Author Archives: Eowyn
Like ‘Ole Bing
I’ve been watching White Christmas every Christmas season for like, uh… fifty years? So much so that I have most of the dialogue down word-for word. Can’t help it. Sure, the movie is a bit thin on plot and somewhat sappy in places, but it just isn’t Christmas without Bob Wallace, Phil Davis, and Betty and Judy Haynes in a snowless Vermont. Besides, nobody sings the title tune like ‘ole Bing. Remember this?
What’s Yours?
Everyone has a story. What’s yours? Roads Diverged is still accepting submissions to our first-ever Holiday Story Showcase!
Here are the basic rules:
– Each submission must be your original work. Please include at the top of your submission (email only): 1) Your name; 2) A word count; 3) “Holiday Story Showcase” in the subject line, followed by your title.
– Length: between 300 and 1,500 words
– Any genre. Stories may be inspirational, fiction, non-fiction, memoir, or humorous. Just make sure they’re G-rated. (I reserve the right to reject any submission, for any reason.)
– I’m looking for clean, uplifting, family-friendly stories that have been thoroughly proof-read.
– First-person narratives are preferred, but not mandatory.
– Stories can be on any winter holiday.
– You may submit more than one story.
– Posting is up to the sole discretion of the blog owner (yours truly), and there is no monetary remuneration for any submission. This is simply an opportunity to share your gifts and stories with the rest of our loyal readers!
– No anonymous submissions. Please include your name.
So, pour yourself a steaming mug of hot apple cider, plop in a cinnamon stick or two and let your creative juices go to work! Be sure the spread the word about our Holiday Story Showcase. The more stories, the merrier!
Please send submissions in the body of an email (NOT as an attachment) to: HolidayStoryShowcase@gmail.com. Last day to submit is December 10.
Review of ‘The Last Summer of the Death Warriors’
The Last Summer of the Death Warriors
By Francisco X. Stork
Seventeen year-old Pancho is one tough hombre. And he’s royally ticked. With a deceased mother, his father recently killed in a work-related accident, and his mentally challenged sister, Rosa, dead, he lands in a New Mexico orphanage mad at the world and aiming to make the world pay. Detectives say Rosa’s death was due to “natural causes,” but Pancho suspects foul play. He formulates a plan to identify Rosa’s killer and wreak his revenge.
Pancho encounters an unexpected wrinkle when he meets D.Q. (Daniel Quentin) at the orphanage. D.Q. has authored “The Death Warrior Manifesto.” (“Rule number one: No whining.”) Impish, intellectually buoyant and devilishly mischievous in spite of a cancer diagnosis, D.Q. pegs Pancho to be a fellow “death warrior.” The Panda (priest) who runs the place assigns Pancho as D.Q.’s helper for the summer, a prospect that thrills Pancho about as much as a cat in cold bath water. Will he choose death and revenge or the way of the “death warriors” – fighting for every last shred of life and love as long as they last?
Francisco Stork’s young adult novel is gutsy. It asks tough questions and avoids patty-cake, trite answers. It engages quickly, combining elements of both a murder mystery and a romance story as main characters battle doubt, disease, abandonment, despair and their own inner demons. The novel is artfully written with realistic, three-dimensional characters and crisp dialogue (may be too gritty for gentle readers). A unique story with some unusual plot twists, Last Summer is worth a look.
Review of ‘Lost December’
He’s amazing. Just when I think he’s penned his final shimmering literary star, Richard Paul Evans flings another into the firmament of fine fiction. Lost December (Simon & Schuster, 2011) is a case in point.
I loved this book.* I read all 346 pages cover-to-cover in a day and a half, including the Epilogue.
Based on the biblical account of the prodigal son, Lost December introduces us to Luke Crisp, son of copy center mogul Carl Crisp. Dad wants to turn the family business over to his son once Luke earns his M.B.A. from Wharton, an endeavor Dad urged Luke to pursue. At Wharton, however, Luke falls in with would could be charitably dubbed a bunch of nihilist husks of humanity masquerading as intellectuals and fellows students. Under their influence and at the urging of his smooth-talking, blood-sucking leech of a “room mate,” Sean, Luke has other plans. He dumps Dad’s business – and Dad – and jet-sets to Europe with his new pals, footing the bill for everyone. Once on the continent, Luke and friends make a career out of running up outlandish bar tabs and room service. But Luke’s million dollar trust fund doesn’t last forever. When the money runs out, so do his “friends.”
