Coal Dust On My Feet ~ part 3

           

            DeDe Nettles was a pistol. At thirty-nine, she carried a .38 Smith & Wesson and could shoot straight. When she slipped it into the pocket of her apron it felt heavy, like a ball and chain. Yawning, she shuffled out to the back porch for some fresh air. She stretched and leaned over the railing hearing … she wasn’t sure. “Could be raccoons trying to get to the chickens.” Voices—someone’s in the yard. “The whole world’s gone crazy.”

She scurried back into the kitchen and locked the door behind her. It was the first time she’d turned that lock since she’d married Thirl and moved into the house on Nicholas Street. After pouring another cup of coffee, she walked to the front room to rest in her overstuffed chair. A chair Thirl had bought her for Christmas. He brought it in on the train from Charleston. The same year he purchased their first refrigerator and added the bathroom to the back of the house.

Before she sat down she smacked the chair. An impulse from living in a coal camp, the dust that flew out of it determined her next cleaning day. She was a small woman and felt like a child each time she sunk into her chair. The first time she took a seat and saw her reflection in the windows, she laughed and said she looked like a redheaded kewpie doll with no legs.

Life’s sorrows showed in her brown eyes, Thirl had told her. DeDe had seen first hand the hardships of mining life on women, and she was no exception. Every woman she knew aged quickly. DeDe’s smiles were few and far between, reserved only for special moments, and mostly for James Curtis. Up close her skin was a vague meshwork of lines and wrinkles, like the peel of an orange, only smoother. Petite, but often the largest presence in the room, her physical size often went unnoticed. She was bound to protect her own with as much commitment and passion as Joseph Bradley when he decided to build his coal empire in Widen.

Thirl teased her, how she could testify about her sanctification one night and shoot a perfect game of pool the next. DeDe recruited every child on Nicholas Street for Sunday school. She never missed a church service. And everybody knew she loved her boy. James Curtis was her prize possession.

For all her religious dreams, visions, and premonitions, she headed the ladies prayer group every week, specializing in prayer for the safety of miners. Some folks said she had the “gift.” Her grandma had it, and so did her mama. A sense of knowing the future, of hearing what could not be heard by normal folk. A direct line to the Almighty. She didn’t gossip, but when she spoke—folks paid attention.

DeDe’s hand slipped into her pocket; her fingers clasped the cold metal of her gun. With her other hand she reached out to the bookcase beside her chair and lifted the ancient picture of her grandfather, turning it in the dimly lit room, tilting it this way and that, gauging the severity of his lifeless face. He was God’s minister, and yet she wondered if he heard the mine scream before his head snapped toward the explosion and the rumble of the fireball—before he was incinerated. Or maybe he never saw it coming. Maybe he was buried by tons of earth without warning. Maybe his bones were crushed, his organs split open, his senses annihilated, his life wiped out before he had a chance to understand what was happening. But she doubted it.

~~~

The coal camp sprawled over the bottom of the hollow some sixty miles northeast of Charleston, the state capital. The road to Widen was hilly, twisting and narrow. A broken road with ruined shoulders and potholes. A yellow sign at the top of the steep hill that dropped into Widen warned, HILL. Somebody scratched it into the word, HELL.

At the bottom, all along its length were small houses, occasionally a large one, set back from the road at the edge of the mountain. A twisting octopus of streets swirled through the valley, not the typical plaid grids of flatland towns. Although the valley was wide, as they typically were in that part of the country, one road and one railroad led in and out of town. Thunderous coal and passenger trains rode the rails and filled the valley with the sound of screeching brakes and shrill whistle stops. A loose-plank bridge near the Grille rumbled with a clap of thunder each time a vehicle drove over the creek below that collected beer bottles, candy bar wrappers, and cigarette butts. No streets or alleys were paved; that was only for folks in cities like Charleston and Huntington. Widen’s streets were covered in slag coal or dirt.

The town was alive with coal. The Company’s huge gob piles, ominous heaps of mine waste with their guts ablaze, filled a person’s nostrils with the pungent odor of struck matches. Over thirty feet high, the graceful slopes of loose coal and sulfurous dirt glowed a soft orange. The tipple’s steam rose like the breath of a monster. A place where coal was screened and loaded into railroad cars, the tipple demanded the town’s attention and tribute. Its silo, locomotive shed and repair shops hugged the company’s railroad yard.

A company town; Joseph Bradley and The Elk River Coal and Lumber Company owned it from tipple to barbershop. Despite the company store, school, post office, bank, movie house, medical dispensary, YMCA, baseball park, and 310 dwellings, Widen was first and foremost a coal mine.

            The trees may not have been straighter in Widen, the grass greener, the sky bluer and the mountains more purple and majestic, but when the mine was producing, it often seemed so. On fine mornings the locals liked to tell each other that, indeed, God covered His black gold with these hills, this place—first.

            But the fine mornings had ended. During the first weeks of September after the mine closed down, the town’s inhabitants remained behind closed doors, clothed in fear. The school closed, the Grille closed, and even the post office closed the day after the strikers dug in and parked their cars, sons, and guns at the top of the road into Widen.

~~~

Inhaling the hills of his childhood, James Curtis watched Odie Ingram skirt the timber at the far end of the east pasture mounted on a young, edgy bay colt. Huge maples, oaks and hemlocks towered over everything, standing still in full foliage on the mountain behind his farm.

Odie worked hard in the mines and he worked his horses hard. James had been welcome once, but he had no idea what Odie would say to him now that they were on opposite sides.

James leaned his shotgun against the fence. He knew most of the younger men had sided with the strikers—he wasn’t taking any chances. They were boys he’d gone to school with, like Cole Farlow. Cole was known for his hot head and short fuse. It stuck in James’ memory the day Cole spouted off that if there were ever a strike, he’d shoot a kiss-ass company man faster than a nigger-lover.

But James knew if the strikers had tried to kill his dad, they’d shoot at anybody. He respected his dad’s position. He’d never side with the union even if he did share a few union sympathies. His love and loyalty to his family far outweighed any feelings for or against the union. Beyond his duty to honor his parents, however, he loved Savina with his soul, and today he wanted to explain that to her father—hoping to keep his place in Odie’s house as his future son-in-law.

James Curtis suspected Odie liked him well enough, but he'd made it clear. Savina could not marry until she was eighteen. It was her daddy’s stubbornness, Savina had said. James, in an attempt to be amiable, respected Odie’s condition. But deep down, James believed Odie would never allow Savina to marry him. James anticipated an eventual elopement. Many couples in Clay County married early, but Odie had an innate fear of being alone since his wife died, so James agreed to wait hoping time would ease his anxiety.

Odie rode high in his saddle, appearing taller than he was. Through the mist of daybreak, the dreamy scene played like a western picture show. In the distance on his favorite colt, Odie checked the mares for signs of illness or accident. The horses fanned away from Odie and the colt. Quick in the morning chill, the mares puffed funnels of breath and shook their heads at the inconvenience.

Odie was not a company man. He worked the mine for one reason and one reason only—to pay off his farm and to raise quarter horses. Odie rode up to the barn then jumped down and hitched the colt to a post, nodding to James, acknowledging his presence. When he ambled toward the back of the house, James shivered; a chill ran the length of his body. Gazing up to the dreary sky, winter was on its way … the leaves were changing, like the rest of his world.

James walked toward the front of the peeling, sagging farmhouse. A pack of spittle-flinging dogs barked and paced back and forth on the porch. Chickens roamed freely. Savina quit trying to fix up the place after her mother died. The yard was covered with junk. Rusted bedsprings, empty Pennzoil cans, wet newspapers, bald tires, corroded truck parts … it looked like the house had vomited its insides.

Odie kicked open the screen door and lifted his gun from his side. Gray drizzle peppered his skin as he stomped down to the bottom broken porch step. Mud and manure covered his boots. A smile ticked briefly at the corners of his mouth like a small spasm and he pulled at his ear with his free hand. Their eyes met with awkward glances. Odie began to stare at James with the eyes of someone who thinks he’s about to be told a fact he already knows. His teeth were clamped shut, his top lip drawn back in that smirking snarl.

James recalled what his daddy had said about Odie a few days ago. That he changed amazingly little over the last thirty years. Except for paunchiness around his middle and the loss of some of his hair, he was the same nice boy he’d gone to school with. James considered the fact that his daddy didn’t really know Odie.

“Morning, Mister Ingram. Savina in the house?”

“I figure she’s down by the crick.”

James Curtis nodded and headed toward the direction of the creek.

“James Curtis!” Odie cocked his rifle.

James froze, feeling Odie’s hot stare burn the back of his neck. He turned around. “Sir?”

A twelve-gauge aimed at his head revealed Odie’s message before he spoke it. “I don’t want you comin’ ‘round here any more. I don’t want you seein’ my Savina agin.”

