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Portraits Galore in the Nation’s Capital

Taxes Off, Time for Road Trip to DC and Back from the international Portrait Society of America’s 2018 convention at the Hyatt-Regency, a luxurious accommodation for near thousand of us.

Pick up your tickets and materials and attend the wonderful Face-Off, where 16 or more known artists paint from six or so models in a giant wheel which you can circle or sit in one of the spokes or both, snap shots of each artist’s progress and wonder which you would bid on in the later auction…which reminds you of a planned 6 x 9 silent auction on Friday evening. I missed that this year, but have a wall of several of them from other years. Follow along @Portrait Society of America. The keynote speakers were stellar.

Decades’ worth of art knowledge is crammed into various sessions, demonstrations, and slides of the greats–Daniel Greene, Everett Raymond Kinstler, and Burton Silverman.  Contributing faculty members judged portfolios, spoke crystallized wisdom or demonstrated painting or drawing or sculpting on stage. Preparation in subject matter and development, in style, craft, and knowledgeable use of materials.

Rick Casali, PSoA 2018 Face-Off

Years of strategy in projecting subject and painter with projectors, cameras, mirrors, and lights so what you see is both model subject and portrait painter as he progresses, side-by-side. Years of work in prizes won garnering the admiration of peers, money, accolades, and certificates at the Saturday night banquet, the Oscars event of this portrait society.

Time rubbing shoulders with those whose journey is similar though different, to see those you’ve exchanged thoughts with on Facebook and other social media, and meet some new ones.

My special picks of sessions that filled up early were Robert Liberace and the painter whose images include New York’s mosaic subways, Daniel Green. I met Virgil Elliot going and coming who has become my single best and most faithful mentor of both oil painting technique and archival chemistry. What a treat seeing him. And Luana Lucona Winner of Raleigh gave me awesome tips on my portfolio, as well as painting direction to take the coming year.

Taking my own yoghurt and dry muesli for quick eats proved helpful. Standing in line for each item tortures the feet and the soul (sole), for which no shoe made is comfortable enough.

Each talk or session gave the dream of making it that much more substance and drops of painting magic and pixie dust covered the talks, the friendships, the sessions for the next portrait commission, the next advertising push, the next International Portrait Competition. Oil painting, color principles, watercolor encouragement from Mary Whyte,  a Sunday morning devotional by Paul Newton which included a stunning collection of artworks done over 6 years for the Vatican was a surprise note.

I kept missing one of PSoA’s founders, Gordon Wetmore, who died a few years back. He always knew me and spoke to me in the elevator by name.

Clinton Hodges, Fellow North Carolinian

I saw a bunch of North Carolinians.

And I got two special meals out with my husband Sandy, who is my biggest fan ever. I’ll give you an update on the particulars, later.

But my favorite picture taken, and my best sideline experience was talking to Clinton Hodges of Exec-U-Shine in the lobby and enjoying a deluxe moment of having my boots shined, and chatting. Clinton is from Selma, NC, and he let me take some photographs of him that may well show up in a later painting. Thanks to his directions, we cut at least an hour off of our return trip, as well. Thanks, Clinton, and thanks PSoA! Rock on!

Also thanks to the wonderful PSoA staff who served tirelessly, and to the wonderful gentleman who found my cell phone left within minutes! Relief–

Gothic Novels–Dark, Supernatural, and Plenty of Spies

When I write books, usually there are Gothic elements in them, even if they are not primarily Gothic novels. One of those elements is spy stuff. All the old Gothics have spy stuff in them…and it is to those earliest examples I have returned in my own writing while keeping the new eNovels thoroughly modern.

updated cover of A Deadly Provenance, set in southern Germany

With that in mind, one look at current news will show you how current and thoroughly modern spying is just now. There’s the 69-year-old political exile Nikolai Glushkov as an example, the Russian found dead in London on a not-too-distant Monday night. His demise was said by the British police to be a murder–a compression to the neck. And Nikolai had been very open in telling people he was on a Kremlin hit list. Glushkov had been a close associate of Boris Berezovsky who was a Russian oligarch and prominent Putin critic. Boris was found dead on the bathroom floor of his ex-wife’s house in Ascot, southeast England back in 2013. After the death of his friend, Glushkov claimed to be on this hit list that far back, and named another victim, Alexander Litvinenko who had been killed in 2006 with polonium poison.

