Barefoot in Baghdad

Nonfiction
If only

BAREFOOT IN BAGHDAD:
A Story of Identity—My Own and What it Means to Be a Woman in Chaos
By Manal M. Omar
237 pp. Sourcebooks $14.99

Reviewed by Marty Carlock

She speaks American English, but she also wears a headscarf, is fluent in Arabic and can quote the Koran. It’s right after the 2003 American invasion, and she says she’s in Iraq on a humanitarian mission. Neither side trusts her.

But she’s not a spy, a journalist, nor an agent of the CIA. Manal Omar is a Palestinian-American, who comes to Baghdad after the U. S. invasion as regional coordinator of Women for Women International, an organization struggling for women’s rights. Her memoirs from this period, 2003 to 2005, shed considerable light on our nation’s problems in Iraq.

Fearing she might be seen as a tool of the American occupation, Omar at first refuses to enter the Green Zone or attend meetings run by the military. Thus pro-war Iraqis are suspicious of her. Because her headscarf bespeaks religious conservatism, Baghdad women accuse Omar of being Iranian and insidiously bent on rolling back the freedoms they have won. They deny there are pockets of poverty in the city and irately reject any idea Iraqi women need help. She finds it difficult to add a woman to her staff, because educated women are loath to go into the poor areas, as she does.

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that have entered the country have little clue about what’s needed. Because Omar has the courage—and the contacts—to talk to all classes of Iraqi women, she is able to persuade representatives of other NGOs that the basic needs—food, shelter, health care, electricity—must be met before they can think about larger issues like women’s rights and teaching money-making skills to women.

Initially, Iraqis welcomed the allied armies and celebrated the end of Hussein’s rule. But as time goes on, slowness in meeting those needs alienates the people from the temporary government of the occupiers. The situation sours—aid money goes to crooked contractors who deliver shoddy work and pocket huge profits. Powerful clans resent loss of their power and property and turn to murder. Civil strife erupts.

Omar’s friend Fern Holland expressed this pessimism:

...the window of opportunities to create a new Iraq was rapidly closing...the people to pay the price were going to be the women of Iraq...These women are unbelievably strong. And I am afraid we are setting them up for failure. We are giving them nothing but bricks and fancy equipment.

In an epilogue, Omar says,

I have worked in other war-torn countries, but my time in Iraq haunts me more than any place I have been... It maddens me that so many of the mistakes that pushed Iraq into chaos were avoidable. From the outset of the U.S. invasion, those in power repeatedly betrayed the people of Iraq by standing on the sidelines as the society crumbled and making promises they could not keep.

Because she still adheres to her culture’s family values, “The decision to go to Iraq was not mine alone. It was a family affair. ” The author had worked for the UN, Oxfam, and then for World Bank, and her Arabic-American family couldn’t understand why she would leave an enviable job to go into a dangerous situation. Omar felt she had a perspective few others did—she was right—and after a long campaign received her father’s permission.

For my Palestinian family, the Iraq war hit a raw nerve. It was a reminder of what had happened to the Palestinians in 1948...another humiliation of the Arab world at the hands of the West. And as far as they could tell, I wanted to be part of it — and I was on the wrong side.

When she is introduced to her staff—all men, she is shocked to discover—she gets a chilly reception. It takes some time for her to find out what the problem is: having been told they would have a female American boss, they had entertained visions of the blond, blue-eyed Barbie starlet type they had seen on television. They were crushed to find they would be working for a scarf-wearing Arabic woman instead.

The author makes many of her points anecdotally, recounting the stories of individual women she helped—or was unable to help. Patriarchal customs hampered her time and again, and U. S. military rules often imposed other obstacles.

She makes good friends in Iraq and finds a husband—but they are forced to flee by extremists. One of her staff is murdered. Some of the others flee to the U. S. But Muna, the woman Omar recruited to her staff, courageously remained in Iraq carrying forward the work of Women for Women, pushing the program to help the most vulnerable.

Despite the retrogression in Iraqi life in the past six years, Omar remains optimistic that the strength and resilience of the Iraqi people will win out and make the country the great nation it could be. If only. 

The self-publishing experiment, part 2

The self-publishing experiment with CreateSpace worked out nicely, with the second chapbook going through without a hitch. Here is the front cover of the second one. The artwork is by the terrific El Paso artist Maritza Jáuregui-Neely. My co-editor and I asked her to capture the flavor of El Paso, and she certainly did:

About a Mountain

Nonfiction
A Noble Miss

By John D’Agata
236 pp. W.W. Norton $23.95

Reviewed by Tim Elhajj

In 2002, John D’Agata helped his mother move to Las Vegas and found himself following the ongoing controversy to relocate and store radioactive waste material from all over the country nearby. He then volunteered for a local community suicide prevention help line, and that same summer sixteen-year-old Levi Presley jumped from the roof of a hotel to his death. In About A Mountain, John D’Agata takes these disparate threads of his experience and weaves them into a meditation on bureaucracy and corrupt politics, the self-destructive impulses of individuals and nations, and the limits of language over time.

For over twenty years Yucca Mountain has been at the heart of a plan to dispose of waste from every nuclear power plant or weapon development site across the United States. The government plans to store this material inside the mountain until it no longer poses a threat to human life. But as D’Agata unpacks the decisions that led to this course of action, it becomes clear that the threat to humanity isn’t what’s driving the policy.

There are politics at play at almost every level of the process, from the assessment of risk—does the threat of transporting nuclear waste outweigh the threat of storing it in multiple locations?—to adopting Yucca Mountain as the central storage facility. Will anyone be surprised to learn that Congress selected this mountain, which may not be the most suitable location for a variety of geological reasons, because its state and federal representatives were among the weakest and least able to protect their constituents from harm?

Fortunately D’Agata has his sights set higher. He isn’t primarily concerned with rabble-rousing against corrupt politicians, but wants us to consider instead the act of self-destruction itself. We consider it literally as he traces Levi Presley’s last hours. We consider it figuratively as we reflect on how long the toxicity of the radioactive waste we’re creating will last, compared to the length of the longest-known civilizations and cultures, or the efficacy of language itself.

