Penny Blubaugh

The prisoner in the photograph is me. It ID number is mine. The photo was taken in 1972at the medium-security Federal Correctional Institution in Ashland, Kentucky. I was twenty-one years old and had been locked up for a year already -- the bleakest year of my life -- and I had more time ahead of me.

From Hole in My Life by Jack Gantos:

KIRKUS REVIEW

“We didn’t so much arrive at our destinations as aim and crash into them like kamikaze yachtsmen.” So Gantos describes himself as a 20-year-old about to be arrested and imprisoned for smuggling two thousand pounds of hashish from St. Croix to New York City. Young Jack seems to share with his fictional characters—Joey Pigza and Jack Henry—a blithe disregard for the consequences of wild behavior. Readers follow him from a seedy motel run by the great-great-granddaughter of Davy Crockett to a Keystone Kops adventure on the sea, from a madcap escape from FBI and Treasury agents to his arrest and trial, represented by his lawyer, Al E. Newman. This true tale of the worst year in the author’s life will be a big surprise for his many fans. Gantos has the storyteller’s gift of a spare prose style and a flair for the vivid simile: Davy has “brown wrinkled skin like a well-used pirate map”; a prisoner he met was “nervous as a dragonfly”; another strutted “like a bowlegged bulldog.” This is a story of mistakes, dues, redemption, and finally success at what he always wanted to do: write books. The explicit descriptions of drug use and prison violence make this a work for older readers. Not the usual “How I Became A Writer” treatise, it is an honest, utterly compelling, and life-affirming chronicle of a personal journey for older teens and adults. Read More 

The year Janet started at Blackstock College, the Office of Residential Life had spent the summer removing from all the dormitories the old wooden bookcases that, once filled with books, fell over unless wedged.

From Tam Lin by Pamela Dean:

KIRKUS REVIEW

 Despite their titles, the novels in the Fairy Tales series (Patricia C. Wrede's Snow White and Rose Red, 1989) are not simple retellings of familiar stories. This latest is not even based on a fairy tale; instead, Dean has taken her inspiration from one of the famous Child ballads, and removed it entirely from its native land and time to a small Minnesota college in the early 1970's. Dean reads the ballad of Tam Lin as a tale of adolescent love, and most of her novel concerns itself with the attempts of Janet Carter and her fellow students at Blackstock College to balance course loads with youthful angst and the bittersweet fruits of clumsy romance. But not very much happens. There is much lively conversation, and Janet and the others attend classes, plays, and films. Apart from legends of a dorm-haunting ghost and a Halloween riding of the Wild Hunt, led by the sinister Professor Medeous, there is nothing of Faerie to be seen. Only at the very end does the original ballad take over, and the faeries show themselves. Dean's characters have an irritating habit of cryptically quoting works of literature in place of direct answers, and the first half of the story is filled with repetitive descriptions of the campus from every angle. But the energetic prose carries the dithering plot along comfortably, and when the Otherworld does intrude, it is as creepy, seductive, and threatening as it is in the ancient tales themselves. Read More 

The trouble started the day Howard came home from school to find the Goon sitting in the kitchen. It was Fifi who called him the Goon. Fifi was a student who lived in thier house and got them tea when their parents were out. When Howard pushed Awful into the kitchen and slammed the door after them both, the first person he saw was Fifi, sitting on the edge of a chair, fidgeting nervously with her striped scarf and her striped leg warmers.

From Archer's Goon by Diana Wynne Jones

INDIEBOUND


"Face the facts! This town is run by seven megalomaniac wizards!"

When Howard Sykes comes home to find a giant thug -- the Goon -- in the kitchen, life turns upside down. Archer, one of seven siblings who control everything in their town from electricity to the police, has sent the Goon to collect the two thousand words Howard's father owes him. Suddenly, the Sykes family is caught in the middle of the wizards' battle for power -- and only Howard can save them! Read More 

By day, the Nicollet Mall winds through Minneapolis like a paved canal. People flow between its banks, eddying at the doors of office towers and department stores. . . .

But late at night there's a change in the Nicollet Mall.

From War for the Oaks by Emma Bull:

POWELLS.COM

Winner of the Locus Award for Best First Novel
War for the Oaks, which first appeared in 1987, is one of the novels that helped define the genre of modern urban fantasy.

Eddi McCandry sings rock and roll. But her boyfriend just dumped her, her band just broke up, and life could hardly be worse. Then, walking home through downtown Minneapolis on a dark night, she finds herself drafted into an invisible war between the faerie folk. Now, much more than her own survival is at riskand Eddi's goals and preferences, musical and personal, are very much beside the point.

By turns tough and lyrical, fabulous and down-to-earth, this novel is as much about this world as about the other one.