When we did our mission work in Europe and traveled behind the Iron Curtain, we knew a man, a very young man named Sergei Kourdakov who escaped a Russian trawler and swam to political safety. We first met him in the U.S. at church services. He was on a circuit telling everyone his story and his conversion–no one would believe his freedom would only last a few years. While his early death looked accidental, no one of us who knew him believed it was anything but murder–a hit from the then-KGB who operated freely all over the world.

In my novel Veiled in White,

Set in Estonia with a North Carolina heroine.

the spy element was part of the inherent fabric of Estonia, its setting. Near St. Petersburg (in the USSR), the small country of Estonia was occupied by the Russians and has always been a target of spies, so the story of the North Carolinian artist who became an art student there and whose American outspokenness got her in trouble on the issue of spies is very accurate and believable.

The spy element is alive and well in the novel A Deadly Provenance. In this case it is connected to the former Nazi network with entanglements into the present and emerging one. Its tentacles reached back into the earlier movement in the USA where a movement of the same Nazi element was born, as well. So when you read about these things in the novel, you can know just how serious, treacherous, and deadly those forces were. There is a love story along with the spy one which brings in a redemptive element.

American innocents spied on in The Czech Republic

Yuletide Folly has no spy feature in it per se, but Stormclyffe, Weep! has Irish spy stories in it, and Czech Point recreates the spy scene rather accurately that we ourselves encountered in our tourist trips into the Communist East Bloc.

The spy element of nations is similar to the spying done by secret societies rampant in

Stone of Her Destiny, from Cape Fear to Kintyre, and provides the impetus to a plot to infiltrate and commandeer the Christian Church. Spying is what secret societies do, and a group or nation only has to value the rewards of doing the lurking, stalking, listening, and recording to set aside the funds to do it, and the game is on.

I watched NBC’s live broadcast of the Russian Ambassador to the UK’s talk on Syria and the latest chemical event, and can only say, how can people not acknowledge the many faces worn by the many interacting countries? If only simplicity and innocence were possible…but then, we would have no books.

On to romance with a mission.

Watercolor Bucket

I’m thirsty. I’m wanting cool, clear water–the water of watercolors.

For a whole year now I’ve painted primarily in oils, building form and surprising it with color. Day after day I’ve painted oils, primarily two major works, sometimes up to 7 hours a day, with only exercise breaks. Not giving it up, though the cry for focus almost wins.

I just heard national watercolorist Mary Whyte, faculty at Portrait Society of America that I’ll go to in April for about the 10th time, and Juror for the Watercolor Society of North Carolina’s 2017 Exhibition in Greensboro confess to giving up painting in oils to pour it all into watercolors. That was during that show which she juried my Crab Art-Attack into, and by the way is still in WSNC’s  traveling art show.

Focus has its rationale.

However, if you have five talents, why turn four of them in? Besides, everyone knows water refreshes. What do you do when the well runs dry, the fire runs cold, writer’s block appears? You take that talent or project back to the well  that was filling and pick up your brush to dip into the new water.

During this same year of oil concentration, I’ve been remembering halcyon watercolor days. Getting thirsty for watercolors. Watching two watercolor students I have grow in their expressions in this medium has primed the well. Teaching different strokes, like wet-in-wet and wet-next-to-wet has pumped me. A set of watercolor paper right next to my oil of a beautiful young lady in a red dress is calling me subliminally each time I walk by.

I’ve been photographing what charms the eye, blue glass with light splashing color from it, a face caught in the trees.

