Tom Schabarum

The Palisades is a book that has been waiting patiently in my drawer to be sprung upon the world for years.  Having written it over the course of four years, two of which were part of the John Rechy workshop in LA, and after many revisions, I put the book away for several reasons.  One, it dealt in a very oblique way with my relationship with my mother, two, another story I had in my head had to be told, and three, life happened.

It is hard to be a writer.  Single for most of my life with no other person to rely on to make ends meet, pick up my shoes, make me eat, etc. being a writer has been the foremost thing I wanted to always be.  But I also needed to make money and I do have a job I love, but it has kept me very busy over the years.

I’m not good at making lists, which is very important for a person to do if you send out manuscripts to a number of various publishers, agents, contests and the like.  It takes a sort of discipline that I lack.  In other words, I have no left brain.  As evidence, it takes me no less than five tries to get out of the house in the morning.

I also hear from writer friends that they spend a great deal of time marketing their books even when they are published by large houses.  I can spend just as much time marketing by utilizing Facebook, Twitter and researching literary blogs online that match the theme of my book on my own.  Sure, I’d love to have a publisher and go the traditional route, but that is changing by leaps and bounds as well.  I would rather an agent/publisher stumble upon or be led to my book, read the critiques that Amazon allows readers to post and then decide.  In the meantime, people are reading The Palisades, a conversation is starting and they are passing their opinions on to others, which has been deeply gratifying for this writer for this book.

All of which brings me to Amazon Kindle. I’ve been following the advent of e-reader technology now for a few years with interest.  Then, this year at CES 2010, e-readers were the talk of the show with several companies coming out with their own versions followed by Apple’s announcement of their iPad at the end of January.  It seems that the future is quickly coming upon us writers.

I still love the feel and touch of a book in my hand.  Turning each page, seeing how far I’ve read and how much more I have to go – when you’re reading Ulysses or War and Peace that’s saying something.  However, in Seattle we have the beautiful Olympic Sculpture Park, which contains a huge sculpture of a typewriter eraser complete with circular rubber wheel and feather brush top.  When I have young people in my car under thirty years old, I always ask them to identify it and none of them know what it is.  Hearing their answers keeps my mind pointing to the future and embracing it.

Books will live on, but they will not live on as those individual things in our hands that my generation and generations before me love so much.  Traditional books are going to go the way of cassette tapes, vinyl records, eight tracks. Just think of all the boxes you won’t have to move when you sell your house!

Books will, however, live on as stored files in e-readers or other devices and some will come alive with video, voice, photographs or better yet, written words that conjure up lives, locales and beauty as they have for centuries.

And people like me, a decent writer with no left brain, limited list making skills, and a need to write still more books in the time I have left, now have a place to put their books and let their friends and family read them if they wish for a nominal fee.  And if the book is well received as The Palisades is starting to be, it may have the chance to take on a life of its own, which has always been the point of writing, yes?

I feel as if I’m adding kindling to the fire that is the Kindle and many other devices that are on their way into people’s lives.  I may not please the writing establishment, but my intent is on pleasing the reader and holding up a mirror to their lives so that they can discover the things I did while writing mine.

Tom Schabarum is a creative director for live events and corporate communications in his alternate life.  The Palisades is his first novel.  He has another, The Narrows, Miles Deep, that he hopes to one day publish and yet one more nearly finished.  His poetry can be found online at pifmagazine.com.  He has also published essays in OUT Magazine and Alex Magazine.

He holds an MFA in creative writing and literature from Bennington College and a BA in cinematography from Brooks Institute of Photography.  He lives by and sails on Lake Washington in Seattle, WA.

The Palisades is currently available on Kindle at www.Amazon.com.

“We’ll buy something just as great when we settle in New Mexico,” my husband promised.

Famous last words.

Our rental house had an old gas stove that burned propane like it was breathing air.  The landlady suggested we blow out the pilot light when we weren’t actively cooking.  Well, that takes effort, and we forgot, until one cold morning I went to light the stove and nothing happened.  It was December, the propane tank was empty, and that day we learned how much extra it cost to have it filled the same day.  After something costs you an unreasonable amount, there’s resentment.  I made raspberry jelly on that stove, and lemon tarts my friend Judi keeps asking for, but there was never a bond between that stove and me.  I was not surprised when the new renters moved their own stove in and left the propane sucker in the garage.

