Rhonda Riley's Blog

I am the kind of person who goes quiet in bad times; I try to be still and gather myself, to listen. Those first few weeks of staying at home and social distancing—when it seemed it might be only weeks—felt like the fates were demanding I do just that: stay home, write, listen. I felt freed as well anxious. I wrote the first poem below, “Shelter In Place”. Then the beast that is a Florida summer came. It rained, then it poured. I wrote a poem (“Florida, June 2020”) about summer settling its dank haunches on Florida as it does every year. Then things changed. Then people died in hospitals by the thousands. And then people died in the streets. I went to a vigil for George Floyd and added these lines to the poem: “Heat rumbles rage-dark skies, / feeds the viral spread,” and added the year 2020 to title.


Shelter in Place

No bras. Bare feet.
Eat. Sing off-key. Sleep. Listen.

Birdsongs say, Spring!
Sirens say, Hold your breath.

Drum of hearts
beats low and soft.
Listen.


Florida, June 2020

Humidity curls our hair,
oils our skin slick.
Water everywhere;
trickles out of us, falls on us,
snakes across the garage floor.
A bucket left in the yard
fills in two days.
Frog eggs then tadpoles pock
the gutter puddles.
Warm wet exhalations
where none but trees breathe,
giving us shade to molder in.
Heat rumbles rage-dark skies,
feeds the viral spread.
Too hot for cynicism
or forgiveness.
The season’s first named hurricane menaces the coast,
leaves a postcard: Just you wait.

I have heard many wonderful things from readers, but I got a message recently that was a first. Artist Tina Crespo wrote to thank me for inspiring her and helping her continue creating during Covid19. “Because of you, I made this,” she wrote. The highest praise I can imagine. And so now, I want to share her lovely work with you. In her show opening, Rituals: The Energetic Landscape Collection, she credits the story of A. for inspiring her—check out the titles she gave her paintings. She has made vivid beautiful landscapes of Addie, of Cole, and the trickster rivers of Florida. Perhaps she, in turn, will inspire you to paint, write, read, sing, and look—all those things you can do at home. And perhaps you will find something you want on you walls during these trying times.

Thank you, Tina! Because of you, I am thoroughly delighted and inspired to continue writing about Sarah and her art.

Keep reading, keep looking, keep creating.

http://www.tinacrespo.com/rituals-energeticlandscapes

I recently read, Untamed: The Wildest Woman in America and the Fight for Cumberland Island, by Will Harlan, which tells the story of Carol Ruckduschel. And while the main subject of the book is fascinating, I was amazed by an altogether wilder creature—slime molds.

An example of cooperation in nature, this excerpt (p. 227) on slime molds particularly struck me: “And bacteria—the oldest and most numerous organisms on the planet—cooperatively share survival information with each other. Perhaps most amazing of all are the humble slime molds. They live as individual amoeba scattered widely across the forest floor until they are starving. Then hundreds of them simultaneously crawl together and merge to form a slug, so they can seek out food as a collective organism.”

I had to check this out. I like finding examples of natural phenomena stranger than my fiction of Adam Hope. And, yep, it is truly strange! Slime molds do a variety of things—crawl slug-like, oozing along at 1.35 mm per second; grow fruiting bodies that release some of the single-celled beings as spores, while the others stay behind supporting the fruiting body and thus sacrificing themselves. Do a Google image search for slime molds and prepare to have your mind blown. Or at the very least, distracted for a few moments from the disturbing human-related news at hand.

Short articles with pictures:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/16/ma...

https://forestsociety.org/blog-post/s...

Quick educational watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nx3Uu...

For a more in-depth look:
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/04/sc...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elqwn...

Several times since 'Adam Hope was published, I’ve been asked about the disappearance of Daddy (Evelyn’s father.) The first time I heard the question, I had to go back and reread parts to discover that Daddy does, indeed, disappear in the second half of the novel. Initially, I answered those letters individually. But now the question has come up again. So I thought I would answer, here, in a public format. (Not much of a plot-spoiler here but if you haven’t read the book, you may want to stop reading now.)

Daddy’s disappearance (or lack of a clear exit from the story) was an omission, a mistake, and probably a little of my own life intruding into the story. Originally, there was a scene in which, long after the Roe/Hope family moved to Florida, they felt safe enough to return to North Carolina for a visit. That scene explained, among others things, that Daddy’s health had declined and he had died peacefully in his sleep without ever admitting his true relationship to Evelyn. The scene did not add much else to the novel and my editor asked me to cut it. I simply forgot, in the shuffle of last minutes edits and revisions, to find a new place for an update on Daddy.

