Mary Chase Comstock's Blog

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I've never been an athlete. Sedentary by nature and choice, I can't recall ever running unless being chased by a bee. My brother, Rob, is different, however.  RenegadeBooks just published his premiere novel, The Pronator , last week.

Until I read his book, I didn't know what a pronator was. It sounded like something out of science fiction, or a role Arnold Schwarzenegger would play. However, I discovered that a pronator is one who pronates; that is, a runner whose foot turns slightly so that that the inner edge of the sole bears the weight. Rob's protagonist, Jay, suffers from pronation, but its literal meaning affects the story only slightly; symbolically, it is the flaw that each of us must overcome to reach our next level.

The action of The Pronator takes place during the running of a marathon. Jay wants only to beat his old time and come in under four hours. During that time, the psycho-physical changes that affect runners during a race such as this--intermittent flashes of memories, dreams, speculations--form the narrative as mile follows mile. Recurring themes of a Catholic childhood, nightmare schools replete with bullies, family dynamics, and the mysteries of spirituality reveal a dreamlike biography.

Being the writer's sister, it's obvious to me that Jay is a thinly disguised version of my brother. Further, I know the parts he left out. I don't know what the popularity of this book will be outside the family, but for me it was a revelation and a rare invitation to a sibling's inner life.

I was at school when I saw the news bulletin about the shooter at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon. UCC is just about 3 hours south of us, but we are part of the same community college system. Just that morning we had talked about guns on campus in my WR 115 classroom. Meanwhile, the shooter had entered another WR 115 class and interrupted their conversation in a vicious and terrible way.

Shock at a distance is shock nonetheless. As an instructor at a CC, it's hard not to imagine the same thing happening on my campus, even in my classroom. There's one exit and a pair of enormous windows that open on the world. What would I do? How could I protect my students? I know the emergency drill: lock the door turn off the lights, pull the blinds, turn off the projector and get everyone on the floor. But that only works if the shooter is somewhere else.

I've been reading responses to the news, many of which suggest that we need more armed security guards and even armed instructors--unworkable for numerous reasons, not the least of which is the plethora of aging educators who are just as likely to shoot themselves in the foot as protect their charges. Besides, taking out one shooter does just that and no more. Another will rise to take his place.

So, how do we stop this epidemic of gun violence? How do I do something? That's the crux of it, isn't it?  Knowing as we all do that politics and government won't serve, the duty falls to the individual. What can each of us do to keep unhappiness and its frequent companion, mental illness, from deteriorating into an unreasoning rage that takes its revenge on the innocent?

As I look at the parade of killers who've emerged over the past 20 years, I see souls who've been rejected and marginalized, who grow in their anger towards insanity and violence. They are not born this way--or, if they are, they need treatment. I'd like to suggest that each of us has the power, through love and kindness, to salvage lives and turn them towards open-hearted community rather than festering isolation. I can do this in my classroom, on the street, in social media. What about you?

The room is still dark. The heater has clicked on. From the glow behind the curtains, I can tell today will be another autumn gem. For just this moment, all is calm and full of possibility.

If you're old enough, you probably remember watching Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom , starring Marlin Perkins and his long-suffering sidekick,  Jim Fowler. This program introduced violence on TV, albeit animal kingdom violence. Among the most memorable segments featured the insatiable python and the enormous beasts it could swallow whole: deer, cows, even crocodiles. Horrendous as the sights were, they were hypnotic. It was impossible to look away.
Politics
That's how I feel during Presidential Debate season. Granted, we've only seen the Republicans so far, but their encounters are as gruesome and mesmerizing as those of python versus croc.  I imagine it's no coincidence that croc is a  homophone for crock, as in "that's a crock of crap." It's also interesting that some of the debaters shed crocodile tears over issues less poignant than a Hallmark commercial. So far, no one has disagreed with the others over anything substantive. They are just generally cranky and like to point fingers.
I really don't understand how we came to this means of selecting a leader. Surely we don't want someone who's merely good at self-defense and nitpicking. My mother used to suggest that, instead of waging war and slaughtering the best members of a generation, leaders of  belligerent countries should have to fight each other in some sort of international arena. They'd engage in mud wrestling, say, pole-vaulting. Then perhaps we'd choose leaders based on a different kind of strength. What do you think?

