Books – Jadi Campbell

Best American Essays

I just received this notification from the International Human Rights Art Movement: “Congratulations! Out of hundreds of pieces we published this year, your work has been chosen as one of three to be nominated for the Best American Essays anthology. You may now refer to yourself as “Best American Essays-nominated writer”!

Whether or not ‘Red, Red Roses’ is chosen for the anthology, the honor is huge. My essay appeared in the IHRAM Magazine’s Second Quarter issue. You can purchase a print issue at this link: International Human Rights Arts Movement.

And hell yes, I will be adding the distinction “Best American Essays-nominated writer” to my CV!

NOTES: © 2024 Jadi Campbell. To see Uwe’s photos and pics from our trips go to viewpics.de. My forthcoming book The Taste of Your Name was one of six finalists for the 2025 Compass Press Book Award. Stay posted: The Taste of Your Name will be available soon. My previous books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded and The Trail Back Out. Tsunami Cowboys was longlisted for the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award. Broken In: A Novel in Stories was semifinalist for the international 2020 Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Award from Hidden River Arts and Finalist for Greece’s 2021 Eyelands Book of the Year Award (Short Stories). The Trail Back Out was the 2023 San Francisco Book Festival Winner for General Fiction, American Book Fest 2020 Best Book Award Finalist: Fiction Anthologies, Runner-Up for the 2021 Top Shelf Award, 2021 IAN Book of the Year Award Short Story Collection Finalist, and awarded a 2021 Wishing Shelf Red Ribbon. The title story The Trail Back Out was longlisted for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award.

And I am a “Best American Essays-nominated writer”!

Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.

Today’s Birthday: Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo

Jorge Luis Borges was born on August 24, 1899 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was a colassal figure in Spanish language arts and letters. His work is classified as fantasy and philosophical literature; he was a poet and translator, too. My second book Tsunami Cowboys includes a quote of his.

Borges said, “Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire.” [1]

In his honor I am reprinting the post I wrote after visiting a tiger park in India. – Jadi

“A brave heart and a courteous tongue,” said he. “They shall carry thee far through the jungle, manling.” —The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling [2]

We’re in India for a few weeks and currently we’re riding in the back of an open jeep. We spent the better part of five hours each day on really bad roads to get here.

Now we’re layered in the few long-sleeved clothes we brought along. How cold can it be if you’re not way up north trekking in the Himalyas?

How cold? Man, it’s effing freezing.

It’s shortly after 6 a.m. in the Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve and we’ve been up since 5:00. “Remind me,” I beg. “What are we doing here?” I wrap the blanket the tiger lodge lent us tighter around my body. (What I really want is a sub zero temperatures sleeping bag.) “Remind me,” I ask again. “Why are we doing this?”

“You wanted to come back to India,” Uwe prompts.

“Oh, yeah. Now I remember.” And it’s true: I was really excited to return. I fell in love with the subcontinent when we visited a decade ago. In Goa we walked miles of pristine beaches. In Karnataka we attended an astonishing Nandi Purnima, the full moon festival, and Hampi was a bare landscape filled with gigantic boulders and ancient temples.

In a country this exotic and large, surely we’d experience something new when we came back. What I did not expect was that I’d be freezing my ass off.

***

D31_9976_DxO8 — Entrance to Bandhavgahr National Park

We’re doing a mix of culture and nature. India is one of the two most populated countries on the planet, and we thought it would be smart to schedule some time in quieter areas too. I’m glad we did. The north central region of Madya Pradesh is green and varied and home to some of the few remaining wild Bengal tiger populations.

So for two days at Bandhavgarh and a day at Kanha National Park*, we haul our sorry butts out of bed at the crack of dawn, pull on all our clothes and drape ourselves in borrowed blankets. 6 a.m.-1 p.m. for the early safari; 3-6 p.m. for the afternoon attempt. If we’re lucky, we’ll spot a big cat.

We’re not lucky. We’re cold.

