Meredith R. Stoddard's Blog, page 15

Q2 Review – Giving it all away

I have been sorely lacking in blog posts lately. This is mainly because my training/instructional design client has been taking up a lot of my time. It’s also summer and my kids are well underfoot. Still, I wanted to give a little review of the 2nd quarter of my year of living outside my comfort zone. Unlike the last quarter I don’t have quite so many things to report. However, this quarter did see me:

Return to the corporate training room for the first time in 4+ years Since I haven’t lead anyone other than my two children for he past few years, returning to the classroom was more nerve-wracking than I thought. Fortunately, my first batch of trainees was gentle with me and were mostly successful leaving the training room. Client was pleased. I’m feeling pretty good about it. So good in fact that I’m hoping to make this gig a more permanent thing.

Participating & posting online I am a chronic lurker online. I’ll find a forum related to something that I’m interested in and watch it for activity without really adding anything. These days I am trying to be more active in forums like the Writing subreddit, and others. More on that stuff in Q3

Made my short stories FREE What started as a Stoddard-palooza promo has turned into something longer. It was a tough decision, because I worked hard on those stories. Still, the royalties I was getting were minimal and I decided exposure was the real priority.

I made them free on Smashwords first and the response was “meh”.  That’s mostly because Smashwords is a bit of a niche market. However, once Amazon started matching that free price the downloads there took off. Now both A Fond Kiss and The White House have reached the top 100 Free Kindle books in Literary Fiction and Historical Fiction. Now, I went from measuring downloads in single digits to triple digits and I could not be more chuffed. I’m hoping that all these downloads will result in more reviews and more exposure.

I did however, have an acquaintance who downloaded them for free, hand me cash the other day. She said the stories were worth paying for, and she wants more. Makes me a little misty.

Overall, the increased interaction with folks has generated some interesting trains of thought. I’ve been pondering the concept of Creativity lately and how people can unlock theirs. I expect to have more blog posts to come on that front. I’m currently working my way through Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art. and hope to have a review/musings on that for the blog soon.

Q3 Looks like it may include:

My entry into fangirl-dom (Can anyone say Outlander!) Because you’re apparently never too old for that kind of thing.
Spearheading an online Gaelic learning group (if the logistics can be worked out)
Home renovations! Finally getting a space for all my work; writing, spinning, knitting, felting, and consulting from home.
Putting my kids in a proper daycare. You have no idea what a nail-biter that is.

Of course, I am always working on finishing the revisions to The River Maiden. That includes completely rewriting the end and the death of my much loved Prologue (Read it while you can. I might not leave it online much longer). Looking forward to it all:)

News Roundup

Today I was bombarded with news stories related some of my own stories.  Thank goodness for facebook, reddit and news alerts. I’ve been working hard in instructional design mode that I might have missed them. But they’re pretty exciting.

First, archaeologists with the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources will be attempting to recover 8 cannons from the wreckage of Blackbeard’s ship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge. The ship ran aground near Beaufort Inlet in June of 1718. If you’ve read my story The White House (currently FREE on Smashwords) you know that it speculates on the events leading up to the demise of the Queen Anne’s Revenge and is loosely based on some other legends surrounding Blackbeard and his relationship to the town of Beaufort, NC.  If you haven’t read it then you really should. Did I mention it’s FREE right now?

Then I saw a series of stories that relate to The River Maiden. (Yes, I am still working on it, I promise.) Actually, they relate more to the books following The River Maiden than they do to the first installment of Dermot and Sarah’s story. So, I’ll list these articles without comment to avoid possible spoilers. My husband will say I giving away too much, but he knows how my brain works better than you do. I’m hoping for you these are thought provoking teasers rather than spoilers.

1) A very interesting commentary on the role of Gaelic in the Scottish Independence movement.

2) A mysterious network of Stone Age tunnels stretching from Scotland to Turkey (or vice versa).

3) A European style Bronze Age monument found submerged in the Sea of Galilee.

Yes, I am just nerdy enough to be thrilled by these articles. I get super excited about languages, politics and history of any era, and if I can get them all in one day it’s a very good day.

 

 

Pro-cras-tin-ate!

