Guest Blogger: Addie Greene, Author of How the Wind Laughed

Addie Greene’s memoir, How the Winds Laughed, which recounts the author’s adventure sailing around the world in a 28-foot boat, began as ninety articles written for the Santa Barbara News-Press. Addie says, “Turning the articles into creative non-fiction with scenes, dialogue, and dramatic tension was like trying to reattach the shed hairs to my golden lab, Daphne. My critique group was of immense help. Then my editor, Molly Tinsley, took over and advised me to turn the dog hair into a fur coat.”

In the beginning, Addie Greene is afraid to climb a mast, even at dock, or change sails on a bucking foredeck washed with breaking waves. Yet as she and her young husband take on the “great adventure” of circumnavigation in a 28-foot boat, a succession of catastrophes demands that she become the driving force in carrying them forward and eventually safely home.

How the Winds Laughed sails on the wings of hope, fear, anger, and love across three oceans and more than 30,000 miles. A coming-of-age quest, it drenches the dreams of Don Quixote with the ignoble reality of Sancho Panza.

The Enemy: Fear

by Addie Greene

During a storm at sea, the assault by the elements is so unrelenting that time stands still. Your morale sinks and so does your threshold of fatigue. You feel your mortality. This is the source of the sea’s power—it takes over your soul and turns it inside out.

In the seventies, my husband, Pete Eastman, and I sailed around the world in our 28-foot boat, Wa, a tale I tell in my memoir How the Winds Laughed. One of my most vivid lessons in fear began in the south Pacific, between the islands of Abemama and Tarawa. The 86-mile trip had begun easily enough, with the wind blowing 20 knots behind us and clumps of thunderheads scudding along the horizon. I sleepily crawled into bed for a nap.

The wind began to build and the seas with it, so that soon the crashing and banging upon the bow made my bed roll and sound as if it were a barrel being dashed down Niagara Falls. By late afternoon Wa had sailed into the line of squalls, and there was little chance Pete could take star sights to fix our position in relation to Maiana, an atoll about 18 miles south of our course. Even in broad daylight Maiana would be visible only from about 10 miles; at night during a storm I feared Wa would be swept onto its reef and dashed to pieces.

Suddenly the wind blasted as if it were going to pick Wa up off the face of the sea.

“Take the tiller!” cried Pete, stumbling forward to take down the sails as the gale carried away his glasses.

“Oh my God, what’s happening?” I yelled . The force of the howling wind had flattened the waves, so that the sea looked quite calm. But it was bubbling on the surface and seemed to seethe underneath with motion. Spray came off its face like smoke. The raindrops pelted so hard they felt like fistfuls of rock salt being hurled by some giant hand.

The seas mounted from 10 feet, to 12, to 15, and then finally the wind abated. Pete put up the jib to give Wa stability, and the 105-square-foot scrap of sail drove us forward at five knots. I still kept a weather eye, looking back and forth from the compass. When a wave larger than the rest came, I turned Wa downwind, petrified that the next wave would roll us over as Wa struggled to right herself.

For eight hours, I was deathly afraid, fear the like of which I never had felt. But I mastered it, kept the ship on course, and in the mastering I touched something deep inside my soul. The sea no longer was my enemy. Fear was my enemy.

To find out more about our adventures, read my memoir, How the Winds Laughed, http://www.fuzepublishing.com.

After growing up close to the land on a California ranch, Addie Greene met a man who taught her the glories of the sea. In 1971, the pair decided to sail around the world in a 28-foot boat. She went on to raise two children and pursue a writing career. She lives in Ashland, Oregon, and though 150 miles inland, she can still hear the winds laugh.

Guest Blogger: Molly Best Tinsley, Author of Entering the Blue Stone

What happens when one's larger than life military parents: disciplined, distinguished, exacting, begin sliding out of control? The General struggles to maintain his invulnerable facade against Parkinson's disease; his lovely wife manifests a bizarre dementia. Their three grown children, desperate to save the situation, convince themselves of the perfect solution: an upscale retirement community. But as soon as their parents have been resettled within its walls, the many imperfections of its system of care begin to appear.

Charting the line between comedy and pathos, Molly Best Tinsley's memoir, Entering the Blue Stone, dissects the chaos at the end of life and discovers what shines beneath: family bonds, the dignity of even an unsound mind, and the endurance of the heart.

