Pray for Rain

A few images from Oklahoma

Donis here...more or less. I never really believed in writer's block. Anybody can write something if she'll just sit down in the chair and start typing, and the resulting product can turn out pretty well.

I do very much believe in writer's drought, however, because I've had personal and painful experience of it, more than once. I'm undergoing a severe drought right now, in fact. I returned from my week-long flash tour of Eastern Oklahoma libraries on Sept. 17, then my husband went into the hospital for yet another operation on Sept. 20. I spent the night at the hospital, then left the next morning about 8:30 a.m. to go home and shower and get ready for a creative writing class I'm teaching at Arizona State U. Before I even left the house Don called me from the hospital and said the doctor had come in and told him that everything looked good and he could go home that day! So I went right back up to the hospital after my class and helped him pack up and fill out discharge papers and brought him home late that afternoon. His post-op doctor's appointment was Friday the 29th, and he had all the the tubes and staples taken out. The lymph node biopsies came back clear. Yay! He's still pretty sore, not tip top yet. He's not cleared to drive for another two weeks, and back to the doctor in six weeks. In the meantime, I'm trying to get my lesson plans for the class in some order.

Am I writing? I am not. I don't know why, except that my brains are not working that way right now. I've been known to produce amazing amounts of work while in the midst of some crisis, so why I can do it sometimes and not others I do not know. Of course, I maintain that intellect isn't the defining element in writing, anyway. Often I find myself creating wonderful scenes or characters, and I have no idea where they came from. I certainly didn't think them up - they sprang from my forehead fully formed. I have an intimation that our brains don't create thought, but are more like radios, and only receive and transmit thought that is out there somewhere.(Who thought it? I don't know. God? My higher self?  The collective consciousness?  How can you know?)

So, I suppose it only makes sense that sometimes we can tap into something mysterious and brilliant, and sometimes the equipment is on the fritz and we just can't.  You can't make it come.  You can only be patient and keep trying.  I read somewhere that "more than success, the gods love the effort."

During times of drought, I cling to that thought as I pray for rain.

A Trip to the Homeland

Donis here. I would love to write about regional idioms till the cows come home, but I'll spare you, Dear Reader, and share several pieces of news instead.

First of all, I've been invited to speak at nine libraries in the Eastern Oklahoma Library District, so I'll be touring the homeland on the Backroads of Eastern Oklahoma. From Sept. 12 through Sept 16, I'll be visiting libraries in Sallisaw, Muldrow, Checotah, Jay, Kansas, Tahlequah, Eufaula, Hulbert, and Muskogee, Oklahoma. At the final event in Muskogee, I'll be joined after my spiel by fellow mystery authors Mary Anna Evans, Will Thomas, and Julia Thomas for a mystery writers' roundtable. All the towns on this tour are fairly small, except for middle-sized Muskogee, which boasts about 40,000 citizens. The library district asked me to come, I expect, because I'm the only person in history to set a series in Muskogee County. A friend of mine said I should use this list of towns as pronunciation test in order to determine who is a native Oklahoman. Good luck. This will be my first trip to Oklahoma in years. To see the full schedule with dates and times, go to my website at www.doniscasey.com. Hope to see you there!

In other news, I'm currently copy editing the advance readers copy of my next Alafair Tucker novel, Forty Dead Men. I received a .jpg of the cover a couple of days ago, along with the editor's blurb. The book is scheduled to appear in February. Here's what it is about: Some people who have experienced a shocking, dangerous, or terrifying event develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It is recognized today as a debilitating but potentially treatable mental health condition. Military veterans are a vulnerable group. But PTSD can deliver a knockout blow to anyone.

World War I is over. Alafair is overjoyed that her elder son, George Washington Tucker, has finally returned home from the battlefields of France. Yet she is the only one in the family who senses that he has somehow changed.

Gee Dub moves back into his old bunkhouse quarters, but he’s restless and spends his days roaming. One rainy day while out riding he spies a woman trudging along the country road. She’s thoroughly skittish and rejects his help. So Gee Dub cannily rides for home to enlist his mother in offering the exhausted traveler shelter.

Once made comfortable at the Tucker Farm, Holly Johnson reveals she’s forged her way from Maine to Oklahoma in hopes of finding the soldier she married before he shipped to France. At the war’s end, Daniel Johnson disappeared without a trace. It’s been months. Is he alive? Is she a widow?

Holly is following her only lead—that Dan has connected with his parents who live yonder in Okmulgee. Gee Dub, desperate for some kind of mission, resolves to shepherd Holly through her quest although the prickly young woman spurns any aid. Meanwhile, Alafair has discovered that Gee Dub sleeps with two cartridge boxes under his pillow—boxes containing 20 “Dead Men” each. The boxes are empty, save for one bullet. She recognizes in Gee Dub and Holly that not all war wounds are physical.

Then Holly’s missing husband turns up, shot dead. Gee Dub is arrested on suspicion of murder, and the entire extended Tucker family rallies to his defense. He says he had no reason to do it, but the solitary bullet under Gee Dub’s pillow is gone. Regardless, be he guilty or innocent, his mother will travel any distance and go to any lengths to keep him out of prison.