Harvests of Starvation Lane

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

podcast, A Mending at the Edge

Diane Eble has posted her podcast of an interview she did with me about my latest book, A Mending at the Edge, writing and life. You can listen to it at http://www.reviewyak.com/ and also at her blog which is www.yourbookpublishingcoach.com and eventually Abundant Gifts blog at www.abundantgiftsblog.com. ("I'm a bit behind on posting my audios there" Diane notes. Enjoy! Jane

Joy in the Journey

Hazy smoke from the California fires has settled into our canyon. We smell it in the air that is still as a rabbit watching the passage of a slithering snake. Yesterday it was windy and very, very hot (113 degrees) and we lost power at one point. Breaking the stillness inside, Bo, the wire-haired Griffon, leapt from the couch and rushed to the covered deck door, barking, something he rarely does. Jerry opened the door, Bo bolted out and there on the deck was a snake. Jerry thought it was a rattler, yelled for me to bring the .38 which I did but when I got there, he saw that the snake was a bull snake and wouldn’t shoot it. Bo, meanwhile, barked and baited it until it worked its way down the steps then fell through onto the dirt below. The dog barked, I tried to grab him, it made this hissing sound that to me sounded like a rattler, but Jerry insisted it wasn’t and he wasn’t going to shoot a snake that could eat mice (something we’ve seen more of since the cat was lost to coyotes).
Anyway, I finally grabbed Bo and dragged him from the snake; we came back inside sweating now from our exertion in the heat, and pondered our dog’s intention. Had it been a rattler, he might well have been bitten though he seemed to be just the distance necessary to avoid contact. At the very least, I think we’ll get another cat.
So begins our July. The river is still high so we have many more floaters than usual and expect quite a bunch come this Fourth of July weekend. I hope they bring their SPF 30. We’ve completed the first cutting of hay and are irrigating again. I’m home from a week in Grove City near Pittsburgh where I taught at the St. David’s Christian Writer’s Conference, visited with my agent and her book group then flew home for four more events. This is the first full week to be on the ranch since May and I like it, even without power sometimes.
Next week we leave again for Orlando where I’ll attend another writer’s retreat (I don’t have to do anything except write at it J), participate in the Christy Awards banquet, and attend several receptions, breakfasts, and have a signing while at the large trade show. A Tendering in the Storm is a one of three finalists for a Christy. My titles have been finalists for five national awards without being chosen as the winner and that’s all right with me. Jerry will attend the banquet and so will his daughter and son-in-law who we haven’t seen in awhile. Jerry will spend most of his time with his daughter while I’m chattering with other authors, hanging out with publishers, seeing what’s happening in this sometimes strange industry that makes it possible for my books to reach your hands.
Then later in the month I’ll be at Aurora hopefully fact-checking material for the quilt and craft book. It’s a very good life we lead and I am grateful.
The theme of the Pennsylvania conference was “Joy in the Journey” and as it happens, everything seemed to come together for that event with our discovery of joy along our writing way. I got to remind people to think “midwife” and not just wait until we’re published before finding that joy; we need to celebrate successes along the way. I don’t think that refers to the writers among us but to the parents, the teachers, the windmill operators, but for police and politicians, ranchers, laundry mat owners and on-line entrepreneurs as well. Other faculty, Gayle Roper, Barbara Hirshbaum, Lisa Crayton, Sally Stuart, inspired us and laughed with us opening doors to creativity.
Sometimes when I’m traveling (read that ‘journeying’) I don’t take time to enjoy. I’m concerned about getting to the airport on time, getting through security, hoping my bag will fit as a carry-on, wondering if the weather will affect my connection and who my seat companion will be and whether I’ll arrive safely at the other end.
But if I set a new attitude before I travel (the work before the work) it changes the entire journey for me. In Dallas, on the way to PA, the zipper on my favorite purse broke. But when my friend Bobbi Updegraff picked me up, she had a dozen purses for me to choose from, all made by a mission in Honduras that she supports. She travels and writes for Presbyterian Disaster Assistance and has a special interest in Honduras where women there make purses from men’s ties. (For $25 you can have one too!). It was perfect! I didn’t even have to go to the mall to get a replacement and my effort helped a mission project in Central America.
At the conference, I found joy in listening to other faculty like Gayle Roper and Barbara Hirshbaum, Lisa Crayton and Sally Stuart and reading first chapters of participants. A couple of fans drove 4 hours from their homes in Ohio to listen to my presentation and we spent time just connecting. I wasn't rushed and so could also walk beside someone who was troubled and pray with her as she took next steps on her writing journey. I nearly froze back there (it was 54 degrees several days!) but I'd thrown in a shawl at the last minute and was fine, just fine.
Coming home, I had a joyful journey too. I sat next to a Texan who was in “gas and oil” and we shared the exit row seats with extra leg room. I got bumped up to that flight and avoided a storm delay. Turns out that oilman hated take-offs and I hate landings so we offered good support to each other.
While at the airport in Dallas, I bought Jerry’s birthday present. Jerry also checked in early at the hotel in Portland so when I called his cell to tell him I was there and couldn’t get through because Mariah had had that cell and it was full, the hotel put me through to him so he could come and get me. And when we got home, Bo was happy to see us both. All things worked on this journey.
Once, earlier in my life, while living in West Bend, WI, I’d made my then husband drive the 40 miles to the airport a day early, rent a motel then show up at 6:00 AM for a noon flight to Florida – before homeland security. The airport wasn’t even open at 6:00 AM! But I was so anxious I pushed us to get there early and so fearful that I wouldn’t know how to manage if something went wrong that I rarely enjoyed those journeys nor even the vacations. Now I do.
So this is a month in which I can encourage you all to remember that things do change; we do survive inconveniences and sometimes even disasters. Small doors open when we take the time to notice them. Rattlesnakes turn out to be friendly bull snakes; and dogs that get close can be caught and brought back. At least sometimes. This time. And smoke in the canyon isn’t always from a close fire; sometimes the smoke is from a trial far away where finding joy is a challenge.
In his song, "Joy in the Journey," Michael Card writes that "there is a wonder and wildness to life, and freedom for those who obey." Perhaps that’s the key this month, to allow the wonder and wildness to permeate the everyday and bring joy to whatever journey you’re on.
Next month I’ll have a new website. I hope you’ll come by. Meanwhile, thanks for your constant support of my work, interest in our lives and prayers for continued joy on our own Starvation Lane journey. Warmly, Jane