***

Later we shed layers as the day warms up. The parks contain barking and spotted deer,

gaurs, nilgai,

lemurs and langurs,

wild peacocks and other birdlife,

wild boar,

and a landscape filled with watering holes and high grasses, forest and farmers’ villages. On the second day at Bandhavgarh our jeep carries a park ranger to inspect a water buffalo kill from the night before. It occurred just outside the official boundary of the preserve and the farmer will be reimbursed for the animal the tiger took down.

We aren’t allowed to leave the jeep – ever – and the ranger approaches the carcass very slowly.

Park Ranger inspecting water buffalo carcass — Be sure you notice that the ranger’s got on lots of clothes too.

Where there’s a fresh kill, the big cat can’t be far.

I mean it: it's really cold out. — I mean it: it’s really cold out.

By the third day I’ve perfected what I name the mummy wrap. I have myself wrapped so tight that I literally can’t move, but this way the blanket doesn’t unwind in the cold wind.

Brr.

And, suddenly, a tiger leaps from the forest, followed by his mate. He moves into the reeds and returns dragging a dead spotted deer by the neck.

We see them for less than a minute and those seconds are absolutely worth the days of waiting. My God, they’re magnificent! During the afternoon safari we get lucky again: 10 seconds of spotting a shyer, rarer leopard.

D32_0640_DxO8 — The leopard moved unconcerned in the back through the high grass

Uwe captures the group of spotted deer nervously fleeing the leopard. He’s in Photographer Heaven.

Naturally we’re already dreaming – about an African safari.

In memory of Jorge Luis Borges, 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986

NOTES: [1] New Refutation of Time, Other Inquisitions, 1952. [2] Kanha National Park provided the inspiration for Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book. © 2014 Jadi Campbell. Previously published as Remind Me Again: What Are We Doing Here? All photos © Uwe Hartmann.

My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded, and The Trail Back Out.

Tsunami Cowboys was longlisted for the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award. Broken In: A Novel in Stories was semifinalist for the international 2020 Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Award from Hidden River Arts and Finalist for Greece’s 2021 Eyelands Book of the Year Award (Short Stories). The Trail Back Out was the 2023 San Francisco Book Festival Winner for General Fiction, American Book Fest 2020 Best Book Award Finalist: Fiction Anthologies, Runner-Up for the 2021 Top Shelf Award, 2021 IAN Book of the Year Award Short Story Collection Finalist, and awarded a 2021 Wishing Shelf Red Ribbon. The title story The Trail Back Out was longlisted for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award.

Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.

Anthony Michael Bourdain + Abby’s Ingredients

Anthony Bourdain was born June 25, 1956 in New York City. Burdain was famous as a chef and television personality, and infamous for his previous drug use and books exposing the dirty secrets of the culinary world. He was a fearless eater, traveling the world and trying everything at least once. According to Wikipedia this list includes but is by no means limited to blood sausage, sheep testicles, ant eggs, a raw seal eyeball, a cobra (including its still-beating heart), the rectum of a warthog, and fermented shark. He committed suicide and the world lost a true original. In his honor I am reprinting an earlier post about ingredients. – Jadi

In a post titled Punctured, we met Jeremy: he works in a food co-op and is bitten by a gigantic Thai centipede. Earlier Jeremy worked in a coolants factory that moved operations; repaired stereo turntables until CDs took over; and serviced video stores where the only genre patrons regularly rented was pornography. Then, with the advent of on-line downloads, those shops closed as well.

He’s tried to involve his wife in some aspect of each new venture. Now Jeremy’s at the co-op, and Abigail’s nervous…

Pomolo, Mekong Delta Vietnam — Pomolo, Mekong Delta, Vietnam

Jeremy got a job at the market and the offerings for her continued education went from disks to baskets full of items Abigail couldn’t begin to identify. “Whole foods?” Abigail asked bewildered. “What, have I been cooking halves all this time?” Her culinary repertoire consisted of items like tuna surprise, or flank steak with teriyaki sauce.

