How to use this Page

Add a Comment

Little Boy Good-for-Nothing and the Shongololo Brave Little Boy Good-for-Nothing must go to the rain-keeper’s hut to bring back the rain-cloud and save his village from drought. Fierce crocodiles guard the rain-cloud, but with the help of his friend the Shongololo, the monkey, the lion and the moon-moths, he rescues the animals that go bump in the night, sets free the moon, and becomes

Display Comments Add a Comment

I was amused to see that one of the web searches that leads visitors to my site is "how does DROUGHT end"?

Well, kids who have to write a report but are faced with too little time and too much pages, it's your lucky day. Here's the ending.

 

• Ruby leaves the woods and becomes a Country-Western singer. Her first #1 song is titled "CONSTANT SCRAPING".
• Sula convinces Darwin West to build FOREVER WATERS, a luxury resort on his property. He appoints her to the role of Boss Lady. Guests come from all over to bathe in the resorts' supposedly miraculous waters.
• Sula's weekly services are offered to all FOREVER WATERS guests, which sparks a new worldwide religion. Her followers call themselves the Thirsties.
• All of the Congregants become resort employees: chambermaids, front desk workers, and cooks. The cooks aren't very good. They haven't made anything decent in 200 years. 
• Hope and Gabe open an organic farm that supplies most of the resort's food. Also, it has those cool goats that faint when you make a loud noise (at right).
• Otto shows up. It turns out that he's been busy in the entertainment industry, operating under his fake name: Dick Clark.
• Jonah leaves and becomes a world-famous poker player. 
• Ford becomes a priest. Yeah, sorry about that, but did you really think it would be an entirely happy ending? (Well.. it's happy for the Church...)

So, there you go. The ending. 

Right?

Or maybe you SHOULD read the whole thing... authors are notoriously untrustworthy...

 

 

Add a Comment

I just joined Pinterest and I had a lot of fun making a little "board" of presents for Ruby, the main character in my novel DROUGHT. Check it out; I hope you love it!

Next up: presents for Oscar. If you have ideas, leave me comments or make your own Pinterest board and let me know where it is!

Add a Comment

by Rudy Ch. Garcia
If you've got writer's block about your next novel, short story or lit piece to win that Pulitzer, read on.

On long-distance calls with my mom this year, one of her regular reports was about how the trees in her yard were dying in the Texas drought. No matter how much she watered, she still lost about half of them on her quarter-acre property on the outskirts of San Antonio, even her hardy mesquites. She, and her trees, are just another example of collateral damage from global warming. Mom's in her 80s and I'm in my 60s, so neither one of us will suffer long from this. However, a child of six will likely have a long thirsty future, maybe one with not very many trees.

Six-year-olds, Chicano and otherwise, dying trees, drought, an arid American Southwest (and northern Mexico), global warming--what's any of this got to do with a lit blog? Nothing more than the Occupy movement, Greenpeace and election politics have to do with latino lit. If we don't see connections to us, then we will make none.

This July's 60mph dust storms in the Phoenix area seem a reincarnation of the 50s Dust Bowl's immense storms, called "Black Blizzards" and "Black Rollers." Those eventually affected one hundred million acres, centered in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles, and adjacent parts of New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas.

Millions of acres of farmland became useless, and forced hundreds of thousands of people to leave their homes. Many "Okies" families moved to California where economic conditions were little better than what they'd left. They affected author John Steinbeck enough to write about in The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men, [wherein many of these "Hispanics" were portrayed as lazy shiftless drunks]. Those droughts began in the Southwestern United States, New Mexico and Texas during 1950 and '51; the drought spread through the Central Plains, Midwest and certain Rocky Mountain States, particularly between 1953 and 1957, and into Nebraska. Texas experienced the most severe drought in recorded history. 244 of Texas’ 254 counties were declared federal disaster areas.

Before I share the background of hard data that might kick-start or revive your lit career, here're some themes that sound like science fiction but could eventually qualify as nonfiction:

1. Epic war story: Drought-stricken Mexican peasants move across the border in the tens of thousands to avoid starvation, and successfully overcome thousands of troops stationed along the border. The forced-migration results in genocidal slaughter, but also overcrowding in homes far from the border. Oh, wait--that's already nonfiction.

2. Neohistorical fiction: An Irish-American-Chicano descendant of Billy the Kid finds safe harbor in those overcrowded homes because of his love for a mexicana and his Spanish poetry lamenting the loss of the few verdant patches in Aztlán. He's on the run from Homeland Security who used a security wand on him at the Denver airport, a violation he returned by taking out several with h

Display Comments Add a Comment

 
Similarities between our time and the Great Depression era are extending beyond the fiscal crisis.