D’Agata gets high marks for the scope and breadth of this work. He reaches for and imagines descriptions of everything from Edvard Munch contemplating the world as he paints The Scream to the few hours prior to Presley’s leap from the tower at the Stratosphere. I really wanted to enjoy this book, and for the most part I did, but somehow, something about its execution left me cold.

D’Agata has a penchant for lists. He includes lists of contradictory facts, lists of the exact types of devastation that might occur in a traffic accident involving a truck with a payload of nuclear waste, lists that include everything that would be contaminated in such an accident from rusted bolts to light bulbs, lists of the accumulation of cosmic sums of interest that accrue over vast periods of time. One or two these lists seems fine, a good idea—this is, after all, a book about the existential grief of modern life. What better way to present this than by asking the reader to wade through this sort of data? But I am the type of reader who wants to drink in every word, and I feel cheated when I am tempted—no, invited is a better word—to scan so many lists by the author.

Worse, D’Agata has chosen to bring into the story his own experience, and his tale of moving his mother to Vegas is incredibly inconsequential and dull. Mom and son look for somewhere to live. Mom and son march in a small parade. He describes a visit to the proposed site at Yucca Mountain, which isn’t as trite. And his work on the suicide prevention hot line allows him to segue more easily into the material about poor Levi. But there is little self-revelation here. The material from his life is simply a way to frame the text, lacking any sort of urgency or depth. Why bother?

Compare D’Agata’s use of memoir here with something like Nick Flynn’s sublime memoir, The Ticking is the Bomb, where Flynn, a soon-to-be father, uses his book to examine his fears of fatherhood and intimacy and, as the Abu Ghraib scandal breaks in the news, his growing obsession with torture and pain. Under Flynn’s deft hand, the connections between his own personal fears, American fears of terrorist attack, and the fears of torturer and tortured alike seem plain enough, but each is made all the more urgent by the immediacy of the prison scandal or the infant growing in its mother’s womb. This is how to use personal experience to inform a political issue. D’Agata presents some intriguing ideas, but his text misses on some important marks. It’s a noble miss, but a miss all the same. 

A self-publisher's progress

Today I submitted a 64-page chapbook to CreateSpace on behalf of Mesilla Valley Writers (MVW), which is here in New Mexico. It's my first such endeavor, and writers considering self-publishing might want to see how it goes. I'll be publishing a second chapbook very soon, and if all goes smoothly, a novel in the fall.

In previous years, MVW has published using a local print shop. We'd print a set number for a set price, and would always have unsold copies languishing in someone's garage. We decided to experiment with an online company this year because we avoid the upfront printing costs and we can buy exactly the quantity we want.

My first inclination was to go with Lulu.com, but they have an 84-page minimum; neither this chapbook nor the next one will meet that criterion. CreateSpace doesn't have that requirement, and their association with Amazon gave me the confidence to try them.

My software includes Word 2007 and Corel Paint Shop Pro X. No doubt other software would do just as well. Formatting the layout and page size in Word was straightforward, just changing it to the 6" x 9" dimensions planned for the book. The page count has to be a multiple of four for any printed book, so I arranged my material and illustrations accordingly. Of course, a few blank pages at the end would be no problem, but you do need to plan for it.

With CreateSpace and probably other such outfits, you have to upload your book in two separate PDFs, one for the contents and one for the cover. Word 2007 allows you to create a PDF of a word processing file, which you can then look at in Adobe. (If you don't have it, download the free Adobe 9 reader. You'll need it.) This is a good time to inspect the entire file for any formatting errors. Then you can upload the PDF to CreateSpace on their website. It's quite straightforward--you get a template into which you upload the file.

After that, I turned to the cover, which was a little more intimidating for me. My front cover graphic had to be 300 dpi and sized at 6 x 9. This was a little tricky getting just right, but mainly because of my inexperience. But it wasn't too bad. The CreateSpace instructions said to export the graphic into PDF. The trouble was, I couldn't see a way to do that using Paint Shop Pro. Maybe I just missed something.

But no matter. A number of free PDF-creating tools exist on the Web. I used

http://www.freepdfconvert.com/, which worked beautifully. I just uploaded my graphic, and got a PDF in return. Very nice. Then it was a matter of uploading that into the cover template. You'll also need to create a back cover and the spine, which of course varies in thickness by page count. They

have a book tour video that shows the process. This is what took me the most time in the submission process, because it requires close attention to detail--and for me, a bit of trial and error. Here is the result:

That red border is not part of the cover; it's the trim area. Anything extending into the trim area will not be part of the cover. The yellow rectangle on the back cover is an area reserved for the ISBN, which CreateSpace puts in automatically.

And wouldn't you know it? After submitting, I realized I needed to make a small change in text. It turns out that all you have to do is resubmit the corrected file.

I'll post more about my experiences as time goes on. Hopefully, they may help someone.

First the good news...

Lots of good things are going on with me lately, along with one rather nasty one. Today I finished the August issue of the Internet Review of Books. Lots of people have a hand in it, of course, but I actually put the web page up on the 15th of every month. Check it out! You'll like it.

More good news is that I'll be publishing chapbooks for the El Paso Writers' League and Mesilla Valley Writers this week. They're lots of work and fun, collaborating with friends to get the jobs completed. They'll both be published through Amazon's CreateSpace. More about them later this week.

And finally, When Pigs Fly has received a dandy new review on Amazon.

Coachmen Santara

2009-2010

R.I.P.

Now the bad—cringe along with me, please—our Coachmen RV has bitten the dust, declared both unusable and unfixable by Camping World. The issue, we're told, is frame fatigue, meaning we could lose the entire back end of the vehicle—it could break off and kill someone—if we continue to use it. When we bought the vehicle it had 4,000 miles on it, and we have added another 16,000, which hardly should be enough to wear it out. There is a lot more detail, but we're going to Camping World tomorrow to remove our belongings from it, and then we're calling our insurance company. It's very distressing, because we love RV travel.