Jackfruit, southern Goa, India — Jackfruit, Organic farm, Goa, India

Water buffalo, market Luang Prabang, Laos — Water buffalo, Luang Prabang, Laos

As Jeremy introduced new ingredients for her to cook, Abigail despaired. The experiment with pornography had wearied her in more than just her body. The effort to familiarize herself with her husband’s latest employment arena was too much. Abigail couldn’t even begin to cook with broccoli rape, celeriac, rose apples, or salsify…

just looking up the latter food and realizing that it was a vegetable also known as oyster plant rendered it too foreign. If she didn’t know where to start with a real oyster, how in the world would she find her way around a dastardly, cleverly named root vegetable you had to wear rubber gloves to prepare?

Abby stood in her kitchen, lost. She resented feeling inadequate, but she felt guilty, too. Nothing says loving like something in the oven. Which part was true, she wondered. Love, for whom? Something in the oven, but what?

43200_V_10_24_13 — Preserved eggs, Kanchanaburi, Thailand

Her husband had assaulted her senses one by one. First it was her sense of touch with the air conditioners. Sound had proved inadequate with the stereo shops. Her senses of sight, sound and touch were simultaneously overwhelmed by pornography. Currently the food store derided her sense of taste. Abigail wondered depressed what would be next for her sense of smell.

Abby leafed through the cookbook he bought her and sighed, looking without success for familiar ingredients. Miracle whip. Devils food cake. Cowboy beans and chili. A slice of American cheese on a burger. Jell-O with fruit cocktail. When she confessed this to Jeremy, he said, “I married a Betty Crocker cliché.”

He had been dismayed when she first cooked for him. After all those great meals in exotic countries of curries, tom yum gum soups, and completely fresh ingredients, Abby’s cooking was like going from Technicolor to a 50’s black and white film clip. She served fish sticks bearing little resemblance to the fish dishes of his recent memory.

All dishes prepared on boats in Halong Bay, Vietnam

“I made homemade tartar sauce!” she announced proudly.

Jeremy spooned out mayonnaise with pickles cut into it and smiled weakly.

The first time she tried to cook him Indian food Abigail choked almost to death because she had no idea that the whole spices all get taken out or pushed to one side, and are not eaten. Ditto with the hot chilies used for flavor.

Chillies, Hue, Vietnam — Chilies and mini limes, Hue, Vietnam

New ingredients were dangerous. For her, bourbon vanilla meant cheap cooking sherry. Cans of condensed soup were her friends.

Abby loved tuna surprise, and the most exotic dish she could cook was a quiche. “If life is a banquet,” she thought, “I must be cheese Doritos chips. I am flat cherry soda.”

– from the chapter “Punctured” in Broken In: A Novel in Stories

In memory of Anthony Bourdain June 25, 1956 – June 8, 2018

NOTES: ©2024 Jadi Campbell. Previously published as Despair is an Exotic Ingredient. Broken In: A Novel in Stories was semifinalist for the international 2020 Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Award from Hidden River Arts, and Finalist for Greece’s international 2021 Eyelands Book of the Year Award (Short Stories). All photos © Uwe Hartmann. More of Uwe’s photography may be viewed at viewpics.de.

My other books are Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded, and The Trail Back Out.

Tsunami Cowboys was longlisted for the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award. The Trail Back Out was the 2023 San Francisco Book Festival Winner for General Fiction, American Book Fest 2020 Best Book Award Finalist: Fiction Anthologies, Runner-Up for the 2021 Top Shelf Award, 2021 IAN Book of the Year Award Short Story Collection Finalist, and awarded a 2021 Wishing Shelf Red Ribbon. The title story The Trail Back Out was longlisted for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award.

Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.

Today’s Birthday: Rachel Louise Carson

Rachel Louise Carson was born on May 27, 1907 in Springdale, Pennsylvania. She was a nature writer, marine biologist, conservationist, and scientist whose 1962 book Silent Spring helped spark the international environmental movement. Silent Spring first brought the world’s attention on the devastation done by synthetic pesticides. The New Yorker and Audubon serialized the book. The big chemical corporations fought her book (of course), including DuPont, Velsicol Chemical Corporation, and American Cyanamid. They claimed she was a fanatic, a Communist (?? because only Communists care about the environment ??), and impugned and called into question her credentials as a scientist. Nonetheless, Carson’s work eventually spurred lawmakers to ban DDT and similar pesticides!

