Caroline Starr Rose

picture book and middle-grade author

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Ravens and Ravens

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Drafting a book is like traveling a twisty, turny road. Here are some recent glimpses into my work on Song of the Raven, my new verse novel manuscript:

  1. I don’t usually like to keep word count records. I’m a pretty slow drafter, and my daily numbers can be a bit demoralizing. Rather, I like to keep track of my hours of work (something I can control).
  2. Guess what? I’m keeping a running record of my daily word counts. Why? Who knows! But for now it’s generally working, so I’m not going to question it.
  3. In early December I went on my annual writing retreat. The first day I wrote 1012 words. The second I wrote 242. The third I wrote 1077. Why so few words the second day? Who knows!
  4. A few weeks ago, one of my writing sessions centered on finding a new raven sound my birds could use as an exclamation. So far, my ravens Kek! Kek! Kek! when defending their territory, Kra! when they are afraid, Kro when they are affectionate, and Caw! Caw! when they are announcing themselves. Caw! of course is tricky, because it’s a sound usually associated with crows. But digging back into my notes, some researchers have used it as one of many ways to express raven calls, too (though ravens’ caws are deeper and croakier). Ravens have numerous vocalizations which can change meaning depending on the context. They also have different dialects (for lack of a better term — so interesting!). After scouring my notes again, I decided Crruck! will be my ravens’ exclamation.
  5. By the way, ravens and ravens is the way my protagonist, Tumbledown, refers to a large group of ravens. Corvids (birds in the crow family) are able to count and might understand the concept of zero. But for big groups of birds — bigger than numbers a raven can define — ravens and ravens will have to do for Tumbledown.
  6. We’re in the middle of packing up and moving to a one-story home. In the midst of the hustle, my ravens have been a respite and joy. Book World is always my favorite place.

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Filed Under: home, Song of the Raven, the writing life

Georgia O’Keeffe’s Ghost Ranch in pictures

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I took a horseback ride at Ghost Ranch last weekend, a northern New Mexico landmark best known as Georgia O’Keeffe’s home. I went with my childhood friend, Anna, who visits every now and again to soak up the goodness that is New Mexico. That pretty pinto you see is Nacho, named for murderous cattle rustler, Nacho Archuleta, who along with his brother, Matteo, kept stolen cattle at El Rancho de las Brujas (Ranch of the Witches — a clever name to keep nearby residents away). The brujas eventually evolved into ghosts, giving the ranch the name it has today.

If you know O’Keeffe’s landscapes, you know they’re saturated with color. This was no interpretation. She recorded what she saw. If you look at the center of the picture above, you’ll see the cliff chimneys.

A bit of snow showed off the landscape’s subtle contours. It was such a gorgeous day!

For years, a cow skull was used as the marker for the ranch. In 1934, when Georgia O’Keeffe first visited Ghost Ranch (then a dude ranch owned by Arthur Pack), she was told to look for the skull. She stayed for the summer and returned to New York for the winter, establishing a pattern that lasted for years. Today the cow skull is still Ghost Ranch’s emblem, made iconic through O’Keeffe’s skull paintings.

Is that me or a child with legs too short to ride Doug the horse?!

A lot of movies have been filmed at Ghost Ranch, like Silverado, Wyatt Earp, City Slickers, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, and the Magnificent Seven.

Georgia O’Keeffe wanted to stay away from the dude ranch, so Arthur Pack was willing to rent her his home, Rancho de los Burros (seen at the base of the butte above), which was set apart from all the activity. By 1940, she’d bought the house from him, along with seven acres. When her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, died, she bought a house in nearby Abiquiu to live in during the winter.

Chimney Rock near O’Keeffe’s home, cousin to the nearby cliff chimneys.

Here’s Gerald’s Tree, a juniper that writer and philosopher Gerald Heard walked(?) danced(?) meditated(?) around, leaving footprints that inspired the O’Keeffe painting (you can see it in the upper-right hand corner of the last picture in this post).

This sweet burro (with one ear tucked behind the fencing) reminded me of Calamity, the burro in my next verse novel, The Burning Season. She was a very good girl.

Georgia, I’d have to agree.

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Miracle cures, art from real life, and the shaking palsy

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April is Parkinson’s Awareness Month, so I thought I’d tell you the story of my character Mr. Ogden, the teacher in Miraculous. Long-time readers (or those of you who know me in real life) might remember my husband, Dan, was diagnosed with early-onset Parkinson’s ten years ago, just a few weeks before his thirty-ninth birthday. Early on, Dan’s neurologist asked how we were handling his diagnosis at home. We told her we’d been as open as possible with our boys (who were nine and eleven at the time). We told them, as the doctor had said, that Parkinson’s wasn’t a disease someone died from but something they lived with. We said we didn’t know what the future would look like, but that Dad would get worse as the years passed. Most importantly, we told them it was okay to feel worried or confused or mad or scared or embarrassed, that those were normal feelings and they could talk to us and ask questions any time they needed to. We talked to their teachers, too, to let them know what was going on at home and asked them to be in touch if they saw any changes in our boys.

Good, Dan’s neurologist said, because I once had an early-onset patient who decided he’d hide his disease from his children.

Friends, this has stuck with me for years. What would make someone feel this was the best (or maybe their only) option? How could someone hide a condition where their body worked to betray them daily? Was it shame? A need not to appear weak? Something else entirely? The whole thing was heartbreaking.

Though I didn’t know it at the time, that story planted the seed for my character Walter Ogden.

Sometimes readers ask me if I take people I know in real life and put them in books. I don’t. I wouldn’t know how to do that, exactly. I don’t think I’d want to, either. (It feels a little icky.) But I have built a character based on this passing mention from my husband’s neurologist. Perhaps that’s the same thing?

A charlatan is bent on deceiving others for his personal gain. A charlatan selling a cure-all tonic plays to customers who feel needy or weak. The thing about writing a book with a charlatan and a cure-all tonic is there must be characters desperate to change and willing to try anything.

I didn’t know Mr. Ogden’s background going into the story. All I knew was he was a young man, a good teacher devoted to his students who had grown up in Oakdale and dreamed as a boy of teaching in the school where he’d once been a student. I knew that when whispers of Dr. Kingsbury’s arrival made it into the schoolhouse, Mr. Ogden was so surprised and distracted he ended school early for the day.

But why?

When I remembered the father who fought to hide his Parkinson’s diagnosis from his children, it all came together for me. Mr. Ogden has the shaking palsy (as Parkinson’s was called at the time). He’s convinced he’ll lose his job if anyone notices, as the last teacher was asked to leave when he developed a chronic illness. Mr. Odgen is worried that will be his future, too, so he sets all his hope on Dr. Kingsbury’s miracle cure.

I love this character. He feels very real to me. And I hope when you read Miraculous three months from now (you’ve preordered, haven’t you?!) you’ll remember how authors take bits and pieces of the world — experiences and questions and memories and curiosities — and use them to craft something entirely new. I often say writing is my way to make sense of the world, and writing Mr. Ogden’s story was particularly dear to me.

I hope in reading this book kids ultimately see there is no shame in disability, that a person who has physically changed has not had their humanity diminished.

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Filed Under: books and reading, family, home, Miraculous, the writing life

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