SINFUL FOLK - Writing Blog

Book Trailer for Sinful Folk (preview version)

Tue, 29 May 2012 14:53:16 -0400

Book Trailer for Sinful Folk (preview version)

What Really Matters - One Mother's Story

Mon, 28 May 2012 14:35:00 -0400

Yesterday, I was at my daughter’s school. One of her teachers nicely asked about my forthcoming book. Here’s what I said: “The book is set in the 14th century - the Middle Ages - it’s about a former nun who has lived in secret for 10 years. Then her son is killed, and she goes on a terrible journey to find out the truth about her life, and prove that her son’s life mattered.”

The teacher looked at me and cocked her head to the side. “That’s so different,” she said. “I thought since you work in business, you’d write a techno-thriller or something like that. Why this story?”

It’s a great question.

For several years, I commuted from my home in Olympia to Seattle. I rode the commuter train an hour each way. I worked a demanding job in high-tech with some very smart people. Lots of email, many hours on spreadsheets and business plans. Your busy job in today’s world is probably pretty similar!

But for an hour a day on the train each way, each day, I had time to think.

And I started thinking about what really matters.

Mothers. Children. Friends. Love. Our connection to each other. Our legacy in our children.

I wanted to write a story about these things. Not about software, or iPads, or spreadsheets. I didn’t want to write about the ephemera of modern life — even though I love books like The Future of Us.

I wanted to focus the lens tighter. What happens when you strip life down to its essentials?

And I remembered a bit of history from the 14th century. Children died in a tragic house fire in a distant village. The families were in such agony that they took their dead children across England to the King’s throne to demand justice!

I could imagine their pain. The torture of losing your child. Their angry search for answers.

Children. Families. Loyalties divided in a village.

In the Middle Ages, there was no Facebook to distract, no email, no websites. Just the realities of what really matters.

So I started writing, in the early hours, as my train wended its way through the misty countryside.

The story became about one woman’s story. One mother loving her child. One tragedy. One relentless urge to find answers.

I wrote my book Sinful Folk because I wanted to think deeply about children, mothers, families, and loyalty. How far would a mother go to protect her child’s memory?

The character of Mear showed me what strength is hidden in the most unlikely heroines. She showed me how strong a mother can be. What power can be concealed in silence. She showed me what really matters.

Thanks for asking!

story-dj: Some of the truest words ever spoken. Ideas will...

Tue, 15 May 2012 04:02:46 -0400

story-dj:

Some of the truest words ever spoken. Ideas will never die, and individual thought will never die.

Review: Sinful Folk exciting, great writing

Sat, 12 May 2012 03:47:23 -0400

Really enjoying this book — I thought it would be slow, moving back into the middle ages, but instead this is really fast moving, exciting and interesting. I keep wondering how this woman kept herself hidden for all these years, and how in the world she managed to keep herself alive. Every other chapter, I’m wondering how she isn’t dead yet. But she’s smart, inventive, misses nothing — and she’s close-mouthed and shy. (A lot like me!) Great writing, interesting medieval perspective. I just hope she stays alive to the end of the book! — Anne Stanford on GoodReads http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12401599-sinful-folk

millionsmillions: A collection of essays, pictures, interviews...

Thu, 10 May 2012 21:41:32 -0400

millionsmillions:

A collection of essays, pictures, interviews and more with the late Sendak.

keys, mysteries, texts, writing

Sat, 05 May 2012 04:03:38 -0400

keys, mysteries, texts, writing

"As long as I can do my work and continue to enjoy myself working on words … I feel fulfilled. My..."

Fri, 04 May 2012 09:56:51 -0400

““As long as I can do my work and continue to enjoy myself working on words … I feel fulfilled. My body causes me trouble when I cross the room, but when I am sitting down writing, I am in my heaven — my old heaven. I began writing when I was 12, I don’t think very well. But I’ve been doing it my whole life. It’s been the center of my life with loves and children, but writing is something I have that not everyone has that I adore.”

- On today’s Fresh Air, poet Donald Hall reflects on aging, writing and his life. (via nprfreshair)

Review: Sinful Folk fascinating, great read!

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 03:50:46 -0400

Reading this book prior to release…. great read! Interesting story, fascinating medieval landscape, and amazing characters. If you liked Pillars of the Earth or Year of Wonders, you’ll like this book. Also, seems a lot like The Red Tent, for people who loved that interwearving of history and ideas and women’s stories. — Ed Wheeler on GoodReads http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12401599-sinful-folk

"Ten years ago, Michaelmas. Summer hours fading into dusk, day dying slow. I had fallen out of the..."

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 04:37:34 -0400

“Ten years ago, Michaelmas. Summer hours fading into dusk, day dying slow. I had fallen out of the straight path into a place of harsh rocks and broken brambles, like the legend tells Satan fell from heaven on St. Michael’s Day. But I had fallen from no heaven, and those who pursued me were no angels.”

- Sinful Folk, by Ned Hayes (forthcoming in 2012)

"A fog of pain overwhelms me, the world is turned all wrong. I will discover who did this, I will..."

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 04:24:41 -0400

“

A fog of pain overwhelms me, the world is turned all wrong. I will discover who did this, I will find the truth.

Yet as I struggle to catch up with the cart, I know that I am going only because my son is going away. My whole life is contained in that tortured, blackened husk. My child.

Where else would I go, but with him?

