Thanksgiving...: unemployed, homeless and happy as a tick on a hound dawg

The holidays have always been a source of comfort to Your's Truly.  This year, I'll celebrate my tenth year of marriage to my fabulous wife, I'll turn 53(but feeling eighteen again in so many ways--Thank you ZEAL!), and I have four fantastic, ADULT offspring, two beautiful and quite lively little granddaughters and a dog named Starbuck (after Lt. Cm. Starbuck of Battle Star Galactica).  


All of the above is the stuff of life, the surroundings that bring us comfort and the true sense of belonging to a family.  

The writer inside of Your's Truly spent the morning looking back at what has happened to him during the past year...

This Blog began because I published a Book and as we worked to build excitement, learned how to effectively promote a work of such nature over the WWW, and found out just how much we needed to break away from the old routine before we could really get it going... This little blog was birthed, with little real expectation on my part.  I just didn't understand how, exactly, a blog needed to be...well...blogged.  


Feathermaye kept at me to read other bloggers that were out there, the ones that had kept it up, built a readership by finding a topic that people would enjoy following along with.  Dooce, well, she's THE DOOCE, and perhaps the best example I've had to follow, closely along the heels of THE BLOGGESS, who uses humor like nobody's-bidness.  I read and followed, and kept sticking up little pieces of writing that spoke to me, whenever they sparked up a little literary flame.


In August, the event I'm Most Grateful for, strange as it may sound, happened when we were laid off from our cushy little job and we lost the roof over our heads, medical insurance, as well as income.  It was our chance... we realized quite clearly, to go ahead with our plans.


I'm so grateful for the confusing events of the summer because it brought real focus to this blog on my part.  We found The Mountain, and a new world of subject material.  I began to see how to create a blog audience, and since last November, I'm proud to say our readership has grown over 100%.  I'm like a kid again when I wake up to see how many of you have taken a look at the latest post.  


I'll most likely put up a few more posts like this, as the season progresses; I get all warm and fuzzy this time of the year.  


Thank you all for following! You know you can always find us on facebook--Thanks Zuckerberg!  It would really be sweet if you give this blog a Tweet!, as you Stumblealong looking for something to Digg.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!  HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO ALL, HOWEVER YOU CELEBRATE THEM.

Read more »

Off to Look for America: Catching everybody up...

If you have read the "Off to Look for America" blog, you already know what we're doing.  The Fabulous Feathermaye and yours truly have launched ourselves off into the unknown... our eyes are on the horizon and we are taking opportunity as it comes.

Thanks to the Divine Mz. Z, we have a roof over our pod, and have kept busy working on both staying alive while on unemployment, and working toward some pretty worthy goals...  


The Hot weather that so pervaded TEXAS and turned it into a summer-long tinderbox, has finally been soaked down by a few good storms as we work from the back porch of the "Mardi Gras" (Mz. Z's B&B) with mobile internet connection and laptops a-buzzing!

Feathermaye with another unique capture
She is greatly influenced by 'Escher'

Of course, on a more personal level, since that is what blogging is really all about (right?), we've also been research machines, burning up every search engine, downloading, as fast as our mobile 3.5G phone will allow, which can take some patience--truth be told.  But, when the night around you is full of rustling trees, and you're parked at a cool, Parisian-style table in a festive, yet rustic, damn near camping, setting, you tend to loose a little of the normal aggravation that technology presents to many of us... 

Calling all Sponsors!  We test lots of products!

East Texas has gone from hot and sticky to cool and crisp, almost cold.  We have started product testing, from Insect repellents to how well Mucinex can really stave off the congested cough of two old smokers.  


Of course, this is East Texas, so there are some differences that seasonal change offers: like going from ninety-nine degrees to thirty seven, overnight.  Yikes, honey, where did we put our jackets? We...DID bring jackets, right? 


Gotta remember, folks, Feathermaye and the ole kid here have been warm-weather travelers, for the most part.  But, since life is presenting opportunity around every corner, we are happy to chase down a few sponsors (Dear Bass Pro Shops..., or Dear People who make Gore-tex...) OUTFIT US!  We are your willing subjects, and if it can be broken, or proven worthy, you need only ask feathermaye


My poor wife, has had just about every mosquito in East Texas feed on her beautiful calves.  Now, just so you know, Feathermaye can rock some Capri britches, and she tends to wear them, like...all the time, all weathers.  She's my little Yankee, after all, Michigan gal.  I digress...


But, you just gotta know, folks, that for a girl who knows she is going to be eaten alive, and be PERFECTLY WILLING to test bug products in some hard-for-most-brave-souls buggy territory, Feathermaye has undergone quite a change.  


Bless her heart, she's had bites on bites, her blood is just too sweet.  She has a lot of strange allergies and has dealt with those conditions all her life.  It had been easy enough to hide out in AC, but when the work you love calls you outside... Well, she went right out there with it!

Her focus is everywhere as she hunts for the next frame...
"Moth Capture" by feathermaye.com 2011

I'm living witness to Feathermaye now crawling around under buildings and trees and bushes, even in the middle of the night!  Uncanny!  She has me giggling like a kid again as we traipse about THE MOUNTAIN taking pictures, or rather, looking for the right picture, the right frame.  Most nights, we are in a scurry to download and edit what we've captured, while new story ideas, promo ideas, ways to help THE MOUNTAIN ideas keep coming and are carefully taken down.  It's all material now, it's all part of the story. 


