Writer Interrupted: January 2011

Sixty Plus Years of Living Means Something

Topping my list of what it means is that I have known a lot of people, loving some of them in varying degrees. Each contributed, contribute still, texture and substance to the landscape of my life.

Being a mature woman at this molecular speck in time for me is liberating, restrictive, scary, safe, confusing, sad, satisfying, disillusioning. Ambiguous. I will use this blog as my motivator, my disciplinarian for writing my stories. Heaven knows, I need discipline, and perhaps this will serve me with the outlet to develop ideas and to formulate work worth reading.

As a fiction writer, it is my duty first of all to entertain, and in the process I will strive to embody through my characters some truth I am examining, some principle I want to defend, or some injustice I want to reveal. Through these individuals, their stories, perhaps I can make some sense of what living MEANS to me, unscrambling what I believe, and why. Perhaps, I might even make you laugh, cry, and ponder along with me, and I'd love to hear from you if I do.

About My Book

The Velvet Bridge is a story of a woman’s encounter with the power of fate, her subsequent choices, and the consequences. It is a story of resilience, of transition from one unexpected upheaval to the next. It is a passageway, connecting the finely sketched episodes of Mattie Featherstone’s complex, yet endearing, life.

Too young to be widowed and too pretty to be alone, Mattie Featherstone’s life runs the gamut of extremes. Following the accidental death of her husband in 1941, the disillusioned mother begins frequenting the honky tonks of West Dallas, soliciting men (mostly draft rejects). As WWII rages, amidst abject poverty and on a downward spiral, she abandons her two young daughters, Judith and Edith Kay. On a bitter, snowy day in 1943, Mattie seeks respite in a campsite for the homeless, a tent city along the Trinity River. When a chance encounter offers her a way out, she grabs it.

At a bus stop café as the war closes, Mattie meets future husband, Max Caliber, a conflicted soldier estranged from his high-powered Houston parents. The next day, Mattie’s shocking arrest for murder temporarily halts their love affair and attracts the attention of all who know, or ever knew, her.
Colorful characters embody and define the diverse 1940’s culture of a nation grinding its gears and stoking its engines.

While The Velvet Bridge lays bare the cruel indifference of Fate, giving immunity to none, it is a testimony to the power of intervention by gentle strangers.

Monday, January 17, 2011

Last year I discovered the art of jewelry making, and after studying numerous books by a growing list of fabulous artisans, then practicing, and practicing, and practicing, I have learned a variety of techniques. I can now say with confidence that I am a jewelry designer and crafter.

I work with beads but not in the traditional way of beading and stringing. I have fallen in love with wire working, in all its diversity. I am fascinated by the countless ways to bend, shape, coil, spiral, twist, and connect it into the most beautiful and original framework for the exquisite smorgasbord of beading stones, crystals, metals, and glass to which I am now addicted. Oh, I know jewelry making is nothing new, but to me it is!

Lately, I've been working on some pieces in the steampunk style, and am dying to begin learning at least a couple of the beautiful chainmaille patterns. Seems there is no end to this new passion of mine!

Writer Interrupted

Sixty Plus Years of Living Means Something

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Monday, January 17, 2011