WIPs Conversation: Robyn Parnell on Her Work in Progress

January 16, 2014

Robyn ParnellIn a misguided attempt to summon the Muse, Robyn Parnell once saw the profile of the love child of Barbara Kingsolver and Chuck Norris formed by the dust bunnies underneath her computer monitor. She chugged a caffeinated beverage until the image faded. Parnell is an Author’s Guild and SCBWI member; her fiction, poetry and essays have been published in over ninety books, magazines and journals (several of which have not filed for Chapter 11 protection). In 2012 she got to practice her It’s-an-honor-just-to-be-nominated speech when one of her short stories was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Notable publishing credits include her juvenile novel The Mighty Quinn, her picture book My Closet Threw a Party and her short fiction collection This Here and Now; less notable credits are not noted in this notation. When not working on innumerable fiction projects Parnell rehearses her NEA grant refusal speech and considers obtaining whatever professional help is necessary to enable her to compose a more pretentious Author’s Bio blurb. For more information,  see: www.RobynParnell.net and  www.theblogimnotwriting.com

Robyn, in “The Assassin,” excerpted from your novel Looking Up, JD and Ciela are recovering in the aftermath of life, post-“incident.” JD is trying to attain a new “normal,” hence his fateful visit to Rivercrest. At what point do these scenes arise in the novel?

What JD and Ciela come to call The Incident occurs in the book’s third chapter. Before Cheryl’s death and Ciela’s peculiar injury (“The Incident”), JD regularly walked/hiked in Rivercrest Park. JD’s desire to return to a normal routine after Cheryl’s funeral (Chapter 14) is what prompts that fateful visit to Rivercrest (Chapter 15).

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Robyn Parnell: “The Assassin,” an Excerpt from Looking Up

January 16, 2014

 Sunday May 23, 1999

Everything has a price, but few things are valued.

The morning after Cheryl’s funeral JD awoke at six-thirty with one of his wife’s aphorisms roosting in his mind. He thought at first Ciela had whispered it to him, but she was still asleep. She’d kicked off the covers and was lying on her side, facing him, one arm draped across her knee, the other tucked underneath her head. In that position the curve of Ciela’s neck seemed not only normal but alluring, and JD scooted over in the bed. He saw that Ciela’s eyelids and nose twitched in R.E.M. reverie. Judging from the up-curve of her lips it was a good dream, and he decided to let her enjoy it.

It was JD’s second morning wakeup, only slightly less pleasurable than the first one, hours earlier, when he’d been stirred from a dark, fitful sleep by Ciela. Her warm feet massaged the backs of his knees and moved down to his calves, her long, slender toes intertwining with his. She’d spooned her torso around his back and nibbled his shoulder blades, softly, then insistently.

I can’t reach your neck, she whisper-laughed.

They’d made love for the first time since The Incident that had left Ciela with her neck stuck in permanent tilt-mode. Their lack of post-Incident sexual intimacy was something they hadn’t discussed, not even once, JD realized, as he rolled out of bed and padded to the bathroom. Pulling on his socks, underwear and sweatpants, he enumerated the episodes of the past six weeks: a blur of tests, doctor’s visits and now what?s…and Cheryl’s death. The blur seemed manageable if not under control – what choice did they have, other than to live through what needed to be lived through? – even as it obscured his awareness that he and Ciela had seemingly lost the desire for desire.

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WIPs Conversation: Kevin Eze on His Work in Progress

January 3, 2014

Kevin EzeKevin Eze, a Nigerian writer, is the author of the forthcoming novel The Peacekeeper’s Wife (Amalion Publishing, Fall 2014). His works have been anthologized in Writers, Writing on Conflict and War in Africa and Long Journeys: African Migrants on the Road. His stories have recently appeared in The Four Quarters Magazine and Outside In. He was one of the winners in the Africa Book Club Short Reads Competition in 2013. He writes in English and French Languages from Dakar, Senegal.

Kevin, Mali, the story, does an admirable job of relating the conflict and turmoil in Mali, the country, through its narration, its characters, but, most of all, in its setting—a hospital where “(a)ll but two wings are closed due to fleeing personnel”…“rebuilt after a suicide bomber levelled the old maternity ward,” and where a “nurse would be driven crazy working in a hospital without towels or paper.” How did you decide to set the story in such a place?

