Excerpt from my novel at The Provo Orem Word

The Provo Orem Word, an online venue for artists in the Provo-Orem area of Utah, has published an excerpt from my novel The Pictograph Murders (Signature Books 2004) in this year’s nature-themed issue.   You can read the excerpt and rest of the issue here, or click on the picture.   Also, check out the ad for The Pictograph Murders and Wilderness Interface Zone on the inside of the first page.   My son Saul designed that.   I think it’s cool. The links weren’t working today but POW is trying to remedy that.

This issue also contains an interview with Terry Tempest Williams, who will perform a reading from her book Finding Beauty in a Broken World at Brigham Young University on March 17.   This occasion interests me for a couple of reasons, one of them being that Williams has not read at BYU in over 20 years, although faculty members like Eugene England were interested in inviting her.   I think this event long overdue and am glad for it.   If I were up in that area, I’d attend.

Beside Williams’ interview, there’s also a nice piece by George Handley titled “Secret Memory.”   George published an excerpt of his book Home Waters: A Year of Recompenses on the Provo River here on Wilderness Interface Zone.

The issue contains many other gems, including the eighth chapter of an epic poem titled “Rough Stone, Rolling Water” by Dennis Marden Clark.

The Provo Orem Word is an online literary magazine that publishes a nature-themed issue every March, but Rebecca Packard, the publisher/editor, is happy to take submissions all year long at submissions@provooremword.org. The ‘zine publishes fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction.   For submission guidelines and a list of The Provo Orem Word’s other themes for this year, email Rebecca at the above address.     Rebecca says, “Not being affiliated with the area will not hurt an author’s chances of being published.”

I’m not a resident of Utah Valley anymore; it didn’t hurt mine!

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Another excerpt from The Pictograph Murders

Why? Because it fits.

When she woke at sunrise, she squirmed out of her sleeping bag, stood up, opened her car door, and draped the bag over it to dry off millions of pinprick dewdrops that had bloomed on it during the night.   When she turned to face the dune at the canyon rim, her attention snagged on a weird image.

Standing on the dune’s crest, back-lit by the sun so that all features receded into shadow, was a squat figure.   The specter maintained absolute stillness on two short, thick legs that rose into a torso dominated by a barrel chest.   On its shoulders balanced a heavy black head adorned by a headdress from which protruded two curving horns.

Excerpt: The Pictograph Murders by P. G. Karamesines

Dave’s post here caused me to reflect more self-consciously on what it is I do  when I go out in the desert.   Do I  walk off pavement’s edge to get away from stresses or disappointments?   Do I go out to  have adventures?   To think?    Dave’s post is about seeking God in nature.    Is that what I’m doing–looking for God out there, in the Great  Not-Me?   This passage from my novel, The Pictograph Murders, surfaced in response to  introspection that  Dave’s post provoked.   I think it sums up well enough what I do  some of the time  I’m out in Nature.        

The wash broadened into a fan of moist sand.   The walls, too, widened to form a rounded chamber capped by an azure disc of sky.   Just a few yards away lay a shallow plunge pool.   Kit waded in and drank noisily.   In the talus slope behind the pool, water clittered around three moss-framed, stone-keyed seeps.   The wiry and crooked little streams stepped and ruffled down slope to empty into the pool.