I can think of no one who inspires me more to embrace life, to find joy when I’m at my lowest, to know that when I can’t change the circumstance, I can still change my perspective. Through her example, she has taught me that even though I’ve gone through some rough times, I’ve gained more than I lost, and I wouldn’t change a thing. Read her post and see why she inspires so and notice how in both of her photos, she is absolutely gorgeous.
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I first “met” Helena Hann-Basquiat through her guest post on Katie Sullivan’s blog, where she had a hilarious dialogue with a 1300-year-old Druid. I was stunned by her dry humor which had a thread of worldweariness sewn through it. That’s depth, my dear Reader. From there I went to her blog, fell in love, made a few comments, and then was given the honor to read and comment on her then-current work in progress, Three Cigarettes. Helena has published as Jessica B. Bell, a writer that would scare the pants off Stephen King, as well as one volume of her memoirs (check out my review here) as well as a long list of shorter works. Helena is the epitome of prolific.
But Helena is a persona, a fictional character. The genius behind Helena is a Canadian fellow named Ken. Ken recently “came out” via the Sisterwives blog and revealed himself. Or as much as he was comfortable sharing. I still don’t know what his resting heart rate is or if he is lactose-intolerant. Whether I should know, have a right to know, is a subject of infinite interest. Indeed, how much can we readers expect authors to share about themselves? If you want some answers to that question, check out Ken’s discussion with Katie Cross: A Question of Entitlement: What Do Authors Owe Readers?
Being that I am a writer too, I would argue that the reader has no entitlement to an author’s actual identity. Unless that author actually reaches out to the reader, as Ken did with me. I was given a choice. I could have continued with Helena firmly ensconed in my mind as a large-breasted, drop-dead gorgeous woman who had lived through a world of hurt and learned to laugh it off. And who also had a nurturing quality (evidenced by her relationship with her niece Penny) that had been missing in my life while I was growing up. So it was very tempting to leave things be. But I am nothing if not curious so I chose to know.
The only thing that really changed when I found out that she was a he was my respect for and awe of Ken’s work shot up about 1000 percent. And then everything fell into place. Of course, he chose a woman to be his persona. Who better to tell stories of great pain and great joy and all that is in-between but a large-breasted, drop-dead gorgeous woman who had lived through a world of hurt and learned to laugh it off. Helena was/is the perfect persona. She embodies all that is wonderful about Ken and she gives him a safe place through which to tell sad and painful stories as well as tales of joy and humor.
Now, without further adieu, enjoy the following excerpt from Volume 2 of Memoirs of a Dilettante. Then go and order the book through Pubslush.
The Disappearance of Amy LeFevre
I didn’t know Amy LeFevre – not really – but I’d seen her around town, riding her bike in her short shorts and Doc Martens, bruises up and down her legs like tattoos fading in the sun. If you really pressed her about the bruises (and so few ever bothered – – I only asked her once out of polite concern) she’d offer self-deprecatory excuses of clumsiness or claim she was anemic.
She wore those Docs so proudly; she’d had to go to the city to get them, and they seemed to be her declaration that she’d gotten out once, and she would get out again. They had steel toes and Amy had gotten in trouble on more than one occasion for using them against boys who just wouldn’t take no for an answer.
Amy had recently shaved her head, and the oh-so-clever boys in school and around the small-minded small town of Arcadia had taken to changing the words to that old Queen song to sing at her “I want to ride my bi-sexual, I want to ride my dyke!”[1] Amy was not a lesbian, not that it mattered to anyone. Closet homosexuality was not the secret that Amy kept, so their taunts didn’t bother her.
Amy’s father ran the hardware store in Arcadia, just as his father had before him, and he was a small, broken man with a broken marriage and a small house living in a small, broken town, and he was absolutely terrified of two small words: Home Depot.
By day he was congenial, and his customers all loved him and wished him well, and would join in his armchair economics lectures that he would launch into whenever the topic of the big box chains came up, which was nearly always. During business hours it was merely sympathizing and small town solidarity, and the conversations would always just be polite agreement that the winds are changing or some other homily. After hours, Amy’s dad would park himself at the bar, and after a couple of drinks, launch into accusations at fellow townsfolk who he knew, he just knew were doing their shopping at the Home Depot just outside of town and taking food right out of my mouth, goddammit!
