Benefit Art Show

Posted on May 26, 2013 by Susanna J. Sturgis

After reading The Mud of the Place a friend told me, “I’ve never met any of these people, but I feel like I could run into any of them in the grocery store.”

Maybe my favorite compliment ever, not least because it captures so perfectly the weirdness of writing fiction about a place that really exists. Mind you, the place that really exists, exists differently for each one of us — I blogged about this in “My Martha’s Vineyard” — but when you add fictional realities to the mix, your head will start spinning if you think too hard.

Cynthia Riggs‘s mystery novels are all set on Martha’s Vineyard, but you know it’s not the real Martha’s Vineyard because on the real Martha’s Vineyard murder is rare and each of Cynthia’s books features at least one body dead by murder most foul. Other than that, however, her Martha’s Vineyard is so drop-dead authentic that her fictional sleuth, Victoria Trumbull, is actually the title character of a guidebook — Victoria Trumbull’s Martha’s Vineyard — that will take you to some real places and won’t get you lost.

Confused yet?

My aim is to tell some truths about Martha’s Vineyard by making things up, but the things I make up have got to be plausible. Several of the Mud characters go to Makonikey. You can go there too, but you won’t see what they see. I modeled the Martha’s Vineyard Chronicle office on that of the Martha’s Vineyard Times, but I gave the building an extra story, and no Chronicle staffer ever worked for the Times.

sign 2In The Squatters’ Speakeasy a nonexistent organization called the Friends of Affordable Housing (FAH) sponsors a benefit art show and sale at the Ag Hall on Memorial Day weekend. The Ag Hall really exists, as does Memorial Day weekend, but I stole the art show idea from the (real) Friends of Family Planning, whose 25th annual art show and sale was this weekend. Since I just finished drafting a chapter about the preview party that opens FAH’s art show, I decided to head down to the Ag Hall to see what the real (?) thing looked like.

foyerLate on a rainy Saturday afternoon, the foyer was quiet. In my chapter, a lavish buffet bisects the room from back to front. There’s a cash bar in the rear left corner, an affordable housing display in the near right, and an artist with big paintings and a bigger ego just downstage from the bar. Yes, I could see it. I could see it all. It works.

In my version, a band is playing and people get up and dance. No one was playing or dancing yesterday afternoon, but look what I found in the middle of the dance floor.

dancers

wall

Several of my characters have artwork in the FAH show. I didn’t see Shannon’s barn painting, or Giles’s arrow series, or Mama Segredo’s watercolors, but I did find the wall they hang on.

I paid particular attention to prices. Were mine reasonable? For the most part, yes. At $150, however, the ticket price for my preview party was too high. I’ll probably bring it down to $75 or even $50, which is what Friends of Family Planning’s tickets cost.

The Friends of Family Planning show features the winning posters in a contest for students at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School. What a great idea. My Friends of Affordable Housing might have to steal it.

hall My art show, I decided, needs more ceramics, more jewelry, and more fabric art. Oh yeah, and a few of those white benches.

mugsI had no intention of buying anything, of course, until my eye lit on Deborah Hale’s ceramics, particularly two mugs with a lovely sea-green and blue glaze. The price was much too reasonable, so of course I bought them — and drank my tea out of one of them this morning.

Don’t be surprised if they wind up in the novel.

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Tripod in the Backseat

Posted on May 24, 2013 by Susanna J. Sturgis

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned as a fiction writer came from a theater director. “Make interesting choices,” he said.

What’s an interesting choice? One that opens up possibilities. Watch a good improvisational theater troupe at work. Its skits work because each actor instinctively makes choices that trigger interesting responses from the other actors. Ho-hum choices lead to two-dimensional characters playing out flat scenes. Boring choices lead to dead ends.

Writing has plenty in common with improv, especially in the early-draft stage. Often I don’t realize I’ve made a ho-hum choice. I may not realize that I’ve made a choice at all. For instance —

A chartreuse Neo-Bug rolled up the driveway of the mansion where Bluesman Luke, one of my main characters, is the caretaker. The lady of the house had called en route, so he was expecting her. Both the color and the make of the car surprised him, however, and he surmised from the luggage in the backseat that she intended to stay for a while, although her husband wasn’t with her. When she rolled down the window, a mop-headed dog rose from her lap and put its paws on the door.

Not bad for the lady’s first appearance, but when I kept writing the dog took up too much of my attention and the scene drifted into shallow water and got stuck.

