Oldish book, brand new review--

I love getting a review for a book that came out years before--it's encouraging to think that a book may be temporarily out of print yet still find its intended readers.  Here are a few clips from a new review.  Thank you, Black Cat Lit!

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Set in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina, The Curse of the Raven Mocker is a complex story inspired by the legends of the Cherokee and the culture of the region’s European settlers. Richly detailed and imagined, it’s a uniquely American fantasy...

I enjoyed this book because of its uniqueness in creating a fantasy world inspired by American myths. It was refreshing to read a fantasy that isn’t based on European myth... This may be the classic “child on a quest” storyline, but the beautiful descriptions of the landscape, imagery, and the language make this one different...

The Curse of the Raven Mocker is a must read due to its roots in Appalachian and Cherokee myth and the great characters Youmans has created. It’s clear that love went into the writing of this novel. It deserves to be a classic.

Marly writes a hymn & more bookishness

Thanks to inverarity for a thoughtful consideration of The Curse of the Raven Mocker and Ingledove at http://community.livejournal.com/bookish. Use the calendar or scroll down; the date of the piece is July 10, 2010.

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Since I'm off being writer-in-residence for the M.A./M.F.A. in children's literature at Hollins University, I missed something this morning--hearing the bicentennial hymn that Fr. Samuel Abbott commissioned from me for the Bicentennial of Christ Church Cooperstown. The new rector, Fr. Mark Michael, and Bishop Love were there, and I don't know who else... The marking of the Bicentennial has been going on for some time and is a big event in the life of the village.

Christ Church Cooperstown is a church with a literary pedigree. Novelist James Fenimore Cooper, on his return from Europe, decided it was nothing but a little country church and that he could make it into a spanking new Gothic bandbox. And that's just what he did. Cooper is its best-known writer, but there is his daughter Susan Fenimore Cooper with her beautiful Rural Hours, and there is Paul Fenimore Cooper with Tal. Those three are buried in the churchyard. The victim of Poe's critical pen, the popular poet W. W. Lord, was rector there and is buried overlooking Otsego Lake. And there are more, including the late Fae Malania.

So I was honored to make this little gift to the village where I have lived for more than a decade. The challenge was to write lyrics that would link physical and metaphysical and bind words to a particular church (also physical and metaphysical.) The concrete things that I used were the splendid Tiffany angels in the sanctuary, the setting of church and Cooperstown by Otsego Lake (called Glimmerglass by Cooper), and the excessive weather of the place.

The only other time I was asked to write a poem for an occasion was for a graduation, and I could not do it! My head filled with lint whenever I tried to consider it. It was a relief that this piece flowed easily from the fount and emerged in proper hymn meter. Although many academics hate to admit it, hymn lyrics have been one of the glories of writing in the United States, and I think it interesting to make my little foray into that arena.

The lyrics were sung to the tune of St. Anne, which church-goers of many stripes will know as "O God Our Help in Ages Past." Here's the commissioned hymn:

Glimmerglass: A Bicentennial Hymn

In ice, remember rampant green
And dawns that seared the night;
Within the winter of the year
Recall midsummer's light.

All things are passing like a mist
That rises from the lake
And floats, dissolving into sun
As heat and hue awake.

In Eden, they knew face to face
While we through smoky glass
Must peer--and as in sun's eclipse
May see a brightness pass.

In time beyond recall, a pane
Of glimmering was laid
'Twixt us and Him who knew our names
Before the worlds were made.

The angels standing in a church
Who watch with eyes that glow
According to the changing light
Have seen us come and go,

And we would be quick-eyed as they,
All night and mourning done,
Annealed in glory like a fire,
And brightening with the Son.

Photo credit: I'm not sure who took this one; the photographer is listed as "Cooperstown New York." If anybody knows, tell me!

Baroush Baroush

I just opened up the Penguin Young Readers Group catalogue for fall, and I'm pleased to find a double page spread in the Firebird section for The Curse of the Raven Mocker and Ingledove, just after one for Diana Wynne Jones' The Tough Guide to Fantasyland. The books look lovely and have fine quotes and are clearly distinguished as "American" in mode, something that I hoped to see. If you'd like to see for yourself, hop over to the e-catalogue and skim along until you reach pages 68-69.

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I've been a bit lax about the blog, because I haven't been lax about my three children, N.'s multiple 9th birthday celebrations, N.'s recycle tiger project, the still-forthcoming will-it-ever-end end of school, the summer schedule, and writing. I'm making the O. V. A. not to spontaneously combust. That's Old Valiant Attempt. Ought to be a Wodehouse acronym, really. Be a good egg and pretend it is, will you?

In other breaking news: N., among other delightful gifts, received additions to the current menagerie. (Thank you, very much, Dr. Laurie. I really needed two more pets that poop.) We now have two Russian (and never, ever rushing) tortoises. The tiny gentleman tortoise, named by N., is Baroush Baroush. After this important decision was made, N. graciously allowed his elder sister to name the much larger lady tortoise. She is now known as Louise Louise. Louise Louise is a real hog on grapes, carrots, and lettuce, and in general manages to keep her mate on the small side by kicking him ever-so-slowly away from the food that she is gently, steadily devouring.

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