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***The CRC Blog welcomes submissions from published and unpublished fiction genre writers for INSIDE THE EMOTION OF FICTION. Contact CRC Blog via email at caccoop@aol.com or personal Facebook messaging at https://www.facebook.com/car.cooper.7
****Laura Hunter’s Beloved Mother is the twenty-fifth in a never-ending series called
INSIDE THE EMOTION OF FICTION
where the Chris Rice Cooper Blog (CRC)
focuses on one specific excerpt from a fiction genre and how that fiction
writer wrote that specific excerpt. All INSIDE THE EMOTION OF FICTION links
are at the end of this piece.
Name of fiction
work? And were there other names you considered that you
would like to share with us? Beloved Mother is
my first novel. There was a time when I considered titles that would be
related to the setting.
I started out with Gray Mountain, changed to Turtleback
Mountain and settled on Beloved
Mother because, as the novel took form, I realized it is about people
and their relationships rather than a particular place. I do admit that place
plays a significant role in the novel. Some might say that the mountain
Turtleback is a character itself.
Fiction
genre? Ex science fiction, short story, fantasy novella, romance, drama,
crime, plays, flash fiction, historical, comedy, etc. And how many
pages long? 
Beloved Mother is
fiction. In some ways, it could be classified as historical fiction in that
each statement that relates to history is closely researched. It depicts an
accurate picture of lifestyles of the times. It covers a three-decade span.
Length is 285 pages.
Has this been
published? And it is totally fine if the answer is no. If yes, what
publisher and what publication date? Beloved Mother is
published by Bluewater Publications.
Copyright date is April 1, 2019, but I
have copies in hand now for Sneak Previews and Signings.What is the date you began writing this piece of fiction and the date when you completely finished the piece of fiction? The basic idea for the novel began as a short story that never fully developed. The year was 1994-95. I continued writing short stories, freelance articles and memoir excerpts for about ten years.
I wrote a biography of my father during this
time, as well.
Someone then suggested that I try my hand at
writing a novel. The idea was daunting, and I procrastinated for a time. But the
idea of women isolated by belief and/or geography refused to leave me alone. In
2010, I began the first draft, a mega-epic that included what would have
outweighed a copy of Moby Dick. The draft incorporated a
town of people and a mining camp of people and a mountainside of people.
I
wouldn’t have considered purchasing such a tome! How could I ask someone else
to do so. I cut out the other two novels and settled on one story line. I wrote
and rewrote the draft for four years. I then found Beta readers who encouraged
me to search for a publisher. 
I found a publisher Bluewater Publications for
the novel in 2017. The publication date is 2019. The overall process took
approximately seven to eight years.
Where did you do
most of your writing for this fiction work? And please describe in
detail. And can you please include a photo? The novel was written primarily in two
locations: my office at home in Northport, AL and at writers’ sessions in
Sweetwater, Tennessee. The office is cluttered,
as many are. Books surround me as I write. A little music system plays whatever
I need to get me into a particular frame of mind. I always have one or two
glasses of ginger ale or water nearby. A four-inch fan and an overhead fan keep
me cool. I am in Alabama, after all. Writing tips and word lists are
push-pinned or taped on most flat surfaces I can see. I have pictures of old
barns that I’ve photographed in East Tennessee over the year. They hang above
my monitor and help me set myself in a place other than my office.
What were your
writing habits while writing this work- did you drink something as you wrote,
listen to music, write in pen and paper, directly on laptop; specific time of
day? I found that using different writing implements
led me to different characters.
I wrote with pencil, ink, computer and laptop.
I drink – still – the entire time I write. Let me clarify - I drink water or
sports drinks while I write. I admit I was in a stupor while I wrote this
novel, but not one induced by spirits! I did often listen to music as I wrote Beloved Mother. I listened to
old tapes of mountain ballads, banjo and fiddle music to help me set the tone
and visualize the setting. Mountain ballads proved most helpful. Readers will
realize their impact when they meet Eli O’Mary, a character who speaks using only
nursery rhymes and mountain ballad lyrics.
I had no set time to write. I still
don’t. When a phrase or sentence came to me, I would stop whatever I was doing
and write it down. I found that these served as strong prompts to get the story
line and characterization going. I would
incorporate the words into the draft and let them lead wherever the characters
wanted to go. Ideas would wake me in the night. I kept a pencil and legal pad
by my bed so that I wouldn’t lose the idea by going back to sleep.
