Book Giveaway

 SIZZLING SUMMER DEAL

 

Ground is so hot in SC you can’t even go barefoot. Summer’s sizzling at a 100 degrees almost every day and I have a deal for you!

 

I’m working on a revised edition of Dust on the Bible, which should be released in a couple of months. In the meantime, I have five extra copies of the current edition. If you’re among the first five persons interested in a free copy (yes, FREE!) and fill in the “Contact Me” form on my website (link below), I’ll mail you a copy. Be sure to provide an address where you can receive the book.

 

(http://www.bonniestanard.com/contact.html)

 

ABOUT THE BOOK

Dust on the Bible begins in the fall of 1944 and comes to a close the following spring, as WWII is ending. Lily’s father is not a part of her extended family, and she makes little headway in finding out why. A tangled history unfolds as we learn the particulars of the marriage between Lily’s mother and father and the complex emotional tension that has persisted as a consequence. In the meantime her anxiety about death leads to a muddled belief in God which results in her joining and unjoining the church. Lily’s family have little education but they have wisdom that comes with experience.

 

UNDER THE BOARDWALK

Doug and I will get together with our family at Myrtle Beach, SC, at the end of July for a week’s vacation. As a comment on how families live any more, we’ll have relatives coming from London, England; Rome, GA; Augusta, GA; and Cincinnati. Given the new houses going up at the beach, you have little trouble finding one with six bedrooms. SO we’ll all be in one house. My favorite time/place is on the beach when the sun goes down.

 

Only God can make sunsets like this.

Two Enduring Movies

 MY LIFE AS A DOG

 

“My Life as a Dog” just became one of my favorite movies. Since Doug hadn’t seen it, I couldn’t wait to watch it a second time with him for a double-dose of enjoyment. It is currently streaming on Prime. 

 

My Life as a Dog is in the Criterion Collection

Doug was restless and could hardly make it to the concluding credits. What is to me a realistic movie that captures the strength and creativity of a youth in calamitous circumstances was to Doug a melancholy movie about a boy with no home. It made him sad.

 

“My Life as a Dog” inspired me and reminded me that genius filmmakers exist (or have existed), though you might not think so, given the usual pablum showing at Columbiana. This is a Swedish movie released in 1987. Some things never grow old.

 

Another movie about a boy that makes no notice of the passing of time is “Empire of the Sun,” as meaningful today as when it was made in 1984. It also has sadness, but this underscores a boy’s courage and endurance in the face of everyday disasters.

 

The spirit of these two protagonists is meaningful today. Rather than become victims of harrowing circumstances beyond their control, Ingemar (in My Life as a Dog) and Jamie (in Empire of the Sun) tackle the circumstances of their life as best they can and never lose hope.

 

Pelion High School Alumni

 PHS Alumni & 2024 Scholarship 

Friday at the Pelion High School Awards Program I presented the Alumni Scholarship to Senior Dylan Wright, who has an outstanding school record. He’s planning to go to USC and become a teacher of music education. His smile on approaching the podium so pleased me I almost forgot to give the certificate to him.

 

The PHS Alumni Association has been around since 1996. There were times when we met at the Pelion Community Center. In the photo are supporters, some names I don’t remember. Back row are Joe Dean Craft, Stella Eargle, Rev. Redmond, Farroll Gunter, Miriam Poole, Carolyn Wise. Those sitting were from Swansea and attended many of our meetings.

Alumni meeting at Pelion Community Center

We held rummage sales to raise money for the scholarship, which is also funded by donations from alumni.  Miriam Poole helped at a sale we held at the crossroads in 2003.

 

Miriam Poole at rummage sale

The Alumni Scholarship is in honor of three Pelion educators who inspired generations of students. Principal Roy Nichols, Teacher/Principal Ruth Nichols, and math teacher Ruth Gunter. 

Ruth and Roy Nichols

Ruth Gunter

We organized several reunions. These photos are from the 2002 reunion, which was held at the school. Too many names to try to list them all, but maybe you’ll recognize some of them.

