rainy day at Roundrock

What you see above is the shell or husk of two or three buckeyes, growing on one of several buckeye trees I have planted beside my little cabin in the woods. Unlike the more commonly seen variety of buckeyes, the ones I’ve planted have red flowers in the spring, which the hummingbirds love (and so do I). One day in the past, I decided that I wanted to have red-flowering plants around my cabin. I had built an entire bed of (expensive) topsoil behind a retaining wall in front of my cabin, and I filled it with bedding plants that would bloom red and make life wonderful. The deer found them wonderful, and the plants did not find the Ozark heat wonderful. The topsoil bed was a failure, and it’s now covered with gravel to help hold the upper retaining wall in place. (For a sense of this structure, have a look at the photos in this post.)

My hope this year is to collect the buckeyes in these husks when they are ready (when the husk splits open) and try to cultivate them into new plants that I can encourage in little pots (after four months of stratification in my refrigerator) until they are ready to plant around the cabin. (The price of a sapling red buckeye tree is astronomical! I think I got lucky when I bought mine years ago.)

Most of our day at the cabin yesterday was spent on the front porch, looking at the rain falling on the lake and listening to it drumming on the metal roof. We had no specific agenda other than to make good use of an opportunity to flee the city for a while, and I think we fulfilled that. We ate lunch. We peered across the lake through my wife’s newish spotting scope. I used my Merlin app to listen for birds to identify. I made notes in my visit journal (humdrum things, but the son finding his father’s visit journals in the family cabin in my novel One-Match Fire is profoundly important to the plot).

The forecast called for the rain to lesson as the day drew on, and it did, so we outfitted ourselves for a march to the top of the lake to see about our efforts to eradicate the Tree of Heaven incursion we found there some months ago. I had taken my chainsaw out there and slashed as many of them as I could (I estimate there are 50) until a nut loosened itself on the saw and the chain jumped the bar and the wielder lost his courage and the sun continued to beat down. That was about three weeks ago.

I’ve since learned that cutting is not an effective way to eradicate this invasive tree, as you can see from the photo below, taken yesterday. (Also, the cut wood smells like peanut butter, and for some people it’s a skin irritant. Such a lovely tree!)

I’m not sure what I’m going to do about these. (I welcome any suggestions.) Since they grow in the headwaters of the lake, I don’t want to use chemicals on them. Yanking them out of the ground is also ineffective if even a few root hairs remain in the soil. And lopping off their green parts is clearly only a temporary fix (above). I’ve noticed that they don’t seem to grown is shade, so I think their spread will be localized. I guess what I’m going to try to do is slash as much and as often as I can. Maybe I can get ahead of it or at least halt its spread.

Sunday Sentence

This is one of my occasional participations in David Abram’s Sunday Sentence project, sharing the best sentence I’ve read during the past week, “out of context and without commentary.”

“When you wake up in a fictitious world, your only frame of reference is fiction.”

Source: Severance by Ling Ma

shameless self promotion – Parent Imperfect

Parent Imperfect is my second novel. It is a sequel to One-Match Fire and follows the family into a fourth generation as two men adopt a son of their own to love and raise as well as they can. Many familiar characters return, new names and faces are introduced, at least one character has left, and the family cabin in the Ozark hills remains as anchor and solace for these men and their fragile souls. (There may even be a talking fox in this tale, though only a troubled boy seems able to see her.)

Parent Imperfect was published in 2024 by Blue Cedar Press.

Parent Imperfect is available directly from the publisher (and purchasing it from them gets me an extra nickel or two in royalties), but you can also buy it from all of the online booksellers. And any bookshop in the world can order it for you. You might also check your local library. Many have it on their shelves or in their electronic book selections.

I’d love to know what you think of this novel.

shameless self promotion – One-Match Fire

My first novel, One-Match Fire, was published in 2022 by Blue Cedar Press. It tells the story of three generations of men: a reluctant father of an adoring son, who then becomes the adoring father of a reluctant son. It is a tale about fathers and sons and the difficulty they can have finding and expressing the love they have for each other. It is a generational saga filled with secrets and misjudgments, hesitations and doubts, redemption and restoration.

Among the cast are wives and girlfriends, buddies and boyfriends, a dog, and a little cabin in the Ozarks where all of them can drop their defenses and find peace, with each other and themselves.

One-Match Fire is available from the publisher directly (I get an extra nickel or two if you buy from them) as well as from all of the online booksellers. And any bookstore in the world can order it for you. Also, check your local library. Many now carry digital copies (ebooks) you can check out.

I’d love to know your thoughts on this novel.