Watercolor is a user-friendly medium, particularly suited for glass, light, the tulip tree blossoms now blooming, and the dragonfly I’ve been saving with his delicate network of wings and iridescent bits of film between the assorted shapes. Perhaps spring itself makes me thirsty for watercolor.

I can’t wait.

At the Portrait Society of America meeting, the professional speakers emphasize our need to paint self-portraits. I shouldn’t be surprised, it’s recommended by the author of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, as well. I’ve been struggling with voice and how mine is different and how to make it appealing. I’m struggling up to a new level, and am about to attempt a new effect a step or two away from my strong realism. I’m not giving that up nor am I turning abstract. The image, however, reminds me of the opening to the Dr. Blake mysteries or the Sherlock movie’s beginnings, and there is a tree over my face. The symbolism is heavy and there is a poetry merge going on, as well.

So I am about to talk my way through the difficulties of the new attempt. I can’t just start, like I sometimes do–I tried that on a watercolor a little over a year ago and that one failed I think due to the watery looks of street lights seducing me into believing all my perspective prelim work was unnecessary. When something looks fluid and easy, it can do that. So I’m going to work this one up a bit first. I have to figure out how to get soft colors without turning them all grey.

It’s a spiritual walk as well as a push into a new realm in craft and expression, and I’m nervous.

I’ll probably have several paintings going at once, and while I’m chilling on this one busy in my other subjects, the answers will probably slide in, full blown.

And while I’m teaching watercolor, something will hit me like Colombo solving a mystery and I’ll have the answer. That still doesn’t keep me from having to work hard, struggle with craft and concept until the baby arrives.

I’m feeling expansive right now, and if I’ve made you thirsty I have an ebook Watercolor Painting Techniques Easy(ier) to introduce watercolor to you. Just send your email address to joartis@aol.com, and I’ll get it to you.

P.S. I finished the drawing–now I need to start splashing! And when I go to the Portrait Society of America in D.C. in April, I’ll hear about watercolor, too, from Mary Whyte.

Learn from Masters, Not Grandma Moses

This morning I was checking out literary magazines I didn’t know and found an artist who advertised herself as, let’s say, “New-York-City raised novice who creates her works sporadically in between many other interests and draws realism inspirationally, inherited talent, no formal education,” examples of her pictures supplied.

Well, I’m sorry, call me cruel, but I laughed my head off. Why do literary people brag about untaught talent in visual arts and demand rigid schooling in other arts, like poetics? This bio truly wins the ‘educated fool’ of the year award. I don’t make fun of people’s fledgling attempts, by the way, only of their attempt to make their stubbornness against learning visual art skill into a badge of honor, a résumé.

Educated fool sounds a lot like ‘noble savage,’ a school of thought which maintains, for instance, that people like Reubens used talented-but-untaught students to paint his museum quality paintings. Sure, students were used in many studios, but they underwent rigorous training in the effects and techniques of the artist they worked for, high-end, not gauche techniques. There’s a line to be crossed here past happy little trees, fan brushes, liquid oils, and dabs.

On one Facebook feed a Canadian artist was touted who used students–but he taught them in such a way as to produce a consistent high-end look prior to his stepping in to put his expertise to the final. I don’t understand people in education who think skill bubbles out of talent full-blown. Why would we need schools?

Okay, you’re on the side of the angels. You have talent. You’ve drawn how-to’s, taken a course in high school. You know you have to work for it. So the idea of artists learning skills in art drawing, painting, perspective, and design does not make you stubbornly resistant to learning. A teacher who believed students painted Reubens’ paintings asked me, what ARE Old Masters’ techniques? For all of you I’ve delved into my Old Master’s studio training in oils and watercolors in Germany and come up with 12 principles gleaned from the Old Masters. Enjoy. And please try them out.

