Bemis is beaming
Table Rock faculty member John Claude Bemis is in the news this week. His newest books for young readers were announced in Publisher’s Weekly. Rodeo Hawkins & the Daughters of Mayhem, the first in a graphic novel series, will be released summer 2023 by Holiday House. The second book, Rodeo Hawkins & the Sons of Disaster, is scheduled for spring 2024.
After every other Sidney Poblocki in the multiverse is murdered, the last Sidney is rescued by a misfit crew of interdimensional troublemakers known as the Daughters of Mayhem, who lead him into a series of misadventures.
The books will be illustrated by London-based cartoonist Nicole Miles.
John is the curator of “The Kids Table at Table Rock” and has a great group of participants coming to the mountain August 30 to September 3, 2021.
Another Page from the Sketchbook
By Table Rocker, Vicki Brumback
Avoiding plastic on the mountain
We’ll send this information out again before the workshop, but we wanted to give you a heads up that we will not be bringing bottled water for participants at Table Rock. We strongly encourage you to bring your own reusable bottle and cup for water, coffee, and adult beverages. You should plan to hydrate with the fine, fresh spring water at Wildacres from the tap.
For some years now, we’ve tried to avoid using plastic on the mountain, inspired by the work of one of our participants this year, visual artist Bryant Holsenbeck. Bryant wrote a book about her effort to completely avoid single-use plastic in her life for a year. The book, The Last Straw, was based on a blog by the same name that she wrote during the first year of her plastic abstinence. “I make art inspired by the natural world using the cast-offs of our society that I find everywhere I look,” Bryant says. Bryant works with school children, college students, and others to bring awareness of the refuse we create without thinking. To learn more, see her website.
One more note about the Table Rock workshop: if you have a current book to sell, please bring copies. We always sell books the last morning of the workshop and authors have a table to sign their books. Because we focus so much on craft, we only engage the commercial side of writing at the very end. As it happens, Bryant’s book, The Last Straw, was published by the same nonprofit with whom we partner for our scholarship fund, The Resource Center for Women in Ministry in the South.
RESPONSES TO THE MAY PROMPT
We received only two submissions for the writing prompt from May, and we are pleased to share them here. The prompt was: Your character has to jump. Set the scene.
She got off from work quite late. One am, sometimes two. She lived a mile away from the restaurant along a well-lit main thoroughfare.
As soon as she popped onto the road, a man pulled up in a sports car -- not a rental which meant he was local. "Hop in, I'll give you a ride," he said. "Nah, it's not far,” she lied—it would take her twenty minutes to walk on the road—and she was tired. He laughed, "Hop in, wikiwiki.” He looked like everyone not a tourist in Hawaii. Nondescript. Boring. She got in.
She lived in the last condo development on the road—before endless sugarcane fields and a nearly hour drive to the airport on the other side of the island.
She pointed out where to be dropped off and he slowed as if to stop. Then he floored the car and whipped onto the empty highway. At first she thought he was playing a stupid trick but the man began to look strange. He crouched over the steering wheel and looked out the window as if he were looking for something. “You stole it!” he shouted. His driving became erratic. “You stole my knife!”
She spoke softly to the man, casually as if nothing were wrong as she quietly opened the car door. She could see a light had come on notifying the driver of an open door but he was too busy searching for his missing knife to notice. The man swung the car into the nearest turnout on the right, the ocean-side of the road. She knew the first turnout was about twelve miles from town. It was a small open gravelly spot surrounded by volcanic rock, scrubby banyan trees and a long abandoned land development. He slowed the car and swung the car left. She opened the door and slid out. Her hip hit the ground and she rolled onto her feet in one motion and then ran into the foliage. The car turned in a circle and she ducked when the headlights moved past her. She was already a hundred feet from the car and buried in growth.
Then she started the long walk back. Now she would walk in the dark, in the safety of the dense shrubbery and rocks along the road.
She heard the car, the only one on the road, zoom away from the turnout. Some minutes later she heard it drive back, then zoom away at high speed – ten minutes or so after that she heard the car driving back to the turnout. She heard the car and the man trying to find her for hours. It was daylight when she made it back to the condo.
The first person she saw was her roommate who was getting ready for work. It had taken her five hours to walk back. Her roommate pointed to her dirty legs and blood-scraped feet with a “clean that before you go to sleep”.
—d Minish, Salt Lake City, UT
Nothing Left to Do
“One, two, three!” Thump, thump, thump! Squealing breaks my trance. Splash! Frigid water shocks my skin as if I’m being burned. I open my eyes to see my two daughters bob up from beneath the water. I sit on the weathered dock contemplating swimming in the icy lake.
“Mom, come in!” they shout. With a sigh, I reply, “Give me a minute. I have to slowly get used to the water.” I watch them play without a care in the world. I envy their ease in their skin.
I close my eyes and see myself, eight years old, floating on top of the lake, held by the water, and drifting away on the muffled sound beneath me. “Mom, please come in with us!” they beg. When I open my eyes to the warm sun, I am still that little girl. I rise from my daydream, inhale the earthy scent of the lake. My body tenses. I exhale sharply. Looking at my girls with a wide grin on my face, I know there is nothing left to do now but run and jump!
—Ruth Wakefield, Marion, NC
June Prompt
Either prose or poetry, 200 words maximum. This prompt comes from the novelist and creative writing teacher John Gardner. The descriptive passage assigned requires the use of the senses and, if done well, unforced metaphor. Describe a barn as seen by a man whose son has just been killed in a war. DO NOT mention the man, the son, war, or death. Due by June 25th. Send to: tablerockwriters@gmail.com