susanlarsonauthor

The pretty good books of Susan Larson


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“Sam (a pastoral)” Kindle Giveaway

From December 9-13, my pretty good book “Sam (a pastoral)” a novel about horses and humans for young and older adults, will be offered as a free gift to you in the Kindle edition on Amazon.com.

The ‘real’ Sam was a horse with common looks and no talent. He won no races, ribbons, or medals for bravery. What can I say about him? He  had a kindly temperament. He behaved for the farrier and the vet. He liked a good gallop, whenever possible. He was my friend.  The fictional Sam,  the humble  trash nag standing at the  center of this story, serves as an example of plain ordinary goodness. He is the calm center of the hurricane of human folly.

The human characters in this book don’t win any prizes either. In their way they are trying desperately to find some happy; some of them do, some don’t.  Small triumphs dot the story: a  man leaves his deadening job the city and goes fishing. An alcoholic kicks his habit by training ‘pulling ponies.’  An timid housewife takes a job and buys herself a pickup truck. A damaged kid adopts thrown-away animals.

Ruthie, the troubled girl who narrates the tale, is convinced that her steed Sam talks to her. She describes him like a lover would in affectionate detail: his hair, his eyes, his lips. She  gauges his moods by watching his ears. On the other hand, the important humans in her life are a blur. She doesn’t see them, nor they her. Mired in a cycle of misunderstandings, tantrums, physical fights, and vicious revenge plots, they talk, or shout, past each other, to the point of insanity. At war with God, her neighbor, and herself, Ruthie wants to find the happy. She may or may not heed Sam’s sound advice on this subject.

While  the characters in “Sam” are struggling and being miserable and so on, they can also be pretty funny. Even Sam is funny. Full disclosure: some sensitive issues are addressed, including bullying, parental abuse and abandonment, teen pregnancy, cruelty to animals, and the humiliation of somebody’s mother-in-law. No graphic violence or gore, no sex scenes, but intense emotional content may disturb younger kids, or kids with family issues.

I invite you to saddle up and ride with Sam for absolutely, totally, utterly free, during my Kindle Freebie Giveaway Dec 9-13.  Download this pretty nice book if you like horses, humans, or both, or know somebody who does.  If you like him, feel free to  post a good word about Sam somewhere.


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A Poem, written on a napkin on my 67th birthday in Matlacha, Florida

Once I vamped for Julius Caesar

Now I’m just a wizened geezer

 

sitting out on the lanai

watching pelicans fly by

 

drinking stale Long Island wine

which like me is past its prime

 

listening to my hoary friends

contemplate impendent ends

 

cancer, dementia, ALS,

bodies failing, minds a mess,

 

though our span of days be few

we’re going out for barbecue.

 


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Working Hard on My Operatic Murder Mystery!

In the spring of 1786,  feisty young composer of considerable reputation is on the verge of getting his revolutionary operatic masterwork produced at the Court Theater in Vienna. Everything seems to be working in his favor: the libretto is brilliant, the cast is stellar; the Minister of Education, the General Manager of the theater and the Emperor himself have all given their endorsement to the work. So, what could possibly go wrong?

Jealous rivals abound. Ultra-conservative nobles find the piece politically dangerous.  Tin-eared civil servants think the opera is too long and threaten to cut the finales. And– on the production’s first day onstage– there’s a hanged man dangling above the stage!

I have been researching and writing this book for several years now. I’m using my own backstage experiences, the memoirs and other writings of the actual people who appear in the story, as well as some excellent histories of this marvelous period of musical and political history.  I am on my anti-penultimate draft, trying to get the time-lines right and making sure that nobody knows what they are not supposed to know when they are not supposed to know it, and that the reveals of the finale are a surprise to everybody, including you!