This is the man that Amy had to deal with every night, and if Amy wore her shorts so short, well, maybe it was so that her father would have to constantly see the bruises, and maybe, just maybe he’d be ashamed and leave her alone. Or maybe she hoped that the townsfolk would put two and two together and say something, do something – but her cry for help went unanswered, even, I’m ashamed to say, by me. Maybe the reason why she shaved her head was so her father couldn’t grab her hair when she tried to scramble away from him when he came into her room at night stinking of Johnny Walker and the sickly sweet tobacco of those cheap cigars he liked to smoke.
One day, Amy just disappeared.
By the time they discovered her father’s body at the bottom of his basement stairs, Amy was long gone.
They found her bike at the Amtrak station in the next town ten miles away.
They never found Amy.
[1] It’s actually “I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride my bike.”
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If you want to read more, BECOME A FAN at PUBSLUSH and pre-order Memoirs of a Dilettante Volume Two and Penelope, Countess of Arcadia
The enigmatic Helena Hann-Basquiat dabbles in whatever she can get her hands into just to say that she has.Some people attribute the invention of the Ampersand to her, but she has never made that claim herself.
Last year, she published Memoirs of a Dilettante Volume One, and is about to release Volume Two, along with a Shakespearean style tragi-comedy, entitled Penelope, Countess of Arcadia.
Helena writes strange, dark fiction under the name Jessica B. Bell. VISCERA, a collection of strange tales, will be published by Sirens Call Publications later this year. Find more of her writing at http://www.helenahb.com or and http://www.whoisjessica.com Connect with her via Twitter @HHBasquiat, and keep up with her ever growing body of work at GOODREADS, or visit her AMAZON PAGE
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Are you a member of a Home Owner’s Association? If so, read on for John Howell’s list of things not to do at your next meeting. If you’re not, read on to find out why you glad you’re not ;)
The Top Ten Things Not to do at Your Annual Home Owner’s Association Meeting.
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Dan Rather told me to do it. Well, in a rather oblique, unintentional way, he did. It was early 1987. I was between jobs, just working as a temp until I could find something regular. My future husband and I were enjoying a quiet evening at home, watching the CBS evening news when Dan Rather earnestly urged anyone who had ever had blood transfusions before 1985 to be tested for AIDS. My future husband got up and left the room. I started to cry.
You see, I had had blood transfusions–about 3 or 4 of them–in 1981 when I was being treated for a traumatic injury to my right leg. The hospital was in Oakland, but it’s not like there were no people living with (dying from) AIDS there. HIV and AIDS was all that anybody talked about. “Jokes” that gay stood for “Got AIDS Yet” and screeds that AIDS was God’s wrath brought down on homosexuals proliferated. To have any kind of risk factor was not just a threat for illness but also for stigmatization. Only the innocent–children and hemophiliacs–were the exception, but often times, not even them.
My future husband never told me or asked me to arrange to be tested, but he knew I would. While he was out of the room, I picked up the phone. I called a local clinic in San Francisco, one where they were providing tests anonymously. The nice man I talked to said I probably would be all right since the hospital I went to was in Oakland, not San Francisco, and my transfusions were a few years ago. But it was still a good idea to get tested.
I had a two-month wait for my appointment. It was by far the longest two months of my life.
My future husband (really, there’s a reason why I keep calling him that) and I went to the clinic together at the appointed time. We had to watch a video detailing all the possible risk factors for contracting AIDS. I wanted to crawl under a rock.
- Blood transfusions. Check. Obviously. That’s why I’m here.
- Unprotected sex. Hmmm. Well, I was protected against getting pregnant but … Check.
- Multiple sex partners. Uh oh. I did have a brief wild period …………………….. . Check.
- Having sex with a man who had sex with another man. Damn. But I didn’t know at first ………………………………………… . Check.
- Drugs, sex, and rock ‘n roll. Of course. (Okay, this wasn’t on the list, but it may as well have been.)
About the only thing I didn’t do was shoot up. Suddenly my history of blood transfusions wasn’t what scared me. It was my own pathetic lifestyle before I settled down with my future husband. A lot of that went on before my accident, before the blood transfusions. Some of it after. None of it pretty.
On the way home after my blood was drawn, I asked my future husband what we would do if I tested positive. The dear, sweet man said he would marry me so I would have health insurance. I stifled a laugh. Chances were the insurance company would find me out and refused to cover me. That was a fairly common occurrence then. I appreciated his sincerity, but I also knew I could never do that to him.
Two weeks later we returned to the clinic.
My future husband was again with me. The clinical aide worker carefully opened the manila folder to read my results. His relief when he said “negative” was so palpable that I had to remark, “You don’t get to say that very often, do you?”
