American Soma Story Coming True

The story, "North American Twlight," included in the anthology American Soma, was excerpted at The Nervous Breakdown last December. In the story, Edward Boone--previously an oil man and corporate opportunist--sells off his rigs and refineries so that he can purchase water rights to the land around him.

"Water," Boone says, "is the new oil."

Read "Edward Boon and the Angel of Death" here.

I made water one of the major symbolic elements in American Soma for a reason. Water (or lack thereof) will fuel tremendous civil unrest unless we are able to arrest its depletion. It is a more vital resource than oil has ever been, since he who controls access to water, controls all of life.

Of course, in my story, Edward Boone was one of the figurative apocalyptic horsemen. It could even be argued that he was two: famine and war. But I thought of him more as famine, an effect I consciously created when I juxtaposed him with the thirsting cattle and the wilting soybean fields:

"The following summer, Lubbock disintegrated to a scorched husk. Plants curled their leaves against the sun and bent over under the weight of the heat. Cattle suffered and stood around their troughs, lowing hoarsely for water. A drought left the land little more than escaping dust. The winds aided its flight by contributing gusting eddies that eroded fields and further parched the earth. In the cities, a water emergency was in effect. Local reservoirs had dipped so low that residents were encouraged to boil their water before drinking it. Boone imagined his profit margins climbing. "

Frighteningly, my story isn't so far from fiction anymore. According to the article, "The Ten Biggest American Cities that Are Running Out of Water" at Yahoo Finance , urban aquifers are drying up. The article's authors, Charles B. Stockdale, Michael B. Sauter, and Douglas A. McIntyre, underscore the gravity of the situation in the first two paragraphs:

"Some parts of the United States have begun to run low on water. That is probably not much of a surprise to people who live in the arid parts of America that have had water shortages for decades or even centuries. No one who has been to the Badlands in South Dakota would expect to be able to grow crops there.

The water problem is worse than most people realize, particularly in several large cities which are occasionally low on water now and almost certainly face shortfalls in a few years. This is particularly true if the change in global weather patterns substantially alters rainfall amounts in some areas of the US." (Stockdale, Sauter, McIntyre)

There are three Texas cities on that list. Frightening indeed. In light of the government's current fragmentary nature, would we, as a nation, be a strong enough to weather the civil unrest--possibly even the civil wars--that would potentially follow protracted water shortages? It's certainly something to think about.

A New Attitude towards Writing

Just got done publicizing the excellent news about Collagist (And Dzanc Best of the Web) Editor Matt Bell and Hobart Editor Aaron Burch coming to read at the October TNY Presents Event. Unfortunately, I can't be there for the reading because I teach a night class while TNY Presents is going on, so I've temporarily handed over my emcee-duties to Kris and Scott until my semester ends.

Also of important note is Jason Jordan's story "Wolverine", which is currently up at New Yinzer Fiction. Check out his own explanatory blog post on the story here!

Today, on my "day off", I've been doing a little writing. I took part in the nth Word's six-word contest. Example #1 (based on the image at right): Preserved Delphic Oracle roams cities, paranoid. Example#2 (below):Outside Eden, Lilith offers the apple. Talk about an exercise in what I preach to my own students: brevity with precision. I don't know if I achieved that, but it was a nice warm-up for longer work today.

I just found Margaret Bashaar's post about coming to terms with making the writing life work. It is insightful, wise, and affirming--and it resonates. Especially #2, where Margaret explains that she has stopped being so concerned with becoming a "successful" writer, which is to say, "well-known" or at least "recognized". I've found that desire for career success and, by extension, affirmation for my writing has led me to dead ends. My experience with producing American Soma was a process ultimately so disheartening, so filled with wheel-spinning, unexpected monetary outlay, and negative experiences that I became extremely disillusioned. To what end was I pounding my head against the wall, exactly? (I want to be sure to add that I am extremely, extremely grateful to the fellow writers who turned my experience around. Huge thanks are due to Terry Hawkins, Jen Michalski, Jason Jordan, horror writer D.L. Russell, and Iconoclast Editor Phil Wagner, who reviewed the book and helped spread the word. I am really very grateful to them, too, because they reminded me that great, positive energy exists in the writing community. And this keeps a girl going. I, in turn, have been trying to pay it forward as much as possible. Let's keep that good energy rolling among us!

I've realized that writing is less about notoriety and much more about steady creativity and regular sharing. As Margaret Bashaar says in the post above: "I'm a poet now. Which means I write poems. Period."

I so agree. In fact, it's my mantra now: "I'm a writer now. Which means I write stories. Period."

Thanks to Margaret, too.