1. Principle of Lost and Found Lines. Sounds mysterious, but really it is just a step beyond outline drawing per se. Most people drawing outlines of subjects think they must draw a figure, for instance, without lifting their pencil. Even sketchers who dab pencil strokes will do this, fully roping in a face, an ear, a shoulder until it looks like a forensic appendage cut off and pasted back on. They have ears growing out of necks, make noses hang from eyes and all sorts of literal disasters. For this principle to make real sense to you, think about the sun shining on an object and observe that happening, and you will see there IS no line on the outside of a nose on a bright day. Start in the middle of open space with a line. At the hair line, leave spaces between hair strokes and avoid the swimming cap effect. Keep on looking for places to lift your pencil or brush and leave a space, and your sophistication will grow. This is the opposite of the stained glass effect with black outlines around everything.

2. Principle of Avoiding Lines Pointing Off Your Work.

Straight line, dark next to light, going off top of page

Avoid drawing or painting stiff straight lines toward the edges. At an exhibit, the viewer will follow them to the next painting. Also, anything organic like a tree has bumps, turns, and curves here and there, and are not perfectly straight. Likewise avoid painting into the edges or corners.

3. Principle of the Foot Against the Edge. I’m guilty of this one. Next time I do it, I’ll try to do a trompe l’oeil post to strain against. The trick is to plan your composition to keep the limbs well within the picture plane.

4. Principle of the Focal Point: If you are not conscious of this, you might create 10 different focal points in one painting which will make the eye jump around like a jumping bean. The focal point, or the place in the painting you want the eye to return to again and again is defined as where the darkest dark meets the lightest light. This you want intentional, not accidental.

5. Principle of Unrelieved Tension. When you position two objects next to each other with only a centimeter or two’s space between, you actually create a kind of focal point, because the eye goes back and forth between the spots seeking to join them and can’t concentrate on the rest of the work.

6. Principle of Too Many White Spots. This happens accidentally in an oil when there’s no under-painting and not enough paint on the surface, the paint contracts and leaves bare spots. or in watercolor when you drag a dark, nearly dry color over a light space and the brush hops over the paper’s bumps–a technique known as dry-brushing. This is another way of achieving a focal point, by the way.

7.  Principle of Limited Highlights and Accents. My German Old Masters teacher in Munich taught there should never be more than 3 of each. Highlights should be one spot of pure white or near it, one spot of white mixed with yellow ochre, one a little less than that. Again, much goes along with this. You would never put a white highlight in a black forest,

White highlights in near-black

for instance. You don’t go suddenly from one extreme to another. Accents are the darkest darks. You put them in at the end where you want to emphasize focal point. Nothing finishes a painting like a well-placed accent.

8.  Principle of Facial Proportions: Make sure your eyes are placed halfway down the head. Too high up, and they look quite strange. People forget there needs to be space allowed above the hairline.

9.  Principle of Stretching Color. Learning to discern colors in objects is a lifelong artof looking, comparing, testing combinations of paint. If there is a hint of green in a shadow, you can stretch the color and add a bit more for enhanced effect.

10. Principle of Not Over-mixing. Why people think they must go back and forth on their palettes until their paint is one uniform wall paint color, I cannot fathom. We could learn from our brother craftsmen, the toll painters that we may double and triple load our brushes and carry colors side by side onto the surface for a much nicer effect. One of my young students dipped 10 times and brought it back to black. Also over stroking. If you stroke over your beautiful colors more than twice you have blended them back together. One very important place this truth shows up is in hair.

11. Principle of feathering. This means going in one direction with a slight lift at the end. Using a soft touch, barely touch a painted edge at the edge.

Grey edge on arm turns it

12. Principle of Grey Edges.

Grey edges turn a round form. A light edge makes it turn up to the eye. Something one can easily forget and produce figures that are too crisp and cookie cutter.

All of these principles keep the eye forever exploring, checking, comparing. And checklists are sometimes what mastery is all about. Have fun trying these out!

The SUPERNATURAL in Christianity and Beyond

Few realize it, but supernatural powers have often been attributed to stones, including in fiction, like Ali Babi and the Forty Thieves written in the 1800’s with secret word of access, “Open, Sesame.”