The book is pretty racy, and although I am fond of almost all the opera singers I ever worked with, this story does not show operatic divas and divos in a flattering light. There is also some harsh anti-Semitic talk in the book, which reflects the attitudes of the period: the city tolerated its Jews, and the Jewish community prospered under the benignity of the Emperor, but in fact the Jews had no civil rights at all.

I’m hoping to get this book out within the next year or so, so stay tuned.  I am hoping to include some musical audio in the e-book version, wouldn’t that be a kick?

So, do you know the composer and the work of which I write?  Send me a note if you do!

Check out my first book “Sam (a pastoral)” a story of love, hate, revenge and forgiveness, in the meantime.

 


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Horses are smarter than you think!

Some folks think horses are dumb; after all, they let us take their freedom and boss them around. While it’s true no horse has written a major symphony or discovered a comet, it is evident they can solve problems, communicate, and figure out ways to take advantage of the people who think they are dumb.

For instance, last month I saw several horses using tools to do something. Only a few animals like higher primates and some clever birds are credited with the ability to do this, but I witnessed my favorite animal turning trash into a handy device.

Two horses of my acquaintance were picking up the woody stalks of weeds in their recently-mowed pasture, and using the  fan-shaped panicles of seed pods to swat flies off their bellies behind their forelegs.  This is a hard area for them to reach with either their heads or their hind legs, so they improvised fly-swatters! How’s that for innovative and smart?

Autumn Pleasures

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Autumn Pleasures.

My plant pals are beginning to color up. This was taken in 2006 in an especially good year for foliage, in my back yard. What with changing weather patterns in New England, this riot  of color may never be surpassed.


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By Jingo, It Works!

I did the Kindle Freebie campaign, and I had a vision of the future.  I mean, it worked.  I had almost 4,000 hits, and sold fifty books.  OK, that doesn’t make my book  “Fifty Shades of Gray,” but for a small-press author on her first go, it’s not chopped liver either!  I have buddies who mock at small presses, and scoff at reading on a device instead of a real book (“The whole tactile experience! turning the pages! Making margin notes! Irreplaceable!”) I say, as a person with allergies to dust and mold, and a love of reading my iPad under the covers, and who likes to take ten books on vacation with her the hardcopy book is in for some serious competition.

So I am pretty content, and am gearing up to do another Freebie campaign when Kindle allows me to. Thanks to all the sites that allowed me to list the book either at a reasonable cost or gratis. A brave new world of  low-priced, tree-saving e-books, e-publicity that does not involve hardcopy or agents, could be a happy place for writers in the near future. I’m glad I have begun to explore it.

 

 


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Free Offer! My Nice Book “Sam (a pastoral)” on Kindle, this week only, September 10-14!

Read the tale of the angry kid, the unlovely old horse, the tumbledown New England Farm, the small-town neighbors  and all the glorious and terrible things that happen in their lives.  This pretty good book is suitable for adults as well as maturer teens.  There are some sensitive issues  for certain young readers: parental violence and abandonment, mild cussing, poverty, some animal abuse, bullying and implied predation of a minor.  There is also a ghost.

http://www.amazon.com/Sam-a-pastoral-ebook/dp/B00969PABA/ref=sr_1_1_title_1_kin?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1378824118&sr=1-1  Image


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Memories of Flight

new bike

When I was a very little girl I had incessant, intense dreams of flying.  I started my flying career for real at four years of age. I got a pair of skates that I clamped onto my shoe with a metal key. I skated on the cement of the basement of my house, sometimes for hours, singing as I flew around and around.  Flying and singing and flying and singing.

At six years of age I was introduced to that most  miraculous machine, the bicycle. My parents scored an ancient, fat-wheeled (possibly cast-iron) Schwinn for me.  It had pedal brakes and streamers on the ends of the handlebars. I was allowed to ride it on the sidewalk–outdoors! I pedaled on that lumbering bike in ever-widening circles around town– to school, to ‘the stores,’ to the playground– singing away, away, away.