Up to now, James was unafraid of Odie’s intimidation—it was the attempt to keep him from Savina that left him weak-kneed. “I have a right, Mister Ingram. I have a right to see her. We agreed.”

Odie’s blue eyes blazed, considering this. “Comp’ny men have no rights on my property.”

“Mama thought you’d feel that way. Said to tell you to remember who helped you on the farm last year when Josephine died.”

Odie lowered his gun, by only an inch or two. “I don’t need remindin’. You tell your ma—Thirl and me are even. Ask Bonehead and Hardrock. Ask ‘em who drove Thirl’s car to the Grille last night. With him in it passed out and bleedin’ like a stuck pig. I don’t owe your daddy nothin’, boy. He helped me when Jo died, and it was me that saved his life last night.”

James opened his mouth but nothing came out. Except for his eyes, Odie had become a colorless man. His pale skin, gray hair, gray stubble, dirty gray pants and jacket, and gray cigarette smoke swirling between his fingers matched the shades of gray in his voice. Pockmarks and small scars marred his face. Small cauliflower ears poked out from the sides of his head. The tip of his left ear, which he tugged at whenever he felt uneasy, was cropped, and his nose lay flat against his face—the result of shoeing an uncooperative horse some years before.

Despite his unattractive features, coarse speech and rough manners, he possessed a keen intellect and a profound capacity for observing the world around him.

James stuffed his hands in his jacket pockets and shrugged. “You and my daddy been mining together since you were my age.”

Odie cleared his head and throat, coughed, then spit a plug of phlegm at one of his dogs. “Boy, you ain’t tellin’ me what I don’t know. Your daddy and me spent years together in them deep-dark-dank holes in the ground. Goin’ in before sunup and comin’ out after sundown … never saw daylight for weeks. That cage dropped us like rocks hundreds of feet into them black holes. Ever’ day we’d walk toward the tipple together with our dinner buckets, givin’ the comp’ny another day’s labor, never knowin’ if we’d come home.” Odie lowered his gun further.

“Anybody ever tell you the definition of slave labor, son?” Odie flicked his cigarette to the ground. “It’s coalminin’. Men that work a job where they risk their lives ever’ minute and at the end of the pay period owe more to the comp’ny store than they made. Debts don’t die with ‘em, neither. They’re passed on to their children. It’s time the union come in, make things better, work less hours, stricter safety rules … you heard Zirka … time to let some of the younger fellers in on them committees. You need to join us, James. Time we make some of the decisions.”

“Daddy said Joseph Bradley has the highest safety standards in the state. That he kept the mine open during the Depression so the men could feed their families. Daddy said Bradley pays as high as union scale.”

“Your daddy has his opinion about Bradley, I have mine. Bradley owns the damn bank. He owns us, boy. You think about that. We cain’t take a shit unless Bradley approves it. Now I’m telling you to get off my land. You best hope the union gets in, then maybe we’ll talk agin. Otherwise … Savina is off limits to you, son.”

Coal Dust On My Feet ~ part 2



James Curtis sat staring at the wall, his thoughts tumbling over one another in no particular order. He had assigned himself guard duty on his dad’s bed in the middle of the night an hour after Hardrock Dodrill and Boney Butcher called Doc Vance from the Grille, drove Thirl home, and then carried his bloody body into the house. James rose to his feet, numb and irritable. He stretched and stumbled to the front room where he fell into his dad’s favorite chair, facing a magnificent ten-point buck’s head hanging on the wall. A buck they’d hunted for two years, until Thirl bagged him the Thanksgiving before last. His dad killed it, and he sketched it. Charcoal drawings from the time he was old enough to hold a pencil collected in boxes in his mother’s chifforobe. A framed sketch of the live buck hung on the wall next to its dead head. He hated hunting; killing anything that moved repulsed him.

            James had ridden to work with his dad like he did every morning. It was called morning by the men who worked that shift, but to James it was still night, dark and cold and silent. He could hear his dad’s muffled voice, along with his mother’s, as they said their good-byes. The sound of his dad’s boots pacing the kitchen floor while he waited for his lunch bucket haunted him.

              Together, he and his dad walked out of their soot-coated house. They crossed the front yard, along with dozens of other men crossing their front yards wearing hard hats with lamps attached to the front, carrying lunch buckets the size of toolboxes. A mass of men leaving in their pickup trucks and cars, their mouths already chewing plugs of tobacco to lubricate their throats against the gritty coal dust.

            A first shift supervisor, his dad had worked for Elk River Coal and Lumber as long as he could remember. Mining provided a good living for his family, he’d said, and it would do the same for James. Proud to be a miner’s son, James Curtis followed as expected. He’d worked the mines from the day he graduated high school, never giving his parents a notion he wanted to leave the mountains. He’d been a company man from the day he was born.

            As a little boy, his mother had educated him in the importance of coal and how it kept food on their table and heated every home in the country during winter. “Why, without coal and the miners that bring it to the surface,” she’d said, “America is no better than some dying country in Africa with starving children.” James waved to his mother every morning, stopping at her flower garden—a giant truck tire laid flat and painted white. James had positioned it next to the dogwood tree in the front yard, a tree she’d insisted be planted the day he was born.

But it was his dad that squeezed his hand every morning without saying a word. A quick grasp just after turning the key in the ignition, keeping his eyes straight ahead. He’d never talked about their work or the dangers of it. His grip was a fast second of assuredness that everything was going to be fine—today. It was their secret, one they shared man to man.

James leaned his head back against the old chair and closed his eyes. He could smell his dad’s scent of hair tonic and lye soap. Drifting between sleep and memory, he saw himself as a child being lifted onto his dad’s shoulders in the Thanksgiving Barn. His dad’s large leathery hand covered his entire back. He remembered being made to sit still on a hard church pew, playing with the flexible watchband peeking out from under his dad’s sleeve, how the gold had worn off, and how it pulled at the hairs on his arm. His dad sucked peppermints, and whistled old country tunes when he drove the car. On his dresser, he kept a pickle jar full of change. Each night his dad emptied his pockets—nickels, dimes, and pennies into the jar, landing with tinny pings. They were the sounds James listened for as he drifted off to sleep.

Yesterday, after they’d arrived at the mine, James Curtis walked behind his dad through a few wisps of smoke left hanging in the air—the last puffs of his dad’s cigarette. He turned and mumbled to his son. “Tell your mama I’ll be home late; I have a League meeting after my shift.”

His dad was fine then, and now he wasn’t.

He couldn’t recall how long he’d been sitting there. James got to his feet and walked three steps to the gun cabinet. Selecting a twelve-gauge shotgun from the rack and a box of shells from one of the bottom drawers, he shoved three shells into the magazine of the gun. Then he jacked a shell into the chamber and engaged the safety.

