Women of the Oak Savannah’s
November 2015 First Draft
The drumming wafted about baiting the ears of the raccoons looking down from the shroud and canopy. At first it was one, then two, then twenty, the pregnant protectors stood swinging their hips and raising their arms and teasing the flitting moths and nightjars with their fingertips. The spherical silhouettes of swollen bellies and swelling breasts were to glimpse a fleeting gestating succulence, humanities ripest state of being. On and on, eye to eye, one almost ready to burst belly after the other. The women of the oak savannah’s prancing before the ocher flames dancing away the doubts, bonding to the womb and wonder, nature’s anointed soul maker’s kneeling for prayers at the foot of the wooded altar.
Work progresses on my fourth novel. I had to rebuild the end of the novel, I am still filling in final touches, but most is done.
I had put the novel away two years ago. I had nothing to contribute to the work I had done. I hadn’t felt satisfied with the manuscript.
Much of the dialogue required very critical combing through. Lots of shit that doesn’t ring true had to be tossed. Other tossed material more to do with overwriting that needed pulling back.
If you look at the teaser at the top, that is the intensity of prose I have been looking to put into the story. This is at its core a story of the destruction of Napa County by developers and their billionaire clients and the environmental activists opposing them.
Waltham Wristwatch 1958
Fourth novel’s have an even higher hill to climb. I think my third novel is a successful sexual farce. In writing beyond that third novel, writing a fourth dramatic metaphysical soul struggle to preserve and protect the wild hillsides of Napa County requires entire different set of emotional muscles. I have had many failed drafts of chapters that didn’t work. I had to write them over, change them, try something else.
There are a number of outlandish elements in this novel. Some, many or all my readers may find some scenes implausible to simply unbelievable. I’ll give any reader space to make up their own mind. But, the words have been carefully constructed, the quality and effort of every sentence has been examined, revised, changed, studied for continuity, if necessary abandoned altogether.
I’m sending this out to a new reader with a iPad as a PDF file, all of this is copyrighted material. I could use a few more readers if any have the time and energy. After a few scrubbing’s I’ll prep for submission to contests and literary agents. This will not go to Amazon for self publication.
“Talk to me,” her doula urged. “The muse of sperm and egg are here with us. Tell your goddess angel what you want…Let your body speak. Listen to her roar, mother nature’s prying opening the soul-maker’s passageway.”