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

blogger interview with Cindy Swanson

It's been awhile, I know. But here for your viewing and listening pleasure is an interview I did with Cindy Swanson a fine interviewer out of Chicago. We spoke about writing and life and I thought you might enjoy this conversation.

http://www.101qfl.com/voicetracks/CindySwanson/Jane Kirkpatrick.mp3
http://cindyswanslife.blogspot.com/2008/06/jane-kirkpatricks-mending-at-edge.html

I'm also going to bring you my monthly memo for June in about three days. Travel is taking me from blogging; but hopefully I'll meet some of you in Newberg, Stayton, Independence, Portland, Florence (Oregon) and in Pennsylvania in the next two weeks. Please visit my website schedule at www.jkbooks.com. Thanks!

Meanwhile, keep writing or pursuing that which brings you nurture. Jane

Monday, May 5, 2008

Blog tour links for A Mending at the Edge

Christy awards, heart stories, bobcats, listening

May 5, 2008. Today the power went off around 1:30 AM. We had power to the irrigation pumps but no power at the house. The electric company spent the morning and finally found the cause: apparently some coyotes had likely chased a bobcat up the power pole and he had met his demise by chewing into the power link that went to the house. Poor thing! "I suppose he died?" I asked. "He is still there at the scene of the crime," announced the power company. They have to drive over 50 miles to get to us but he seemed pleased to have had a reason to come down the reptile road, watch the river rise from the snowmelt in the mountains and eat his lunch overlooking the alfalfa field. Power is back. I can get back to writing.

this is the montly memo that will eventually be posted on my website www.jkbooks.com. Please visit there and check out my schedule. I'll be in Portland, OR tomorrow evening (May 6) for the Willamette Writer's gathering there. Hope you'll stop by.

