[Double click on any of    [Continue reading]]]> Friday morning, the hurricane-formerly-known-as-Earl had wimped its way out of North Carolina — without leaving us so much as a drop of rain or a gust of wind. But at least the surf was up at the end of the island and I got to watch a little wave action.

[Double click on any of the pictures to see them in all their full-screen glory!]

Saturday was the local farmers’ market and art fair, held every Saturday morning during the summer around Carolina Beach Lake, which is supposedly the closest fresh-water lake to salt-water in the world. How close? Damn close: cross the street, walk through a parking lot and you’re in the ocean. In years we’ve had ‘real’ hurricanes, you can get to the ocean from the lake via kayak; they’re pretty much the same body of water.

I came home with a bunch of vegetables and some neat shell/bead/dragonfly earrings. And, obviously, lots of pictures.

We are graced with GREAT local musicians and we got to hear lots of them this week-end at my favorite venue: the local Tiki Bar — plunked on an old pier jutting out over the ocean. Here is Root Soul Project performing Saturday night.

Yes, that is the ocean in the background. I’ve watched the moon rise over the ocean (not this week-end, of course) while listening to great music (with a hint of surf in the downbeat) and drinking a good NC craft beer. Really, what could be better? Heard three good groups and did LOTS of unabashed people watching Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evenings. Too loud to eavesdrop, unfortunately.

Finally, here’s the Boardwalk and our own Carny Town. This is the second summer we’ve had a summer-long carnival along the Boardwalk. The carnival has had its friends, its foes, and it has revived the local Redneck Riviera title just a bit, for both better and worse.

I haven’t been to many carnivals since my son finished middle school, so I’m not that into the latest rides — most of them don’t seem to have changed all that much since the Olden Days when I actually went on all of them. But this floating bubble thing — this was new to me.

It was new to our carnival, too. Earlier in the summer this little spit of real estate held the bungee jump. But a carny worker was reportedly inappropriately groping young females as he was ‘helping’ them into their bungee harnesses — though I’m not sure what constitutes appropriate groping. So he and the bungee jump were run out of town and in came the bubble. (Did I mention that some folks were not too excited about having a summer-long carnival in their back yard?)

This bubble thing creeped me out, though the little kids bouncing and rolling around looked like they were having a blast. You get pushed into this giant flat beach ball and then they inflate it — and zip you up so you’re waterproof/airproof and roll you into a big pool of water. It’s almost impossible to stand up and you bump and bounce around until, I guess, you pass out from lack of oxygen or the bubble guy decides it’s someone else’s turn. Couldn’t help it; I kept hearing Paul Simon singing in my brain.

One final, sweet note to the Island tour: just-made tiramisu gelato. Mmmm, good!

And that is the way we — at least one little sliver of us — looked to a distant constellation this Labor Day week-end.

How about you?

I’ve always loved Kim Carnes’ voice and this song — even though this isn’t the best version of it, it’s the only one I could find on YouTube. And, uh, Kim is 65 years old here and looks, IMHO, absolutely fabulous, so there’s something to be said for breaking the rules.

Which brings me to    [Continue reading]]]>

I’ve always loved Kim Carnes’ voice and this song — even though this isn’t the best version of it, it’s the only one I could find on YouTube. And, uh, Kim is 65 years old here and looks, IMHO, absolutely fabulous, so there’s something to be said for breaking the rules.

Which brings me to the main point(s) of this post:

Ten rules for writing fiction: Part One and Ten rules for writing fiction: Part Two.  The Guardian asked thirty writers for their writing do’s and don’ts.  And here they are.

Thirty writers X ten rules each = 300 writing rules!!!

(Okay, not quite 300 as some of the writers didn’t come up with ten.)   I loved reading all of them together to see the different perspectives, similarities and contradictions.  I’m going to print out both articles and highlight the rules that spark my muse, see how and if that changes over time.

In keeping with the Six Word Memoir concept (oh, we really should start doing some of these sometime, too!), here’s my distillation of the rules.

Write — for and from your soul.

What do you think?

I love this song — the simple lyrics, tight harmonies, the faith in a brighter day even in a world filled with strife and sorrow. It’s a traditional Kentucky bluegrass song, from around the time of    [Continue reading]]]> Bright morning stars are rising,
Bright morning stars are rising,
Bright morning stars are rising.
Day is a-breaking in my soul.

I love this song — the simple lyrics, tight harmonies, the faith in a brighter day even in a world filled with strife and sorrow. It’s a traditional Kentucky bluegrass song, from around the time of the Civil War, I think.

It’s one of the songs I sang with a couple of other people in a coffeehouse a couple of weeks ago.  We sang acapella, we stayed on pitch, we harmonized, and we were actually not at all bad.  I love singing like I love writing — gotta do it.  It’s different, of course, but there’s that really wonderful buzz when you mix it up — whether it’s notes or words — and it all comes together just right.

Alas, no one taped us singing.   But here’s Emmylou Harris and the Red Dirt Boys singing pretty much the same arrangement we did.  I wish I could say I sound just like Emmylou –  in my dreams, and only in my dreams, I do.