James Curtis paused, peeled off his Elk River Coal and Lumber Company cap, and tossed it on the buck’s right antler. Grasping the shotgun in both hands, he opened the back door and slipped out, out of his mother’s line of sight.

~~~

Doc Vance stood, checked Thirl’s pulse one last time, then packed his medical bag. “Keep that wound clean and dressed. Send James Curtis to the office if you need me. Your lucky husband should be fine. Shove these pills down his throat for the next few weeks. We’ll watch for infection. A few more inches and that bullet would’ve severed a main artery in his leg.”

The old doctor hadn’t stopped talking since he arrived minutes after Thirl was laid on his bed. “You know, the League is a legal bargaining agency for Bradley’s employees. That committee was formed to create the company’s welfare plan for its own workforce. I helped to put that committee together. That League’s a fine a group of men as God ever made. The League of Widen Miners is company, sure, but it offers medical and retirement. Don’t those fool strikers remember the mine was open two and three days a week during the Depression even when the other mines were shut down? Don’t they remember that?”

“Lord, Doc, they’ve been trying to strike here since I was a girl. You’re really worried this time, aren’t you? How long do you think this one will last?”

“How long’s hard to say. As long as it takes. As long as the United Mine Workers provide their strike fund. John Lewis and Bill Blizzard are behind this one again, bigger and better organized than the last strike. I’m afraid it’ll get more violent before it’s over, as long as their morale doesn’t crack.”

            DeDe set her coffee cup on the table by Thirl’s bed. “I believe I’ve told you, I’m not from Widen. My family came here from Matewan to get away from the reputation of that town, the violence—and death. Daddy died here, in Widen, from black lung back in ‘44. Mama … she passed from black lung too … from thirty years of washing Daddy’s clothes.” DeDe smoothed the front of her bloodstained blouse, her stare drifting through the windows and then back to Thirl. Her voice was strained and soft. “My daddy believed Joseph Bradley owned the safest mines in the state; that’s why we moved here. But the mines will kill us all, eventually.”

Every man in her life had been or was a miner, including her son. They all learned the speech patterns of the coalface. In response to the slightest tap of a pick or a shovel, the mine communicated. Sighs, hisses, pops, squeaks, groans, crackles, gurgles—each sound spoke to them and warned of underground water, a weak wall, or a methane leak. Her own father once told her if the mine choked and found itself about to crumble, it shuddered first then screamed like a woman in childbirth.

But to DeDe, a long strike was as dangerous as a cave-in. “I’ve seen the killing a strike will bring. I’ll protect my own.” Her face already beginning to sag, the carefully groomed hair already beginning to gray, the eyes already receding into a calm, dark indifference most people chose to see as insight. She never wore makeup. DeDe looked down at her bitten half-moon fingernails, then twisted her thick copper hair into a knot and anchored it at the private part of her neck with bobby pins. She picked up her pocketbook.

            Everybody in town knew she kept a gun in her purse, including Doc Vance. She walked back into the kitchen, gripping it against her chest. Doc Vance followed on her heels.

“DeDe! Now you listen to me … I won’t have you or any other woman in this town in harm’s way. You let the men handle this. The company’s recruited its own force. Thirteen good and loyal company men, I’ve heard. Sworn in as deputies by the County Sheriff to guard the town. Stay out of it, DeDe, I mean it.” His stare like two grimy nickels and his tone—stern, “You tell the rest of the women in town, stay close to home and keep their young’uns in the house after school. I’ve always been fond of your family. Why, it was just yesterday I delivered James Curtis in this house.”

“That was over nineteen years ago. I believe you stood by us when we buried a stillborn son five years later. I’ve had enough heartache, Doc.”

Doctor Vance nodded, avoiding her eyes, then gathered his jacket and medical bag. “You know management’s secret weapon when there’s a strike? It’s the women. Mama goes a few months with only gut paste gravy and biscuits to fix for supper, the old man’s hangin’ ‘round the house drinkin’ and yellin’ because the kids’re sick and cryin’ and there’s dirty clothes everywhere and he’s gone most evenin’s to a union meetin’ or finishin’ his shift on the picket line, comin’ home tired, cold, and dirty—stinkin’ of liquor. Drives every women I know crazy. They’ll settle because their wives’ll make them settle.”

DeDe could only nod in return. She picked up his hat and led him to the door. She was the granddaughter of a much-revered Baptist minister who had also worked in West Virginia’s coal mines at the turn of the century. Surely that should count for something with God. DeDe smiled deceptively and handed the doctor his hat. “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord of hosts.”

“You just remember that,” he said as the screen door spanked shut behind him.

Coal Dust On My Feet ~ part 1

~~~Widen, West Virginia, September 1952~~~

              No one knew how long the strike would last.

~~~

Bullets whizzed past Thirl Nettles’ head. Bolting for cover, he leaped into his 1940 Plymouth sedan. His right leg throbbed with a red-hot searing pain all the way up into his groin. Only moments before he’d left the League of Widen Miners meeting, strolled past the tipple and began whistling, “Walking The Floor Over You.”

            “Thirl! You okay?”

            “I’ve been hit!” He slid down on the seat and pressed his hand on the wound, the inside of his car spinning around his head.

            “Hold on!”

            The pain was like nothing he’d experienced before. Not just a pain—an explosion like a live grenade thrown into his body. It couldn’t be contained. It spread and expanded, searched for ways to escape the confinement of his skin. His flesh vibrated with it.

            Hearing his heartbeat in his ears, he glanced down at his legs. Dark, warm blood soaked his pants. For a moment, he was sure they were his dad’s legs, the day they carried him out of the Macbeth mine explosion—dead. Thirl remained crouched down and motionless on the seat as more rifle fire struck his car, until dark was the only hand he had to hold before he passed out.

~~~

Dawn arrived, sifting its dull light through DeDe Nettles’ lace panel curtains. In the front room, the coal stove grumbled and ashes rattled into the ash pan. The morning was miserable cold, raw and damp, the kind of damp that ate into your bones and sucked out the marrow. It had rained for two weeks straight. Buffalo Creek ran high, its steep banks muddy and slick.

            Thirl didn’t know who had come to his rescue. He opened his dark eyes to find a blurry Doctor Vance hovering over him. The other side of the bed was still made, the pillow tucked neatly under the chenille spread. Groggy, Thirl heard the doctor’s voice before he passed out again.

            Doctor Sherwood Vance, a wide, solid stump of a man, bald and nearsighted behind wire-rimmed glasses, worked the bulge of muscles in his jowls to and fro, all while he muttered mostly to himself, but partly to DeDe.

“Bastards ... low lifes. Miners, they call themselves, but they have no loyalties, not to their town, not to their country, not even to each other. They call themselves godly men but they’d sell their souls for a wooden nickel and a plug of tobacco. They talk like politicians, up one side and down the other. No respect for the League tryin’ to make life better for them. What do they expect when somebody like Jack Hamrick goes berserk in the mine! He deserved to be fired!”

DeDe pulled the blanket over her husband to keep him warm. She had combed back his oiled hair and washed the coal dust from his face the best she could. He’d kept a trim figure all these years despite his diet of fried potatoes, bacon, sausage, and squirrel. And daily helpings of molasses and biscuits. The man ate for enjoyment, like most men that worked in a coal mine.

DeDe watched their son, James Curtis, pull his legs up to his chest and sink into the bottom of his dad’s bed. He stared at the blood on the floor. At nineteen, he stood as tall and lanky as Thirl and shared his unreadable dark blue eyes and constant smile. But where his dad’s hair exuded the color of brown mountain clay, James Curtis had inherited her burnt red locks, often appearing as if they’d been dipped in honey when the sun hit at the right angle.

DeDe gave her son’s shoulder a soft hug, pulled off his cap and kissed the top of his head. Until that moment, she had no strength to ask questions. Her immediate concern was to assist the doctor in keeping her husband alive. But anger bubbled just under the surface of her constraint, searching for a way out of her mouth. She wiped sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand, then followed the doctor into the kitchen to prime the pump. Tears dripped down her cheeks as she watched Doc Vance lean into the sink and scrub her husband’s blood off his hands.

All the nights she lingered near the sink while Thirl washed up after work in her tiny kitchen, stripped to the waist, mine dirt covered him like shoe polish. He’d dip his arms over and over in water up to his elbows, scrubbing with a wire brush and hard granite-like soap, turning the water black. She thought she’d never again see the true color of his skin. Black coal dust collected in the creases of his neck and in the wrinkles of his face. To DeDe, her husband’s hands looked like black bear paws. She knew he was proud to never have lost a finger. Thirl had told her he regarded non-life threatening professions as jobs for women and men with too much education. She saw him as a person who’d been unknowingly thrown into a world between heaven and hell. She’d heard the Catholics had a name for it. But unlike everybody else in the coal camp, he was content in the place he stood—never expecting God to give him more. Even if he damn well deserved it.

A sob caught in her throat. Her voice and stare were equally painful. “What happened, Doc?”

Doc Vance scrubbed then dried his hands on a clean towel. “Thirl was there when Harry Gandy fired Jack Hamrick last week. You know Jack and Opal? I believe they attend your church.”

“Don’t recall his face. I know his wife.” She wiped her tears with the cuffs of her blouse, then motioned for him to have a seat at the kitchen table.

            “The way I hear it, Hamrick went plum crazy last week when asked to work in a trackless section of the mine where a new machine was bein’ given a tryout. Hamrick flew into a rage, shoutin’ the job was unsafe and that the company was tryin’ to kill its men. Damn fool, took a pop bottle, broke off the end, and slashed a gash an inch long in his supervisor’s cheek. Took me an hour to stitch him up. You got any coffee?”

“I’ll make some,” she said. After rinsing out cups, she filled the coffee pot with water and Maxwell House, and then turned the electric stove on high. While it perked, DeDe began scrubbing found blood off the table with jagged sweeps of her arm. Her elbows pumped sharply. She sniffed more tears back in her head, but didn’t speak.

Doc Vance removed his blood-spattered glasses and wiped each lens slowly. “I wasn’t there when Gandy fired Hamrick. But I walked into Gandy’s office tonight right after the League meeting. Thirl had just left. Nobody expected miner retaliation. After all, it’d been a week since they’d fired Hamrick—but seems Jonas Zirka, a troublemaker in my mind, got everybody all stirred up. When problems come to the mine and things look bad, there’s always one man who thinks he’s got all the answers and is willing to take command. Usually, that individual is crazy. This time, it’s Zirka. Hamrick needed firing. But Zirka’s gonna use it and some other lame issues to try and bring in the union again. Lies are an infectious disease. I think Zirka contracted it from some fat cat in the UMW. Anyway, I heard the gunfire. So did Gandy.”           

DeDe stormed back into her husband’s sick room and glared at her son. “Get a message to Mister Gandy. Make sure he knows it was your daddy that’s been shot. Use the phone in his office to call the sheriff.”