It’s been about a month since my beta readers and critique group have given me their feedback on the latest draft of The River Maiden. The general consensus is that the characters and writing are good, and the story is mostly good but there are [image error]too many questions left unanswered for a first book in a series. I had come to this conclusion on my own before many of the readers even got back to me, but it was nice to have that confirmed. So there appears to be a good deal of rearranging, revising and rewriting to go into the next draft before it’s ready to be shown to potential agents/publishers. 

Since I have already outlined the next book in the series, I have some timeline gymnastics to work on.  There is the question of what to reveal in the first book, without completely ruining the plot of the second.  Also, the question of how far the romance in the first book can/should progress and how that might change some of the tension in the next book. There are storylines to be dropped and others to be built up. Needless to say with almost 250 pages of content, this is a daunting prospect, and one that I’ve been chewing on in the back of my mind like a particularly tough piece of literary beef jerky.

Fear not! I have not been idle while gnawing away on my various writing dilemmas. In fact, I have been even more active than usual though just not in the area of writing. (I know terrible to get out of the habit of working every day, but there it is.) So here are some of the things that I’ve been up to instead of revising The River Maiden.

[image error]- Taken on an Instructional Design consulting client.

- Added a Clearance section to my etsy store and marked down a bunch of items to go in it.

- Organized/customized our closet in the master bedroom complete with drawers and shelves.

- Planted my vegetable garden, succulent garden, herb garden, shade garden, water garden (with fish) and fairy garden

- Completely revamped our deck from it’s previous jumbled state into a gorgeous oasis including container gardens, a new gazebo, social area and even a workspace for writing/editing outside while the kids play.

- And last but certainly not least, binge watched 4 seasons of Dr. Who.

I know, I know. I should have been working on The River Maiden. The good news is that I am getting back to the grind. Even though, I’m working for my client during the hours of the day that I would have previously devoted to writing, I have a plan. This morning I got up at 5AM and came downstairs to work on some reading and editing. I know this has worked for other writers with day jobs and I have high hopes. My characters and my story are usually the last thing I think about as I’m going to sleep at night, so maybe getting up and getting to work before any of my other responsibilities intrude will be a good model for getting things done. It went pretty well this morning. We’ll see how well it works when I get to writing some of the new material.

Oh! I should also mention that in honor of Stoddard-palooza (Our month long family festival from our anniversary to our birthday’s) I will be giving away my historical fiction shorts this month, though not at the same time. Right now The White House is free on Smashwords. I’ll keep it that way for a couple of weeks. Then it will go back to its regular price and A Fond Kiss will be free. I hope that Amazon and Barnes and Noble will be adjusting their pricing accordingly, but I don’t really control that the way I can on Smashwords. So, if you haven’t read them or have read one and not the other, check them out this month to get a free taste.

More than the resting place of Tamerlan Tsarnaev

It’s not everyday that our little county makes the news, but it happens occasionally. Today, however Caroline County was in the news in a big way, and not for anything that anyone who lives here did. You might have heard by now that Tamerlan Tsarnaev has been buried in Doswell, VA which is in the southern part of Caroline, about 10 miles from my house. 

Personally, I don’t think it matters where he’s buried and I don’t really think it should matter to anyone but his family. The most important thing about Tsarnaev’s death isn’t where he’s buried. It’s that there is one less terrorist plotting to hurt innocent people. And by terrorist I mean a person who hurts or kills innocent people, causing mass terror to make a political/religious point. I do not mean Muslim, Chechen Separatist, Arab or any other specific ideology, nationality or religion. Fundamentalism of any stripe is dangerous and leads to that kind of behavior. I would like to think that through reason, kindness and tolerance potential terrorists could be reformed, but that’s maybe not so realistic.

There are actually two things that do bother me about Tsarnaev’s burial in my neck of the woods.

First – We’re a very small and frequently cash strapped rural county. My husband likes to say we live in the Middle of Nowhere. I prefer to view it as the Edge of Somewhere. We’re just 25 miles north of the state capital and only 75 miles south of the nations capital, but we’re also 10 miles from the nearest grocery store. Here’s the Wikipedia page on us if you’re looking for more info.  Unfortunately, as idyllic as this rural setting can be it has it’s issues, and funds are one of them. Our schools are barely adequate, no matter how hard the teachers and administrators try. Our county water system consists of a series of wells, some of which are prone to run dry in hot summer months. Our police and fire departments do their best to cover 539 square miles.