Class of 1956

 

Class of 1959

 

red-faced ranting

 

Me, this morning

RANT ON PUBLISHERS

Sometimes you just have to rant to keep your sanity. My sanity has been put to the test by my publisher's questionnaire regarding the upcoming release of a fiction book. In the list of questions:

 

1) List any potential reviewers, publications, and media outlets that you can contact who might be willing to publish a review, article, or announcement about your book.

 

2) List libraries, booksellers, and other venues who may host a book event for you.

 

3) you’ll need to talk about your book to groups and individuals, market your book on your website, social networks, and by other methods.

 

PROVIDE YOUR OWN MARKETING

Maybe I’m overreacting, but my impression is that the publisher isn’t just asking for assistance in marketing my book, it’s asking me to do all the marketing. From my previous experience, none of my publishers called me regarding a possible appearance or a possible interview or book signing. Not once.

 

INDEPENDENT PUBLISHER DILEMMA

The publisher here is a small independent publisher, which is where any unknown writer has an outside chance of getting their book published. Though independent publishers may be struggling to survive in a commercial environment that is toxic, to cut costs by cutting marketing is self-defeating, not just for their authors but for their own financial well being.

 

DO I HAVE FANS?

Do publishers realize that first time authors don’t have fans? We don’t belong to a hundred organizations. We don’t hobnob with literati. We don’t host socials. We have no clout.

 

CLOUT IS THE ISSUE

Publishers have clout, if they choose to use it. Who is more likely to get a book signing scheduled at Barnes & Noble—me (an unknown person) or a publisher (even an unknown one)? The mere fact that a publisher makes the call provides legitimacy, one that no beginning author can muster regardless of how wonderful the book.

 

LONG TERM EFFECT

When publishers cut the marketing department from the budget, their bottom line will look good in the short term, but the long term consequences are dismal. Publishers can only thrive if their authors thrive. And emerging authors can only thrive with marketing support from publishers.

 

An even more disappointing consequence is that some of the most creative and talented writers do not have a chance to reach an audience (despite enthusiastic promises from the self-publishing sector). We’ll blaze no new literary trails given the current environment.

 

 

 HEADING FOR ST. MATTHEWS

 

Me and my booth last time

 

Hope there’s sunshine tomorrow (Saturday, Apr. 20), unlike today. I’m packing books, tent, posters, tablecloths, and other stuff to go to St. Matthews for the Purple Martin Festival.

 

St. Matthews is a typical small Southern town. It dates back to the 1730s. Think about it, that means it began before the Revolutionary War when we were governed by the British (a little perspective). It’s the birthplace of athletes and actors, e.g. Viola Davis, Alshon Jeffery, Eartha Kitt.

 

 

 

Me and the Purple Martin mascot

TAKE A WALK IN THE SUNSHINE

 

Come to see the car show, carnival rides, festival food, but most of all, come by my tent and let’s visit. I’ll be signing and selling my books and talking about writing.

 

Saturday, April 20
Happening: Purple Martin Festival
Location: Calhoun County Courthouse Grounds
Address: 606 F R Huff Drive
City: Saint Matthews, SC
Time: 11 am – 6 pm

 

St. Matthews is about 40 miles south of Lexington, SC (before you get to Orangeburg).

See some really cool cars...

 

You may ask, Why is it called the Purple Martin Festival? Actually St. Matthews is on the path of the birds’ migration from Brazil to eastern USA, a route of some 7,000 miles. This year, the first Purple Martins spotted in SC were in Hanahan in February. They are the largest species of swallow and eat billions of flying insects. Once common in our area, they have been disappearing, have been reduced by one-third in the last 50 years.

 

I hope you’ll stop by the Festival that honors Purple Martins!

 

 

Meet the Authors Day

MEET ME IN AIKEN, SC

An in-person event to meet and greet local published authors! Mingle with writers, rub elbows, find out what’s happening next Saturday, March 2, in Aiken, SC from 11:00 am until 4:00 pm. I’ll be there, as well as 28 other authors. The address is 1310 E. Pine Log Road. Would love to see you with us at “Meet the Authors Day.”

