Say What, Now? By Gail Roughton

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Has it ever crossed your mind that a lot of problems are caused by folks unnecessarily complicating things? We've all got folks in our lives who're masters of that.  You know, like the people who, when hanging a picture, first pull out their handy-dandy stud-finder and locate a stud (regardless of whether the picture weighs a few ounces or whether it's in an ornate frame and weighs a ton), and then pull out the tape measure and measure top to bottom and side to side before picking a spot.  This was my husband's preferred method when he was younger; nowadays, he's more apt to follow my method of eyeballing the wall, hammering in the nail and hanging the picture. I've always been a "the shortest distance between two points is a straight line" type of gal.

But the prize-winners among the folks who unnecessarily complicate things are English teachers, especially senior high English teachers and college professors.  Please let me state here that I have the utmost respect for teachers, truly I do. However, I'm afraid teachers, especially those who teach in the aforementioned upper levels of the educational system, might have a bit too much respect for just how complex and complicated a writer's mind is.  We're really not that complicated.  What am I talking about?  

This.  This little diagram is what I'm talking about.  We're writers. We're not rocket scientists.We're telling a story. We're not making comments on the inequities of society.  Well, we are, but that's because any story we write is, of necessity, reflective of the society in which it's set. In other words, we write what we know because guess what? It's what we know.  Unless of course it's science fiction or fantasy. But it's not like we're sending out hidden messages visible only to those who sit and analyze our wondrous words. 

For instance, when my youngest son was in college, one particular assignment required him to discuss the significance of Bram Stoker's use of the Three Sisters in Dracula as an allegory for the social inequities in the treatment of women in Victorian society. Or something similarly esoteric to that phraseology, it's been a while.  And really. Say what, now? 

We're talking about Dracula here.  Truly one of the masterpieces of literature. I read it when I was in the eighth grade and I didn't sleep for three nights thereafter. I didn't sleep without a cross and a St. Christopher's medal around my neck for the next ten to fifteen years, either. Was that the effect Bram Stoker was going for? Oh, you betcha it was. Was he disappointed it never crossed my mind that the Three Sisters weren't being treated fairly as equals to the Count, just as women in 19th Century England weren't treated as equals to men? Well, I can't exactly ask him but I really doubt he'd have lost any sleep over it. I think if anybody asked him what was going through his mind when he created the the Three Sisters, he'd say "I was trying to scare the bloody hell out of anybody reading the story." And if anybody asked him for his thought processes in creating such an allegory for the social inequities of his society, his response would be "Say what, now?"  In an English accent of course.

Because evil never dies. It just--waits.

I write to entertain. To be honest, I write to entertain myself. That's honestly my primary motive for writing. I've written books widely disparate in style and genre and usually the bottom-line motive is I'm bored and I need some entertainment. That being said, of all my books, The Color of Seven is the one an English teacher would be most apt to find full of hidden allegories and parables and comments on society (not that I think any English teacher would ever be using it in an English class). That's because it spans over a century in time, beginning in the 1880's and extending to the present as it tells the story of a family living in Macon, Georgia in the post-Civil War South. Racism, mixed marriages, and prejudice are all elements of the plot. And then there's the eternal battle of good versus evil, light versus dark thing, I've always been a sucker for that, it gives me the excuse to throw black magic and voodoo and vampires in. I call it my Southern Gothic family saga horror, and my unabashed and unashamed motive in writing same was to scare the hell out of my readers while making them fall in love with some of the characters and totally loathe a few others, which is the pinnacle of success for any writer. (And at the risk of sounding as though I'm tooting my own horn, feedback from readers indicate I was successful in that endeavor, at least with a few folks.) 

As to the more serious social issues I admit are an integral part of the background and plot of this book--trust me, I didn't set out to write a novel highlighting those issues. They're in the book because I'm southern, born in 1954. I cut my teeth on Civil War history, I grew up in the 1960's. I never did a lick of research on anything in that book (unless you count copying the street names and business names off an old 1888 map of my hometown of Macon, Georgia which is why the story starts in the 1880's in Macon, Georgia--I wasn't about to waste that treasure) except for the voodoo black magic elements involved. I didn't do any research  because I didn't need to. And why not?  Because we write what we know, what's already there, burned into our brains and woven into the very fibers of our being. There's not always a hidden agenda.

Therefore, if any English teacher ever did ask a student to discuss the use of vampirism in The Color of Seven as a statement on the post-Civil War dichotomy between the races, trust me--the only appropriate response would be "Say what, now?" Everything doesn't have to be complicated, folks. You know what they say.  "If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck--it's probably a duck." Enjoy the simple pleasures! (Including a good scare.)