When writers have ADD

Some blogger I am, not posting for three weeks. Lots of writing-related activity has been going on, though, which seems to be an excuse both for not blogging much and for gaining no traction whatsoever on my next novel. In fact, will there ever be another brand-new novel from my keyboard? Certainly not for a while, as one project after another pops up its alluring little head and gives me that come-hither look. A very good writer friend once described himself as a literary roundheels, by which he meant that every appealing idea that occurred to him made him want to stop what he was doing and cavort with something new. It was a self-effacing comment for someone who has published 10 mysteries with St. Martin's Press, but I understand his sentiment. Active projects on my plate include writing book reviews, maintaining the Internet Review of Books (IRB), participating in three writers' groups (president of one, chapbook editor for two, admin for an online group), flirting with writing poetry, finding and working with web development techies to develop a new and improved IRB website, eagerly searching for typos in other people's work, and putting together some short pieces for a writing contest, all while frequently stopping to check email and too infrequently checking other people's blogs. It's all fun at least 90 percent of the time, or I wouldn't do it. The trouble is that novel writing requires a long-term commitment that's inconsistent with this fragmentation of time, this self-imposed ADD.

There will be another novel, but it's already written, sitting on my hard drive since the previous millennium, when an agent was unable to place it. An artist will create a cover, and then off the novel will go to publication, probably through Lulu. It's serious, though, and most of my fiction in the last few years has been fairly light.

What about you? If you're writing a novel, do you clear the decks of distractions? Do you block out time, plunk your butt in the chair, and just write? That's the way to do it. Once upon a time, that used to be me. No longer, but I'm not complaining.

Writing like Stephen King, but not getting paid like him

I write like
Stephen King

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

—Or so the I Write Like website says, based on its analysis of chapter one of One Must Die, to be published in 2011. Check out your writing at http://iwl.me. Is it accurate? Who cares? If you like the results, as I do, go with 'em.

When Pigs Fly available on Kindle

I'm pleased to announce that When Pigs Fly is available on Kindle at http://tinyurl.com/whenpigsfly-kindle.

It’s a rollicking road trip, a comic crime caper, and one man’s quest to do the right thing. The Alamogordo, New Mexico, Friends of the Library refused to let me do a reading because of immorality of the bad guys—what better recommendation could I ask for?

For six bucks, you can’t go wrong. You don’t even need to buy a Kindle reader. You can download Kindle for PC for free.

Redwood forests and London Bridge

We're approaching the halfway point in our4,000-mile, month-long RV trip to the West Coast. The main highlight was seeing our son in the San Francisco area for three days, but almost every day adds to the catalog of delights: petroglyphs where we never expected to see them; London Bridge in the middle of what should be nowhere; trees turned to stone; Victorian Painted Ladies; a town consisting entirely of a general store and a gas pump; thriving redwoods that were already giants when Columbus was but lust in his father's loins. Yesterday I walked in a redwood forest--actually, we're staying in an RV park that sits in the middle of one--and examined an old trunk that had fallen sometime in the distant past. Its diameter might have been seven or eight feet, and one end was hollow. I stood inside, imagining being a hiker who sought shelter from a sudden downpour--the inside of the old giant would have been perfect for a half dozen hikers. On its outside, however, the bark was covered by clover, ferns, lichen, and moss, thousands of small roots extending from the top of the mass. It's going to take a long time for Nature to wipe all traces of the tree's existence, but she is patient. She will do it.

My new card reader doesn't work, though it was fine at first, so I haven't been able to upload photos from my camera for a few days. But perhaps because Man trumps Nature (in his own mind), a highway will lead me today out of this ancient glory and north to a Radio Shack. So by the end of the day I should be able to upload more photos.

Here, at least, is London Bridge, carried stone by stone across the Pond in the 1970s and reassembled in Arizona. Oddly, it looks at home.

Book covers

Here are a couple of book covers I designed for a friend, Dr. Judy Hilbert. She's published both titles on Lulu.com. Desert Blooms is her chapbook consisting mainly of writing by members of her local writing group, who are all seniors living in Las Cruces. The red blossoms are a detail from a photo I took this spring in a neighbor's yard.

This one is from last year. Our fiction critique group meets at a restaurant in Mesilla, so Judy and I set up some shots in the parking lot. She brought along a teddy bear that was germane to her story, and she placed it in the remains of an old, broken-down wagon.

ebook ups and downs

A while back, iUniverse approached me with an offer to turn my novels into ebooks in the epub format for an introductory price of $79. After some dithering, I said yes to creating an ebook for When Pigs Fly about three weeks ago. If it worked out well, I thought, I would go back to do other titles.

Well, I followed up yesterday and learned that they'd forgotten to place my order. So today they've corrected that, and their rep saw that I got the service for free. Meanwhile, the price for future ebooks has gone up from $79 to $249. Yikes! Now I am strongly tempted to just figure out how to do it myself. The ebook won't be ready for about another six weeks.

So it's a good news-bad news deal with iUniverse. On the one hand, they have always treated me fairly and honorably. On the other, they have not overwhelmed me with their competence.

Las Cruces author Jim Lindberg

Today I submitted a short profile to Southwest Senior, about local author Jim Lindberg. This gentleman has done a lot--earned a degree in physics, built rockets at White Sands, studied the atmosphere for the Army, took up gemology as a hobby, bought gems for cash from Mexican miners, earned a private pilot's license, worked as a police officer for ten years, once had dinner in Brazil with a woman who identified herself as Hitler's photographer, and has written two books. He is a member of Mesilla Valley Writers here in Las Cruces, and says he never has writer's block or runs out of ideas.

Whew. I'm tired just thinking about it all.

Here is a link to his two books: http://www.llumina.com/store/ShortStories.htm

An interview with Anne Hillerman

Anne Hillerman

This interview with Anne Hillerman, daughter of the late mystery writer Tony Hillerman, appeared in the May 2010 issue of Southwest Senior. Reprinted with permission.

You and your husband Don Strel have two new books out within six months of each other: Tony Hillerman’s Landscape last October and Gardens of Santa Fe this month. What were the challenges and the pleasures of these two projects?

