A NEW BEGINNING 2015: End of a Season

Posted on September 20, 2015 by peggylchambers

hammock    It occurred to me on my walk with the dog this morning that my blog is called “Views from the Hammock.”  I haven’t spent much time in the hammock this year.  Like me it is getting old and used – frayed around the edges and broken in a few places.  But still hanging in there.

I take a walk with the dog most mornings unless it is raining.  The app on my phone says the route is 1.65 miles x 7 days a week that is 11.55 miles each week.  Since I retired in March I have lost 6 pounds – only 7,000 to go.

I noticed a change in the air this morning as I pulled on a windbreaker.  Autumn starts next week and the nights are cooler. I was sweating by the time I finished the walk and the kids in the neighborhood were out in force in shorts, barefoot on their bicycles.  What a difference half a century makes to a body.

I pulled out a used sweatshirt and planned a rehab for the fall.  I am painting autumn leaves on the front and cut off the cuffs.  It will at least look different even if it is used.  I only have three navy sweatshirts – you can never have too many.

I’ve been reading two post-apocalyptic works lately: Gordon Bonnet’s Summer’s End http://gbfiction.blogspot.com/2011/12/summers-end.html  and John T. Bigg’s Sacred Alarm Clock http://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Alarm-Clock-John-Biggs/dp/1633730697/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1442680520&sr=8-1&keywords=john+t+biggs. Both discuss the world as we know it ending – being some of the last to survive and what it is like to be alone and scared.  I wrote one myself a few years ago.  The Apocalypse Sucks http://www.amazon.com/Apocalypse-Sucks-Peggy-Chambers/dp/0615969410/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1442680635&sr=8-3&keywords=peggy+chambers was written as a humorous take off on a serious subject.  Why am I suddenly reading end of the world stories when it is the end of summer?  I don’t know it just came up.  But endings sometimes conjure up subconscious thoughts as I wander down the road with the dog.  She is chasing locust hiding in the grass; I am chasing thoughts for a blog.

Autumn brings the smells of dry leaves and warm fires.  It isn’t an end but a beginning of cool weather, toasted marshmallows and cozy sweatshirts.  Enjoy it.  Christmas is coming and the hammock will have to be tucked away once more.

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A NEW BEGINNING 2015: Glome’s Valley and the Heavener Runestone

Posted on September 13, 2015 by peggylchambers

new cover  What would you do if your only friend was a ghost?  What would you do if you were given a magic sword and told to fight off trolls?  What would you do if your only son was lost in the forests of southeast Oklahoma while you were trying to decipher the ancient runestone at Heavener?  You could call Thor for help if you had the app on your phone.

Ethan went with Dad to study the runestone that summer – just another adventure into the past with Dad.  Ethan was eleven and all his friends were back home playing baseball and swimming.  He was stuck in the hot sticky valleys near Heavener, Oklahoma while his dad worked.  He was bored until he met Glome – a boy about his age that just happened to be a ghost.  Glome’s friends were thumb-sized fairies and Bob the dog, a big furry ball of fun.  Then the trolls came and someone had to rescue Hilda before the Festival of the Full Moon.

“The sword! Ethan, use the sword!” yelled Ari as he swung at a nearby opponent.  He fought like a young man and Glome was fighting off the largest troll of them all with his tiny wooden sword.   He twirled and parried blocking every blow.  It was then that Ethan realized he had to help his friends.  He drew his sword like the hero he had seen on TV and held it out in front of him.

The silver sword glistened in the sun as he swung it at the nearest troll. He took aim, sliced the air––and missed by a mile.  He had never tried to hit anything with a sword except in his video games back home. This was different.  This was real life.  The troll laughed and charged. 

Glome’s Valley is a YA fairytale set in southeast Oklahoma near the Heavener Runestone.  A modern-day boy with a cell phone in his pocket is thrust into a make-believe world where an ancient war has raged for centuries.  There are beautiful princesses trapped in flower valleys and smelly trolls determined to make her their queen. It is just the kind of place that Loki could twist his mischief into shape unless Thor reins him in.

I will be at the Heavener Viking & Celtic Festival selling and signing copies of Glome’s Valley on October 10 and 11, 2015.  I’d love to meet you.  Or you can find it in bookstores everywhere.