Now, they have to focus additional attention on protecting one small cemetery near the county line from vandals and hate crimes, whether they like it or not that is their job.  But our county doesn’t have the money for that. So, I would like to ask Martha Mullen who arranged the burial how she thinks we should pay for her doing her “Christian duty”.  Should the county put off digging a new well, or layoff one of my children’s teachers to pay for the additional law enforcement around a cemetery that otherwise wouldn’t need it?  Those are the kind of decisions that our county Board of Supervisors face every year, and unexpected expenses like this cause real repercussions for those of us living here.

Second – Caroline is actually a really nice place with some great people in it. On of my favorite things to do around here is ride through the back roads of the county and it really is beautiful. My Instagram followers will be vary familiar with some of the sights here. It’s full of rolling hills and tree farms and gorgeous and a rich history.

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But like everywhere, we also have some bad apples. When the news broke today, some residents were actually calling 911 to voice their displeasure over the burial as if they could send police out with sirens blaring to stop something that happened yesterday. I’ve seen some of the comments on facebook and in our local paper loaded with intolerance. What the Tsarnaev brothers did was horrific, and inexcusable and people are angry about it with good reason. Unfortunately, I have no doubt that at some point someone from here or from outside the county is going to vandalize that grave or the whole cemetery. They are going to show the intolerance and bigotry that simmers under the surface of American society in ways that will not affect Tsarnaev or his family but will hurt the families of the innocent people buried there.  I would like to think that we’re better than that, but just like reforming fanatics that too is probably unrealistic.

That should not be the face that Caroline shows to the world. There is a lot more to our home than one cemetery.  For me, this is the place where my ancestors first owned land in America after coming here as indentured servants. It’s also the place where William Clark of Lewis and Clark fame was born. This is where John Wilkes Booth was killed after assassinating Abraham Lincoln. Until recently this was the home of Boy Scout Jamboree. This is where Secretariat was born.

Most significantly on the subject of tolerance, Caroline was the home of Richard and Mildred Loving.  The Lovings grew up in Caroline, but were forced to leave when their interracial marriage was discovered by local authorities. At the time miscegenation was illegal in Virginia and many other states. The Lovings challenged that law, and in 1967 the Supreme Court found anti-miscegenation laws were unconstitutional. If it weren’t for the Lovings and their desire to live here in Caroline, those laws might have taken a lot longer to be struck down. There are a lot of couples in America who owe the legality of their marriage to the Lovings. Here’s the trailer for an HBO film about them.

Preview – The Loving Story

I sincerely hope that my neighbors of all creeds will put their best feet forward while the world is watching our little corner of Central Virginia. I would like for Mildred Loving’s beautiful and determined face to be the face that represents Caroline County to the world, not the face of Tamerlan Tsarnaev and not the face of intolerance.

First quarter of 2013 – Overcoming Inertia

Now that the bombers have been caught and America (especially those of us who live and/or work near target cities like D.C.) can let out that breath we were collectively holding through most of last week, I can get to that blog post that I had been planning before last week’s tragedy.

I didn’t so much make a New Year’s resolution for 2013 as a sort of pledge to myself at the beginning of the year to step out of my comfort zone. If left to my own devices, I would be a hermit and by hermit, I mean never picking up the phone, only communicating through email and only going to the store to buy food and craft supplies. I am by nature and introvert with a capital I. This is one of the reasons that being a writer is a good fit for me. It’s also one of the reasons why my writing and other creative efforts tend to fly under the radar.

Through an unfortunate series of events toward the end of 2012, I was rather forcibly made to look at the state of my life, career, accomplishments…and realize that I was pretty much being that hermit that my little hater (for a definition of “little hater” see this video) would like me to be. I did a little research and realized that two of the professions in America that are most prone to depression are Writer and Stay-at-Home-Mom and for much the same reason. The work is solitary, and the recognition of success is almost non-existent. Oh, and the pay sucks.

