…you heard it here second folks. Now through tomorrow, Wed, April 20, the e-book edition of my novel, The Town Slut’s Daughter is free. Follow this link.  “Haley has the gift of writing to suit her subject in all its raddled variety, from wired and jarring to lyrical and tragic.”-Vancouver Sun. Happy spring!

Indulged in some movies last night including Heathers which I’ve had a hankering to watch; delighted to find that it’s still exceptional, blackly funny and stands the test of time. Nostalgia inducing, high school was hell, as Veronica observes, though I liked my friends. Well, most of them. All I wanted to do was get the hell out of there though, putting in the required effort to graduate. This recent poem seems apropos.

FIELD TRIP

Take umbrage.

Sour all I have.

Do not rock kismet,

Delight in peals of spring.

Mired, I flicker, follow

A waif; wily, poisonous, we

Pervert high school rituals,

Clawhammer rivals,

Blind to the nests,

Cocoons, hives, shells,

Snoozing in biology class,

Oblivious to organisms

Living in, on, through us.

All escape our attention.

I know I must

Observe, take notes.

Name stars and species,

Salvage withered specimens,

Friends. Repair things

Beyond repair.

Sail toward a ship.

Oh, and it’s my birthday, according to Google.  A present,  another poem from the forthcoming collection.

PACIFIC TIME

Cedar jungle.
Left coast.
Mellifluous bees and

Hummingbirds swarm the
Morning, a teeming creek
Bows to the sea.

Chocolate hens and hares
Consume the household
Quickly. Mugs stacked,

We steep, fuse. Volatile
Lives lampooned,
Bursts. Snipes. Rants

Compelling as a drowning cow,
Pert hustler rising in your skull,
But see, Howe Sound

Currents obviate
Previous episodes, ancient
Grievances, low levels.

Forget restitution.
Leave the old scow
To rot on the alluvial plains.

Still wondering, especially with my birthday approaching so thought it apropos to re-post this blog entry along with a recently scanned baby portrait. According to my mother, it was the runner-up prize in a baby contest. Story of my life, I swear.

Who’s Your Daddy?

March 8, 2012

I wish someone could tell me. Let’s talk paternity fraud, a term that didn’t exist when I was born. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to find my biological father. “Does he know I exist?” I asked dear old Ma after she’d blurted out on her death bed that my father, the only father I’d ever known, was not my “real” father. Shocked naturally, I didn’t believe her at first, but it explained so much! Why people often asked if I was adopted. Why I felt no kinship to my father’s side of the family, the Daneliuks, or the “Danefucks”, as our schoolyard tormenters called us. Why I took my mother’s maiden name. It explained the bouts of estrangement between my sisters and I, my half-sisters. We’d always been so different, what little common ground we shared divided in two. Why Grandma Daneliuk favored my sisters. She must have harboured suspicions. Why I always felt like a freak!

I asked my *alleged father*. Equally shocked, he could provide no information, but sympathetic, took a DNA test at my request. The results excluded him, “as the biological father of Heather Haley.” First thing out of his mouth; “I’d never have married her if I’d known.” Thanks Dad. Poor Dad. By lying on my birth certificate, my mother had betrayed both of us. All of us, biological father deprived of any relationship with his daughter. I was stunned by my sister’s reaction, intense sibling rivalry. “Ha! That means I’m the oldest.” Neither could she understand my dismay, or why I should care. I must always know the truth. Besides, I have a child and our health to consider. Ironic too, that fascinated by crime, intrigue and mystery, I wind up saddled with huge one, seemingly impossible to crack. I’m running out of time with everyone, including me, getting older. I’ve questioned my mother’s surviving relatives, all claiming to know nothing, though I wasn’t spared gossip. Apparently, Ma liked to have fun, often driving down from her home in Matapédia, Quebec to the CFB base in Chatham, New Brunswick to attend parties. Maybe bio-dad was stationed there, serving in the Air Force. I’d consult with a private investigator if I could afford to. Though I could go mad speculating, the writer in me can’t help imagining. I’ve developed a theory; she couldn’t tell me, didn’t know his name. Maybe it was a one-night stand. Maybe she was raped. She did describe such a scene to me once. Catholic, rural, Great Darkness-Duplessis Orphans era Quebec was not a good place to be knocked up. Ashamed, desperate to be married, her child legitimate, she lied. This is the real kicker; wed or not, knowing people would do the math, my grandmother tried to coerce her into an abortion.  Sins are more sinful when the whole town knows.

