Rita Sims Quillen's Blog, page 4
May 3, 2014
First Review-HIDING EZRA
OFF to a good start--hope there will be more good reviews published! Of course it's all the good reader reviews here on Goodreads, on Amazon and on Barnes and Noble that mean more than anything! Here's former professor Ben Jennings from A! magazine:
http://artsmagazine.info/articles.php...
http://artsmagazine.info/articles.php...
May 1, 2014
SOMETHING SOLID TO ANCHOR TO
It's official-I"M CRAZY! I just published the novel HIDING EZRA--something I've worked on off and on for over 15 years. Then I got the bright idea that since I had written quite a few poems and would be busy promoting and doing readings from the novel, why not just do a book of poetry at the same time?! Not a smart move-I'm sort of overwhelmed, and pre-sales of the poetry book, SOMETHING SOLID TO ANCHOR TO from Finishing Line Press, aren't going that well. I may end up with a giant EGG on my face on this one. Oh well.
But just in case there are any poetry lovers among my GOODREADS friends, I wanted you to know about it. Here's a little sample. Since APPALACHIAN JOURNAL isn't available online, I thought I'd share the poem that's in the current issue with you. It's a true story--that I have a memory of being a toddler lying in my crib and watching the sun rise--that people have told me can't be true, that it isn't possible to remember things from that time in your life. But people insist lots of things are fact that I am positive are not. So there you go.
This poem and other impossible tales are in SOMETHING SOLID TO ANCHOR TO, available for preorder at Finishing Line Press.com -click Preorder Forthcoming Titles and scroll down alphabetically to my name...Thanks for your interest!
FIRST MEMORY
People never believe me
When I tell them I recall
Waking in my crib, lying watchful
While my parents dozed.
I slept there until I was two
In front of the window in their bedroom.
I remember watching the sun rise
Amazed, lazy in my warm nest,
Only the sound of breathing,
Blood rush pulsing and the words yes and yes.
Just as now I feel no need
To summon others at the moment
The miraculous occurs,
I couldn’t tell my parents then or later
That I saw God and angels and clouds
That became beliefs, most of all,
That silence was now
A cloak I would inhabit,
Walk around inside
Wearing it as beautiful silk
All my days.
But just in case there are any poetry lovers among my GOODREADS friends, I wanted you to know about it. Here's a little sample. Since APPALACHIAN JOURNAL isn't available online, I thought I'd share the poem that's in the current issue with you. It's a true story--that I have a memory of being a toddler lying in my crib and watching the sun rise--that people have told me can't be true, that it isn't possible to remember things from that time in your life. But people insist lots of things are fact that I am positive are not. So there you go.
This poem and other impossible tales are in SOMETHING SOLID TO ANCHOR TO, available for preorder at Finishing Line Press.com -click Preorder Forthcoming Titles and scroll down alphabetically to my name...Thanks for your interest!
FIRST MEMORY
People never believe me
When I tell them I recall
Waking in my crib, lying watchful
While my parents dozed.
I slept there until I was two
In front of the window in their bedroom.
I remember watching the sun rise
Amazed, lazy in my warm nest,
Only the sound of breathing,
Blood rush pulsing and the words yes and yes.
Just as now I feel no need
To summon others at the moment
The miraculous occurs,
I couldn’t tell my parents then or later
That I saw God and angels and clouds
That became beliefs, most of all,
That silence was now
A cloak I would inhabit,
Walk around inside
Wearing it as beautiful silk
All my days.
April 16, 2014
BRAVE NEW (PUBLISHING) WORLD
Some wag once said that "People in the South never recognize their writers until someone in New York tells them to." Of course, there's a lot of truth to that-ask someone about Southern writers today and if they're avid readers, they'll name Adriana Trigiani, Lee Smith, Amy Greene, Silas House, David Baldacci,Sharyn McCrumb, Wiley Cash, Ron Rash--all writers that have been chosen and heavily promoted out of New York.
But increasingly, small and academic presses are also cranking out excellent Southern fiction. I'm thinking of Algonquin Press, Mercer University, and West VA University, just to name a few. And of course, I'll add my little publisher, Little Creek Books, in there, too.
Ironically, it seems to me that as publishing gets bigger and more global that it actually seems to be getting harder and harder to get a book published in New York, so naturally the flow is going out in a different direction. I believe this trend will only continue.
The big film studios are now only interested in big action films, remakes, and comic book characters; they want a surefire moneymaker with lots of special effects, etc. No one is much interested in a small low-budget (relatively) character-driven or quirky film that would have less mass appeal. So too has the merger mania in publishing lessened the opportunity for an author with a similar character-driven, literary story to find a publisher in New York willing to take a chance on him or her.
So all that creativity finds a new channel, bypassing the publishing monolith and the bookstores chained to it, using social media to bring readers and writers together outside the establishment, so to speak.
We still may not get much recognition down here in the southland, lacking New York's blessing, but we ARE finding readers--lots of them. Almost 5 months in, my book is selling very well. That's the best recognition any writer could hope for.