Of course as a Write-at-Home-Mom I’m like a Double Strength Depression Magnet. This is not to say that I was depressed or am now nor was I in January, but I did suffer from Post-partum depression after my daughter was born, so I know enough to recognize the turn off for that bumpy road to Misery Town.

It became strikingly apparent to me that if anyone was ever going to read the novel that I had just finished much less publish it, and if I was going to emotionally survive the process of submission and rejection that will eventually get me there, I would have to start interacting with more people and putting myself out there.

So instead of a resolution, I personally declared this the year of stepping out, putting myself out there for people to see and basically changing what normal is for me. With that in mind. I did a number of things.

I cut off the long hair that I’d been hiding behind for years.
I joined a gym, and started going to classes. For an introvert who’s been overweight since puberty, I can’t overstate how big a step it is to work out in front of other people. It’s huge.
I joined a local critique group where writers come and read their work to be critiqued in person. I’m no stranger to public speaking, I actually enjoy it, but it’s a first for me to be reading/speaking in front of people about anything other than tax software or instructional design.
I joined a very thorough online critique group that tackles one member’s novel every 2 weeks. I like this because it forces me to stick to their schedule instead of pushing things off as I am prone to do. And right now, they’re all reading The River Maiden. I can’t wait to hear their feedback.
I eventually started working with a personal trainer.
I sent The River Maiden out to beta readers. This is very big, because it’s been in my head for over 10 years. These characters are very personal to me, and I feel protective of them.

My results have been a little mixed. I haven’t lost as much weight as I think I should have in 3+ months, but I am much more physically fit than I was in January (and probably have been in years), and I push myself further every week. I also feel 100 times better than I did last year. I’m actually starting to enjoy the feeling of sore muscles and dripping sweat. I learned that even when stepping out of my comfort zone, I’m not interesting in getting my hair cut every 3 weeks which is the approximate time that it takes from my short curls to grow from cute and sassy to old lady hair helmet. So, I’ll be letting it grow out a bit.

In the second quarter of this landmark year, I’m planning to…

Start querying agents for The River Maiden. I’m happy to take recommendations from anyone who knows a good agent
Keep showing my work to more people
Keep building my online social media presence
Overhauling my etsy store, something I’ve been putting off for too long.

…among other things. I’ll update you on my progress.

 

Wake Forest Oral History Film

I won’t bore you yet again by telling you how amazing my grandmother is. She’s absolutely the best for any number of reasons. Just one of those reasons is her incredible memories of life in the early 20th century. This is a segment of an oral history documentary from her local museum. It’s very well put together. She keeps saying that she’s not going to do any more interviews, because it makes her maudlin. Still, when you’re 95 there aren’t that many people around who can compete with your historical insight.

This film also has the memories of some other ladies from this lovely little town. You can find them at their website.

“Choose a suitable design and hold to it.”

I am a plotter. I think I’ve mentioned this before. I’m always amazed when I hear people say they just write by the seat of their pants. I can’t even conceive of the idea of writing without knowing how something is going to end. Maybe it’s my non-fiction background, or my academic bent, but for anything larger than flash fiction I have to have an outline. I think it was probably said best by those wise writing gurus Strunk & White.

“Writing, to be effective, must follow closely the thoughts of the writer, but not necessarily in the order in which those thoughts occur.”

This is not to say that I’m never carried away by a scene or character into something that I hadn’t foreseen or planned. Much of the Alex Budge parts of The River Maiden were expanded based on the strength of the character as he appeared in my head while I was writing. Still, I start a project knowing where I will end and what things need to be covered along the way.

Now, I started writing The River Maiden years ago, and when I did I had a very useful mind mapping program that helped us turn abstract ideas into outlines. Unfortunately, since I no longer work for that company, I don’t have access to that program anymore. So, now that I’m in the process of plotting the next book, and was looking for a way to get all of the various themes of this book that have been swimming around in my head into some sort of outline. I found a few methods for plotting a novel, including mind mapping as I had done before. But I also found the information about how to use a snowflake diagram.