“Ain’t no use calling the sheriff, Mama. Picket line’s done been formed at the top of Widen hill. Doc’s right. Zirka’s behind it. All that noise last night, those car horns blowing and moving through the streets? Strike’s on. I was with Savina last night. When I took her home, it was Odie who told me ‘bout Daddy. I wanted to go straight to the sheriff. But her daddy said the law won’t come unless somebody’s dead ‘cause Widen is all private property, owned by Joseph Bradley.”  She knew her son saw no point in holding back the truth, even from a woman.

“Odie said he’s gonna strike.”

“Then you get a message to Savina’s daddy. Tell Odie he best remember who helped him with his farm last year when Josephine died.” She gave her son a maternal once-over that made him instinctively straighten up from his slouched position on the bed.

“Yes, Ma’am. Next time I see Savina.”

“Your girl, Savina, she’s welcome here James, but Odie’s not gonna allow your skinny company butt on his property.”

“No, Ma’am.”

She watched James lower his gaze to her bare feet. They were filthy and spattered with blood. A few of her pretty red toenails were chipped. They were to attend a church sing in Gassaway tomorrow. She was going to wear shoes with her toes sticking out. Two nights before she had held a bottle of red nail polish in front of Thirl, and he smiled. “Real pretty,” he’d said.

Doc Vance carried two cups of coffee in from the kitchen. With his elbows fanned out and his eyes on the cups, he glided up and handed her a cup, stiffly easing himself down on the chair beside her. They continued the vigil beside Thirl’s bed, watching his chest rise and fall with each breath, as if at any given moment the body would change from a wounded man to a dead corpse.

“Odie ain’t too bright,” said Doc. “The man has only two more years of work to gain a pension, but decides to strike. Told me he ain’t gonna go on paying fifty cents a month to that no ‘count company League. Damn black throat. Since the rules of pension eligibility require twenty full years of service, of which Odie already has eighteen, he’s throwin’ away $1,200 a year for life to save twelve dollars. The man sleeps with his head up his ass!”

... to be continued

A Coal Miner's Granddaughter Remembers

Wash day at Grandma King's house was long and grueling, especially in the winter. I still recall the smell of Grandpa's wet clothes. The stench of the mine refused to budge from the heavy denim. This picture threw me back to those wash days ... when life was simple ... when I was a bitty girl who played among the wet sheets and blue denim hanging on the line.

I loved those days, and my coal mining grandpa. The picture above was taken long before he walked hunched over from working years in the mines. I was born a coal miner’s granddaughter. That fact inspired the story COAL DUST ON MY FEET. I never dreamed one day I would write about Widen, West Virginia. The town that had so haunted my childhood was once involved in a reign of terror between labor and management that has been said to be the longest and most violent coal strike in the history of our country. As a child, I was only privy to bits and pieces of these stories.

I dug deep into the crevices of my memory. I tunneled through pages of old picture albums Daddy and Mama kept stored away for years, and found what I was looking for. My grandparent’s wedding photo. Looking at it, I realized the miners of West Virginia and their children didn’t romanticize their lives. They lived them, surviving the best they could. The outside world didn’t exist much past an occasional radio program or newspaper article. For many years, time stood still in the hollers and mountains around Clay County. Life for my grandpa, Troy Jennings King, consisted of his wife Gussie, five children, and a job … mining coal for the Elk River Coal and Lumber Company.

As a writer, I returned to West Virginia, to Widen, and immediately began to develop a powerful attachment to the place. Over the next few months I learned more about the town, and discovered that my family had deep roots there. Several generations of Kings and Samples were born and lived in Clay County, all the way back to the Revolutionary War.

A short time later, I learned of the role my grandpa played in the Strike of 1952, siding with the company that had been loyal to him through the Depression. Grandpa always said, "We Hardshell Baptists don't sell our souls that easy." But the family was split on both sides.

COAL DUST ON MY FEET is a very real story … in some ways. The strike did happen. Jack Hamrick, Ed Heckelbech, Bill Blizzard, Charles Frame, John Lewis, Jennings Roscoe Bail, Governor Marland, and Joseph Bradley were real people who either lived in or near Widen, and were associated with the strike. Otherwise, the story and remaining characters are fictional, created from my imagination purely for storytelling purposes. But the violence from September 1952 to Christmas Eve of 1953 is legendary, and the men who were killed and maimed live on in the memories of their families to this day.

Families were torn apart, cousin against cousin, father against son—and the union, though it failed to break the back of the company, changed things. Eventually, the company closed its doors. In its day, 3,000 people lived in the coal camp of Widen. Today, there are less than 200. The town folded up except for the post office and a few that refused to leave—some of them are my relatives.

From these threads of family history, COAL DUST ON MY FEET was woven. It is a tale of love and betrayal, forbidden passions and long-buried secrets, of one woman’s struggle with her heritage and with her God—and the ancient bridge where the real and the supernatural meet.

But most intriguing to me personally as I wrote this story was the possibility that I had come by my stubbornness genes honestly, and that I was more like my grandparents than I ever dared to think. I dedicated this story to them.

In the coming days, I'll post excerpts from COAL DUST ON MY FEET, one of my favorites from Southern Fried Women. I hope you enjoy it.

Blessings to you and yours.

The Journey Never Ends

Yesterday was an exciting day!

We're booking signing and speaking engagements, although not everything is confirmed, we're making headway on the book tour. A tour that looks as though it will take Michael and I around the country this time. From sea to shining sea.

My book trailer is looking fabulous and I'm so pleased. Lots of good news there!

And ... drum roll, please ... Televenge is an Editor's Pick from BookExpo America 2012 from the Library Journal Review. http://reviews.libraryjournal.com/2012/07/books/editors-picks-from-bookexpo-america-2012-from-magick-to-bbq-backlist/

I think back to the days when I just wanted to pull my hair out. Writing at 3 a.m. when the rest of the world slept. The day a few experts told me the book was just too long ... "cut it in half!" "make it a trilogy!" "You're not Nora Roberts, nobody's gonna publish a book this long by a debut novelist!"

The day my watch stopped, the hairdryer started on its own, the TV started when I walked past it, and the bathroom door locked and I couldn't get out ... all on the day I decided not to shorten the book, to stay true to my heart, and to keep certain chapters in the book.

I recall the day I changed the title, but couldn't get used to it, and changed it back. The seventeenth draft. The twenty-second draft. The printers I wore out just printing copy for my readers.

The critiques. Oh, those blasted critiques that sent me reeling! But in the end, shaped the story into crisp prose, shutting the mouth of the author, and never stopping the reader.

Crying over this chapter and that character. Debating on whether or not to dig that deep into my own story and rewrite it. And I remember the day I cut out a character, taking out five chapters in the process. It felt like a funeral.

The day I bawled my eyes out when I typed, The End. But it wasn't the end. It was only the beginning of a journey that has carried me to where I am today. Ready to start the next book.

Well. After the marketing and promotion of Televenge. And a few more good days like yesterday.

Blessings to you and yours.

And on this Farm she had some Grandchildren!

Ei-Ei-OOOOO!

The Miracle of July 4th

What we celebrate with picnics, apple pie, and fireworks--the colonials gave their lives for. If you love history as I do, you know the horrific fight the early Americans endured so that we could swim in freedom. As you relax around your pools on this hot summer day, just breathe a word of thanks to those who not only gave their lives, but the lives of their families as well. These gallant men who fought with General George Washington, lost battle after battle in unbelievable conditions. Discouraged and disheartened, thousands of men, women and children fought and died to give us the freedoms many of us take for granted.

I do love this holiday. It's summertime at its best. Parades, the grand old flag flying high above the local high school band marching down Main Street, tractors pulling homemade floats, ice cream cones and watermelon. It's a day off work. A day to relax with sparklers for the kids, and a cold beer on the lawn. Baseball, a firey hot sun, and running through the sprinkler. We seem to have become so distanced from the reason we celebrate the 4th, that I wonder if we had the choice would American History be an optional course in our school systems?

Fortunately, American History remains mandatory in our schools. But most of us memorize enough of it just to pass the course, seldom pondering the extreme sacrifices made for us to celebrate July 4th.

The strategic battles, the brutal hand-to-hand combat, and the children that were slaughtered in the process makes me weep. The starving mass of men that turned the tide of war to eventually knock the British to their knees was nothing less than divine intervention. In my humble opinion. As I study more about the birth of our nation, I'm constantly amazed at the odds against us. Out-numbered, out-maneuvered, and out-smarted in one battle after another, I can't image the heart of General Washington. What was it that moved him forward?

One retreat after another, some men wore rags on their feet in horrific winter conditions. It took six weeks just to get a message across the ocean. There were few roads, faulty guns sent by the French, and food for the army (if you could get them to enlist) consisted of salt pork and flour.