”

- Sinful Folk, by Ned Hayes (forthcoming in 2012)

"Any man among us has seen so many die over the years, the wave after wave of death sweeping in like..."

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 04:35:38 -0400

“

Any man among us has seen so many die over the years, the wave after wave of death sweeping in like a tide that strikes all, haphazard. The good, the bad, the virgin and the harlot: no one is spared, all go rose-spattered with plague lesions, and there is no sense, no judgment before doom strikes.

Death takes us all with the black malady or the sweating sickness or the white blindness or the winter croup, crops failing or bitter water in our mouths.

There is no justice to such deaths, and there is no sense.

But this fire – the flames that burned our boys – these few deaths were an act of malevolence. Someone intended this, there was a judgment made, an evil act. And in this, it is for sure and certain that there is a soul at fault. Someone can be blamed, if not for all the deaths that have been visited upon us, then for these deaths as a synecdoche for all that came before.

I will move heaven and earth to hold onto one thing that makes sense now, the few victims who can be atoned, the one tragedy that can be redeemed.

”

- Sinful Folk, by Ned Hayes (forthcoming 2012)

April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead...

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 04:01:00 -0400

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain

- T.S. Eliot

"White men’s bodies turn green under the billows of the sea I have been told so; when the young..."

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 09:00:05 -0400

“

White men’s bodies turn green under the billows of the sea
I have been told so; when the young are dragged from the tide
their lips have melted into a delicate slash of emerald.

Black bodies turn blue in the brine
none of the longshoremen here notice, for there are too many dead;
in Jamaica or Barbados it is rarer. There, the heavy pictish tinge
is obvious — their friends, dark and strangely indigo, found
among the flood of tourist caucasian suicides.

There is a color women’s bodies turn
the change is as oblique as the departure of the soul
when our flesh takes on the scent of waves, our skin tone melds away.

But no one has ever noticed the change of shade; these corpses often float for years. then, sometimes, they return to shore, marry, take up jobs or clean house, have children, laugh and talk.

I am walking around still, tasting of ocean, undetected.

”

- “Transfiguration”

From the book of poems Glossolalia: Speaking in Tongues (2009), by Ned Hayes

(Poem appeared previously in The Mid-American Review )

"Sinful Folk" - a 2012 Amazon Breakthrough Novel

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 13:36:00 -0400

Sinful Folk just hit the “2012 Amazon Breakthrough Novel” short list (the quarter-finals)!

You can get two FREE chapters right here on SinfulFolk.com (over to the RIGHT here —> or at Amazon)

Posting a review on Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Sinful-Folk-2012-Entry-ebook/ would be GREAT — the judges use these early reviews to help decide what novels will progress to the final stages of the contest.

More about the contest here: Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest

Thanks for all your support so far!

Sinful Folk book trailer (preview version)

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 04:45:00 -0400

Sinful Folk book trailer (preview version)

"In the end, I listen to the fear that keeps me awake, that resounds through the frantic beating in..."

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 04:10:05 -0400

“In the end, I listen to the fear that keeps me awake, that resounds through the frantic beating in my breast, the dry terror in my throat, the dread that comes with the pricking of the rat’s nervous feet in the darkness.”

- Sinful Folk, by Ned Hayes (forthcoming in 2012)

"In the early hours of the night, I tell myself that the sound I hear is frost cracking, river ice..."

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 04:18:00 -0400

“

In the early hours of the night, I tell myself that the sound I hear is frost cracking, river ice breaking. I lie to my own heart, as one lies to a frightened child, one who cannot be saved from the conflagration.

All the while, I know it is a fire. And I know how near it is.

”

- Sinful Folk, by Ned Hayes (forthcoming in 2012)

"Always, I must hide my true face. As my fingers work, I grip hope to me, a small bird quaking in the..."

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 04:27:06 -0400

“

Always, I must hide my true face. As my fingers work, I grip hope to me, a small bird quaking in the nest of my heart.
…
This sooty ritual is perhaps my own strange paean to womanhood. Like Theresa of Avignon, that spoiled heiress of the French throne, who shared my vows at Canterbury, the world will see me only as I intend.

It is a type of vanity: if I cannot be a woman, I will be as ugly a man as I can muster.

”

- Sinful Folk, by Ned Hayes (forthcoming in 2012)

"Each time I told my story, I lost a bit, the smallest drop of pain. It was that day that I knew I..."

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 04:00:06 -0500

“Each time I told my story, I lost a bit, the smallest drop of pain. It was that day that I knew I wanted to tell the story of my family. Because horror on Earth is real and it is every day. It is like a flower or like the sun; it cannot be contained.”

- Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones (via bookmania)

"Every sentence has a truth waiting at the end of it and the writer learns to know it when he finally..."

Sat, 03 Mar 2012 09:02:05 -0500

“Every sentence has a truth waiting at the end of it and the writer learns to know it when he finally gets there. On one level this truth is the swing of the sentence, the beat and poise, but down deeper it’s the integrity of the writer as he matches with the language. I’ve always seen myself in sentences. I begin to recognize myself, word by word, as I work through a sentence. The language of my books has shaped me as a man. There’s a moral force in a sentence when it comes out right. It speaks the writer’s will to live. The deeper I become entangled in the process of getting a sentence right in its syllables and rhythms, the more I learn about myself.”

- Bill Gray, the reclusive novelist in Don DeLillo’s novel Mao II. (via mills)