At least we have the same hair.

I hope you enjoy this.  Peace on.

Seems that Warren Buffett, the richest man in    [Continue reading]]]> Sue Shellenbarger wrote an interesting – to me, at least, and given the blog posts I’ve read lately about our creative endeavors, interesting to some of you on the same blog circuit as me – article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal: Lesson From Buffett On Following Dreams.

Seems that Warren Buffett, the richest man in America (or maybe the world, I forget which, but he’s right up there), gave his 19 year old son Peter “enough [money] to do anything, but not enough to do nothing.”

His son promptly dropped out of college, set up a music studio and began playing the piano, writing music, and experimenting with electronic sounds. He’s been successful enough that he’s now (this is Peter Buffett, not Jimmy – I have no idea if they are related) an Emmy Award-winning musician.

And now, of course, he’s written a book, and this, I guess, is the ‘lesson’ of the article. “If I had faced the necessity of making a living from day one, I would not have been able to follow the path I chose,” he wrote.

Well.

Shellenbarger, who writes regularly on juggling work and family, followed that statement with this one of her own: “If someone had given me the gift of time, for example, as Mr. Buffett did for his son, I imagine I would have squandered it writing bad novels, rather than getting useful paying work as a secretary, then as a teacher, and then going to graduate school in journalism, a far more practical path in my case.” [emphasis added]

Ouch.

Her career trajectory runs pretty parallel to mine – though right now I’m writing what is arguably a bad novel (I refuse to think I’m squandering my time, though) and her WSJ article today focuses on decluttering her house. Yeah, she can park her car in the garage now, but how about her soul? Her muse?

I spent many years as a single parent running my own business, and during those busy years, I almost never read a novel, let alone tried to write one. I was on that practical path that paid the mortgage and the orthodontist. Now I have a bit more time – even though Warren Buffett has not yet graced me with my own pot of gold – and I don’t want to think I’m squandering it.

If I don’t complete a successful/marketable/critically acclaimed novel, does that mean I’m squandering my time? I sure hope not. Do I need to write a best-seller to show I’m not wasting my time?

How about you? What drives you?

And why?

Squandering? Really?

I wanted to show that delicious, healthy food can look just as unappetizing as the artery-clogger I posted on Friday. This is my seitan, right before getting sliced and tossed into a yummy stir-fry. Sorta    [Continue reading]]]> …I thought I’d post this picture of the seitan I made and wrote about a couple of weeks ago.

I wanted to show that delicious, healthy food can look just as unappetizing as the artery-clogger I posted on Friday. This is my seitan, right before getting sliced and tossed into a yummy stir-fry. Sorta like skinless chicken breasts, which also look pretty nasty, especially to chickens.

If anyone is interested in the recipe, leave a comment or send me an email and I’ll write it out for you. I combined a bunch of recipes, added some ingredients, forgot to add some others, and it came out great.

I do have a couple of southern vegan/vegetarian cookbooks: Cookin’ Southern Vegetarian Style and a really neat split cookbook: Hot Damn and Hell Yeah/The Dirty South Cookbook. They are both filled with tasty recipes. Big Bubba Tofu in the Trailer Park Specials section is living proof that grease and salt are not just the provenance of the meat and potatoes set.

But Southern cooking is a lot more than barbequed rodents and chicken-fried tofu. If you drive along a country road in the south you’ll pass cotton fields, tobacco barns, then a Free Will Baptist church. More cotton fields, then the Pentecostal church. Tobacco and another Baptist. And so on.

Southern cooking is covered-dish lunches and suppers at these little country churches. (I know, it’s not just a Southern thang, but since we’re here….)

I got to experience real Southern cooking and hospitality during the middle of NaNoWriMo. It was a glorious clear, warm fall day and my little church choir drove a couple of hours to sing at a tiny Universalist Church that was celebrating its 125 years as “an oasis of liberalism in a desert of orthodoxy.”

What an understatement. In the church foyer, looking like the Smith Bros. cough drop box, hung two pictures of the founding ministers, side by bearded side. One had served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, while the other had fought for the Union, indicating from the get-go “the congregation’s willingness to embrace diversity of opinion and outlook.”

After the service, we went out back where picnic tables were piled high with the most amazing assortment of dishes: fried chicken, chicken and dumplings, fried okra, fried tomatoes, succotash, Crowder peas, baked beans, mashed potatoes, hush puppies, fruit salad, collards, green beans, ham, cornbread, biscuits and gravy, all waiting to be washed down with big pitchers of sweet tea.

While we ate, the kids played hide and seek in the ancient church graveyard next to the picnic tables. Birds sang, the sun shone, leaves rustled in the breeze. Time was…timeless.

Then we moved on to the dessert table, and Lordy, Lordy!! Pecan pie, chocolate pecan pie, red devil cake, lemon squares, cherry pie, chocolate cream pie.

Yeah, I had two slices of the made-from-scratch 7-Up pound cake. It was awesome.

And that is Southern cooking. Enjoy, y’all.