08 Sunday Nov 2020
Tags
America is Back, Biden wins, celebration, Love, Politics, Presidential Election 2020, truth, Truth and Love wins, USA
I feel like I’ve been ship-wrecked at sea for the past four years and finally have reached the shore.
I want to kiss the ground.
And then get up and dance.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, America!!!
12 Saturday Jan 2019
Posted in Art, Family, Love, Photography
Tags
Anniversary, art collage, celebration, daughter, life, personal, wedding
I created this collage to celebrate my daughter and her husband’s 6th wedding anniversary, today. They were married January 12 in Shell Beach. Her husband made a surfboard called “endless Love” for all the guest to sign, and she made and decorated her dark chocolate, chiptole pepper wedding cake. Their best friend officiated as they stood barefoot in the sand with the waves unrolling in the background.
Aside from the births of my children and grandchildren, it was the happiest day of my life.
I wrote a post about that day six years ago Sea, Sky, Earth, Fire – My Daughter on Her Wedding Day, which began:
She was married beneath a cliff on the edge of the sea standing barefoot on the rocky beach. Barking seals sunning on rocks and crashing waves nearly drowned out the simple ceremony.
Hunchbacked boulders rose from the sea behind her like giant guardian sentinels. A single guitarist played flamenco music to match the red rose in her hair while the late afternoon sun glimmered across the waves.
Sea. Sky. Earth. Fire. All four essential elements holding the world together blended beautifully together that day.
Below are a few photos and memories that I tried to capture in my collage.
Happy Anniversary, Kelli and Andrew!
27 Friday Dec 2013
Posted in Fiction, My Writing, Short Story, The Writing Process, Writing
I just finished writing an 85,000 word novel that I’ve been working on the past couple of years. It feels good to have completed something of this magnitude, even though I still have a lot of work to do to get it ready to send out to agents.
I’m hoping you can help me do that by “liking” my author page on Facebook, or following me on Twitter. A strong “platform” could give me the edge I need in a competitive market. You can do so by clicking the links in the sidebar, or going to the pages at the links below.
https://www.facebook.com/DeborahJBrasket
https://twitter.com/DeborahBrasket
I’m also looking for a new set of readers, people who will commit to read the novel and provide feedback on several levels: how well it holds your attention, where it sings, where it sags; if there are any holes or gaps in the content (dangling threads, illogical time warps, etc.); anything that comes to mind that could make the novel stronger. If you think you’d like to help out this way, please let me know.
“From the Far Ends of the Earth” is about what happens when the one person who has been holding together a difficult family mysteriously disappears. Will those left behind have the strength and love, or even the will, to keep from falling apart?
The novel is told from the perspective of the three family members left behind.
Kay is a “cranky” grad student studying archeology. While distrusting men in general, and her father and brother in particular, she has been extremely close to her mother, who now leaves mysterious messages on Kay’s answering machine. Mourning her loss, Kay sifts through the shards and debris of childhood memories trying to understand the past and learn how to trust again.
Cal has spent most of his life on the street strung out on heroin, but he’s living at home when his mother disappears. He is deeply hurt and angry at her disappearance, and mystified by the strange photographs she mails him. When his father suddenly leaves, he is left on his own with a house to care for and no clue how to do it. Eventually he discovers his own artistic outlet welding sculpture from scrap metal. Then he takes in a boarder whose tattooed body reveals a past even more tragic than his own.
Walter awaits his wife’s return by paying her credit card bills and tracking her journey through Central and South America. Then he decides to take his own long-delayed trip to Alaska, where a new life, new love, and new tragedy await him. When his wife’s credit card bills stop coming, he travels to Machu Picchu in the mountains of Peru to find her.
I wrote more about the novel in a blog post, which includes a link to a short story “When Things Go Missing” adapted from one of Cal’s chapters.
I have a second short story adaptation in the works from one of Kay’s chapters set Mexico at an archeological dig. It’s called “The Fragrance of Rocks.” While I’m finishing up the final revisions on the novel, I’ll be working on it and some of my other short stories.
The writing life, I’m finding, is one never-ending process. Which is why it’s so important to share and celebrate the milestones with others. I hope you will join me!
“Friday I tasted life. It was a vast morsel.” – Emily Dickinson
“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.” – Anaïs Nin
Deborah J. Brasket 