Earlier this year I took an on-line class from writer/artist mary anne radmacher (she writes her name with all lower case letters, by the way). It began January first and required writing three paragraphs a day and sending them to her. I didn’t think I could manage that with the novel being due, working on the quilt book and Jerry’s January surgery, but I thought it would inspire me and it did.
At the same time, along with several other Christian novelists, I committed to writing 2000 words a day hoping to finish that novel before I went to Italy. I made it! And I’ve kept up the practice mary anne began, a little. Not every single day, but often.
Today I pulled up the phrase “Let your heart instruct you. Listen well. You will know your way.” It’s from one of mary anne’s little boxes of sayings from her site, www.wordshop.com. It seemed especially fitting this month.
May it seems is a month of good news for me. A Mending at the Edge has been on the Pacific Northwest Booksellers bestsellers list since it was released in mid April. The third book in a series often doesn’t sell well so this is great. Along with it, we’ve seen more people at events and signings, too, which is sweet. Then early this week we learned that A Tendering in the Storm, the second book in the series, is a finalist for the Christy Awards, a national award for the best in Christian fiction. The first book in the series didn’t make the Christy cut but it was a finalist for the WILLA Literary Award so it’s amazing to me that this has happened now, after all this time. The list of all the finalists is pretty impressive if you’d care to visit the Christy site. It could make up your reading list for the year! www.christyawards.com
When I read mary anne’s words, I was reminded about the importance of that heart instruction. Since I began this writing journey, I’ve tried so hard to listen to the stories that really called my name, the ones that “instructed my heart” so I could write them down and share them when I’m off on my adventures speaking to writers groups or to educators or to people who just love stories. I’ve tried to do the same when I’m asked to read a book or explore with someone how to get a book published or whether I could endorse their latest work.
The book that was nominated was a hard book to write because of the sadness of the woman’s life at that point. It’s a book about grief and its many siblings and it’s a book about the price of independence and the costs of compliance to a devastating act. Those are hard subjects and I struggled with whether to tell much of that part of her story. But readers have said even though it was a difficult (as in sad) book to read that it was worthy of their time. Several on the blog tour said the series as a whole had truly affected their own life journey.
Still, readers said they’re looking forward to A Mending at the Edge because they have confidence that Emma’s heart will be restored, that she will find her way. And so she did through the arts, through her faith, through community and through her listening to her heart.
This all speaks, though, to the continuing need to listen to my heart. I have to listen when requests come in that I can’t always fill, for events or to speak. I have to learn how to say “No” which I realize I didn’t do so well if you look at my schedule! I have to learn when to say yes as well.
Today I learned that the release date of the quilt book I’ve been so absorbed in for the past 18 months has been put back to January of 2009. Oh how my heart ached when I learned this! Within the hour of discussion with my editor I went through all the stages of grief: anger, denial, bargaining, depression and finally, acceptance.
While my mind was racing, my heart was saying “what’s the best thing for this story?”
It is the best thing to be able to have the best product possible, the best way for pre-sales, for getting the book into places we hope it will reach people. The more we talked, the more my heart settled. Yes, I have to disappoint people who hoped to have the book to give as Christmas gifts! Yes, I had to change some dates already scheduled for events related to it. But on the plus side, the entire team can do the work they want to do to make this book their best and publishing really is a team sport. All the facets must come together or we’re lost.
On the plus side, Oregon celebrates its 150th birthday next year and the quilt book will be available for that, a perfect way to memorialize Oregon’s history with this historical/quilt/inspiring book. The national association of communal societies will meet in the fall next year and the publisher hopes to do additional promotion through the year so that will be a good linkage. It’s actually a plus that I’ll have “an Oregon Story” (though it’s much more an American story) since my next novel will be set in the Midwest and my Northwest fans might feel slighted a bit. Now they won’t be. They’ll have their own book to devour (hopefully) for 2009 and still have an appetite (hopefully) for my grandmother’s story set in Minnesota and Wisconsin, my home state, when it comes out in April of 2009.
Plus, I’m in the midst of having my website revamped and I’ll be learning a new program so I can post my monthly memo and keep my schedule up instead of having to bug my very busy niece. And I’m already busy researching the second novel in the “Portrait of a Woman” historical series so really, as Jerry said, everything will work out.
It’s really nice to have his support and to know that he, too, can adapt to this change. We’ve been having quite a good time on our journey of travel this year, sometimes with the dog, sometimes not and we’ve discovered that spending that much time together is really pretty special. We’re fortunate indeed.
I don’t know what sort of things may be happening in your lives right now but I do know that taking that deep breath and listening to your heart is a truly good thing to do. You will find your way. And you will not be alone.
I do have lots of events in May so I hope to see you at some of those. Most of all I thank each of you for making room in your heart for my stories.
Warmly, Jane

Friday, April 18, 2008

blog tour, transportation, quilt show and spring

My dear webmaster still hasn't loaded up on my site www.jkbooks.com so I appreciate you waiting for that first chapter read. It won't be long and I'll have a new webmaster (my niece with her five kids is moving on to other things!) but thanks for your patience until then.

On Tuesday, my newest book released! It's called A Mending at the Edge and there's a great review of all three books in the series at www.burlysue.blogspot.com written by Kim Ford. I hope you'll go visit it. Tonight I have a signing at Powell's Bookstore in Beaverton, OR. Powelle's is one of the world's largest independent bookstores. I won't be in the downtown store. My first and only visit there was two days after 9/11 and 125 people came, seeking comfort I think and because all the airlines were cancelled.

