time out for a commercial break

On Wednesday, I spent two hours in my favorite Tucson hair salon-- for the sole purpose of getting a permanent. They aren't popular anymore. Styles change; and this week, mine was the only one (out of maybe twenty customers in varying states of services). Most of the ladies appeared to be having their hair colored, which takes quite a bit of time with a head covered by silver papers (for streaking, I think) or a dark gel looking substance. Since I have never gone to a salon for anything other than a perm, I am unsure how long coloring takes, but it appears to be longer than a perm.

Perms involve a lot of rollers, of varying sizes, which also have to remain a certain amount of time after the stylist has spent about 45 minutes (for my hair) wrapping it around rollers. Once you reach my age, if you wear your hair long, you are wise to choose coloring or a perm-- or, of course, neither.

I got my first perm in the '80s, which is when Armando (Wednesday's stylist) told me they were most popular. I like them for the increased body and how I can, if I wish, do what you see in the first photo, wash and let it go loose in the witch or nature child's favorite look.What surprised me with this perm was when Armando told me my last one there had been May of 2010. I knew it had been awhile, but time does indeed fly. Since this is the only salon I now use for a permanent, that was the last one I had.

In the past, I have tried two other Tucson salons. My second experience here was a small salon that seems to have been there forever-- with a regular clientele. It had  five stalls (mirror, shelf for supplies, and chair) for stylist and customer. I liked the old-fashioned atmosphere, the neighborly chit chat, with the added benefit of having a stylist closer to my age who also wore her hair long. I returned to Tucson one year to find she had retired. I decided to try something different.

My current Tucson choice is a state of the art business, very elegant. They handle all the services a person might want including manicures, pedicures, facials, massages, etc. Before you sit in the chair, you don a black robe to protect clothing. It, along with  the stylists in black or black and white, makes for a sensually pleasing atmosphere. I enjoy watching the others to see why they are there, how it looks when they leave, but I am most glad when I leave.

The thing is with a permanent, a woman with long hair cannot mess around with budget places. My first try for a Tucson salon came not long after we bought this house. The stylist was charming, chatty, and left the curling agent on too long. With long hair, that is a disaster. It took many months and cutting off a lot of length to get beyond the frying. Now I don't mess with budgets. Since I only do it rarely, I figure I can afford a luxury treatment especially when it leaves my hair soft as this one did.

I am one of those people who likes long hair but doesn't want to spend much time messing with it. I am happiest when, in the mornings. all I have to do is run a brush or comb through it. Sometimes, if I have plans for the next day, before I go to bed, I pin it in fat rolls on top my head (added bonus of not sleeping on its length). In the morning, pulling out the pins takes a couple of minutes, and I'm good to go. At night it looks like an elegant updo-- during the day it's comfortable. A perm makes all that work better.

Arizona Sunset

Arizona Sunset

What appealed to me about writing this book, set in Arizona Territory 1883, was the way I could relate to the life of Abigail, my heroine. She was trying to do the right thing but feeling trapped by expectations and the conventions of her time. She felt she had no options. And it's not as though she was altogether wrong. Just think about it, that the year my mother was born, 1912, was the first year women in Oregon could vote. Arizona became a state that year but it took fighting for women's right to vote which was won before the year ended. There were cultural constraints on Abigail's life. How does a woman deal with that kind of situation?

Well, she took a risk, a big one. She started off to solve a problem and then ended up with an option which at first seemed temporary but ended up more complex than she had ever dreamed. Freedom comes with a price.

Setting this story in southern Arizona with a great bulk of it in the San Rafael Valley was another plus in the writing. I knew the area well from going there many times over many years. I've always thought I'd love to live there, but it wasn't ever possible. Through my characters I got my chance.
 

Arizona Sunset is available from Amazon for Kindle. 

For the first month the Kindle version will be $3.99 but with October, it'll go to the price I intend for it to stay-- $4.99. Pricing a book is always a tricky issue because you don't want to ask too much, but you also don't want to undersell its value. It's one of those questions with which writers and likely publishers wrestle. I am compromising by having an introductory price. I won't have future sales, as that seems unfair to  buyers who bought it its full price; so if it looks interesting, buy it in September.

For anyone who doesn't have a Kindle, these books can be read on computers and Amazon has a free Kindle app to enable that.

Its paperback is created and available also-- Arizona Sunset. Getting them to coordinate and be there the same day was trickier than it looked. Up until last night I didn't know if it would work but looks good. I will be writing more about CreateSpace and how that works next week as I think they do a great job for the indie writers.