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A NEW BEGINNING IN 2015: Fall Writing/Speaking Agenda

Posted on September 6, 2015 by peggylchambers

calendar    Fall is a time of rest.  Foliage turns bright colors as the cool nights meet the bright sun of day.  People venture forth from their air conditioned homes and offices more in tuned to nature and its last offerings of bounty. The tomatoes on my vines are abundant with blossoms and small green globes.  Maybe there will be fried green tomatoes soon.

With all this venturing forth came a full calendar at my house and I am thrilled.  I have a schedule of presentations and book signings from September until January and would love to do more.

September 15, 2015 the Life Long Learning Institute at Central Christian Church in Enid has asked me to discuss writing to a group of 55 year-old plus who are interested in continuing their education.  I am beginning with “setting” because all stories must have one.  The classes are every Tuesday in September from 1:00 to 2:30 in the afternoon at the church and I will be there on the 15th.  Marsha Kay Oldham will fill the September 8th slot teaching poetry.

October 10 and 11, 2015 I will have a tent at the Heavener Runestone Viking and Celtic Festival at the park. https://www.facebook.com/events/476355209210014.  I will be showcasing my YA book Glome’s Valley set at the runestone. It will be a fun weekend of Vikings, blacksmiths, Celtic music, food and maybe even falcons.  Vendors of all sorts will be set up at the park and you should come out and join us.

October 23, 2015 the Denny Price Family YMCA will have family night and I will have a table set up signing and selling my books.  If you are member, bring the kids and join the fun.  There will be games and activities all evening long.

December 19, 2015 the Oklahoma City Writers’ monthly meeting at Full Circle Books in Oklahoma City asked me be their guest speaker.  I will be presenting on imagination and fantasy writing.  The meeting begins at 10:00 a.m. in a room outside Full Circle Books at 50 Penn Place and I will also set up for a book signing in the store afterwards. The public is always invited.

January 8, 2016 I will have my first live radio blog interview with Speculative Fiction Cantina and bestselling science fiction author S. Evan Townsend. The show starts at 5:00 p.m. (6:00 EST) and is a part of the Writestream Radio Network (http://www.writestreamradio.com). It should be a lot of fun!   Speculative_Fiction_Cantina_2_transparent-240x150

Join me this fall for all the fun and festivities and get out and enjoy the cooler weather.  We’ve earned it after the heat we’ve endured this summer.

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A NEW BEGINNING IN 2015: Glen Rose, Texas

Posted on September 1, 2015 by peggylchambers

dinosaur foot prints    Dinosaur footprints from 65 million years ago are still visible in the river at Glen Rose, Texas (http://www.glenrosetexas.net/164/Convention-Visitors-Bureau).  I remember wading in that river and stepping in the imprints years ago when I was pregnant with my first child.  No, it was not 65 million years ago – even though it seems like it.  W trekked back to my husband’s roots this weekend to visit relatives we lost contact with over the years and they took us on a tour of their town.

Glen Rose is a town of about 2500 people set in the Texas hills southwest of Ft. Worth.  dinosaur foot prints 1   We took I-35 south and cut west around Ft. Worth to avoid Dallas on Friday evening about 5:00 p.m.  Never again! We spent more than an hour parked on a six-lane freeway.  Even the GPS got ticked off.  She kept telling us to turn left which would have placed us in the grassy median.  Then again, maybe that was a good idea.

But, the rest of the weekend was enchanting.  We once again became acquainted with long-lost cousins, their family and the town my husband spent many summers in as a child.  We were able to pick back up where we left off and enjoyed the time together. We ate too much (what is there about vacations?), laughed a lot, and met their children.  We promised not to let it be another thirty years before we connected again.

Glen Rose capitalizes on the dinosaur foot prints and other fossils found in the valley.  dinosaur foot prints 2    We visited the Creation Evidence Museum of Texas. They theorize that dinosaurs co-existed with humans several thousands of years ago, not millions.  The museum displays fossils, pottery, bones and a delicately created ark complete with animals.  You can see their information at www.creationevidence.org.