Rachel Carson is one of the scientists whose work led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. [1, 2] Her book plays a big role in the phenomenally successful science fiction trilogy The Three-Body Problem by China’s author Liu Cixin. It’s been a best-selling book in translation and was made into a series both in China and on Netflex. [3]

In acknowledgment of her work I am honored to reprint part of the post I wrote after visiting the intact world of Borneo’s protected frog populations. – Jadi

Ah, Kubah National Park on Borneo…. froggie paradise. The park is also home to other species. We met these guys.

Borneo angle-headed lizard (Gonocephalus borneensis)

Giant bent-toed gecko (Cyrtodactylus consobrinus)

And these. They were the size of my out-stretched hand!

When we planned what to do and see on Borneo, I made only one request. Okay, I admit: it was a demand. I wanted, no, I needed to go on the night tour to see endemic frogs.

Our tour guide picked us up in front of the hotel and drove us out to Kubah National Park, where the park ranger met us. The four of us headed up into the park in the deepening darkness. And I do mean up: we climbed to 1,ooo feet to reach the part of the park where the most frogs hang out. The road was lit only by the beams of our torches and the flashes of fire flies.

Fire flies! I haven’t seen them since my childhood in New England, back when their on-and-off glow was an atmospheric element of every summer evening….

It was glorious.

You hear the one about the cinnamon frog and the fly?

It was also very, very funny, at times like being in a Monty Python sketch. Overcast, humid as hell and still hot as hell, even in the middle of the night. I dripped sweat and my glasses kept fogging up. Pitch black darkness, except for our flashlights…. which the two guides and I were shining on the frogs so that Uwe could capture them in photos. He didn’t want to use the camera flash, not wanting to startle the wild life and because light from a camera flash is too artificial. So I took his flashlight and held a torch in each hand, aiming them as directed. It was as though he were a mad director with a camera crew. It didn’t bother the critters one bit – they went on singing, and croaking, and hanging out on bole branch and vine…

Pitcher plant colony. Home of the narrow-mouth frog, first described in 2010. Microhyla borneensis was once the smallest known frog from the Old World (the current record holder is Paedophryne amauensis from New Guinea). The narrow-mouth frog is the size of your pinkie’s finger nail

A highlight in a night of a parade of wonders was the long-nosed horned frog. O.M.G. If folks on safari speak of the ‘Big Five’, froggers go into raptures about this guy:

He lives in the leaf litter on the jungle floor, and remained motionless even as the park ranger cleared away the leaf detritus around him so that we could see him better. The horned frog, mahogany frog, and narrow-mouthed frog found in the pitcher plant are the rarest of the rare, the ‘Big Three’ of Kubah Park’s frog world. I clearly saw the first two, and saw the third jump from a distance.

Natural world geek heaven.

In memory of Rachel Carson, 27 May 1907 – 14 April 1964

NOTES: [1, 2] President Jimmy Carter awarded Rachel Carson the Presidential Medal of Freedom after her death. Go to my post Today’s Birthday: The Enivornmental Protection Act to learn more about the importance of this legislation. Go to my post Jean-Jacques Rabin + The Trogon for more about The Audubon Society. [3] I’ve read one of the books. Dense and absorbing. The Netflix series is superb!

Many of these frog species can be found only on Borneo. Go to this link to hear what serenaded us in the jungle: Most beautiful sound. Microhyla borneensis. The jungle was not silent! © Jadi Campbell 2024. Previously published as Borneo is Frog Paradise: Part Two. All photos © Uwe Hartmann. To see more of Uwe’s pics from Borneo and our trips go to viewpics.de.

My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded, and The Trail Back Out.

Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.