"A contemporary fantasy classic."Publishers Weekly

"Emma Bull is really good."Neil Gaiman

"One of the most engaging fantasies I've read in a long time."Minneapolis Star-Tribune

"[This novel] knifes through the fantasy genre like a sharp blade of wind."Charles de Lint Read More 

Strange things can happen at a crossroads.

It might look like nothing but a place where two dusty roads meet, but a crossroads can be something more.

From The Boneshaker by Kate Milford:

KIRKUS REVIEW

In 1913 Arcane, Mo., 13-year-old Natalie Minks loves mechanical things, and her father’s bicycle-repair shop is the perfect place to tinker. Naturally curious, she is intrigued when a medicine show comes to town with promises of healing potions and an array of unusual machines. Folks in town are skeptical of “snake oil salesmen,” but Natalie suspects that the strangers are more sinister than mere con artists. At the same time, she experiences visions that may be connected to the town’s history and these mysterious travelers. These visions heighten her fears that her family and town are in danger from unresolved deals made with the Devil himself. This unusual story, with elements of folklore, tall tales and steampunk, has rich details of small-town America in the early 20th century as well as the impact of budding technology. Natalie is a well-drawn protagonist with sturdy supporting characters around her. The tension built into the solidly constructed plot is complemented by themes that explore the literal and metaphorical role of crossroads and that thin line between good and evil.  Read More 

Meeting

George and Ivan met
seventeen years ago in

Miss Julie’s second grade class
at Pinewood School, one of those

disappeared one-room
schoolhouses – forty kids, eight

grades, and Miss Julie.
Ivan’s family had a

farm, George’s parents
owned Popo’s “So Fresh and So

Clean” car wash. “Only
one for seventy miles,”

Old Popo would boast.
Farmers would bring their trucks, their

Sunday church cars, their
tractors, even, if they were

passing through town, done
with plowing, covered with dust.

The business shouldn’t
have lasted, but somehow it

held on until George
was old enough to learn to

chamois the hoods and
windows, to buff the tires

and polish the rims.
By this time he and Ivan

were the oldest class
at Pinewood, getting ready

to take a bus each
morning to Carruthers High.

One hour and fifteen
minutes each way. “Got to leave

at 6:30 each
morning,” George groans. Ivan just

shrugs. “I’m up before
then, anyway. Cows to milk.”

“Carruthers High School.
Two hundred kids there, Ivan.”

“Don’t need to worry,”
says Ivan. “You’ve got me.” Read More 

Something I've been playing with -- a story in poems. Here's the first one. Others to follow.


Nights

Both George and Ivan
long for adventure, a path

to divine freedom.
They just don’t know where it is.

Tonight they slump on
the hood of George’s old, green

gas-guzzler Lois,
a 57 Chevy

with white sidewalls and
leatherette steering wheel

cover. The sky is
clear and country road black. Mars

is so red it glows
like a mad, baleful eye,

and maybe that’s a
comet, the kind you wish on.

“I’m going places,:
says George. Ivan’s heard it all

before. George says he’s
going places, but he still

works at Popo’s car
wash, still comes home every night

damp, with soap in his
shoes. Ivan points to the tail

of the comet with
his beer can, taps his fingers

on Lois’ warm
hood, says, “Did you use it? Did

you wish?” And George says
“Of course I did. I told you.

I’m going places.”
For one sharp minute Ivan

believes. They stare at
the sky and imagine France,

the coast of Peru,
the length of the Amazon.

Then Ivan laughs, gulps
his beer, drops his head against

Lois’ windshield.
“Sure George.” “Sure Ivan,”

George echoes, and the
boys settle in to see who

Can stay awake till
dawn.
 Read More 

Sharon Bryant has created a whole, wonderful world in Rockydale. If you love stories told in pictures here's great one. And you can view the whole story at once, now that Christmas is over.

Meet everyone in Rockydale and enjoy!

Ron Koertge's wonderful book Lies, Knives and Girls in Red Dresses has been chosen as on of the best books of 2012 by Publishers Weekly.

They're right! These sideways retellings of traditional fairy tales -- in verse -- are funny, snarky and downright scary. The illustrations, by Andrea Dezso are a perfect compliment. The cover with the gigantic wolf and the tiny Red Riding Hood lets you know just what you're in for even before the book is opened.

Full disclaimer: I know Ron and saw this in advance and loved it. But the "real" book is a stunner.

Pair this with Phillip Pullman's new Fairy Tales From the Brothers Grimm and you'll be able to find something to read all winter.  Read More 

This is an amazing article by Elizabeth Harball about an amazing place -- the Institute of American Indian Arts. But more than that, it's a story about finding your own voice no matter what everyone tells you. The link is on the right sidebar.