Both books posed a similar challenge—how to condense the information and select among so many possible photos to give readers the best book possible. For Tony Hillerman's Landscape, photographer Don Strel and I both enjoyed traveling throughout the Four Corners area and the Navajo Nation, following the footsteps of Tony Hillerman's detectives, Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn. In Gardens of Santa Fe, we delighted in the opportunity to see such gorgeous gardens and meet the interesting people who created them.

Tell us about the origins of Tony Hillerman’s Landscape.

Each fall, I help present the Tony Hillerman Writer's Conference: Focus on Mystery. One year New Mexico mystery author Michael McGarrity was our keynote speaker, and Don Strel created a slide show of the places in southern and southwestern New Mexico McGarrity used for his latest book. Tony was in the audience and enjoyed McGarrity's illustrated talk. Afterward he said to Don "Why don't you do something like that for my books?"

Which of your dad’s Chee/Leaphorn novels is your favorite, and why?

Working on our Hillerman's Landscape book gave me a great excuse to re-read them all and I found something I'd forgotten and admired in each of them. I especially enjoyed the early books, Dance Hall of the Dead, Listening Woman, The Dark Wind. I hadn't read them for 25-30 years and they hold up over time very well.

Why do you think readers connected so well with his work?

Tony Hillerman was a wonderful storyteller, with a tremendous appreciation for the landscape in which his stories are set and for the characters who inhabit them. The plot resolutions leave the readers satisfied. The bad guys get what they deserve, Leaphorn and/or Chee solve the crime—and teach us something about the Navajo in the process.

How have his novels affected popular perceptions of the Southwest?

As Don and I have traveled throughout Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico on our book tour, we met many people who say Dad's novels provided their introduction to the Southwest. They liked what they read, came here to visit, and maybe even moved here. The books present American Indians—Navajos, Hopis, Zunis, Utes and other tribes—as real people, and as different from each other. His skill here has helped educate readers who haven't had much other exposure to Southwestern Indians.

Did your dad model any of his characters on real people? And how much Tony Hillerman is in Joe Leaphorn's character?

Yes, Dad often mentioned that he built Joe Leaphorn in part on a sherriff he came to know when he worked a reporter in his early days on the police beat in rural Texas. Other characters, including one memorable villain who spends his spare time trying to find the mother who abandoned him, came from his years in journalism. Sometimes, Dad would let non-profit groups auction off the chance to have a character in his next book named after the buyer. But, although the names are real those character don't necessarilly have anything in common with the real person.

Joe Leaphorn did remind me of Dad in some ways....his unflapability, his dogged anaylzing of problems until they were solved, his tremendous love for his wife and, of course, Leaphorn's appreciation for the beauty of the landscape of the Navajo Nation. Dad loved that country and was totally devoted to his wife, my Mom Marie.

Do you plan to write fiction some day?

Yes. If it will be good fiction remains to be seen. I think every person who enjoys playing with words and stories shares that fiction dream.

Tell me about his influence on your own writing.

Both of my parents always believed that I could do, and succeed at, whatever career I chose. I saw how much my Dad loved journalism, so that was my first career and it lead to books. I had some classes with Dad at UNM when he was teaching journalism and he gave me the same tough, honest criticism he gave everyone in the class. He encouraged me to keep at it, not to get lazy with my writing, and to always expect a little more of myself.

Finally, aren't you glad he didn't follow that agent's advice to get rid of the Indian stuff?

You bet!

Cuddling my new iPad

A couple of weeks ago, I bought an iPad at the Apple store in Albuquerque. Was it worth the money? Oh, that's probably the wrong question. It's a bright, shiny grownup's toy that entices the shopper with its utter and shameless sexiness. Walk past the display model and you can almost hear it coo, ooh, baby...take me home...stroke your fingers on my interface...

They were out of stock on the $400 model, and I had to act while my resistance was low. So my wife and I walked out of the store $500 poorer but feeling oh-so twenty-first century.

People, myself included, seem to be buying these machines based mainly on their potential. A certain number of applications come with it, such as the Safari browser, email, a notepad, a calendar; other apps are free or modestly priced. Nota bene: so far, all of this duplicates functionality already on my laptop. I purchased a Sudoku game and use it a lot, but could have kept playing on my laptop for free. There is a free app that lets me read all my Kindle purchases in an appealing display, but I already own a Kindle. I can upload photos and music, but I already use my laptop for that. There's an iBook app I don't use yet because my Kindle books won't transfer over. Other apps exist, but they are still relatively few.

So I ask myself, potential for what? Simply for the uses I haven't thought of, the surprises developers will dream up.

Meanwhile, it's hard to see the iPad fulfilling any immediate need that my other gizmos can't satisfy quite well. I love it, but so far it's mostly an expensive Sudoku-playing machine.

Redundancy, anyone?

Back on the blogging wagon

First rose of the year in our patio

A friend reminded me today that I've fallen off the blogging wagon. Guilty, your honor.

My writers' groups have had interesting guests this month: Robin Romm at Mesilla Valley Writers and Rus Bradburd at El Paso Writers' League. Both seemed like seasoned presenters as they spoke about their own works and about the writing process. Bradburd spoke of the need for writers to write against the readers' expectations and to avoid the familiar. Writing about losing is more interesting than writing about winning, he said, because losing (and conflict) reveal character.

Tony Hillerman on writing

“Sitting at a computer is the place for taking a clunky sentence and smoothing it out, making it read better. I do some of my best writing in my head before I fall asleep for my afternoon nap. I recommend that!”

—Tony Hillerman, quoted in Tony Hillerman's Landscape by Anne Hillerman

Draft cover for Cobra

Here is a draft of a cover design for my mystery, Cobra. The clip-art snake image is copyrighted material I will purchase from ClipArtOf.com. The rest of the work is my own, using Paint Shop Pro X.

The story itself, which I'll self-publish, is a detective novel set in urban U.S. with flashbacks to Cambodia. Unlike my previous works, this one is serious.

So here's my question: Does the cover make you want to read the book? I'd really appreciate people's input either way. If anything in the design doesn't work for you, please tell me. Thanks!