Luke returns to Las Vegas and soon hits rock-bottom. Friendless, penniless, and homeless, Luke Crisp is the highly educated son of a Fortune 500 corporate exec. whose entire worldly possessions fit into the backpack he carries from one street to the next.
Too embarrassed and ashamed to contact his father, Luke winds up living “underground” in a culvert. After being robbed and beaten up, Luke is rescued by Carlos, a Good Samaritan who runs a convalescent care center. Carlos gives Luke a place to stay and hires him. Luke soon takes on a second job at a local Crisp’s Copy Center, where no one knows who his father is – and he’s not about to spill the beans. He comes closes when he meets the distant, detached Rachael, a single mom with a painful past.
What follows is a remarkable, poignant story of forgiveness, reunion and the true meaning of love.
Told in vintage Evans style – first person narrative, with an engaging, intriguing plot and three-dimensional characters you feel like you know – Lost December is a holiday treat. Get a copy for yourself this holiday season. Better yet, get several and share.
* I admit it. I love all of Evans’ books. If you have a “reluctant” teen reader, check out Evans’ Michael Vey: The Prisoner of Cell 25. My twelve year-old couldn’t put it down!
Huckleberry Creek: Mount Rainier’s Best Kept Secret?
The Huckleberry Creek Trail to Forest Lake Camp may be one of the best kept secrets in Washington State’s Mount Rainier National Park. That’s because you have to be part mountain goat to hike out. Yep, the return trip is almost entirely uphill. Think Empire State Building without an elevator. But this is one trail that’s worth every grunt, groan and creaking knee.
You’d never guess that a world-class wildflower meadow, gurgling creek and glassy tarn are tucked into the conifer-clad valley below Sourdough Ridge at Sunrise on the eastern flank of Mount Rainier. Their secrets are revealed only to the truly intrepid or utterly clueless. Consequently, we had the entire hike to ourselves on a beautiful Thursday in late September, save for one other couple from Holland. And they were lost. See? Everyone with brains headed toward Frozen Lake or Mount Fremont. We, on the other hand, opted for “the road less travelled” and were rewarded with one of the most beautiful alpine settings in the park. And aching knees. But I digress.
Dog-legging off Sourdough Ridge, the Huckleberry Creek trail narrows and turns treacherous as it juts into Huckleberry Basin, especially through a rock-strewn avalanche chute below the basin. Past the chute, the trail slims further to ribbon-width as you dip into a riotous romp of Renoir pastels cleverly disguised as a serene alpine meadow. While the wildflowers aren’t as plentiful on this higher, more exposed side of the Mountain as they are in Paradise, they still paint the landscape in rich floral hues where yellow mountain daisies, purple aster, lupine, fire-engine red Indian paintbrush and white-tufted bear grass splash the landscape like a Louvre-worthy canvas.
Huckleberry Creek winds through tall, thick grass and plays hide and seek with the trail as it skips around gentle knolls and ridges bristling with evergreens. Once you’ve reached the valley, cross a couple split-log foot bridges and elbow the creek on your left. It’s a short walk to Forest Lake Camp.
While its shores are lined with the sun-bleached bones of fallen trees, Forest Lake is as still as the Sphinx. If you’re part polar bear, go for a swim. We lunched at the camp for about an hour, listening to warbling wrens and varied thrushes. Chipmunks scurried nearby as gray jays, those shameless panhandlers, thought we were opening a traveling cafeteria. We left reluctantly as afternoon faded and snow-scrubbed breezes began whining off the Emmons Glacier.
As for the return hike, well, be sure to fuel up the after-burners. Both creek and camp are well worth the hamstring-hollerin’ climb out. Just don’t tell anyone.
Review of ‘Every Last One’ by Anna Quindlen
By Anna Quindlen
Random House, 2010
She’s done it again. In Every last One best-selling author Anna Quindlen offers yet another poignant mixture of panache and pathos as she traces the effects of seemingly inconsequential choices and actions that turn out to be life-altering.
Every may get off to a slow start, but its gathers steam quickly as we’re introduced to Mary Beth Latham, husband Glen and their three incredibly average teenage kids: popular over-achiever Alex; introverted, morose Max; and independent, free-spirited Ruby. Neck-deep in “the usual” – proms, soccer games, high school angst, sibling rivalries, curfew, family dinners and sibling spats – this “typical” suburban family turns out to be anything but. Just about the time the reader starts feeling lost in the dull monochrome of what could be the average American family – as in, ‘been there, done that’ – Quindlen tosses us a curve. A big one. The pacing is perfect.