Traveling the easy way back home on Highway 81, we avoided the traffic in the Dallas Metroplex and arrived home much less tired than the first trip. We have to do this again.  Glen Rose is charming and so are her people.  I think even the dinosaurs would agree. I think I see a story here!

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A NEW BEGINNING 2015: It’s Hurricane Season!

Posted on August 23, 2015 by peggylchambers

Hurricane    It’s hurricane season! The first named Atlantic hurricane of the 2015 season is named Danny and is not expected to be much of a threat – unless you are in its path.

In my beach read Secrets of Sandhill Island the weather has turned much like the emotional atmosphere of the town.   Meg is certain she has to go back to her tiny beach house one last time even though the hurricane has turned and is picking up speed.  Alex is afraid he is too late save her.

The windows rattled until Meg was sure they would break.  The huge gust of wind that blew the screens on the porch in, suddenly stopped and sucked them back out.  Then the groan became louder – and the ripping began.   Ancient nails torn from their rotting wood groaned as they were pulled against their will holding on to nothing – flying up and over the top of the house. Within an instant, the porch walls and roof were gone and the floor was about to follow.

“Time to go!” Alex shouted as he shouldered the backpack full of Meg’s mementos. “Stay close with your head down.  We just have to reach the van and we should be relatively safe.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her from her precious home.

They ran out the back door not even trying to shut it behind them and clawed their way through the garden never letting go of each other’s hands.  Without him, Meg was sure she would have been swept away in the wind.  A tomato cage with the plant still inside flew past her face so close the leaves brushed her skin.  She thought she would be impaled on its pointed wire feet.  She gasped, or maybe the breath was sucked out of her, it was hard to tell.

Once at the back of the garden they climbed up the sand dunes holding on to grass along the way.  At the top they stopped, crouching to see what might be blowing their way before standing.  From the top of the dune, Meg could see there were no lights left on in the harbor.  Either they had been blown out or everyone had already left. 

 Climbing over the rise, suddenly the rain increased wrapping around them like soggy bed sheets on a clothesline, entangling them in their own wet clothing.    Meg could see the van parked off the side of the road in the distance.  It rocked in the gusts like it might take off flying.  Heads down and stumbling into the wind they pushed forward together against Mother Nature’s fury – one step forward and sometimes two or three back.  Once they reached the asphalt, they found it slick and Meg fell on her knees.  They made little headway until they got back on the soggy sand.

It’s hurricane season.  Pick up a copy of Secrets of Sandhill Island while the barometer is right.  If you enjoy it, please leave a review on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Goodreads.  Batten down the hatches!

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A NEW BEGINNING 2015: Heavener Runestone Viking and Celtic Festival

Posted on August 16, 2015 by peggylchambers

055    The southeast corner of Oklahoma has a beauty and magic all its own.  From the Talimena Drive to Winding Stair Mountain and points in between, it is dream-like and lends itself to story tellers, artisans, and musicians.

The Heavener Runestone is no exception.  This sandstone monolith is carved with something resembling ancient Viking letters – or maybe not.  Some think it was written by a Frenchman during the French and Indian wars. But it is not French either.  It was once known as Indian Rock.  But whatever it is, it is magical.

Each spring and fall the area hosts a Viking and Celtic Festival http://heavenerchamber.com/events/runestone/runestone.html and this year I plan to join them.  October 10 and 11 at the park surrounding the stone there will be a festival with all things Viking and Celtic.  I will have a tent set up and be signing my book Glome’s Valley http://www.amazon.com/Glomes-Valley-Peggy-Chambers/dp/1633730603/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1439743055&sr=8-3&keywords=peggy+chambers.  It just stands to reason that it should be there.  One school of thought is that the ancient Viking letters on the stone are claiming that valley for Glome – and maybe it is.  I know that the uniqueness and beauty of the place brought all kinds of fairy tales to mind I HAD to write about it.

October is beautiful time of year in Oklahoma and I would love to see you at the festival.  Check out the park out on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pages/Heavener-Runestone-VikingCeltic-Folk-Festival/252169061500605 and stop by the blue canopy with Glome’s Valley inside.  It is a modern-day fairy tale set in Oklahoma with ancient Viking overtones.  I can’t wait for fall!

