My post today combines two of Cee’s CFFC challenges, Anything Small and Found in Nature. You can join in Cee’s challenges here: https://ceenphotography.com/2023/04/11/cffc-anything-small/

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is a semi-autobiographical novella written by Dai Sijie, a Chinese French author and film maker.  The book was published in 2000 in French and in English in 2001.

The book is set during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution that occurred in the People’s Republic of China between 1966 and 1976. The programme was implemented by Mao Zedong after his return to the centre of power in 1966 and followed his period of self-abstention and bowing down to less radical leadership in the wake of the failed Mao-led Great Leap Forward (Second five-year plan to convert China from an agriculturally led society to a communist society through the formation of people’s communes) which resulted in the Great Chinese Famine during which an estimated 15 million to 55 million people died of starvation (1959 to 1961). The purpose of the Cultural Revolution was to preserve Chinese communism by purging any remaining aspects of capitalism and Chinese traditional culture from Chinese society.

The book is the story of two teenage boys, Ma, the narrator, and Lou, his best friend, who are assigned to a re-education programme through labour and are sent to a mountain called “Phoenix of the Sky” near Tibet.  The villagers spend their lives growing rice and mining coal, both of which are physically relentless occupations that wear down the boys in body and spirit.

The story begins with the teens having just arrived at their assigned village and suffering through the headman’s inspection of their belongings.  He is inspecting Ma’s violin with great suspicion. The reader quickly understands that Lou is the more forward and quick thinking of the two as well as a natural leader, when he saves the instrument by persuading the headman to let Ma play it for him. The reader also discovers that Ma is a good musician.

The boys’ miserable situation has arisen due to both their fathers being named ‘enemies of the state’ due to their education and occupations (Ma’s father is a doctor and Lou’s father is a famous dentist) and both youngsters’ despair of ever returning to the city. The re-education programme is viewed by both as a punishment and a permanent relocation and situation.

Lou has a great talent for storytelling and uses it to ingratiate both youngsters into the community. Over time, the headman sends the boys to the closest town with a cinema to view films and come back and retell them to the villagers. Through their story telling, the pair meet the ‘little seamstress’, the daughter of the local tailor and the ‘reigning beauty’ in the region. Lou ends up having a sexual relationship with her and is in love with her, but he feels she is not sufficiently educated and cultured for him.

The boys meet another youngster, Four Eyes, who is also being re-educated and living in a neighbouring village. Four Eyes is the son of a well-known poet and is finding life in the village even more difficult as a result of his thick glasses and very poor eyesight. By accident, the two boys discover that Four Eyes has a suitcase full of banned books and manage to manipulate Four Eyes into lending them two books. Lou memorises the books so that he can relate them to the little seamstress in a bid to expand her horizons and uplift her.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress explores the themes of love, coming of age, reading, education, censorship and beauty through the experiences of three teenagers during the period of the Cultural Revolution in China.

While the book is based to a certain extent on the author’s experiences in China during this time, it is a work of fiction.

I found this book to be fascinating. I learned a huge amount about life in China during the Cultural Revolution and the suppression of knowledge and education which always seems to result during social revolutions. The characters are beautifully and sensitively portrayed, and their anxieties, struggles, and experiences were engaging and enlightening.

Quotations that intrigued me

“I was carried away, swept along by the mighty stream of words pouring from the hundreds of pages. To me it was the ultimate book: once you had read it, neither your own life nor the world you lived in would ever look the same.”

“The sheer audacity of our trick did a lot to temper our resentment against the former opium growers who, now that they had been converted into “poor peasants” by the communist regime, were in charge of our re-education.”

“”So are you weeping tears of joy?” I said.

“No. All I feel is loathing.”

“Me too. Loathing for everyone who kept these books from us.””

Purchase Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress here: https://www.amazon.com/Balzac-Little-Chinese-Seamstress-Sijie-ebook/dp/B07XB4CL5Q

If you are interested, this is a 40 second clip from the movie:

Thank you for the recommendation, Martina Ramsauer.

Today, I am delighted to introduce talented author and poet, D.L. Finn, whose new book, In the Tree’s Shadow, is available for pre-order on Amazon.

Welcome, Denise!

Introduction

Thank you, Robbie, for having me here to discuss my upcoming release, In the Tree’s Shadow.

Today I’m happy to share the new book trailer. I put it together on Canva, which I find easy to work with. They have access to the needed images and have a selection of music to choose from, but I went with my husband’s song, “Soar.”

There are twenty-seven stories, and I could only highlight a few in the video and blurb. During the coming weeks, there will be posts that will focus on twenty-one stories from the book.