I had a great trip to Chicago at the quilt show and some other events there. But I was booked on American Airlines and was on the first flight cancelled out of Portland on Tuesday and on the last flight cancelled on Saturday night getting out of Chicago. They flew me to Dallas where THAT flight was cancelled. They found another plane, and we took the skytrain to the new gate and the skytrain stalled! People don't like to get behind me at the copy machine...but this time it wasn't me! Still, we formed a community we people trying to get to Portland and stuck in the world of transportation.

Today it's beautiful on this ranch, white fluffly clouds shadowing the growing alfalfa and the newly seeded sections of the fields. We're fortunate to be here yet another spring. I hope wherever you are today you are inhaling the goodness in your life. Jane

Friday, April 4, 2008

Italy and the next book

Italy was Bella! We had a wonderful time, walking everywhere (except when we took the bus or the train). On Easter in Sorrento, the church bells start clanging at midnight and ring on the hour with fireworks at noon. At the hotel, each room was served a lovely traditional Easter bread shaped like a cross (I didn’t eat it but my traveling friend, Sandy, did and announced it bella!). Behind our hotel a series of steps, hundreds, made their way up the steep mountain side and at different landings were the fourteen stations of the cross. Someone had placed a flower in a vase at each station and at the top there were bouquets of flowers inside the small chapel there. We could see out over the Bay of Napoli to Vesuvius (we could also see Vesuvius from our hotel room window, just lying in our beds!) and view the town of Sorrento with its red-tiled roofs and olive and orange groves throughout the city. Easter morning we kept walking up along a path that eventually took us to another road and there we walked another hour or more past olive groves and orchards where both oranges and lemons grew on the same trees. We carried our umbrellas that day but didn’t need them. It was truly a lovely day of newness all around and I felt so blessed to be spending Easter Sunday in Italy.
At the noon meal later, the hotel brought in a huge (the size of a five year old child) chocolate egg. They then cracked it open and we all got sheets of dark chocolate as dessert for our meal. In Sorrento, they also have a custom where smaller chocolate eggs (the size of footballs) are filled with trinkets, little bracelets or toys for children, and the stores the day before were filled with these presents wrapped like we wrap roses with colorful cellophane paper. Easter Monday is also a holiday there. And by the way, the lemons are the size of grapefruits. We learned that they’re on steroids, really, and people buy them for the novelty of the size but they also cut them open, take out the pulp and put in lemon sorbet that is then frozen and the dessert is served in that huge lemon half with a tiny piece of chocolate for color. I loved that sorbet! It didn’t have flour in it either the way gelato does.
Good Friday was a special day as well as most of the small towns held processions to the church carrying a statue of the crucified Christ. We arrived late on Good Friday and were caught in the traffic jams following those processions. Believe me, the streets are very narrow in places and our driver knew the back roads or we’d still be there waiting for all the little Smart Cars and scooters and three-wheel vehicles to make their way through the maze of alleys and roads so narrow I could stand in the middle and almost touch both sides of the walls lining some of them!
But it was the people and their dogs we loved the best! Of course we were meeting people from around the world, especially Europe, at the conference; but the community of Sorrento was filled with warm and helpful people too. No one every groused at us when we had to ask for directions or asked what something was. I ate gluten-free and only had one bad day (and that might have been from the excess chocolate!) We took some side trips along the Almafi coast, the Isle of Capri (pronounced with the emphasis on the first syllable, Cap) and into Rome and even there we figured out how to adapt when the bus we’d planned to take back to Sorrento decided to leave two hours before their printed schedule. So we took the trains and walked back up to our hotel after 10:00 PM feeling very safe (and escorted by some of the street-savvy dogs who show up often to check out the scrap-department. Sadly, we left them few!)
I told Jerry our next project should be to photograph “The Dogs of Sorrento” as they were many and varied but also well-behaved. And it would get us back to Italy!
Maybe I was thinking dogs so much because while I was gone our old lab, Brody, had another stroke and lost control of his functions and Jerry had to have him put him down. I’d said a good good-bye to him before I left thinking that at 14, he might not make it many more months. He didn’t. He was such a good dog and we’d had him at least three years longer than we’d thought we would by giving him what we called “Happy Pills” for his arthritis and other pains. He eventually stopped going on walks with me and with Bo, but before then, he’d walk as far as the two trees that were on the property when we bought it, hackberry trees, growing on the ridge below the house. He’d lie there in the shade and wait until we made the river loop and came back by to pick him up, often having to get the six-wheeler so he could just step in and ride back up the hill. Brody came to us when Mariah did the first time, when she was seven. She’ll be 21 this year so we’ve had a long and loving time with Brody. He’ll be missed.