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A NEW BEGINNING 2015: Go Set a Watchman

Posted on August 8, 2015 by peggylchambers

Go Set A Watchman    Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman is a very controversial novel. From the fact that Lee is now elderly and in a nursing home, to the rumor that she did not want it published, and mostly the possibility that everyone’s favorite lawyer in the book was shown as a racist, this novel has once again created a hailstorm of conversation.  As a piece of literature, it is as beautifully written as the first.  It is not the sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird published in 1960 and set in the south in the 1950s, but the original before it was edited.  She re-wrote it to conform to the time and I think her editor was brilliant.  The world wasn’t ready for Scout all grown up as Jean Louise Finch the way it was originally written in 1960.

The little town of Maycomb, Georgia where Scout grew up in To Kill a Mockingbird, reminds me of the town I grew up in.  Clarkton, Missouri is in the boot heel of Missouri. Not really in the south like Georgia but it had its share of racism like the rest of the country at the time.  I had two sisters instead of one brother and my father was an aircraft mechanic, not an attorney. But Scout reminded me of me.  No we didn’t have a maid, of any color; my mother took care of all those duties.  But I was born in the time that Scout lived. I played with neighborhood kids and had the freedom to run the small town with my sisters.   I was born in the early ‘50s, the time frame of Scout’s childhood, and I lived through the turbulent 60’s in the United States.  I have not seen racism as up close and personal as the Deep South, but it was still there and I remember the race riots well.

All the hoopla about this book seems to be that people are crying racism about their favorite attorney, Atticus Finch.  Was Atticus really a racist or was he a product of his time as most of us are?  I thought of Atticus as a peace keeper. Jean Louise was surprised to find out her father took on black clients only because it was keeping the town from exploding white against black.  He also attended white only meetings held in the courthouse meant to rally the whites against the blacks.  But again, he was the cool head in a hot situation.

In To Kill a Mockingbird Atticus was ordered by the Court to defend a black man who was accused of raping a white girl in the south prior to the Civil Rights Amendment of 1965.  He defended him even with the possible danger to himself and his family.  Atticus was Scout’s father but also her hero.  Atticus a racist?  He didn’t rally one side against another, he defended a man not because of color but because it was the right thing to do.

In Go Set a Watchman, at the age of twenty-six Jean Louise came home from New York to an aging father and a home town in turmoil. She was still beginning to realizing that there were shades of gray to everything in life.  Jean Louise grew up living by her conscience, but with her heart out on her sleeve.  Sometimes you have to make the best of a situation in order to eventually make it better. Change does not come quickly. I think Atticus was a level headed man who cared about everyone, black and white, and mostly the society he lived in.  He was honest and he cared about his family.  He was a product of his time.

What are your thoughts on Go Set a Watchman and Atticus Finch? Have you read it or just formed your opinion?

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A NEW BEGINNING 2015: Autumn Fog

Posted on August 2, 2015 by peggylchambers

Autumn Fog    It’s August and temperatures are soaring.   Anything cool is a welcome relief.

Autumn Fog is the new color of my “writing room.”  It conjures up images of a misty pond or lake with hidden secrets.  The room is actually a guest bedroom.  But I spend a lot of time in there. It holds my grandmother’s bedroom suit and the aging leather recliner I inherited from my deceased father-in-law.   The multipurpose room holds memories of family and days gone by.  I think of the new color as grey with overtones of blue and green.  It is soft and soothing, and I hope encourages the muse that lives there.

I have been painting for the last week.  No, it is not a big room but I am an old person so it takes longer to paint than it used to.  I painted for two partial days, took a day off to rest my back and then went back to it. But Autumn Fog was worth it.  It is cool and warm at the same time and encourages my imagination.

I love the scent of a newly painted room – it smells clean like a fresh start.  I finished the first draft of my latest novel there and that is where I plan to go back over looking for plot holes and fleshing-out certain areas. I am sure the new color will bring out new and inventive ideas for my writing. It has already encouraged me to paint and redecorate two other rooms. Once I rest up.

