On the Road in Georgia

There are several things I experienced and learned from my weekend trip up middle Georgia. Besides the indescribable joy of reuniting with my Junior High School best-friend, Kathy, I have to mention the intense pride and gratefulness I felt seeing all the farmland. Cotton, corn, tomatoes, Vidalia onions, legumes, strange grasses, and what I think were sweet potatoes. Then there are the farm-stock – donkeys, goats, horses, cattle. There was one big bruiser of a bull who had his own pen. My red jeep was the only vehicle on the road. The bull-to-end-all-bulls turned his great head as I slowed down to 20 mph to get a good look at him. I did not stop. I heard somewhere that bulls don’t like red. This one was every bit as big as the Liberty I drove.

I do wish that the farmers would label their fields in big enough signs so motorists can read them: Tomatoes, onions, red beans, rice, sausage – you get the point. Very helpful for the ignorant traveler, i.e.: me.

Camouflage is a neutral color. I saw brown camouflage mid-calf pants worn with an expensive looking white knit sweater-set. The top was edged in crocheted lace. The woman was easily in her late 50s, early 60s, her long silvery-white hair pulled back in a black barrette, makeup applied exquisitely to her beautiful face. Another man wore his Real-tree with a red Cardinals t-shirt, another wore green Vietnam-style camo with a Pittsburg Steelers shirt. Did you know that Deseret storm camo goes with a pink tank top? I could go on and on, but the consensus is that camouflage, whether worn by men or women goes with everything.

Next observation: In Moorehaven I saw a car. One. Everyone else had a pick-up truck, Jeep, or some sort of 4-wheel drive. Outside the Moorehaven Country Store was a humongous deer strung up ready for butchering. A man proudly stood next to the deer with his bow and arrows front and center, chest pushed out, camera ready. Across the street the local feed store pronounced on a hand-lettered sign that bags of deer corn are available. Guess it worked.

In the middle of no-where, a house, front porch filled with rocking chairs, perched amidst rolling cotton fields. A good 100 yards from the house, five-feet from the road was a covered wood-plank stand with honey lined up in various amber hues, a sign read: Honey, honor system. Take your honey, leave money in box.

I passed a yard full of every imaginable kind of appliance in various forms of rusted and broken-down manner that could be found. The front yard was not visible. A sign painted in red with at least a four-inch brush proudly announced “broken appliances for sale: cheap.”

Some of the towns held their pride high with clean streets, washed store fronts, and old southern houses painted and beautiful. Others looked like they were going to erode back into the red clay and never be seen again. I felt really sad for the last ones – they are on the way out, and unless someone in those towns decides to take a hand and spruce them up, they’ll be swallowed back into the antediluvian forest and forgotten.

I stayed off the major highways – rode the streets less traveled, drumming my own way across Georgia, singing rather-off tune to whatever song my I-pod threw at me. The air was clean – no industrialization, no smoke from vast lines of cars. With the sun-roof back when it wasn’t raining, I could smell fresh-turned earth, scent green-growing things breaking free of the soil and reaching to the sky. Sometimes I knew when the cattle areas were nearing, but it was the clean scent of critters out in the fields, munching grass and lipping water from small ponds.

Rushing to go someplace leaves out so much of the pleasure. Getting there, to me, is at least half the fun, and hands-clenched-tight-on-Interstate-traffic-packed-roads is not my idea of fun. It is hard to imagine that I drove twelve hours since Friday night, and pulled into my driveway at 3:30pm on Sunday refreshed and ready to write.

Both Baggins and I had a lovely time: going, visiting, and coming home. Seems we also brought back a trunk full of inspiration. Thank you to the state of Georgia, thanks Nicole for planning such a fun party, and thank you, Kathy for being my friend and for being older than me.

Imagining the possibilities,

Peggy

Where is the Music?

There is no music. However, I can fix this problem, and do. 

I cannot think without music. Cannot breathe, smell, feel, see or even write. Without tunes floating around me, I do not exist. I need the deep, passionate pounding of a throbbing bass drum, the light taps of the snare, the soul haunting humping of hands on bongos and congas, and the crashing cacophony of cymbals pushing up the hairs on my arms. It’s hard to stay away from those Zildjians, to remember to sprinkle them throughout a song like flakes of red pepper perking up a meal, or exclamation points spicing a story. I’d rather smack the shit out of them. Use them like lightning during a summer heat storm until the air smells of electricity and toes curl.