Scenes often unstick themselves, but Squatters’ Speakeasy as a whole was stuck. As I blogged earlier this month, I had an opening scene and a good idea but the thing wasn’t going anywhere.

It came to me, probably when Travvy and I were out walking, that I should take a closer look in the backseat of that car. So I reviewed the previous scene in that chapter, in which Bluesman Luke, recovering from a hangover, is trying to coax a tune out of one of his guitars. Once again the lady calls from the far side of the Bourne Bridge to say she’s on her way. Once again the startlingly chartreuse VW rolls up the drive.

This time, however, Luke notices a tripod in the backseat. Oh, the lady explains, she’s been taking photography courses at the Museum School.

Where did the tripod come from? Did the mop-headed dog turn into a tripod? I don’t know, but at that moment the author’s character sketch turned into a character.

self-photo

Blogger photographs self.

A few days later she appears at a late-night blues jam at Luke’s cottage, packing two cameras and the tripod. Pretty soon she’s persuaded Luke to attend an event he desperately wanted to avoid but where I needed him to show up. (More about that later.)

As I watched the lady — whose name is currently Elinor Madsen, though that may change — make things happen with her camera, it dawned on me that some of the other Squatters characters had to be carrying cameras. Several of them are visual artists, after all, and hell, even I — not a visual artist — am reasonably adept with both a point-and-shoot and a camcorder.

Cameras are everywhere. More, their presence expands the possibilities wherever they show up, whether the occasion is private or public, ordinary or extraordinary. Private parties become public when a partygoer posts photos on Facebook or uploads a video to YouTube. Bystanders catch public officials and police officers in acts they would rather keep secret, and it’s no longer “your word against mine” but “your word against my pictures.”

Blogger photographs self but forgets to turn flash off.

Blogger photographs self but forgets to turn flash off.

I’ve long been fascinated by what we see, what we don’t see, the myriad ways we see what we want to see and don’t see what we don’t want to see or might not be able to handle. Martha’s Vineyard, like any tourist destination, is a theme park where some people make their living creating illusions for other people to see, and the other people believe (some to greater, some to lesser degrees) that what they’re seeing is true.

As I blogged the other day in “Reality,” tourism is reality TV’s first cousin. Maybe we’re all tourists in each other’s lives?

I, however, didn’t have a clue what this had to do with Squatters’ Speakeasy until that tripod appeared in the backseat of Elinor Madsen’s chartreuse VW. What better tools to explore the themes I’ve long been obsessed with than cameras, camcorders, and YouTube videos?

Thank you, subconscious. I owe you another one.

 

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Green Green

Posted on May 22, 2013 by Susanna J. Sturgis

The unfolding of spring this year has been unusually entrancing, or maybe it’s just that I’ve been more-than-usually entranced. In winter, I packed my little Canon PowerShot on late-afternoon walks when the gathering clouds promised a vivid sunset. These days I pack it on Trav’s and my morning walks just to see what new wonders spring has revealed.

I’m not sure I see more when I’ve got my camera along, but what I see seems more wondrous. Here’s some of what’s going on in my neighborhood these days.

green undergrowth

Along the driveway

In winter, green brambles and moss catch the eye. Now they’re shouted down by leafing-out huckleberry bushes, blueberry bushes, and all sorts of undergrowth. The oak foliage above is still a-borning.

Pretty soon the oak pollen will be turning the cars yellow-green and making some of us sneeze.

Pretty soon the oak pollen will be turning the cars yellow-green and making some of us sneeze.

Fledgling scrub oak leaves are startlingly red.

Fledgling scrub oak leaves are startlingly red.

Camera in hand, I notice raindrops on green leaves. It hasn’t rained much lately, but it rained Sunday night. This was taken on a still-overcast Monday morning.

wet leavesThe pines are green all year-round, but spring greens them in new ways.

Baby pine cones -- is Mama Tree giving me the finger?

Baby pine cones — is Mama Tree giving me the finger?

The pines are two-tone while they're putting out new growth.

The evergreens are two-tone while they’re putting out new growth.

Green and gray play together. From a distance it’s same old same-old. Up close it’s fascinating.

green and grayI’m told that green has more shades than any other color. How many of them are in this photo?

shades of green 2

This recently plowed field is Travvy’s favorite vole-pouncing ground. You can’t pounce on green. If you miss the vole at first pounce, then you can dig for it. travvy watches

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Reality

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Susanna J. Sturgis

I still can’t wrap my head around the phrase “reality TV,” or the culture that came up with it, or the way it rolls trippingly off our tongues as if it makes sense. What will scholars from a different space-time continuum make of it?