Sunday Sentence

This is one of my occasional participations in David Abram’s Sunday Sentence project, sharing the best sentence I’ve read during the past week, “out of context and without commentary.”

“When a new book comes out, I derive comfort from a drag show I saw in Provincetown years ago.”

Source: unsayable – A Life in Writing by Michael Cunningham

Tonganoxie Author & Book Market 2026

I will be at the Tonganoxie Author & Book Market on September 19th, along with dozens of other authors and vendors promoting our bookish works. The fair is sponsored by the Tonganoxie Public Library where the event will take place. The fun begins at 1:00 in the afternoon and lasts until 4:00, rain or shine.

My table will have my novels, One-Match Fire and Parent Imperfect, for sale. Sparkling conversation is free. Scrapefoot intends to be there (but don’t expect her to be sociable). The library will have a charm-collecting keychain activity where event goers can gather charms distributed among the vendors. There will also be an indoor craft book magnet activity (so be sure to come and give that a try so you can tell me what it is). And there will be food trucks.

Tonganoxie is about a half hour west of Kansas City in Leavenworth County, Kansas. The community of 5,000+ touts itself as being halfway between the east and west coasts and halfway between the Canadian border and the Gulf of Mexico. The word “Tonganoxie” derives from the name of a member of the Delaware tribe who had lived in the area at the time the town was founded.

Come out and say hello!

Sunday Sentence

This is one of my occasional participations in David Abram’s Sunday Sentence project, sharing the best sentence I’ve read during the past week, “out of context and without commentary.”

“Stories are, by definition, experiences about experiences, and we who write them know that any story, even the greatest of them, is an approximation of the unsayable — that which we all know but can express in language.”

Source: unsayable – A Life in Writing by Michael Cunningham

bits and pieces

This is the unopened husk on a buckeye tree that I planted out at my little cabin on the edge of the Missouri Ozarks. I planted two sets of three of these years ago. They are red-flowering, unlike the creamy white kind more commonly seen, because I wanted to have only red flowers blooming around my cabin. The set of three you see here has done well, growing taller than I am and spreading with a nice crown full of vivid red flowers in the spring that the visiting hummingbirds like. The other set, on the opposite side of the cabin, is doing okay, but it is not as vigorous or abundant in flower or fruit. I think I need to give it more sunlight, but I don’t want to take down a certain oak tree to do that.

I tried harvesting a few buckeyes one year, but the nuts shriveled down to raisins, so I don’t do that anymore. I had hoped that at least some of the ones that ripened properly and fell to the ground might sprout, and then I’d have other buckeyes to plant around my cabin, but I’ve never seen any evidence of this.

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The swiftest response I ever received for a story submission was only a few hours after I’d sent in my hopeful email. It was for my story “The Lively Arts in Kansas City” and you can read about it here if you want. And now I have a record for the swiftest rejection I’ve received for a submitted story. Last week I submitted to a lit mag looking for things on a specific theme, and my story seemed to fit it. But the rejection email came only a few hours later saying that while they liked the story, they wanted to focus their upcoming issue on the country where they publish it (South Korea). That’s fine, but they didn’t say anything about that in their call.

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A friend has told me that I should not refer to unsuccessful submissions of stories as “rejections” but as “declines.” I can see her point, but as I say to writers I’ve known who have lamented these, they’re not rejections, they’re credentials!

Unrelated but similar, I recently saw bookmarks referred to as “quitter strips” and I think I’m going to begin calling them that.

__________

I continue to be beset with scam emails from “individuals” who want to sell me a service to promote my novels. I delete them on arrival, but I suspect it’s my participation in certain social media spaces that is identifying me as a likely target. First World Problems, as they say.

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Speaking of my little bit of forest on the edge of the Missouri Ozarks, I have discovered a patch of Ailanthus altissima, also known as Tree of Heaven, down at the headwaters of my lake. It is a non-native plant, and my land ethic is to have/introduce only Missouri native plants on my 80 acres. Tree of Heaven is an Asian import that is planted in cities sometimes, but it is invasive and easily escapes cultivation. They don’t provide much food for local wildlife, and they are know to attract certain webworms. Somehow, a tribe of these has moved into almost the center of my woods. (I suspect I have more than I know.) So now I have an added chore when I visit. I intend to eradicate every one I can.

The patch is in a line on both sides of an island (that is rarely an island since the area around it has filled in with rocks washed down from the watershed), and it marches across the top of the island in the same line. Next time I’m in my woods, I intend to fire up the trusty chainsaw and get busy. Unfortunately, these trees will sprout from stumps (the thickest that I know of is not even five inches in diameter), so i think I’m going to need to make repeated assaults. I know there is a chemical you can paint on stumps that will kill the roots, but since these invaders are in the headwaters of my lake, I don’t want to introduce such a thing.

