The Night Virginia Stole The Baby Jesus

     If you saw  the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, aired July 29, you know Eureka Springs, Arkansas, is a cantankerous town that ignores what the rest of the world thinks, goes its own way, and considers most laws merely suggestive guidelines. The dispute reported on the Daily Show was about a non-discrimination ordinance we passed defying a state law that sanctioned, even encouraged, the persecution of gays. No way was that going to happen here. We welcome everyone, as long as you behave, don’t intend harm, and don’t try to tell us how to live…which brings me to the subject of this blog.

It is that time of year when a lot of us celebrate the holiday season known as Christmas with a nativity scene in Basin Park. Predictably, anti-religious groups protest, claiming we're promoting religion. We could set aside space for groups to celebrate traditional events, holidays that happen around the same time…like the Jewish Hanukkah. We could do that, but these zealots don’t want compromise…they want no evidence of Christmas anywhere. They even object to Holiday Lights and money being spent for any decoration, even  decidedly unreligious Christmas trees.

Eureka Springs survives on tourism. Christmas decorations and events translate into out-of-town visitors and retail sales, so we ignore these haters, as we do anyone who tries to tell us what to think, but understand our display is unique. It means a lot more to us than the celebration of a birth. It is the commemoration of an event dear to all our hearts; an event that is part of our history, a tale repeated endlessly, making us laugh and remember. We're celebrating “The Night Virginia Stole The Baby Jesus.” 

Before you hear the story, you have to know that Virginia Voiers is a very gracious and elegant lady, proper in all ways, and highly regarded by the community. Just about every committee in town seeks her gentle presence, and she's served on a lot of them, always arriving dressed to perfection. We are in awe of Virginia.

For many years, during the Christmas Season, it was the custom of a local sorority to create a nativity display in the band shell at Basin Park, in the center of town. It was also the custom of the juvenile element in town to steal the Baby Jesus and have it turn up somewhere else. One night, some thirty years ago, as her husband, Bill, remembers, Virginia, her grown daughter, and her son were having dinner downtown, during the holidays. They passed the display while walking home, and Virginia’s daughter noticed the baby was still in the manger. 

Her daughter said, “C’mon, Mom, let’s steal the baby.” Well, Virginia enjoys a good joke, so she did. Unfortunately, the local carriage driver, passing by, witnessed the deed and called the police, who came and arrested Virginia, and took her to the station where the local sorority head, apparently not amused, preferred charges. 

What? Virginia? The town was agog. Sides were chosen. Tempers flared. For weeks, it was the main subject over evening libations at The High Hat Lounge.

Stan Adams, the local Methodist minister, stayed by her side the whole time in court as she was convicted of thievery, malicious mischief, and damage to private property. The sorority (which, you understand, must remain nameless) claimed the baby was damaged. Virginia was given probation and told to apologize. She wrote a check.  Didn’t apologize. Not our Virginia!

But that isn’t the end of the story! About a year later, as Bill tells it, Judge McBeth remembered the missing apology and cited her for contempt of court. Police came to the door, took our Virginia away in handcuffs. If there had been cell phones, it would have gone viral, and she spent about half a day in jail, the Methodist minister by her side, until her lawyer came.

So, if, some Christmas, you are visiting and, hanging out by the nativity in Basin Park, and you  hear someone say, “You remember the time Virginia stole the Baby Jesus?” you will now become one of us, because you know the story.  Remember to smile.

Loyalty Pledge? What's that all about?

What’s all this about a Loyalty Pledge the Republican Chairman has come up with? Support the “Party” choice no matter who wins the Primary Election? Campaign not going to plan? Not going to happen.

It is time to accept that a massive social change is on the way and the political bosses are losing control. The old ways are dead. In a last ditch effort to change the primary process because some maverick candidates have somehow seized the lead, the old guard party bosses are trying to gain back some control by making delegates promise to support the “party” choice.

So the “interloper,” Donald Trump signed. He pledged to support the Republican Party goals and ideals, (didn’t mention candidate) and gained the promise of all the rest of the contenders to support him if he won. A clever move.

