My Earliest Memory - MFRW 52 Week Blog Challenge

I decided to enter this Blog Challenge http://mfrw52week.blogspot.com because it is writing-related and will require me to create a new blog every week, each with a pre-determined subject. Recently, I've found I need this extra push to get more blogs written.

Kenmore Inn (located near Kenmore) ©Mary Montague Sikes

This week's subject is my earliest memory. It's a little hard to know for certain what my earliest memory is. After all, sometimes photographs in an old album will stir and revive memories (or what we believe are memories). Is it possible that sometimes the "memories" that come to us are merely our imaginations building a story? After all, writers are impossibly creative, aren't they?

Among my first memories are those from the grounds of Kenmore, the historic home of Fielding Lewis, brother-in-law to George Washington, that is located in Fredericksburg, Virginia. My mother was friends with the founders of the Kenmore Association and she loved being a volunteer at the old restored mansion. I was about four years old and Mother always took me with her. It was nice to visit the kitchen that was separate from the house. Wearing a stylish black hat and dark suit, Mother used the silver service to pour tea for visitors to go with the traditional gingerbread made there from a colonial recipe. Perhaps I was jealous of the attention she gave others, but to this day I dislike gingerbread.

Somewhere, I have a photograph of Mother serving tea, but I can't find it now. I, also, have photos taken by a professional photographer of Mother and me in colonial costumes, standing on the steps of Kenmore. He took of picture of me alone on the Kenmore grounds and made a large print of it for display in his downtown business window. I don't know what eventually happened to it. I suppose all those pictures helped the Kenmore memory live on for me.

Several months ago, we visited Fredericksburg for a college class reunion. I didn't get to Kenmore, but I did take photos of the nearby Kenmore Inn, a bed and breakfast and restaurant, that also holds many memories for me.

What about you? When were your first memories?

My Favorite Writing - Jungle Jeopardy

Marketing for Romance Writers has a 52-week blog writing challenge, and I've decided to join. The first week is "What is your favorite piece of writing and why?"

Jungle Jeopardy, my Indiana Jones kind of novel, has to be the most exciting, fun piece of writing I've ever done. It starts on the island of Antigua where my heroine lives, then heads to Costa Rica and goes up to Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala.

Our first trip to Antigua a few years ago was the real inspiration for this book. It all began with a visit to the director of the history museum on the island. He shared so much with me that I was immediately hooked on writing a book that would include some of the things I learned.  

Secrets by the Sea was my first book with Antigua as the setting, but it didn't tell the whole story so I wrote Jungle Jeopardy. Billy, the jaguar, became a character in that book. If you love animals, casting an animal in an important role in the story will intrigue you.

Costa Rica is the only one of the four Central American countries we have visited, but I had developed strong interest in the Mayan Ruins of Mexico. I pulled that knowledge into my new story that I set in the jungle. The fictitious ruins in my book rely a lot on what I learned while visiting the Mayan sites at Palenque, Chichen Itza, and Cozumel. I had already created a series of large Mayan Ruins paintings, so writing a story that included ruins was a perfect follow-up.

In my imagination, I see Jungle Jeopardy as a magical movie. It is a true adventure story and romance with an actor who is a young version of Harrison Ford. Who might that be?

Happy New Year and Thinking Big Art

Happy New Year, All! On New Year's Eve, I was fascinated reading the television crawlers featuring tweets from viewers. Many of them commented on watching the new year come in with the "love of my life".

I thought, "Isn't that wonderful? Isn't that the reason authors write a romance novel? How nice to be with the "love of my life" on the first day of the new year.

Happy wishes, happy days for the year 2018. Hoping you have good memories from 2017 and that the new year will meet your expectations and fulfill your hopes and dreams.

***

"Amy Sleeping" oil on canvas ©Mary Montague Sikes

   Recently, I received a notice for an art show, "Think Big" that will be a featured event at Art Speaks on the Bay in Mathews in the spring. Thinking big excites me. While I was earning my MFA in painting and printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University, everything I painted (except for my pastel working drawings) was big. I loved the feel of the oversized stretched canvasses beneath my paint brush. I enjoyed seeing the way the pieces filled the walls of my large university studio while I painted them. It was wonderful to have a master's thesis show of large work that gleamed on the walls of Anderson Gallery at VCU.

In most exhibitions now, the work is limited in size--usually no larger that 40 inches on the longest size. Those pieces are nice, especially the watercolors, but they lack the excitement of the big pieces that thunder from the walls. Although I enjoy experimenting with texture and color on the smaller canvasses and the wooden supports, I still long to work on the larger pieces again. However, storage becomes an issue as well as the transportation of the work to galleries and shows. Also, most galleries simply don't have the space for sizeable art work.

My VCU thesis show featured work painted with both oil and acrylics. I have many of those pieces stored in my home now. One oil painting, "Rocky Mountain High", 60" x 96", is too big to carry with me in a van as a stretched canvas. Another painting that is six-feet square has never been shown in a public gallery.

When I was working with figures, I did many paintings of our children on large canvasses. I'm glad I did because they provide special family memories for me.

I love big art. Thank you, Bay School, for an opportunity to "Think Big" once more.

Book Signings - Past and Present

Book Signing at Barnes & Noble New Town Williamsburg, VA

When my first novel, Hearts Across Forever, came out in 2001, I was thrilled and excited to set up book signings. My first major signing was scheduled at a Barnes & Noble in Richmond for the night of September 11, 2001.

The whole world changed on that date, so you know what happened with my signing. Although the excitement diminished for me, I continued the scheduled book store events. When my Hotels to Remember coffee table book was released the next year, I had signings for both it and my novel in Barnes & Nobles in cities like Savannah, Georgia, Jacksonville and Brandon, Florida, etc. I even had one in Oahu, Hawaii. I also set up signings in Waldenbooks, Borders, as well as little independent book stores in various cities including Sedona, Arizona. I was getting my name out, as some people mentioned.

I never fully appreciated the importance of those signing opportunities until recently when people made comments about "hitting the big time" with the B & N signing. I know they were merely teasing, but I started to think that sometimes I take too much for granted. I, also, miss the special little bookstores like Twice Told Tales in Gloucester, Virginia that has gone out of business in recent years. I wonder if the little bookstore in Las Vegas, Nevada, where some of the Oak Tree authors, including me, had a book signing event a few years ago, is still around.

With nine novels and many other non-fiction books a part of my experience, I am looking forward to promoting An Artful Animal Alphabet in bookstores. What have been your experiences?

Why Did Blacklist Let Tom Keen Die?

"Life and Death" acrylic ©Mary Montague Sikes

Because there is so much violence in the popular television show, "Blacklist," I wouldn't watch the program for a long time. Then, when I did take a look, I was hooked by the drama and the love story between Tom Keen and Liz. Also, the odd relationship between Liz and Raymond Reddington is compelling.

Everything on "Blacklist" seems to be life or death. That's one thing that keeps viewers returning week after week. But viewers also fall in love with characters and with relationships. Killing off Tom Keen is as wrong as the demise of Joe Dubois in the final episode of "The Medium."

Although Reddington told Liz that Tom is dead, the writers still have the possibility of bringing him back to life. In the season finale, we watched them put Tom into one of those morgue drawers. That could be a ploy to keep the killers off his trail in the future. Perhaps he is not dead after all; perhaps he left the hospital and is in hiding, awaiting an opportunity to return to his family. Perhaps he will try to contact Liz at some point. Perhaps the writers will come to realize that killing Tom Keen is a very bad move.