 

Steve Gordy has scheduled a day of activities including round table chats, author readings, and panel discussions. I’m looking forward to the panel “The Present and Future of Writing.” Much controversy today about AI’s impact. Some people think computers will do our writing in the near future. In fact, you can already buy novels on Amazon that have been written by computers. Something to talk about! That panel is on at 11:45 am.

 

If you’ve been thinking about taking up writing, you may like “I Want To Be a Poet. How Do I Get Started?” Panel discussion at 1:00 pm.

 

Aiken is what I think of as “small town America,” in a good sense—A main street worthy of a movie setting and numerous restaurants and cafes. A visit to the Aiken Antique Mall will give you an impression of what our past was like. 

 

Short Story Accepted for Publication

  HOW FAR IS THE GAS STATION

From Encyclopedia Britannica

Close To the Bone has accepted my short story “How Far Is the Gas Station?” for publication. The estimated time of publication is this November. Close To the Bone is an online magazine that publishes edgy crime fiction, both short stories and novels. 

 

I wrote this story when I was invited to read at the Halloween “Noir at the Bar” event in Columbia last October. Like many noir stories, “How Far Is the Gas Station?” is marked by a dark theme with elements of violence and suggestions of sex. 

 

According to Close To the Bone’s website, their aim is “simply to bring you gritty and interesting short fiction across multiple genres.” Editor Craig Douglas was born in Ely, England. He joined the British Army when he got bored of life in a north eastern mining village and now lives in the UK. He spends time editing and publishes poetry and fiction.

Samples of novels published by Close To the Bone

 

Valentine Noir at the Bar

NOT SO SWEET REVENGE

Me, reading "Not So Sweet Revenge"

Wednesday evening at Noir at the Bar, I read my story “Not So Sweet Revenge” about a woman who retaliates when her boyfriend ends their relationship. Actually I re-wrote an older story, putting it into first person point of view. I can pay better attention if a person reads aloud something in first person (I-me).

Raegan, reading.

Raegan Teller was one of the readers. She, along with Chris Maw, has been arranging the Noir readings. I hope they will become a tradition, but we may not return to the British Bulldog Pug.

 

Here’s the lineup of readers, left to right:  Phil Lenski, Carla Damron, Warren Moore, Paula Bensen, John Starino, Raegen Teller, ME, and Charles Israel.

Looks like fun, and it was!

 

3 poems accepted for publication

PROTESTING

I have never liked the word protester. It’s a relative to the word victim. In the balance of power, protesters are losers. Their weakness makes them squeal rather than fight. I say this knowing full well that many protesters would fight, given the right circumstances. But circumstances have a lot to do with whether we are strong or weak. Over time and without the means to fight, a protester can become a whiner. Having said that, the word serves a useful if not necessary purpose and expands our language.

 

So why am I protesting the word protester? It’s my weakness. One of the poems to be published later this month in the ezine Bloom is a protest. How’s that for shooting myself in the foot?

 

“Period of Uncertainty” is about the predicament of women with respect to pregnancy and birth control. This protest embodies the ultimate power struggle, one in which a woman is pitted against religious belief as well as her own physiology. It ends with these lines:

 

Who will speak of these things
with a tongue untainted by inheritance?

 

noir at the bar Feb 14

 

DELVE INTO DARK STORIES

 

If you’re a reader and you haven’t tried noir, it’s about time. Noir? you say. What’s a noir story? It’s a “disturbing mixture of sex and violence” (Wikipedia). The noir heyday was in the 1930s and 40s. Think about stories by Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Carver. Or movies like “The Big Sleep” or “Touch of Evil.”

 

Typical noir movie plots are: 1) detective falls in love with the woman whose murder he’s investigating (Laura); 2) shy heiress marries and begins to suspect her husband’s planning to murder her (Suspicion); 3) gambler hired to work in a casino discovers his employer's new wife is his former lover (Gilda).