I often wrote as a friend and I rode up the road while she drove me to and from Tennessee. I kept a
notebook in the car so that I could pull off the road and write something down
that I needed to remember. I still follow these practices. One of the most helpful experiences I had
during the development of my writing the novel was the interaction among fellow
writers at Learning Events on Orr Mountain outside Sweetwater, Tennessee.
Our
facilitator would begin with a specific goal – a lesson. We would write and
then critique each others’ works. The events were invigorating and productive. I
attended session Novel 5. At our “graduation,” we all wore tee-shirts that read
“I survived Novel 5”!
What is the
summary of your fiction work? Southwestern Virginia, 1923. A young girl’s spur-of-the-moment decision to
run away with a stranger impacts two generations for forty years. Abuse, rape,
love, abortion, and murder take two sisters and a niece on different paths that
eventually braid into one. Cherokee spiritually and an Old Testament God battle
for the sisters’ spirits, until the young niece’s love for Turtleback Mountain
and its creatures breaks the patterns that have controlled their lives. Because
each belief is painful, yet beautiful, the conclusion is not what the reader
would necessarily expect.
Can you give the
reader just enough information
for them to understand what is going
on in the excerpt?
Lily’s
mother Anna has died during the month of December. A blizzard covers Turtleback in three feet of
snow, then ice, then snow. Lily preserves her mother’s body by putting her out
in her coffin on the front porch in the freezing air.
This scene is the burial
of Anna in early February when the ground has thawed enough to be shoveled.
Lily’s friends from down the mountain, Gabe and Seth White, help with the
burying. This scene, which leaves Lily with a tremendous sense of loss, is only
the beginning of her true loss, Turtleback Mountain.
Please include excerpt
and include page numbers as
reference. The
excerpt can be as short or as long as you prefer.
Pages 224-226
The burying had been
those few days in February when false spring appeared and then vanished,
killing all leaf and bloom it had duped into coming out. Lily buried her mother
in the middle of the road. A stretch, more track than logging road, abandoned
when the mine on the face of the mountain played out, created the only strip of
land suitable for burying without climbing to Flatland. She had decided early
on that she would bury her mother there. Her daddy had never been a part of
their lives, so no need to take her to Breakline. She had no idea about her
Covington folk.
The
ground, brown from last season’s leaves and musk, lay soft from rains that had
beaten trees naked after the blizzard and melted ice. They stood, no more than
stark grey shadows, barren of winter ice and its weight for one more season.
Morning
of the first February break in the weather, she walked the road to Breakline
Camp, the road soggy by melted snow. At the top of Turtleback where the road
dipped into Breakline, she saw in the distance the open hole of the mine’s
black mouth. She wondered about life in tunnels that had at one time been
little more than burrows. Tunnels that bent men double under their low
ceilings. She wondered if her father had walked with his face to the ground
like so many others. Dark miners moved about the camp like impatient insects,
as they manipulated massive yellow machines that would soon eat away at what
had once been an underground mine.
At
the commissary, she found Gabe and Seth White. She brought them back, offering
to pay twenty-seven dollars, all she had left from her father’s pension, if
they would put the body easy in the grave.
Lily
took her long-handled shovel and helped dig the grave, while her mother lay on
the front porch threatening to thaw. Because her mother had been a slight woman
at her death, they dug the grave shallow.
Gabe
and Seth lifted the coffin, each supporting an end, and set it down feet first,
before positioning it straight in the trench.
"Ought
this hole to be a mite deeper?" Seth asked.
"It's
deep enough to keep varmints away," Lily answered and turned her back to
them.
"These
ruts that old mining road?” Seth asked. “Seems the old mine used to run right
nigh here."
"No
matter,” Lily said. “I won't have my mama buried on slope. I want her steady in
the ground. Not where she’s standing on her feet through eternity. Here's where
she'll lie." Lily stood with her legs slightly apart, in lopsided comfort,
with one foot in a rut, one slanted on the loose dirt. Turtleback Mountain
stood behind her. The town of Covington below to the south and east; Breakline
Mining Camp, north and to the west, she stood in the center of all that had been
her life.
"Reckon
this'll do then," Seth replied, and he shoveled dirt and rock in on the
coffin. The sound muffled itself against the wood like rain on shingles too
long on the roof.
"Wait.” Lily set out for the porch. "Stop your
shoveling,” she called back. From the edge of the porch, she picked up a pint
fruit jar, its ring at a cocked angle, its lid flat against the glass mouth.