You want to talk about miracles? July 4th is a miracle.

Remember that as you load your plate today with hot dogs and potato salad.

Just for a minute ... think of those colonial fallen families and say thanks.

Then go enjoy your fireworks!

Blessings to you and yours.

No Guarantees For The Writer

UGH, I certainly don't like to go this long between blog posts! But we're getting down to the wire, three months to go before the book launch! TELEVENGE, the dark side of televangelism.

I've been working closely with my publicist at Smith Publicity and my publisher at Satya House, setting up media interviews, booking the launch party, and writing byline articles ... the list is endless and it includes a great deal of time on Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, and whatever else I can put myself on. The final edits have to be completed before the actual book goes to print, and I'm already working on the next novel ... yes, folks, by the time I lay my head down at night, I've worked twelve hours or more.

The TELEVENGE book trailer is in the works, I'm booking speaking engagements from Ohio to North Carolina to Georgia, and back up the east coast into the Philadelphia area, and my publicist tells me the response to their initial pitch to the media was overwhelming!

I'm hoping all the book buyers at the BEA in New York City are enjoying their advanced reading copies. Hundreds of uncorrected proofs are out there, and this writer can only hope for the best at this point.

When you've done all you can do, poured your heart and scraped-thin soul into your book and then into promoting it, you have to put all the negative thoughts surrounding the publishing industry out of your head. Yeah, you know the odds. Any writer with half a brain who spends any time on the Internet knows the tough road ahead. The thick skin needed for the journey. But we persevere anyway, don't we? What choice do we have?

There are no guarantees. I know that.

It's all I've ever wanted to do. Sure, we crave some measure of success. But this life, my career as a writer, I'm already living my dream. Harper Lee couldn't be any happier than I am at this moment.

I'm already blessed.

Blessings to you and yours.

PICTURES Of A Successful Book Expo!

Here I am, signing Advanced Reading Copies at Book Expo America 2012 New York City!

Claudine Wolk, my Social Media Guru, spreading the word and bringing the book buyers to my booth!

I signed almost 200 books in an hour and a half!

 It was a tremendous success! We're off and running as we prepare for the release date! October 8th! Currently, you can preorder on Amazon.com and from my publisher at Satya House Publications. After 10/8, TELEVENGE will be available everywhere! I can't tell you how excited I am, just waiting for you to get your copy! Thanks to the entire team at Satya House for making this writer's dream come true. Bless you all!

It All Starts Today!

We're packed and ready, steering the Chevy due east. Heading to New York City today and Book Expo America. Michael and I will hit the Javits Center sometime tomorrow. It isn't our first book party at the Javits. But this time, I'm arriving as a bonifide novelist. Televenge is making its debut and I'm pretty stoked, I really must say. I'll be signing books Wed. at Booth 4346 - 10 am, and at Autographing Table 14 - 1 pm. It's certainly the culmination of years of hard work. Although, in some respects its really just beginning.

I'll be meeting with my publisher, my publicist, and hopefully lots of eager readers. It's quite an exciting time in the life of a writer. I've worked a lot of years, wondering if I would just die on the vine. Some mornings I'd sit at my computer and think, "what the hell am doing?" The tears and frustration halted me in my tracks more than once. And I've pulled a lot of splinters out of my hands, building that proverbial platform.

As a writer the hard work is never done, unfortunately. But this week, I'm going to bask in a little bit of sunshine. The book I was meant to write is finished. It's in God's hands now. I'm just going to help Him sell it the best I can. I've had questions as to its genre, and I really have a hard time answering. It's literary, its romance and suspense, thriller, and a bit of the paranormal all rolled into one.

What I do know is that Televenge is a story about the dark side of televangelism. A powerful message of faith and deliveance and strength of the human spirit. A tale of unconditional love. A vivid portrayal of heartbreaking loss and incredible courage. I'm hoping folks will talk about it for a long time.

If you're in NYC this week, and your a bookseller, come see me! I'd love to meet you and hand you a copy of the book.

How cool is that?

Blessings to you and yours.

An Appalling Pastor

I usually don't stomp on my religious soapbox unless something is weighing heavy on me.

Today, I got a taste of pure hatred when I viewed a YouTube video that has gone viral--a pastor (if you want to call him that) in North Carolina ranting on about homosexuals and what he would like the government to do to them. I was appalled. Maybe you've seen it. I won't go into details, you can pull it up on YouTube yourself. The words spoken sent chills down my spine. I think for the first time I experienced something akin to the horror the people in Europe felt the first time they heard Adolf Hitler rant about the Jews. What this pastor (again, the word used loosely here) said he would like to do to gays and lesbians brought tears to my eyes and made my skin crawl.

All I could think about was the love of God, that He is the judge of sin, and only He determines what is sin and what is not. Not us. Not any pastor. Or anyone who calls himself a pastor.

I like to quote Pastor Matt Idom from 1/28/2011 in his online post entitled, Worshipping God, not the Bible. He said, "We preachers are notorious about moving in and out of scripture like it is some worn out back door, ever struggling with the temptation to use it to prove a point or leverage a position ..."

An old hymn we used to sing in Sunday school has been running through my head all day. It's by Frederick M. Lehman, 1917.

The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell;
It goes beyond the highest star,
and reaches to the lowest hell;
The guilty pair, bowed down with care,
God gave His Son to win;
His erring child He reconciled,
And pardoned from his sin.

O, love of God, how rich and pure!
How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure--
The saints' and angels' song.

This next verse was penciled on the wall of a narrow room in an insane asylum by a man said to have been demented. The profound lines were discovered when they laid him in his coffin.

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Through stretched from sky to sky.

I think that old buzzard in North Carolina who calls himself a pastor is going to be shocked someday at who really makes it to Heaven.

Just my humble opinion.

Blessings to you and yours.

Social Media ... When To Say It's Enough!

My brain is bleeping Tilt! Tilt! I'm on overload wondering how many "HOW TO BE THE BEST BLOGGER EVER" BLOGS are on the Internet? Clicking on the ever-popular HOW TO BLOG blogs gives me a headache.

Ten tips on how to know the five reasons why you can't blog about those twelve things ... Lordy.

I've been blogging since 2005, essentially for myself. I blog on what matters to me. Writing, family, friends, the publishing industry, religion, my home, my children, what's bothering me, televangelism, what I love, writing ...

Lately, I've been reading blogs that are solely about writing, publishing, editing, marketing your work and I find that after a while ... they begin to repeat themselves. In my case, I'm not blogging just to writers, I'm blogging to readers. Not all readers want to know about query letters, how to land a publishing contract, and polishing a manuscript.

I guess I'm not consistent. That doesn't make me a bad person.

Some of my blogs speak to the writer. Some to the reader. And then, some speak directly to me. For the most part, I write what's weighing heavy on my mind. It comes out easier that way. I'm not searching my brain for every little sentence. I suppose if I followed the "rules" I might collect a few more readers. Possibly. And if I downloaded pretty pictures or trolled for guest bloggers, I might get a little more attention. It's fine if that's what you want on your blog, but what if it's not?

Does that make me a bad person? What's wrong with simplicity?

Here's the kicker: Social media is overwhelming. Today's writer is competing against enormous odds. Twitter and Facebook and the rest are necessary to the writer's platform. And really, even after a morning online, you're never quite sure you've appeased that Social Media Monster. We can spend hours and hours on the Internet, posting, blogging, building relationships, wondering if it's ever enough all while our manuscripts are languishing.

The key to knowing when it's enough is within you. I get edgy. I can feel it's enough when the irritation begins to build. When I'm watching the clock and thinking about a new character for the next chapter in my story. Self discipline and time management plays a part, sure, but it's more than that because in reality, ALL of it is important. What is most important to you? A simple question but do we ask ourselves--are we becoming Facebook/Twitter junkies? I had to learn where to draw the line as a writer. When to say ... enough. And just maybe you do, too.

By the way, did you watch the Hatfields & McCoys on the History Channel last night? It was awesome.

Blessings to you and yours.

Why I Wrote The Book

Book Expo America will kick off in New York City in two weeks. I'll be there, signing Advanced Reading Copies of Televenge, on Wednesday, June 6, from 1 to 2 pm. There is no way to describe this feeling. A novel I've been writing forever, it seems, is about to debut. Throughout the years, I've been blogging about it. Hoping, praying, and clawing my way forward.

It's not been an easy road, although I didn't expect it to be. I often think about the character Andy Dufresne in Shawshank Redemption who clawed his way through a mile of sewer pipe to reach his ultimate goal. Fighting against all odds, he eventually made it through the stench of that pipe to freedom.

It's been twenty-four years since I left my church. This book began as thoughts and sentences way back then. First as journal entries, and then in bursts of dialogue, short stories, and a rather long outline. Finally, after a lot of healing, I began to write the novel in 2002.

