PEGGY FIELDING'S NEWSLETTER
Vol. 5 Number 3 March 2005

BE PATIENT. IT'S A TRIP BACK TO THE PAST

I'm writing this on Easter Sunday so I suppose Ms Hazel and my brother Jack, are simply whirling in their graves because I'm working on Sunday, particularly on Easter Sunday. Working on Sunday can be allowed to the black sheep of the family only and that is you-know-who, of course.

But hey, hold up here. Go to the newsletter archives now. Carolyn Leonard of Oklahoma City reminded me to explain to readers how to get to my newsletter archives. You go to my website, www.peggyfielding.com and when home page appears, look to the list on the left and tap "Newsletter." You can also subscribe to the newsletter free if you haven't yet done that. I'd like you to read my newsletter via the archives so you get the full benefit of Dan's artistic use of photographs and drawings. He magically inserts them into the right places as the story unfolds. He is such a clever man.

Now, back to Easter. Do any of you readers remember the days when it was vitally important to have a new dress to wear to Sunday School and Church on that special day? I remember quite well. Ms Hazel strained every muscle and squeezed every centavo, to be sure that Jack had a new pair of striped overalls and a new shirt, and I had a new dress, and if the pennies stretched far enough, we each got new shoes as well No money? Well, the new dress was made from one of my aunt's or grandmother's hand-me-down silk dresses; Jack's shirt from one of their cotton dresses. However, most years I had a red or yellow organdy dress. One year I had a brown organdy dress. (Now I was never allowed any input as to color, style or cloth. I was just happy to receive a new dress which became my designated "Sunday Dress," until school started in September.) Anyway, I inquired about the unusual color of my "Easter Dress" that year. Ms Hazel told me Jabara's sold her the brown organdy and a yellow straw bonnet for the same price she would have had to pay for just the red or yellow organdy she usually bought. Jack's overalls were plain blue denim that year also, another money saving move. Mama really wanted me to have that hat since I was way up there in fourth grade, almost a young lady. She cut the brown stuff out without a pattern and sewed it up on her treadle sewing machine, finishing it by hand. Same style as always. It was brown organdy dress and yellow hat all the way into September. It looked something like this:

NOW FAST FORWARD TO AGE NINETEEN

I graduated from Central at Edmond and married my college boyfriend. We drove to Missouri where he was going to study to be a doctor. My husband's friend and his wife, Judith, helped get my first teaching job in a tiny town called Baring, Missouri. That little place was a whole new world for this small-town Baptist girl from Creek County.

LIVING QUARTERS

Judith lived and ate with her aunt and uncle in the huge brick former bank building they'd purchased for $500 and made into their living quarters. I rented the room in back, at least a part of it. I had a large round dining table and a dining room chair and a full sized bed in the space near my entry door. The rest of the room was filled with boards and broken objects, boxes and rolls of wire and Celotex. In the far corner there was another clear space where my sink was located. (Have any of my female readers ever tried to pee into a sink?) If I needed to go to the bathroom for more serious reasons I had to go out my door and step into their back door to the toilet located in the section of the bank they'd turned into a somewhat makeshift kitchen. I eventually afforded myself the luxury of my very own chamber pot from the grocery store. Missouri is wickedly cold and snowy in winter.

For food I went next door to the grocery store to buy what I ate in the evenings and what I carried to school for lunch. There was, naturally, no TV, no radio, no movie in the village, and no church, except the Catholic church. Judith and her relatives and I were the only protestants (Baptists didn't like to be called "protestants" but that's what the 496 other Baring citizens called us.) In my big, high ceilinged, storeroom cum bedroom, I ate, read and did schoolwork. Those are the usual things I do now in Tulsa, come to think of it. (If readers are interested in some of the things that went on at the school they need only insist that I write about them at another time!)

SHOCK AND AWE

One weekend about two weeks before Easter I drove to Kirksville to spend the weekend with my new husband. He finally remembered to tell me we'd be going to a school sponsored formal dance on the Saturday night before Easter. Another first! Southern Baptists everywhere will understand this next statement: I'd never in my life been to a dance!

We had no money. We'd budgeted $5 a month for my room and $5 a week for my food and gasoline for going back and forth to our studio apartment in Kirksville. Judith and I walked to school in Baring.

My husband's mother, whom I loved dearly, had sent us $10 for Easter. I took it back to Baring when I left Kirksville on Sunday evening.

Our next-door grocery store (only grocery/general store in town) sold cloth and findings so I bought several yards of yellow cotton cloth and several more yards of, TA TA, yellow organdy. There was plenty for me to do in the next two weeks. Thanks to observing Ms. Hazel over the years of "Easter Dresses" I knew how to lay out and cut out a dress without a pattern. I also knew very well how to sew on my fingers. The finished dress was pressed and ready by Good Friday (as they called it in Baring) for the voyage to Kirksville.

