Beryl: Day 4

[Original post on this date. Still no power. A thunderstorm cooled things off a little, but near 7 pm, it’s steamy.]


So much litter from the trees covering the yard. You may not be able to see it, but a falling tree limb was caught on one of the power lines, and Beryl’s winds did a nice job of twisting it up in a second line and then letting it rest on yet more lines. We think that’s the point when we lost power. When that transformer blows, it usually takes out five houses. Originally, that was the case, and most of our neighbors still had power.

But on Tuesday (the second day), wind or rain continued the chaos and our neighbors lost power, too. None of us had any idea when we might get help.

Nice title on today’s comfort read.

I enjoyed it with popcorn. Grateful for a gas oven/stovetop, because I prefer my popcorn made the old-fashioned way in any case.

Beryl: Day 3

[Original post on this date. Remain without power. Will add more to Beryl posts when power is restored.]


Today’s first comfort read from Mary Stewart was Rose Cottage. I’m sure I read this one, though it was like reading it for the first time. There was a sort of twist to it that reminds me of an important plot point in the Neverending Saga. I let the readers know pretty quickly (second novel) what most of the characters don’t know. Mary Stewart saves hers for the very end after teasing the readers with suspense.

Speaking of cottages, I dragged some big tree limbs and a lot of other branches off of Debby’s patio. As a result, she’s starting to make Fairy Cottage look a little more normal.

The daily showers are bringing the temperatures down a little. That’s more helpful than you can imagine unless you’ve experienced Houston in July.


My second comfort read was the Mary Stewart novel that used to be Debby’s favorite (may still be), Touch Not The Cat. A big storm figures into this novel, too. Timely.

Tiny Tuesday!

During May’s power outage, I colored every day during the sunlight hours. Coloring gave me the opportunity to think of my characters and what I wanted to write when I could get back on the Internet and my computer.

I was feeling way more stress and anxiety during this weather event and its power outage. For the first time, I decided to take my anxiety meds, though only in half-doses. Just an attempt to take the edge off.

I also opted to read instead of color, choosing comfort books. I stuck with one of my favorite authors since I was a teenager (my mother, sister, and I all shared and devoured these novels). I’ve reread my favorite Mary Stewart books many times, so I decided to begin with books I don’t remember reading at all, but if I did, it was only once.


First up on Tuesday: Thornyhold. Not so much her usual romantic suspense, this one had a little more magic, a fun change from a small paperback.

Beryl: Day 2

[Original post on this date: Still no power. Lots of tree debris. Structures, people, dogs are all well.]


Yard, patios, carport, roof–everything is covered with tree debris brought down by Beryl’s strong winds. We’ll have a mess to clean up when it stops raining. (After yesterday’s Beryl weather, today we had a big thunderstorm.) The two terrified dogs have had their meds to help them sleep through all this. The other two dogs aren’t happy, but they tend to take their cues from the “relaxed” dogs as well as from us, and Tom and I are staying as chill as we can…without air conditioning.

Houston’s electricity provider is doing a terrible job of communicating.

Beryl: Day 1

[Original post on this date: Beryl came ashore as a Category 1 hurricane. Strong bands reached us before dawn, and we lost power at 6:20 am.

Updating via phone after the fact. Will edit these posts and share photos when power is restored and I can use my computer again.]


Street flooding from Beryl’s rains. Lots of broken limbs floating down the street toward the corner drains that empty into our neighborhood bayou. As I watched the water rise (it never came over our sidewalk), Beryl’s winds were pushing the water in the opposite direction of its natural flow. It was a bit mind boggling to see that conflict between land and wind.

Sunday Sundries

Today I hope to conclude the bookmarks discussion prompted by Mark L. It’s a shame he’s unable to see these posts at present due to various technical issues. I miss his comments and look forward to interacting with him again soon, both here and on his online journal.

These are the rest of the bookmarks I found inside books on the living room shelves. The first batch includes books I shelved unread (I don’t actually keep a TBR pile because I wouldn’t know where to stack it). I put bookmarks in them as little flags to help me find them when I’m looking for something to read. These are on my music shelves.

Joe Nick Patoski’s Willie Nelson: An Epic Life. I very much look forward to reading this when I’m ready for another biography. (I think the most recent three I read are on loan to Lynne: one each on Stevie Ray Vaughan, John Mellencamp, and Bruce Springsteen.) Willie’s bookmark advertises the animal rescue group Scout’s Honor Rescue. This was the organization to whom Lynne turned over two dogs she found tied to a fire hydrant on her way home from work one night. The poodle mix, Curly, was adopted immediately. When she took the chihuahua, Paco, to an adoption event, she realized she couldn’t let him go and adopted him herself. He was part of her family for years before crossing the Rainbow Bridge. I adored that little guy.