By the time I took the manuscript to a week-long Breakout Novel Writing Intensive with Literary Agent Donald Maass in 2005, it was over 1,200 pages long. Can you imagine? After seven more years of rewriting and some rather severe editing, the book is about to see the light.

I did not write this book specifically for the Christian audience, or to criticize or attack preachers. I'm a storyteller. My first objective was to write a great story. Televenge reflects the realities, the long-lasting devastation, and the horrific effects of legalism. I also wrote Televenge help myself heal completely; to show that pastors are human, to encourage others struggling in dogmatic churches to share their stories, hold their pastors accountable, and save their families from ruin.

This book is not about me. It's not my story. It's many stories that came together to become Andie's story. A story of hope, of deliverance, and strength of the human spirit. An unforgettable tale of unconditional love, heartbreaking loss, an invincible spirit, and incredible courage. Televenge will inspire countless conversations for years to come.

Everyone deserves unconditional love and no individual should settle for less. For those who have left a manipulative situation or are thinking about it, I want them to know no matter how desperate their circumstances they can come out of a dark place and into a life that is calling their name.

And that is why I wrote the book.

The book will be released on October 8, 2012. It is currently available for preorder on Amazon.com where you can read the synopsis. I'm very proud of the work that's gone into it, and of the people in my life who came together to get it published. I've been very blessed.

I'll be launching the book to the book buying community in June. I've never felt so excited in my life.

Blessings to you and yours.

Bra Shopping

I went shopping yesterday.

I hate shopping.

I'm not a shopper. At all. Not for clothes, shoes, or groceries. It's a necessary evil in my mind. Not sure what kind of a woman that makes me. But yesterday, I went to Dillards and had a professional "bra fitting." Dear God in Heaven.

So with a tsk of her tongue, Miss Saleslady stuffs me into this bra that "fits perfectly," she says. I sigh and say, "Okay. I'll take it." I've never paid so much for a bra in my life. Since when did undergarments begin costing so much? $70.00 for a dang bra! And then she has the nerve to ask me if I want to buy more than one?

Ugh. No thanks.

When I get home, I decide to wear it around the house just to get the feel of it. I mean, I'm not used to that kind of support. I've been wearing Walmart bras for the past ten years. You know the kind I mean. Soft, white, just enough support that you're not jiggling all over the place, no underwire, the kind of bra you can throw in the washer and dryer and forget about. After all, it was ten bucks after the "rollback" price. Good enough for me.

So I've got on this 70.00 bra and I'm sweating. I feel like I'm in a straight jacket, or wrapped in a corset from 1890. After about twenty minutes the underwires are not only cutting into my side, they're hurting my underarms. The four clasp closure in the back is scratching my back and now I'm getting pissed off. How the heck did somebody talk me into paying $70.00 for something that feels so horrible. I don't give a rat's patutie how high and tight it holds the girls. I need a little comfort with my support. Not torture!

I rush downstairs, pull the Dillards bag and sales receipt out of the trash, and quickly take the bra off.

Ahhhhhh. (C'mon ladies, you know the feeling!)

This over-the-shoulder-boulder-holder is going back to Dillards after I head to Walmart for milk, eggs, cheese, and a new bra.

Blessings to you and yours.

The FACEBOOK Monster

My good old blog. I feel like hugging it this morning.

I remember the days when it was so much simpler. Getting up in the morning, taking my coffee to the computer. All I had to do was flip through a few emails and write an occasional new blog.

Not anymore.

Now, there's Twitter that can hold you hostage for about a half-hour, and Shelfari, and Goodreads, and Pinterest, and this Library thing I'm on, and then there's the big monster. FACEBOOK. If I'm not careful, I can waste the whole morning. Do we really need to touch base with all this social media every dang day? I don't even talk to my mother or my grown children every day!

And for cryin' out loud, there's thousands of links and sites that can take you off in forty-eleven directions ... mostly on how to "better utilize" FACEBOOK. It's becoming a love/hate relationship for me very quickly. I love connecting with new and old friends. But it seems FACEBOOK has barred me from new friends for seven days since they received "complaints" that "I've made numerous attempts to befriend the same people." ARE YOU KIDDING ME? If you've received more than one request from me to become my "friend" it wasn't from me. I ain't beggin' ya. Ya know? C'mon! I'm not that desperate. Believe me.

But I feel like FACEBOOK has sent me to the corner with a dunce cap on my head.

Frankly, I'm taking a few days off from the FACEBOOK monster. I feel so green sometimes. I do love people, and I really do like making and getting reacquainted with friends. But I don't like being accused of something I'm not doing. And of course, there's no way to complain to the Facebook staff.

There are many things I do love about getting the word out about my work, building my platform, and helping many other authors build theirs. It's important and I get that. And I do like being able to reach out when prayer is needed for my family, as well as other families. I think that's a marvelous thing to be able to do.

But right now, at this minute, I don't appreciate the FACEBOOK monster. I'm extremely frustrated with it all. I'm sorry somebody thought they had to complain. I'm staying away from Facebook for a few days. I've got better things to do than be insulted.

Like writing.

Blessings to you and yours.

What's So Amazing About Grace Anyway?

Every day I wake up I'm thankful for grace. For His renewed mercies. For this amazing thing we call, grace.

And it seems, for political and other reasons, so many of us smug humans forget that grace binds us all. It's grace that keeps us from flying off the face of the earth! It's by His grace that gravity holds our feet so firmly on this planet that He hung upon nothing!

It seems so many of us attach limits to grace. That we can only possess a measure of grace if we obey this law and that political group. Walk this line! Live this way! Believe like me! Grace can only be yours if you sit your butt in church every Sunday without fail and worship like I do!

Hmmm. I wonder.

What was Jesus really like when He walked and talked among us? I think about his first recorded miracle, at a wedding no less. I have to believe He danced and drank His wine and laughed with guests. It annoys me that Christians have turned Him into a somber, priest-like eunuch, never smiling or feeling the temptations of men. More than that, they put Him way out in space in a makeshift Heaven where nobody can reach Him except the chosen ones. They create God in their own image. Weak, petty, and self-righteous. It makes not a lick of sense to me.

He felt what we feel. He knows us down to the the very last cell in our bodies. He created us. Nobody knows us like that. How can we be so intolerant? How can we think the way we worship, the way we live is the only way, the best way?

Grace is divinely inspired tolerance. It wraps around us and holds us to Him.

Love is the result of grace, and it seems to me this world would be a much better place if we practiced a little more of both.

I don't have all the answers, but my heart is heavy this morning. I'm so thankful for grace. To me it's a little more than amazing. It's astounding.

Blessings to you and yours.

John 3:16 Facebook Blog Hop

If you are part of the John 3:16 blog hop on Facebook, send me a message and you'll have a chance to win a free copy of Southern Fried Women. I'll send it to you myself, signed to you!

Enjoy the blog hop!

Blessings to you and yours.

Post Op Report

Sitting in the hospital room, I looked out the window from the fifth floor. Across the street from the hospital, a white steeple with a cross on the top jutted high into the air. I felt like it was placed there specifically for me. A gentle reminder of who was in charge.

It helped.

We checked in on Monday, and waited. Waited for a room, blood tests, and one nurse after another to to do this and that, all while asking questions, giving advice, and relaying step-by-step what was about to happen. A mastectomy is not something any woman wants to endure. But what about a man?

My six-foot-two husband suddenly looked so vulnerable. Hanging on to the right side of his chest those last few hours, Michael was a trooper. For me mostly, I'm sure.

They brought in a small bed for me to sleep on beside him, because I was not about to leave him. But sleeping is not something you do much in any hospital. All night long, nurses and doctors crept into the room bringing with them the bright lights of the hallway. Slinking around, trying to remain invisible, they took vitals, checked the IV, and did whatever it is medical people do in the middle of the night.

By Tuesday morning, groggy and aching from trying to rest on beds we were not used to, we tried to prepare ourselves for what was about to happen. Finally, at 7:15 a.m, Michael handed me his glasses, his wallet, and his wedding ring.

Nobody can prepare for having a breast removed. Not really.

They wheeled Michael to nuclear medicine after I kissed him for the umpteenth time. That was the last I saw him until they brought him back to the room at about 2 in the afternoon.

We had a fabulous surgeon, a wonderful nursing staff, and thank God for it. Pale and nauseous, Michael dozed in and out until finally, around nine that evening, he began to feel human. It made me feel much better to slip his wedding ring back on his finger.

He's home now. A drainage tube hangs from his side, and there's a big dip in his chest where a scar runs across it, but it really doesn't look so bad. He's alive. And will be for a long, long time thanks to early detection. We don't have the results back from all of the tests, but the doctor was extremely positive.

