PEGGY FIELDING'S NEWSLETTER
Vol. 4 Number 11 November 2004

MY AVALON REWRITE IS MOVING ALONG

Yeah, I'm still rekeying my MAKE BELIEVE CURATE for Avalon. Luckily my pal, Jackie King is reading/editing each new chapter as the revised version comes off the keyboard.

Ami Reeves, a fellow member of The Tulsa NightWriters was able to stand up and brag at last Tuesday's meeting. She has sold a mystery novel to Avalon. I hope they put her picture on the book or on the dust cover because she is so young and pretty. She is a prize winning/selling poet, as well.

I'm a bit dubious about offering my own photograph if they like the new version of CURATE and offer to buy. I will, of course, send my publicity photo if they ask but I hope they don't ask.

TNW

The Tulsa NightWriters meeting was really good this month. P.C. Cast talked about sex between the species and showed her three published "fantasy" novels. I had to interrupt Ms. Cast when I finally held her latest book in my hand. The book is a Luna imprint from Harlequin. It's a trade paperback in size, incidentally, but I had to comment on her cover illustration.

"Excuse me," I said, "But I must interrupt."

"Yes?" she answered, puzzlement on her face.

"I just have to say that the cover of ELPHAME is one of the most beautiful book covers I have ever seen." Then I held her book up and turned it right and left so alll TNW members could see what I was talking about. Ms. Cast then looked pleased at my interruption of her very good talk. She was as attractive as her book cover, by the way.

OTHER BOOKS

Another good thing came out of the TNW meeting. My friend Mary Jo McCauley sent her son Will to my chair to hand me five old Regency Romance novels. Mary is good that way. She knows I love the old ones and when she comes across those little treasures she hands them on to me. I especially appreciated THE REGENCY MASQUERADE by Rachell Edwards, copyright 1982, which was my favorite of all.

Among all the other books I read was a new Harlequin Historical Western by Jillian Hart, called MONTANA WIFE. Hart's work was new to me and I really enjoyed the book. However, she needed an editor, as we all do. things such as the little piece where her heroine was throwing up made me want to heave. It went something like this...She had to wretch, then wretch again, and wretch once more..." etc. A wretch is a man of bad character, so see the scene in that light, kiddos!

I think she meant RETCH, which is a formal word for "vomiting" or "throwing up."

I was disturbed by a number of such tiny booboos.

We all need to watch this kind of stuff, don't we?

Nevertheless, Hart's storyline caught me. I realized tears were welling in my eyes at one point. That's good, reader friends! Editors have often repeated the ditty attributed to Charles Dickens, talking about editors, "Make me cry and I'll buy!"

SALAH, SALAH, SALAH, SALAH, SALAH!

My newsletter has caused me some pain and some joy this month. The joy came during a telephone call from Toronto, Canada.

Nearly 25 years ago a former friend who shall remain nameless, was fooling around with some Spartan students and she asked me to help acclimate the Arabic speaking young men who shared an apartment and attended school where she worked. I was newly from the Philippines and suffering from divorce so I quickly took on the task. Some of the boys I liked, some I did not, but I tried to be equal in my treatment of them. It seems that one eventually went crazy, was hospitalized and is now a silent hermit, another died, one had 23 children, yet another got into trouble with the law in the USA in later years (No he wasn't a terrorist, unless you're talking about body odor) and my very favorite, Salah Salah, became an immigrant to Canada where he has lived for ten years with wife and family..

He is the one who called and gave the report on the others. I can't take the blame for crazy, dead, in trouble with the law, too many children, or even body odor, but I was so glad to hear that the one I liked best was now a longtime, solid, hard working, Canadian citizen with two daughters, both in college.

In my mind he still remains the really nice, English speaking, red headed young man of 25 years ago, although he assures me his hair is now gray.

And no, to you cynics out there, I didn't have sex with Salah. I took him and his pals to the zoo, to the sights in the city, and to the Sunday School Class for their age group at the First Baptist Church. Does that surprise you? Of course, Salah, 10 to 15 years younger than I, never showed that sort of interest or this might be quite a different report. I think my former friend was having it on with the guy in their group who reeked with body odor.

This is more or less what I looked like about ten years ago, not much different than when I was squiring Salah and the other boys around. (Photo by Pat Wade.)

Salah says he found me on the Internet.

SAD NEWS, ALSO

Another person found me on the Internet as well. William Demastus contacted me about his mother, Sarah Marshall Demastus, who was my inseparable "best friend" from sixth grade until she married Milton Wayne Demastus when she was 16 and chose the housewife's life. I chose quite a different way, but be assured, I never stopped loving my old pal. The people I love, I continue to love forever, unless they do me wrong in some way, and Sarah was always my friend.

She's the one who spoke to my mother and they both insisted that I start wearing lipstick because I was thirteen years old and it was time! So I reluctantly started using "paint."

Sarah died of renal failure and is buried in Norman, Oklahoma next to Milton Wayne.

When I was almost fifteen I visited Sarah at the tiny house she and Milton had rented in Oilton. I wanted to go somewhere and she had agreed, but first she had to run the sweeper, and she did, with me watching. I asked how often she had to do that and her answer, "I run it every day," was the clincher. Running a sweeper was not for me and I've kept to that thought. For many years I had household help to do all that. Later Miss Hazel did it if things looked too bad around my place. Now I just let the place get dirty. Once a month I need to clean up, Jackie tells me, so now I’ve hired someone to do that chore.

I'll miss my old friend. We shared so much in our days together in Oilton.

When the past comes back it's not always good news.

OTHER OILTON TIES

Dale Denney does a down home type magazine called "The Denney Chronicles," and he reprinted the dream story I'd pulled from my files. The dream was a somewhat skewed look at Oilton through the eyes of a child. Dale is a Tulsa NightWriter but he lives in Jay, Oklahoma. Good writer, both fiction and nonfiction. He also publishes articles and letters from other former Oiltonites such as my brother's best friend, Bobby Williamson, or my cousin Julia Mae Bice Hoover.

Dale Denney, editor of the Denney Chronicles, with his wife Nita and their only grandchild, Dori Beth Denney

CONTEST

Okay, I'll give a book of choice to the person or persons coming closest to my finish date on MAKE BELIEVE CURATE. I am now working on Chapter 23 and I am looking at 33 chapters altogether. When you email your guess please include your US Mail address and choice of book as well.

Good luck to each and every one of you.

I THINK I'M LUCKY ALSO

For all holidays in the past few years I have had a standing invitation to join Jackie King's family celebration at her daughter's house. This goes for Thanksgiving as well. Yay!

And I'm lucky to have you, my readers, subscribing. See you all in December.

Love

Peggy Lou