Crowning
Pyramid visioned
Moments...Hallucinations?
First, the highlight of tonight was having Tarah and Alex surprise me by stopping by for talk and laughs and hugs. How blessed I am. And a soak in the hot tub + good phone conversation with several friends, IM'ing my mom who's in Italy, with dad, studying Italian, 11 pm Friday night here and 7 a.m. Saturday there. Talked to my brother Patrick via cell - he is a tech writer and long distance runner who lives in San Jose, CA - while I rollerbladed the neighborhood for 30 minutes; we are going to see the poet/musician Leonard Cohen there on my birthday, Nov 13, along with my brother John, and their respective girlfriends, Laura and Kathleen. Tarah tells me she talked to my brother Jerry, a D.J. and computer graphic designer who lives in Silver Lake (L.A.) a few days ago, and he'd been out having too much fun on a work night (I've been doing it for 20 years, don't worry about me.) I've been trying to get over the visit him on a weekend for about two months but he's so cool he doesn't sweat a thing.
Oh yes, and I am proud to announce that the Fall, 2009 version 4.0 of the Inlandia Writers workshop, which commenced last night and has a group of a dozen or so repeat attendees, making the evening feel cozy, warm, and commuinity - my idea of a great workshop! This session also has the excitement of enjoying the youngest-ever participant, the two month old son of Amy Floyd, who has been in the workshop in utero from conception and is now attending in his stroller! What a joy for me, to teach my workshop and get to hold the baby, who slept through the entire two hour class! He's welcome to scream anytime he wants. Now, our age-span covers the gamut from pre-birth to 80 years old, the latter would be Wally Longshore of Mt. Rubidoux Manor, who provided the Summer, 2008 version 1.0 workshop with humor, dignity, wisdom and inspiration. And afterwards a fun get together at Denny's on University (near UCR)
attended by friends/writers Mario, Wendy, Mike and Cyrus. And me. Fun fun fun.
Now, I loop back around....to the obsessive compulsive desert book stuff!
Forgive my obsession...just me and the PC and I have to shout it out somewhere! Hurrah! the new-ness of book editing for me...sorta like giving birth after a prolonged labor -- getting all the help, guidance, love and wisdom I could realistically extract from so many writing friends, editor & publisher, family, associates, and diverse others, including one devout from-start-to-finish friend who I feel safe to moniker "permissions-wanding wizard.
My love and thanks and gratitudes to ALL of you without who this project would have been unimaginable and impossible to complete-- along the way. This is your book as well as "mine," and I also must give a nod to all of the authors whose works are reflected in the mirage I've somehow managed to glue down in space + time.
And at last, impossibly, unbelievably, can it be? Completely alone and finally investigating at my solitary reflection in rare desert waters, mirroring back to my youngest childhood days, at a series of desert oases, some with scant water - a thousand crossings and overlays on every ancient Indian trail, later turned to spring-to-spring covered wagon and later vehicle roads....in the middle of summer....actually late last winter...got it done....dehydrated and have had months to replenish, cut the umbilical cord myself with my own fingers, and...this!
Could it be? A whim from nearly three years ago, when I preposterously proposed the concept to Malcolm M. at Heyday Books...little old desert isolationist me? A lifetime culmination of all my private readings and dreams...ready for public purview in the more populated population centers and readers...an act of loneliness births itself from the desert and finds a home among the civilized and degenerate reader alike, come to the party as you are!
The baby is born.
Almost. I'm handing you over to the morning glow, see there over the limned desert peaks to the east? Just past the Colorado River, adobe red hues, blanketing the long open Mojave....wink...smile....cry....almost there, full sun...your pyramid hour come round at last... Sorta having in case you guessed, a Yeats-inspired phantasmagorical moment. Off to pet the dog.
FRONT COVER
[Cover Done]
SPINE
Nolan
No Place for a Puritan
[Heyday Logo-Cal Legs]
BACK COVER
Literature/Anthology
$21.95
A man foolishly and arrogantly collecting live rattlesnakes…
A lone woman striving to make a home in a remote desert canyon…
A blooming romance by the desolate Salton Sea…
To the uninitiated, the California desert is a parched and unforgiving place, but to those who know it intimately, it is rich in plants, animals, people, and a seemingly endless variety of geography. It also abounds in stories—tales of human folly, courage, aspiration, struggle, and at times heroic delusion.
No Place for a Puritan brings together eighty writers and poets to pay homage to a land that has been feared and romanticized throughout the ages. From the traditional stories of the Cahuilla Indians to Joan Didion’s acerbic cast of characters in Play It As It Lays, from Mary Austin’s meditations in The Land of Little Rain to the writings of today’s young and emerging authors, this anthology unfolds the many stories of the California desert with freshness, drama, delicacy, and surprise.
from advance reviews:
"You could argue that the great California desert is such an idiosyncratic landscape that stories of lives spent there there are too regional to have universal meaning. But, as this thrilling and necessary collection attests, you'd be wrong. A landscape that captivates writers as diverse as Joan Didion and John Steinbeck, that provokes unexpected works of literary beauty from obscure Spanish missionaries and Chemeheuevi Indians must be a place that reflects something deep and true about us all."
- Marisa Silver, author of the New York Times Notable Book, Babe in Paradise, a collection of short stories, and the novels No Direction Home and The God of War, finalist for the Los Angeles Time Book Prize.
“With voices as varied and untamed, as resilient and beautiful, as the landscape itself, this anthology maps another misunderstood and too often overlooked region of our state.”
—Alex Espinoza, author of Still Water Saints
[Put this on the side instead of below the quotes]
Writers:
Mary Austin
Gayle Brandeis
César E. Chávez
Joan Didion
Juan Felipe Herrera
James D. Houston
Aldous Huxley
Jon Krakauer
Barry Lopez
Sylvia Plath
Rebecca Solnit
John Steinbeck
Susan Straight
Hunter S. Thompson
Wakako Yamauchi
and more…
[Heyday logo-Cal Legs
ISBN: 978-1-59714-098-0
barcode
www.heydaybooks.com]
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