Inside dead fireflies stuck to the bottom, stiff, their once vibrant ends the
color of dried wood. Lily placed the jar of insects in the grave, next to the
coffin’s head, and stepped back.
"Now.
Do what you're here to do." Lily walked back toward the house in step with
the thuds of dirt as each hit against the coffin. "Don't you break that
jar, Gabe Shipley." She spoke without turning.
From
her mother’s old chair on the porch, Lily stared past the scene in the side
road, leading up the Turtleback. Beyond,
a band of blue opened from between skeletal white clouds. Lily sat on the porch and wailed a chant-like
dirge neither of the men had ever heard. She took three or four notes from one
of Kee Granny’s old minor scales and worked them back and forth, weaving a
lament that reverberated off the mountain wall, a nagging melody that rivaled a
whippoorwill's sorrow:
Bring
me a fruit jar and fill it with light
of
fireflies and wonder to stave off the night
no
spirits born evil dare enter the door -
bring
morning - not darkness –
for
fireflies no more
gleam
bright in the moonlight - not fireflies -
but
wonder will outlive the night
Gabe
and Seth never looked up. They patted the filled grave with the back of the
shovel and stood the tool against a sycamore trunk.
The burial would not be worth the telling in
Breakline. They would not be remembering words. They probably thought burying
the fireflies was something else again. They had not seen lightning bugs since
cool weather had set in. The power of fireflies to ward off sinister spirits
lay in their glow against a black night. Dead bugs don't shine. But all that
had not mattered when Lily had gathered the insects.
Two
weeks of heavy rain and ditches full to the brim with gushing water, a low
rumble from the earth signaled a change Lily had not expected. Gabe would later
tell her that the mouth of the abandoned mine between Boone Station and
Covington had collapsed.
Why is this excerpt so
emotional for you? And can you describe your own
emotional experience of writing this
specific excerpt? This scene is one of the
saddest in the novel, in my opinion. Lily is now alone on the mountain where she grew up. Neither her
best friend Gabe nor the older man Seth who has watched her reach
young adulthood understand Lily’s connection to nature and the land. Her
isolation is complete. She accepts the fact that no one would understand the song
she composed for her mother, and she doesn’t question the loneliness that
realization brings her.
I almost cried when I wrote it. I almost cry when I reread it. One of the saddest aspects of this scene is the interconnection of
losing her mother and using the love of the mountain she has learned from Kee
Granny to produce a poignant song of her own. She is both mother’s daughter and
Granny’s daughter at this point.
Were there any deletions
from this excerpt that you can share with us? And can you please include a
photo of your marked up rough drafts of this excerpt. Deletions from pages 224 to 226 are highlighted
in blue:
Her daddy had never been a part of their lives,
so no need to take her to Breakline to bury her next to Clint Goodman
Morning of the first February break in the
weather Lily walked the road to Breakline Camp,
the road soggy by melted snow.
Gabe and Seth never looked up. When Lily’s funeral
song ended, they patted the filled grave with the backs of the shovels
and stood the tools against a sycamore trunk.
Lily thought the
uniqueness of her mother’s service unimportant.
The burial would not be worth the telling in Breakline. The men would not be remembering words.
Other works you have
published? Since 1994, I have
published
sixteen stories and nine poems, as well as numerous free-lance articles. In
fact, I considered myself a short story writer until I wrote Beloved Mother. My stories and poetry
appear in anthologies and literary magazines. Anthologies include Belles’ Letters, Climbing Mt. Cheaha, Motif and Belles’ Letters 2. Magazines that
contain my works include ALALITCOM, Crave
Magazine, Explorations, Birmingham Arts Journal, Marrs Field
Journal and Pithead Chapel. I also have a story collection Hard as a Rock ready for editing. My writings reflect the perseverance of the downtrodden; those who refuse to give up, even against extreme odds.
Anything you would like to add? One of the issues I worked most
diligently on was being certain that I wrote nothing that might offend the
Cherokee Nation. Theirs is a people I highly respect. I spoke with members of
the Nation and did extensive research on what is and what isn’t acceptable in
their beliefs. The one character who denigrates the Cherokee beliefs does so
through a warped sense of self and the use of mind-bending herbs, not through
any personal animosity toward the Cherokee. In fact, the one person she most
loves is himself Cherokee.
Writing Beloved Mother was a spiritual experience for me. The setting
and the characters came to me complete, even the spirits. Once I accepted them,
they began to move through my mind while I wrote as if I were watching a movie.
I did little to rework the plot other than add specific details such as sensory
triggers and tie-ins to previous events. The experience was almost surreal.