So this blog post is titled “Reality” instead of “Reality TV,” even though TV plays a role in two of the big stories on Martha’s Vineyard this week. In one it’s obvious: the production crew has arrived to film the “docu-soap” I blogged about in February.

The docu-soapers will be gone by early July, I’m told, though the docu-soapsuds will doubtless linger longer. The newspaper photo I saw of some cast members on Main Street, Vineyard Haven, could have been taken on the same corner in July, though the actors, wearing 85-degree clothes in 60-degree weather, must have been chilly.

Which is to say that the docu-soapers looked pretty much like the real thing, whatever “the real thing” is. Summer on Martha’s Vineyard is reality TV without the cameras. Why would anyone want to make a reality TV show about reality TV?

Wait, wait, I know the answer: Because otherwise how do we know that it’s real?

signTourism, come to think of it, is reality TV’s first cousin. Reality TV’s interactive first cousin. True, it’ll be lots cheaper to watch The Vineyard in the comfort of your home entertainment center, but on the real (?) Martha’s Vineyard you can interact with locals who aren’t improvising from a script . . .

Cancel that. Most of us most of the time are improvising from a script, having learned that if we get too real, the tourists will look worried or angry and may even accuse us of being insufficiently grateful. If it weren’t for them, after all, how would we eat?

Martha’s Vineyard in the summer is like Old Sturbridge Village or Colonial Williamsburg, only it’s set in the present so we can’t call ourselves historians. We’re just the crew that keeps the show running smoothly. Bring your own cameras. You can take your own pictures.

***   ***   ***

TV’s role in the other story is less obvious. This past Saturday, a barn manager on Meetinghouse Way in Edgartown found Majik, one of the miniature horses in her charge, dead in its pasture and the other one, Chance, injured. Majik had been mauled, apparently by a dog. The dog turned out to be Mugsy, a three-year-old mixed-breed rescue who was adopted from a shelter at least a year and a half ago. The owners have agreed to have Mugsy put down when the state-mandated quarantine period ends next Monday.

The most recent Martha’s Vineyard Times story includes a photo of Mugsy. I leave it to you to puzzle out what breeds might have gone into the mix. To judge by the comments on the M.V. Times website, quite a few people were dead sure from the outset that the culprit had to have been a pitbull, even though no one saw it happen and Mugsy hadn’t been identified.

Anyone who’s been paying attention to dog-and-livestock dramas on Martha’s Vineyard over the last 10 years or so had to have at least considered the possibility that a Sibe or Akita or other northern-breed dog might have killed Majik. Put it this way: If it had happened in my neighborhood and Travvy had been AWOL at the time, I would have feared the worst. But no, many commenters immediately zeroed in on pitbulls. If you wade through the comments, the same “facts” come up over and over again: it must have been a pitbull, pitbulls are trained killers, only pitbulls are capable of such things, and — a pervasive assumption that is seldom true — a dog that kills livestock might go after a child next.

I’d bet good money that they’re getting their information from TV and other news sources, and whipping themselves into a righteous frenzy with the help of various social media. Such information is predigested so it can be swallowed whole. It’s generally not hard to tell when a commenter has brought firsthand experience and some thought to the table. If these people have any to bring, they’re keeping it under wraps.

Trudy the wise woman, she of The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, opines that “reality is nothing but a collective hunch.” I’m inclined to agree. But what happens when our collective hunch turns out to have been packaged and served up on TV?

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Sign for Summer?

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Susanna J. Sturgis

Maybe this sign could go right under the one in Woods Hole that says MARTHA’S VINEYARD NEXT LEFT?

Island Closed sm

Sign courtesy of Shirley W. Mayhew

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Drummer

Posted on May 11, 2013 by Susanna J. Sturgis

More about the weirdness of writing:

In Squatters’ Speakeasy young Mark Churchill has a band, and of course the band has a drummer. Drummers usually sit back in the shadows with their drum sets so until a few months ago I didn’t pay much attention to this drummer. If he showed up on cue, that was enough.

Then Mark and his bandmates were talking about an upcoming jam at Bluesman Luke’s cottage — Luke is Mark’s father and musical mentor — and the drummer said no way was she going: Luke thought “female musician” was an oxymoron and the last time she’d sat in, he ragged on her incessantly for her unconventional appearance. “Hoo boy,” said Dennis the bass player. “Last time you were there I thought you were going to crack his head with your conga.”