That’s a lot of very specific steps (so specific that they’ve now made software for it) that get down to more specifics than I’m ready for right now. Instead I’m using it help me layer the various themes of the plot. I have 6 main themes and each section is for outlining that theme and how it all fits together.  I built my own tool for using the snowflake diagram using a folding foam board.

This helped me brainstorm the different movements of the plot and how each of the main characters get to where they need to be at the end. Instead of going through all of those steps however useful they may be, I used the snowflake structure to organize my brainstorming. Since I’ve had some scenes running through my brain for a while now, this gives me a chance to get them out and organize the. Not all of these points of the snowflake have specific events lined up with them, but it does give me a look at what is needed to move Sarah and Dermot and company to where they will be at the end of this book. While brainstorming the plot, I used the side panels to note locations and characters who need to be fleshed out further. I did this with post-its on the board so that I can move things around as needed. This also enables me to use the board again for the next project (did I mention I’m cheap?).

Snowflaking as we’ve started to call it around here is becoming quite the thing. My six year old is even using it to plot her work-in-progress ”The Day it Rained Kittens”. I helped with the writing, but the plot points are hers. I can’t tell you how important organization is when your story is being dictated by a six year old.

9 Unlikely Things I Learned While Writing The River Maiden

One of the things I love best about writing is research. I’m a naturally curious person, so it’s just the way I operate. It’s one of the reasons that I fell into training in my corporate life. I just wanted to know how things worked and I didn’t mind explaining what I learned to other people. It struck me the other day when I caught myself reading up on the parking brake of a 1990 Honda Civic, that I’ve learned some unexpected things on my way to finishing this novel.

There are the obvious things; Celtic lore, Appalachian culture and off the grid living. Naturally,  my Gaelic vocabulary has increased about ten fold.  there are also some unlikely things. These are things that I wouldn’t have thought of until I got to that point in the novel, things that I probably wouldn’t have Googled if I hadn’t been writing this book.

1) The basic geography of Nova Scotia.

2) This looks like an awesome place to spend a summer vacation.

3) The little blue house on Ransom St. that I used to live in is no longer blue, no longer has a porch swing and has fallen even further into disrepair.

4) The basics of moonshining. I watched a lot of how to videos. Here’s a relatively short one.

If you’re interested in moonshine or moonshiners you should check out these videos about the late Popcorn Sutton who was part of the inspiration for the appearance and voice of Alex Budge.

5) How to malt barley and corn for making liquor.

6) Recipe for peach brandy.

7) The path of ocean currents from Nova Scotia to the Gulf of Maine.

8) The basics of disarming someone with a handgun. Just one of the many ways it pays to be married to a former Marine.

9) And, of course, this is the parking brake of a 1990 Honda Civic.

Favorite Literary Crushes – Darcy and beyond

By pure coincidence, today marks the 200th anniversary of the publication of Pride & Prejudice, and just a few days ago I got word that Dermot Sinclair is the object of his first reader crush by way of one of the lovely folks on authonomy.com who has read the first three acts of The River Maiden. It’s incredibly gratifying to have created a character worthy of a reader crush and since I’ve had a crush on Dermot for ages, it’s nice to know I’m not alone. 

Of course one of my first reader crushes is Fitzwilliam Darcy. Because really how can a girl resist a guy that by turns calls you plain and refuses to dance with you, tells you your family is and embarrassment and then goes completely out of his way to fix things when your ridiculous sister practically makes your family untouchable all the while trying VERY hard not to seem in the least bit vulnerable and failing miserably until he says something like this.

“By you, I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception. You shewed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.” Oh, Darcy!

Of course, Darcy isn’t just the romantic hero of Pride & Prejudice, and many adaptations since. He is all of the guys that look down their noses at smart, witty girls who don’t quite fit in. He’s the society that tries to tell us to be one way, because that’s what’s expected of us when all we want is to be another. And Elizabeth Bennett manages by persistently being herself and speaking her mind to bring him around to appreciating those very things that make her different and special. And he manages by being there when she needs him to show her that sometimes what society wants for you isn’t completely intolerable.