 

Get to know noir stories on February 14 at the British Bulldog Pub. In the capable hands of local writers, you’ll be introduced to mystery and violence (sorry, no graphic sex). I’ll be there with Paula Benson, Carla Damron, Charles Israel, Jr., Phil Lenski, John Starino, and Raegan Teller.

 

Explore kinky underwear and celebrate a noir Valentine’s Day. The British Bulldog Pub is located at 1220 Bower Pkwy, Columbia, SC. Get a table by 7:00 PM. Come earlier and order fish and chips (yum!).

 

 

London Visit

TIME WITH OUR OLDEST SON

Just getting around to thinking about our trip to visit Jason & family in London. We arrived on granddaughter Milla's birthday and returned to the States Dec. 11.

Milla celebrated her 15th birthday.

Jason, Milla, and Doug went to a tree lot and brought home a tree. We all helped decorate it. Ellen prepared our Christmas dinner and she is a great cook. When we arrived, she had cooked a poppyseed cake and a chocolate bundt, yum!

With Lola in the living room.

Mince pies are a big thing in London. Individual pies are sold in packets of six. Somebody bought two different brands, one expensive and one cheap. We had a pie tasting contest to see which was the better flavor. The results were pretty much split, but I picked the cheap mince pie.

 

WASSAIL, OH YEAH!

We walked up Church Street to look at Christmas decorations and stopped for a cup of wassail at an Irish pub. Nothing is better than wassail when you’re outside on a cold day. It’s a spiced red wine served warm. A cup of that and you won’t feel cold, even if it’s 20 degrees. By the way, degrees are in Celsius in Europe, which means you have to convert to Fahrenheit to get an American reading.

 

All of us love fish and chips from Sutton and Sons. The English crew ordered a side of mushy peas but Doug and I haven’t become that English yet.

Fish and Chips restaurant near Jason's.

Jason reserved seats to see “Hamilton” at the Victoria Palace theater. Some people would think the disjunction of an 18^th Century story paired with 21^st Century music would be in some way dishonest. For five minutes, I had my doubts about it working, but 15 minutes in, the music won me over. A talented cast. 

At Victoria Theater.

Jason and Ellen hardly ever use their car. While we were there, it was convenient to get around on either the bus or the tube.

Ellen, me and Jason on the tube.

Doug and I went to Brussels for several days to visit friends. While there, we drove to Waterloo where a huge mound with a lion on top commemorates Napoleon’s defeat.

The lion is barely visible above the Panorama.

Jason's recent kitchen renovations expands the space for a table. We spent lots of time there. 

The glass doors to the garden are new.

Time to go home, and it was sad to say goodbye.

Flight to Heathrow

 

DREAD OF AIRPORTS

 

My least favorite place is an airport where you haul around luggage while dodging body traffic and getting lost. When I traveled alone to Chicago for a funeral in September, O’Hare Airport tested my endurance. Just finding my way around was a challenge.

 

On December 1, Doug and I set off for London and a visit with Jason and his family. Charlotte airport was easier, mainly because I was traveling with Doug. We gave ourselves three (or was it four?) hours to drive to Charlotte and get to a boarding gate for Heathrow Airport. Fortunately, Doug remembered that we needed advance reservations to park in the daily parking lot.

 

You have to be computer literate to get a seat on a flight, and luckily Doug handles most of the technicalities. In addition to parking reservations, he booked our airline tickets online and checked-in online 24 hours in advance. We still had to get in line to check our luggage and pass through security.

 

I try to pack luggage that I can manage by myself, but our 10 days in London pushed the limit. Doug helped me with my bag when we boarded the bus to and from the parking lot to the terminal.

 

I find it helps me to begin these trips by realizing in advance that I will wait in long lines, I will get lost, I will pay more than I expect, I will get inaccurate directions, and I will be tired and grouchy.

 

The payoff was landing in London and having time to spend with Jason, Ellen, Lola, and Milla. More to come about our visit.