The (borrowed) conga in residence

The (borrowed) conga in residence

Hoo boy indeed. I learned a few things from that exchange. Mark’s drummer was a she, Luke’s take on the blues was seriously sexist, and the drummer probably knew something about Afro-Cuban drumming if she played congas.

Now that she’s out of the shadows, she’s turning into a key character, one who makes things happen and says things no one else dares to. The others call her Suze, or maybe Sooz. Either way the similarity to Susanna is impossible to miss, and I’ve never had a character show up whose name was that much like mine. Beyond that, however, the resemblance stops: she’s got three rings in one ear, two in the other, and one in her right nostril; her hair is braided liberally with beads (which she uses to great effect when she’s talking); and she’s spent time in Cuba and (I’m pretty sure) Brazil.

Roberta teaches the mambo rhythm at a recent class.

Roberta teaches the mambo rhythm at a recent class.

On the other hand — I’ve been taking an all-women drumming class with Roberta Kirn. It’s a blast. I practice on a conga borrowed from a neighbor up the road. When I’ve got enough money, I’m going  to get a drum of my own.

Which came first, Suze or my interest in drumming? Aha, that’s where it gets complicated — and interesting. Not long after I moved to the Vineyard year-round, I started volunteering at Wintertide Coffeehouse, which at that point happened only on winter weekends, and generally learning my way around the island’s grassroots music scene. Die Kunst der Drum, an all-drum ensemble led by Sam Holmstock, was prominent in the scene at that time. They played inside, they played on the beach, and wherever they played, people got up and danced.

Being fresh out of the women’s community, I couldn’t help noticing that DKDD was almost entirely male. Roberta was one of the two exceptions. Co-leader of the ensemble was Rick Bausman, who went on to found the remarkable Drum Workshop. I took a class with Rick at Wintertide in its year-round Five Corners incarnation (20 years ago?), meant to go on with it, but didn’t. Both Roberta and Rick are huge believers in building community through music. (Roberta is a protegée of Sweet Honey in the Rock veteran Ysaye Barnwell, whose Building a Vocal Community workshops are devoted to exactly that.)

And community, you’ve probably noticed, is an obsession of mine. What fosters it? What diminishes it? What does it make possible that individuals in isolation can’t accomplish, or even imagine, on their own? What does it make impossible, or at least difficult? What does it squelch?

So Suze the drummer steps out of the shadows and I get to see what happens next.

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Ghost Trees

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Susanna J. Sturgis

I thought I’d missed the ghost trees this year. Their white flowers flicker off in the woods before the oaks start leafing out. They catch the corner of my eye as I drive down State Road. Spring is coming, they say.

Spring was surely coming, in a riot of first yellow then purple, but I hadn’t seen the ghost trees. I’d missed them for sure.

But I hadn’t. They’re here.

shad 1

My ghost trees have many names, shadbush, serviceberry, and amelanchier among them. “Shadbush” because they bloom when the herring (shad) are running. Are the herring running?

shad 2

There’s nothing ghostly about the ghost tree at the foot of my outside stairs. Maybe it’s a shadbush? Whatever it is, spring is most definitely here. I’m wearing a T-shirt, and the front door is open.

shad bush

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12 over 12 Windows

Posted on May 6, 2013 by Susanna J. Sturgis

I’m a fairly rational, left-brain person, but some things reason just can’t explain and one of them is writing. Where do ideas come from? Where do fictional characters come from? How do you find out where they live?

Most fiction writers I know will tell you how their characters direct and occasionally hijack their plots. I , the fairly rational, left-brain nonfiction writer, will tell you this. If non-writers talk like that, they risk being sedated or locked up or, if they’re Joan of Arc, burned at the stake.

What I write is limited by my experience. If I can’t imagine something, it doesn’t show up in my writing. But the stuff that I do know shows up in my writing in the weirdest ways. Sometimes I don’t know I know something till it appears in ink on the page before me.

Deena Churchill is a Squatters’ Speakeasy character. I didn’t know where she lived, but her son, Mark, and his band were about to show up at her house to practice so I had to figure it out PDQ. When Mark and his bandmates pulled into Deena’s driveway, what did they see?

A traditional cedar-shingled Cape with two 12-over-12 windows on either side of the front door. Cedar shingles and Cape Cod dwellings are ubiquitous on Martha’s Vineyard, so that was no surprise, but 12-over-12 windows?