Then there are notes that weave around the drums. Give me a guitar and heart-rending riffs, the passion on the face of the artist painting with fingers on the long necked electric guitar, pushing notes deep into wood, the other hand plucking strings hard and hot, drawing out pieces of my soul. I’ve seen musicians caught up in a musical moment, eyes closed, body wrapped around their instrument or the mike while they spill out their guts to the audience, drawing everyone in, welcoming us to their world of love, heartache, laughter and tears.

I’m a bluesy girl. No doubt about it, and a belly-song is what I love – a song so full of life that it clenches my belly and ties me in knots. Add in a big bull or bass guitar to swing the deep dark tones that keep my heart beating, and a sweet sax to pull it all to heaven, and, if luck holds out, a singer who puts words to life and shares with me, the listener, a bit of their soul.

There are, of course, options available for my ever-present music addiction, and I do use any method available to get my music fix. Everyone has their favorite. Mine? Live music, hands down.

Get up. Get dressed. Go out. Listen. You won’t regret it. See, no matter how loud the IPod, radio, television, stereo, it cannot have the immediacy of live music. Try it. Pick a venue. In Tallahassee we have so many opportunities to listen to music and watch musicians play their own songs as well as old favorites that I cannot even begin to name them. Yes, I have my special places I go to listen and write. If you search in your town, you will build up a list of places to go. Most venues for live music are not expensive. Many bands play for tips, or, as one of my favorite groups say on their tip jar: Bail Money. Get to know your local musicians. If you have children, show them the beauty and passion of live music. Let your kids know that music comes from the heart, from hours of practice, sweat, fun, and real people.

Who knows? You may find the plot for a novel on one of your musical outings. You could walk in to the bar where the NQH (not quite human) hang out and hear the White Circle Blues Band. And when the moon is in full bloom, and the night calls, you might want to walk in the deep southern swamps and pine forests searching for a Critter-Splitter – or not.

But what ever you do, listen to the music.

Imagining the possibilities,

Peggy

The Real, Honest to Goodness Reason Frogs and Toads Show Up After a Rain Storm

The frogs and toads, my friends, have been in hibernation.  Their entire make-up says that no handsome princes or beautiful princesses are out and about in the wicked heat.  It tells them that the beautiful people only visit the out-of-doors in the summer when the rains cool down the sweltering skies.  As we all, being intelligent folks, know, frogs and toads are in perpetual search for their soul mate.  The person who will one day pick them up and plant a nice big smackeroo on their little froggy lips, thereby enabling them to complete their final metamorphous from amoeba-tadpole-frog/toad to prince/princess.  Ergo – rain equals the arrival of a bevy of hopeful long-jumping, fly-eating caecilians.

So, folks, you have a job before you.  Have some compassion, some feeling for your fellow amphibians.  Do the right thing!  Pick up a greenie and lay one on it!


Imagining the possibilities,


Peggy

Story, Undefeated

Story, Undefeated

Have you ever had an idea for a story and yet didn’t write it down?  The story filled your dreams.  Followed you around like a lost dog, begging you to turn around and pat its head, to pay it attention.  At the oddest times, you think of that story.  Shopping for groceries, it slips into the conscious.  Putting clothes in washer and dryer, the story taps at your soul.  Write me, please, yet the paper/computer stays blank.  There is something else you must—do—see—feel.  You close your eyes and turn away, shutting out the small flame of an idea that is looking for receptive tinder…. 

WHY?????

The story is too much.  Too close to home.  It grabs the heart and squeezes.  It holds a mirror up to the writer’s soul, then reflects like a prism to the world things we may not want anyone to see.  What will people say if they read this?  What will people think about me if I put this in writing?  The story spark lights up places better left hidden for whatever reason.  It is simply too much to bare.  (I meant that word.) 

Let’s face it.  As writers, we share our deepest selves to anyone who reads our work.  Everything our characters do comes from our mind, heart, and soul.  We feel what our characters feel.  We give them life and meaning.  We determine everything about the people in our stories whether truth or fiction, therefore it reflects something about the writer.  What if Shakespeare had never written To be or not to be, that is the question? Or Charles Dickens never said via David Copperfield, I was born.  Or Lucas’ famous:  In a Galaxy far far away…

I’m writing this, because I caught myself avoiding a story for the past few days, and realized that life is too short to keep things bottled up.  I’m going to try to uncork the bottle of hidden ideas and let them come forth like a magical being.  I hope to light the pages up with lovely black letters and let ’er rip!  It won’t be easy – I do know this, but it is time.  If one of my characters wants to do something, I will not hold them back because of my fear.  When the spirit strikes, even If I can’t put the whole thing in final form, I’m going to write as much as I can so the spark will not be blown out or fade into oblivion because of lack of care.