This term I've asked my Writing 115 classes to develop the daily habit of observing and thinking about the world around them and then share their thoughts with the world in a blog. I hope that they will become more aware, more appreciative, and more introspective as they compile the raw materials of good writing. This isn't an easy task. Everyone is multitasking their lives, trying to do their best and avoid the crazy-making world that interjects itself with fearful sound-bytes and flashing ads about losing belly fat.

I am going to join my students in this endeavor, so you should see many short posts from me as I, too, attempt to engage with the little moments that pass into nothingness unless explored.

* I won't be posting these on FaceBook, etc. but if you want to see what's going on around me, enter your email address into the "Follow by email" form on this page.

September the Eleventh
If you, knowing what you know,Having read what you have read,and rememberingAll the tales you’ve heard
Should despite these warningsname your son Icarus,You cannot feign surpriseWhen blood of your bloodreaching wide as a swan unfurledsteps forward from the sillAnd into the arms of flames.
The updraft buoys him like cinderSo that he might instead be flyingAnd for a moment the air is his.
So, too, Daedalus treading the shore, brushingfeathers of ash  from his dusted shouldersStill thinks of cheating disaster.


Mary Chase

I like the word renegade. It speaks to me. My educational consulting company is called RenegadEducation, largely because we don't follow the slavish rules of mainstream education (and, not coincidentally, we make very little money). I am also a renegade writer and when I released The Fool's Journey , switching from traditional to independent publishing, I invented RenegadeBooks when the Kindle manuscript submission form asked for the name of my publisher.

Over the next several months, I followed Fool’s Journey with the publication of my backlist of Regency romances as the old rights reverted back to me. I enjoyed tweaking the books, designing new covers, and learning about marketing. Then I started thinking about other writers I knew who were renegades too. Renegade Publications was about to be born. My friend and critique group member, Margaret O’Neil, had written several great romances, but editors and agents didn't want her stories. They broke the rules of traditional publishing, but both of us still believed there was an audience out there.

Margaret was my first author, with Million Dollar Wife, a glamorous "marriage of convenience" story. We worked together to prepare the rest of her books ready for publication. I designed the covers and managed her promotions. Then, she began to find a monthly income coming her way.

Finally, it occurred to me that I was onto something. I added the great Nadine Miller to my group of writers with her backlist of traditional Regencies. They began to roll off the digital shelf as buyers, anxious to find traditional love stories, clamored for more. So...books were selling. I was taking 10% and liking it. My writers liked getting personal attention. I started thinking about what defined my minuscule publishing house:
RenegadeBooks is small

I am the only staff member, so small is necessary. I also teach writing, wrangle two dogs and acclimate to having my retired husband at home. 

Small is good

I like being able to respond to my writers immediately, sometimes several times a day. Their writing is important and so is their input.
RenegadeBooks is a little different, but so are its authors. 

Our authors are talented writers

They either have a backlist of traditionally published books, or completed novels they—and others—believe in. 

They want to be a part of the publishing process, but they don't want to deal with the technology.

Our books reflect traditional romance sensibility

Our books certainly are not prudish, but love is at their center, not sex. If there are sex scenes, they are central to the plot. If you want to know more, read Peter Jordan’s Marriage or Here for You Always by Margaret O’Neil.

Max and Whisky, always on the job.So...we are off and running.Soon, I'll be adding classic romantic suspense by Carol Duncan Perry.

I'm finding there are a lot of readers who appreciate a little old fashioned romance, with a little sizzle in all the right places. I’m interested in adding a few more writers who fit the bill—four to five this year and more later.  If you're interested, let me know. (Now, if I can just teach my dogs to edit, I should be set.)

Life is hard. We all know that. Granted, no one is shooting at me, and I have not contracted any strange viruses, but I am nonetheless bogged down by life events, those I chose and those I didn't. So, if you've been wondering why I am not posting more often, here's the rundown:

The Great Flood

Why should a flood resulting from a freak summer downpour still be affecting my life in December? To begin with, it joined the parade of "one damn thing after another" from which so many of us suffer. Rain flowed in through the basement windows with ungodly abandon, soaking Persian carpets and the wall-to-wall Berber beneath them while I slept peacefully upstairs. I had no idea what had happened until I went downstairs a day or two later to see why the smell of mold was beginning to waft its way up. My first step onto the basement floor went squish. Crap.

