Spring Fever
January 1, 1970
March Newsletter from the desk of Karen BrichouxContents:
*News
*Article: Spring Fever
*What I’m Reading
News:
*The cover for FALLING INTO THE WORLD is here (http://www.karenbrichoux.com/work4.htm ). As usual, NAL’s art department has done a wonderful job.
*If you would like to be added to my snail-mail mailing list to receive a postcard informing you of upcoming releases (this amounts to one postcard a year and is the only thing I will send you), send me your mailing address at email@karenbrichoux.com Please put “mailing list” in the subject line. The amount of spam lately is making it difficult to figure out what is legitimate e-mail (this goes for all e-mail). I try to always respond when I receive an e-mail (even if it takes a few days), so if you don’t get a reply, I probably didn’t get your e-mail.
*Article: Spring Fever
Living in tornado alley means that we have gorgeous clouds, tropical rain, and unpredictable weather. My grandpa used to say “If you don’t like the weather, wait three days.” Warm air from the Gulf of Mexico collides with arctic blasts from central Canada to make living in the middle of the lower 48 exciting and changeable. And it was very exciting on Sunday morning when a microburst hit our fair city. A microburst is a lovely phenomenon not unlike a small atomic bomb. It’s a blast of wind that comes down out of the sky, hits the ground, then rushes outward at speeds up to 100m.p.h. over a distance of about 2 miles wide. In some cases, a microburst is more destructive than a tornado.
Fortunately for us, we dodged this bullet. But the rest of the city didn’t. Driving around later in the day, I saw people sitting out in front of houses with 80-foot oak trees lying on their roof; trees that have been here since the town was founded were uprooted, changing the nature of a city that prides itself on its “Tree City, USA” designation; a market farm to the east of here lost buildings, barns, greenhouses, and one shed rolled for half a mile before coming to a stop; historic buildings on the university campus were damaged to the tune of 6 million dollars.
As usual, the city pulls together and neighbors turn out to help cut up fallen trees and pull cars out from under the rubble. In one place, I saw a patch of daffodils that took the unusual tropical warmth of the day as a signal to bloom and peek out from under the branches of a fallen tree. And having the KU basketball team win the Big 12 Championship tournament on the same day helped to raise a lot of spirits; perhaps more than usual, since many electricity-deprived fans ended up in the sports bars.
So why am I babbling about this? Because it’s this kind of humanity during the crazy happenings of life that keeps me interested in real people and causes me to want to write about them. We all have a little of the blooming daffodil inside of us--that spark of hope and beauty. And writing about that hope and beauty is vastly more interesting to me than trying to write a story that will shock readers with its bleak and horrific outlook on life. Maybe this is what the creative writing teachers meant when they said we should write what we know.
Hope you have a wonderful spring break.
Best,
Karen
*What I’m Reading:
THE RAPHAEL AFFAIR by Iain Pears
AS COOL AS I AM by Pete Fromm
SERVING CRAZY WITH CURRY and A BREATH OF FRESH AIR by Amulya Malladi
A VIRTUOUS WOMAN by Kaye Gibbons
THE HUNDRED DAYS by Patrick O’Brian