My latest New York Times Magazine mini-column looks at a sandstorm, “Steinbeck-ish in its arrival,” that rolled through Lubbock, Texas last month, as a harbinger of a possible impending (and permanent) Southwestern Dust-Bowlification. “I expected at any moment to see a line of Model Ts coming through headed to California,” a city councilman said. “It really did look like pictures I had seen of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.”

See (and hear) also a tour of Grapes of Wrath country as of 2009 and Woody Guthrie’s “Talking Dust Bowl Blues” (above).

Add a Comment

Hopefully you've heard Ruby's story. Now listen to Ford's part of DROUGHT:

And be sure to enter to win a DROUGHT prize pack until 6:00 PM ET on Monday, April 18!

 

Add a Comment

 

As DROUGHT's release date neared, everybody had one question:

"What are you going to do that day?"

I did not have a good answer. While I knew I could spend the day wandering bookstores, looking for it, I also knew that stores might not have even taken it out of the box yet. And that would make a happy day just a plain old depressing day. So how else DO you celebrate? 

Here are the awesome things that I, and my wonderful family and friends, came up with!

--Tweets, Facebook posts and blogs: thanks to EVERYONE who announced DROUGHT's release yesterday! Special credit to my sister, who announced that she had no water in her apartment yesterday and completely had me worried for her until she reminded me that it was "DROUGHT Day". Ahhhhhhh yes.

--An old-school steak lunch at Capital Grille with my Patron of the Arts, aka my husband.

--Flowers! My lovely mother, sister and husband all treated me to flowers. The house looks so pretty today. I warned the house not to get used to being so fancy all the time. :)

--Happy hour out with friends, one of whom spent the day tracking and finally chasing down the DC Cupcake truck so I could try their cupcakes. And may I say they were spectacular. I will be posting more soon in a DC Cupcake round-up blog entry!

--Gifties!! I've got a bottle of bubbly stuff for celebrating, thanks to a lovely friend, AND check out this very cool item, at right. It's a vase made from a spoon. Which is absolutely perfect for DROUGHT, since the enslaved Congregation has to harvest water from living leaves with... spoons!

--And finally, we had a marathon viewing of Showtime's new series, EPISODES. It's about two screenwriters, so that seemed tangentially appropriate. I. Loved. It. 

DROUGHT has been warmly welcomed into the world and I feel like the luckiest author around, today. 

 

Add a Comment

Tomorrow, Jan 25, DROUGHT releases into the wide, wide world. Like any book it's been a long time coming. 

So what does an author do the day before her book releases? 

Works. Hits the gym. Gives her kid a bath. Reads SCAREDY SQUIRREL to her kid for a bedtime story. Finishes a couple of blog interviews. And then she finishes writing a chapter for her NEXT book!

In other words... kind of same old, same old. But with a little jangling noise in the back of my head. Psst. Book releases tomorrow. Tomorrow! TOMORROW!

 

Add a Comment

Publisher: EgmontUSA
ARC: 392 Pages
Genre: YA Dystopian
Book from Publisher*

From Goodreads. Ruby Prosser dreams of escaping the Congregation and the early-nineteenth century lifestyle that’s been practiced since the community was first enslaved.

She plots to escape the vicious Darwin West, his cruel Overseers, and the daily struggle to gather the life-prolonging Water that keeps the Congregants alive and gives Darwin his wealth and power. But if Ruby leaves, the Congregation will die without the secret ingredient that makes the Water special: her blood.

So she stays.

But when Ruby meets Ford, the new Overseer who seems barely older than herself, her desire for freedom is too strong. He’s sympathetic, irresistible, forbidden—and her only access to the modern world. Escape with Ford would be so simple, but can Ruby risk the terrible price, dooming the only world she’s ever known?

Review
DROUGHT, by Pam Bachorz, is one of those books that, while reading it, made me absolutely insane. Let me explain. There is a lot of information thrown at you in a short amount of time. I had to figure out where this was taking place and what the rules of this society were. Not much of it is explained, so it is left to the reader to understand as you go along.

The Congregants live in a sort-of 'cult' society where they have very little, except for the Water that has kept them alive for over two hundred years. They are enslaved by Darwin West who is a very evil man and proves that to these people each day when he orders his guards (Overseers) to whip the people if their quota of Water are not fulfilled each day. This happens often since there is not much water to be found (title hint- drought).

In the beginning, this society of Congregants are tight-knit, until their youngest member and future Leader, Ruby, meets an Overseer who does not possess the same ideals as Darwin. A dangerous romance brews between these two and Ruby begins to question their current lifestyle. The Congregants constantly pray to Ruby's father, Otto, in the hopes of his return to save them all.

About 1/4 through the book I wanted to stop reading. I searched the book sites for reviews of this book wondering if it would be worth it to continue. One specific review stuck out for me. This reviewer had the same questions I did, but she did say the end was worth the confusing ride. And after slugging through it, I whole-heartedly agree.