My sessions at the conference went well. Talking about Enduring Stories or The Seven Thoughts that Hold us Back and how we can transform them, appear to be universal issues. The women from Qatar spoke to me afterwards (there were three of them attending the conference) about how fear and anxiety and unworthiness have to be addressed as their country undertakes an amazing commitment to education bringing six American universities in to provide degrees in medicine, engineering, architecture and more at the upper end while committing to extensive early childhood education and on up to stop what they called the “brain drain” of their countrymen and women who leave to study abroad and often don’t come back. They hope to educate their citizens there and keep them there to continue to advance this small Middle Eastern nation rich in natural gas reserves. The head of their ministry of education is a woman whom these women said was truly a model for them. It was a delight to discover that the material I had to offer, the material that is both a part of my mental health life and my writing life and homestead, too, can speak to people on the other side of the world, about changing how we feel and changing the lives around us by how we live our own.
The main presenter was Erik Weihenmayer, the first blind man to climb all seven of the world’s highest mountains including Mt. Everest. His presentation brought both tears and laughter along with awe of the power of the human spirit to dream big, to gather up a team of remarkable people (19 of the 21 person team also summitted, the greatest number of team members to do so on any expedition) and to learn to reach further and higher and to inspire those around them to seek greater heights as well. He also showed video clips of some of the challenges of the climb; but also of new technologies that showed that the brain continues to “see” even when the eyes don’t and he is testing a device where he holds a sensor on his tongue which is connected to a computer carried on his back that sends him messages where he can “see” to play tic tac doe with his daughter and see well enough to catch her cheating! He did have three O’s in a row before her three X’s! Ah, the amazing brain.
His story also spoke to me of the work I did with families challenged by developmental disabilities and several other presenters spoke about educational successes around the world in serving students with special needs. The head of the Perkins School for the Blind also presented and gave a horrifying statistic that over 6 million blind children world-wide are not involved in any educational programs because in many countries they do not believe they are entitled to education. Through Erik’s non-profit foundation, he took six blind Tibetan students on a rock-climbing expedition. Imagine the soaring of their spirit to know that they could indeed learn to do things that even sighted people (like me!) quiver at doing, climbing some huge rock, and be successful at it!
So this April, I hope you’re ready to see how eariler inspiring moments and beliefs of my life and Emma’s history got translated into A Mending at the Edge. It’ll be out in two weeks! You’ll be getting a postcard if you’re on my mailing list and there are a number of events where I hope to see you including the coast launch of the book sponsored by Time Enough Books in Ilwaco, WA, not far from where Emma and Christian lived their lives (at the Heritage Museum there, April 20th at 2:00 PM) and of course in Aurora itself on Mother’s Day at 2:00 PM. A new exhibit is opening that weekend as well “All About Emma” and I believe there’ll be tours of some of the museum sites including the house that Emma once lived in. So if you’re in the Northwest….come visit.
I’m scheduled for a number of blog tours during the next weeks. I just have to figure out how to let you all know that! Hmm, maybe posting them on my own blog? You think? I’m still getting the hang of all this!
We’ll be back on the Oregon Coast on April 26th in little Toledo, OR at 1:00 at the Methodist Church there. We’re (Jerry and me) invited back by the Serendipity Book Group that’s been meeting for many years and one of their members, Dixie McKay, is the mom of the woman who invited me to Sorrento as part of the European Council of International Schools. Her daughter is second from the left in this photograph (with new friends Fran (on the far left) and Adelle, next to me, also presenters at the conference). This was at the gala on Saturday night where we were serenaded by waiters who sang so beautifully they could have been on stage. Maybe during the day, they are! Dixie, the mom, rounded up close to a hundred people in that little church the last time we came. We hope we can repeat it!
Very soon, the first chapter of A Mending at the Edge will be posted on my website, www.jkbooks.com I hope you’ll be interested enough to want to read more and then this fall, will also want to see photographs both old and new of the quilts and crafts for which the Aurora colony was known regionally in the book Aurora: An American Experience in Quilt and Craft. We hope through the photographic non-fiction book to let people around the country (maybe the whole world!) know of this group of Christians who sometimes stumbled and fell but who picked themselves up and did their best to live out their Christian beliefs including the Diamond Rule, where they hoped to make others’ lives better than their own. It’s a worthy effort to pursue and this month of spring I hope to do something each day that just might make another’s life better than mine. It will be a challenge for I am humbled by the richness of my own life.
I hope you’re humbled by your own as well. Ciao for now!