Here’s the book trailer:

Blurb

A collection of short stories where dreams and nightmares co-exist. 

Nestled inside these pages, you’ll meet a couple in their golden years who take a trip with an unexpected detour, a boy desperate to give his brother the Christmas gift he asked for, a girl with a small glass dragon who is at the mercy of her cruel uncles, or a young mother who has the same dream about murder. You’ll be introduced to worlds where people get second chances and monsters might be allowed their desires while angels and dragons try to help. Happy endings occur, but perspective can blur the line between good and evil in these twenty-seven tales. Since the stories vary between 99 to 12k words, whether you have only five minutes or an entire evening to settle into reading, there is something that will suit your time and taste.

AMAZON PRE-ORDER PURCHASE LINK:    http://a-fwd.com/asin= B0BWL7LX9K

Fun Finn Facts

1. A small angel’s glow reflected on a door in our hallway.
2. I always have a nightlight on when I sleep since I’m still fearful of what may be in the darkness.

My review of A Long Walk Home: A Christmas Novelette

Its Christmas Eve and Kenzie’s boss has closed the office, forcing her to go home and face the start of Christmas alone. Kenzie has always loved Christmas and been the first in line to bake and join in activities to promote the Christmas spirit, but not this year. Following the deaths of both her parents a few years previously, Kenzie has met and become engaged to Heath. Their wedding date was set for this Christmas Day. Heath had proved to be unfaithful and unreliable and left Kenzie, becoming engaged to her best friend, Joy, shortly afterwards. Kenzie has lost her fiance and her best friend at the same time and, with no family, her life feels worthless and she has spiraled into a great depression.

This is a story about recognising people for what they are, overcoming great trials and tribulations, and forgiveness (Joy, not Heath). The storyline has several intriguing paranormal twists with guardian angels and evil spirits which give the book a much stronger good versus evil thread.

DL Finn is a good writer and has created characters with whom the reader can sympathise and relate. A lovely Christmas read with a feel good ending.

A Long Walk Home: A Christmas Novelette is available from Amazon US here: https://www.amazon.com/LONG-WALK-HOME-Christmas-Novelette-ebook/dp/B07JR5QWG5

About D.L. Finn

D. L. Finn is an independent California local who encourages everyone to embrace their inner child. She was born and raised in the foggy Bay Area, but in 1990 she relocated with her husband, kids, dogs, and cats to Nevada City, in the Sierra foothills. She immersed herself in reading all types of books but especially loved romance, horror, and fantasy. She always treasured creating her own reality on paper. Finally, surrounded by towering pines, oaks, and cedars, her creativity was nurtured until it bloomed. Her creations include children’s books, adult fiction, a unique autobiography, and poetry. She continues on her adventure with an open invitation to all readers to join her.

Find D.L. Finn

Twitter

Bookbub

Facebook

Instagram

Pinterest

D.L. Finn blog

Amazon Page

This week Dan and Cee have paired up to create a Thursday Doors and CFFC challenge about Things People Live In.

You can join in Cee’s CFFC challenge here: https://ceenphotography.com/2023/03/28/cffc-things-people-live-in-combo-with-thursday-doors/

You can join in Thursday Doors here: https://nofacilities.com/2023/03/30/doors-and-doors/

Here are my photographs for the challenge:

Pictures of streets of houses in Whitby, UK (sorry the doors are small) and pictures of the small boats in Whitby Harbour.

Pashley Manor in Kent – the manor house has a lovely wide door.

Pictures of St John’s College, Cambridge, UK

Houseboats in Faversham Harbour

Terri’s Sunday Stills prompt for this week is Peekaboo – Who sees you?

I manage to find a few fun photographs for this theme.

You can join in Sunday Stills here: https://secondwindleisure.com/2023/03/26/sunday-stills-peek-a-boo-who-sees-you/

Short story on vocal: Magic mirrors and dancing lights

You can read my short story about King Soshangane of the Gaza Empire which controlled parts of Mozambique and Zimbabwe during the 1800s on Vocal here: https://vocal.media/fiction/magic-mirrors-and-dancing-lights

You can read the limericks about lockdown I submitted on Vocal here:

https://vocal.media/poets/children-are-vectors

and here:

https://vocal.media/poets/on-line-meetings-during-lockdown

Welcome to Thursday Doors! This is a weekly challenge for people who love doors and architecture to come together to admire and share their favorite door photos, drawings, or other images or stories from around the world. If you’d like to join us, simply create your own Thursday Doors post each (or any) week and then share a link to your post in the comments below, anytime between 12:01 am Thursday morning and Saturday noon (North American eastern time). If you like, you can add our badge to your post.