It is the dog-days of summer and this one has been more humid than most.  So the idea of an Autumn Fog is even more pleasant.  I don’t know if I will really redecorate the other two rooms or not but a fresh start is always a good thing.

What colors do you have in your writing/reading nest?

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A NEW BEGINNING 2015: New Adult Novel Work In Progress

Posted on July 26, 2015 by peggylchambers

10050462-writing-on-a-white-laptot    I went out on a limb and decided to try my hand at New Adult writing.  I understand that New Adult (NA) and Young Adult (YA) though wildly popular, are not a genre but an age group.  Young Adult is considered the teenage years and New Adult the college years and beyond of the protagonist.  As a retiree I found more than a few challenges when writing about this age.  However, somethings never change, even if they change how they are done.

My suspense novel involves a young girl growing up in a blue collar family working with her mother in a flower shop. She then goes to college and works part time in a law firm.  She has a lot to learn and develops a thicker skin along the way when she runs into rude and sometimes dishonest co-workers while she juggles school and friends.  A friend becomes a boyfriend, and the bad boy she had stars-in-her-eyes for in high school transitions from a bully to a rapist.  The world is not always as we conceive it when we are young. And life is not always fair.

Erin is not only hard working she is brilliant and school comes easy.  Relationships, not so much.  Her father died when she was young and left a hole in her life. Her mother had to take on the role of both parents and being young herself, she and Erin sometimes grew up together.  But they loved each other and would do anything for each other.

Aunt Toni, her mother’s sister, became a lawyer and her life seemed so much more glamorous to Erin than her mother’s that Erin strove to be like her.  Erin wanted that type of life for herself.  But she was unaware of the sacrifices Toni made along to the way to become who she was.

Now someone in the small town of Mansfield is raping young women and Erin knows who it is.  He hurt her once when she was young.  She just needs to prove it to everyone around her while juggling school and work before it happens again.

Blooming Justice is my latest work in progress and is nearing completion.  I can’t wait to show it to you

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A NEW BEGINNING 2015: Glome’s Valley and Gloria Farley

Posted on July 19, 2015 by peggylchambers

new cover    In 1994 Gloria Farley published the book In Plain Site. (http://www.amazon.com/Plain-Sight-Records-Ancient-America/dp/1880820080/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1437323148&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=gloria+farley+in+plain+site) Gloria was an Oklahoman with in insatiable curiosity.  She believed that Scandinavians and Egyptians visited the new world long before Columbus discovered America.  She attempted to prove it with carvings and artifacts dating long before Europe invaded what is now the Americas.  She felt they were not left there by the Native Americans but someone else.  She was not an archeologist; she was a social worker who spent her own time and money researching not only the Heavener Runestone but many more sites across the United States. But with the help of archeologists and other scientists who believed her tale, she found, researched, and documented runestones across the United States.

She first stumbled across the runestone in 1928 hiking Poteau Mountain near her hometown of Heavener, Oklahoma. It was then known as “Indian Rock.” And from that day forward, Gloria was hooked on artifacts.

I first heard about the site on Discover Oklahoma tourism show on television and my husband and I made a weekend trip to visit the runestone.  I was enchanted.  Later I took my grandson back to see the site because I had an idea for a book using that area for the setting.  My “city kid” grandson with a constant electronic device in his pocket, said “This is cool, Grandma.”  I got through to him, and he was right.  It was cool.

Glome’s Valley (http://www.amazon.com/Glomes-Valley-Peggy-Chambers/dp/1633730603/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1437324299&sr=8-3&keywords=peggy+chambers) was hatched at that southeast Oklahoma site and my imagination was on full throttle. I loved the idea of a fairy tale born of Oklahoma history.  Gloria Farley felt the Heavener Runestone was a boundary marker stating that that valley had been claimed for Glome.  Whether her ideas were right or not it made a magical setting for a book; a Viking ghost named Glome who had been in the valley for centuries and a modern kid bored with spending his summer alone except for his ever present cell phone.  Of course since there is Viking mythology, Thor had to be involved along with his crazy step-brother Loki.  I wrote a fairytale for a magical area.

I hope you read and enjoy Glome’s Valley and visit the Heavener Runestone.  Take the kids. They will think it is cool.

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