The First Folios II

I’m a lifelong Shakespeare fan. When I met my sister Pam in London, I’d already gotten us tickets for two of his plays. And once I saw a First Folio of The Tempest at the National Maritime Museum, I was on a mission. In the next ten days, I wanted to track down as many Folio Editions as possible….

We didn’t know it, but it was ‘Folio Season’ (4th March to 8th November). The year 2023 was the 400th anniversary of the printing of the First Folio which brought together 23 of the Bard’s plays. Talk about perfect timing to visit London and go on a Shakespeare hunt!

We saw both Macbeth and As You Like It in London and the Globe Theater displayed the ‘Munro’ copy in their main foyer. It was a pleasure to see the anonymous owner had made the copy available for the public to view.

The V&A Museum owns three copies of the First Folio. The V&A’s obsession with collecting (the Victorian “I want!” compulsion, we called it) proved too much for us. Pam and I made it to the room with their folio editions, admired them, and fled.

Image courtesy of the British Library website. Link provided in the NOTES

But the British Library displays copies of all the Folios (First, Second, Third and Fourth) in their superb Treasures Room. The Library was down the street from our hotel; this meant we were able to visit twice and take our time examining the cases with their rare copies of Beowulf, Chaucer, Shakespeare, the Brontë sisters’ teeny tiny book (it fits in a palm), Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman, original notebook pages of song texts by the Beatles, the Magna Carta, and so much more.

It’s free to visit! Go! The Bard and I would approve!

PROSPERO

Sir, I invite your highness and your train
To my poor cell, where you shall take your rest
For this one night; which, part of it, I’ll waste
With such discourse as, I not doubt, shall make it
Go quick away; the story of my life
And the particular accidents gone by
Since I came to this isle: and in the morn
I’ll bring you to your ship and so to Naples,
Where I have hope to see the nuptial
Of these our dear-beloved solemnized;
And thence retire me to my Milan, where
Every third thought shall be my grave.

NOTES: “On 25 March 1616, Shakespeare revised and signed his will. On 23 April, his presumed birthday, he died, aged 52. On 25 April, he was buried at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford.” – The Royal Shakespeare Company.©2024 Jadi Campbell. Click here for more on British Library Treasures. For Uwe’s photos from our trips and his photography, go to viewpics.de.

My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded and The Trail Back Out.

The Trail Back Out was the 2023 San Francisco Book Festival Winner for General Fiction, American Book Fest 2020 Best Book Award Finalist: Fiction Anthologies, Runner-Up for the 2021 Top Shelf Award, 2021 IAN Book of the Year Award Short Story Collection Finalist, and awarded a 2021 Wishing Shelf Red Ribbon. The title story The Trail Back Out was longlisted for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award.

Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.

The First Folios

Fanatical Fan of First Folios ?

That’s me….

I’m in love with Shakespeare. [1] It all began with going to a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream as children. The college show was sold-out, SRO. Or, in my sister Pam’s and my cases, sitting room only. The adults sat us on the edge of the stage and I remember watching spellbound. We were hit by the dew drops that Puck sprinkled on Titania and the hapless lovers, and I’ve been love with the Bard ever since.

Heading to London last September to meet Pam meant we were going to be busy. Pam’s wish list was long and broad. Mine was too, but the #1 item on my list was this: Make a pilgrimage to the National Maritime Museum and the first folio of The Tempest they were exhibiting as part of the First Folio’s 400th birthday!

The exhibit The Tempest and the Thames: Shakespeare’s First Folio was closing a few days after our arrival, and my lovely sister agreed that we could head there before we did anything else in London…

Pammy snapped photos of me pointing in glee at the First Folio edition lent to the museum by Dulwich College. I made a point of leaning over the glass case and read aloud from the pages the curators had opened the folio to. It begins with a terrible storm:

ACT I

SCENE II. The island. Before PROSPERO’S cell.