Nations recognize talking stones and the sensational regularly, however. Among them would be Scotland, Ireland, Lhasa in central Tibet, Sri Lanka, and Israel. Under the temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem lies a foundation stone held to be the spot of either the Holy of Holies or the Outer Court of the First Temple. Stones credited with supernatural powers are legendary. Scotland’s Stone of Destiny, snatched as a spoil of war by Edward in 1296 is said to be where Jacob slept, receiving the vision from God of angels descending on a ladder. Jesus used mute rock to symbolize indifference to him, proclaiming that rocks would cry out to point to him, if necessary.

Supernatural is at the heart of Christian and Jewish history with the Ten Commandments emblazoned on stone tablets directly from God, to include angel visitations, inception of Mary by the Holy Spirit, a virgin birth, appearance and vocalization of God at Jesus’ baptism, three years of major miracles by Christ and his disciples then and beyond, His resurrection, the rolling away of the stone entry to Jesus’ tomb, conversion of Christian-killer Paul through a public vision making Paul blind, speaking of thousands in unknown tongues, the raising of the dead. Over the years traditional denominationalism gave way to evangelicalism which has now imploded, and everyone is looking for a new moniker.

Tradition often leaves little room for the supernatural.

Mainstream Christians fail to realize that top religious entities, the Catholic Church for one, have documented provisions for supernatural visitations of aliens, a controversial arena shut down by the ‘median voice’ of believers of many faiths. Others believe the final days will explode with supernatural visitations touching Earth. Whether God origins or no are issues resurfacing for free-floating Christians at large who have distanced themselves from the many ecclesiastical bodies.

Re-enter one such Stone–stolen by England’s Edward in 1296 as a spoil of war and returned to Scotland in 1996–a stone on which Scotland’s royals were crowned, and after 1296, was England’s coronation stone, a stone reputed to speak. Some argue that Lia Fail designation was meant only for Ireland’s stone by the same name which bears a totally different look, located on the hill of Tara instead of on Moot Hill. Others say that name still applies to Scotland’s Stone of Destiny under guard at Edinburgh Castle with the crown jewels, brought in on November 30, 1996 in a motorcade to great fanfare.

Back home, now, in Scotland–or is it? Prominent Scottish citizens like Alex Salmond are quoted as questioning Edinburgh Castle Stone’s authenticity.

Diana Gabaldon uses a stone in Scotland for the fictional entry of her character into a fantasy historical past. She uses the history of my ancestor, Farquhard Campbell, in her books that started with Outlander. My romance novel and thriller is based on a Scottish stone as well, but one this author speculatively posits a future for that is based on its history. Stone of Her Destiny’s heroine has direct lineage from that very real but difficult-to-be-traced Farquhard Campbell and his wife Isabella McAllister Campbell whose story bears on this debate in a startling enough way that it might wake the the dead.

Ever since the Stone of Destiny was liberated from its throne chair in the wee hours of November 14, 1996, in Westminster Abbey, the public have wanted to hear every possible detail about the stone’s journey. Since the stone’s vitae contains a history of thefts as well as coronations, one asks a bold and valid question. And now on the eve of destruction, perhaps the ancient stone which one legend holds is the stone that carried the arc of the covenant of the Hebrew children for 40 years in the wilderness, the very stone Jacob lay on when he received a vision from God. Perhaps the stone wants to speak again.

Perhaps it wants to name the true Monarch of the World. The real Stone could resurface just in time to speak once more and shake the Earth.

Follow Kenna as she involves Scottish Laird by the name of her ancestor and his son Lane of Blackheart Heights in a history-propelled search through current-day Scotland into the world of the supernatural to find the Holy Grail, the Stone of Her Destiny.  You can buy this book in the special promo right now at the link. Look for a new promotion first thing in the new year.

Belief in supernatural activity of stones recedes to early folklore and Babylonian culture. Perhaps even for today it is not so strange a belief. A speaking stone could act as pivot point for people of faith, to forever unify or divide.

