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Review of CHEROKEE ICE by John T. Biggs

16 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by BoneSpark Blog in C.A. Explains It All

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book review, Cherokee Ice, John T Biggs, Liffey Press, magical realism, Native American lore, new books, oklahoma author, Oklahoma Book Award, Pen-L Publishing, Sacred Alarm Clocks

CherokeeIce_front-200

ISBN: 978-1-942428-34-3 (272 pgs) from PEN-L Publishing

What do a dwarf, a holy man and a ghost horse all have in common? –Danny Riley, a mixed-up NDN on the wrong nation’s rez, who may or may not be a witch.

Riley is at the center of writer John T. Biggs’s latest magical realist novel CHEROKEE ICE, which I am excited to learn is a fiction finalist for the 2016 Oklahoma Book Award.

On its surface, the novel is about the rise and fall of a designer drug in several Southwestern states, but at its core it is a family saga that is as much about what we would do for family as what family does to us.

With this book, Biggs proves again that he understands how to ground the magical in the real, be it a young man’s first, awkward sexual encounters or his fraught mother-son relationship.

Biggs also understands the beauty of a well-written prologue. In the taut, three-page scene that opens the book, he manages to create sympathy for an otherwise unsympathetic character, thereby steeping us literally (in-utero) in the main character’s same conflicted emotions. Emotions that are later mirrored in other characters, both major and minor.

One such example is supposed tough-guy Tommy Bracken, a drug dealer whose own addiction to the emotional vulnerability of a sexually sadistic relationship (with Danny’s grandmother, no less) and acute fear of spiders is often at odds with the extreme macho-ism needed to maintain his territory.

In this sea of emotion and drama, characters, over time, begin to merge into each other. Whether it be morphs between fathers and sons, brothers and husbands, drug lackeys or cops, the unpredictable shape-shifting heightens the vision-like quality of the storyline.

One of my favorite vision-like scenes comes in the last quarter of the book, when Lil Bits, the aforementioned dwarf, tries to kill Danny for the second time, this time with the help of silver bullets and a few hired goons.  Pardon the long passage (readers and publisher), but the space is needed to see how Danny works his special kind of mojo:

Green goo covers the African American dwarf’s eyes, spoiling his aim as he fires a silver bullet into the wasp nest on Danny Riley’s pickup truck.

Danny feels the burn of the wasp toxin for the time it takes his heart to shift into overdrive. The nausea clears. Poison tumbles through his  drug factory enzymes and winds up in his brain, where it’s a lot different than it started out.  Danny Riley suddenly understands that bullets aren’t nearly as dangerous as wasps.

His wasp-sisters’ poison doesn’t turn into visions inside Little Bits’ hired killers. They have their pistols out, squeezing shots off this way and that, filling the air with projectiles than fly off to lodge in buildings and automobiles and maybe an innocent bystander or two.

Clouds of nitrate-flavored smoke don’t hinder Danny or  his wasp-sisters at all. Gunpowder residue tastes as sweet as nectar on his lips. It doesn’t burn his eyes or dull his vision. Everything is crystal clear, broken into a thousand pieces Washed in rainbows, as if Danny is gazing at the world through a cut diamond lens.

Danny Riley knows he is not a wasp, as much as he knows anything, but he is moving too fast to think about it clearly. Faster than thoughts, faster than all the reasons a man can’t move this fast. Faster than Little Bits can take aim through the haze of smoke and vomit and superstition.

The African American dwarf empties his revolver of silver bullets, tries to make one land on Danny, who is moving around him the way a swam of hornets attacks a marauding bear.

Danny snatches the pistol out of Little Bits’ hand. Throws it at one of the Italian killers. Hits him square in the face. Knocks him out as he fires his pistol one last time and shoots his partner in the knee.

Little Bits takes off running down the center of the street, screaming for one of his two silver Jesuses to save him from witches and wasps.

cropped-header_john_bw1The situation only gets more complicated after that, and what a wild ride to get to the conclusion!

That said, I felt that the ending, which was satisfying in its own way, needed to go just one step farther with Danny by letting his newfound courage bring him back into his own identity.

All in all, though, another great book from Biggs, who also has a new short story collection out from Liffey Press, called appropriately, SACRED ALARM CLOCKS. The collection made the best selling Oklahoma Writers list in February.

For more news on his writing, check out johnbiggsoklahomawriter.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Odd Bits from a Creative Life

01 Monday Dec 2014

Posted by BoneSpark Blog in Odd Bits from a Creative Life

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A Tree Born Crooked, Alaska, Cloud Pharmacy, colonized Tlingit women, Common Place, December Book Clubs, Erika Dreifus, Hannah Maynard, John T Biggs, language of the earth, Metzger, noir, Pandamoon, Pen-L Publishing, Popsicle Styx, Practicing Writing, Southern grit lit, Steph Post, Stuart Rojstaczer, surrealist photos, Susan Rich, symbolist painting, Teller poem, The Art of Slow Writing, The Mathematician's Shiva, The Next Best Book Club, Tlingit creation story, Tlingit raven, Walking on Air, Women's Poetry List-Serv, work in progress, Writing for Life

PAINTING

I’ve been working on some symbolist paintings about the Tlingit Raven.  Watch a versions of the Tlingit creation story here.