The worst nightmare of a career politician has happened. The nation’s voters are out for blood. The constituency has become aroused. The revolution has begun. Say what?

We, the people, are fed up with politicians who talk a good game, promise change, and after  elected turn into self-serving hacks wanting only to share the celebrity, the perks and the wealth, and to hell with what the people want. 

My state, Arkansas, saw the truth in action when a bought and paid for legislature ignored the U.S. Constitution and voted to force public water systems to add fluoride laced with lead and arsenic to our water without our permission. They voted to forbid us to declare our town free of discrimination, punishment yet to be determined. 

 What happened? The constituency  became aroused. The revolution began. Say what?

When I was young, just getting into politics, I met an old old, hard line Chicago Democrat at a meeting. He was feeling generous to this enthusiastic but dumb neophyte and decided to give me advice.

“Little lady,” he said,  (it was 1954) “One thing ya gotta remember. Never arouse the constituency. Once that happens, and they get mad, it’s all over. There’s no tellin’ what they’ll do.” He went on to relate a harrowing story. Seems the son of a Ward Heeler (they’re now called block organizers) had a son who was an over sized bully in school. The kids were afraid  of him because his powerful politician father, who doted on him, protected him. Well, the parents finally had had enough and they hired a bigger bully from the South Side of Chicago to do justice. The kid ended up with various broken bones and when his politician father visited him, in the hospital, he said, “Son, you learned a good lesson today. Never arouse the constituency.”

Well, we’re aroused. No more seemingly sincere candidates who don’t care about us, or what we want; they just want to get rich and get all them perks. Election to even state office is a guaranteed million by the end of the term. On a national level, it gets worse. Never mind the Constitution. What do voters know? They’re trained to vote the party, no matter who’s running.

All that stuff political organizers learned in college on how to get elected to office has been trashed. Confusion reigns. The rules no longer apply with mavericks like Donald Trump, or Ben Carson, or Carly Fiorina running. We’re done. We’ve had it. It’s our turn.

The problem with change is that you have to elect a strong, determined warrior to get it done…somebody with fire in the belly, who knows how to swim with the sharks and drain the swamp to get rid of the alligators. We have the warrior, as long as he has a wise partner who can help clean up the mess. Let’s get out there and vote.

You Have To Believe To Write About The Supernatural

A sense of place is all important in writing fiction. Readers can sense the credibility in your writing if you’ve been there. To be able to write about the supernatural you have to believe ghosts and paranormal events exist. How can a writer describe how it feels to encounter a spirit unless they’ve experienced terror when confronted with a mist that is slowly taking human form? Paul, Samantha, and Andy Barlowe, the principal characters in my new novel, The Haunting of Aaron House, to be published by Rogue Press in September 2015, have never seen a ghost, although Sam declares she can “feel” the previous owners of the antiques she finds. Writing this book, about ghostly possession and hauntings was easy for me because spirits have always been a part of my life, taken for granted.  I grew up believing in ghosts, spells, and the supernatural in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, the setting for the book. Today I live in Eureka Springs, Arkansas where all things metaphysical are accepted as real.

 My paternal grandmother was a faith healer who cast spells. They were called PowWow Women. In the novel, I use a spell given to my mother when she was a young girl to rid her of a persistent boyfriend, although for a different reason in the story.

     In Aaron House, Paul Barlowe, and his company, Barlowe Films, are shooting a documentary history of the region. He’s brought Sam and Andy to help on the film, so they are all staying in a rented farmhouse, by chance furnished with the antiques Sam loves.

They don’t know that for the last 170 years it has been haunted by two ghosts, Amalie and Phineas Peale, waiting for a human couple, because each needs human energy to gain enough power to destroy the other. Since the Civil War only men have lived there, the Aaron Brothers being the last.

The plot follows Paul, Sam and Andy during the making of the film at various historical sites while Sam, who has been told of the ghosts, tries to unravel the mystery of what has kept them from moving on. Soon, Amalie, who by now inhabits Sam's body, causes her to flashback to the 1860s, and gradually revealing the sinister secret that has kept these two ghosts at war. Paul knows there is something wrong, but cannot believe in ghosts, no matter what Sam tries to explain. One day, when he is alone in the house, he encounters the evil personage of Phineas and realizes they need help to get free. Even worse, Phineas later possesses him during an intimate moment with Sam, which terrifies him.

