A New Book Baby Out in the World

by Linda Rodriguez

My newest book was just published. Dark Sister: Poems is my third book of poetry to be published. It's a true book of the heart. This is the book in which I examined my family and my heritage. It's filled with stories from grandparents and other ancestors and explores what it means to be the complex living culmination of all those varied lives, dreams, and experiences.

It's odd being a poet and a mystery novelist. At least, other people seem to think so, though it makes perfectly good sense for me. The worlds of poetry/literary fiction and mystery/thrillers are very separate. I never see that more clearly than when I attend one of the conferences for each type of writing—and I usually attend one for each every year. Oddly enough, although the stakes are higher in crime fiction than in poetry (there's never any real money or sales in poetry or most lit fiction), the competition is fiercer and meaner in po-biz (as it's often called) than anything you'll find in crime fiction. Mystery and thriller writers, taken as a whole, are a very laid-back, genuinely nice group of people, something that simply can't be said for a great number of writers in the other field. (Not that there aren't poets and literary fiction writers who are absolute dolls—there are many whom I love dearly.)

I'm about to head out to Tampa, Florida, for the largest literary conference in the country, AWP (Associated Writers and Writing Programs), with usually over 17,000 attendees. I'm looking forward to seeing so many friends that I only see at this conference each year, but I'm also dreading it because it's grown so huge and sprawling that it's barely accessible for this woman on a cane and also because, as usual, there are all kinds of tempests raging in the lit world that can make navigating the political currents tricky and stressful. Still, I will have my new books with me for my panels, caucuses, and readings, and I have people looking forward to the chance to acquire signed copies, so that makes me happier about the trip.

Dark Sister is my tenth published book. It's available for sale here:

https://mammothpublications.net/writers-m-to-z/rodriguez-linda-dark-sister/

If you had told me years ago that I would ever manage to publish ten books, I would have been ecstatic but unbelieving. And there is still that frisson of excitement and delight when each new book comes out, and I hold it in my hands for the first time. I doubt that will ever go away, even in the unlikely event that I should be fortunate enough to one day have thirty or forty published as some authors do. So I'm celebrating a new book baby, and I hope you'll take a look at it—to appreciate the lovely cover, if nothing else. I have been spectacularly fortunate in the covers of all my books.

Here is a sample of the poetry in the book.

WHAT CROW SAYS

This is how gods are made.

The land is wild and free,

soil just beginning to cover the warm rock.

One day, the stone lights up

with the dreams of animals.

Out of the shining,

something other awakens.

These things happen so easily.

Nature is crowded—

everything intent on being warm.

Who knew what damage dreams could wreak?

This furless, clawless thing created

from whatever’s wasted or not wanted in us,

we watched it arise

walking on two feet like Bear

but so weak and slow.

Bear can outrun a horse,

kill a deer with one blow.

It should have died but didn’t.

Some tenacity kept it alive

and breeding and changing

the very world around it

We all spoke the same language

until that changed, too.

Now we’re left with consequences.

Now we are the other,

everything other to this being.

We are the constant target in the crosshairs.

Now we live with the burden of being seen,

living into our observed death.

Great plans never work out.

Chaos is forever seeping in.

All it takes is a crack in creation

like this to ruin everything.

Here is a wound no spell can heal.

We’ve tried them all.

Not even Spider can weave us whole again.

Spoilage creeps over the whole land.

Cherish your wildness.

It’s all we have left.

Live close to the edge.

Published in Dark Sister (Mammoth Publications, 2018)

I will be on the road to Florida when this posts, so my response to comments will be later on Monday, but I look forward to connecting then.

Linda Rodriguez's Dark Sister: Poems has just been released. Plotting the Character-Driven Novel, based on her popular workshop, and The World Is One Place: Native American Poets Visit the Middle East, an anthology she co-edited, were published to high praise in 2017. Every Family Doubt, her fourth mystery novel featuring Cherokee campus police chief, Skeet Bannion, will appear in August, 2018, and Revising the Character-Driven Novel will be published in November, 2018. Her three earlier Skeet novels—Every Hidden Fear, Every Broken Trust, and Every Last Secret—and her books of poetry—Skin Hunger and Heart's Migration—have received critical recognition and awards, such as St. Martin's Press/Malice Domestic Best First Novel, International Latino Book Award, Latina Book Club Best Book of 2014, Midwest Voices & Visions, Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award, Thorpe Menn Award, and Ragdale and Macondo fellowships. Her short story, “The Good Neighbor,” published in the anthology, Kansas City Noir, has been optioned for film.

Rodriguez is past chair of the AWP Indigenous Writer’s Caucus, past president of Border Crimes chapter of Sisters in Crime, founding board member of Latino Writers Collective and The Writers Place, and a member of International Thriller Writers, Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers, and Kansas City Cherokee Community. Visit her at http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com