Category Archives: On the Writing Life

On Hiking in New Mexico, On Integrating Word and Image, On the Creative Life, On the Writing Life, Walking All Day On Stone

The Heat Has Broken

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High on the rocky hillside, an Ancestral Puebloan scoria trough metate, smashed.

It had been a huge thing, about two feet long by a foot wide. No idea what it must have weighed. It lay downhill from the jumbled stones of a long structure, surrounded by shattered pottery from decades of meals.

Who hauled that thing up the mountain? Who smashed it, and why? Scoria metates are so often found in pieces; were they broken ceremonially at a woman’s death? When a settlement was abandoned? Or is that imagination?

The sand is pecked with raindrops. Fall, rain, and cooler weather, all so welcome, have arrived together. The desert is green, and the asters are in bloom.

On Hiking in New Mexico, On Speculative Fiction, On the Creative Life, On the Writing Life, On Writing, Walking All Day On Stone

Lightning Strike:

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Practicing to Be Lightning

Speculative fiction this time, and a long time coming. I can’t promise never again to release two books in four months–like mesquite bushes, books have deep roots, and the writer can’t always control when the visible part makes it to daylight. But I can tell you it’s been a journey.

For years I’ve been thinking about mining my thirty years of hike notes–about 600 hikes–for the setting for a novel. From the malpaís and beyond, through a portal to another world that is also this world–think Venn diagram–here it is.

About:

For Ben, reality is crumbling …

Pursued by a whistling killer through flash flood, rockfall, and storm, under a sky where even the stars have gone mad, skeptical scientist Ben and intuitive Zuni artist Trace flee across an uncanny desert wasteland, fighting to climb what is surely a mountain—or is it a cloud? 

Ben thinks he’s the rescuer … until he isn’t. Trace has a GPS … kind of. But lovers and nightmares hunt them on the paths of their very neurons. Prisoners of their disastrous pasts, can they escape? Does anyone ever escape?

On an ancient earth where the land itself is alive, Practicing to Be Lightning plunges you into a terrifying quest where the lines between reality and imagination blur, and survival means confronting not just raw nature, but the wilderness of the soul.

And praise:

“A breathtaking book.” —Connie Willis, SFWA Grand Master, winner of eleven Hugo and seven Nebula awards

“A heart-stopping quest through a dangerously beautiful landscape toward a mysterious destination pairs with vivid portrayals of irrational evil and irresistible human kindness.  A fine read.” —Anne Hillerman, author of the best-selling Leaphorn, Chee, Manuelito mysteries

“A good book bridges worlds. A great book drops you into its own. Practicing to Be Lightning is a great book. We can’t help but follow its call into the landscape of the malpaís, all sharp edges and sheer drops, as perilous and beautiful as our inner selves.” —Zach Hively, Reading the West Book Award-winning author of Desert Apocrypha

“In order to understand the truth, you need more than one way of knowing. What Betsy James does here is to meld two ways of thought—science and religion—into a better description of what the world really is.” –Dr. K. Kitts, retired NASA scientist

More in the sidebar … –>

… and an excerpt here.

Bookshop * Barnes & Noble * Amazon

Please choose our indies first.

On Hiking in New Mexico, On the Creative Life, On the Writing Life, Walking All Day On Stone

Too Hot to Hike

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… so it’s time to repair the desert gaiters. You think maybe?

The seamstress said, “You know it’s going to cost you more to repair them than to buy a new pair?” 

I know. But in Escalante last spring a young hiker said, “You can’t get that kind any more!” and offered me fifty dollars for them. When I explained that they had thirty-plus years and about seven hundred hikes in them he said reverently, “You’re the real deal.” 

Seriously? After that, how could I bear to get new ones?

On Creativity, On Hiking in New Mexico, On Integrating Word and Image, On the Creative Life, On the Writing Life, Walking All Day On Stone

There’s a Mouse

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It’s much too hot to hike in the desert. We’re hiding out, like this mouse.

There is a mouse. I promise.

Find the mouse:

I mean it. There’s a mouse in there.

Hint: Look for the invisible but hopeful thought balloon that reads, “You are mistaken. There is no mouse.”

Another hint: The mouse is about the size of a pecan.

Mouse!

On Creativity, On Hiking in New Mexico, On Integrating Word and Image, On the Creative Life, On the Writing Life, Walking All Day On Stone

Serious Kitchen Equipment

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On one five mile hike, about twenty metates. Most were the simple Archaic type, but did even the Ancestral Pueblo use that casual style when hunting and traveling light? The materials were always to hand.

Nine of them:

Also one Ancestral Pueblo type, broken. So often metates are broken. Were they perhaps broken ritually to mark some event?

On Hiking in New Mexico, On Integrating Word and Image, On the Creative Life, On the Writing Life, Walking All Day On Stone

What Is It?

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It stands in the middle of one of the linked plazas of a remote, dusty, fallen Pueblo complex that was abandoned, probably because of drought, sometime about 1200 C.E..

It’s not a grave. Ancestral Puebloans didn’t do graves with headstones.

It looks shrine-ish. The unassuming shrines of the Pueblos are often a careful pile of stones.

On Hiking in New Mexico, On Integrating Word and Image, On the Creative Life, On the Writing Life, Walking All Day On Stone

White on Sand

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I’m not great at identifying projectile points, but my best guess is that this is an Armijo point (Late Archaic, about 2,000 B.C.) and an atlatl point rather than an arrowhead. It was about an inch long, and, interestingly, had had a “field repair.” The original delicate serration had broken along one edge, spoiling its symmetry, and someone–the original owner? a later finder?– had resharpened the broken side with plain bifacial knapping. Like a slightly tippy Christmas tree, it looks wonky but serviceable.

I’m not great at identifying flowers, either. But the desert was blooming.

On Creativity, On Hiking in New Mexico, On Integrating Word and Image, On the Creative Life, On the Writing Life, Uncategorized, Walking All Day On Stone

Whose House?

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The square-cornered foundation and a couple of scattered sherds say Ancestral Pueblo, but both the vertical orientation and the size of the stones are unusual and impressive. Walls and roof–jacal style, the Southwest version of wattle-and-daub–have long since dissolved into the desert clay.

And another house. I have no idea whose, but the excavator left their claw marks above the doorway.