 

L to Rt - Doug, Milla, Ellen, Jason, Lola, Me

 

 

appropriation

 Cultural appropriation is censorship by another name

 

One of the sessions at the SC Writers Association’s conference Saturday allowed writers to read aloud their query letter to a panel of three literary agents for critique. I made a mistake. Because I hadn’t read the directions carefully, I arrived with a pitch instead of a query letter, which I read anyway despite my embarrassment.

 

However, I couldn’t have been as disappointed with my critique as another writer who actually read a query letter. Her book, the subject of the letter, involved a story with a slave.

 

The subject of “appropriation” dominated the agents’ comments. Appropriation in writing is commonly understood to mean that a writer adopts customs, behavior, habits, etc., of a culture that’s not their own in producing a book. For example a white writer produces a story about a black, or a Latino writes about an Asian.

 

The writer at the conference who read her query letter before the panel was cautioned that we have to be careful in today’s environment. By the time the agents finished their cautionary statements, it was clear that the writer’s book had no chance of being published. The problem was her color. She was white and her story involved a black slave.

 

When it comes to cultural appropriation, a distinction should be made between historical fiction and contemporary fiction. It is easier to understand that ethnic groups have a right to claim their story as it exists today. Who better to understand the traditions, language, and ideas than one of their own members?

 

But historical fiction is another matter. The most contentious issue today is that blacks claim ownership of their history as slaves. The argument goes that they were the ones who suffered and no white (or yellow or red) person can understand this. But how can a black person living in the 21^st Century understand what their ancestors underwent over a hundred years ago?

 

A white writer has as much access to the Slave Narratives and slave autobiographies as a black writer. When you come to think of it, one of the most powerful books written about slavery was written by a white woman. Historians credit Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe with galvanizing the abolition movement. Are we to say she had no right to write this book?

 

Restricting historical fiction novels to certain authors based on ethnicity limits our perspective, imagination, concepts and understandings. The losers here are not just whites but black, reds, and yellows, the entire spectrum of literature.

 

"Query Letter" panel of literary agents

 

Noir at the Bar, British Bulldog Pub

 HALLOWEEN STORIES

Noir readers: Irene Stern, Bonnie (me), Phil Lenski, Cathy Blake, AJ Brown,
Kasie Whitener, Raegan Teller, Paula Benson

 At last night's Noir at the Bar, I, along with seven other writers, read stories aloud to an audience. Some of us dressed in costumes, but nobody had one as ridiculous as mine. Wearing a wig is a real pain, it's hot, itchy, and in your face. Not only that, I had cut the hair before the show -- confusing in that I couldn't separate the cut pieces from the remaining hair. After I got to the Pub where everybody was eating dinner, a wad of hair fell out onto Chris Maw's dinner plate (Sorry, Chris). 

Part of the fun was being with other writers and friends. It was a thrill to have members of my aerobics group there. Linda Jackson, who is probably the only person who can keep me going to aerobics, mixes different exercises so that there's never a dull moment.

I was glad to have the challenge to write a scary story. Never tried it before. I discovered that you can throw together graves, ghosts, blood, fangs, black cats, and such and still not get a scary story. I've begun working on another one.

Bonnie Stanard in creepy mode

Sales at Cayce

Doug did the selling and I did the signing.

WRAP-UP CAYCE FEST

 

I sold out of copies of “Dust On the Bible” at the Cayce Fest. It was one of those days that make you realize how great the weather can be when the sun shines and the breeze is pleasant. I’m glad I can still wear sandals without getting cold feet.

 

Doug helped me put up the tent and arrange the tables, books, and displays. Our location was not on the midway with the heavy traffic but on a dead-end spur. The bandstand was the scene for music all afternoon, a variety of styles from blues to reggae to bluegrass.

 

One fault was that there were too few food vendors. To buy a BBQ sandwich, you had to get in a long line and wait for about 20 minutes. The hot dog truck in front of our tent ran out of food.

 

It’s an event Cayce can be proud of. I hope it will return next year. 

 

We were under a big tree, in the shade.