 The book has a roaring climax, but I won't tell you more, except, to relieve the tension of the ghost scenes and add some humor, I've added a very tender love story between Paul's wealthy playboy partner, Lloyd, also working on the film, and Penny, the terribly repressed and shy assistant working as a script girl. Penny is confused. She's never had a boyfriend, especially a millionaire hunk like Lloyd. He is totally smitten and pursues her. There is also a stray dog who is not exactly what he seems.

 The book will be available on Amazon, as are all my books, in both e-book and paperback, sometime in late September.

We Don't Have Crime in Eureka Springs

We don't have crime in Eureka Springs. When I read about what goes on in Chicago, Boston, and other big cities I wonder what it must be like living with all that fear. We like our police. We know their first names. The police department and the fire department have Facebook pages that tell us what is going on. Oh sure, we have some drug possession, and residents and tourists alike are fond of alcohol. We have two breweries and a vineyard, but things are pretty peaceful. Maybe it is because we are so old. 
      The picture is a shot of our downtown.  The large building far left, the Basin Park Hotel, was built in 1907, a "new" addition. Basin Spring, which started the town, is in the trees next to the building. The entire area was rebuilt after a fire in 1886 destroyed the entire downtown, and all the gingerbread cottages further up the hill.  What you see here was rebuilt with limestone. Living surrounded by all this history lends a sense of security and peace. Our visitors declare they feel the healing energy of the town the minute they enter. You can be safe here, and accepted for who you are, as long as you don't intend harm.  We welcome everybody and by law are discrimination free. Everybody is accepted here. Otherwise, let me remind you that Arkansas is an open carry state, so behave.
     We don't worry about car jacking, murders, or police brutality.  You can walk the streets at midnight in complete safety. We don't worry about burglars.
     Once, in 1922, some crazies from Oklahoma tried to rob our bank. I tell the story in my book, The Hidden History of Eureka Springs.  The word got out--we had a phone or two by then. The entire town responded with outrage, and stormed the bank, guns blazing. The robbers were killed. Hundreds of shots were fired. The coroner remarked later that most of the bullet wounds were post mortem. Everybody wanted to be able to brag they shot a bank robber, dead or alive. We celebrate the event every year during Folk Festival with a re-inaction.
     Even though we don't have much crime, a big favorite of the tourists is the local police report, carried by both weekly newspapers. You'll read more about it in my new book, coming out in October. It's titled, Love in a Small Town, and is a romance set in Eureka Springs. I have bits and pieces of Eureka in all my books, but this one tells what it is like to live here, from the point of view of a teenage girl and her stepfather, newly arrived from Chicago and undergoing cultural shock.
   The report might read:
                  3:09 a.m. - An alarmed citizen discovered an individual sleeping on her porch. 
                                       Official arrested the visitor for public intoxication.
                   4:30 a.m. - Resident reported large bird making noise in a tree outside her 
                                        window. When the officer arrived, the rooster was gone.
                  10:00 a.m. - A domestic dispute at a local motel. Officer arrived to help
                                          settle the issue.
You can buy a copy of The Hidden History of Eureka Springs from the museum by visiting http://www.eurekaspringshistoricalmuseum.org or visit my website for more pictures at:
http://joycezellercom.weebly.com

Where Do You Find Ideas To Write About?

