AllieCat on the Flux blog, after MIBA

FLUX blog...Chasing AllieCat made the blog news.

Harvest and Cycling, my autumn treasures

Autumn has a way of making us pensive, don't you think? Of course, it makes us aware of the passing of time. This year, it's all the more true: my son is getting married in a week, and my grandson turned one year old this past week. But I don't feel old. I just feel as if I'm gathering more information about the world inside. I can only, only hope that makes me a better writer.

I get up a little slower when I've been sitting on the floor, but otherwise, I still feel as physically capable as ever. Maybe I'm fooling myself. But then again...I had a happy realization while cycling last week. I love watching the long shadows during an evening ride in the fall. What I don't love is that dark comes so quickly. Twice this year, I've squeaked home on my bike in the throes of darkness. A couple near misses. Time to mount my light for safety--just in case.

But watching my own shadow, I snapped this self-portrait.  I remember how when I started riding fifteen (!!?) years ago, the guys' long shadows were so smooth; their long shadow legs looked like smooth, fast pistons stretching out, up and down the ditches as we passed. Mine looked awkward and certainly not smooth by comparison. Last week, I watched my shadow and made this happy discovery: lo and behold, somewhere, somehow in the last decade and a half of riding, my own cadence has become smoother. My legs looked like pistons, too. I'm going to relish that realization.

Then again, there's the beauty of harvest. It's sad to me because it means soon the fields will be bare and brown-black although there's a certain beauty of bounty in that, too. It also means the long Minnesota winter is too soon upon is.

The harvest itself fills my heart so full that sometimes I think it will burst (to embrace a cliche). Riding my bike alongside tractors, golden beanfields, or a combine like the one in this picture I took last week reminds me of the richness our soil still holds (IF we take care of it). The smells and sounds wash over me with memories: walking out to Dad's combine in my Halloween costume to show him my ghostly self before we went trick-or-treating; riding rounds in the combine with him, working aloud on my Confirmation memory work; just riding, my forehead pressed against the glass window (exactly as Lainey does in Jake Riley: Irreparably Damaged), watching the grain or corn wash like a wave up into the combine header.  And those glorious last autumns at home, when both my brother Bill and Dad were out in the field and they trusted me to do the chores all by myself. I felt so useful. What a good thing to feel.

There was the night when I was probably sixteen when I drove the Cub Cadet into the hog lot with a cart full of 5-gallon buckets of feed, and realized I couldn't back it out without the cart twisting sideways.  I was utterly stuck. What did I do? I emptied the buckets, fed the pigs, and then straightened the cart behind the little tractor by  herking it around by hand so I could back out. I don't think I ever told Dad or Bill about that and here I am, publishing it for the world. I still can't back a wagon or a cart to save my neck.

But I can ride my bike down county highways, flanked on both sides by golden, browning fields of grain and corn, and breathe it in, and be glad to be this tiny part of the plenty of the earth.

September Visitors by David Budbill

September Visitors by David Budbill I'm glad to see our friends come: talk, laughter, food, wine. I'm glad to see our friends go: solitude, emptiness, gardens, autumn wind. "September Visitors" by David Budbill, from Happy Life. © Copper Canyon Press, 2011. Reprinted with permission. (From Writer's Almanac)

Midwest Independent Booksellers Association, The Depot, Minneapolis

Trying to catch up...

Wow. I've been editing Slider's Son every spare second, so I haven't taken time to blog for ten days. So much to say, and so little time.

Rainbow theme:
First, Kirstin Cronn-Mills was on a panel last night at the loft, discussing GLBT YA literature, and the evening was fascinating and fun. So far to go in getting full acceptance of honest literature. Kirstin was the "token straight ally" author. I want to read every book represented there. Marion Dane Bauer, David LaRochelle, David Levithan, and Pat Schmatz. See my facebook page for a photo of the rainbow snacks provided (Jello made by DivaE, aka Kirstin).

Makes me delighted that in our upcoming anthology Girl Meets Boy, the stories include at least one gay romance.
I'm also gratified that in Chasing AllieCat,  the issue isn't an issue--it's just part of who a character is. 

David Levithan and Brian Farrey both read from their recent novels, and they ROCKED.

We're lucky to live in Minnesota with such a supportive writing community!

Posts coming in the near future (in between or after editing): Kurtis Scarletta, Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna, and some thoughts on fall cycling...:) stay tuned.

Maybe half ??? done with this edit of Slider's Son. I hope.  It always takes longer than I anticipate.
I'm trying hard to write, do necessary schoolwork, and get out on my bike at least a little bit while the weather is so perfect.

Tonight, I had a short ride, but a satisfying one. I rode the County Road and the Rabbit Road (isn't that a great name?) to St. Peter, and then rode up the Hwy 99 hill, and at the top, turned up Co. Rd. 21 to the crest by the golf course. The hill is 1.4 miles from bottom to top. I was pretty happy to maintain 10-11 mph the whole way up. That's nothing to racers and riders who hammer--stronger riders than I--and TDF riders would go up that hill like it was nothing, but for me--I was very happy with that! (I've ridden up that hill at 6-8 mph before, and I haven't climbed all that well for the last few years...this is a vast improvement--a sort of breakthrough). Then, after I rode along the ridge for a few miles and came back down, I caught a tractor that was going about 20 mph.

Next goal: a train, running parallel to me. I realized it would be across the tracks ahead of me, and I'd have a long wait because it was a long train. So I took off like a bat out of hell, to use a bad cliche, and realized I was riding along, passing train cars. Finally, I overtook the engine! I got to the intersection/RR crossing when the engine was still a quarter mile away. Very satisfying.

The experience, riding between the River valley ridge of hill and a moving train, pasture and fields in between, was surreal...like being in a movie...full of movement and beauty.

I am more aware of trains than ever, too, because trains play an active role in Slider's Son, the novel I'm editing. It all seemed like an epic ride, even though it was just a little casual after-work ride. These golden, green, blue, sunshiny days are all too fleeting. I'm still trying to absorb every moment of them that I can.

Weekend...

A long weekend ahead. I'm glad. After one meeting, I can do my own stuff.

I got the last of my readers' comments back on Slider's Son, so I can throw my heart into the rewrite of this novel. It's interesting how readers disagree, yet when there's a general thread that appears in several readers' comments, you know you have to address it, and then, finally you see how the story can be fixed, and you dig in. So enough here. I'm digging. I hope to not resurface for a couple days (Except to ride my bike!).