Like many people who have too much stuff, too many collections and too little sense of organization, our basement--all 1000 square feet of it--is a labyrinth of cardboard boxes, unsorted piles, forgotten files and out-of-favor furniture. Not to mention one small room I had converted to a clothes closet. Just add water, and the entropy of our lives had begun to meld into one soggy and possibly sentient being.

Even after the cavalry arrived with their fans and vacuums, I was still removing 12 litres of water from the air every day for weeks with my newly purchased dehumidifier. Hauling, sorting, and tossing preceded the removal of the carpets, more drying and finally the installation of a new floor. Even though the tasks are now completed (well, almost...I still have a little bit of organization to take care of) my nights are filled with dreams of swelling books, molding dolls, floating receipts and seeping water.

Rats!

I never like to say anything bad about Oregon, but, in addition to the friendly beaver and majestic Roosevelt elk, the Norway rat is indigenous and prolific here. Further, recent destruction of a wooded area in our neighborhood stirred up the local population of rodentia and sent it looking for new digs down the street. Our street.

Rats! Plague-ridden, destructive, and evil! A family of them appeared in our laundry room in early fall, entering through a hole Mom and Pop rat had chewed along a pipeline. The parents succumbed rapidly to traps, but their children were observant and smart. We ended up buying several kinds of traps, and experimenting with different kinds of bait after the wunderkinden had learned to avoid peanut butter, dog food, cheese, rice, etc. My husband, Jose, master of gadgets, bought a device called a Raticator, which boasts an "infrared sensing zapper."
This eerie chamber worked on the last two. Or, rather, I thought they were the last two.

I didn't see any physical evidence, but from time to time my Scottie, Whisky, sniffed behind the couch and barked down the heating vents. Whisky is a retired ratter, though, and had achieved little in the area of pest eradication until last week when he wrought such a hullabaloo of pent-up vengeance as I will not soon forget.

Whisky had been sniffing and growling around the dishwasher and Jose, resorting to the least technical of mouse traps, decided to block the entrance to the kitchen with sticky paper designed for trapping unwanted interlopers. I didn't like the idea. Getting stuck and then tossed into a dumpster sounds like a bad way to go, even for a rat. At least the Raticator offers a quick end to life's travails. However, Jose is as stubborn as a terrier. Down went the sticky paper on the other side of the baby-gate that keeps the dogs out of the kitchen, and off to bed we went.

We had no sooner turned off the light than I heard a high-pitched Skreeee-skreeee-skreeee! from the kitchen accompanied by an outraged barrage of Scottie barks. "They will both get tired," Jose said laconically. Not so.

I made Jose get up to see what was happening. He came back and said, "There is a rat on the paper." I already knew that. Skreeee-skreeee-skreeee! Woof-woof-woof!

"Are we going to let that poor creature stay stuck there all night?"

 "Whisky is very interested," Jose said.

"What if he knocks that gate over?" Skreeee-skreeee-skreeee! Woof-woof-woof!

"Whisky cannot knock the gate over. It is a strong gate." Skreeee-skreeee-skreeee! Woof-woof-woof!

Immediately, a crash came from the kitchen, followed by a yip. Then silence. The gate had been breached.  I swear, if Jose didn't say everything in a cute Brazilian accent I'd have smacked him.

We went out to the kitchen. There was no sign of the rat, but Whisky was stuck to the paper. Crap.

I grabbed a pair of scissors to separate Whisky from the paper, lifted him by the tail (this convenient, strong handle comes standard on all Scotties) and found the rat underneath, rather untidily disemboweled. I dropped the tail and pushed the whole mess away with my foot without thinking. My bunny-eared slipper was now stuck to the paper as well.

I think you can imagine the rest. Snip-snip, curse-curse. Detritus out to the trash. Lysol clean-up. Dog and me into the shower. To bed by 2 a.m.

I still think there's one more. Either that of the spirits of rats past are eating the bait in the Raticator--that device appears to have given up the ghost.

AND... There's also good stuff in my life that also keeps me from posting here. 
Teaching
As usual, just when I despaired of my students, they have stunned me again with their insights. and I remember why it is I do this.
Writing
I found a critique group that works for me. They are fabulous readers who offer practical, insightful feedback. Now I need to write more fiction, too.
Publishing
Earlier this year, I started RenegadeBooks to publish my own work, as well as books by authors who don't fit the mold of today's romance publishers. They don't want to write 50 Shades of...Yikes!  So far, we have 11 titles and a website that needs work. If you want to know more, read Peter Jordan’s Marriage or  Here for You Always  by Margaret O’Neil.
***So that's what's up with me.  I will post more...soon I hope.  Maybe my students will keep me honest and give me some due dates.