You can join in Thursday Doors here: https://nofacilities.com/2023/03/23/some-fun-leftovers/

Cee’s prompt for this week is Things people drive and seeing as most things people drive have doors, I am combining the two prompts this week. You can join in Cee’s challenge here: https://ceenphotography.com/2023/03/21/cffc-things-people-drive/

Airplanes at the Imperial War Museum in Duxford, UK

Ox Wagons at the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria, South Africa

Lastly, Sir Chocolate drives a car, made entirely from cake and sweets. His rocket ship is built from biscuits and powered by bicarbonate of soda and cream of tartar mixed with milk.

Writing Marta – Strong female characters right out of history

One of the cool things about Delilah and the Women in the West adventure series is the fact that there is a true-life historical female character in a supporting role, along with the strong female protagonist in each book. In the first book, Delilah, the supporting character is Elizabeth “Baby” Doe McCourt Tabor. In Book 2, Sarah, the supporting character will be Big Nose Kate, and I’ve begun the pre-writing process of outlining for that one. In Marta, book 3 in the series, the supporting historical character is Clara Brown. An emancipated slave, Clara was one of the first women to go to the Colorado gold camps, providing domestic services for many of the miners, including the first laundry service in the Colorado territory.

I’m not that far with the third book. Marta is still a loose collection of ideas, with an outline draft, which can be manipulated as I change my plot points until I’m ready to begin the actual writing of the story. If you read Delilah, you will learn that Marta was captured by Indians while traveling west with her family. Book 3 is the story of Marta’s life in Central City, Colorado in the years following her release from the Utes. The supporting historical  female character for this  is not as renown as the supporting characters for the first two books, but she was  an important figure in the gold camp turned township of Central City, and I am proud to offer her a supporting role in my story. Marta takes place at a time when Clara Brown was elderly and in failing health, and she will fill the role of the wise women or mentor, sharing her wisdom with Marta, who is a nurse in charge of Clara’s care.

“Aunt” Clara Brown – A true pioneer in her own right

Clara Brown – Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame

Although there weren’t many women on the American frontier, there were women who did ‘go west’ to seek their independence, their fortunes, or both. There were also those who came west in the familial units, as wives and daughters, later losing husbands and fathers to the many hazards in the rough pioneer lives of those who ventured west into the frontier, and finding their own way out of necessity. But, if there were few women to be counted, there were even fewer black women. In this respect, Clara Brown was a pioneer and a trailblazer for the women who followed. Clara was a rarity indeed, as she was not only a female, but a female of African American descent – a freed slave, acting as her own agent in a frontier that was often harsh and cruel.

In slavery, as an indentured servant, Clara acquired domestic skills needed to run a household. Freed after many years, Clara used those skills to establish her value in the community and make her own way as an independent business woman and entrepreneur.

Born a slave in Virginia in 1800, Clara and her mother were sold and sent to Kentucky when she was nine. Later, she married a slave on the same plantation, and they had four children together. But, as was the fate of many indentured slaves, she and her family were all sold at auction by their owner and she would never see any of them again, with the exception of her youngest daughter. Her third owner freed her in 1859, at the age of 56. Under Kentucky laws, freed slaves were required to leave the state or revert to indentured servitude once more, and so she cooked and provided midwife services on a wagon train, to pay for her passage west, making her way to Colorado.

In Central City, a  gold camp consisting of mines, a few shops and saloons, and the shacks of miners and their families, she established the first laundry service in Colorado territory and provided domestic services such as cooking and cleaning, earning enough to make a living. go back to Kentucky as a representative of the Republican governor of Colorado to help freed slaves. She learned that her husband and oldest daughter had died in slavery, and her son had been sold too many times to trace, but she continued to search for her youngest daughter, Eliza Jane. She located her in Council Bluffs, Iowa in a heartwarming reunion. Clara returned home to Denver with her granddaughter in 1882.

In 1869, she went back to Kentucky in her search for her family. She came back empty handed on that score, but she brought back sixteen freed men and women, helping them to relocate in Colorado. At that time, she had accumulated savings and properties around Denver and Boulder, Colorado totaling almost  $10,000.00, (which would be valued at around $100,000.00 today).

With her wealth, she helped other blacks to relocate to Colorado, providing shelter and helping them to obtain gainful employment. In addition, her home became a community hub, as she opened it to freed slaves and provided religious services for the community, helping to establish the first Protestant Church in Colorado, and earning herself the “Aunt” Clara moniker. Most female philanthropists at this time were women wielding the wealth of their husbands, but there were some who did it on their own. A rare bird indeed, Clara Brown was a black, independent female philanthropist and profitable businesswoman.