I tried to make myself as glamorous as possible but when Judith's husband looked me over and said hesitantly, "You look...uh...very pretty, Peggy." I knew my dress would turn out to be the biggest mistake at the dance. And it was. It looked something like this:

SKID FORWARD SEVERAL YEARS

New husband, new family; By then Id learned my lesson. Ray and I had very little money the first few months after we were married at Christmas. Came March I needed an Easter Dress. But I'd learned my lesson. Ms Hazel gave me enough white linen to make a short-sleeved sheath. I had a remnant of the white lace from my wedding gown and I made a pullover top to go over it, all made by hand, of course. Ms Hazel made a cute lavender dress for Suzy. Her brother Phillip had a decent looking jacket so we were good to go. This is what we looked like after Easter Services at First Baptist Church in Pampa, Texas. The man taking the picture wore the gray flannel suit he'd worn to our wedding in that same church three months earlier. I was one proud little bride/stepmother.

I'd really learned my lesson. I made many, many other dresses by hand during the following years, but never another garment designated specifically as an "Easter Dress."

SAME OLD CONTEST

I have the same gripe about Avalon as I do about sex... nothing happening. You can still enter with what date I will hear from Avalon about my MAKE BELIEVE CURATE. Enclose the title of the book you prefer as well as your US Mail address. Let us hope word comes soon, but I figure your guess is as good as mine.

ANOTHER GRIPE

At the March Tulsa Night Writer meeting our speaker threw himself into a chair and said he was giving his speech the lazy man's way, TNW members were asked to ask questions which he, national best selling novelist that he is, would try to answer. This was after he insulted our sweet little vice president, Jackie King.

Ugh!

When you become famous enough to be invited to speak, don't ever accept an engagement unless you're prepared to actually plan a presentation. Worry about this even if I am dead. I will come back to haunt you the moment you say to yourself, "That's easy. I'll just have them ask me some questions."

LOVE AND STUFF

Since I hadn't received a Logan novel from Dusty Richards for some time, I went out and bought a new Logan Book by some other ghost writer than Dusty. I read it and it wasn't bad but it wasn't Dusty Richards, for sure. I'll just stick with the Logan books written only by him.

Have you readers read Dusty's short story collection, WALTZING WITH TUMBLEWEEDS, published by AWOC.COM? If not, you should get it and read it. Lovely short stories. Not much sex there, just good sensitive stories. Order his collection by going to http://www.awocbooks.com/book.cfm?b=21

OWFI A'COMING

The last weekend in April will be fun. We'll be having our annual Oklahoma Writers Federation, Inc conference in Oklahoma City. I’m rooting for Michael Sasser, Chuck Sasser's son, to fill some important office on the state Federation board. He is a well-published writer who has just moved back to this area from Florida. I don't know him well but he looks intelligent and I LOVE his father.

HENS AGAIN

We're still shopping our collection of novellas, CHIK~LIT FOR FOXY HENS; ROMANTIC ADVENTURE AFTER FORTY. We've received several blurbs from well-known writers and editors for use on the back cover of the book. We've also had a couple of nibbles from publishers. Maybe some good news about this one in May. One can hope, right?

P.O.D. BOOKS

No matter what some uninformed famous writer may have told you, not all POD publishers are the same. My SALLY sold to Hard Shell Word Factory a few years ago and my books THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO WRITING AND PUBLISHING MAGAZINE ARTICLES and BARBARA and CONFESSING FOR MONEY and STADIUM KIND OF LOVE all sold to AWOC.COM. I did not pay one cent to the publishers. Mary Wolfe at Hard Shell has been quite faithful in sending royalty statements (and small checks) 4 times a year while Dan Case at AWOC.COM sends me a check every month. This month my royalty check from him was for $85. At times it has been $100 or $200 or more, and he pays like clockwork. Now, of course, $85 is not a lot of money but it's sure better than zero, and it's way better that hearing only twice a year from my other publishers in New York.

My advice to you? If they want you to give them money to publish your book, that's a no-no. If they want to send you no advance or a tiny advance so they can send you tiny royalty checks each and every month, that's a big yes-yes so far as I am concerned. If you know me at all, you know I would never in a million years pay a publisher to put my writing into print. I want money from them!

FREE! FREE! FREE!

The Northwest Arkansas Writers free all-day Conference for Writers is being held at the Harvey Jones Health Education building on the corner of Emma Ave. and Berry St., in Springdale, Arkansas on Saturday, April 2, from 8:30 am to 3:30 pm. Speakers are Charlotte Smith, Radine Trees Nehring, Sharon Erwin, Priscilla Maine, Velda Brotherton and Dusty Richards, all dear friends of mine. I hope you will attend. I know I could learn something from each of these people. Hope you'll be able to go and be inspired. Carol MacLoud is going to take notes for me, so in essence, I will be there with you. I'd love hearing reports from any other participants who want to fill me in.

All these good writers listed above are giving of their time and expertise without charge for the benefit of Dusty's writing group. Plan to buy a few books.

A BIRD FLEW OVER MY HEAD

Yeah. A real live bird flew over my head inside the grocery store yesterday. What does that portend? Let me know.

BEST BOOK

The best book I've read this month is THE PAID COMPANION by Amanda Quick, who is really Jayne Ann Krentz. It needed just one touch of editing in the epilogue. The epilogue shows what happened one year after their marriage! The hero is shown speaking to his two infants and two babies. Quite a lot to accomplish in one year since she was a virgin when they met and he'd never married or had children. Someone got in a hurry and I have a sneaking hunch it was the copy editor.

SEE YOU IN APRIL MY FRIENDS.

Love, Peggy.