p e n c h a n t

Call it a lost art, though I know there are people in the world who refuse to abandon all to technology, who still have a hand for elegant penmanship.

Perhaps not lost but anemic is the art of courtship with a personal, passionate, aesthetic touch. A dove, in the upper left corner, carries this letter from one man who was heart-over-head in love. Notice the date, 1919. DeAlva Allman would have been 19 years old, born in 1900. She was my maternal grandmother, he, my grandfather, Duncan Robert (D.R.) Jackson. He played the violin, painted desert scenes, and worked in the Texas oil fields, and later, after moving to California, the oil fields in Long Beach. He died there at the young age of 61.

We now send light-fast notes, stripped of all but prefab emoticons, disposable. Give me a sad face, somebody.

image is actual size / click to enlarge

love is a lovely word

once upon a time, children made their own entertainment

our refrigerator runs way too loud

seagulls get messy

clothes do not make the man—a male infant plus a number of years do (in most cases)

due to past axial precession, the pole star was once Thuban, not Polaris

rain comes in three assortments: wet, wetter, wettest

most works of fiction contain nonfiction

ridges running along the skin of an avocado indicate strings inside

sometimes, if you’re lucky, bread will land butter side up

you are never as old as you’ll get

it was Luke Howard who named the clouds

hang pictures at eye level or lower (the tendency is to hang them too high)

yell only in an emergency

if an orange smells sweet at the stem, it will taste sweet

press the fleshy part between your thumb and forefinger to help relieve a sinus headache

rabbits can be litterbox trained and make delightful house pets

most works of nonfiction contain fiction

I’ve been asked many times what my earliest influence was, and I can trace it to a moment that shimmers from my childhood. When I was eight, I sat enraptured for 34 minutes as I watched the magic realism of a film called The Red Balloon. This singular work sparked something in me I had no definition for but welcomed with my whole being. The film drifted into my vision like the red balloon itself, captivating, enchanting me, revealing that there are elements beyond self that are as natural and needful as breath.

The story is an allegory of life, played out on Paris streets* by a six-year-old boy (Pascal, the filmmaker Albert Lamorisse’s son) who frees a  red balloon that’s caught on a lamppost, and together boy and balloon share the joys of companionship, the challenges of separation, rejection, escape, and finally, death.

This simple urban fairy tale—one of the earliest of its genre—captures the basic desires of humanity.  As we each seek acceptance, purpose, gladness, we each must hide at times, stumble, dash or press through constricting passages by twists and turns, run up steps, run down, while hoping to soar, ultimately, into a lasting place of peace.

Yet there is that portion of humanity, a portion too vast and common, that disdains all things pure and beautiful, which seeks in ways both psychological and solid to destroy what it can neither understand nor possess. In the film they are the masses, adults and children alike, who, at the least, display annoyance and indifference, and at the worst, mindless insensibility, harm. The result must ever be: death of the innocent, death by stoning. Time stands still in silent horror at the withering of Pascal’s spirit friend.

There is, however, a jubilant end to the tale, as a teeming cluster of balloons from all over Paris provides a resurrection. This is what we wish for.

That is what magic realism can do: reveal matters of the soul perhaps vague for the child to fully comprehend, yet yearningly receives.

As I have matured as a writer, I’ve found that almost everything I write touches back to the brilliance of The Red Balloon.

* Nearly all of the homes and quarters, cafes and bakeries, steep steps and cobbled lanes among which the story was filmed, no longer exist. Only the church remains.

Here’s a recent Q & A session with Wild Girls Mother-Daughter Book Club of Books Inc. in San Francisco

. Independent editor and store manager, Summer Dawn Laurie, chose The Dragon of Cripple Creek to be their September read.

WG Does Mom wake up?
TH Whether Mom wakes or not depends on the reader; that is why I left it open ended. I believe we all live by hope—hope for something or someone, something better, a dream to come true, some promise yet to be fulfilled. How much hope do you have?

WG Did you introduce any magic into the pearl that would wake up Mom?
TH In Chinese lore, pearls are symbolic of both life and death. They are also associated with dragons. Since a pearl would give eternal life to a dragon, I realize there may be some life-restoring effect when one is placed in Pearl’s palm, especially one that’s been in the possession of a dragon. Who knows whether Ye added his own touch of magic?