Then I got religion. The religion of donating blood. The AIDS epidemic complicated blood donations because, at that time, if you had any of those risk factors, your blood was not wanted. But people needed blood still. I had a precious, life-giving commodity. I didn’t have much money, but I had plenty of blood.
That year I started donating blood and I’ve been donating ever since. Granted, I’ve gone through some dry spells. And now that I’m older, I have to take an iron supplement before and after my donation, or wait 16 weeks between donations instead of 8.
But it’s something I can’t stop doing. Even though I now have enough blood drive T-shirts to open up my own shop with. Even though I hate needles and sometimes it does hurt (especially that one time when the alcohol hadn’t completely dried … talk about fire in my veins!). Even though I get faint at the sight of blood. I just keep on giving.
Those blood transfusions in 1981 weren’t the last time I needed transfusions. At the least, I’m helping myself. At best, I hope I’m helping others.
Oh, and my future husband. Yes, he became my husband. Took the whole package of bum leg, AIDS scare, sordid history, and all.
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It’s that time of year, folks, when most if not all of us in the United States have to at least starting thinking about filing our tax returns. To avoid pain and anguish, read John Howell’s most helpful list of Top Ten Things Not to Do When Doing Your Taxes.
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If you’re a follower of my blog, you’re likely a writer with dreams of hitting it big. Maybe even a screenplay worthy of an Oscar nomination. If you are, then prepare yourself and read John Howell’s Top Ten Things Not to Do at the Oscar Ceremony.
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Elodea (RIP) posing on one of my smaller bookcases. My husband and I have a lot of books. Mine are mostly fiction; his are nonfiction (environment, politics, history). I often think of my husband as better read than myself although he rarely reads fiction. On the other hand, my girlfriend and I can dominate a social gathering with our discussion of our favorite fiction authors. But, it’s only been in the last few years that I’ve really taken up with reading contemporary authors. My journey has been odd but interesting.
When I was (much) younger and there was only the one-room library up the road for my summer reading adventures, I had only what that small room could offer. I remember reading Hans Christian Anderson and being both drawn to and repulsed by his stories. I also remember wanting to change the ending of his stories. As I got older, I grabbed more of the hard-cover books because they made me feel like a grown-up. Or I would sit in the magazine alcove and leaf through old issues of Vogue and Elle magazines. In the last summer of my teens I read D.H. Lawrence, Anais Nin, Henry Miller, and . . . Albert Speer. I think I even tried to read The Gulag Archipelago. I have a vivid memory of reclining on a lounge chair in my neighbor’s yard, sunbathing, while awkwardly holding open a very thick paperback copy of Solzhenitsyn’s book.
It was a strange summer.
And for the next 20 years as I drifted in and out of college classes and between degrees and jobs, I read the classics: Shakespeare (totally lost on me when I was in high school), Dickens, Austen, Eliot (George and T.S.), the Brontes, Woolf, Forster, Ford, Donne, Pope, … there was a time when I could recite every author/poet/essayist that I read or was assigned to read. I’ve since forgotten most of them.
After leaving college and applying myself to the work-a-day world, my reading shifted more to magazines: The Nation, Harper’s, The New York Review of Books, The Atlantic. Periodicals from which I could read an essay or short fiction as my last mental exercise before going to bed. [Note: I’ve been a magazine subscriber for over 30 years. While I was in college, however, those magazines often just piled up while I tried to finish the next day’s reading assignment.]
Since I’ve been seriously writing again (or writing seriously), I’ve started reading contemporary authors, as in authors who are still alive. They’re not dead. They might not be white. And most of them are decidedly not male. Joan Didion, Barbara Kingsolver, Louise Penny, Elizabeth Wein, Robert Galbraith (sorry, he’s a she), Val McDermid, Joyce Carol Oates (I have a love-hate relationship with that woman). All my life I’ve leaned toward women authors, but that’s another blog post.
I have no doubt that many of you could spout off a list of books/authors you’ve read that is twice or ten times as long as mine. My list isn’t exhaustive. I would have to get up off my ass and go to my bookcases to remind myself the books I’ve read or intend to read. I don’t feel like doing that right now.
