work, work, work

Since last entry I've viewed quite a number of sunrises over the Ross Barnett Reservoir outside Jackson, Miss. Finished odds and ends for moving into the new house in Madison, travelled to West Virginia once and Alabama three times, and spent many hours unpacking boxes. My weight machine remains in pieces and I've found myself getting out of shape by avoiding exercise--with the weight machine as the excuse, of course. Made it to a couple of Alabama football games too, including the exhilarating, last-minute Arkansas win and the disappointing, last-play Georgia loss.

The garage remains cluttered, but at least my library is in shape. What a treat to rediscover so many prized books as I unpacked and looked for the right shelf for each book. In the middle of one box, I had to stop and reread Richard Hugo's What Thou Lovest Well, Remains American. Wow, such as perfect book. His voice has always echoed in my ear, since I first read his work in 1973 or 74, I think. If America has ever had a finer poet, I can't imagine who it might be.

My second-floor desk faces southeast and the sun rises to my left over an expanse of water. The golden or orange light, depending on the clouds that morning, burns across five miles of open water as I finish my first cup of coffee most mornings. It's rained only once since I moved. I'm getting spoiled by this view.

On Friday last, I began the rewrites of story nine in the collection, the final story. The working title is "The Consequence of Summer Heat", though the story stretches over a year and the heat is not really oppressive in the story, nor does it the "heat" of the one female character add much meaning to the title. So I'm working on a better title, but without a good alternative at this point. I'm considering "The Consequence of Desire".

Henry suggested that the voice was a bit uncertain in parts, as I was a bit sloppy and moved from third person limited to third person omniscient in one section. This story is both my longest and most recent. It was finished specifically to bring up the word count of this ms. I'd been working on the story off and on for a couple of years, but had nothing more than an opening scene that I kept once I started on the story in earnest. Because it ran long, it gave us the ability to treat two stories more harshly than others--they were cut. I was never comfortable that these two stories, both from a 12-year-old boy, had the same tone and tenor as the remainder of the ms, so this made the book much tighter I believe. One of the stories we cut had won an award at a literary festival at the University of Montevallo, though it's never gotten anywhere with lit magazine editors and will likely remain unpublished in a drawer somewhere.

We finished the cover and it's been approved by the publisher. Jefferson Press was kind enough to let me work with graphic designer Bill Porch, whose work includes assignments for such names as Jaguar and Louisville Slugger. AS I mentioned, Bill worked on more than a dozen concepts, finally settling on three we sent to the publisher for review and for them to run the top designs past the gurus at IPG. They all picked the cover I was favoring, which was nice.

I see I've used my time up and it's past 10, so I'll sign off now.....thanks for letting me run on.....let me hear from you. --Philip