More Scouts Honor memories: Tim fostered many dogs for the group (Tom and I fostered less than a handful). Pixie was Tim’s first foster fail and became Rex’s “little sister.” Later, someone reached out to Lindsey about a stray dog living in a parking garage and being cared for by several people. The property owner was going to call a kill shelter to pick her up. Scout’s Honor agreed to take her into their adoption program if Lindsey could catch her, and Tim agreed to foster her. That dog was Penny, who became Tim’s second foster fail and Rex’s second little sister. All three lived great lives with Tim, bringing much joy to friends from The Compound, Doll House, Houndstooth Hall, RubinSmo Manor, Fox Den, Fairy Cottage, and Green Acres/Half Acre Wood. Rex, Pixie, and Penny are reunited with one another and all their dog and cat buddies at the Rainbow Bridge.


That’s a bookmark for the Timothy James Beck novel I’m Your Man in George Plasketes’s biography Warren Zevon: Desperado of Los Angeles. It’s not his only  bio waiting for me, and I suspect these were moved to the pile after I read Crystal Zevon’s I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon.

 

 

The other bio is Nothing’s Bad Luck: The Lives of Warren Zevon by C.M. Kushins. The bookmark inside the Kushins book is from Garden District Bookshop in New Orleans. I didn’t buy the book there, but I’ve purchased others from them during various Saints and Sinners festivals, and anything New Orleans-related seems like a good bookmark for the untamed spirit of Zevon.

Somewhat related to New Orleans (if you read long enough, you’ll get the connection)…

I initially became aware of writer Mark Doty thanks to my friend James, who gave me one of Mark’s memoirs and invited me to attend  a Mark Doty reading and booksigning with him back in the mid-nineties.

I continued to go to appearances Mark made in Houston. From one of those, there are two bookmarks in this copy of My Alexandria: Poems By Mark Doty. One is from Brazos Bookstore, which is almost certainly where I went to hear him read from the book in 1998 and had him sign it afterward.

 

 

 

The second bookmark is from Twelve Voices: University of Houston Creative Writing Program & Imprint, Inc. Doty was the John and Rebecca Moores Professor in the graduate program at The University of Houston Creative Writing Program for ten years.

Above are more books from his appearances. All are signed, and some are inscribed with specific messages based on our conversations.

Once, I admitted to Mark that a few years earlier (before he was part of their faculty), I’d applied to U of H’s MFA program in Creative Writing. I felt driven to do so by my late friend Steve’s plea that I create fiction from my experiences with the HIV/AIDS community and not let my friends’ stories be forgotten. I’d tried, with very little success, to do that, and wondered if a writing program might help me find my voice.

I knew what a longshot it was. From their own site, the program advises, Admission to our creative writing program is extremely competitive, with up to 20 new students across the two genres selected each year from the hundreds of applications received from around the world. I’d long been out of the academic world, and I had no outstanding writing samples to submit with my application. I was disappointed, but not surprised, not to be accepted into the program.

From then on, my inscriptions from Mark in his books always included encouragement and best wishes for my writing. And then, in a most unexpected way, I did find a voice for telling those stories when I began doing a fun writing exercise with my friends Timothy, Timmy, and Jim. I could recognize the spirit, humor, and sadness of the friends I lost and their larger community in what I was writing with them. When we had a draft of a first novel that grew out of that exercise, I began sending it out and got dozens of rejections. I shared that information with Mark at a signing in 1999 for his memoir Firebird, telling him I was happy to be writing but sad that the writing wasn’t finding a home. This is what he wrote when he signed his book that night.


Mark Doty. For Becky, who will be persistent–9/99 Houston.

Because of that, I decided not to give up on behalf of the entire TJB team. Timothy and I both read a first novel by another writer and agreed that his tone and subject were similar to what we were writing. It seemed worth reaching out to that author’s agent, who submitted the manuscript to Kensington, and all that writing and submitting ultimately turned into the five Timothy James Beck novels. Persistence can definitely pay off. Thank you, Mark Doty.

I’ve also had the pleasure of interacting with Mark at Saints and Sinners literary festivals in New Orleans. At one of those, I went to a panel where he had his attendees do a writing exercise by giving us a prompt. What I wrote gave me a scene I hoped to use in a Becky Cochrane contemporary romance novel if the publisher wanted a third, but my editor wasn’t enthusiastic about my third Coventry idea (I believe it was titled A Coventry Homecoming). Last year, I modified what I wrote during Mark’s panel and included it in the sixth novel of the Neverending Saga. Hold on to your scribblings, writers, you never know when you may find a place for them. And published or unpublished, NEVER STOP WRITING. (I have to remind myself of this constantly.)