Enter PROSPERO and MIRANDA

MIRANDA

If by your art, my dearest father, you have
Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them.
The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch,
But that the sea, mounting to the welkin’s cheek,
Dashes the fire out. O, I have suffered
With those that I saw suffer: a brave vessel,
Who had, no doubt, some noble creature in her,
Dash’d all to pieces. O, the cry did knock
Against my very heart. Poor souls, they perish’d.
Had I been any god of power, I would
Have sunk the sea within the earth or ere
It should the good ship so have swallow’d and
The fraughting souls within her.

PROSPERO

Be collected:
No more amazement: tell your piteous heart
There’s no harm done.

It was an emotional experience for me. I swear my eyes were filling with tears by the time I finished reading out loud from a manuscript of a play performed 400 years ago.

Reading from a First Folio went from being a thrill to an obsession. I decided to track down as many folios as time allowed.

Part II to follow!

NOTES: [1] I mentioned this fact in a post I titled Meet the One-Tracks. And today is William Shakespeare’s birthday. The Immortal Bard would be 459 years young today. He and his works haven’t aged a bit. ©2024 Jadi Campbell. For Uwe’s photos from our trips and his photography, go to viewpics.de.

My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded and The Trail Back Out.

Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.

The Green Under the Snow

THEMA Literary Journal’s new issue Help From a Stranger features my short story The Green Under the Snow. This story is from my collection The Trail Back Out.

Here is their mission statement: “THEMA, the theme-related journal, has three goals. One is to provide a stimulating forum for established and emerging literary and visual artists. The second is to serve as source material and inspiration for teachers of creative writing. The third is to provide readers with a unique and entertaining collection of stories, poems, art and photography.”

THEMA was born in 1988 and is used by university writing programs across the USA.

To see more and order issues, here is a link to their website: https://themaliterarysociety.com/

I’m one proud author and deeply honored THEMA accepted my story!

The Trail Back Out was the 2023 San Francisco Book Festival Winner for General Fiction, American Book Fest 2020 Best Book Award Finalist: Fiction Anthologies, Runner-Up for the 2021 Top Shelf Award, 2021 IAN Book of the Year Award Short Story Collection Finalist, and awarded a 2021 Wishing Shelf Red Ribbon. The title story The Trail Back Out was long listed for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award.

Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.

Albert Chinụalụmọgụ Achebe’s Banned Book

Author Chinua Achebe was born on November 16, 1930 in Ogidi, Nigeria. He remains one of world literature’s most important African writers, widely read and studied. When it first appeared, Things Fall Apart was banned in Malaysia and Nigeria. In my first year of college I read this devastating book. I recently reread it, and would like to think that our world has grown more aware of the destruction colonization brings. But attacks on books and ideas have only increased; Things Fall Apart was challenged by schools in Texas.

In honor of Chinua Achebe, here is the post I wrote for Banned Books Week. – Jadi

I’d been warned: the 5-Star reviews couldn’t last forever. “Be prepared,” people cautioned me. “Trolls are out there and sooner or later one of them will pan a book. It’s going to be ugly.” I don’t check for reviews on Amazon much as I take the long view. Writing a book is a slow process, and building up a list of reviews can take a while. I’ve been pleasantly surprised to receive consistently solid, glowing reviews.

Until now.

I got my first 1-Star review. The German guy says Tsunami Cowboys is the worst book he’d ever read. He didn’t finish it. And, after page 56, HE BURNED IT.

WTF? Really?? In the 21^st century, people are still burning books?!?

I went into shock. I was horrified. Shaken. Ashamed, even. In my worst nightmares, I never ever ever imagined someone would actually destroy my words like this. Until now, it was beyond my powers of imagination.

I got out a copy of the book. What could possibly be so offensive? I opened to page 56 and the peak of a chapter in which Coreen, one of the main characters, is trapped in a cult and can’t get out.

Ok…. Maybe the troll was upset by the topic. I sure was; that’s why I wrote about it. If he’d made it to the end of the book he would have learned the following: I’m religious. I believe in God. My heroine’s story continues well past the page where he stopped reading.

If he’d bothered with the author’s Afterword, he’d have learned my personal reasons for even including this thread in my book.

