Serena's Coming!

I'm excited as a mill-hill kid during fair week and I got my free ticket from my school teacher. Hey! I am a mill-hill kid and it IS Piedmont Interstate Fair week. But the reason I'm excited is that my copy of Ron Rash's latest novel, Serena, is on it's way. Should get mine today or tomorrow. You can read the first chapter if you go find the Serena page on Amazon. There is also an interesting essay by Ron on the page.

The book actually springs from a short story published in Ron's anthology, Chemistry. The story, Pemberton's Bride, features evil Serena and her new husband, and is set in a Western North Carolina lumber camp in the 1930s.

I like how he writes a short story and then it grows up to be a novel. That also happened with the novel, The World Made Straight. Perhaps one of my stories will grow up to be a big book some day. Ha.

Our school was fortunate to host Ron last spring when he came to speak to our students about writing. I was honored when the librarians asked me and a few other teachers to join them and Ron for dinner the night before. You know, everytime I see that guy he ask me what I'm working on - I know Ron from the Wildacres workshops. And he did that for our students, too. You don't get that very often with famous writers. After dinner I just had to ask about training an eagle to hunt rattlesnakes - you'll know what I'm talking about if you read the short story or novel. A very lively discussion about how he learned about it and researching for fiction in general followed.

This one is going to be big, folks.