The political season is in full-swing again (does it ever stop?) and we're getting ready for another mid-term election. Fingers are pointing, excuses are fumbling and fear is mongering. Same old stuff. I was going to blog on this topic and lead into a conspiracy theory that's been percolating in the back of my head, but I decided to repost the following instead, one of my favorites from the last election:

I Got the Foghorn Leghorn Blues 

 "The blues isn't about feeling better. It's about making other people feel worse..."
   -- Bleeding Gums Murphy to Lisa in The Simpsons 

Have you been reading Salon? Huffington Post? Watching the news on MSNBC? If you have, you know the Democrats have got the blues, and they've got them bad. The Democrats are good at having the blues. It keeps them from having to do anything substantive, but provides great talking points and finger pointing opportunities.  

There are rules for having the blues and I highly suggest you read them here. The Democrat Blues differ somewhat, however: 

You cannot have the blues on the back porch or "down by the river". You must have the blues in public, preferably in front of a camera.Even if you shot a man in Memphis, it wasn't your fault -- but you can tell everyone which obstructionist Republican tripped you on the way to a meet & greet and made you fall on the gun he was carrying and it discharged, killing the man in Memphis (who, by the way didn't have health insurance).Your blues tragedy cannot be brought about by hubris. Rather, you were done wrong by a low-lyin' Don't Tread on Me snake who had promised you his/her vote, but instead voted the other way after some soul searchin'.Et cetera...

Politically, the blues are the irrefutable domain of the Democrats. But if the Dems have the blues, what's left for the Republicans? Well, there's no need to worry. They got something even better. Republicans got outrage. Luckily for them, outrage has no rules and the Republicans, those champions of deregulation, like this a lot. They can, will, and have been outraged over everything. They don't much like Bleeding Gums Murphy, for obvious reasons. Instead they've modeled themselves after the irascible Foghorn Leghorn.
There are no accidents in the universe, so it is not in the least surprising that Foghorn Leghorn was brought to us by Looney Tunes in the1950s. Foghorns don't need to make sense -- they just have to be loud. They can rev up indignation over anything: replacing crèche scenes with "holiday trees," Super Bowl ads, and video games that reward sustainable community choices.
They rant against and blame the current administration for our economic woes, blithely forgetting their role in its inception. In the name of protecting life, they can vilify a woman who defends access to health services and at the same time support the death penalty. They can spout a simplification of any complex problem into an endless loop of self-serving sound-bytes that appeal to the ignorant masses who are products of a school system they continue to cripple. Blather, wince, repeat. It really doesn't matter which side offends us the most or more slyly undercuts our liberties and livelihoods: there's not much to choose between them.
But where do we fit in? Don't fret. We also play a role in this cartoon show: the dependably trusting Yakky Doodle who doesn't realize his own peril until he's roasting in the Fibber Fox's oven, and finally quacks: "I think you're the FOX!" In the series, Yakky was always rescued by his friend Chopper the Bulldog. But this is where my metaphor breaks down, as metaphors always do. However much politics in America may resemble the funnies, it's very real. And all of us are sitting in a pot waiting to be stewed again.

****

Well, we only have to change out a few words--Ebola or ISIS, for instance--and this post is completely up to date. However, I'm beginning to think it is no accident that politicians can't compromise anymore, refuse to consider the common good and fling a constant barrage of accusations: lying, treason and horn-swaggling. The atmosphere of distrust and aggression is so consistent, I begin to fear it is deliberate. I fear the "opposing sides" are actually working together to ensure that nothing gets done. A frustrated populace eventually tires of the farce and turns its attention elsewhere. Why else would anyone play Candy Crush into the late hours, photograph their dinner for the delectation of FaceBook friends or watch Honey Boo Boo?

Safely attached to our various devices, as I so surely am, there is little fear we'll notice what's going on in Washington, much less the rest of the world. Perhaps we'll sign a few more petitions or post a few protests. But the blinking ads in the margins of our monitors call like Sirens to Odysseus and we sail faithfully into oblivion.