications a writer faces gathering the details of his stories from what he sees and experiences. Though everything in a story is a composite, people can sometimes recognize bits of themselves and are offended or worried. It was something I needed to hear since I've been worried about that. He wrote: "And if the writer should suffer a qualm about putting his best friend in a story ... his next thought will be 'Okay, I'm a snake, but first there's a story to tell.'"

I read an Anne Lamott quote: "If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better" in an article Christopher Schelling wrote about being a character in Augusten Burroughs' books that is also helpful. Article here: https://medium.com/.../i-am-a-character-in-literature...

It's funny I came across a Charles Jackson book that addresses my concerns about a book I wrote that mentions Jack Kerouac several times, since Jack Kerouac mentioned The Lost Weekend in Dharma Bums.

After I read The Lost Weekend 10 years ago, I had to work hard to find Charles Jackson's obituary to find out if he stayed sober. I found it on microfiche at the Portland Library. Here it is:

Women Writers

Glad to have these awesome women writers back in my library. Sold most of my library to Powell's a decade ago, and am slowly rebuilding it.

Ode to Teachers

AN ODE TO TEACHERS

What I've learned by writing a book: I feel like it's good, I feel like it has worthwhile things to say, but I have no idea whether it's actually publishable. I can't identify the quality of my own work.

I also became extremely grateful to my writing teachers over the years. Since getting published is a long shot, I'm going to use this forum to thank them now, even though most of them won't see it.

Chronologically:

Larry Vardiman - my dad, who has actually published multiple scientific books and articles and is now writing a hilarious series of murder mysteries that I get to proofread, which helped warm me up for writing and showed me how to weave varieties of experiences into the main narrative.

Dean White - my first college English professor, who gave me my first writing assignments, encouraged me, and seemed to believe in me more than I felt I deserved. RIP

Jack Flynn - English professor who introduced me to composition and creative writing. He was so enthusiastic, so knowledgeable, and gave such great feedback, that he sparked something in me that still burns.

Glenda Richter - mythology professor who gave rich lectures and writing assignments that injected the history of storytelling into my bones.

Rob Crowther - best friend, who taught me about endurance, perfectionism, imagination, and the use of intricate details during thousands of hours of conversations about writing and life and by letting me read his horror.

John Granger - my favorite college professor, whose love of American literature, in particular, astute analysis of it, and thoughtful commentary in response to my own reactions to it shaped the way I read and, therefore, the way I write.

Stephen-Paul Martin - creative writing professor who facilitated students critiquing other students' writing in constructive and useful ways. The original members of the writing group that is so important to me met here.

Harold Jaffe - literature professor who made me feel like I belonged in the literary world, that I might have something worth saying, and that I might someday be able to say it at an adequate skill level.

Victoria Featherstone - a really good poetry teacher, who taught me the basics and made it fun.

Sandra Alcosser - another poetry teacher who pushed me to step up my game, even though I'm not really a poet.

Peter Herman - a literature professor who bequeathed me with his love of the Romantics and gave detailed, thoughtful, encouraging and useful feedback.

Roberta Borkat - Restoration and 18th Century Literature professor, who taught old-fashioned, difficult pieces of writing with such love, perspicuity, and relativity to the present that I was able to enjoy, appreciate, and learn from writing I would have otherwise dismissed and missed out on.

El Cajon Boulevard - the writing group of SDSU students that formed in 1998 and lasted, off and on, until 2003, providing feedback, motivation, and most importantly, comradery between aspiring writers. There were too many members to list here, and they were all important, but thank you, Chandra Howard, for co-founding it, and thank you Abbie Berry, Maya Shafer, and Chris and Holly Norton for being the reliable heart, and Eric Sacks, John Deese, Janelle Anderson, and Steven Panther for sharing yourselves and your stories.

Joe Schneider - my obituary copy editor who taught me so much about accuracy, proofreading, research, and the technical skills of journalism. He was also extremely kind and generous with his knowledge.

David Coddon - friend, co-worker, teacher, and editor, who taught newspaper feature writing with a sparkle and a penguin, giving excellent instruction, and pointing me toward my first "real" writing opportunity, then helping me publish several articles.

Lidia Yuknavitch - my friends' favorite writing professor, who gave a weekend writing workshop on the beach that I went to, then went on to write beautiful, incredible novels that make me feel humbled to have been in her presence. Yes, they are that good.

Chuck Palahniuk, writer who generously shared his and his teacher Tom Spanbauer's writing tricks with his fans in a free online writers workshop. I especially liked his tips on rhthym and symmetry.

So, FB is a weird place to say thank you, but where and when do you acknowledge all the teachers you were fortunate enough to have learned from?

Thank you all.