New Gothic Romance

Lulled to sleep by grace. Soothed into inaction by forgiveness. Numbed by grief. Led to apathy by distant images of hate. Murderous, thunderous images in abeyance, a shark’s shredding teeth kept at bay by one sheer glass screen. A letter from the past slaps Kenna into action. Who knew an ancient letter could wake the dead, give a country’s coronation stone voice?

Another in her line of Gothic romances, Joanna McKethan’s Stone of Her Destiny takes us on the journey of a quest novel, as Kenna moves from NC to Scotland to cover news of the returning coronation rock “Stone of Destiny” to Edinburgh Castle after a 700-year gap where it sat in Westminster Abbey as a spoil of war. Galvanized by loss and grief, Kenna shoves everything aside to pursue her holy grail, the real Stone of Destiny. A daunting task unless like Kenna you are chosen by God or circumstance or 7 generations of lineage to reactivate facts overlooked by everyone before, facts rediscovered in Kenna’s attic lineage–and in her new residence at Blackheart Heights in Tarbert, Scotland.

From history come forces that stalk her today, kidnap her, watch her and let her go on an unseen tether. Secret societies search the same holy grail and think she knows something, or that she may lead them to something they, too have lost. They must have the real stone at any cost and they believe she just may lead them to it.

Suspense doesn’t grow without love and romance hand in hand in this novel. You might say one feeds the other.

Spies, art objects, love, and danger fill Joanna McKethan’s other novels as well as this new one; Veiled in White is set in spy-infested Estonia near St. Petersburg, Russia. Yuletide Folly is set in Southern Pines on a politician’s megalithic horse estate, and A Deadly Provenance sends a heroine into threats in post-Nazi, Cold War Bavaria, Germany. Her Gothic romances contain espionage in no small measure,  like Czech Mate.

Stone of Her Destiny is due to be released November 30, 2017, on St. Andrews Day–the stone was stolen in 1296 and was returned by Prince Andrew on St. Andrew’s Day to Scotland’s Edinburgh Castle November 30 in 1996.

Local Author’s Book Release Nov. 30 Features Stone of Destiny

From Scotland to England, 1296. From England to Scotland, 1996. After 21 years this November 30, 2017, the Stone of Destiny might have a new destiny planned for its future.

Organizers of Perth’s bid to be UK City of Culture 2021 want the stone restored to its “historic home”–I am assuming they mean Scone Palace (pronounced skoon), as it was known as the Stone of Scone all these years, as well as the Stone of Destiny, since the kings of Scotland were crowned on the Stone there at Moot Hill at Scone Palace. But I may be wrong. I imagine the wrangling and the wranglers are both kept secret to some degree. When officials in Scone first voiced loud objections to housing the returned stone at Edinburgh Castle, they were told Edinburgh had better security than Scone Palace, or such was the hearsay I picked up at Scone Palace when we visited in 2010, a place replete with so much history of the Stone and the Kings, it screams its historical claim.

I imagine organizers must be planning ramped up security for the Stone, to have the chance to win their bid.

Not many days from now, on St. Andrew’s Day, November 30th, Scots will celebrate the return of the famous stone to their country after being held hostage by England for 700 years, ostensibly a serendipitous response to Lord Forsyth of Drumlean’s request made on behalf of his daughter to return the Scots their stone. I say that because I know Robbie the Pict lead the charge in what I consider his hilarious legal letters to police constables, royals, the Queen, Princess Diana, and who knows all (there’s a book by him, of course) at least three years prior to the stone’s return filled with records of his 3 years’ worth of onslaughts by post. If there was ever a time for a good laugh, it’s reading his not-dry-at-all legal letters as to the real ownership of the stone, the filing of a claim of theft, and more.

Whatever plans are being made, I’m sure it is under the cloak of secrecy, as the first time of planning was for moving the Stone.