Arizona Sunset has a trailer which is at YouTube (there is a link to a more extended one at the back of the book-- which readers should only view when the book is finished):

The following are a few photos of the region I love so much to share just a bit of why. It is as rugged and beautiful today as it was when my story was set. It wasn't a land ever held by weak people. It still has risks for those who foolishly underestimate it. Danger is part of its beauty and what I hope I have managed to partially capture with my book-- Arizona Sunset

Kindle 

Paperback

Ghost of the forest

One of the things that always brings me joy is when I come across the ghosts of the forest, our Oregon Coast Range Roosevelt elk, in a herd grazing and interacting with each other. When I am in areas I know they could be, I watch for them, can often tell where they have been (they cut a wide track) but to catch a herd grazing as we did last week, that's not so common an experience for me that it has yet to get old.

We have elk at the back of our land here. Regularly they tear down a fence as they have a route they are familiar with and if a fence is in their way, well it's not like they don't know how to fix that.  Back there, I've watched them gambol far below me, jumping in and out of pools of water, but only when I didn't have a camera with me.

 there are three visible in this photo if you enlarge and look carefully

The only time we have gotten photos of them on our land is when we left a wildlife camera back on one of their trails. After they saw the camera, it looks as though they licked the lens as all the rest of the images were very fuzzy and we have one with a nose right in front of the camera. Too smart by half.

I had a friend in college who had grown up in the Coast Range and told of being treed by the elk. They are big animals and definitely do have the ability to hurt a person if they were so inclined. Generally they run.

The photos below were taken March 13th of a good sized herd we lucked upon while in Cascade Head Preserve down on the Coast. These animals are not fenced; they are wild. This was in a mountain and riparian zone being restored to a natural wetland, much of which is now owned by Nature Conservancy, not that this elk herd probably ever paid much attention to that. This is their home range, and they know who the intruders are. This is the season where the bulls will have dropped their antlers; so you can only tell the males by body type-- that is unless you get a lot closer than we were (all photos taken with telephoto).

I didn't count but I think this time we took over fifty photos of what looked like fifty elk. Someday I should put my elk photos into an album so that other elk lovers can enjoy them all. Someday is a long way off as I have work to do from being gone.

Reflections

Interesting reflections in water require several elements-- some degree of stillness in the water, something above worthy of being reflected, and little or no breeze. They might be found in a puddle, lake, creek, river. Capturing them with a camera is a bit of a challenge helped much by having a polarizing lens.

If your photograph captures that reflection on the perfect day, it can seem as though it's as real as what was above. It's not, of course. It's always a reflection. My favorite ones look like an abstract painting with just enough air or water movement to blur the images.

The subject of reflection is a worthy one for a writer to consider and that will follow some recent photos of reflections taken at Catalina State Park.

 Life itself is about reflecting and discerning the real from the illusion. Plato claimed everything we experience is a reflection or shadow and wrote a philosophical argument to defend his opinion.

Writing fiction is always about the reflection. It's what a writer looks for-- finding what is real and capturing a reflection in words. No matter how realistic the words might sound, they are always reflections of life. Some are closer to what might seem real and have the reader thinking they read a slice of real life but they are always reflections. That is their challenge and their beauty.

An example of how reflections play out in fiction will use the events in Benghazi when four men were killed by a terrorist assault, one of them our US ambassador.

Non-fiction will try to reveal exactly what happened-- a perfect reflection. Since it's done by humans, that is not possible; and in that case, even more so because not all events are totally known except by those there (some of whom died).

Fiction can decide to take what happened there, use the events but create fictional characters to set within it. Now the story still appears realistic, but it's a fuzzier reflection of what actually happened.

Finally you get into romance, sci fi, detective, apocalyptic etc. You take that event, the facts you know, but you use them somewhere else totally and in the case of a romance, you put a hero or heroine into the situation and before it's over make the ending work as you wish the real one had.

The thing is a lot of people consider 'serious' literature to be more accurately reflecting life. Perhaps... or perhaps it's a reflection of something totally away from the real object and suiting an author's agenda.

When writing or reading, it's all something to consider-- what reflection was that writer aiming to create and why.

 Photo above cropped a bit and flipped to show that abstract painting in the water which the photo captured. I had thought of moving the log for the photo but opted to leave its interesting shape and contrasting color.

But because I could, I used my photo tools to take that log out, crop the image down a bit and remove some grasses with the wonders of Photoshop creating even more of a feel of an impressionistic painting-- this one in water. My version of Corel Photo-paint is an old one, but I know how to use it and it is a lot of fun to play with images to add or take away-- which also happens to be what creative writing is about.

November at the Oregon Coast

A week-end at the Oregon Coast with the family where we experienced pretty near every kind of weather possible for a coastal late fall. It was a good time with the grandkids, kids, and for thinking. As usual, I took a ton of photos. The quiet time without my computer was something I needed.  I returned to the farm feeling  inspired about life, beauty and possibilities. The Coast, in all its moods, is always rejuvenating to me.