I used to feel self-conscious about either my lack of “well” reading or my inability to remember everything I’ve read. But then I read this essay in Harper’s by John Crowley: On Not Being Well Read (sorry, you need to be a subscriber to read the whole thing.) Mr. Crowley has a reading history not much different from mine, in that it wasn’t perfectly linear with an early and long immersion in classic literature. He muses about the idea of being “well read” or “widely read” or “much read.” He discusses a book I’ve never heard of, How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read, but notes that your interest in following the lessons of this book may have more to do with “your need for approval from yourself and others.” Crowley has the opposite problem. While he acknowledges that he has “surely forgotten more of the books [he’s] read than remembered,” he still remembers a lot and some of what he remembers is esoteric enough that he gives the “impression” [his italics] of being well read. He also discusses the fact that not everyone reads every book in its entirety. [Look for discussions on Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch and you get the idea that a great many more readers probably don’t finish as many books as we think they do.]
But what I really appreciated about Crowley’s essay is that in the end, it doesn’t matter. Having books is it’s own joy.
“But now that I am in my eighth decade, my seventh of devoted reading, isn’t it perhaps time to correct my lacks, to make myself whole, as the legal phrase would have it? As I write, I have in view a lot of the books I would ask myself to take up; they’ve been there for years, they move with me from house to house. Like many people who have a lot of books on shelves, I have had casual visitors ask if I’ve really read them all, in a tone that might suggest wonderment, or suspicion of pretense. And of course I haven’t read them all. Many are there just because I haven’t read them: because I want, or once wanted, to read them, or at least consult them. They are books I’d like to have inside as well as outside.”
So you, dear Reader, how do you fare with the reading of books? Do you consider yourself well read? What does “well read” mean to you? And, finally, for this is very true of me, do you have books on your shelves you haven’t read but that you keep just because?
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Many thanks to Luanne Castle at Writer Site for tagging me to participate in this special blog tour. It comes at a good time for me because I’ve been
wrestlingworking on my WIP, Clemency, A Novel. Before you read my post (or after if you prefer), please do read Luanne’s post on her WIP: http://writersite.org/2015/02/12/read-all-about-it-here-the-work-in-progress-blog-tour-stop/ Luanne is working on a memoir, “excavating” her memory to “create a new story”:My book is the story of an old family secret that infects the present and creates a dysfunctional father-daughter relationship–and the quest for answers that allows the father and daughter to learn and forgive.
Now, doesn’t whet your appetite for more from Luanne? Indeed, it does mine.
But before I lose sight of my own purpose in participating, let me proceed with the rules and my contribution to the tour.
The work-in-progress blog tour rules (which we all know are made to be bent or broken):
- Link back to the post of the person who nominated you.
- Write a little about and give the first sentence of the first three chapters of your current work-in-progress.
- Nominate some other writers to do the same.
Brief description of my novel:
Clemency is a story about Misty Daniels, a young girl (~18) in prison for allegedly killing her live-in boyfriend after he beat her up, causing her to miscarry. Enter Sarah Mansfield, a newly minted attorney who believes in Misty’s innocence and wants to secure her freedom. But not everyone believes that Misty is innocent. Not even Misty. And there are some people in Misty’s poor small town that want to see her stay in prison. And they will do anything to make sure that happens. Even if means someone has to die.
Only in her mid-twenties and alone in an unfamiliar southern city, Sarah finds her life on the line and with few people she can trust. Her boss and mentor, Lucas Danforth, seems to know more than he lets on and brushes off Sarah’s concern for her and Misty’s safety. Michael Daniels, Misty’s half-brother and a former Marine, is more interested in hindering Sarah’s investigations than helping her. And the people of Oyster Point, led by Sheriff Cooley, harbor more than a general mistrust of strangers. They are all hiding something, and Sarah suspects that what they are hiding is the key to Misty’s freedom.
Status of my novel:
Still in that primordial stage that is particularly gross and sticky.
Excerpts from the first three chapers:
Prologue
Misty Daniels cradled her small round belly as she collapsed onto the sticky linoleum floor. She huddled against the kitchen wall, her damp brown hair covering her tear-streaked face. Her mouth was frozen in a silent scream of pain, her eyes shut tight against the blood that dripped down from the cut on her forehead.
Chapter 1
This wasn’t quite what she had expected. The room was dusty with boxes of documents lining the short space of walls against the sloped ceiling. The desk reminded her of the big clunker her father had for the thirty years that he taught English. At the thought of her father, Sarah pulled a framed photo out of her gray Timbuktu messenger bag. She stroked the simple wood frame that bordered the last picture taken of her parents and her, at her graduation from the small private college where her father had taught.
