Where I Live: A WOW Blog Tour with R. Douglas Clark

Posted by Kathleen Pooler/ @kathypooler with R. Douglas Clark.

Welcome to R, Douglas Clark’s WOW Blog Tour for his new Sci-Fi novel , Welcome to Maravilla. He will discuss, “Where I Live ” in this guest post.

Welcome, R, Douglas!

Author R. Douglas Clark

Where I Live

            The village of Chimayó in northern New Mexico is a landscape painting, a crimson ristra, an arroyo filled with trash, a vintage car, a quality of light, a white cross on a red hill, a discarded syringe, a memory, a vision. Chimayó is the dusty roads, the rusted cars half-buried in the riverbank, the adobes and the doublewides, the snarling dogs, the raps and rancheras, the fields of chile, the abandoned apple orchards, the bright plastic flowers decorating the cemeteries and descansos, the weaving shops where tourists stop on their way to the humble Catholic church where pilgrims pray in front of a violent cross. This is where I live and write.

Chimayó’s older families have lived here for generations, ever since the Spanish came up from Mexico. All the others, the Anglos and Mexicans, are newcomers who ambled into the valley over the past fifty or so years, ignorant of its curses and charms. The aboriginal inhabitants, the Indians, live nearby on the reservations but not in Chimayó itself, except in the bones of Chimayosos and in their blood.

Unlike the postcard villages of New Mexico, Chimayó has no central plaza. Its shops and houses are scattered about like the first fat drops of rain on a dry day. Forget the fantasy of a leafy plaza where people gather to talk and stroll about; let go of the desire to linger on a warm summer evening while a band plays canciones. This is not Chimayó.

            Chimayó is not a movie set. It is not an illusion but an undisguised reality. The past, with all its deeds and misdeeds, its knowledge and secrets, burns through to the present. The dead live on in stories and memories. The living dance on the graves of their ancestors and dream of those yet to come.

Book Summary

The tiny hamlet of Maravilla, New Mexico is not immune to modern-day problems. But the citizens of Maravilla have their own special problems, as well:

A developer wants to build a Christian-themed amusement park next to Maravilla’s historic church.

The county line runs right through the town, splitting it in two.

And the government is threatening to close their post office!

Into this muddle steps Jake Epstein, a young writer from the big city. Jake is seeking peace and quiet to finish his current project: a science fiction story in which adventuress Tai-Keiko must deliver the secret formula for Zeton-9—with the evil Krossarians in hot pursuit.

But then reality and science fiction converge—and Tai-Keiko finds herself in present-day Maravilla, face to face with a gobsmacked Jake.

Join Jake on this comic run along the dusty roads of Maravilla, and find out who won the fight between Father Ignatius and the heathen pig farmer. How a basketball game changed the fate of the town. And was that white flash in the sky a UFO? 

Print Length: 195 Pages

Genre: Science Fiction

Publisher: Beeline Press (June 19, 2019)

ISBN-10: 1645400646

ISBN-13: 978-1645400646

Welcome to Maravilla   is now available to purchase on  Amazon.com ,  Barnes and Noble , and  IndieBound.

About the Author

R. Douglas Clark was born in Vermont, grew up in Colorado, attended college in Chicago, and received a Master’s degree in music from Brown University. Seeing no future for himself in academia, he spent a year in the Oregon woods, living in a primitive cabin, writing music reviews and cultural commentary for magazines and newspapers. Next stop, Eugene, Oregon where he spent 20 damp years as a bootstrap businessman, father and musician. On a vacation trip, he and his wife, Shelley, fell in love with sunny northern New Mexico and subsequently moved there. After four years running Boys and Girls Clubs in Chimayó and Abiquiú–and another four, running a U-pick raspberry farm–he retired to write fiction full time.  

Find R. Douglas online: https://www.rdouglasclark.com/