I love Jane Austen with her sharp eye and witty pen. If there is a heaven for writers, I like to imagine Jane Austen, Johnathan Swift, Mark Twain and Dorothy Parker relaxing over a few drinks and having a great laugh over some of the more overwrought and self-important writers in literary history. My husband likes to sneer at my love for Jane Austen almost as much as he sneers at my love of romance novels. But, what he doesn’t realize is that Austen’s novels are just as full of social commentary as the Sci-fi and post-apocalyptic speculative fiction books that he likes to read. Same scathing look at society, just wrapped up in corsets and ribbons instead of gadgets and gun straps.

There are today on HuffPost Books two articles arguing the merits of the  two most visible actors to play Darcy in the last 30 years. There is of course Colin Firth who plays Darcy so well, he’s done it in the BBC mini-series and in both Bridget Jones movies. There is also an article making a credible argument in favor of Matthew MacFadyen. This article has some good points, and had me wondering if part of my own preference for Colin Firth’s Darcy wasn’t wrapped up in my strong preference for Jennifer Ehle’s Elizabeth to Kiera Knightly’s. Still, it left me wondering about other people’s preferences.

This naturally led me to wonder about people’s preferences for OTHER literary crushes. Such as, Edward Rochester, or Heathcliff.  Click on each one for a list of actors who have played these roles. I was going to put lists here, but they’re far too long.  I’m telling my favorites.  Which ones are yours (comments please)?

Fitzwilliam Darcy: Colin Firth. Period. End of story.

Edward Rochester: Michael Fassbender, though if you haven’t see the 1943 version with Orson Welles, Joan Fontaine and a very young Elizabeth Taylor you really should.

Heathcliff: I’m not really a Wuthering Heights fan, but I know Heathcliff excites a lot of readers, and audiences. I will suggest that you watch the delicious Tom Hardy in the 2009 TV movie version and then watch him in The Dark Knight Rises. I think you’ll find a lot of similarities in his portrayals of Heathcliff and Bane.

If these guys don’t float your boat, who is your literary crush. My other big two haven’t been lucky enough to be in film yet, though Sony Picture TV is working on an Outlander TV series. So we may see Jamie Fraser on our TV screens before too long. Alas, I don’t foresee a Lymond Chronicles movie or TV series anywhere in the future, though I think Francis Crawford would give James Bond a run for his money.

Big doings on the Once and Future Page

So, I’m stuck here with a sick child today which means no writing is happening. But I’m trying to make the most of it by updating some much needed information on the contemporary fiction series that I’m working on. As you know I’m currently editing/revising/slashing/burning the manuscript for The River Maiden. But wanted to provide a little peek into where the series is going. As I said in my post a couple of weeks ago, I’m working on outlining the whole series. With that in mind. I have given The River Maiden its own page and added pitches for the next two books Old as Stone and King of Mist to the Once and Future page. 

Also on the Once and Future page I have added a copy of the ballad that Sarah is researching for her dissertation. She calls it The River Maiden (hence the book title). It lays out the mythos for the entire series. Although the series is interwoven with many actual Celtic legends, The River Maiden (the ballad) is made up by me. I tried to follow common conventions and structure of traditional ballads. I also included themes like the lame king, cauldron of plenty and stone that will be very familiar to students of Celtic lore so that this would assimilate aspects of Celtic culture that readers may already be familiar with.

On the page for The River Maiden (the book) I have added a new excerpt. This is a flashback to Sarah’s childhood that I recently added to the manuscript. For those of you who have read the other excerpts, I won’t force you to go hunting for it. I’ll reprint it right here. I hope you enjoy.

 

Childhood Memories

Mòrag jumped when she heard the door to Mama’s room upstairs open and close. She held her breath as her heart beat in time with her mother’s footsteps through the hall and down the stairs. She reached a shaking hand out to gather her crayons that were scattered across the worn table. Maybe if she cleaned up her mess, Mama would feel better.

She put the crayons neatly in her box and closed it. She rose to go put the box in it’s place on the little bookcase in the parlor, but Mama was blocking the doorway. She stared hard at Mòrag, like she was a problem that needed to be solved. It was the same way she looked at the puzzles they liked to work on to pass the time when they got snowed in. Mòrag stood there beside her chair, awkwardly shifting from foot to foot wondereding what to do. She never knew anymore how to behave around Mama, not since the bathtub.