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The Lake (a/k/a Summer Magic) by Gail Roughton

A few years back, Alan Jackson sang of  "...an old plywood boat, with a 75 Johnson with electric choke". I love that song, love its poignant lyrics that hark back to childhood for all of us born in a far-away time warp when there was enough technology to make life pretty dang sweet but not so much that it'd taken over the world to the extent everybody posted pictures of their meals on Facebook.  There was no Facebook, there was no such thing as a smart phone, cause there was no such thing as the internet. Heck, there was no such thing as a cell phone, and texts as a means of communication were far in the distant future. Life was simpler then. Nobody had to tell kids to play an hour a day. Mothers hollered out the doors for us to "get in outta that hot sun a minute 'fore y'all fry alive!" But it was modern enough that suppers were cooked on electric or gas ranges rather than wood burning stoves and refrigerators had replaced iceboxes, even if folks still called them iceboxes and would continue to do so for years. Ice was plentiful to chill beverages even if came from ice trays and not ice makers and milk and diary products were actually delivered to your door should anyone so desire and most folks did.  Air conditioning wasn't yet a standard in homes but oscillating fans twirled overhead and in windows. There was a television set in almost every home even if it was only one, and even if it was still black and white and not technicolor, and America unwound in front of it every night. After Walter Cronkite advised us "That's the way it is...", we watched sitcoms with far more innocent humor than the sitcoms of today, cheered on heroes in white hats (or law enforcement hats or military helmets), and booed the villains, for whom no one had any sympathy at all, 'cause they were clearly villains and not victims of anybody's society. 

I grew up in the heart of Georgia, raised a country girl in the very center of the state. In Middle Georgia, when you say "the Lake", you mean Lake Sinclair, a man-made lake engineered by Georgia Power Company. It's a major, major source of hydroelectric power for the Middle Georgia region, has  roughly 400 miles of shoreline and spreads over 15,000 acres. Nothing compared to the Great Lakes, of course, but we'll take it. Its shores are lined with lake houses and boat houses and in my childhood, those houses were mostly little cottages, cabins or trailers used as summer or weekend houses, most of which were accessible only over a series of turns onto dirt road after dirt road. Nowadays, a high proportion of Sinclair Lake houses are extremely nice year round residences and I'm not sure if a dirt road even exists anymore in the general vicinity of the Lake.  

I don't remember how old I was when Daddy built his own old plywood boat (not that it was old at the time of construction, of course), around ten or eleven, I'd guess. Daddy was a master carpenter, so there wasn't anything half-done or half-finished about that boat. It was absolutely water-worthy, complete with steering wheel and windshield. I remember early morning fishing trips with Daddy and Mr. Emory, our next-door neighbor without whom no father-daughter excursion was complete. We didn't have a lake cabin ourselves, but the owner of the construction company Daddy worked for did, and as he was getting on up there in age and seldom, if ever, went to the Lake at all, we had full permission to use it at any time. We didn't, in fact, ever use the cabin proper, mostly because boarded up cabins have a very distinctive smell that's not all that pleasant, but we made frequent use of the property itself for family cookouts. That was pretty much standard Sunday afternoons, boat rides and cookouts at the Lake. Nothing fancy. Just good food, good company, good fun. Like I said, a simpler time and place.

Then "life"--whatever that means--got in the way, and before I knew it, it'd been a minimum of forty plus years since I'd been on any boat at all, let alone on Lake Sinclair, and just as many for my husband, who'd also spent the weekends of his teen years at the Lake, though he was more athletic (it doesn't take much to be more athletic than me) and had been a heck of a slalom skier.

I'm happy to say that situation's been rectified for us now. A few years back, my husband bought an older, used boat. He didn't get a lot of use out of it the first couple of years after its purchase, mostly because until this spring when I retired, I was too tired to even think spending a whole day of my two day weekend manhandling a boat in and out of the water even sounded good. This year, though? Ah, this year, we rented a boat slip at a lake marina right off the main road to the Lake, and put the boat in the water for the summer. It just sits right there and waits on us, and we're there at least once a week. It's great when we're with the kids and grandkids. Sinclair's a lake where you just jump right off the boat into the water (with life vest, of course).  You don't see too many folks skiing these days, the big thing's "tubing" and I admit, even I might be able to tube, though I haven't gotten up quite the nerve yet. So far I've left the jumping into the water and the tubing to the young folks. 

It's just as great when it's just us. We love riding up and down and exploring the lake but I confess I think my favorite's when hubby turns off the engine, sets up the trolling motor, and we just putt up and down the shoreline while he throws out his fishing line. Oh, he hasn't caught a thing yet, and we don't even go when it's actually a "good fishing time" so there's pretty much not even a chance he'll catch a fish, but that's not the point. I come from a long line of fishermen who don't fish to catch fish; i.e., my Daddy and Mr. Emory. They fished to enjoy the outdoors and the company they were in, and that sure works for me. I slather on the sunblock and sometimes I read (that Kindle App on the smartphone, don't you know?) and sometimes reading's just too much trouble. I just look at the shoreline, listen to the whooooossshhh of hubby's line as it swishes out into the water and the slow criiiiikcriiiiik of the reel as it comes back to the boat. I drink in the peace, the smell of the water, the sound of contentment. And I go back. Back to a simpler time and place.

I must have subconsciously missed the Lake more than I realized in the forty plus years I spent away from it, because it certainly plays a part in the one of the books written in my years away from it.  In fact, it's the scene where the heroes of said book take down their villain.  Okay, yes. I love, love, love the lake, it's idyllic and quiet and peaceful but some parts of it are pretty dang remote. Back in the day, they were even isolated, especially in the winter, and I ask you. What kind of writer would I be if I passed that up as a setting in a Southern Gothic horror story?

my name be Cain...and my color be Se'ben

Because evil never dies. It just--waits.

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