In Shelf Awareness, remembering my grandmother and reflecting on stories in which time works differently

Within every story there are stories, and this morning I am deeply blessed by the chance, in Shelf Awareness, to remember my grandmother and to reflect on the passion I have for creating young adult stories in which time works differently.  Jennifer Brown, the children's book review editor for Shelf Awareness, opened this door to me.  Her kindness toward me and Small Damages has been remarkable.

Pictured above is my beautiful grandmother, whom I lost on Mischief Night when I was nine. She sits beside my grandfather, who holds my brother on his lap.  I am sitting with my beloved Uncle Danny.  My mother's family.  Sweet memories.

Thank you, Jenny Brown and Shelf Awareness.  These are the opening words of my Inklings essay.  The rest can be found here:

My books for young adults are frequently shaped by relationships between those who have so much wanting yet ahead and those looking back, with pain and wonder. Time works differently in books like these, and so does memory.

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Small Damages/School Library Journal Review

My dear friends of Philomel have sent along the School Library Journal review of Small Damages, and I am breathing a sigh of relief.  The pre-launch period of any book is an exercise in measured breathing.

I share the words with you here:

 KEPHART, Beth. Small Damages. 304p. CIP. Philomel. July 2012. Tr $17.99. ISBN 978-0-399-25748-3. LC 2011020947.
Gr 9 Up–Kenzie is 18 and pregnant, much to the embarrassment of her mother and her Yale-bound boyfriend, Kevin. Feeling helpless and alone, she submits to her mother’s plan to keep the mistake hidden by going to stay with friends of friends in Spain for the duration of the pregnancy and giving up the baby to adoptive parents. In a daze, Kenzie finds herself on a dusty bull farm, Los Nietos, hot and lonely, experiencing a lifestyle that is completely different from her former life. But it is in this unknown landscape that the young woman finds the support that she lacks at home. The cranky old cook, Estela, and the mysterious young horseman, Esteban, become the nurturing mother and attentive friend that Kenzie yearns for, and she becomes the kind of person who can take care of herself and her baby. Beautifully told, the characters’ stories are soulful and compelling, and the setting is rich and alive. While the subject matter might seem familiar, even overdone, this story is unexpectedly tender and original, never falling prey to cliché or the trappings of the typical teen problem novel. Or if it does—the moodiness, the somewhat easy resolution—the style is so engaging that the tale is still fulfilling.–Jennifer Miskec, Longwood University, Farmville, VA

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Small Damages, Excerpt (and a contest to come)

The release of Small Damages is just a month away. This morning I'm sharing this brief excerpt. Look for a contest next week. I'll be giving away four hard copies. The trailer is here.

Outside the sky has grown stormy in one distant corner. The sun still shines on everything else. “I know a place,” she tells me. “Not far.” Through narrowness to broadness, up a wide plateau of stairs, she walks and I walk with her. She opens the door. She waits.

It takes time to adjust to the darkness—to find the stained-glass windows high above the smoke stain of incense and wax. “Eighty chapels,” she says, “in this one cathedral.” When she steps ahead on the marble floor, her heels strike bright, hard echoes. When I breathe, it’s the smell of oranges and crisp.

The nave is giant, endless, stoned in. The pews are worn and settled. Everything is carved into a million dimensions—it’s hanging, it’s suspended, it’s on a pedestal looking down. Adair slides into a pew, and I join her. Two pews ahead, three women veiled in black kneel side-by-side, hands against hands in prayer. Near to them, across the aisle, a Japanese man is tripoding his camera, and in between the legs of the tripod, a kid races a toy car across the tiles.

“It’s my favorite place,” Adair says, “in all of Spain.” I think of Miguel and the Necropolis. I think of vanishing. I look past Adair to the stones that hold the space away from itself. I watch the candles burning and the Christs—Christ after Christ. A thousand of them. Tourists slide up and down the aisles. The women pray. Someone sings, and someone else measures the length of the song’s travels, and into the song beats the snap of the camera.

“What did Miguel tell you about me?” I ask her.

“That you’re smart, and a little pissed off.” She smiles. “I’d be pissed off too,” she says. “To be honest.”

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Losing sentences, holding onto story

I was nearly destroyed by my ten-year-in-progress manuscript yesterday.  The pacing was off, and I couldn't find a cure.

I sat with my old photographs, my boxes of books, my research.  I sat with all 240-plus pages half on my lap, half on the floor.  I sat, and I'm glad that I couldn't see my own face.  Frustration?  Bewilderment?  Exhaustion?  All three?  You're all washed up, Kephart, I said.