Now, Mama lived like a ghost; there but not there. She didn’t talk. She rarely ate though she sometimes came to supper, like now. Her skin hung from her bones. She almost never spoke. Some days Mòrag tried to make Mama feel better, but it never seemed to work. Just today, she had painted a picture for her at school. It was the prettiest picture that she had ever done. She ran all the way home from the school bus stop with the paper streaming behind her like wings. She was so excited, sure that something so lovely would cheer Mama up.

Mòrag had found Mama and Granny in the vegetable garden. They’d been digging up weeds and their hands were covered in dirt. Mòrag went straight to Mama who was on her knees between the rows. “I made this picture for you, Mama! Look! It’s like a fairy tale.”

Mama looked up from what she was doing. Her gaunt face was smudged with dirt and some of her hair had come down to drift around her face in little wisps. For a second, just a second her mama smiled at her. Looked her right in the eye and smiled at her like nothing was wrong, and Mòrag could almost see the old Mama. The one that used to play with her and love her.

Then Mama looked down at the picture and it all changed. Her eyes darted across the picture from one thing to another taking in the castle and the princess, flowers and sunshine and her face became a mask of rage. Mòrag watched as the old smiling Mama drained away and was replaced by something terrifying. Mama slowly lifted her hand to touch the painting. Mòrag thought about pulling it away because her hand was so dirty. The fingernails were green from the weeds and there was black soil every crevace. Before she could though, Mama grabbed the painting and tore it from Mòrag’s hands crumpling it and causing the thick paint to flake off and scatter in the dirt. A raw pained sound came from Mama’s throat like a wounded animal as she slammed the painting to the ground and began to stab it with the trowel that was in her other hand.

“A’ mise, mo bheancachd.” (Come with me, my blessing.) Granny said grabbing Mòrag gently by the shoulders and pulling her toward the house. Mòrag walked toward the house still watching Mama over her shoulder as she began to throw dirt on the painting that was now in tatters. “Tha Mami glè sgìth.” (Mama’s very tired.)

That’s what Granny always said, Mòrag had heard it a thousand times in the last couple of months. She wanted to ask why Mama was so tired. Why didn’t she eat? Why didn’t she play anymore or talk above a whisper? Where was the mother that had loved her? She wanted to ask her Granny all these questions, but she couldn’t seem to get them past the big lump in her throat.

So she just cried. She hated crying. It made her feel like such a baby. Big girls in first grade didn’t cry. Babies cried. She hated Mama for making her cry. Granny tried to make her feel better with a biscuit with honey on it. Mòrag tried to take a couple of bites to show Granny that she was alright. She’d show Mama too. She’d get out her crayons and draw a picture just as pretty as that painting, but this time she would give it to Granny or Ol’Duff.

That’s why her crayons were all over the place when Mama came downstairs for supper. Mama stood there staring as Mòrag until Granny stepped between them. She put a bar of soap in Mama’s still filthy hand and gave a short nod toward the sink. “Nigh do làmhan.” (Wash your hands.)

Mama didn’t argue. She just turned to the sink and began scrubbing the dirt off her hands. Mòrag took the chance to step into the parlor and put her crayons away. She stayed in the parlor, but watched through the door as Mama stayed at the sink giving her hands a good hard scrub with hot water. She was still scrubbing when Ol’ Duff came in through the back door. He usually only stayed around the farm in the winter, but Mòrag knew he was here still in the late spring on account of Mama. Duff was the only way that Granny could get a break from watching and caring for Mama.

He came in and took off his old and patched overshirt and hung it on a peg by the kitchen door.  Mòrag liked Ol’ Duff. Most people couldn’t see past his often dirty wornout clothes and his long hair and beard. They just thought he was a drifter or a hippy, but he had kind eyes, and always a good word for a lonely little girl. Mòrag glanced over to her little shelf on the bookcase and the box of tiny wooden animals that Duff liked to carve for her.