Where do ideas for novels come from? From a lot of sitting, and thinking, and reading. Newspaper articles are fertile ground. The scene in my Accidental Alien, where the medics at a murder scene argue if the victim is dead or not, came from an actual account in a newspaper.
     Conversation yields ideas. One day a friend of mine expressed her negative opinion of another woman with the remark, "Once she gets off the subject of herself, she has nothing to say." That statement gave birth to a character in The Haunting of Aaron House, which you'll get to read this February.
    When I read Lady of Hay, by Barbara Erskine, published in 1986, I knew someday I'd write about reincarnation, past life regression, and time travel. My latest book, Love Out of Time, is that book. The story unfolds on the New Jersey seashore. I love the ocean, and if I can't live there, I can at least be there in my imagination. The main protagonist was going to be a modern day woman who falls in love with the ghost who haunts the beach house she rents to spend time recovering from the trauma of a sudden divorce. My passion is American History. I try to include it in all my books, so I made the ghost a captain of a whaling ship who lived during the Civil War, about 1865. All I needed was some little-known event from the Civil War to cement the whole thing together. Research led me to The Stone Fleet, an idea so far-fetched it is hard to believe it really happened.
     Back in 1865 the whaling industry in New Bedford, Massachusetts was thriving, but the end was in sight. Oil had been discovered in the ground at Titusville, PA, the whales were becoming scarce due to uncontrolled slaughtering. The tall-masted sailing ships were being replaced by steam engines, which were faster, and a lot of old ships, not worth repairing, sat unused and rotting in the harbor.
     The Southern Confederate Army was gaining strength, defeating the Northern Union Army at every turn. The Southern Navy threatened Yankee shipping by sailing up the Chesapeake Bay to strike at Northern ports.
     The War Department in Washington decided to purchase some of the old sailing ships at New Bedford and fill them with rocks so they could sail to the mouth of the Chesapeake and be sunk, thus blocking enemy ships access to Northern ports. The plan was called The Stone Fleet. Thirty of these old ships were purchased and local farmers were paid to bring rocks to fill them. Well, as usual, something went wrong, or, as we would say today, it became one huge clusterfuck. The old wooden ships were so filled with worm rot that they started to fall apart and sink on the way south. Some actually reached the mouth of the bay, but they disintegrated when they sank, and the army discovered that the bay was so deep at the mouth that the Southern navy sailed right over them. Unbelievably, they tried this a second time and the same thing happened. It makes one wonder if some of these people serving in the government today might be reincarnations of past officials.

Book of the Month
If you liked Gabaldon's Highlander, or Dragonfly in Amber, you will enjoy reading Lady of Hay, by Barbara Erskine. An experiment in hypnosis and past life regression goes awry and  journalist Jo Clifford finds herself caught up in royal politics in eleventh century England during the reign of King John, of Magna Carta fame, and his child bride Matilda. Jo's past life identity becomes hopelessly entangled in the unspeakable treachery of King John's court, and affects her in her present day life as she realizes those she knows in her real life could be reincarnations of those inhabitants of her past. This is a long book (over 500 pages) and it sometimes moves slowly, but it is fascinating history. 
The book has gone through numerous printings since it first appeared in 1976 and has sold more than a million copies worldwide.

     

Love In A Small Town

This is a picture of Eureka Springs' one and only main street as it appears today. It is lined with Victorian Gingerbread cottages built around 1880, after the last devastating fire destroyed most of the town. You can see more pictures on my website if you click on the "Hidden History of Eureka Springs" page. http://joycezellercom. weebly.com
     In October, 2015, Rogue Press will release my new book about Eureka Springs titled, "Love in a Small Town." It is about David Martin, newly widowed and  stepfather to, Sarah Graham, fifteen, whom he has only known for the two years of his brief marriage. He's a wealthy financial analyst and he doesn't know anything about parenting. He left that up to his wife, Sarah's mother. They live in Chicago and David, panicked at the responsibility of new fatherhood, decides that Chicago is too full of temptations for a naive young girl and moves, with Sarah, to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, population 2072, and known since 1879 as a haven for the dissident and disenfranchised. It is pure culture shock for Sarah, and she can't fit in. The move was difficult for Sarah, who was used to a privileged life in private school. She's not accepted by the high school kids. She falls in with the wrong bunch, headed for trouble, and is saved by nerdy Logan, closet genius and class nerd, who introduces her to his three friends, also nerdy.
     Meanwhile, David meets Lindsay, owner of a small fragrance shop that caters to the thousands of tourists the tiny town hosts every summer. He's attracted to her but, every time the two meet, something goes wrong and they end up in an argument. But hey, there's a lot of love in a small town, and their affection for Sarah brings them together.
     Eureka Springs has a reputation for being the 'quirkiest' town in Arkansas. Residents take pride in not having any traffic lights and only a few stop signs. Of course, none of the streets intersect because most are paved-over wagon trails on the hillside, made when the town was new, in 1879.
     Indeed, the residents are so colorful that when a Hollywood production company decided to shoot a movie here about a crazy preacher, they decided they didn't need to bring in extras. They hired the whole town instead. the film, "Pass The Ammo," only received one viewing locally before going to video. A local reviewer remarked, "It's the only film I've ever seen where the rolling credits at the end received a standing ovation." In the coming months I'll tell you more about the book, and tell some stories about the characters.
     I've "borrowed" some locals for characters in "Love Out of Time," which takes place in a small tourist town on the New Jersey Shore. If you read that you'll get an idea of small town life.

