Anne Powers's Blog: Smoke From Small Fires

2018-19 has been an exciting year! I was honored to win the top award at Tennessee Mountain Writers, the “Excellence in Writing” award, and also their first place Fiction award. I was also accepted into the Nashville Writers Group and have spent a productive year with them, learning from Susan Gregg Gilmore (Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen, The Funeral Dress) and 9 other excellent writers.

A new novel, “The Word on the Water”, is over half way finished. Stay tuned!

If you read "SMOKE FROM SMALL FIRES" you'll love Anna Grace and Pearlie's art exhibit, ART IS STRANGER THAN FICTION. It makes the book come alive, and visually explores the emotions, trials and joys in "Smoke".

Enter ANNE SCANDLYN POWERS in the FaceBook search box, and under the PHOTOS tab, open the Album titled ART IS STRANGER THAN FICTION.

The art of Anna Grace and Pearlie Bean was "Ghost Artisted" by Anne Powers.

The art of SMOKE FROM SMALL FIRES characters Anna Grace Tollett and Pearlie Bean opened Sunday (January 17) at the Oak Ridge Art Museum. If you live in East Tennessee, stop by to see it before the first week in March. If not, The entire show, including the intimate sketchbooks of the characters, will be posted on Pinterest after the show closes on March 5! If you read "Smoke" the show will seem like an old friend!

And thanks to all you readers who came to the opening. I appreciated your presence so much!

I am busy,busy,busy in the studio creating an exhibition of the art of my artist book characters, Anna Grace Tollett and Pearlie Bean. Anna Grace is a college graduate art major and a traditional artist. Pearlie Bean makes art in secret, has no art supplies and is completely untrained. It's great fun to crawl into the skins of the fictional characters I created and make their art! The exhibit will open on January 16th, 2016 at the Oak Ridge (Tennessee) Art Museum and run through the first week in march.

Pearlie Bean's work falls in the genre of "primitive" or "raw" art. Some might say you can't make primitive art if you aren't an actual primitive. Since I created Pearlie, her thoughts, and know her mind as well as anyone, I feel qualified to make her art! The title of the exhibit is "Art is Stranger than Fiction!"

If you write, you know that an author's brain has no respect for clocks and schedules and healthy amounts of sleep. Often, the writing that digs the deepest is birthed at odd hours, when braincells start noodling and exploring dark corners that go unnoticed in the light of day.

Once in a while though, good sound sleep sets in, and that is inevitably the very night a tired writer forgets to turn the iPhone to OFF.

Enter another writer's thrill, a PING, or DING or other e-beep of choice because someone, some blessed unknown soul out there in the world, is up at three or four am, and just had to say, right away, "I can't put it down."

When I went to refill my book stash at the local store, I came upon several boomer men talking about "Smoke". They were saying they'd never read a book since high school, and they were reading "Smoke", every word. What's more, they thought they might just start reading for enjoyment. Now that's something! If I don't sell another book, the work has been worthwhile if a few people discover the joy of reading.

Happy Thanksgiving, readers! I wish you a peaceful day and loving family time!

This Thanksgiving, I have so much for which to be grateful. A gracious Spirit, a fine family and the birth of a new baby book!

New authors have so many small thrills after they finally get up the courage to send a new book out into the universe! Here are my three favorites so far!

• Four nights in a row, at 3 or 4 am, a "plop, ping" from the phone I forgot to turn off before I went to bed. Someone was up, reading far into the night, determined to finish "Smoke". Wow!
• At the launch party, parents with a child by the hand, brought around to meet "a real writer". (I was looking around, trying to figure out what author had come to my launch party!)
• And the best one so far, a sweet middle aged man who came up to me and said, "I have never read a book before in my life, but I am going to read every word of this one because I know you." What an honor, if this man does in fact get turned on to the joy of reading, because of me.

Here's a "Foodie" analogy for "Smoke From Small Fires": It's like poisonous, tart, spinybarbed tidbits served on a bed of grits and southern mountain nostalgia! Yummy!


And "Smoke" made some Foodie Blogs! Go look!

Gather with ME by KnoxFoodie

And finally, the book refers to squares of Pearlie's famous strawberry cake. Here's the recipe!
• • • • • •
PEARLIE’S FRESH STRAWBERRY CAKE

For STRAWBERRY CAKE PREHEAT OVEN to 350 Degrees
• 1 cup fresh ripe strawberries, chopped up
• 1 tablespoon water
• 2 cups flour
• 1 1/2 cups (heapin’) of sugar
• 1 tablespoon bakin’ powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 stick softened unsalted butter
• 4 egg whites
• 1 cup milk
• 1 and 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• A drop of red food coloring

STRAWBERRY BUTTER ICING
1 box confectioners sugar
1 stick butter
1 tsp vanilla
3 large ripe strawberries, mushed

Cake
1. Grease up two 8-inch round cake pans.
2. In a large saucepan, cook the strawberries, 2 tablespoons sugar, and water. Stir this and boil it down, and cool it.
3. Mix together the flour, 1 1/2 cups sugar, baking powder, and salt. Beat in the butter until the dough is crumbly.
4. Combine egg whites, milk, and vanilla with a whisk. Add about half of the mixture into the mixing bowl and beat it together. Add the remaining milk mixture and the cooked strawberry mixture. Add a few drops of red food coloring to make the cake pink.
5. Divide the batter between the two cake pans and bake 25-30 minutes or until the tops get brown and a toothpick stuck in the center comes out clean. Cool for 15 minutes then turn the cakes out on cooling racks. Cool before icing.

Icing
1. Blend icing ingredients in a large mixing bowl and frost the cake!

To Blog or not to Blog. In preparation for blogging or not blogging, I scoured Google for the blogs of my favorite authors. There weren’t many, and I wondered if blogging might be a beginner-ish thing to do.

Would Eudora and Tennessee have…blogged?

But my daughter, who is a writer, tells me this can be a great way to connect more personally with your audience. That’s you! I like the idea of being able to say things informally to you, hear from you, and share the birth and life of “Smoke From Small Fires” in an intimate way! After all, a blog is just an ongoing conversation. Not so terrifying. Gulp!

My parents are gone now, and I go to the studio. I close the door behind me, and slip into the skins of my characters, Anna Grace and Pearlie, and make art once again.

Go See!