The rest of this remarkable book focuses on how Mary Beth and her girlfriends such as no-nonsense Nancy and “English rose” Olivia help her cope with an immense tragedy. We also discover what’s eating Mary Beth’s former friend, Deborah. Like the consummate storyteller she is, Quindlen weaves a rich tapestry of roles and relationships that are almost excruciatingly authentic.
Besides the carefully crafted plot and three-dimensional characters, the dormant strength of Every Last One – a phrase uttered by a police officer on one tragic New Year’s Eve – lies in its “every person” appeal. Readers may feel they know the Lathams. Maybe this ophthalmologist’s family is their neighbor, colleague, coach, or their kids’ favorite hang-out site. Or maybe it’s them. This complicated, beautifully drawn story of struggle, survival, unspeakable loss and love is weft as tight as a Persian rug, and is just as exquisite. I read the LP version (385 pages) cover to cover in a day and a half.
Full of unexpected twists and turns, Every Last One is another stellar work of fiction like the kind we’ve come to expect from Quindlen. Much of its strength lies in sturdy characters, believable dialogue and its subtle message of hope. This one’s a keeper.
***
Coming soon: A review of the autobiographical Lessons from the Mountain: What I Learned from Erin Walton, by Mary McDonough.
‘Once Upon a Story…’ Part 3 of 3
The best stories are often book-ended by Once upon a time and They lived happily ever after. Once upon a time there were Three Bears, who lived together in a house of their own, in a wood. Once upon a time there was an old sow with three little pigs…. A vain emperor who loved beautiful clothes … an east wind blew through Number Seventeen Cherry-Tree Lane. Once upon a time Gepetto found a piece of wood, Tom and Huck a robber’s treasure, Aladdin a lamp. A wisp of a happy ending waltzes in the wind.
That’s it, isn’t it? What most of us want, deep-down inside? Isn’t that why something stirs within us when a great and noble struggle winds up with a superlative conclusion in which Good triumphs over Evil? Aslan vanquishes the White Witch. Kidnapped through the machinations of his Uncle Ebenezer, David Balfour claims his inheritance with the help Alan Breck Stewart. Dorothy Gale discovers “there’s no place like home.”
Don’t such endings make you want to pump your fist in the air, stand up and cheer? “All is well” endings to wonderful stories bring sighs of satisfaction. Where does that come from? And what about the stories that end with “all is not so well”? Capulets and Montagues take pot shots at each other from opposite sides of the Verona tracks; Romeo and Juliet are caught in the cross-hairs. Anna Karenina leaves her husband for the dashing Count Vronsky and a train. Quasimodo grieves himself to death, clinging to the dead body of his beloved gypsy girl, La Esmeralda. Don’t they leave us feeling a little… bereft? Like our map has been misplaced, or we wandered into the wrong tale?
What is it within you and me that sighs when we read or hear these stories? It’s almost as if “happily ever after” is a yearning etched into the wet cement of our souls at birth. And maybe it is. Have you ever wondered why? Have you gone ahead of your story?
***
Excerpted from chapter 1 of Once Upon a Story, by yours truly.
‘Once Upon a Story…” Part 1 of 3
Once upon a time, a king loved a princess. Their love was epic. Pure and unstained. Then evil entered, followed by betrayal. The lovers were torn asunder, the princess taken into captivity. The king sent his son to launch a daring raid into enemy territory to rescue his beloved: You.
A fresh look at the greatest love story that ever bloomed, Once Upon a Story… mines nuggets of eternal truth from some well-loved stories, reminding us that we were created for relationship, live in a war zone, have an enemy, and that God’s love makes it possible for our stories to end with, “and they all lived happily ever after.”
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Once Upon a Story is looking for a reputable publisher. Excerpts from chapter 1 are coming up soon. Keep an eye out!
Shout About It!
Read a book recently that’s too good to keep to yourself? Found a story, author or series that’s simply amazing? Maybe you stumbled onto a literary “stinker” that rates a red light?
Even the most voracious book lover can’t read everything. So let’s help each other. If you’ve found something worth sharing – or can advise others to avoid – let your fellow bibliophiles know!
This page is for you. Share your favorite books, authors, hits and misses HERE!
Pages & Paws 