Even the Stone of Destiny‘s original return into Scotland was made 2 weeks prior to its show arrival. It was snuck in under the cloak of darkness, after being snuck out from Westminster Abbey under the cloak of darkness, between its closing and 2a.m. when it left on November 15, my birthday. In some undisclosed location in those two weeks following, it was housed at a secret location where it was cleaned, dressed up, and catalogued like some artifact from the British Museum in order to be paraded on November 30th down the Royal Mile encased and highlighted by glass in the back of the van. The Scots’ precious Stone of Destiny was surrounded by glass walls for all to see, proceeded and protected by a company of police escorts in full dress.

Crowds lined up to view the spectacle. Some of this, of course, occurs in the context of Stone of Her Destiny when Kenna and Blackheart Castle’s heir apparent, Lane, use her press passes to view the event at Edinburgh Castle–the event that propelled Kenna into a new life in Scotland after losing her uncle (surrogate father) and romantic connection where she lived in Charlotte and on the Cape Fear River. Kenna traces her lineage of seven generations to Kintyre in the town of Tarbert in this Gothic romance set both in Scotland and in NC along the Cape Fear, stalked by dark forces across continents.

Last year a 20-year celebration was headed up by the HES (Historic Environment Scotland). They need to keep the hype up and plan a good one for this year, as well, imho, but Scone Palace, billed as the original home of the Stone, might do well to keep up its campaign for historicity’s sake. You are welcome to use my novel Stone of Her Destiny to stir up conversation about the ‘Cludgie Stane.’ The Stone’s past before 900A.D. is steeped in legend and often this incarnation of the stone is itself questioned as to whether or not it is the real stone, but that’s another story for another day.

For me, the days I write poetry kiss the ordinary with extra.

From the start, I enter a zone, oxygenated, fresh, a walk into the new or into the old with new sight. It is at once a fragile state and tensile strong. I begin with a touch of fairy dust, proceed into intense struggle, and emerge with a secret stash.

Are the works good, great, or perfect? Of course not. Those adjectives don’t really apply. Does it speak? Is the voice clear? Does the string hook you and pull you in? Does the silk envelop and lift? Those are better questions, along with myriad others.

This week, my husband’s brother Robert requested the rights to publish the poem I wrote to his, my husband’s, and their brother James’s father who died not many years ago.

Of course I said yes. Most poets would, and I liked this poem and writing and re-writing it very much. I was excited when Jonathan Kevin Rice accepted it into the Iodine Poetry Review, accepted some suggestions he made, and then was more than happy to see it published there. See my earlier post which contains the poem.

I promised in still another post to let you see two winners I had in the North Carolina Poetry Society’s Pinesong Awards 2017. Here they are.

Poetry of Witness, 2nd Place

His Time Has Come

Silently I stand, too young

to speak, only listen, see,

I am the accidental witness

to your race. How does one

so young see it all–your car

racing him head to head

down the road–his car flips

over and over, crashes near

me, but others reach you quicker,

try to pull you from the wreck,

your neck is broken; you are

a young black man I do not know.

I mourn, cry for the life you

never had, and now I see

the car that raced you–white

one with a stripe, return

from the opposite direction,

as though a first responder.

This time his lights are flashing;

he wears official clothes,

exits his squad car to take

charge, file white papers,

end the race he had begun.

He glares, warns me off.

That was then. Now I am

old; my voice returns.

I loved the Judge’s comments, Ray McManus, who said in judging he looked for two possibilities, validation and revelation. He said when poems do this, we don’t just read them, but feel them. He said “His Time Ha Come” was a tight-set poem that explores the agony of silence in our youth and how, in time, that voice returns. He liked especially that the poet leads to the revelation but leaves to the reader to imagine how the voice will return.

Here is the second one:

Up from the Cape Fear

Mary Ruffin Poole American Heritage Award, Third Prize

From my upstairs window looking down, I see

a snake stretched out on sun-warmed gray stone.

Groggy from an afternoon’s nap, I think, charcoal,

round. What type of snake is this who sits upright, walks

on ground, like the serpent in Eve’s garden, neck high;

body spans entrance wing to wing in late summer sun.

Small head, I think, a black snake, or even a racer,

crawling on distended belly, full of rat. My son–

I am thick with sleep that won’t recede–he leaves

tomorrow for duty in Iraq. I see it as an omen.

