Writing Spaces: Catamaran

I am a grateful fan of Catamaran Literary Reader, and have been made to feel like an established part of the Santa Cruz writing community because of their journal launches, their presence at Bookshop Santa Cruz and local art galleries, and their inspirational summer writing conference on the Monterey coast.

On Friday night I read from my short story "Moroccan Spices" at the launch of the latest Catamaran—Vol. 8, Issue 1: Spring 2020, Issue 28—a ride to add to one on quite another catamaran, that into the blue waters off the sacred Place of Refuge on the Big Island of Hawai'i, some twenty-five years ago.

Moroccan Spices

I am delighted to have my short story "Moroccan Spices" included in the new (Spring 2020) issue of Catamaran Literary Reader.

The title is an allusion to "the skewers Jane had threaded lovingly with perfect Red Flame grapes grown by organic farmers in Sonoma or Rohnert Park, and Nieman Ranch pork, humanely raised, marinated in spices overnight—a blend of cumin and paprika, ginger, cloves, and just a smidgen of cayenne" and to the lure of far-off places, to travel and great dreams of bright, brave places and ways of being.  To something Sarah, our middle-aged heroine, sets off on a belated quest to find and claim as her own—"with her rations of Moroccan pork-and-grape skewers and a bottle of Aquafina determined to recapture the spontaneity she’d lost somewhere along the way, the feeling of having all the time in the world to track the moon to its lair out in the Pacific or farther oceans."

image:  Le Creuset, Moroccan Magic

Marbles

Another story, "Marbles," has been published by the excellent Typishly (who, as I've said, I love not least for their perpetuation of the serif!).

This is a new addition to my collection of stories inspired by aphorisms, which includes "Swallows" and "Moss" (co-winners of the Literal Latté short-short contest in 2012), "Pishing" (published by The Walrus in 2013), "She Who Hesitates" (published by The Wild Word in 2019), and "Milk" (to be published by Minerva Rising this spring). 

Its heroine, Tess, is accused of having lost her marbles, and she agrees that "she had lost quantities of marbles, more than she could count," but "in some incalculable calculus all of the losses added up to make her what she was."  And what she wants now, instead of marbles, is the fairy tales she's illustrating happily,

"animals with magic powers, gray ocher wolves and burnt umber owls; women healers in carmine cloaks; genies curled like unctuous snakes in natural sienna pots; flying Turkish carpets of blackcurrant red with Rumi verses stitched around the edge, ready to dart off on transforming quests.  She wanted Fionnoula, their soft-coated Wheaten terrier, at her feet as she worked; to drink white peony tea from the stoneware noodle bowl she used as a teacup; to see the cottage garden out her window, with its leggy chives and echinacea, lamb's-ear, Russian sage, wild indigo, and pale pink hollyhocks.  To be at home, finally, fabulously, after so many years being somewhere else."

Writing Spaces

A favorite bookshop in Monterey.  

Windows, inside and out, a place of reflection, liminal and transportive.  The writing's not on the wall, but in and on the window.




image:  Christie B. Cochrell, January Window

January Term

"January Term," a story started long ago and finished recently has been published by Typishly, a stylish online literary journal (which, true to my own heart, believes in serifs, in this heathen age of sans!).

It all begins with Ariel, named for Shakespeare's "tricksy" spirit—

         "As Lucy fought her way out of the Super Shuttle outside Meadow Hall two days after the New Year, a great gray cat quite nearly landed on her head.  In class last fall she'd learned that Coleridge called drama a willing suspension of disbelief, the audience agreeing to set aside their critical faculties in order to be entertained.  And so she chose to be enchanted by the falling cat, all fur and canny turquoise eyes, as by a blazing comet foretelling the coming of kings, and didn’t mind that it almost hit her.  (Missed her by a whisker, as her Grandma Verna waiting tables back in Des Moines would have said.)

         The cat in turn was perfectly oblivious to Lucy, as to the cry of 'Ariel!' directed at it from above, and sauntered off with imposing disdain into the emerald-green grasses in front of the old dorm."

image:  Collage, Christie B. Cochrell

Writing Spaces

A safe fortress of words, against Weltschmerz and mind-muddle and ignorance of things like Cartagena's door knockers and the stained-glass demons of Strasbourg Cathedral.  A bright castle of words, reaching and reaching up into the sky, and flying immense wind-filled flags from its turrets.  An apothecary's shop of words, healing the heart and soul, fragrant with balsam fir and bearberry, with chicory, elder, fennel and goat's rue, with Jamaican dogwood, juniper, linden, and lovage, and, always, with my often written-about sage.

image:  Nigella Lawson, English food writer — from 100 Famous Authors and Their Writing Spaces

A Siege of Herons

My second mystery, "A Siege of Herons," has been published in the January 2020 issue of The Mystery Weekly Magazine, and is available in print and in Kindle format.

This is the fourth story featuring poet/detective Tomás Vilalta and his archaeologist partner Gritta Becker, set on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca.  (Read about the other three here.)

In this, Mireille Cabrol, a well-known Mallorcan artist with a remote family tie to Cezanne goes missing, and Vilalta traces her to the Medieval walled town of Alcúdia, and nearby S'Albufera Natural Park.  There, while painting purple herons and other exotic waterbirds, the painter has reportedly stumbled across bird traffickers and subsequently vanished.  The trail leads Vilalta still further into the wilds of the island to an old hermitage where Mireille was last seen, in the company of a young woman with the look of an exotic bird the artist has for unknown reasons befriended.

I offer this small taste to whet the appetite:

         He'd brought home with him a postcard of one of Mireille Cabrol's paintings, which he studied while the stew simmered. Gritta got up, stretched, hugged him, poured them wine from a bottle of good moscato, and picked up the card with curiosity.

         "Purple herons were significant in Egyptian mythology," she told him. "Associated with creation, renewal, the Phoenix."

         "Maybe Mireille Cabrol made that association too, if it's well known," Vilalta mused, interested. "She seems determined to show the Phoenix rising from the fire." He told Gritta about the devastating fire, and the artist's studio with [canvases of herons everywhere like] upswept purple flame.

            He dished the mussels and broth into bowls, the rustic brown clay dishware saturated with intense turquoise recently purchased from a fabrica north of Palma, and they went out to the arbor to eat, among the herbs and aloes and a mass of purple bougainvillea.

image:  Purple Heron, Matt Brady, eBird