A hospital in distress better captures the drama of the human condition in Mali at the height of the conflict. A hospital is a waiting place, a corridor of life. The Malian people were trapped in this tenuous corridor, like in a hospital, waiting, to either return home “restored” or be carried home for burial. The UN-backed French intervention was the doctor. But the hospital was also the irony of the Malian conflict: Malians sought refuge or treatment at the same hospital, irrespective of the color line.

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Kevin Eze: “Mali,” from a Story Collection in Progress

January 3, 2014

 

In Africa, when an old man dies, it is a library burning down.

-Amadou Hampâté Bâ

 

After her daughter died, Amy made the hospital her home. She returned to her village to wash her k’sa, a traditional African dress, a few days a month, but those days were less frequent. No need to return, no need to worry about her k’sa. She wears hospital scrubs instead of dresses.

She wakes on a traditional mat, where people normally sleep during the hotter seasons, in the emergency unit. She sleeps there deliberately, in expectation of the next casualty. Some days the sun over the Sahara rises with the shuffle of footsteps, the wails of family members, to which she awakens. Immediately she swings into motion to help those around her. She knows she is safe thanks to the British soldier who guards the hospital.

“Someone would like to see you,” a nurse says. Amy, face still unwashed, rubs the fatigue out of her eyes.

“Has another person died?”

The nurse pauses. “He is waiting outside.”

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WIPs Conversation: Jean Copeland on Her Work in Progress

December 5, 2013

jean copelandJean Copeland is a high school English teacher who received her M.S. in English-Creative Writing from Southern Connecticut State University. Her fiction and personal essays have appeared in T/OUR Magazine, Sharkreef.org, Connecticut Review, Texas Told ‘Em, P.S. What I Didn’t Say, Off the Rocks, Best Lesbian Love Stories, Harrington Lesbian Literary Quarterly, The First Line, and Prickofthespindle.com. She also wrote an essay that will appear in the essay collection, A Family by Any Other Name, in early 2014.

Jean, this opening chapter of The Revelation of Beatrice Darby finds Beatrice awakening to her own sexuality and attraction to women through her impulsive interest in a dimestore novel about a lesbian romance. Beatrice is a churchgoing girl and this is 1957, in a quaint pharmacy and soda fountain, during a time when “good” girls dated “nice” boys, soon got married, and primarily worked in the kitchen and took care of the kids. Without a doubt, her budding revelation will have consequences on many levels. What inspired you to set the story in this period rather than a more contemporary one?

I’ve had an affinity for that period since discovering my first Doris Day and Rock Hudson film on cable as a teen. But as I researched the social history of the LGBT movement for a class I was going to teach, I was fascinated and humbled by the paradox of that era regarding homosexuals: Life was wholesome and wonderful for “normal” Americans but oppressive and dangerous for anyone brave enough to be out and proud. I could explore that precarious life from the safety of my protagonist, Beatrice Darby.

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Jean Copeland: An Excerpt from The Revelation of Beatrice Darby

December 5, 2013

CHAPTER 1

Suddenly they were alone on an island of forbidden bliss.

Beatrice Darby did a double-take at the salacious caption on the cover of the novel she knew right away she shouldn’t be looking at. Odd Girl Out was its title, and she felt a strange tingle as she absorbed the image of the half-naked blonde perched under it, her naughty parts barely hidden in a pile of plush pillows. She glanced around DeLuca’s drugstore to make sure no one she knew noticed her ogling its cover art on the rack in the back corner.

This discovery raised the stakes in her presence at DeLuca’s that afternoon in 1957 as she was supposed to come straight home from her summer job to prepare supper—a week-long penitence for skipping Sunday mass the day before to enjoy a sunny morning at Lighthouse Point Park. She and her older brother, Quentin, rarely agreed on anything except that when their mother had one of her nervous spells and couldn’t accompany them to church, they would act as each other’s alibi as they pursued separate adventures in religious hooky. Her caper would’ve been a success, too, had their gossipy neighbor, the heathen Mrs. Pritchett, and her brood of five not been struck with that same notion.

Her heart raced as she snatched the paperback from the cluster of other tawdry romance novels on the bottom shelf. She pivoted toward the wall on the heel of her saddle shoes and began fanning through the pages.

A wash of heat flooded Laura’s face. She bent over Beth again, perfectly helpless to stop herself, and began to kiss her like a wild…

“What do you think you’re doing?” a woman hollered.

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