Just A Boy With A Gun
May. 13th, 2013 06:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
madwriterSince I keep forgetting to mention this, my (mainstream) poem "Chestnuts, Sleep", which originally appeared in the Winter 2007 issue of Appalachian Heritage, was just reprinted in the March / April 2013 issue of the Journal of the American Chestnut Foundation. Woot! I don't often let my stuff go for free, but I was thrilled to be able to make a "donation" to the ACF. They're doing great work--trying to restore the American Chestnut tree after it was almost completely wiped out by the Chestnut Blight in the 1910s through 1940s--so letting them reprint the poem was the least I could do.
In the meantime, writing occurred this past Saturday before I headed off to a Mother's Day country buffet, in the actual country, with my family at the Homeplace in Catawba, Virginia, which may very well have the world's best fried chicken. (They also make a mean peach cobbler.) This made Saturday pretty much my perfect day.
PROGRESS REPORT FOR 5/11/13
New Words: 2600 on chapter 9 ("Copper Heart") of Arizona. 13-year-old Gus Beckett gets his first taste of defending someone with a gun, while Carlos Alvarez gets his first taste of working with the Tucson Indian Ring, a group of businessmen who want the Apache War to keep going because it's making them tons of money.
Total Words: 279150. I wonder sometimes if my stubbornness about all of this staying one book will be more of an undoing than any publisher's or agent's rejection.
Reason For Stopping: Getting ready for the family outing.
Book Year: 1874.
Mammalian Assistance: Vegas briefly guarded his box pile.
Exercise: Walking Tucker around the neighborhood.
Stimulants: None.
Today's Opening Passage(s): Rock Marrak was angry. Angry enough, Will thought, to start throwing around the fists as hard as his nickname. As always, Marrak only got that violent when he thought his money was being threatened. And this time his anger was directed straight at Will, the head of Thompson-Marrak operations in Copper Heart.
He had Anglicized his Cornish name, Petrock, to Patrick. But to friends and enemies alike he was still Rock. And now with James Thompson dead—killed by Apaches, it was rumored, probably the only people alive vicious enough to finally take Thompson off the Earth—Marrak was the combination of administrator and enforcer, the diplomat who would still drag an opponent into the street and beat him nearly dead if he thought it was needed to get his way. He’d never threatened Will that way—but then again, he’d never hinted that Will was a threat to business before, either.
Darling Du Jour: Nothing springs out at me.
Non-Research / Review Books In Progress: Claudia Christian; Edward Rutherfurd.
In the meantime, writing occurred this past Saturday before I headed off to a Mother's Day country buffet, in the actual country, with my family at the Homeplace in Catawba, Virginia, which may very well have the world's best fried chicken. (They also make a mean peach cobbler.) This made Saturday pretty much my perfect day.
New Words: 2600 on chapter 9 ("Copper Heart") of Arizona. 13-year-old Gus Beckett gets his first taste of defending someone with a gun, while Carlos Alvarez gets his first taste of working with the Tucson Indian Ring, a group of businessmen who want the Apache War to keep going because it's making them tons of money.
Total Words: 279150. I wonder sometimes if my stubbornness about all of this staying one book will be more of an undoing than any publisher's or agent's rejection.
Reason For Stopping: Getting ready for the family outing.
Book Year: 1874.
Mammalian Assistance: Vegas briefly guarded his box pile.
Exercise: Walking Tucker around the neighborhood.
Stimulants: None.
Today's Opening Passage(s): Rock Marrak was angry. Angry enough, Will thought, to start throwing around the fists as hard as his nickname. As always, Marrak only got that violent when he thought his money was being threatened. And this time his anger was directed straight at Will, the head of Thompson-Marrak operations in Copper Heart.
He had Anglicized his Cornish name, Petrock, to Patrick. But to friends and enemies alike he was still Rock. And now with James Thompson dead—killed by Apaches, it was rumored, probably the only people alive vicious enough to finally take Thompson off the Earth—Marrak was the combination of administrator and enforcer, the diplomat who would still drag an opponent into the street and beat him nearly dead if he thought it was needed to get his way. He’d never threatened Will that way—but then again, he’d never hinted that Will was a threat to business before, either.
Darling Du Jour: Nothing springs out at me.
Non-Research / Review Books In Progress: Claudia Christian; Edward Rutherfurd.