At least one member of my writers’ group didn’t know what “12 over 12” meant, and a couple more thought 12-over-12 windows were rare, or found only in very old houses. So I wondered: Why did Deena’s house have four 12-over-12 windows in front?

Well, a house that Travvy and I walk by several times a week has 12-over-12 windows in the front, and on the side too, along with a 6-over-6 on the second floor.

House on Pine Hill, West Tisbury

House on Pine Hill, West Tisbury

On my next trip to the post office, I noticed that the West Tisbury branch of the Martha’s Vineyard Savings Bank — my bank — had 12-over-12s all around. It was built in the late 1990s and so doesn’t qualify as “old.”

M.V. Savings Bank, State Road, West Tisbury

M.V. Savings Bank, State Road, West Tisbury

So 12-over-12 windows had been scavenged by and composted in my writerly brain. What did my editorial, analytical left brain have to say about the windows on the front of Deena Churchill’s home? “Goddamn,” it said, “I’d hate to have to clean those buggers — but given Deena’s financial circumstances, it’s highly unlikely that she does her own cleaning. Let ’em stay.”

And stay they have. The interior of Deena’s house, it turned out, isn’t traditional at all. And every time I turn around, I see more 12-over-12 windows in my town.

Next door to Alley's

Next door to Alley’s

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Disaster Drill

Posted on May 4, 2013 by Susanna J. Sturgis

Whenever a hurricane barrels up the East Coast or a blizzard bears down on New England, a few panicky friends halfway around the country are sure that Martha’s Vineyard is about to be flooded off the planet.

True, on a map the place looks vulnerable, surrounded as it is by ocean and with a maximum elevation of about 350 feet above sea level. In reality? Not so much. True, the roads close to the shoreline usually flood and beach erosion can be formidable, but I, like most Vineyard working stiffs, don’t live anywhere near a beach. Hurricanes and blizzards knock trees down and the power out, but so do the nor’easters — “three-day blows” — that don’t get reported in other parts of the country.

ARC disaster vanNevertheless, we do prepare for considerably worse. Late this morning, through the usual combination of connections and coincidences, I found myself at the island’s first-ever disaster shelter drill. The drill was a dry run for the Vineyard’s disaster-service organizations to practice coordinating their efforts. Participants included the American Red Cross, the Medical Reserve Corps, the Salvation Army, the Boy Scouts, and the newly formed Martha’s Vineyard Disaster Animal Rescue Team (MV DART).

front doorI cannot tell a lie: It was MV DART that piqued my interest. One of the many lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was that disaster planning had to take companion animals into account. Hundreds of thousands of pets died or were stranded, in part because they couldn’t be transported or sheltered with their humans. Today’s shelter drill included clients with pets.

When I approached the door to the Tisbury School gym, where the drill was being held, a sign directed incomers to “Register animals first.” An arrow pointed to the left. Travvy had stayed home, but leftward I went.

Canine disaster evacuees were played by stuffies. The guy on the left is Snoopy.

Canine disaster evacuees were played by stuffies. The guy on the left is Snoopy.

The several MV DART volunteers included a veterinarian, an animal control officer, and several other animal lovers who had put plenty of thought into what dogs, cats, and their owners might need in a disaster shelter. Not only dogs and cats either — I learned that when handling a pet rabbit it was important to keep the hind legs from kicking out. When afraid, a rabbit’s first impulse is to flee; a rabbit can also break its back by striking out too strongly with its hind legs.

The MV DART volunteers were prepared for sick pets, stressed pets, and stressed pet owners. Animals that live in the house are considered pets: dogs, cats, rabbits, birds, and the like. The shelter cannot accommodate barn animals. What if your pet goat or lamb lives in the house? They’ll probably decide on a case-by-case basis.

registration

An intake interview

Registration for human clients was in the gym. Clients were played by Boy and Cub Scouts. Other Scouts stood (or sat) by waiting to render whatever assistance was needed.

The Medical Reserve Corps volunteers were ready to deal with the health emergencies and chronic conditions of shelter clients.

 

Drill coordinator Jim Thomas (left), the shelter manager, and a member of the Medical Reserve Corps hold a consultation.

Drill coordinator Jim Thomas (left), the shelter manager, and a member of the Medical Reserve Corps hold a consultation. My point-and-shoot’s flash made those reflective strips glow!

After the drill itself, which lasted from 11 a.m. to 12 noon, the volunteers adjourned for a delicious lunch — pasta, meatballs and sauce, salad, garlic bread, and brownies — prepared by the Salvation Army, who got a hearty and well-deserved cheer for their efforts.