The worst typo ever?

The Red Room asked readers about the worst typo they've ever seen. In the early '70s I wrote for a local weekly newspaper. On one fateful deadline night, a reporter (not yours truly) wrote his account of a planning board meeting, and the editor rushed it through to print without giving it much of a look. But the reporter had embedded a parenthetical note to the editor, not meant for publication, mentioning a member of the public who'd attended the meeting. The gist was that the gentleman, who was named, was a loudmouth, a fool, and the town drunk. Naturally, the article was published with the private note intact, and it caused quite a commotion. The way I heard about it later, the newspaper's owner privately apologized to the man, who in turn acknowledged the basic truth of the article as printed.

Defining the border

Gene Keller, the speaker at today's El Paso Writers' League meeting, gave us a 15-minute writing exercise to "define the border." Since El Paso is flush against the U.S. Mexican border, that's the one he meant and the one we wrote about. Here is my effort:

The border is a line we've agreed upon—a river, a wall, a treaty. Land that once was theirs but now is ours, and they had better not show up without their papers.

It's a line between us and them—our language and theirs. Our money and their drugs; our guns and their crime. It's a line we cross every day, enjoying the benefits of each others' culture. It's a line that once kept shifting but now is fixed in the ground. It's a line that is both distinct and blurred.

Writing book reviews

I'm working my way through Barnaby Rogerson's The Last Crusaders, about the century-long clash between Christendom and Islam that lasted into the 16th century. My assignment is to review it for the February issue of the Internet Review of Books, so I need to finish soon, even though it's not a speedy read. When I come across a passage that might be worth referring to, I write the page number and the first few words of a sentence on a piece of paper. When I've finished reading the book, I'll open a Word file and start writing notes--initial impressions, then perhaps quotes or ideas from the list I've compiled. That's generally enough to get me started on writing the review.

That sounds straightforward enough, but what do others do? If you write book reviews, how do you approach the task?

A book unfit for review?

A book reviewer I know recently refused to review a self-published book on the grounds that it was so sloppily written and edited. The book review editor tactfully explained to the author that the reviewer preferred not reviewing it at all to writing a scathing review.

The author blithely responded that since his manuscript had been edited by an English teacher and a grammar-checking program, he felt perfectly comfortable with the book the way it was, and that the reviewer must simply be judging by her own unique standards that were of no concern to the author.

I haven't seen the book in question, but it's hard to imagine a writer with such a cavalier attitude having any success.

Gringos in Mazatlán

Here in Mazatlán we are yards away from both a busy street and the ocean. As I listen to the mixture of sounds, I sometimes find it hard to distinguish between traffic and surf. Perhaps two-thirds of the RVs here in Mar Rosa RV Park are from Canada, including every U.S.-bordering province except for the Maritimes. License plates abound from British Columbia, and these people are here for multi-month stays. With the exception of someone from Ohio, the U.S. visitors are all from west of the Mississippi.

If you can tear yourself away from the lovely beach, getting around the city is easy and inexpensive. Yesterday we rode a bus into downtown for nine pesos each, which amounts to a little over a half dollar. The bus had a hand-printed destination on its cracked windshield, and a little girl who was maybe four or five years old sat on the driver's knee. Bring Your Daughter to Work Day, I suppose.

We rode a pulmonia to an indoor shopping area with dozens of vendors selling clothing, arts, crafts, food, and such. Vendors tend be assertive and friendly, and to an extent you can haggle on prices. Nancy and I must have Gringo emblazoned on our foreheads, because the vendors immediately try out their English on us. For regular shopping, the big chains like Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stand ready to take your pesos. We've been buying groceries at a nearby Mega super market, which is as modern and well-stocked as any in the States.

One night this week we attended an excellent flamenco performance in the historical part of the city. You can see a YouTube video of the dance troupe on their website.

Mexico trip, day 7: Celestino Gasca

Empty beach, Celestino Gasca

At 4 p.m. I walked the long beach at Celestino Gasca and looked around to find that I was the only person in sight. The water is warm, and young men swim out beyond the surf with flippers and mesh-covered inner tubes, apparently diving for oysters. We’re in a tiny RV park built for eight occupants, with a couple of small buildings, a pool that I’m told is called an “infinity pool,” and some colorful flowers. Oddly, at least to me, two sides of the property are fenced off with chain link and barbed wire, even though any unlikely trespassers could easily walk around it. Near the pool is a covered patio area for lounging and dining; they serve excellent seafood dishes.

As nice as this place is, it’s not near anything else as far as I can tell. I’m eager to move on to Mazatlán and, I hope, leave the sand fleas and godawful Internet connection behind.

By the way, my experience so far is that a great many places accept only cash instead of credit cards. That seems to go for gasoline, RV fees, and many restaurants, although my Visa worked for a couple of lunches.

Mexico trip, day 6: Celestino Gasca

RV park at Celestino Gasca,

on Mexico's west coast

Yesterday was no more than an overnight stay in Los Mochis, a good-sized city with just one RV park. Roosters do live there, and the place lived down to our expectations in every way.

Today we stopped at Celestino Gasca, an hour outside of Mazatlán, where we plan to stay a couple of nights. The beach on the Pacific Ocean is utterly gorgeous here, and the place advertised free Internet. That turns out to mean that they have one 3G modem that they lend out on request. I have it now and can’t get it to work. Maybe the owner will help me out tomorrow, or maybe I will be posting this from Mazatlán.

The highway through Los Mochis and Culiacán is mostly a four-lane, divided road that’s in good shape. We passed any number of cornfields and tomato plantings, with mountains in the distance. We crossed from the state of Sonora into Sinaloa, which sports a license plate with a bright red tomato. At one rest stop a fellow approached me, holding up a plastic bag with what looked like garbage in it. I thought he was trying to sell it to me, so I gave him a couple of pesos and waved him off.