Story now completed, I am imagining the possibilities,

Peggy

You Sang Me Fair

You Sang Me Fair

You sang me fair my pulse did run
As liquid flames red-ripe to plumb

From deepest depths a burning pyre

That bade my heart to leap and hum

Anon for furthest mount I strove

To reach the peak that in me thrust

And burst full blown a red-rose bower

As desert sands parched throat to rust

Your lips on mine assuage my thirst

Two souls implode with molten fire
Our hearts lay bare as fair and just

Love merged and quenched with fierce desire

Contest

Contest UpAuthors has announced the contest winners for their First Chapter contest.  I am proud to say they chose my first chapter for Les Gens:  Into the Night as the winner for the genre:  Urban Fiction/Horror.  They also chose it as the over all winner. I am honored beyond measure.

Thought I'd share the chapter:

Les Gens:

Into the Night

By P. E. Kassees

Everyone died, Clint knew this, understood it since serving two tours in ’Nam.  Death could come fast, or slow and agonizingly brutal.  He always prayed that when his time came, it would be quick.  Looked like he was going to find out; not in ’Nam, but somewhere deep inside Tallahassee’s blood-red earth.

The air was freezing, so frigid, the lightening-bolts of pain which earlier had lanced through his shattered shins were now numbed to mere knife-pricks.  It would help if he could see, but there was nothing except a vile, moist blackness reminding him of a gook tunnel he’d crawled through during the war; and the air—it smelled worse than a cesspool.  Clint figured they’d put him here, wherever the hell here was, right after they’d murdered Mark. 

Clint remembered trying to help his buddy when one of the fiends knocked him out as cold as the hard ground he now lay on.  Odd that he’d lived through the hell of Dak To in ’67, only to end up alone in the goddamn dark with his legs snapped in two.  At least they didn’t do to him what they’d done to Mark.  Not yet, anyway, and not if he could help it.  Someone had to let the world know what was going on, and he planned to hang on as long as he could. 

  Clint pulled his body along the floor.  It was imperative to find a way out.  His right palm slid into something wet and slimy.  Cursing, he sprawled in filth—a sticky putridness that wriggled and clung and buzzed.  He felt a hand, and relief flowed through him that someone else was there.  He grasped it, and with a soft thlop, the appendage landed in the goo beside him.  An epiphany soaked in horror flowed through his body, and he knew: unless someone found him, death was going to be a long time coming.

From www.upauthors.com:

 "OVERALL WINNER:  If there is such a thing as a perfect first chapter, P.E. Kassees wrote it."

Designing Woman

Menoly Anne Arnau, proud Floridian of Minorcan descent, Anthropologist by degree, government employee by day, and sometimes knit-wear designer, learns that not every twig holding mankind’s heritage was in her text books.  In a week, she witnesses a bloody murder on the steps of a church, meets Antoine de Chevalier, Interpol Agent and Les Gens extraordinaire, and becomes embroiled in the midst of an international investigation centered in Tallahassee, Florida’s capitol city.  Through all of her adventures in Les Gens: Into the Night, as she experiences horror, murder, and romance, she wears her knitted designs. 

Menoly is a designing woman.

And that is a good thing.  Knitting makes her happy, and it makes me, the author, happy.  It is also a marketing tool.  (BIG cheesy grin) 

When writing, It is much more interesting to have characters who are as real as people seen on the street, at work, or in the local knit shop.  My folk, and the people in books I remember and enjoy reading about, have loves, hates, homes, friends, acquaintances, families, hobbies, and on and on.  I read Anne McCaffrey said for characters to have a present, they have to have a past,or they will not be grounded.  I agree.  Characters won’t leap off the page unless the author gives them a complete life.  Raison de vivre… a reason to live.  That reason to live gives the author a plethora of opportunities to spread the word about her/his book.

Does your character like to play guitar?  Do you have music the character has written?  Right there, you have a place to advertise.  What about paint?  Share information in watercolor/oil/acrylic groups in your town and on the internet.  An author I know writes about a woman who works with her Sheriff’s Department as an adjunct diver and helps solve crime.  She joined a national diver’s association and attends their conferences selling her books.  Glynn Marsh Alam – sets a fine example on marketing her Luanne Fogarty series.  See?

 

Menoly knits, and not only knits, but designs garments.  I’m making designs for Menoly.  Some will be offered free, some will be for sale on this blog, or, if I can ever get one set up, through a website.  Now, I take designing seriously, having already sold some of my patterns.  I'm not blowing smoke, and nor should you.  Do your research. 

Take your writing and share it with others.  Look in your book to find places and people who will be interested in these wonderful characters you’ve written about.

But most of all – have fun as you breathe life into your characters!

Imagining the possibilities,

Peggy