In the final scene between Cole and Evelyn, when she visits the graveyard, Daddy’s grave is not mentioned and his absence—or the absence of his grave—is not explained. That omission is different. It is not due to last minute editorial changes, but is the kind of omission Evelyn would make; the kind of omission I made at the grave of my own parents.

Evelyn describes her father as the kind of man who is absent in ways that can leave his wife and children lonely, a man who did not tell stories, “not a bad father, not much of a disciplinarian, and never cruel. Yet his love was like light to me. I could see it and I knew intellectually that it touched me, but I could not touch it back. And like the sun’s light on a winter day, it did not warm me, just reminded me of warmth and made me long for it.” That is how I felt about my own father.

One night, shortly after The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope was published, I drove out to the cemetery where my parents are buried. I buried a copy of 'Adam Hope' not over my father’s body, and not between my parents’ graves, but over my mother’s heart. I took my story to the one who would have read it and because she knew me and loved me with a touch I could feel and could return.

Evelyn does not think of Daddy in that final scene because she wants, on that day and at that moment, to tell the truth and she wants to tell it to the people she most regrets lying to: her mother, her daughters, and Cole.

Still, the readers who contacted me were right. This was an omission that I should have caught. If I had it to do over again, I would add a passage about her father's death.

The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope is only a partial fiction. It really is difficult to tell a whole truth or to tell a truth entirely. But there is one thing that is true in the novel: There was a coffee house in Gainesville, Florida in the 1960s to early '70s where two red-haired sisters could have played their music – The Bent Card.

Though I never went to The Bent Card (I was too young and lived too far away), I married someone who did play music there. Years ago he started having an annual reunion party for musicians who had played at The Bent Card. Fast forward a few decades and that reunion party of old-time and folk musicians has segued into something bigger. Now, one night a year in early January, my house fills up with musicians. Invitations are not sent out. People just show up. They bring food. They bring drinks. They bring guitars, fiddles, basses, flutes, mandolins, and their voices. They stay and make music until the last musicians get too tired or too hungry to continue. Here are a few of the folks who show up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MschW... David Beede

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUzvt... Captive Eddies
https://www.facebook.com/captiveeddies/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEwS7... Patchwork

I will post this on my Facebook, too. Happy listening, y'all. Happy reading.

A relative told me that 'Adam Hope was mentioned somewhere as having a special offer going on recently. So I checked it out and saw that there has been a lot of new activity here on Goodreads! Lots more ratings than average and the ebook was on sale. Thanks to all you Goodreads folk who have taken the time to read my work and then made the extra effort to rank or review it. I appreciate it! And it has been much needed. I have had the mother of all flus on top of the distractions of the holidays, and I needed the inspiration of so many positive ratings and reviews to get me back at my desk, and getting the Hope sisters on their journey. Happy reading to all of you in 2018!

Dear Fellow Readers and Book Club Folks: I LOVE book clubs. People get together for everything else, why not reading? I joined a book club for the first time a few years ago—a humbling and liberating experience for me. I realized what a great diversity there is in reading pleasure and what different people want to get out of a book. Reading and discussing with others has made me take a second look at some books I wasn’t that thrilled with initially. I like it when others see things I missed or bring a different point of view to the discussion.

All this is my roundabout way of saying: If you invite The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope to your book club, I would be honored to join you or contribute in any way I can! Contact me at rrileyauthor@gmail.com. I’d be happy to answer any questions you or your book club have, and I can send you a list of discussion questions. You can even help me with that list, if you like, and add your own questions for future book clubs to ponder. And I can do Skype or Zoom sessions as well! So just let me know. Meanwhile, happy reading—whatever or wherever you may read.

If The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope is on your want-to-read list or you have recommended it to a friend, there is a good deal going on right now through Amazon. The e-book is on sale now for $1.99.

I just realized that the e-book of The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope is on sale now for only $3.99 on Amazon and Kobo. I don't know how long the sale will last, but please pass the info on to fellow readers or friends, or buy a copy yourself if 'Adam Hope is on your want-to-read list.

I bore myself sometimes talking about my own work and I feel a little guilty doing any writing that is not writing on the next book. But I do truly appreciate everyone who reads my book and takes the time to review or rate it. And I will be posting more here soon.

I am currently working on another book, which will be a sequel to Adam Hope! I was supposed to be working on a completely unrelated book, but I hit a major snag somewhere between my heart and my head. Then I got a spark about where Sarah Hope is in China...

Many thanks to all of you who read, rank, and review.

If you (or any of your friends) have The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope on your want-to-read list and prefer the e-version, now's the time. It is on sale! My publisher has marked it down. The sale should last for a few more days. If you read it and like it let someone know.

Meanwhile, happy reading.

--Rhonda