Mesmerized, I watch, hypnotized by a snake

whose body is bigger, fuller, rounder than his head

who stretches out at 18 feet here in old N.C. We

entertain strange snakes that slither up from Cape Fear.

An albino moccasin, yellow underbelly, once

migrated up the banks of the dry river bed searching water

found us, his eyes red hot coals under the car. Head

raised, he slid aggressively toward us; this one lumbers.

Took two years’ research and a park ranger to discover

we harbored a Vietnamese cobra by our front door.

It’s okay, they don’t use other snakes’ holes;

they’ll keep wandering, looking for their own.

7th Generation Highland Scot Pens Novel on Stone of Destiny

A rock. A sword. A crown. Letters. A Scots legacy.

Beautifully staged and guarded at Edinburgh Castle in Scotland, the rock with a dozen names and at least that many legends of provenance–the Stone of Destiny–returned to Scotland in a cavalcade of royal limousines on November 30, 1996. The Scots’ Coronation Stone will have resided there for thousands of daily viewers for twenty-one years on its anniversary this year.

In a note of interesting happenstance, Prince Andrew himself returned the Stone to Scotland, November 30th, an official holiday named since 1320 St. Andrews Day, a commemoration of the martyrdom of Andrew the apostle in circa 70A.D. The cultural and official exchange took place in Edinburgh Castle. Although accompanied by much pomp and circumstance, the return of the Stone purloined by England’s monarch Edward as war spoils in 1296 from its home at the Palace of Scone in Scotland, is a nominal gesture since it was ‘given’ on a string. The Scots must return it when the next royal is crowned in England. See more photographs on Pinterest.

Kenna Alford believed seeing the Stone’s return firsthand worthy of supreme effort in the novel Stone of Her Destiny, worthy enough to make her life obsession. Positioning Stone’s return with private agendas abroad, she catapulted all to the land of her ancestors. Her knowledge of Scottish forebears bracketed seven generations and encased the very land on which she had lived in North Carolina on the Cape Fear, land acquired by them and kept in family possession since circa 1736. And gave her letters tracing back all the way to that first generation emigrating from Tarbert, out of Campbeltown.

Together, she and Lane, the heir apparent and lord of the castle Blackheart Heights cover this event and many to come. Just like in real life, royals, processions, regalia, all are quite seductive elements to the commoner to watch, follow, and enjoy. If you are close, you can participate in the festivities. And the intrigue.

Kenna thrives on intrigue. The Gothic mansion she grew up in, a Southern ghost-ridden plantation house, has prepared her for the extended stay she begins at gloomy Blackheart Heights with its strange visitor, a little girl, a doll, happenings, and weird presences going bump in the night.

She finds that she has competition in the romantic department, however, and that her lessons in falconing given by Lane at Blackheart are not the only inroads into his life and heart, but that he has something going with a raven-haired beauty named Tarra Montfort. She finds out that the elite family of Montfort’s are highly-placed Masons that plumb the depths beyond their own estate into the castle where she stays. She finds they have a vested interest in that castle, as well.

With the rug pulled out from under her at home, freed to follow the Stone to Scotland and back and if necessary, over the whole world–to her own destiny, she does just that. Freed to love and to marry. Freed to look under rocks, trace the journey of the Stone, and stir up a world of controversy. Free to learn the enhanced significance of the Speaking Stone to international groups bent on acquiring it for themselves. And so many of these groups think the wrong one lies in Edinburgh. So many think she knows something that the rest of the world does not.

She learned the price of her obsession, endless stalking and intrusion, fear for her life and that of her loved ones too late to withdraw from the grim trek her curiosity and resultant knowledge set her out on. She is driven, drawn, and determined, like any self-respecting redhead of Scottish descent. And like most women, susceptible to a romantic relationship.

Stone of Her Destiny is a Gothic suspense slated to appear as an E book on November 30th this year: St. Andrews Day.