Search for the Soul
by Molly Best Tinsley

Entering the Blue Stone is a memoir of my parents’ final years, when my father was afflicted with Parkinson’s disease, and my mother was eventually diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. My siblings and I had to move them from their home to an independent living apartment in a continuing care facility, then to the assisted living wing, and finally to the nursing home on the bottom floor. It’s a fairly common experience nowadays, but it feels extraordinary when it happens to you, a cross between a comedy of errors, a crusade for humane treatment, and, of course, a prolonged funeral.

At first my motive in writing was to tell a cautionary tale so that other families might begin this end-of-life process with more information. And certainly there are plenty of advisories in our story. But what we went through wasn’t just an ordeal. The experience reawakened deep connections with my siblings and also a love for our parents we had simply taken for granted over the years. We laughed together as much as we cried. As a family, we were navigating a crazy world. How many times we felt as if the administrative staff had lost their minds while those with diagnosed dementia exemplified grace and a certain common sense! And that feeling led to the most important insight of all—the loss of logic, cognition, and many aspects of personality does not strip the elderly of their humanity. They must still be acknowledged as emotional individuals, unique souls.

After two years, our parents received their final “demotion” to the nursing unit. Following horrific actions on the part of the staff, which I recount in Blue Stone, my father survived there exactly two weeks. Our mother’s journey would be very different. My brother checked in on her every day; my sister and I flew in for a weekend a month and spent long stretches with her in what became the Alzheimer’s ward. And we began to look forward to these visits!

Time stopped, to-do lists were left at the door—we settled into the lounge and chatted with our mother and any other resident who happened by. We introduced ourselves again and again, often to the same person. We learned to watch for cues and listen for subtext in these conversations. If we could let go of our need for them to “make sense,” they often did make sense. We learned that this memory impairment business takes countless forms—Ray never lost the gallantry of gentleman; Marie never lost her ability to find the right tone and timing in her verbal responses, even if the words themselves were “off.” Louise retained her ability to play solitaire, and to clunk around in Dr. Scholl’s wood-soled sandals.

I guess the “moral of the story,” as my dad used to say, was to sink into the experience instead of fighting it—instead of grieving, or resenting, the severely diminished capacities of the elderly, to acknowledge their alternate universe and appreciate the signs of the special spirits which remain.

PURCHASE FROM FUZE PUBLISHING, AMAZON OR BARNES AND NOBLE!

Air Force brat Molly Best Tinsley taught on the civilian faculty at the United States Naval Academy for twenty years and is the institution’s first professor emerita. Author of My Life with Darwin (Houghton Mifflin) and Throwing Knives (Ohio State University Press), she also co-authored Satan’s Chamber (Fuze Publishing) and the textbook, The Creative Process (St. Martin’s). Her fiction has earned two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Sandstone Prize, and the Oregon Book Award. Her plays have been read and produced nationwide.

Interview with Larry Buchanan and Karen Gans, Authors of The Gift of El Tio

Larry Buchanan earned his PhD in Economic Geology in 1979 and taught university-level geology for several years, but his love of the field led him to gold and silver prospecting in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. In 2006, he won the coveted Thayer Lindsley Award for the San Cristobal silver discovery. Dr. Buchanan has published a dozen scientific works and is a sought-after speaker at international conferences and college campuses.

Karen Gans earned her Master’s degree in Early Childhood Development and has thirty-five years experience as an educator, counselor, and mental health consultant. She taught English in the Quechua village while the couple lived in Bolivia. Ms. Gans and her husband have four children and two grandchildren.

To find out more visit http://thegiftofeltio.com.


Where did you grow up?

Larry – I was born and raised in the Pennsylvania coal fields, but at 11 moved to the Mojave Desert of California where I fell in love with the wide open spaces. Each weekend I hiked up and down the canyons and ridges, crawled through abandoned mines, and searched for veins of silver and gold. I read geology books before I was in high school, so you might say I was a prospector since my pre-adolescence.

Karen – I grew up in Connecticut, surrounded by trees and no desert in sight. That made living in the high desert of Bolivia a challenge!


When did you begin writing?

Larry – I began writing in 1964, my sophomore year of college. My professors said my imagery was like that of Saroyan, whom I had never even heard of but I assumed it was a compliment. Then for about 30 years I was too busy making a living to give creative writing much thought.

Karen – I wrote professional reports from the time I was in my twenties. The Gift of El Tio is my first creative non-fiction endeavor. Larry and I began to document events in 1998 and it took twelve years to write our book.

Do you write during the day, at night or whenever you can sneak a few moments?

Larry – I write best from 5 AM to 11 AM, then the day's crises take over.

Karen – I like to write in the mornings, read what I’ve written later in the day, and revise the next morning.

What is this book about?