WG Did you mean for the dragon to be a stand-in for, or rather to 
represent, the mother? Or what about dinosaurs?
TH Yes, Ye and Mom are symbolic parallels. Regarding dinosaurs, I believe dragons were a form of dinosaur. The book of Job mentions the fire-breathing leviathan, which is, to me, obviously a dragon or dinosaur. It’s noteworthy that God is the one who mentions it to Job.

WG What happened to the Warrens? We’d hoped to have them come back 
into the story.
TH Some characters win your heart, like the Warrens did mine, yet they also serve a function. (All characters, both minor and major, serve a function.) The Warrens served their function, and as happens in reality, they become a good memory. How often do we meet the dearest people, only to lose them in the scurry of life?

WG Who was your inspiration for Dillon?
TH As I said earlier, every character serves a function or purpose. When I first created Kat, I felt she needed someone within her own age range to relate with outside the adult realm. There had to be someone who would eventually be involved in helping her balance her thoughts and actions. That person had to be a sibling, since she was not taking a friend on this trip. A sister would have posed the risk of being competitive, so an older brother was the answer. Hence Dillon. His name came naturally to me; it sounded right and had a Western touch to it. I also listened to a lot of early Bob Dylan while writing The Dragon of Cripple Creek—it provided background and mood—and Dylan has a way with words, as does Dillon. I suppose, too, Dillon is a teen version of myself.

WG What was your inspiration for Rex’s room? We love his zany decor!
TH Rex’s room is as random as Rex himself. Much of it reflects Wonderland—the Mad Tea Party in particular. It is the Mad Tea Party. There’s a door for a table, with a mouse hole (the Dormouse); a bat chasing stars on his computer screen (Twinkle-twinkle, little bat); Rex drinks syrupy tea (tea and treacle); he has a hat collection… In fact, Rex is the Mad Hatter. He says when the Grahams enter, “There’s hardly no room…” Which is a distorted echo of what Alice is told when she arrives at the Hatter’s: “No room! No room!”

WG Could this story work in any other location than Colorado?
TH No. Though there are other gold mines with tours, I don’t know of any as rich with detail and setting as the Mollie Kathleen Mine. Speaking of Mollie Kathleen, she’s as much a strong female character as any in the story (Kat, Pearl, Rose Robbins, Miranda Bates), and the mine represents her pursuit of a dream—a dream come true. Cripple Creek is a gambling town, which is critical to carrying the theme of greed. Pikes Peak connects us to the grand and glorious, besides representing idyllic America.

WG Are there plans for this to become a movie?
TH I wish, I hope! My agent, Sara Crowe, is good at selling movie rights, but it also takes a buyer. Incidentally, I pictured Kat’s story as a movie the entire way through as I wrote. I see cinematically as I write.

WG Do you have a list of all the “Alice in Wonderland” references? Some of us started lists but then got taken up by the story and we’re 
sure we missed a bunch.
TH After skimming the novel, I came up with about 50 references to “Alice.” Some are wordplay, some are description, some are character and name, some are event, some are theme. The main themes are dreaming and falling into fantasy. Besides the dream theme, the first reference is to the walrus, p 6. Also on 6 is the Duchess. (By the way, there are many typos in the book having to do with capitalization and proper nouns; one of them is Duchess.) I introduce the keyhole on p 10, which appears later in Rex’s place, the keyhole through which is a garden (on his roof). Kat uses forms of the word “curious.” She takes a fall like Alice, and speaks of things “Alice” herself. In Ye’s chamber is a chessboard with the pawn waiting to be made queen (pgs 45 & 262—an event that prematurely and calamitously occurs when Kat is standing—grown tall—above the tumult in the hotel lobby, p 169. Max is the White Rabbit, and his last name is the habitat of rabbits. While at the Warrens, Kat sees herself in the looking glass, and there’s a red heart stitched onto the robe she wears. Several other references are: Harold is the herald (the Messenger, Haigha) in “Through the Looking Glass;” the man who allegedly stole the gold from Kat’s room is holding a cushion like Tweedledee and Tweedledee as he fights with Rex; playing cards (queen, king, jack, etc.); the maid sees words “Take Me” on the nugget (”Drink Me” “Eat Me”); Jabberwock, p 44; Carpenter, p 195; Dinah, unicorn, p 204; large mushroom, p 209; Sad Willie is Father William; clock face stuck on 6 o’clock (Mad Tea Party time), p 222; drummed out of town (Lion and Unicorn), p 235; soup tureen, fire poker, p 238; soup of the evening, p 246; stray croquet ball, p 283; haddock, p 289; “all the king’s horses…” p 294; pearls come from oysters … and on it goes.