Clara proved her value in the mining community of Central City, once labeled the richest square mile on earth, and to the state of Colorado, by venturing forth into places not for the faint of heart, much beyond the realm of common expectations for a black woman of the times. She became Clara wasn’t a superhero, but she was an amazing woman, who used her brains and her inner strength to help others. She was voted into the Society of Colorado Pioneers in 1884 for her contributions during the Colorado gold rush. She died on October 23,1885. Clara Brown was inducted into the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame in 2022.

References

Karen A. Johnson (Winter, 2006) The African American Experience in Western States Journal of African American History Vol. 91 No. 1 pp. 4-22 Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/20064044

Clara Brown Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame Retrieved from https://www.cogreatwomen.org/project/clara-brown/

Clara Brown. Colorado Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/clara-brown

“Aunt” Clara Brown. History Colorado. Retrieved from https://www.historycolorado.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/2017/aunt_clara_brown.pdf

Clara Brown: Pioneer and Philanthropist in Early Colorado. History of American Women. Retrieved from https://www.womenhistoryblog.com/2015/03/clara-brown.html

Delilah giveaway

I’m giving away two digital copies, 

and one signed print copy

of

Delilah

Leave a comment to enter. 

Multiple entries are allowed, 

so leave a comment at each stop for more chances.

About Delilah

Delilah is a woman haunted by her past.

Her homecoming from prison quickly turns into a quest for vengeance when she is brutally raped and left for dead, and her fourteen-year-old ward is abducted. Sheer will and determination take this tough and gritty heroine up against wild beasts of the forest, Indians and outlaws to Leadville, Colorado.

Can the colorful inhabitants of the Colorado mining town work their way into Delilah’s heart, offering a chance for a future she thought she’d lost along with her innocence?

If you like strong and capable female protagonists, you’ll love Delilah.

Purchase Delilah: Purchase link: https://books2read.com/DelilahWIW

About the author

Kaye Lynne Booth lives, works, and plays in the mountains of Colorado. With a dual emphasis M.F.A. in Creative Writing and an M.A. in Publishing, writing is more than a passion. It’s a way of life. She’s a multi-genre author, who finds inspiration from the nature around her, and her love of the old west, and other odd and quirky things which might surprise you.

Her latest release is the re-release of Delilah, as Book 1 in the Women in the West adventure series. She has short stories featured in the following anthologies: The Collapsar Directive (“If You’re Happy and You Know It”); Relationship Add Vice (“The Devil Made Her Do It”); Nightmareland (“The Haunting in Carol’s Woods”); Whispers of the Past (“The Woman in the Water”); Spirits of the West (“Don’t Eat the Pickled Eggs”); and Where Spirits Linger (“The People Upstairs”). Her paranormal mystery novella, Hidden Secrets, and her short story collection, Last Call and Other Short Fiction, are both available in both digital and print editions at most of your favorite book distributors.

In addition, she keeps up her authors’ blog, Writing to be Read, where she posts reflections on her own writing, author interviews and book reviews, along with writing tips and inspirational posts from fellow writers. Kaye Lynne has also created her own very small publishing house in WordCrafter Press, and WordCrafter Quality Writing & Author Services, where she offers quality author services, such as publishing, editing, and book blog tours. She has served as a judge for the Western Writers of America and sitting on the editorial team for Western State Colorado University and WordFire Press for the Gilded Glass anthology and editing Weird Tales: The Best of the Early Years 1926-27, under Kevin J. Anderson & Jonathan Maberry.

In her spare time, she is bird watching, or gardening, or just soaking up some of that Colorado sunshine.

Terri’s Sunday Still’s prompt is I’d rather be … You can join in here: https://secondwindleisure.com/2023/03/19/sunday-stills-id-rather-be/

What an easy prompt.

… at the game reserve

I just love these ‘who are you?’ pictures. These animals have so much personality.

… doing artwork

Tanka Tuesday

Colleen’s challenge this week is to write a syllabic poem using synonyms for green and spring. I chose moss and vault and before you say anything about the context, there are no rules about that – hehe!

Spring sleepers

Earth’s subtle tilting

Coaxes forth abundant life

Interim defeat

Vibrant colours triumphing

Over dreary winter greys

***

Renewal extends

To the moss laden stonework

Of the silent vault

Halts abruptly at the door

Behind which the dead still sleep

By Robbie Cheadle

You can join in Tanka Tuesday here: https://wordcraftpoetry.com/2023/03/14/tankatuesday-weekly-syllabic-poetry-challenge-no-311-3-14-23/