Then horses.  My head seven feet off the ground, practically in the clouds! I sat atop Pegasus, a magic being that rejoiced in its power, barely touching the ground between great bounds, soaring!  Walk! trot! Canter! Gallop! I was told many times that horses were dangerous. Flying is dangerous.  Freedom and power are dangerous. I also took singing lessons from my church choir leader.  More freedom and power.  Nobody told me singing was dangerous, but it was.

I chose singing as a livelihood.  This is a dangerous decision, in the economic sense, anyway. But. Singing is flying; it gave me that airborne feeling. Musical tones, really high shiny notes, came out of me and rose like the moon or a balloon into the sky and hung over the heads of the audience, luminous and round, defiant of gravity.

Then came the aging process, when gravity asserts itself.  Various parts of my face and body loosened and gradually sagged in a southerly direction. My soaring operatic voice went mute and fluttered to the earth. My spine told me to stop galloping around on my beloved horse friends.  I beat a retreat to the bicycle, but this time the bike I rode was a beautiful road bike made of carbon fiber, with many many gears.  I rode it everywhere, humming old tunes in my head. I was a geezer, but dammit I was still moving through the air, through the world, still getting in my flying time.  I was content…

Last winter I was diagnosed with an acoustic neuroma.  This is a benign tumor on the acoustic nerve that affects a person’s balance.  I was told, no more bicycle.  We wait and see if the tumor is going to get bigger. While you wait, please remain with one foot on the earth at all times. Well, could be worse; I’m on the ground, but not under it. I could accept that.  I had done some writing. I could do some more.

Writing is not flying.  It’s static, sometimes almost paralytic, for me.  My back hurts. My feet fall asleep. I don’t hum.  If I play music I don’t hear it.  Writing hurts.  It hurts right now.  Writing for me seems to be all about trying to remember the flying.

Happy postscript:  my surgeon got me into a vestibular therapy program, and my balance has improved; they trained me to ignore the dizzy disoriented feeling that the tumor gives me.  I got back on my beloved bike– I couldn’t even look at it all winter or spring– and pedaled, 3, 5, 10, 20 miles. I am good to go, I think.  I also think the flying will help the writing, because I feel so good during and after those exiting, free, outdoor, dangerous hours. I feel like me.


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Working my Niche

When the pollen count went down below five on the official index, I went outside (ah, the  sweetgreen smells of summer!) to visit some riding schools. I had my shoulderbag stuffed with hardcopy editions of my pretty good book “Sam (a pastoral),” bookmarks and flyers with their fullcolor photos and qr’s tempting people to buy this wonderful creation on the spot.  Up went several flyers on each  tackroom bulletin boards, into the barn lounges went complimentary copies…”What’s that book about?” said several young riders, “Can I see it? Can I read it? Can I buy it on my phone?”  Who says kids don’t read? I love the younger generation. I love  my  niche.

Hardcopy versions of  “Sam” are on sale at the Stone’s Throw Tack Shop, 416 Boston Post Road East, in Marlboro, MA. E-book readers can get in from Amazon, where it is good and cheap.

Full disclosure, although there is a large chestnut equine person on the cover, this book is not strictly about horses.  It’s about bonding, or join-up, as horseyfolks would say. It’s also about working out that life isn’t fair, not for anybody, and you have forgive life for treating you rotten.  There is only so long you can chew horseshoe nails and think about how to get even. We are talking about grace, love and forgiveness. Life forgives you, doesn’t it?

Nevertheless, we would do well to see animals as persons. Because they are.  While they do not possess human symbolic language systems, they are eloquent in expressing themselves. They have rich emotional and sensory lives; and to regard their personhood with love and respect is a holy thing to do.  I think also that regarding humans in their full personhood– reading each others’ rich gestural and emotional languages– is central to our humanity. Perhaps doing so would lesson the number of truly horrible things we do to one another.  I will only mention war, trafficking and the denial of dignity to the poor and helpless.