But increasingly, small and academic presses are also cranking out excellent Southern fiction. I'm thinking of Algonquin Press, Mercer University, and West VA University, just to name a few. And of course, I'll add my little publisher, Little Creek Books, in there, too.
Ironically, it seems to me that as publishing gets bigger and more global that it actually seems to be getting harder and harder to get a book published in New York, so naturally the flow is going out in a different direction. I believe this trend will only continue.
The big film studios are now only interested in big action films, remakes, and comic book characters; they want a surefire moneymaker with lots of special effects, etc. No one is much interested in a small low-budget (relatively) character-driven or quirky film that would have less mass appeal. So too has the merger mania in publishing lessened the opportunity for an author with a similar character-driven, literary story to find a publisher in New York willing to take a chance on him or her.
So all that creativity finds a new channel, bypassing the publishing monolith and the bookstores chained to it, using social media to bring readers and writers together outside the establishment, so to speak.
We still may not get much recognition down here in the southland, lacking New York's blessing, but we ARE finding readers--lots of them. Almost 5 months in, my book is selling very well. That's the best recognition any writer could hope for.
April 10, 2014
Researching HIDING EZRA
When my husband first told me the tale of his grandfather's incredible adventures during WWI, I thought, I don't even know what that war was about. In school, we study the Civil War--crazy but clear--and World War II with its 2 fronts--crazy but clear--but WWI? It seemed a very complex war, more irrational than the other two, if that makes any sense. And I couldn't recall anything really about the time period except the big flu epidemic. I did remember that from history class.
When I decided I was going to try to write a novel that was built around the basic true story of my husband's grandfather deciding that his family needed him a lot worse than the Army did, I could find nothing in the library to help me understand his predicament or the times he lived in. I did read some books and articles about the war, and also specifically about the flu epidemic, but I found nothing about deserters, nothing about the reaction of real people here at home in southwestern Virginia, nothing about what challenges the the first modern draft presented. So I knew I was going to have to find out what I needed to know some other way.
So I began to look for newspaper accounts of the day. I ended up spending 4 summers--when I was out of school--squirreled away in local libraries readings newspaper accounts of that time. I read the KINGSPORT TIMES NEWS, the BRISTOL HERALD-COURIER, the Scott County, VA paper, and several coalfield papers, starting from the summer of 1918 all the way through to the fall of 1922. Every day's paper, cover to cover. On microfilm. Now you see why it took four years.
But then I was ready to write HIDING EZRA, having come to understand that my husband's grandfather was part of a huge sociological phenomenon-175,000 men that went AWOL for similar reasons--and that incredible events besides the flu epidemic were occurring: a coal strike, a wheat shortage, the coldest winter in decades....History came alive, as sharp and clear and real as my own life, and I had to make others see it, too, with new eyes, to understand what incredible hardship had occurred in this forgotten and often overlooked war. It is the story of thousands of families-a story that had to be told.
When I decided I was going to try to write a novel that was built around the basic true story of my husband's grandfather deciding that his family needed him a lot worse than the Army did, I could find nothing in the library to help me understand his predicament or the times he lived in. I did read some books and articles about the war, and also specifically about the flu epidemic, but I found nothing about deserters, nothing about the reaction of real people here at home in southwestern Virginia, nothing about what challenges the the first modern draft presented. So I knew I was going to have to find out what I needed to know some other way.
So I began to look for newspaper accounts of the day. I ended up spending 4 summers--when I was out of school--squirreled away in local libraries readings newspaper accounts of that time. I read the KINGSPORT TIMES NEWS, the BRISTOL HERALD-COURIER, the Scott County, VA paper, and several coalfield papers, starting from the summer of 1918 all the way through to the fall of 1922. Every day's paper, cover to cover. On microfilm. Now you see why it took four years.
But then I was ready to write HIDING EZRA, having come to understand that my husband's grandfather was part of a huge sociological phenomenon-175,000 men that went AWOL for similar reasons--and that incredible events besides the flu epidemic were occurring: a coal strike, a wheat shortage, the coldest winter in decades....History came alive, as sharp and clear and real as my own life, and I had to make others see it, too, with new eyes, to understand what incredible hardship had occurred in this forgotten and often overlooked war. It is the story of thousands of families-a story that had to be told.
April 4, 2014
WHERE 'HIDING EZRA' HAPPENS
Hello readers!
Here's a link to a few pictures I thought you would enjoy if you have read HIDING EZRA. Cut-n-paste this into your browser or click the link:
http://www.ritasimsquillen.com/where-...
These are some of the real places that I used as settings for various scenes in the story. Each pic has a note that pops up when you hold your mouse over it.
That's not to say that these places, these houses, are anything other than pretend locations! The owners or residents of the houses, for instance, are in no way connected with the story or the real people that the novel is loosely based on! I just needed to imagine a place that "worked" in my mind as a feasible location to see each scene clearly and vividly.
