Fumiko Hayashi (1903-1951) was a prolific, successful, and influential Japanese novelist (Diary of a Vagabond, Floating Clouds) who unfortunately is little known today. I mention her work in my novel in progress, especially The Town of Accordions and Fish (aka Accordion in a Fish Town), so I’m learning more about her in hopes of avoiding one faux pas or another.- Last night, we spent a fair amount of time working in the yard after supper. The mosquitos took note and were staying close at hand to help out.
Do you lose track of the authors you like? I enjoyed The Witches of New York (2017) by Ami McKay. I just now discovered she wrote a sequel to it a year later called Half Spent Was The Night. Okay, so now it’s on order, the perfect time to get it since I’m re-reading The Witches of New York.- I’m really getting pissed off seeing a daily news story about a shooting. We shouldn’t have let Clinton’s assault rifle ban expire since it reduced the number of shootings for weapons of war that are hardly needed for hunting or home defense.
Today’s Facebook memory is a photo of my two brothers and me pretending to use a water fountain at Fairview Park in Decatur, Illinois where our grandparents lived. We spent more hours in that park than at their apartment. My memories of Decatur have worked their way into some of my stories.- My twice-a-year doctor’s visit is scheduled for Tuesday. We’ll see how he likes hearing that when he doubled the strength of my BP prescription, my feet got swollen. I’m cutting the pills in half and supplementing them with Tumeric. BP is fine. Feet aren’t swollen.
If you like old movies, Poet of the Camera about cinematographer James Wong Howe is a great story. I like old movies and always notice the perfection of his camera shots. “He pioneered the use of techniques like deep focus and high-contrast lighting; his dexterity at sculpting scenes of rich chiaroscuro garnered him the nickname ‘Low-Key Howe.’ Weathering changes in Hollywood from the advent of sound to color to widescreen, Wong Howe won two Oscars (for 1955’s The Rose Tattoo and 1963’s Hud) and was nominated for eight others.”-
Short Story My twisted fairytale, “Waking Plain,” will be free on Kindle from June 6th through June 10th. It’s the reverse of “Sleeping Beauty” in which nobody wants to wake up the dull-as-dishwater sleeper.
Tag: yard work
Sunday’s Tatterings
Like most writers who claim there is madness in our methods, I occasionally wonder if we’re simply suffering from wall-to-wall insanity. If so, there are times when the world seems tattered; if not, there are also times when the world seems tattered. One of my favorite poets, the late Lucie Brock-Broido, once said, “I came to poetry because I felt I couldn’t live properly in the real world.” I feel that way about prose and magical realism.
- I think I’m more or less done with my recent series of posts on this blog about magic. For those of you who liked it, thanks for reading. For those of you who didn’t, thanks for waiting for it to run its course. Magic of one kind or another is part of most of the books I write. So, the series of magic posts show why this is the case as well as my belief that intuition is everyone’s birthright.
After my fellow author Smoky Zeidel at Thomas-Jacob Publishing wrote many Facebook status updates about Monarch butterflies in various stages of of development in her garden, I’m happy to see her monarch ranching has become a new book.- My wife and I finally found a series of dry days to work in the yard. The good news is, the yard looks better. The bad news is, we both feel like we just came home from a 30-mile mountain hike. Gosh, you’d think we were both a hundred years old and tottering around with walkers.
Coping with the aches and pains of yard work, my wife was awake at dawn when the moon was setting and captured this picture.- While going through the shelves looking for something to read, I found a copy of Karleen Koen’s Through a Glass Darkly. It’s been on our bookshelves for 32 years and I’m finally reading it. Will I finish it? Too soon to tell. It’s a historical romance, and that’s not my favorite genre.
- Within my favorite genre (magical realism), I think I might be nearing the end of my work in progress, Lena, which will be the third book in my Florida Folk Magic series (following Conjure Woman’s Cat and Eulalie and
Washerwoman) released by Thomas-Jacob Publishing.. There have been days when I didn’t think I’d figure out how to write this story. In a Facebook post on my author’s page in which I said I don’t like “sensitivity readers,” I mentioned that if I offend the KKK and white supremacists with this series of novels, it makes my day. I don’t need a sensitivity reader saying, “Well, Malcolm, this novel might offend bigots.” Okay, so what? - I see rain is on the way. Perhaps that means no yard work after supper. I could use another nap.
Saturday Natterings: Yard work, Diagon Alley, NPR poetry, and Melinda
A selection of stuff for the blog today because my bad cold makes me too tired to write an exciting post. However, we will be speaking of magic again soon.
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Parked in the garage this week. The yard is out of control. If you have a yard, you know what this means. My wife and I planned to rein in the unruly grass and encroaching weeds even though we hadn’t yet recovered from our one-week trip with family to Disney World and Universal Studios. But then it rained. Dang, we had to postpone our yard work. Several days ago, somebody didn’t secure the pasture gate and we found our yard full of cattle. Not the first time this has happened. They ate some of the grass before we chased them back into the pasture.
- While in the Orlando area, I was lucky to finally meet
Melinda Clayton of Thomas-Jacob Publishing. my publisher whom I’d worked with on line for quite a while but had never met in real life. Great times at a cool restaurant in Sanford. Her husband, my wife, my brother and my brother’s wife were there as well.
- Speaking of my publisher, Melinda will be happy to know that I finally ran out of excuses and have added new scenes to Lena, the upcoming third book in my Florida Folk Magic Series. The series begins with Conjure Woman’s Cat.
- NPR wants you to fill Twitter with “your haikus, tankas, limericks and the nonsensical, and we’ll feature some of our favorite bite-sized verses online and on the air.” Learn more here.
- FROM MY FACEBOOK AUTHOR’S PAGE: Napoleon Hill’s statement that “Whatever The Mind Can Conceive And Believe, The Mind Can Achieve” separates, I think, those who succeed from those
Original cover. The 1902 book is still in print. who don’t–this depends on how one defines “succeed.” Or, as James Allen wrote many hears ago, “You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.” Everything I know about magic can be based upon these and similar statements. Whether one is talking about magic or the processes of daily living, many people limit these statements because they either don’t see that people are more powerful than they know or because both statements force a person to acknowledge his/her responsibility for his/her “lot in life.”
Photo from the trip: Diagon Alley at Universal Studios. There were long lines, of course, but it was fun seeing this re-creation as well as my two granddaughters’ reaction to it. They each bought an interactive wand which, if you used it just right, made things happen in many of the store windows.
Have a good week.
–Malcolm
Malcolm's Round Table 