He's a survivor now. A member of the pink ribbon club. We're thankful for our family and the hundreds of friends who prayed for us during this time. We're thankful God was with us in that room, for the gentle reminder he placed just outside our window. A tall, white steeple that pointed to the Heavens ...

Blessings to you and yours.

TELEVENGE, the Dark Side of Televangelism

... is now available for PREORDER on Amazon.com.

From the Publisher:

Andie Oliver is a faithful woman--to God, to her handsome husband Joe, and to televangelist Reverend Calvin Artury, a Godfather in a Mafia of holy men.

Raised to be subservient and submissive in the tradition of the Bible-belt South of the 1970's, she becomes a prisoner of that tradition. As a reluctant member of Artury's evangelical megachurch, the House of Praise in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Andie's dream of children, home, and marriage falls apart when Joe is hired on the ministry team.

The charismatic Reverend conducts faith-healing crusades, creating the largest religious television audience in the world, surpassing the income and followers of Oral Roberts and Billy Graham. Working limitless hours, Joe is sucked deeper into the ministry while Andie attempts to free him from the Reverend's control and far-reaching influence.

But it is Mavis Dumass, Andie's best friend since birth, a sassy, gorgeous African-American woman and aspiring recording star, who holds the secrets to Reverend Artury's carefully veiled debauchery. Fiercely protective of Andie, Mavis is just as fiercely disdainful of both Joe and Reverend Artury. What happens to Mavis leaves Andie near mental collapse and struggling for freedom from the cult's grip.

Andie is still unaware of the extreme danger their pastor wields until she witnesses the murder of a church member. Fearing for her life, she plummets from a dreadful existence into a horrific one as she uncovers Reverend Artury's long-hidden truths, and loses everything, including her children. But she strikes back, threatening to expose the Reverend to the world.

Raised by two psychopathic aunts, Reverend Artury reverts to the twisted "cleansings" of his childhood. As his mental stability declines, Andie quickly realizes she must go into hiding. Fighting for redemption for her family and herself, Andie confronts the very definition of sin and shakes the Christian evangelical world to its core. Evading ruthless adversaries who will go to any lengths to protect Reverend Artury, Andie battles the darkest side of televangelism, forever changing a nation of evangelicals.

Vivid and tragic, Televenge exposes chaos in the megachurch, and embraces those who discover unconditional love in a religious world fraught with fear and intimidation. With more twists and turns than the Blue Ridge Parkway, Televenge takes you from the Piedmont South to the Hawaiian Islands, to Nigeria, Africa, and back to the high country of North Carolina.

In pitch-perfect voices, Pamela King Cable's emotionally rich debut novel creates four extraordinary characters who will stay with the reader long after they finish the book. Suspensful and deeply moving, Televenge will be one of the most talked about books of the year.

A Pink Ribbon For A Broad-Shouldered Man

I asked him, "When did you notice it?"

"It's been a little tender," he replied. "I thought it was just a pimple."

A month ago my husband had a routine chest x-ray prior to cataract surgery. The cataract surgery was cancelled because they found a small nodule in his right breast. After a mammogram, an ultrasound, and a biopsy, it was discovered that my precious husband has stage 1 breast cancer.

Breast cancer. Isn't that a woman's disease?

Apparently not. Although rare in men, it happens. He was scheduled for a mastectomy on Friday but has since been rescheduled for Tuesday, May 8th, to give the doctor adequate time instead of squeezing him into a packed schedule. I suppose we just have to wait, although we're mentally prepared.

Or is one ever mentally prepared for this sort of thing?

But the prognosis is excellent. It was caught, thank God, very early. It's small, and there is a good possibility he won't even need chemo. All he'll have is a scar. "Women like scars," I told him. "Maybe you can get a tattoo there in a few years." We're bathing ourselves in prayer, and my friends and family have jumped into the pool with us. Including my Facebook Friends. :-)

It's a scary word. But we are people of great faith. It surrounds us like tinted windows, we can look out, but nothing can penetrate. Michael's life is a testimony to the human spirit. From his early days in the military to the death of his daughter and the years of struggle that followed, until now. I just may have to write a book about it. Someday.

And Michael may have to wear a pink ribbon on his lapel the rest of his life. But at six foot two with broad shoulders, he is very much a man's man. He's never been one to fear his feminine side. Pink ribbons? He'll wear them proudly. I assure you.

I can also assure you, Michael Cable will beat this monster, just like he's beat every other monster in  his life. And I will continue to be blessed by this man. Thank you all for your continued prayers, and I'm sure we'll be able to give you a good report in a few short weeks.

Blessings to you and yours.

What Do You Hold Back As A Writer?

One of my favorite quotes, a quote I often recite when speaking to groups of writers, is the quote by Dorothy Allison from the New York Times Book Review, Sunday, June 28, 1994: She said, "Everything I know, everything I put in my fiction, will hurt someone somewhere as surely as it will comfort and enlighten someone else. What then is my responsibility? What am I to restrain? What am I to fear and alter-my own nakedness or the grief of the reader? I want my stories to be so good they are unforgettable; to make my ideas live and my own terrors real for people I will never meet. It is a completely amoral writer's lust. If we begin to agree that some ideas are too dangerous, too bad to invite inside our heads, then we stop the storyteller completely. We silence everyone who would tell us something that might be painful in our vulnerable moments."

I remember being told that God doesn't just tickle our ears with sweet scriptures. I have reasoned that God not only reveals Himself through miracles, but also through our realities. What is real. What we know.

As a writer, I decided a long time ago that whether or not it sounds like something a "Christian" would write, I would write what is real. I would be a fearless writer. Come what may.

My characters are not all God-serving men and women. They don't all live within the sheltered walls of christian schools, homes, and they don't all spend their weekends at choir practice or church socials. They don't say "shoot" when they mean, "shit." They're real. They have a voice, and I won't betray that, any more than I would betray the voice of an evangelist. My stories and novels are not written for the Christian audience, but my message of faith is clear. I like to think that I roll the camera, recording the scene exactly they way the characters react and speak.

Life is messy, gritty, dirty, and dark. But out of that comes pin-pricks of light and hope.

I feel like a pioneer of sorts. I can't write any other way. There is no condemnation heaped upon my shoulders, and yet I'm quite sure the message of love and redemption is apparent, to the point it jumps off the page and pierces the reader's heart.

Wishy-washy? Compromising? Some might think so, I suppose. I prefer to think of it as a double-edged sword. It cuts quick, before you know you even know you're bleeding. I think the world is ready for reality-based writing. For somebody to write stories off the straight and narrow, and yet never losing sight of the truth and the way.

A bit too open-minded for some, maybe, but I like to think God made me this way. He's just been waiting to see what I do with it. Televenge will be available to the public in October. A novel not for the faint of heart.

And like Dorothy Allison ... I held nothing back.

Blessings to you and yours.

Pez Dispensers Full of Antidepressants

Sometimes I think being a writer during this time of flux in the industry is enough to drive most of us to carrying around Pez dispensers full of antidepressants.

I wonder how Eudora Welty would react if her publicist (if she even had one) told her to learn how to Twitter. Do you think William Faulkner would spend an hour a day on Facebook? I doubt if many of great writers of the last century worried over book tours, book festivals, and book returns. They turned in their manuscripts, and were off to writing their next novel.

My, how things have changed.

The publishing industry has gone through so many changes, I wonder if it even recognizes itself. The number of experts offering me words of wisdom pop up in my email every day. You have to weed through them. Find the ones that need pulling, and take time on the few that spark your interest. Most of the time I delete them.

I would like nothing more than to bury myself in a good book, sit in the library for a whole day, and develop characters and scenes just for the fun of it. Writers don't have those by-gone luxuries anymore.

I'm getting ready for the upcoming promotion surrounding my novel, the book signings, the speaking engagements, and the traveling involved. And really, I don't mind it. I enjoy meeting my readers, getting inside their heads, finding out what they're reading these days. Connecting. Writers have to connect with their readers more often than they used to. Technology demands that we do.

E books can be read overnight. Stories are shorter. Reviews are plastered over the Internet so readers can make intelligent choices. It's enough to give Margaret Mitchell a migraine. I'm not sure the writers of yesteryear would know how to handle it. I wonder if they'd embrace it, or give up in the midst of such fierce competition.

I'm in the midst of a countdown. There are lists of preparation. Each month before the novel is released to the public, the writer, publisher, and publicist have their work cut out for them. I'm about six months out from pub date, and every day my list grows longer. Even though I have a great team behind me, my list remains long and detailed.

I don't have a Pez dispenser full of antidepressants, but I am considering increasing my coffee intake.

Blessings to you and yours.

Have You Earned Your Social Media Merit Badge?

How many of us sit at our computers and decide we're going to take over the world with social media? We're going to blog every day. Set aside time for tweeting. Dive into the depths of our Facebook account. Build our writing platform come Hell or High Water!