I did not rename or re-arrange my county the way Faulkner did with his infamous Yoknapatawpha County (if I ever make up a fictional place with a name that impossible to say and spell, somebody slap me!). But like Faulkner, my story could not be told in some other place or geography. It is in, and of, these mountains and valleys where I have lived my entire life, organic as the soil itself.
Here's a link to a few pictures I thought you would enjoy if you have read HIDING EZRA. Cut-n-paste this into your browser or click the link:
http://www.ritasimsquillen.com/where-...
These are some of the real places that I used as settings for various scenes in the story. Each pic has a note that pops up when you hold your mouse over it.
That's not to say that these places, these houses, are anything other than pretend locations! The owners or residents of the houses, for instance, are in no way connected with the story or the real people that the novel is loosely based on! I just needed to imagine a place that "worked" in my mind as a feasible location to see each scene clearly and vividly.
I did not rename or re-arrange my county the way Faulkner did with his infamous Yoknapatawpha County (if I ever make up a fictional place with a name that impossible to say and spell, somebody slap me!). But like Faulkner, my story could not be told in some other place or geography. It is in, and of, these mountains and valleys where I have lived my entire life, organic as the soil itself.
March 27, 2014
Writing as a "career"
There was a time, when I was in my thirties, I thought I might have a "career" as a writer. Now, since I was a poet, it wasn't that I thought you could make a living from selling poetry books! I wasn't that clueless! But I thought I could get one of those nice jobs at a university where you're the writer-in-residence, teach a few classes a year, and get paid to write. Seemed like a stellar career that I was perfectly suited for.
But in those days, it was very hard, very hard for a woman to do that. In the kind of prestigious lit magazines that could launch you toward that kind of career, almost no women were published in those days--the truly enlightened ones might have 1 or at most 2 women in each issue--and around 6-8 men.
Plus I had the added handicap of having a very pedestrian academic background--I'm a community college graduate--a very hillbilly pedigree--and probably worst of all-- an accent. So no "career" for me.
But nothing could stop me from living the writing life. I've published dozens and dozens of poems in dozens and dozens of magazines and anthologies and met dozens of wonderful people because of it. I've been invited to read and teach all around the southeast and met dozens of wonderful people because of it. I've published essays, poetry, short fiction, and a novel and will soon have my 6th book published--poetry again--and so I leave a legacy for my family to cherish, an account of the life well-lived and examined, a record of my heart and my place. And that's better than a 'career'.
But in those days, it was very hard, very hard for a woman to do that. In the kind of prestigious lit magazines that could launch you toward that kind of career, almost no women were published in those days--the truly enlightened ones might have 1 or at most 2 women in each issue--and around 6-8 men.
Plus I had the added handicap of having a very pedestrian academic background--I'm a community college graduate--a very hillbilly pedigree--and probably worst of all-- an accent. So no "career" for me.
But nothing could stop me from living the writing life. I've published dozens and dozens of poems in dozens and dozens of magazines and anthologies and met dozens of wonderful people because of it. I've been invited to read and teach all around the southeast and met dozens of wonderful people because of it. I've published essays, poetry, short fiction, and a novel and will soon have my 6th book published--poetry again--and so I leave a legacy for my family to cherish, an account of the life well-lived and examined, a record of my heart and my place. And that's better than a 'career'.
March 13, 2014
Hiding Ezra- the almost-a-movie
After I tell them the plot of my novel HIDING EZRA, many people say, "That sounds like it should be a movie." Oh, if they only knew the long frustrating tale....
You see, HIDING EZRA was a screenplay first-before it was a novel. A filmmaker optioned the story when it was just in the outline stage, spent two years working with me via email and in person to flesh out a screenplay, got an agent in LA to represent it,& got lots of "big-time" Hollywood producers, directors, and acclaimed technical people to read it and write enthusiastic letters expressing their interest in working on the film.
He came tantalizingly close with a couple of high-profile people interested in it, but the folks who had the money (or at least the clout to get it) said "no.". Neither I nor the filmmaker was someone they were willing to take that much of a risk for.
So.... even though I agree that HIDING EZRA would be a great movie, I'm not holding my breath.... I'm just thankful to finally have this amazing historical story out there, and I hope that the hard work has paid off in the form of a book that plays as vividly in your mind as a movie does on the big screen!
You see, HIDING EZRA was a screenplay first-before it was a novel. A filmmaker optioned the story when it was just in the outline stage, spent two years working with me via email and in person to flesh out a screenplay, got an agent in LA to represent it,& got lots of "big-time" Hollywood producers, directors, and acclaimed technical people to read it and write enthusiastic letters expressing their interest in working on the film.
He came tantalizingly close with a couple of high-profile people interested in it, but the folks who had the money (or at least the clout to get it) said "no.". Neither I nor the filmmaker was someone they were willing to take that much of a risk for.
So.... even though I agree that HIDING EZRA would be a great movie, I'm not holding my breath.... I'm just thankful to finally have this amazing historical story out there, and I hope that the hard work has paid off in the form of a book that plays as vividly in your mind as a movie does on the big screen!