These characters still live and move through my mind. They are dear friends I
don’t want to set aside.
An educator, I am certified to teach history, English and music. I hold an Educational Specialist degree in Secondary Teaching Methodology from the University of Alabama, as well as eighteen hours in journalism and eighteen hours in creative writing. I have done extensive studies on the history of West Alabama and the Civil War and serve as an historical re-in-actor. I taught in four school systems and at the University of Alabama before retiring.
My mother had ordered a red set of World Book Encyclopedias from a
traveling salesman. The books arrived the same time as the mumps. I spent weeks
reading encyclopedia after encyclopedia, even hiding under the cover with a
flashlight to avoid having to sleep. 
Following graduation from the University
of Alabama, I married Tom Hunter who, before retirement, designed and built
research instruments for the College of Arts and Sciences.
As we raised twins, I
found no time for writing. I was too busy teaching our children to grow and
others to write. The academic and artistic atmosphere surrounding Tuscaloosa
continued to fuel my imagination and desire to become a part of the arts
community.
My parents would not have
approved. They had, after all, refused to let me become an airline hostess!
(too-worldly, you know) Too, as a female, I needed an education that would
support me and our children were I to find myself needing to do so. Writing did
not guarantee income. My studies in creative writing and journalism include these published authors: Michael Knight, University of Tennessee, Knoxville;
I began
by writing short stories and a few poems. Each one I have had accepted has been
awarded an international, national or local prize and/or been published. The
idea of writing a novel seemed daunting, but the work began to materialize as
the events of Beloved Mother marched across my mind. The characters and
their actions refused to leave until the work was finished.
In my spare time, I work with a small
writing group in Tuscaloosa. I garden and read, primarily Southern and
Appalachian authors.
INSIDE THE EMOTION OF
FICTION links
001 11 15 2018 Nathaniel
Kaine’s
Thriller Novel
John
Hunter – The Veteran
002 11 18 2018 Ed
Protzzel’s
Futuristic/Mystery/Thriller
The
Antiquities Dealer
003 11 23 2018 Janice
Seagraves’s
Science
Fiction Romance
Exodus
Arcon
004 11 29 2018
Christian Fennell’s
Literary
Fiction Novel
The Fiddler
in the Night
005 12 02 2018 Jessica
Mathews’s
Adult
Paranormal Romance
Death
Adjacent
006 12 04 2018 Robin
Jansen’s
Literary
Fiction Novel
Ruby the
Indomitable
007 12 12 2018 Adair Valerez’s
Literary
Fiction Novel
Scrim
008 12 17 218
Kit Frazier’s
Mystery Novel
Dead Copy
009 12 21 2019 Robert Craven’s
Noir/Spy Novel
The Road
of a Thousand Tigers
010 01 13 2019 Kristine Goodfellow’s
Contemporary
Romantic Fiction
The Other
Twin
011 01 17 2019 Nancy J Cohen’s
Cozy Mystery
Trimmed To
Death
012 01 20 2019 Charles Salzberg’s
Crime Novel
Second
Story Man
013 01 23 2019 Alexis Fancher’s
Flash Fiction
His Full
Attention
014 01 27 2019 Brian L Tucker’s
Young Adult/Historical
POKEWEED: AN ILLUSTRATED NOVELLA
015 01 31 2019 Robin Tidwell’s
Dystopian
Reduced
016 02 07 2019 J.D. Trafford’s
Legal
Fiction/Mystery
Little Boy
Lost
017 02 08 2019 Paula Shene’s
Young Adult
ScieFi/Fantasy/Romance/Adventure
My Quest
Begins
018 02 13 2019 Talia Carner’s
Mainstream
Fiction/ Suspense/ Historical
Hotel
Moscow
019 02 15 2019 Rick Robinson’s
Multidimensional
Fiction
Alligator
Alley
020 02 21 2019 LaVerne Thompson’s
Urban Fantasy
The Soul
Collectors
021 02 27 2019 Marlon L Fick’s
Post-Colonialist
Novel
The
Nowhere Man
022 03 02 2019 Carol Johnson’s
Mainstream
Novel
Silk And
Ashes
023 03 06 2019 Samuel Snoek-Brown’s
Short Story
Collection
There Is
No Other Way to Worship Them
024 03 08 2019 Marlin Barton’s
Short Story
Collection
Pasture
Art
025 03 18 2019 Laura Hunter’s
Historical
Fiction
Beloved
Mother
