Caroline Starr Rose

picture book and middle-grade author

A Coconut Cake and a Cottontail Thief

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In July I…

  • Celebrated my twenty-eighth anniversary.
  • Critiqued two picture books and one chapter book.

  • Read through The Burning Season a couple of times in preparation for edits. This ended up being a 21+ hour endeavor that showed me a lot of areas where the manuscript is lacking. I tossed and rewrote sections fully knowing they might end up gone in some future version. But writing is always a learning experience and no effort is ever wasted.

  • Made Emily Dickinson’s coconut cake, which was very tasty but a little dry. (If I make it again, I’ll soak the coconut in water first.)
  • Thinned the apple trees (probably later than I should have, but apple trees are new to me).

  • Chased deer from my backyard dozens of times. (They’re fond of the apple trees. Above is one of the crew heading to my backyard.)
  • Played plenty of Scrabble.
  • Watched plenty of Yellowstone.
  • Sent Song of the Raven to my critique partners. Cut out the aimless “to-ing and fro-ing” and the cogitating that slowed the last third down. Sent it on to my agent — fingers crossed!

  • Made a compost bin out of a storage tub.
  • Covered my garden after discovering eggplants and tomatoes missing.

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.

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.