Larry – Initially, we planned to merely document the changes in the people as my company destroyed their village. At the time, I felt that everything could be reduced to a mathematical common denominator, that cold, hard facts trumped culture, feelings, history and religion every time; and that the impoverished 17th Century village had nothing worth preserving. The silver discovery was mine, by God, they were going to move, and nothing more needed be said. Imagine my surprise when not only did I become intrigued with the color and value of Quechua culture and cosmology, but I also learned that the silver discovery wasn’t mine at all: The people knew the silver was there all along, they were just waiting for the fulfillment of a 400-year old prophesy from their god, El Tio, who promised them a gift that would change their lives forever, a gift to be revealed in the year 2000. It seems I was just a convenient messenger for this god to help fulfill his promise. Indeed, El Tio’s silver gift did change their lives forever, but he never said the changes would be for the better, and like most gifts, this one had many strings attached.

Karen- Although we set out to document the changes in the village, the book also became the story of the changes in each of us. As I describe in your next question below, Larry and I came from polarized viewpoints regarding development in third-world countries. We wrote The Gift of El Tio in alternating chapters, first my voice, then Larry’s. People tell us it reads like a suspenseful novel.

What inspired you to write it?

Karen – I was appalled when Larry told me his company would have to move an indigenous village in order to build a mine. I am quite liberal; Larry, conservative. I argued that it was immoral to destroy a culture; he, that the mine would bring jobs and eradicate poverty and that culture did not feed hungry people. I felt so strongly that I demanded we live in the village and document the changes.

Larry - Karen made me do it. Women have a way of controlling men.

Who is your favorite character from the book?

Larry – Without a doubt it is that old sprite, Juan de la Cruz Copa Quispe, the chief of the village whose perpetual smile was only broken by a grin. Don Juan was the keeper of the customs and he was eager to teach us the myths, prophesies and rituals of his people.

Karen – My favorite character is based on the adolescent, Soledad, who befriended me early on. She could understand my faltering Spanish and would interpret what was going on around me. This young lady was so resourceful – she maneuvered the rocky terrain like a goat, could hunt and catch the desert critters, and she dreamed of becoming a mechanic/chauffeur.

Was the road to publication smooth sailing or a bumpy ride?

Karen- After numerous “almosts” followed by rejections from agents, we were fortunate that our writing instructor, Molly Tinsley, and her colleague, Karetta Hubbard, created FUZE publishers and wanted our book. Molly not only helped us get published, but she also did an excellent job of editing our manuscript.

If you knew then, what you know now, is there anything you would have done differently?

Larry – Yes, I would have made the book twice as thick. We have so many fascinating stories we didn't put in. Of course, the conventional wisdom is that thick books don't sell.

Karen – I can’t think of anything. Larry and I had great fun – for the most part – writing together. I do feel sad that we had to omit some of the chapters.

Where can readers purchase a copy of your book?

From: Fuzepublishing.com
Amazon.com,
Kindle and Nook

Do you have a video trailer to promote your book? If yes, where can readers find it?

Yes, the trailer can be found on our website: thegiftofeltio.com (media and press –radio,television,video), Fuzepublishing.com or Youtube


What is the best investment you have made in promoting your book?

Larry - Getting to know our editor Molly Best Tinsley and our publisher Karetta Hubbard. Fuze Publishing also puts out an excellent newsletter thanks to Meg Tinsley.

Karen – Larry contacted 3,000 geologists, letting them know this book is available. I thought Larry might lose his professional credibility. (You’ll see why when you read the book). However, the book is being used to sensitize geologists to how they impact cultures. It does help that Larry is a world-renowned geologist. Also, selling electronic books is profitable.

What is one piece of advice you would like to share with aspiring authors everywhere?

Larry – Live first, then write.

Karen – keep writing

What is up next for you?

Larry – An autobiography in which I not only tell you how to discover huge silver deposits, but also give you clues that tell you exactly where one is waiting to be discovered.

Karen – I’ve witnessed the struggles of an illegal immigrant family and I’m hoping to tell their story.

Is there anything you would like to add?

Larry - There is nothing like huddling around a fire in the cold nights while the wind whistles through the grasses and sage, listening to the stories told by the shaman and chief of the village, watching their faces as the wind screams…is that a man?…a spirit? …maybe El Tio is hungry tonight? Wrap the llama fur about you and stay close to the fire.

Price: $19.95 paperback, $5.99 ebook
Pages: 254
ISBN: 9781450739146
Publisher: Fuze Publishing
Release: December 2010

Amazon paperback buy link:
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