WG We are always interested in how book covers are conceived and 
created. We know you created the art, but how did that particular 
image come about?

TH The best way to answer this is to have you go to my Facebook page, The Dragon of Cripple Creek, where you’ll find an album called “the jacket art: from concept to creation.” I had little say about the jacket once the original art left my hands. It was an editorial and marketing decision to delete Kat from the picture, probably to make it more accessible to potential boy readers. But how Ye ended up being green is beyond me. Kat herself says, “But the dragon’s not gr—” p220.

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WG What is your next inspiration?
TH I have several, but the project I’m currently on is another middle grade novel called “Hans Andersen’s Ghost,” in which a day-dreaming boy named Skim meets Andersen’s restless ghost in the Copenhagen Cemetery, and is sent to Andersen’s storybook world when he dons his mysterious top hat, only to discover a world more real than his own unpleasant life, and in fact, terrifying. But he manages to prevent the girl with the red shoes from having her feet chopped off, resulting in Andersen’s tale to be rewritten, and the ghost finally finding rest.

WG What were some of your favorite books to read when you were in 
middle school?
TH I read everything by Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Tolkien, also Peter S. Beagle’s “The Last Unicorn” and “A Fine and Private Place.”

Thanks Summer and Wild Girls, for choosing my book to share.

Summer Troy, I’m simply blown away by your thoughtful and inspiring responses.

We all seek to know where we come from, where we are, and where we’re going.
The same is true for story characters.

For G. T. Denny’s Deep into the Heart of a Rose
graphite on archival paper / click image to enlarge

where I’ll be next weekend

attending the James River Writer’s Conference and participating in three panel discussions:

Flesh & Bones / putting life in your characters

Twos, Tweens & Teens / writing for children & young adults

Say What? / writing believable dialogue

Among featured speakers are Robert Goolrick, author of New York Times bestseller, The Reliable Wife; Tayari Jones, author of Leaving Atlanta; Karl Marlantes, author of New York Times bestseller Matterhorn; and Kathi Appelt, Newbery Honor Award-winning author of The Underneath. Other noteworthy events include Pitchapalooza, where you can sharpen your pitching skills with national book marketing experts David Henry Sterry and Arielle Eckstut; hands-on workshops on query letters, poetry, and pitching an agent; one-on-one meetings with distinguished literary agents; and sessions on using Facebook, Twitter and other social media.

The conference is an annual event presented by James River Writers, a non-profit organization that brings aspiring and professional writers and passionate readers together. Please click on the links for more information.

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Work in progress for a year-long project of Timothy Ryan Poe, who is filming my short story, December’s Dream. For other shots from the work, go here.

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“And among the nut-brown leftover leaves lay the remains of a tree house. One of them had built that—August, no doubt. Painted across the slats were the words, No rules allowed, but a line ran through allowed and aloud was painted bold above it. December laughed as he puffed. Rule number one: No rules. Reality 101: Rules existed, you just kept them to yourself.”

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I’ll be presenting and signing at the Baltimore Book Festival, September 24. A good way to spend your Saturday, along with hundreds of authors and thousands who love books. Here are the details.

Dire straits edition

Starving artist paints last supper

Matches on strike, protest burn out

Deodorant samples: $6 or BO

Time-worn cliché kicks bucket

Spittin’ image supplied with spittoon

Surgeon charges arm and leg for amputations

Aging comb loses teeth to thick toupee

Pet peeve faces euthanization

Junior Potato Head expelled for carrying concealed peeler

Archives: Leakey finds missing cufflink in monkey suit

Literary news: Sleepy cyclops gets shut-eye

And the Good News Award goes to: Family discovers lost conversation during outage