Tag Archives: Writing

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.

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On Creativity, On the Creative Life, On the Writing Life, On Writing, Walking All Day On Stone

The River

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Even when I don’t want to write, if I begin, the flow begins: very steady, like blood, or a river.

Year after year I hiked down Frijoles Canyon to the Rio Grande. The river is always there. In different seasons it is different colors—tan in March, emerald in October—and has different water levels, and the sky above changes color and temperature.

But the river itself is always there.

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On Creativity, On Illustration, On Integrating Word and Image, On the Creative Life, On the Writing Life

Balancing Writing and Art

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My family was anxious about labels. (“What’s your major?”)

To my ancestors—who according to the Zunis are dancing for eternity, though it’s hard to envision those inveterate Presbyterians dancing at all—I say: What I am is me. I am the one who writes, paints, works, sings…and dances.

How to do it all—time allocation—is another question. Honest, guys, I don’t know how. I dither and fiddle and get cranky. I put in a good work day, but sometimes that means lying in the grass staring at clouds, or walking around an Asian store trying to guess what the hell some dried object is.

I try to distinguish my family’s slightly hysterical work-ethic voice from the deep, driving voice of what actually wants to get done. Sometimes one is louder, sometimes the other. But as I accept my own mortality I have less patience for the hysterical voice. More and more I cleave to the voice of time, nature, peace: the voice of earth, where we are one of the gang: very unimportant, very much a part of the world.

For more on the double life, click here.

For walks on this earth, click here.

On Creativity, On Illustration, On Integrating Word and Image, On the Creative Life, On the Writing Life, On Writing

Being Both

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Who am I? A writer or an illustrator? Which? Both?

Yikes.

For years I drove myself insane with that question. Sometimes quite theatrically. “Is there a name for somebody who isn’t just an artist and isn’t just a writer but is something that doesn’t really have a name? How do I tell people what I ‘do’? What am I?”

Many a 2 a.m. distress session there. Until a friend clarified things.

He said, “Your nouns are fighting each other: artist vs. writer. If you used verbs instead—I’m painting or I’m writing—then it’s just a question of time allocation.”

Duh!

For more on leading a double life, click here.