Our RV park is small, with perhaps a half dozen RVs here now. Two are from British Columbia and one is from Saskatchewan, all retirees here for extended winter stays. One of the Canadian women had a deep bronze sun tan making her look like a roasted chicken. She also had a big smile as she sat back into her lawn chair to soak up more bright afternoon sun. It seems that Canadians are less spooked by news accounts of Mexican crime than Americans are.

Mexico trip, day 4

We're staying in San Carlos an extra night and leave for Los Mochis, Sinaloa, tomorrow. Our friends tell us not to expect television or Internet there, but we'll have electricity and probably water and roosters. So Thursday will be a day off from email and blogging. Then Friday we'll skirt Culiacán and arrive in Mazatlán, our primary destination. Whenever I find a decent Internet connection, I will upload more photos.

Everything is quiet here in San Carlos, except for the John Deere power shovel chugging and banging almost next door. We see American and Canadian tourists here and there, but the beaches are almost empty except for gulls and pelicans. It feels abnormal for such a nice area.

Meanwhile, our son arrived safely in San Francisco to start his new software job this week.

Mexico trip, day 3

This is one of the worst Internet connections we've come across in a while. Lots of time to daydream and chat while mysterious cyber forces do their slow dance. Aren't electrons supposed to be, like, fast? And the pix aren't loading. Oh, here we go:

Our day here in San Carlos got off to an inauspicious start, as we had little cash, our debit card wouldn't work, and not many places seem to take credit cards. It took us a good deal of the morning to straighten matters out with our bank back in Las Cruces—they had blocked use of the card as a security measure since attempted transactions started happening in Mexico. They told us we should have let them know our travel plans in advance. One fellow RVer told us he advises his bank anytime he's going to travel out of his home state. So Nancy and I stewed a lot, but all was well by noon.

Next door to our RV park, heavy equipment is loudly at work at 8:30 p.m. Apparently a recent hurricane destroyed a bridge so that the road ends suddenly, no doubt harming a lot of businesses. Now there is a giant hole where a steam shovel works on the once and future bridge.

We haven't seen much of San Carlos, but the beach is the big draw anyway. Temps are in the 70s and the water is pleasantly cool to wade in.

Mexico trip, days 1-2

Our first day was okay but not notable. We stopped for the night north of Tubac, Arizona, and will write no epic ballads about it.

Today we drove from Amado, Arizona, roughly 300 miles to San Carlos, Sonora today and arrived tired, cranky, and unfit to be near. It was a long drive down Mexico Route 15, following our friends in their RV--not bad except for the narrow driving lanes. We were on a four-lane divided highway, but the lanes seemed barely wide enough for the trucks and buses that frequently blew by us in the passing lane. Really the driving felt safe except when I'd get tired and bored. We'd bought a walkie-talkie to communicate with our friends, who took the lead because they knew what they were doing. Notable are the topes, or speed bumps, for which signs give ample warning. We went over the first one carefully, but it turned out to be the mujer de todos topes--the mother of all speed bumps, and everything fell out of our cabinets, including a bottle of olive oil. (Tip: Would you like your floors to be shiny and slippery? Coat them with olive oil.)

On a couple of stops we learned that our debit card doesn't work down here--argh--and we have to resolve that pdq. It could be a security measure, as we live near the border and perhaps the assumption is that the card could have been stolen and smuggled across the border. We'll call the bank tomorrow and hope we can straighten things out. Also, we were surprised to find that so few places accepted credit cards.

By the time we arrived in San Carlos, Nancy and I were pretty much at each other's throats--you can get away with that when you've been married as long as we have--but our friends suggested we all hie ourselves over to the next-door restaurant where they offered a free margarita to each RV customer. The first one was good, so I ordered a second, which for some reason filled up a much bigger glass. Well, let me tell you, it figuratively knocked me on my butt. A couple hours and a plancha mexicana (flounder dinner) later, I am still a few degrees off level. But it was just a minute's walk back to the RV, and the restaurant accepted my Visa card, so all's well.

We are yards from the ocean and arrived too late for me to take photos--and I was in no mood anyway--but we'll be staying here at least another night, so I will have pix to post tomorrow. The coast is gorgeous.

Writing and travel in 2010

Our Bengal cat George seems to be doing well on his beta blocker, a tiny 6.25 mg pill fragment that if it fell on the floor we might never see again. We delayed our Mexico trip so he can have a Saturday morning follow-up at the vet, and then barring anything unexpected, we will head off on our trip on Sunday. Our first stop will be Nogales, Arizona, so we will cross the border on Monday. As everyone knows, there is a certain amount of mayhem down there, but none of it—knock on wood—seems aimed at tourists. Still, we'll be careful. The road to Mazatlán is a straight shot from the border.

While we're there, I'll be working on one of my 2010 goals of losing 33 pounds by my birthday in October. As for writing-related goals, those for once are easy to define and should be straightforward to keep. Long ago I set a goal of getting a particular novel published by a certain date, which quickly taught me never to set a goal where I can't control the outcome. So my goals include writing and submitting material for publication, editing and publishing a couple of writing club chapbooks, and maintaining the Internet Review of Books website. Oh, and I may decide to self-publish one of my old novels as an e-book.

What are your plans for the new year? Do you find it hard to stick with your annual goals?

A hopeful prognosis for George

George, doing what he does best

We learned today that our five-year-old Bengal cat George has a defective mitral valve and hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy, which the vet tells us will shorten his life. Lately George has had a few seizures and lacks the energy he used to have, when no shelf was too high, no breakable item quite safe from a swat of his paw. He'll be going on a beta blocker, and his prognosis is "fair to good." Many cats survive only months with symptoms like his. We're hoping for him to have the best outcome possible.

We've been speculating that his life span may be shorter than his twin sister Gracie's, but we will be grateful for whatever time we have with him. Even without his full former spunk, he's a joy.

Getting ready for Mazatlán

We're preparing to leave for a month-long RV trip to Mazatlán on January 1. Today we drove with our friends to the Mexican side of the Santa Teresa border entry to get visas. We're confident we'll be safe because our friends are going with us and have made the trip a number of times. In fact, they've lived in Mexico. So we were all mildly surprised when a woman in line for a visa warned us what not to do when we're on the road: don't pick up anyone, don't talk to strangers, don't leave the vehicle unattended, and at gas stations just pay for your gas and leave. Some of that is common sense; we don't intend to pick up anyone, for example. On the other hand, we aren't going to live in fear. The highway from the U.S. border to Mazatlan is apparently a straight shot, so we aren't worried about getting lost.