We may be eating Ramen Noodles and a new supplement that we will mention later; we may have lost weight like you wouldn't believe, having forsaken fast food--except for evenings when Mz. Z hangs out with us and forces us to eat pizza!  


Please understand, we're having a lot of fun, but we're also learning how to work for ourselves from a very thin precipice.  At such altitude, and with so much hanging, it pays to be positive, as well as realistic.
  
We have found that it also pays to live Spartan, keeping only what is important for everyday function, slowly shucking away what is really not necessary.  It's amazing to see how full of Shit-we-seem-to-need-to-carry-around-with-us we are. 


Living up here in a sort of fake Western Town, it gives us the singular opportunity to work in the GREEN if you know what I mean.  As I write this, Feathermaye sits across from me and plans a new green project for the approaching Market Days.  That will be another blog.

Rainy lit Bougainvillea under Mardi Gras' Porch

I know, everyone is asking about the Book Controversy. We've been dodging reporters and picture-takers, for the most part.  I will say that the new book, A Week in Agony...Texas has sort of taken on a life of its own.  I've just completed a series of interviews with press from that part of the state.  Sometimes, big things start small, don't they?

The new book is causing a fuss

However... There is the problem of the lawsuits, the ones that I've still not gotten from anybody.  This lawyer guy down in Agony has it in for me.  He's gotten into the heads of some of the families down there, people Feathermaye and I have come to call friends, and turned them against us, evidently.  They hope to somehow forestall, or stop the book from being published.


My stalwart publisher is unabashed by such scandal and name-calling, he is going ahead with the book and will be announcing a release date soon.  Did I already mention that this is just book one?  You can still catch a glimpse or two of Generations in Agony...Texas, right here on the blog!

Signing books here!

Feathermaye is busy getting in touch with her artisan friends, telling them about THE MOUNTAIN as we both keep working to get the word out. It's really happening.  The folks who've been here for years still have that gleam in their eyes.  We want every artist we can find to know that there is a place like this.


We also want to continue to tell you fine folks about it.  Without your following us, we'd be talking to the sky, I suppose.  Thank you for following and remember you can always find us on facebook (thanks Zuck),  Please be sweet and give this one a Tweet! as you Stumble along.  Can you digg it?  





   

Read more »

To All You Good Ole Boys...

I read another blog today.  The writer spoke directly to (I am assuming here) all southern writers, specifically guys, and more specifically guys who like to act tough, or ‘sit on a stool and sharpen a knife blade’ as they talk to a group of people about something they’ve written.  I’ve not known many of these sorts of individuals, but I certainly won’t challenge that they do, in fact, exist.

Julianna Baggott is a well-known, well-established and well-represented writer.  In my opinion, her writing is clear and sharp, but has a depth of feeling that surprised me.  She also writes under pen names Bridget Asher and N.E. Bode.  In other words, she’s the real deal. 

Ms. Baggott’s blog of 1/02/11 is aimed at a group of writers she deems ‘The Good ole Boys of the Literary South’.  Of course, this got my attention at once.  I’ve only got a couple of hardly-noticed novels out there, but I am a Southern Writer (well, story-teller, truth be known) born in Georgia, raised in the Carolinas with summers in Florida, who now lives in Southeast Texas.  Oh yeah, I’m one of the guys she is talking to, only I must assume that she’s really aiming her thoughts and words at those of us who have ascended into full notice; perhaps with reviews on the top of the NY Times' lists.  Well, that’s not me, yet.

What must she want of us?  Obviously, she would like to read the words of a new Hunter S. Thompson, or another Truman Capote (father of the modern American novel).  She wants to hear what the next Faulkner has to say about his/or her land, and what Southerners do with the lives they have down in the Sun Belt.  I don’t blame her at all.

In her blog Julianna complains about the stereotypical ‘southern writer’.  The bravado, the self-imposed ban against acting too flashy, or the acting as if it all really doesn’t matter that much, as if such wordsmiths are above the notoriety they may, or may not induce.  

She’s asking us to stop it… 

After a lot of banter about the tough act, she implores us to reach down deep and pull out the real feelings; the ones everyone else would’ve made fun of you for when you were in grade school.  She wants to hear about the times when we felt our vulnerability; when we found ourselves less than the chivalrous knights and cavaliers our pasts bequeathed unto us—simply because we were born where Spanish Moss drapes the limbs, and things just move a little slower, probably because of the constant heat.  

Yet, Julianna wants to know more about us.  She’s asking for less about hunting, scaling fish and firing off ammo at county line markers.   She wishes to know just how deep we feel about things.  Do we cry?  Sure, but we seldom speak of it.  Oh, I think she has our number better than we might like to admit. 

Okay, Julianna.  I’m with you, I suppose.  If those few requests will add you to those who read the voices of the South, I’ll be happy to provide those darker, or softer depths.  After all, the world we grew up and out of, even though we still stand upon it, is no longer the bedraggled wasteland of reformation.  Those days have long since passed. 

I write today about the New South.  The South that belongs with the American flag, even if old resentments still color the thoughts of a few.  As the North continues to freeze, the South continues to call out, like a beacon of warmth.  C’mon down, y’all, and buy a book or two, will ya?

S

Read more »