And then you look up from your desk and it's already noon and you've got to get something out of the freezer for dinner; fold the clothes in the dryer before they wrinkle; talk to your mother who complains you never call her, and run to the store for eggs and toilet paper. Before you know it, it's time for the kids to come home, or the dog has escaped and your neighbor is calling you to get Barney out of his flowerbeds.

Or maybe the warm spring air is calling you outside, and you notice how awful your own flowerbeds look from the winter, so you dust off your garden tools and dig up a few weeds. Before you know it, it's time to pull dinner out of the oven, eat, clean up the kitchen, on and on ... and there's always that novel on your bedside table staring at you. The one you fall asleep reading five minutes after your head hits the pillow.

The next morning brings new resolutions, or pretty much the same ones you made the day before as you sit at your computer, staring at your list of things to do you should've tackled the day before.

Come on. Admit it. How many of us really want to spend time on Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In and all the other sights designed to suck time away from us. How does one successfully find the excitement in it? The feeling of accomplishment? All while knowing we need to start the next book, outline, research, edit, and query? I think maybe it's that we use time as an excuse. Think? The fact of the matter is ... we really don't want to do it. So the question becomes, what can we do to make ourselves want to spend the time tweeting? Facebooking? Caring about every Linked-In email that plugs up our Inbox?

Sure, sure ... we've heard it all before ... it's something we have to do to be successful. So you wonder how many tweets are sincere and how many are working toward their Tweetie Bird Merit badges? "How many followers/friends do you have?" Na-na-na-na na, na.

I'm finding too many people whose lives are wrapped around their Facebook account, when really, they desperately need to mow their dang yard, play with their kids, bake a pie for their sick neighbor. There's got to be line drawn somewhere in all this. Any ideas?

Blessings to you and yours.

There's a Price to Pay for Your Memories

They say when you're born, you begin to die. Not something we want to think about. But I sat at the funeral of my ex-mother-in-law last Friday and thought about that very fact.

I was close to this amazing woman. She was a mother to me in so many, many ways. I knew her from the time I was eight, married her youngest, and spent most of my young adult life at her feet. She was my spiritual mentor in my youth. So many memories ...

I think Martha and I talked long into the night on countless occasions, about God and church and Heaven and family ... I was Ruth and she was my Naomi. Your people shall be my people and your God, my God. Well. Anyway, I can still smell her pies baking in her yellow stove. Smell the coffee and bacon frying in her old and dated kitchen; and if I try hard enough, I can still taste the roast beef Sunday dinners. The hot air on a summer night, eating ice cream from the Dariette, sitting out under that old shade tree in her backyard. Feeling the wind in the breezeway, the sinking mattress in the old spare bed in the back room, hearing the sound of the trucks at night on the highway. Precious memories, how they linger.

I washed more loads of clothes and diapers with Mom than a body has a right to. That ancient wringer washer, hoo-boy, I wouldn't take a million dollars for that memory. Totin' loads upstairs and out to the miles of clothesline that zig-zagged across the backyard by Dad's shop.

I still have dreams about that old homestead. Who wouldn't? My entire youth is tied up in that place. But, ah, time heals wounds, and for that we should all be grateful. Unconditional love is the thread that binds this family. I'm more than thankful for it.

We're all going to miss her. God is so good to fill in those cavernous gaps and put the joy we so desperately need at this time into our hearts. Yes, it is a very sad time, but it is a tremendous time of celebration. A circle unbroken.

Martha was 89. She raised five children, (six, including me) and influenced her nine grandchildren in ways I never knew until the funeral this past Friday. It was a crazy week of
family and friends and laughter mixed in with the tears.

And then, yesterday, my dear, sweet current mother-in-law, ends up in the hospital. So, we are on another wait-and-see, moment-by-moment, stand-by-the-phone kind of thing. Bobbie Sue is a real sweetheart, as well as a true Southern broad. I'm sure she's giving those nurses plenty to laugh about.

All of this has made me think about the passage of time, and how quickly we can go from a little girl in pig-tails, to a wrinkled woman in a nursing home. But for those of us who believe in the promise of Heaven ... it's just a little easier to take when it's over.

So I've been away from my computer for a week. It's good to be back.

Blessings to you and yours.

Does Your Pastor Wear An Armani Suit?

Bravo to the comment left as a result of my previous post. Bravo! Tithing and giving can be looked at in many different ways. For me, giving to a down-and-out family across the street is doing God's work. Giving to the "Because I am a Girl" program is also the hand of God reaching out. Giving to the poor and the homeless, toys and coats for kids, any reputable charity -- in my humble opinion, is the mark of a Christian.

You don't do it for recognition, but for love and compassion for your fellow man. That, my friend, is following in the footsteps of true Christianity.

I think many evangelicals have lost their focus of what it means to give. We've become so wrapped up in believing that God wants His people to have the best, that we forget Christ lived and dwelt among the poor and the destitute. I'm not saying it's wrong to have nice things, and I don't have a problem with sitting in a pretty church, but I do have a problem when it becomes the focus of a church to make sure their pastor lives in the lap of luxury. I have a problem with pastors who wear designer clothes when the majority of his congregation can barely feed their kids!

I realize there are churches claiming to be good stewards with their money. I'm sure they'd be happy to let you see where their money is spent. Many congregations where I lived in the south, were extended family to their members, loving them and taking care of their needs during a family crisis. Church families can be a beautiful thing to have as part of your life.

But when you're hounded week after week to give your 10% and your love offering so that He will pour out His blessings upon you! -- It makes me wonder. TV preachers and marathon praise-and-worshippers know exactly what to say to make you weep. They can send you to the phone to donate before you realize you've left the comfort of your Lazy boy. You ever think about the psychology that goes into all that?

We can reach out in many directions, inside and outside of the church. And we shouldn't feel guilty for it. I believe He blesses us according to the intents of our heart. Just my humble opinion. I don't belong to any church. I doubt I ever will. So I can't judge, but I've experienced the strangle-hold of a megachurch. I know first-hand the guilt involved in not paying your tithes.

I also know not all churches are bad when it comes to forcing you to give, and even in the bad ones, there are still good people. But you'll never see me clutching my hard-earned money in my hand and walking down the aisle to throw it at the pastors feet. A pastor who wears Italian leather shoes for $500 bucks a pop. I'd rather take my chances and give it to the pan-handler on the corner.

Just my humble opinion.

Find a reputable charity. Sponsors for children in underdeveloped countries are needed, as well as here in our own country. With our economy the way it is, there are many families in your own neighborhood who need help. Be an anonymous donor. If you know a family who is hurting, pay their light bill. Send them a gift card to their local grocery store. Leave a note on their door with a word of encouragement. Don't wait to be an angel of mercy just at Christmas.

That, is all of our priority. Christian or not.

Blessings to you and yours.

Does Jesus Really Need Money?

So I'm channel surfing yesterday, and I flip to a religious station. A marathon "praise-a-thon" to raise money. For the station or missions or whatever. Folks are standing at their seats with their arms raised, moving and swaying to the music, eyes all watery, and sending up a few shouts in between stanzas. A large group of singers and musicians blanket the stage, leading the auditorium from one song to the next, on and on and on and on. I wonder if they classify this as entertainment? Are the people who tune in moved to donate by watching this? An occasional testimony is relayed, the person in 70's couture talking loud and long about sowing seeds of prosperity. Giving in faith. And how God has blessed them, saved them from a life of poverty, sickness, and disease. All because they sowed their seed.

Phone numbers blink at the bottom of the screen and I wonder how many of these I've sat through in my lifetime?

Does God really need my money? Or does He really intend to test my faith on a regular basis by whether or not I give my last dime?

I suppose that depends on whether or not we take the scriptures literally. The condemnation I feel for even writing this blog post weighs heavy on me, because you see, I was brought up on the covenants of God. On the conviction of the Holy Spirit. On the literal meaning of each and every scripture. And if you did not believe as I did, then whoa be unto you. You were dead already.

I understand why these praise and worship marathons exist. I know the love they feel for their Creator, but I also understand the fear involved. The sorrow they feel for anyone who does not believe like they do. Or walk their same path. I swallowed that dogma for years and chased the feelings of eternal security until my feet were worn to bloody stubs.

Am I now an apostate? Have I forsaken the cross?

No.

I've grown tolerant. I've learned that more than anything, God's love can not be explained or compared to the love we know as humans. I will never walk in fear again. I learned that we cannot control God by "giving until it hurts." I've even grown tolerant of folks praising God on camera and living like the devil when the house lights are turned off.

I changed the channel eventually. At least Ellen DeGeneres isn't using guilt to get my last dime. And she makes me laugh. That's more than I can say for a gospel-singing marathon.

Blessings to you and yours.