But then last night I slept a little (sleep is something else, I tell you), and when I woke I knew just what the problem was, a problem I should have discerned at once (this is me writing, I reminded myself, me, with the same built-in flaws, the same go-to tendencies, the same great love for landscape and sky when the point is, the point is, the story).  I threw pages away, pages and pages.  I was ruthless with every excess word.  I blue penned the book like its life depends on blue penning, and, in fact, it does.  The pace is back on.  The tension has tightened.  So much more is at stake.  I'm losing sentences like I always do.  I'm holding onto a new kind of story. 

Novels get harder as we push ourselves beyond what we know, my friend Alyson Hagy wrote to me earlier today, after listening to me go on about this book I won't give up on.  She's almost always right, my friend, Alyson.  She's definitely wiser than I am.  Because even though I've been writing this book for almost all of my published writing life, it is the book I've not known how to write, the book I've had to grow into.

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All day, in this winter rain, writing of heat and Spain, revising this

Miguel heads for the jeep. I climb in beside him and slam the door and he drives—past the house into the fields of bleached-out grass, over earth rising and collapsing, into the thick of the dust. There are check points—that’s what he calls them—and at each, Miguel hops out, turns the key in a lock, swings open the gate, hops back in, drives forward, stops, then locks the gate behind us, until finally we are out among the bulls, jerking along like some African safari. He tells me the facts as he thinks them up, and when he has the English to explain: The bulls fight when they are four. They weigh 480 kilos. They wear the brands of their birthdays on their back, the cortijo logo. They have nice, straight backs and horn geometry.

We scatter the herd, break them out of the shade until they are near, running beside us—fast in a straight line, awkward on the turns, annoyed. Miguel keeps talking about the finest horns, the best backs, the beauty. In a few weeks, he says, he will take the six bulls that he loves best and pack them into a truck and send them off to a bullring. Bullfighting is poetry and mind, he tells me, and when his bulls die well he does not feel the sadness; he feels the pride.

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Excerpt from a novel (long) in progress

The heat is less than it was. A breeze has blown in, and in Stella’s kitchen I stand with a bowl of artichokes flicking off stems, lopping off tops, yanking the tough outer leaves, and now I set a pot of water to boil and toss the naked white meat in. It takes a while to tender the artichokes with heat—that’s how Stella says it, tender with heat—so I wait, and when the artichokes are boiled and drained and cooled, I slice them thin, and with a smaller knife remove each furry choke—cut around and snap them free, toss them away. In a separate bowl I mix the lemon, oil, and garlic, add the sage and marjoram, the shreds of parsley and mint, and pour the whole thing over the chopped-up artichokes, then cover the bowl with a rag. I clear the counter, wipe my hands. Stella gives me the eye under the bridge of an eyebrow.

“Good enough,” she says. “Now start on the pears.”

“The pears?”

“Peras al horno.”

She tells me to wash the pears and peel them. To halve them, thumb out their cores, keep them fresh with orange juice. “Paradise,” she says, and she fits the knife to my hand, this one thin knife, and shows me what she wants. I have trouble near the stem, but now that trouble’s done and the pear snaps into two parts, clean.

“Pay attention.”

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Looking for Book Love

a note of quest,
and a request...

(for names of books you love)

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My Seville

For five years I worked on a novel—a series of novels—that sprung from and kept returning to Seville—my brother-in-law's home, a favorite destination. I've never left that novel, not entirely. I've always looked for another way in.

Yesterday I printed hundreds and hundreds of pages of my Seville. I sat in a quiet room and began again. Writing olive trees and gypsy songs. Writing down flamenco.

Flamenco is the bend of the body. The play of the soul upon the face. The invention of the moment. She wore her dress like an animal she could not trust. She worked her castanets.

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Thanking my Lucky Stars

Clearly, I've already said much too much today.

Except there's this: I have two extraordinary women and bloggers to thank for noticing the work that I seek to do here, the stories I try to tell with images and words.

First, might I thank Barbara, whose beautiful, thought-provoking blog was the subject of last Sunday's New York Times article on "slow blogging." I was moved by Barbara's comments in the story, logged onto her blog, discovered the value of her mind, and said something. She took the time to visit me here, and to mention my work on her site. I thank her.

Then, last night or this morning (I didn't sleep; this day has blurred), I discovered somehow (I really don't know how) that a clearly generous, quite popular, and talented blogger soul named Amy had mentioned my blog on her site.

Well, what can you do, when the heavens open up and sweetness rains down?

One thanks one's lucky stars. And the stars themselves.

Speaking of stars—this photo montage was created by my artist husband/business partner years ago, when I was working on a novel that takes place in southern Spain. Something Lenore posted a while ago has me thinking about that novel again. I have something I'd like to write into it. And I just might.

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