I’ll be trying out some interesting techniques with my new painting mentor beginning in January.  Very excited to embark in this new direction. Have also found some support for my collage work in a small studio in California that will allow access to more materials. Always nice.

READING

Enjoyed the math-flecked debut The Mathematician’s Shiva by Stuart Rojstaczer over the indexholidays. A tale of family angst in the wake of “the greatest female mathematician in history[‘s]” death and the odd bunch of followers that descend on the family in search of her (possible) solution to the Navier-Stokes problem.  Recommended to me by Erika Dreifus of Practicing Writing and now a pick by BooksAMillion for its December Book Clubs, this is definitely worth a read even by mathphobes.

I also gave a glowing endorsement to John T. Biggs latest Popiscle Styx from PenL.  It’s an impressive sophomore novel that deserves its own category .  I”m going with noir/magical realism/Okie local color/crime for now. Good stocking stuffer!

You might also want to pick up Walking on Air if you are in the mood for some Mississippi small town life.   I’ll have more on this story collection soon and a review of Steph Post’s latest N. Florida noir/ Southern grit lit from Pandamoon with  a full review in  Small Press Book Reviews later this month. PopsicleStyx_Front-200 a-tree-born-crooked-top-book WalkingAir_Front-200

 

 

 

 

POETRY

The Women’s Poetry List-serv has been having an interesting discussion on writing books.  I picked up two of their recommendations: The Art of Slow Writing, which I have yet to read and Metzger’s Writing For Your Life, which has this gorgeous passage:

A poem is a penetration into the essence of something. It begins in a moment, is the thing itself as well as the surrounding space. A poem is in the spaces between the words.

 

This draws me back to the work of poet Susan Rich, whose collection Cloud Pharmacy was gifted to me by The Next Best Book Club (TNBBC) and very enthusiastically discussed on Goodreads recently.

images.duckduckgo.com

I fell in love with her suite of poems on the surrealist photographs of Hannah Maynard.  So very fascinated by her way of entering into the work, which she describes in detail in her  “Statement of Poetic Research,”  available with some of the work at Common-Place.

I’m thinking of trying something similar with the “colonialized” images of Tlingit women at the Univ. of Washington, The Alaska Digital Archives and Penn Museum.  This would slide in nicely with the suite of Tlingit legend poems I am already working on.

I’ve made a stab towards it with this Work in Progress piece:

 

Teller

I planted myself
in its heart

I grew inside
the story

marrow of history
backbone of myth

body of taboo, image, desire

what a fucking terrifying solid
being

of communal dream

almost too much oneness for one
mother

nevertheless, die to the fictive selves
so that the “real” voice emerges

 

But I’m not sure exactly where I’m going with the project yet.  I find myself (along with my very patient sponsor/mentor) wishing that I could write much, much faster.  This has been a project of long brewing and constant re-immersion in a culture I am somewhat isolated from both generationally and geographically.

Yet, I am finding it very rewarding.   I have hopes of making it to Alaska if Grandpa Kashka’s health improves.   At 87, he clings tenaciously to the Florida sunshine, but my uncles and cousins are still shucking a living from the rocks.

Thank God we all know how to speak the language of the earth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Review of OWL Dreams by John T. Biggs

09 Sunday Feb 2014

Posted by BoneSpark Blog in C.A. Explains It All

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book review, John T Biggs, magical realism, Native American lore, new books, oklahoma author, Owl Dreams

ISBN: 978-0985127473
(292 pgs)
from Pen-L Publishing
4.5 stars (on a scale of 5)

Owl Dreams is one of those novels that defies easy description. Like Gabaldon’s famous genre-bending series, it is a meld of many forms, with elements of mystery, romance and Southwestern lore that blend seamlessly into a wild, urban operetta.

Action centers around Sarah Bible, straight-laced anthropology major, who is the daughter of a manic depressive and the one sane voice in a tale of circus freaks, voodoo gods, shapeshifters, NDN witches, criminals and crazies.

The storyline is so beautifully strange and the author’s ability to inhabit his characters’ (often addled minds) so keen, that the reader is gripped and propelled from page to page with growing obsession.

You’ll find yourself rooting for the oddest of characters and may even begin to question your own grip on reality as the story moves along. This is all part of the fun, and a testimony to the skill of the author.

cropped-header_john_bw1 I first encountered Biggs in the short form and was not surprised to see that he has accumulated several awards for his fiction.  He has clearly sharpened his teeth there and has now delivered a gorgeous first novel that I highly recommend.

Get your copy at Amazon.com, Barnes & Nobles or Pen-L Publishing.

And follow johnbiggsoklahomawriter.com for more news on his writing.

 

***If you’re a writer and would like YOUR book reviewed, please drop me a line at bonesparkblog@yahoo.com. I am especially interested in small press publications, both fiction and poetry.

 

 

 

 

 

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