Chapter 2
Sarah sat at the concrete beach table, watching Lucas through tortoise-shell Wayfarer sunglasses that she had found while hiking around Juniper Springs. Lucas read the note again, his lips curled in a slight smile. Someone had typed on the small piece of paper: “Let Misty rot in prison. Or you will go to hell.” Sarah had immediately called Lucas after opening the envelope, and he had gallantly rushed over to Tully House.
Now, time to announce the other participants in this tour. I am so
relievedhappy that these wonderful writers have agreed to participate.
S.K. NICHOLSS’s debut, Red Clay and Roses, chronicles the trials and tribulations of a group of characters grappling with inequality in the Jim Crow South. It is set in 1950s-60s Georgia, and explores civil rights, interracial relations, and women’s issues. An avid regional crime fiction reader, Nicholls’ next project is a series of crime novels with colorful characters who take you on a fast-paced adventures through Florida. You can find Nicholls on her blog where she also posts awesome photos of Florida, discusses writing and books, and shares updates on her many writing projects.
The enigmatic HELENA HANN-BASQUIAT dabbles in whatever she can get her hands into just to say that she has.
She’s written cookbooks, ten volumes of horrible poetry that she then bound herself in leather she tanned poorly from cows she raised herself and then slaughtered because she was bored with farming.
She has an entire portfolio of macaroni art that she’s never shown anyone, because she doesn’t think that the general populace or, “the great unwashed masses” as she calls them, would understand the statement she was trying to make with them.
Some people attribute the invention of the Ampersand to her, but she has never made that claim herself.
Earlier this year, she published Memoirs of a Dilettante Volume One, and is about to release Volume Two, along with a Shakespearean style tragi-comedy, entitled Penelope, Countess of Arcadia.
Helena writes strange, dark fiction under the name Jessica B. Bell – VISCERA, a collection of strange tales, will be published by Sirens Call Publications later this year. Find more of her writing at http://www.helenahb.com or and http://www.whoisjessica.comConnect with her via Twitter @HHBasquiat
BECOME A FAN at PUBSLUSH and pre-order Memoirs of a Dilettante Volume Two and Penelope, Countess of Arcadia!
KATIE SULLIVAN: Writer, mom, real-food foodie, reckless gardener and wannabe spy, Katie Sullivan is descended of pirates and revolutionaries, and a lover of all things Irish. Born in the States, she is a dual US/Irish citizen, and studied history and politics at University College, Dublin – although, at the time, she seriously considered switching to law, if only so she could attend lectures at the castle on campus. Today, she lives in the American Midwest with her son, two cats and a pesky character in her head named D (but you can call him Dubh). Katie’s first book, Changelings: Into the Mist, a young adult historical fantasy, is available in print and digital from Amazon. She can also be found writing with said character weekly at her blog, The D/A Dialogues.
Changelings: Into the Mist is now available! This historical fantasy, filled with pirates, magic and kings, is not to be missed. “It’s a love letter to Ireland.” ~ Helena Hann-Basquiat, Memoirs of a Dilettante.
“Those who can laugh without cause have either found the true meaning of happiness or have gone stark raving mad” ~ Norm Papernick
J. S. COLLYER is a Science Fiction writer from Lancaster, England. Her first novel Zero was rele
ased by Dagda Publishing Aug 2014 and was listed in Northern Soul’s Magazine Best Reads of 2014. The sequel, Haven, is due out Oct 2015.Zero is available in paperback or for Kindle through Amazon: http://a-fwd.com/asin=B00MRACF86
Find out more about her and her other titles and upcoming booksignings through any of her websites:
jcollyer.wordpress.com
facebook.com/jscollyer
twitter.com/@jexshinigami -
You may be wanting another holiday to celebrate but here are some good reasons not to celebrate President’s Day. Courtesy of John Howell over at Fiction Favorites. Enjoy ;)
Today’s list has been created to provide a little satire surrounding President’s Day. (Happy President’s Day) This is a holiday that I have had a tough time getting my mind around. Other than getting a Monday off, I haven’t been able to see the significance of it all. Yes, Lincoln and Washington each have a birthday two days apart and this may be the only reason. Of course, there have been forty-four presidents and most have made at least half of the population angry at one time or another. Let’s just say if a President were a member of the family their birthday would in a probability be forgotten. So I’m making the supposition President’s Day is an invention of mattress and car companies for an excuse to have a sale. Here is a tongue in cheek top ten things not to do on President’s Day.
Top Ten Things Not…
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Marie at 1 Write Way 