My biggest issues revolved around the Congregants. They were afraid of their captors, which kept them on a tight leash but any thought about becoming free from Darwin was something they automatically turned down. WHY? I felt these people were brainwashed into staying because of Otto returning 'someday'. I think if they all rose up together against Darwin they could have broken free. Even though enough time had passed (200 years!),  it seemed that they didn't even want to be free. Ruby's mother was at the top of my List (not a good list to be on). There were times I wanted to reach into the book and smack her for holding Ruby back from a life outside their prison.

With my constant anger over the Congregants, I realized, that is probably the point. Bachorz skillfully pulled those emotions from me and ultimately made me enjoy the book. She made me invest everything into these characters. I enjoyed the strange relationship between Ruby and Ford. They bared their souls to each other and hoped in the end that would be enough for them to be together. After many revelations, I was glad I finished it. I was not prepared for my mind to wander about it days after fin

Add a Comment

I take naming my characters very seriously. There isn't a single character in my books that doesn't have a name of significance. Sometimes readers can pick up on why I chose that name--but other times it's a private meaning, just a touchstone for me.

A few examples:

--In my upcoming book, DROUGHT, the main character's name is Ruby. I chose that name for a number of reasons. First, rubies are a precious stone, and Ruby is precious to the Congregation that is her family. Even though most of them don't know it, her blood sustains their lives. I also liked naming this character after a gemstone that needs cutting, polishing, to be made beautiful--because Ruby will have to go through transformations before she reaches her potential too. And then there's the most obvious reason: rubies are red. So is blood.

--But the main character in my first book, CANDOR, got his name--Oscar--quite differently. In the first draft of CANDOR, he wasn't the son of the town founder. Heck, he wasn't even the main character. No. He was the son of the school custodian. He had the bad luck to be named Oscar, which meant he had to deal with a lot of kids teasing him--the custodian's kid living in a trash can just like Oscar the Grouch, etc. That gave him a chip on his shoulder. It's one of the few characteristics that survived as he evolved into the rich, smooth main character with big secrets. Somehow, I couldn't bear to change his name. I figured it sounded fancy, like a boy born into privilege. Besides, he wouldn't let me call him anything else. 

--I won't reveal any of the names in my new book, since it's still just a little baby idea and these things DO change, but I will share a few of my favorite places to research names:

• US Census Records. If I'm writing about teens in 2015, then I like to check their birth years to see which names were most popular then. Some characters should get very popular names, and others the most obscure.
• Baby name books--a favorite writers' tool. My go-to book is titled THE BEST BABY NAME BOOK IN THE WHOLE WORLD, by Bruce Lansky. 
• Graveyards records and landholder records--some you can find via Google while others you will only find at your local research library. I chose some of the last names in DROUGHT (Pelling, Prosser, Schuyler) from common property holder names in upstate New York. 

Happy character naming!

Add a Comment

Last weekend, we took a trip to the upstate NY books that inspired the setting for DROUGHT, my upcoming book. Keep your eyes on this space for announcements soon about DROUGHT. Until then, here are a few pictures to give you a glimpse into the world of Ruby, Ford, and the cruel Darwin West...

water streaming down a dirt road

a dirt road to nowhere... or anywhere, so long as it's away

cabins deep in the woods, overlooking a lake

Add a Comment

Have you ever just been stopped cold by imagery? Matt Phelan has written and illustrated a graphic novel that even in arc form has risen to my list of all time favourites.

Jack is a child of the dust bowl. The rain stopped coming when he was just 7 years old, and since then he hasn't been much of a help. There is no farm work to do and his clumsy nature means that when he does try to help his dad, he usually just ends up knocking things over.

Many families are leaving town. There's nothing left but dust and sickness. Some are even being diagnosed with something called "dust dementia" which occurs when folks seem to see things in the dust that aren't there. Things like bright bursts of light from empty barns, and storm kings.

What is Jack seeing, and will he ever be able to help out and not be a burden?

I don't want to say too much about this extraordinary book since it is not due out until September, however, I could not help but share a bit since I have not seen a graphic novel that has pulled me in so quickly and so fully since Blankets, by Craig Thompson. This is a completely different book, but Phelan has raw emotion on every page from the atmospheric storms, to the drawn and wan faces of the people living through this incredible time in American History. The Dust Bowl has always been a fascinating subject matter, and The Storm in the Barn will most likely have readers looking for other information about the time period and the people who survived it. The book itself is chock full of historical detail from the popular Oz books, to rabbit drives, and snake superstitions. This is a title that I will happily buy in its finished form and pass on.

Thanks so much to Jesse for sharing this with me.

Display Comments Add a Comment

* 13 pages

Display Comments Add a Comment