I know with certainty that I’ve read this Louise Penny book, although it has a bookmark in it. I think that little angel was probably another bookmark that belonged to my mother and remained tucked inside the novel even after I finished reading it. Louise Penny is among my favorite authors and I’m up-to-date on all her novels. Except…

Recently, Tom and I were talking about the novel Bill Clinton cowrote with author James Patterson. I bought it, read it, liked it. (They wrote a second, but I don’t have it. Yet.) Tom asked me if I’d ever read the novel Hillary Clinton cowrote in 2021 with Louise Penny. And I said, “I’m pretty sure I got it from Murder By The Book, but I haven’t read it yet.”

 

Sure enough, there it was on the bookshelf with its “flag,” a bookmark from Detering Book Gallery, a fantastic bookstore, now closed, that was managed by our friend Steve V. No bibliophile who experienced Detering could ever forget what a joy it was. This political thriller would be a strong contender for my next read except that every.single.day, I’m heartsick because of politics.

The Clinton/Penny book is on what I guess could be called my executive branch shelf, where I spotted another book with a bookmark.

Both books were published in 2005, and I don’t remember if I read President Carter’s, but I definitely know I purchased, read, and relished all of Harley Jane Kozak’s Wollie Shelley mysteries after I got them from Murder By The Book.


Sadly, I just missed a booksigning at Murder By The book with my friend Dean James, writing as Miranda James, for his latest Cat In The Stacks Mystery, Requiem For A Mouse. You can bet I’ll be getting it from MBTB soon and adding it to his shelf, where here, you might spot a couple of bookmarks. I must have been reading the Southern Ladies Mystery Dead with the Wind at Mister Car Wash, judging by the bookmark. On the shelf in the background, another Murder By The Book bookmark is tucked among those Cat In The Stacks paperbacks.

I believe this concludes three Sundays of Bookmark Inventory. Thanks for following along. Sometimes, this site contains the only writing I can find the heart or energy to do. These three posts gave me a chance to express my deep regard for other writers and their work, my commitment to my own writing, and my gratitude for readers, including those of you who read here. Writing can feel like hollering into the void sometimes, so thank you for when you comment here or email or text me to let me know you’re still out there reading me.

Tonight, we’ll start seeing the impact of Beryl on our side of Houston. Possible street flooding, trees down, power outages. We’re preparing as best we can. I’ll update when I’m able. Everyone stay safe.

Saturday Storm

Back in the pre-pandemic days, when I still had a job and also went to lots of appointments or took Debby to hers, I spent a lot of time in my car or waiting rooms coloring. These small coloring books (about 5×7 inches) were often in the magazine stands in checkout lines at the grocery store, so I’d grab one to keep in the car. I haven’t used them in quite a while. The cover of the one with the ice cream cone had a glass of water spilled on it, which is why it’s missing.

Yesterday, I was thinking before I wrote, and I began glancing through these. A few of the coloring pages made me feel nostalgic for things from my childhood, like Uncle Gerald’s weeping willow tree and ice cream cones (I rarely eat ice cream these days). So I chose these two to color. (I took the ice cream cone from inside the coloring book; the cover’s still on it.)

Back in my younger days, when at Baskin Robbins, I’d get a scoop of Jamoca Almond Fudge and a scoop of Mint Chocolate Chip on a double cone. On my coloring page cone, top to bottom, I imagined the flavors as: blueberry, cherry, orange sherbet, chocolate, orange popsicle with red sprinkles, bubblegum, strawberry, lime, banana popsicle, grape popsicle, mint chocolate chip, raspberry, and chocolate fudge ice cream–sort of like frozen Skittles in a cone. Today’s the first birthday of our grandniece. We were just texted a photo of her eating a giant ice cream cone that looked as wild as this one (and lots messier!).

We’ve had a storm today, with thunder and a couple of power flickers. Right now, the dogs have calmed down as the thunder has let up, and so far, the power’s still on. I’m not even sure this is related to Tropical Storm Beryl, as we should be getting the brunt of that in our area on Monday. This could be outer bands, I suppose? [ETA: Today’s was a different system. Beryl’s outer bands begin arriving tomorrow around noon.]

Coastal friends, stay safe, dry, and air conditioned. I’ll go back to writing as long as the electricity still holds.