Authors Helping Authors

Once you've published you become aware that you've joined a new community....that of authors helping authors. You are expected to do your own marketing with a little help from your publisher, and, in my case, a lot of help from my agent, Jeannie Loiacono, but mostly you are on your own. 
I belong to a group very generous writers who will help you me if I reciprocate. This feature is my way of paying it forward. 


Susan York faces the biggest decision of her life. "A baby or college?"
Unmarried and confused, Susan is not looking for a guy. She only wants to get through her classes without getting sick.
Colt Lefevour needs help with his English Lit homework until he discovers Susan is pregnant. Hurt from his ex-girlfriend aborting his baby, he wants to be the father of Susan’s baby, but will he be able to convince her to let him help?

Tina Gayle's books are available on Amazon.com You can find her at:
Home - www.tinagayle.net   Blog - www.tinagayle.blogspot.com

Fiction: How To Start A Novel

If you write, every conversation, every observed happening, every glimpse of an interesting person, or every snippet of dialogue herd on TV, is fodder for a novel.

When I began my last novel, Love Lost in Time, the location came first because I had childhood memories of vacations at the seashore, and when I’m writing, I’m there, in that place. Okay. Who is there?

Thirty-something woman whose life has been shattered and she must find her place in a new life. She rents a beach house in a small seaside, tourist town to think. I know something about this. I’m on my fourth major change. Sara decides she is not going to repeat as perfect wife and mother, simply occupying space. A quote from the book:

“The mildly judgmental way Clover looked at her, suggested she was being compared to the Toy Group at a dog show—amusing but without meaningful purpose.”

Okay. I’ve got my theme. Now for the fun part. She’s going to fall in love with the ghost renting the house, who died in the 1860s. Some of you remember, “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir?” One of my favorite movies.

My books have to be about something new to me, because I thrive on research. In this instance, I settled on the 19^th Century whaling industry. My ghost was a whaling ship captain. By now my imagination was at a full gallop.  I’m an American History junkie, especially the Civil War. Here’s my chance to learn about whaling. I read Moby Dick. Ismael suggested the character of the husband who deserted Sara to find adventure. I read Whalers, the Time-Life Book about early whaling and learned to love whales. I discovered a little-known event in the Civil War called, “The Stone Fleet,” and used it as a mystery Sara has to solve when she is sent to 1860 New Kensington. Time travel research got me into wormholes and vortexes and I sent Sara to a meeting of the local Metaphysical Society to learn about parallel universes. I added a local insurance fraud that Sara discovers that puts her life in danger, and a mystery of the origin of some of the local residents, who look a lot like people she met in 1860.

By now I’m totally engaged and having the time of my life writing this book. I haven’t forgotten the romance, which like everything else, has a surprising twist, and, of course, since it is the New Jersey shore, we have to have a hurricane.

Go to http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00UPMAS9G and read the first ten pages of the book and the synopsis. Of course, I hope you buy it and let me know what you think by writing a review on Amazon. Or you can e-mail me at author@joycezeller.com, or even visit my website to see what other romances I’ve written. http://joycezellercom.weebly.com