Celebrating my Friends

I love it when my friends have good news to share, and earlier this week I received this press release from Slim Randles:

Albuquerque-based writer and former mule packer Slim Randles will receive The Rounders Award at a reception October 16 at Governor Susana Martinez’s residence in Santa Fe. Named for the classic novel by Max Evans, The Rounders Award is given by the New Mexico Department of Agriculture to “individuals who have lived, promoted or articulated the Western way of life.”

 Former recipients include artist Grem Lee, novelist Max Evans, musician Michael Martin Murphey and humorist Baxter Black.

 Randles, whose weekly column “Home Country” reaches 2.2 million readers in 44 states, is also the author of nine books, including the national award-winning “A Cowboy’s Guide to Growing Up Right.”

  Also receiving the award this year is Santa Fe-based art dealer and raconteur Forrest Fenn.

Slim Randles

Since Slim has been so generous in sharing his columns with us, I thought it only fitting that we celebrate him today. This is quite an honor and so well deserved.

This has nothing to do with celebrating friends, but I laughed out loud when I read the following in Louise Penny's first novel Still Life.  A witness is explaining his aversion to violence to Inspecter Gamache and says, "I'm not a brave man, I'm afraid, but I can't tolerate killing. Killing anything. I have spiders in my home with names."

While I have learned to be more tolerant of spiders since I moved out to the country, I draw the line on naming them. Although our daughter once named a spider that built a home on her porch. Our grandchildren were young at the time, and our daughter used the presence of the spider as a science lesson, letting the kids chronicle the life of the spider as she spent the summer with them, laid eggs, and then went to spider heaven. Yes, that's what she told the kids. (smile)

Have you ever named a spider or any other bug? Do you run in terror from anything that creeps or crawls or flies too close?

Friday's Odds and Ends

Most of us know that former senator Rick Santorum is against legalizing gay marriage, and he has been known to make some inflammatory remarks about homosexuality. More recently he told students at a college in New England that having gay parents is worse than having parents who are convicts.  His rationale is that a father in prison is better than having no father.

Hmmmm... I wonder if he has ever checked the statistics that show that young people are more prone to crime and violence if their father is or was in prison? That is a fact I discovered when doing research for my book on violence in schools, Coping With Weapons and Violence in School and on Your Streets.

If you'd like to read more about what he said, here is an article  that has more details. In researching this topic, I also found this comment on a forum that offers another viewpoint. "As the daughter of two lesbian moms, I'm disgusted and offended by the "family values" crowd claiming to want to protect children like me. Note to Rick and his ilk: you're not helping us. You're hurting us by making sure that our families are stigmatized and unprotected."

Whatever your views are on the subject, if we are truly to have separation of church and state, doesn't it stand to reason that a person's religious view of homosexuality should not influence legislation?

On another note, I found this quote on a blog titled terribleminds which is written by Chuck Wendig. I liked it enough I thought I would share it. "The writer’s voice is the thing that marks the work as a creation of that writer and that writer only. You read a thing and you say, 'This could not have been written by anybody else.' That is voice."   

Who are some authors you have read that have a distinctive voice? If you are an author, do you consider your voice as uniquely yours?

Here is an example of what I mean when I encourage clients to escape the ordinary in their writing. This is from Louise Penny's latest book A Trick of the Light. Instead of writing "Clara's heart beat faster." Or, "Clara's heart thumped in her chest." Both descriptions which I have read numerous times, she wrote, "Clara's heart threw itself against her ribs like something caged and terrified and desperate to escape."

It would be interesting to know how easily this comes to a writer like her. It reads effortless, but for me it takes time to move from the ordinary to the not so ordinary. That is why it takes me a long time to write a book. How about you?

It's Friday the 13th. A superstition says that if a black cat crosses your path on Friday the 13th, you will have bad luck all year. I'd better stay away from our new kitties.