Then we bought this house, a place we hope to stay for many years.  M.C. (Magic Chef), the electric stove that came with the place, I barely gave a second glance.  The first thing we planned to do was replace M.C. with gas.  I had visions of vintage stoves, double ovens, custom colors, of bread coming out of the oven with crusty brown top, of potatoes roasted in olive oil and sprinkled with Kosher salt and springs of rosemary, of my first Thanksgiving dinner turkey when my son came through on his way to his R.N. residency in Kentucky.

Alas.  To my dismay, we learned that to pipe gas to the house would cost more than it would have to move Vi King over international waters.  Sometimes you have to try to love things.  I cleaned M.C. up and dove right in to cooking electric.  In high altitudes it takes longer for things to boil.  Recipes must be adjusted, extended, and for every success there are ten failures.  I began buying double the ingredients for whatever I planned on making so I could throw away the mistake and proudly serve the success.

Then came the mouse.

Like Laura Ingalls Wilder, we live on a prairie.  Endemic to prairies are prairie dogs, mice, packrats, rabbits, coyotes, and so on.  Well, our house had been empty for a while, and it was over thirty years old.  There were gaps in places where the stucco meets the earth.  Mice can squeeze through envelope-thin spaces, and apparently had a regular route into the kitchen.  Picture the cartoon woman standing on a chair screaming, “Eek!”  and you have me learning that mice were in my kitchen.  I plugged steel wool in holes, wiped the counters down with bleach, never left a crumb of food out, and set humane traps.

One night I got up in the dark for a glass of water.  I walked into the kitchen, switched on the light and there, on top of M.C., was a mouse.  When I screamed, it jumped, and then it DISAPPEARED DOWN THE HOLE FOR THE ELECTRIC CONNECTION TO THE BURNER.  The mouse was not only in my kitchen, it was IN M.C., which never again stood for “Magic Chef,” but rather, “Mouse Central.”  My husband vowed that more humane traps would take care of things, and he even went so far as to relocate the mice to a remote area–how he still loves me after all these years is a mystery–but part of me will always see that little gray body slipping into the burner hole, headed God knows where.

Yet my issues with M.C. go deeper.

M.C.’s logo features a round body in a classy black tuxedo, like the maitre d of a fine French bistro.  He and his puffy little hat mock me daily.  Set M.C. at 425 to make a cherry pie, and he heats up to 425 in about ten minutes.  In goes the pie, and off I go to write or play with the dogs or read a book.  But when I return, M.C. will have turned himself up to 500.  HIS DIAL ACTUALLY TURNS BY ITSELF.  He scoffs at my curses.  I tell him, “First royalty check I get you’re gone, dude.”

Please buy more books because I’m still waiting.

Meanwhile, if I want my recipe to come out right, I have to babysit M.C.

But twice in my life, I had the best, though at the time I didn’t appreciate it.  Wisdom is reaped in retrospect, something my mom taught me by example.  Since man discovered fire, so much good in life has taken place around the hearth that one should not be engaged in battle with a stove.  On a snowy day like today, the sight of steam escaping the simmering soup pot, or the smell of gingerbread baking, or the aromatic steam of slow roasted elephant garlic coming out of the foil tent draws my husband into the kitchen.

“Hey, Good Lookin’,” he says.  “What’cha got cookin’?”

May all the stoves that served us arrive at the appliance corral, and catch the attention of someone like my mom.  Meanwhile, I’m saving my pennies and checking Craig’s List.  I know my new lover is out there somewhere, waiting.

Jo-Ann Mapson is the author of nine novels, most recently, The Owl & Moon Café. In Fall 2010, Bloomsbury U.S.A. and U.K. will publish Solomon’s Oak, her new novel.  She lives in Santa Fe with her husband and five dogs, where she is at work on a new novel.