With Two You Get Gift Wrap

Pinckney and I have been collecting signed books for many years. We got a good start when we joined Square Books's Signed First Edition monthly program, and always pick up books at readings and signings. I love stories in any form--audio, live storytellers, e-books, paper books--but there's just something special about having a book in hand that's been signed by the person who wrote it.

There are "books make great gifts" promotions all over the web. And for good reason. A book provides an other-world experience, temporarily replacing all the daily muck that clogs our brains with sensations that are at once intimate and expansive.

When you read my prose, you enter that other world with me. While we won't have identical journeys, we share an experiential bond. I think that's pretty cool.

I should have made this offer weeks ago, but I don't think it's too late....

If you purchase one of our books and send it (or have it sent) to us between now and December 31st, we'll inscribe it and send it back to you, or directly to whomever you choose.  We'll even pay the return media mail postage. (US domestic only, please. Limit 5 books per recipient. Heck--buy two or more and I'll even gift wrap. Trust me, you don't want Pinckney to do it.)

Have books sent from your favorite independent bookstore, a chain store, or, in the case of Press 53, the publisher. Here are some handy links. Order soon, if you're interested...The post office can be poky this time of year.

Surreal South 2009 
Surreal South 2007 (Sorry, but we can't have all the Surreal South authors sign these. Joyce Carol Oates, Ron Rash, J.T. Ellison, et al, don't actually live with us.)

Pinckney's Books
Dogs of God
Town Smokes
The Wrecking Yard

Laura's Books
Calling Mr. Lonely Hearts (As of this date, no paperback release is scheduled, I'm sad to say. So order soon--when they're gone, they may be gone forever.)
Isabella Moon

Contact me at laura@laurabenedict.com for more details and addresses.

I hope you'll buy some books for gift-giving this year, no matter who wrote them. You can even do what we did this year and buy some new ones to donate to the Marine Corp's Toy's for Tots program. But please don't put any Benedict books in a Toy's for Tots box--We want the little darlings to have merry holidays, not scary holidays.

***Oh, and the pic is of our new foundling kitty, Miss Nina Garcia. Silly, isn't she?!

Donal Og

The other night I watched The Dead, John Huston's  film adaptation of Joyce's story The Dubliners. I don't know why I didn't take notice of this poem the first time I watched the film years ago. It's an 8th century ballad adapted by Lady August Gregory, a great Irish playwright of the last century.

I could think about this poem for hours.


Donal Og

It is late last night the dog was speaking of you;
the snipe was speaking of you in her deep marsh.
It is you are the lonely bird through the woods;
and that you may be without a mate until you find me.

You promised me, and you said a lie to me,
that you would be before me where the sheep are flocked;
I gave a whistle and three hundred cries to you,
and I found nothing there but a bleating lamb.

 

You promised me a thing that was hard for you,
a ship of gold under a silver mast;
twelve towns with a market in all of them,
and a fine white court by the side of the sea.

You promised me a thing that is not possible,
that you would give me gloves of the skin of a fish;
that you would give me shoes of the skin of a bird;
and a suit of the dearest silk in Ireland.

When I go by myself to the Well of Loneliness,
I sit down and I go through my trouble;
when I see the world and do not see my boy,
he that has an amber shade in his hair.

It was on that Sunday I gave my love to you;
the Sunday that is last before Easter Sunday.
And myself on my knees reading the Passion;
and my two eyes giving love to you for ever.

My mother said to me not to be talking with you today,
or tomorrow, or on the Sunday;
it was a bad time she took for telling me that;
it was shutting the door after the house was robbed.

My heart is as black as the blackness of the sloe,
or as the black coal that is on the smith's forge;
or as the sole of a shoe left in white halls;
it was you that put that darkness over my life.

You have taken the east from me; you have taken the west from me;
you have taken what is before me and what is behind me;
you have taken the moon, you have taken the sun from me;
and my fear is great that you have taken God from me!

-Anonymous

Some People Call it Paranoia. I Call it Intuition.

Some people are better than others at hiding things.

There have been many times in my life when I've known or done business with people who truly disturb me. I'm not talking about a cynical salesperson or someone who's simply socially awkward. I'm talking about people I wouldn't want to be alone with on a bet. I once made the mistake of getting personally involved with someone who could be described as a psychopathic, antisocial narcissist. (That's not a diagnosis, I know.) There's no doubt in my mind that he could kill a person and dispose of his or her body with impunity and without guilt. While I won't make that mistake again, he's unknowingly given me plenty of material for my fiction.

I confess that I'm always initially suspicious of charm. Sometimes a person's charm hides a good and clever heart; but it can also hide a deep, frightening darkness. I find it difficult to write the second type into my fiction (seriously, I don't know that I've ever written the first type). I took a shot with my character Miles, in Isabella Moon, and I think he comes off as pretty believable. But so much depends on the personalities of the other characters: their vulnerabilities, their capacity for trust, their powers of observation.

Here's something that happened to me recently. As events go, it was brief and insignificant, but not charming at all.

I was browsing the shoe department aisles of a particular discount store. (Finding shoes has become a big challenge of late.) When I turned into the aisle that held racks and shelves of sandals, I saw a woman standing beside a shopping cart, and a heavyset man sitting on the bench that was tucked between the racks for trying on shoes. He wore blue jeans, a cap with a sports logo on it, and an ill-fitting plaid shirt. He wouldn't look at me or make eye contact, and his face was serious, like he was thinking about something ponderous. He also looked like he wished he had a cigarette, but I didn't smell cigarette smoke as I passed him, so I may just have been making that up.

Now the woman--she looked at me immediately. And she didn't seem happy to see me. The second thing I noticed about her was the pair of black sandals she was wearing. I had bought the same ones a couple weeks earlier and there were still a few new pairs left on the shelves. I almost said something to her about how comfortable they were--Talking to strangers is a bad habit I have that I got from my perky, gregarious mom. But I thought better of it. This woman definitely didn't want to interact with me.

At first, I wondered if I'd walked into the middle of an argument. The pair was obviously together, though they weren't communicating. The woman let me get by her with my cart, but she didn't do it with any kind of enthusiasm. I hung around to look at shoes, but what I really wanted to know was what was going on.

She messed with a few more boxes of shoes. I don't think her heart was in it any more than mine was. It was all very awkward. Finally, the man got up and wandered away without saying a word.

I tried on a pair of shoes. The woman didn't. She just absently touched some boxes. After another minute, she hurried away in the opposite direction. She was still wearing the black sandals.

The whole event left me puzzled and vaguely uncomfortable. I made up a ton of stories in my head to try and explain what had been going on. But the answer eventually came to me with an intense, sudden clarity a few hours late : When I turned the corner, the woman had been in the process of stealing the shoes. The man was involved, and he didn't want to stick around to see what she would do.

I like to think the best about people. And God bless her if she couldn't afford an $11 pair of shoes. I'm no saint, but I certainly would have bought them for her if she was so desperate.

Is this what really happened? Who knows. But I had a very brief, exciting period of shoplifting myself when I was a young teenager, and I remember the bleak feelings that guilt and necessary secrecy brought into my life. Isn't it always that way with unpleasant secrets?

I don't think human beings are designed to keep secrets. Otherwise we wouldn't have such observable, clinical, physical reactions when we lie.

Click here and here for a couple of simple lists of things that will help you know if someone is lying to you. But make sure you really want to know if they're lying. Sometimes there's such a thing as too much information.