Without a word, he stepped up to the sink where Mama was scrubbing her hands. Steam was rising from the sink. Duff whispered something to Mama that Mòrag couldn’t hear as he reached over and turned off the tap. He grabbed a towel from the rack beside the sink and used it to gently dry Mama’s hands. Mama let him dry her hands, but she never looked at him. She would shift her eyes everywhere, but Duff’s like she was afraid to look at him.

“Tha biadh deas.” (The food is ready) Granny said in her brisk manner as she set the serving dishes on the table. Mòrag went into the kitchen and straight to her chair which was next to Granny’s. Mama and Duff sat on the other side of the table. As always in spring supper was made up of whatever they could get from the garden and the forest. Tonight it was fish that Duff had caught that morning along with spinach sautèed in bacon grease and mashed potatoes and some sliced radishes. There were also biscuits that Granny made every morning.

Since Duff started coming into the house for dinner, they had fallen into a routine of eating supper and talking about their days. Duff would talk about the wildlife he’d seen and what he would go hunting for the next day. Granny would talk about the still and how it was working and what plans she had for the garden or foraging. They both made a point of asking Mòrag about her school day, and the antics of the other kids in school.

They were almost like a normal family. Granny and Duff tried very hard not to act like there was a ghost sitting at the table, but they all knew she was there. She would pick at her food. Sometimes she even took a bite, but most of the time she just pushed it around her plate and stared down at the table. The rest of them tried to ignore her, and most of the time she made that easy to do.

“Did you have your spelling test today?” Granny asked. She always spoke English at the dinner table on account of Duff not having the Gaelic.

Sarah swallowed the bite of potatoes she had just taken and mumbled. “No, ma’am. That’s tomorrow.”

“Then we’ll go over your words while we do the dishes.” Granny nodded to her. Spelling and dishes was also becoming a routine.

“Sing any good songs in music, this week?” Duff asked her. He loved to hear Mòrag sing.

“There is this one funny song about a cat named Don Gato. He falls down and breaks a bunch bones. It sounds kinda sad, but the song is really funny.”

“Well, sometimes you gotta laugh or else you’ll just cry.” Duff said with a wink. “Maybe you can sing it for me when you’re done with…”

Suddenly Sarah felt eyes on her and looked up to find Mama watching her. Silent tears streamed down her face. The others noticed too and stopped talking. They all sat there for a frozen moment staring at Mama while she stared back at Mòrag. Mama looked so sad, but Mòrag didn’t believe that look anymore. She’d seen little else but sadness from Mama in the last couple of months, and her sympathy had just about run out especially after Mama had destroyed her painting.

Feeling a little reckless, Mòrag did something she had never done before. She lifted her chin ever so slightly and looked her mama right in the eye. She waited to see if Mama was going to say anything; maybe explain why she had destroyed the painting, why she had turned herself into a living ghost, or tried to drown her baby a couple of months ago. Mama didn’t say anything. She just sat there staring at Mòrag with fat tears rolling down her sunken cheeks.

When her mother didn’t speak Mòrag just shrugged in indiference and went back to eating her dinner. She cut off a bite of fish with the side of her fork and was scooping it up when she heard Mama’s fork clatter onto her plate and Mama’s chair scrape across the wood floor. With an explosive energy that none of them had thought her capable of, Mama had sprung up from her chair and tried to reach across the table for Mòrag. Her fingers hooked like claws went straight for Mòrag’s throat. Fortunately, Duff was quicker and stronger. In a flash he was on his feet. He wrapped his arms around Mama pinning her arms to her side. At the same time Granny jerked Mòrag’s chair back from the table and put herself in front of it in case Mama got loose.

Mama and Duff struggled for a moment until the soothing rumble of his voice saying “Easy, Molly, easy now.” found its way through the rage that had once again clouded Mama’s brain. When he got her calmed down enough that he could get a better grip on her, Duff walked Mama outside into the yard. Granny went to the window to watch them. No doubt Mama would calm down a lot faster without the sight of her daughter. Little Mòrag pulled her chair back up to the table and picked up her fork again. She stared down at her plate for a few seconds, but couldn’t bring herself to eat anymore. She pushed her plate away and stalked out of the kitchen and up to her room.