MV DART, the new Martha’s Vineyard Disaster Animal Rescue Team, is eagerly looking for volunteers. For more information, the person to contact is Rita Brown.

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Squatters Hijack Blog

Posted on May 3, 2013 by Susanna J. Sturgis

I don’t want to jinx anything here, but for the last several weeks I’ve been working on novel #2 — and it’s alive. It’s cooking. When I sit down to write, words come through my fingers. Characters show up unannounced. They open doors I didn’t see and tell me things I couldn’t imagine.

ink blotHere’s proof.

What, you ask, does a folded-up paper towel with ink blots all over it prove about anything?

Well!

I do my first-drafting in longhand, with fountain pens. At last count I had nine pens and almost as many bottles of ink, all different colors. After a pen is filled, it has to be blotted.

I use different colors for different scenes, so I can keep them straight in my ring binder. If a scene’s in “Tropical Blue,” I’ll use “Fireball” for scribbling comments in the margin. (Fireball, a bright orangey red, is good for note scribbling no matter what other colors are in play.)

When I’m  not writing, the folded-up paper towel is just a coaster for my morning tea mug and my evening beer stein. It collects tea stains. Tea stains are the pale brown blotches in the lower left. They don’t exactly catch a person’s eye.

candleAnother sign that writing is going on: spent matches collect around the blotter. This is because I light a candle or two when I’m writing. While the candle burns, I write. I don’t do dishes or download email or (candles and pens forbid) check out Facebook.

This is my favorite candle holder. I bought the grappa at the suggestion of the late Lisa A. Barnett (1958–2006), science fiction writer, theater editor, and all-round wry and brilliant person. After one swallow of grappa, I swore off it for life. I used the rest of the bottle to pour libation for Lisa on the first anniversary of her death, and it’s been a candle holder ever since.

What I’m working on is my second novel, tentatively titled The Squatters’ Speakeasy. Squatters popped into my head almost exactly 10 years ago, in April 2003, as an idea and a scene. The idea was that a bunch of musicians, artists, and free-floating misfits take over a Vineyard trophy house and turn it into a speakeasy. The scene was two archers on a deserted roadside not far from South Beach in Edgartown. While I watched, they came out of the woods, ducked back when a car passed, then one of them drew his bow, took aim, and shot an arrow into the terminal O of a Monticello Real Estate sign.

No, Monticello Real Estate does not exist on real-time Martha’s Vineyard. Yes, the scenario has wish-fulfillment all over it. Vineyarders appropriating a seasonal monster house for year-round creative use? A speakeasy inspired by the late, great Wintertide Coffeehouse? Two anonymous archers — it wasn’t till this spring that I learned who they were — talking back to a particularly snooty real estate company? And all this barely a year and a half after 9/11, when such talking back was bound to be called terrorism?

Over the years I played with the idea and the scene. I learned that Squatters takes place 10 or 12 years after The Mud of the Place and on the same alternate Martha’s Vineyard; it involves some of the same characters and has a lot to do with housing. But for a host of reasons, it never took off. Until spring 2010, I had a horse. Between horsekeeping and editing full-time, I had little energy for writing. The Mud of the Place was published in December 2008 and pretty much sank without a trace, so why even think about writing another novel? Etc., etc., etc.

You’ll notice, though, that the URL for From the Seasonally Occupied Territories, started in July 2011, is http://squattersspeakeasy.com. “Squatters’ speakeasy” was a vision, a state of mind, as well as a working title, and this blog was part of it from the get-go.

So can I keep both the blog and the novel going at the same time? At first I thought not: one of them was bound to suffer. Then it dawned on me that writing a(nother) novel about Martha’s Vineyard is part of my year-round Vineyard life. The Vineyard is this big hunk of sheep’s wool (or maybe malamute fur) that I’m trying to spin into a narrative thread or two or three. Maybe I could blog about the writing?

Many writers, including me, love to talk about writing. There are blogs galore devoted to all aspects of writing. Whether anyone besides writers, aspiring writers, and artists in other media pay any attention is an open question. In short, I don’t want to bore the pants off you regular and irregular readers who aren’t especially interested in writers talking about writing — so don’t worry: I’ll blog about spring and summer and Travvy and license plates and how the roundabout is working out, as well as about what the squatters are up to.

Stick around, guys. This could get interesting.

My tool table: candles, pens, ink bottles, blotter.

My tool table: candles, pens, ink bottles, blotter.

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