The signed Bedlam Farm Autumn and Family Farm notecards are now up and available for viewing and purchase on the Redux Gallery website. You can also order them by calling 802 867-4211. The autumn cards are a celebration of love and light in the fall, and the black and white and color Family Farm cards, all from the Rouse Farm (Big Valley Farm) are a labor of love. A portion of the proceeds will go to benefit farmer’s aid groups. This is a good way to get some photos and to celebrate family farms and also to help embattled family farmers. We shouldn’t allow family farms to perish, not without a fight.
FYI, Borders Books has picked “Rose In A Storm” as a “must-read” book for Fall and Christmas and has decided to offer coupons for one-third off of the sale price of the book in its stores and online. That is wonderful for the book, but I also thought I should pass that on. You can get the Rose coupon here.
How blessed I am to have so many wonderful women in my life. Here are just three. Maria, Fanny and Rose. In some ways, “Rose In A Storm” is a women’s book. Women often live outside of the emotional consciousness of men, as Rose does with Sam the farmer in the novel. I think it’s telling that so many women tell me their dogs relate to them in more emotional ways than their husbands. The emotional lives of women are increasingly connected to animals, especially dogs and cats. A compelling thing to write about, and a key element of “Rose In A Storm.”
Fanny reminds me not to let the good reviews go to my head. And there will be reviews that are no so good, there always are. People ask me how I feel about reviews, and that’s easy. I love good ones and generally think bad ones are dumb. I like the trend towards reader reviews, though that you see on Amazon and social media websites. They are wildly uneven and often surprising, but I also think they are useful. No book is perfect, at last no book of mine, and I learn things from all reviews, good and bad. No question, good ones are more fun.
The reviews for “Rose” have been generally wonderful. Some people are struggling with my return to fiction. They would prefer real stories from the farm. I also have something of a mysterious and, for me, quite strange passage near the end of the novel, which I quite love but some people are surprised by. So a bit of controversy isn’t bad either. One reviewer on Amazon said she was shocked to see in the author’s bio that I was married to Maria and she didn’t think it was fair for me to write a novel without explaining how that happened. I’m mulling that one.
My idea that “Rose” is something of a women’s parable is getting through. And also my notion of exploring the way a dog’s mind really works is proving fascinating to some people as well, and I am happy about that. I worked hard on that. Critically, the book is already a success for me. Now we’ll see who buys it, which in publishing these days, is much more significant than reviews.
Cleaning out my photo files, I came across the first photo I ever took on the farm, this shot of the barn before it was restored taken from the living room window of the farmhouse. The camera was on automatic and I just pointed it out the winow and pulled the shutter. I can tell from the condition of the barns that it was before a lot of changes in my life. But I can also see I was already drawn to light and a particualar kind of composition. Strange to come across it.