Last night our friends called an RV park in Mazatlán and were told we'd have no trouble staying at their park. Skittishness of tourists is one reason they gave, but they said the overall economy is the main problem. In any case it has security, has wi-fi, and is right by the beach. That way I'll be able to get sand in my toes, drink cerveza, maintain the Internet Review of Books website, and write blog entries accompanied by lots of photos.

Mexico is a beautiful country wracked in places by violence. Mazatlan itself is said to be safe for tourists; as with any big city, there doubtless are neighborhoods where strangers shouldn't go. But our friends, who've been there, tell us we'll get everywhere we want to go by bus or taxi.

An uncommon snowfall

Organ Mountains near Baylor Canyon Road,

Las Cruces, New Mexico

Over the past weekend, a storm moved in and delivered two days of rain—not a deluge, but steady. Our Chihuahua Desert climate typically sees scattered rain, if any at all, between July and September, so our most recent storm was a surprise. As a transplanted New Englander, I listened with excitement as the El Paso weatherman predicted that the clouds would deliver one to three inches of snow in the region before disappearing.

I'm happy to write that the snow fell in the relative lowlands of Las Cruces, lasted long enough to titillate us, then promptly melted. Even the Robledos and Doña Ana Mountains were bare. But the Organ Mountains dominate our city's skyline, and they looked as though they wore a coating of confectioners' sugar. It might not happen again for years.

A view from Baylor Canyon Road

So Nancy and I set out for an afternoon drive up Route 70 to the San Augustin Pass (elevation 5719 feet), which leads to the White Sands Missile Range. From there we doubled back to the city side of the mountains and followed Baylor Canyon Road.

It probably won't last on the mountains but another couple of days. Snowmelt is already trickling in rivulets and will soon rush in sheets, watering the cactus, the creosote, and the grama grass. It will find its way into the arroyos and into the Rio Grande, and whatever people don't take out will either evaporate or flow to the Gulf.

Baylor Canyon Road parallels the Organ Mountains.

The White Sands Missile Range is on the other side.

When Pigs Fly gets its butt kicked

Here is the latest review (ForeWord Clarion Review) of When Pigs Fly, and it's hardly kind. The writer's main point is that he hates my humor. Even his compliment about my storytelling is framed as a slap in the face. Mainly, though, Diet Cola is pissed off. He worked so hard to be an asshole in that story, and all the reviewer can focus on is what he drinks.

The review came through iUniverse, and they offered me the option to kill it. I told them heck no. Let it run.

When Pigs Fly
Bob Sanchez
iUniverse
290 pages
Softcover $17.95
978-1-9352-7866-5
Two Stars (out of Five)

“George Ashe sat in the passenger seat, inside the ceramic urn still protected by the FedEx box,” Bob Sanchez writes in a line that is typical of the humor in his latest novel. When Pigs Fly tells the story of Mack Durgin, a former police officer from Massachusetts, who has settled into retirement in Arizona only to be sucked into the biggest crime caper he’s ever seen.

Sanchez’s plot sounds original, but the novel reads like a watered down version of a Coen brothers’ script. First, there’s the compelling protagonist who wants nothing more than to settle down and enjoy some peace and quiet. Of course that can’t happen, because a box arrives with his friend’s ashes contained in an urn inside, and Mack knows that he has to fulfill a promise. The fulfillment of that promise becomes a harrowing task that involves over-the-top, one-dimensional characters like “Diet Cola”—an ex-con with a craving for calorie-free soft drinks—and an Elvis impersonator who is actually named Elvis.

Mack sets out to spread George Ashe’s ashes over the Grand Canyon. Along the way, he’s pursued by a variety of oddball characters who want to get their hands on another item contained inside the urn. This twist provides the hook that propels the tale forward.

Sanchez’s humor falls flat from the beginning because the novel seems to be trying too hard to be something that it isn’t. The characters are clichés that readers will have a hard time taking seriously. There are bad one-liners (“We’re not in Kansas anymore Dodo”) and downright shameless gags such as an Elvis impersonator getting stabbed in the eye with a tampon. Additionally, Sanchez contradicts himself often by making a point, then immediately overruling himself, as in this line: “Too bad tires were so hard to shoplift, or Ace could pick up some nice radials Stealing tires was always possible but it was tough getting them installed.” Statements like these lead readers to question the tale as a whole.

The real shame, however, is that Sanchez is actually a good storyteller when he puts his mind to it. The narrative flows well and actually captivates at times, but sadly, his writing skills are overshadowed by silly character names and lackluster dialogue.

Even in the craziest of crime capers, readers must be able to identify with the characters and believe that, as strange as the story is, it could actually happen. When Pigs Fly does not succeed in this.

Liam Brennan

Turkey Day in the Southwest

A short Thanksgiving essay of mine has just appeared in the newsletter of The California Writers's Club (West Valley Branch), thanks to their editor, Kathy Highcove. You'll need to scroll down to page 11 of the PDF, where I am honored to have space next to Alice Folkart's essay. Here it is:

Turkey Day in the Southwest

By Bob Sanchez

Kathy Highcove recently asked me to write about food for your Thanksgiving issue, and she could have picked no one more qualified. Indeed I have consumed food my entire life, and for virtually every reason one can imagine: hunger, consolation, gluttony, boredom, celebration, love, parental threats, desire to please, and the time of day, to name but a few.

Thanksgiving gives us one more reason to tie on the bib. It’s that wonderful day when we give thanks for football and our God-given freedom to overeat. In 1950s New England, we’d go to a high-school football game that Thursday morning and return home to the aroma of the baked turkey and mince pie that Mom was just pulling out of the oven. She’d make the piecrust with lard and the gravy with bird grease. Clogged arteries were a thing of the future—the near future, as it turned out.