Everyone needs a hobby, right?

say hello to Scrapefoot,

though she probably won’t respond.

Scrapefoot is a character in my novel Parent Imperfect (and two uncollected short stories, one of which you can read here). She is a fox, obviously, but even in the universe of my fiction, she may not exist.

Scrapefoot is a friend of the character Clarkson, who is adopted by two less-than-perfect dads, and he feels lonely and out of place. She visits him when he’s wandering the woods at the family’s hundred acres in the Ozarks, and sometimes they have conversations, but mostly she just listens. She helps him feel less lonely as she shows him interesting features of the forest that the adults have overlooked (a small spring, two arrowheads, who is responsible for leaving rocks on top of leaves, and other such profundities). She is wild, so she will never let anyone pet her or put a collar on her. But she may also be magical. Or she may be solely from the imagination of a needy boy. I leave that open to your interpretation in the novel (though I have definite thoughts about this).

I have written a story set a generation later in which Scrapefoot appears to a different boy. My wife read it and said that took away the mystery of the character. If she is seen by a second character, that pretty much means she is real and not imaginary, and thus she is less tantalizing. So that story got filed away. (I’m not sure it was a very good story anyway.)

I picked up this plush fox at a very nice toy store, and it sits on a table near my writing desk as a sort of companion. I don’t talk to her and, curiously, she doesn’t talk to me. But I decided she is always going to accompany me to any fairs or festivals where I will try to sell my books. When I went to these the first few times, I noticed how elaborate many of the vendor tables were around me, filled with displays and decorations and eye-catching features. I had (have) nothing like that (aside from two brightly colored Masai blankets that I use as table cloths and small banners for the imprints I’m representing). Having Scrapefoot along will help correct that and maybe even spark some conversation with potential customers. In the photo above, she is sitting atop copies of One-Match Fire and Parent Imperfect at the most recent vendor fair I was at.

Like all folkloric foxes, Scrapefoot is sly and cunning. Her pedigree goes back to the European Middle Ages when stories were told of how she would sneak into the houses of the rich to use there things and eat their food. (Basically the poor taking from the rich, which I’m sure resonated with the peasants.) Eventually, she evolved into the character Goldilocks, who did that with the house of the three bears.

The name Scrapefoot comes from a bowing gesture in which the right foot is swung behind the bowing person, and it scrapes on the floor. To those in the know, it is considered a mocking bow, which is in keeping with a fox’s sly nature.

Friday Feature ~ Moving Day

My story “Moving Day” appeared in summer 2018 issue of THEMA Literary Journal, volume 30, number 2. I had submitted it in response to a call for stories on the theme of “The Face in the Photo” since my character finds a photograph of his father as a sickly child and it changes how he sees the man and even directs the course of his life.

I wrote “Moving Day” as part of what I considered a “cycle” of stories about three characters (grandfather, father, son) over their years. I didn’t realize at the time that I was writing a novel (until a friend read the full manuscript and told me so), and that novel became One-Match Fire. “Moving Day” became Chapter Fifteen of that novel.

I had based the story on an old photo of me (currently sitting on the bookshelf beside me where I can see it). I am a child of perhaps two or three, in a hospital gown, sitting on the mattress of a large crib. On the bed beside me is a tray that must have held food, but I guess I’d eaten it. In the foreground you can see the back of my father’s head. Apparently he brought me books to “read” during my hospital stay. I have no memory of this happening in my life, and I only learned of it when I was paging through some old-fashioned photo albums at my mother’s house. She told me that I had contracted pneumonia and that she feared I was going to die. In my short story, the son character finds a different sort of photo of his father as an infant with words scrawled on the back that he is “healthy again.” The son is at the stage where he is trying to grow distant from his father (because the boy is gay and he doesn’t think his father will accept him if he comes out), yet the photo, which he keeps for the rest of his life, stirs compassion in him, and this “love from a distance” conflict stays with him throughout his life, not always manifesting in healthy ways.

THEMA Literary Journal bases its issues on given themes. They are old school in that they do not accept electronic submissions, nor do they have online issues. I sent my story in by snail mail, and I received the acceptance letter (and a contract) several months later in the return envelope I had included. (Submitters outside of the U.S. can submit electronically.) The physical copy of volume 30, number 2 sits among others like it on a shelf near my desk, and I can look over at it to feel warm fuzzies.