I’m appalled that someone would be so hateful. I questioned everything I am doing as a writer, and worried about the consequences of exercising my voice. Then I remembered: I just went to a high school reunion. It was a fantastic weekend spent seeing wonderful people again. By far one of the most lovely is a woman who was a missionary.

She’s read my books. At the reunion, she made a point of telling me that the story of Coreen and the cult disconcerted her, and she had to put Tsunami Cowboys down for a while. It hit a little too close to home. But, she said, she picked it back up a few months later, read it to the end, and liked the story I told very much.

So that reassures me.

Words contain a lot of power, more than we realize. My encounter with the troll really brings that realization home to me, and in the future I will pay closer attention. His other reviews have the same ugly caustic tone, so I’m not alone. I’m not sure if that makes me feel better, or worse.

As my dear writer buddy Nancy Carroll remarked: “You’re now in good company, Jadi. Think of the books that have been burned through the ages.”

Indeed.

Think about them.

In memory of Chinua Ochibe, 16 November 1930 – 21 March 2013

NOTES: [1] https://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/. Books by authors of color continue to be challenged and censored. Top 10 Banned Books that Changed the Face of Black History P.S. The trolls reviews have all been taken down! © Jadi Campbell 2023. Previously published as Someone Burned My Book. All photos © Uwe Hartmann. Uwe’s photos of our trips and his photography may be viewed at viewpics.de.

My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded, and The Trail Back Out.

My burned book Tsunami Cowboys was longlisted for the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award.

Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.

Today’s Birthday: Abraham Stoker

Author Bram Stoker was born on November 8, 1847 in Clontarf, Dublin, Ireland. In 1897 Stoker gave the world Dracula, the vampire from Transylvania. Undead, the vampire must drink blood and transforms himself into a wolf or a bat at will. In Stoker’s honor here is an excerpt from my first book, about the 2,000,000 wrinkle-lips bats Uwe and I saw when we visited Thailand. – Jadi

Gabe had seen places, either accompanied by a friend or alone, that were magic. All the hardships of individual travel had been amply rewarded as he stood with the driver and guide and watched while millions of wrinkle-lipped bats flew from a cave on a hill in central Thailand.

It was dusk when the car came to a stop on a plain with no one in sight, the sun a bright red disk sailing below the horizon. Gabe got out of the car just as the first bats emerged from the cave.

These were followed by more, and more, and more, an impossible number of flying mammals swooping and looping in ribbons across the skies.

“Each bat will cover up to 200 kilometers of hunting grounds tonight before they’re done,” the guide told him.

Gabe heard them calling to one another, the rustle of millions of wings unlike anything he’d ever experienced. His view across the plain was filled with the streams of flying creatures dark against the crimson of the deepening night sky.

There was not a single other human being anywhere, no buildings, no roads, no signs of human civilization, only the twisting spirals of the bat colony in the air.

The men stood for over two hours as the bats sailed overhead. Gabe waited until it was too dark to make out the shapes of the bats before he turned away, images of flight burned onto his retinas and his memory.

– from the chapter “Waiting” in Broken In: A Novel in Stories

In memory of Bram Stoker, 8 November 1847 – 20 April 1912

My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded and The Trail Back Out.

Broken In: A Novel in Stories was semifinalist for the international 2020 Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Award from Hidden River Arts and Finalist for Greece’s international 2021 Eyelands Book of the Year Award (Short Stories).

Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.

Story collection featuring Cranberry Lake wins award

I was interviewed recently by Adam Atkinson at North Country Now. He wrote a beautiful article. Click on the link to read about one of the most remote and serene places I’ve ever spent time in.

Source: Story collection featuring Cranberry Lake wins award

Category: Books

Best American Essays

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Today’s Birthday: Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo

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Anthony Michael Bourdain + Abby’s Ingredients

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Today’s Birthday: Rachel Louise Carson

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The First Folios II

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The First Folios

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The Green Under the Snow

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Albert Chinụalụmọgụ Achebe’s Banned Book

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