When we sat down at the table, Dad led us in a swift and perfunctory Bless us oh Lord for all those delights we really took for granted. Critical questions followed: White meat or dark? (Always white for me.) More stuffing? (Yes, please.) Cranberries? (Yes, please.) Lakes of gravy filled the craters in the mashed potatoes, while salt and pepper rained over all. At one such meal I politely asked my brother’s girlfriend to “please piss the butter,” causing everyone but Mom and me to get up from the table, choking with laughter. Mom glowered and said nothing.

We didn’t know the word tryptophan back then, but we felt its effect as the afternoon wore on. Then in the days after Thanksgiving we’d pick away at the turkey’s carcass until there was nothing left of that poor bird but the bones and a plaintive gobble.

Half a century has passed, and now my wife and I live in New Mexico, where the official state question is “Red or green?” referring to one’s preference in chile colors. Our holidays have been drained of most of the fat except what we carry around on our persons, but otherwise we still have turkey on Turkey Day. So when my online friend Miz Highcove said, “Hey Bob, what’s a Hispanic Thanksgiving like?” I was briefly stumped because I’m not Hispanic (long story short: Papa Sanchez was from British Honduras and swore allegiance to King George).

So I delved into research for a few minutes, and it turns out that Southwest holiday fare isn’t much different from what you might expect: mix a bit of chile into the stuffing and go easy on the Pilgrim references, and you’re pretty much there. Several Web sources (and you know how authoritative they are), say that the real first Thanksgiving was celebrated near El Paso—therefore, near me—by a conquistador in 1598. Take that, Plimoth Plantation.

Of course, some original research was necessary, so we went out to eat. A Hispanic waitress told me that on Thanksgiving she likes to serve her family cornbread muffins made with chopped jalapeño, which sounds delicious to me. Finally, a Google search turned up such worthy suggestions as mixing spicy chorizo into the stuffing and combining a sweet and sour chile sauce with a cranberry base. So with a little Googling, you can easily add a Southwestern flair to your Thanksgiving meal.

Just keep an eye on the butter.

Bob Sanchez is an ex-New Englander living in Las Cruces, New Mexico, where he’s webmaster of The Internet Review of Books. In the past, he’s been a technical writer and a few other things he’d rather not talk about. You might find his blog interesting and his novels amusing. They are When Pigs Fly and Getting Lucky.

Nothing That Needed Eyes (Flash Fiction)

Here's a short piece I wrote for my writing group's chapbook.

Nothing That Needed Eyes

No good would come from disturbing this old house, I thought, applying my crowbar to an ancient oak plank. Still, there could be money squirreled away somewhere in this mess. Rusty nails creaked and snapped; the board popped up to expose a shallow dirt cellar crawling with centipedes and roaches.

Nellie Westhaver had lived here alone, at first pitied and then ignored by the townsfolk for the shiftless husband who had held lots of odd jobs and fast women until he and some mini-skirted trash named Luann disappeared for good and good riddance, probably on the Greyhound to Boston. He’d left his rattletrap Buick behind, but Nellie didn’t drive.

I’d recently spent ten years’ worth of medium security in Walpole and didn’t have a dime left to my name. Crazy Nellie had been my next-door neighbor, the type who never answers the door, fills every room with newspapers going back to Genesis, and lets you know she’s dead when she starts to smell. The house dated back to Revolutionary times, with its low ceilings and stone fireplaces in every room and not a single wall or doorway plumb or true. Not having many job prospects as an ex-con, I decided to see if the old bat had hidden any cash.

The stench had finally told her fate last week—masked EMTs carried her body out feet first on a stretcher, and police closed and padlocked the door. Already I hear Seven-Eleven wants to buy the lot.

Evidently, someone had made half an effort to tame the terrible odor, but the place still smelled like air freshener overpowered by death. Rot gnawed at the wood while mold spores and silence filled the air. Old Look magazines and Lowell Sun newspapers sat in dusty stacks. A small TV with rabbit ears looked like it hadn’t been used since Lawrence Welk died. At the window, a fly struggled in a spider web as a daddy-longlegs sidled up to suck out its juices. I knew how the fly felt, an inmate at the mercy of a sadistic prison guard.

Home improvement for this house would have to start with a match, but I’d never torch it because I’d be the number one suspect. This was the first place I’d ever broken into, the first place I’d ever been arrested, back in my juvie days when Nellie and Ashton still held backyard cookouts and enjoyed sipping martinis and electrocuting moths with their luminescent bug zappers.

Nellie’s bed smelled about right for her having died in it. I felt in the stained pillows and covers for hidden cash, knowing perfectly well some cop would already have checked all those obvious places and pocketed the prize. Cabinets and closets and dressers turned up the usual jetsam floating in a sea of dust bunnies as Nellie sailed on to her next life.

I pushed the queen-sized bed aside to rummage through the tattered cardboard boxes underneath and found old letters and bills, a broken telephone, stained Melamine plates, nothing even fit for a yard sale. If this house had anything less than ten years old or worth more than five dollars, I’d have been shocked. Frustrated, I kicked a box. There was no point in looking any more—but wait, this was odd. Several floor boards looked lighter and newer than the rest: pine surrounded by oak, galvanized nails bent but not rusted, hammer-head impressions in the soft wood suggesting slapdash carpentry.

Eagerly I pried another board and looked into the darkness. Some godforsaken life form squeaked and scurried away. I turned my flashlight on a pea-green Army blanket, and a thousand miserable bugs scattered in all directions. Only a fool would disturb that filthy piece of trash, but I was a plain and simple fool.

I went to a closet and found a wire coat hanger that I used to fashion a hook. I tried to catch one edge of the blanket, but the hanger slipped out of my hands and out of reach. Disgusted, I lay on the floor and reached down to pull away the blanket.

A sudden visit from the police couldn’t have brought me closer to cardiac arrest. I didn’t care anymore about money.

A pair of skeletons in rotted clothing lay one on top of the other. A hatchet rested inside the skull it had shattered down the middle. Toadstools grew out of both eye sockets—but there was nothing here that needed eyes.