I’ve been advised by someone who does understand how much this means to me that generalized ancestor DNA testing can provide valuable insights, give me an idea of bio-dad’s racial, genetic back ground. Family Tree testing provides email addresses of people who share your DNA and wish to be connected. My only other hope is to visit the relevant villages back east and start asking a lot of hard and persistent questions, if I can find people willing to talk. Of course any such information can be extremely unreliable and vexatious. I will try to arrange a trip out there in the not-too-distant future. Hey, I could make a documentary. We shall see. I still hope there is some way to find some answers.

I envy adoptees and sperm donor babies; they have legal recourse. Clues. In 2010, a woman named Olivia Pratten mounted a lawsuit against the provincial government, the first of its kind in Canada. It sought to amend the B.C. Adoption Act requiring physicians keep permanent records of all egg, sperm or embryo donors and allow offspring to access those records when they turn 19. Not having the right relegates Pratten to “second-class citizen status and represents the province’s wholesale abandonment of equality rights,” according to her lawyer, Joseph Arvay, a veteran constitutional attorney. Indeed. It’s a fundamental right to know our origins. Arvay cited a passage from Roots, stating “that in all of us, there is a hunger—marrow deep—to know our heritage, to know who are and where we came from. Without it, one is left with a disquieting loneliness.” Try and explain that to my sister and long-dead mother, whom I still miss. I think she had every intention of taking the secret to her grave, but dementia prevented that. Ah, family secrets, all too common and often entwined with abuse and domestic violence.

Though it’s not in my nature, perhaps I should just give up. Let it go. I’m torn. Still wondering. Thanks Ma.

And neither can the poet in me help but imagine:

PRINCESS NUT

If I could have been inside
the hollow tree that night
I would have seen his face.
I would know his face. His body,

spiced with sweat salt and tobacco.
My father. Forbidden topic.
Fugitive. Alien, though earthly
as a cyclone to my mother, clinging

from an oak as he pried her limbs apart.
I would have heard howling, watched
his head rearing back. Full lips, gappy grin
revealed. Full lips, gappy grin like mine.

I would have seen the twigs
and russet leaves stuck to their thighs.
I could have picked up
the knife. Saved my mother.

I would know, what is his,
what is mine. I would know
he’s the smooth nut in a rough cup,
I, one of many acorns.

The manuscript is coming together, painstakingly but such is the nature of editing, revising. Not much time for other projects but I’m still hoping to record an audiobook edition of my novel. So, a poem, from the forthcoming collection, to be re-named.

MY WEEK

Fed a germ.
Dog tottered.
Spooned flies out of yogurt.
Dislodged ants from the toaster.
Entered words.
Fought for blackberries
And free stuff.

Doctored bites.
Signed language.
Collected greens,
(Heirloom tomatoes.)
Parlanced a meme.
Registered my feelings.

The last house on HUSBAND RD
Has prolific bamboo décor.
You can sit in a resin chair there,
The white ones especially war-strong.
It’s too late in the week
To do anything nice

Or nicely.
Too late in our lifespans
For anything,
Though he’s still trying
To Xerox his ass,
Moon earth.

Slow Sunday, a spot of solitude, hence a new poem, for the new collection.  I’m working to have the manuscript ready by the end of January, working title, Detective Work.

Perhaps not entirely appropriate-though no doubt he was once an upstart-I will dedicate it here, now to David Bowie. I’m still reeling from the news of his death. He certainly can keep a secret, or is it just me? Did everyone know he had cancer? I, like millions, idolized Bowie. Ziggy Stardust helped me survive high school, I swear, and I had the great privilege of seeing him in concert. I was moved by the Blackstar videos and will set about listening to the album. I’ve always loved this photograph by Canadian John Robert Rowlands and have a framed print of it in my living room. Bowie truly was a remarkable artist, an inspiration. Funny, black stars litter my book. I use a row of four black stars to indicate scene breaks within chapters.

UPSTART

Cineaste selfies over brunch.

Four-dollar toast,

Single-origin coffee,

Post-ironic jokes,

Cold, amusingly terrible eggs.

Actually, I like crap reports Juan,

Nearly as much as fapping

To Kristen Stewart.

Groan we must, our nuggets

Of wisdom lost

On the 19 year old who

Only needs to sell a few batches

Of home-brewed kombucha

In order to retrieve his skateboard

From the pawn shop.

Juan’s a gem,

Director in the rough

With a great idea for a movie,

Matching Kickstarter campaign.

A few years back I was fortunate to visit the Yucatan, now billed as the “Mayan Riviera.” An anthropology buff, I was thrilled to tour the ruins of Tulum and Chichen Itza. It was Christmas and I was astonished by the degree of Maryolotry, the inspiration for this poem from my collection Three Blocks West of Wonderland.

It bears repeating, especially in these turbulent times; Peace on earth, Goodwill to men, including women and children.

FIRST CAME MARY

Enchanted morning swim, matrix of turquoise

lagoon. Silver palometas, yellow damselfish

caress my legs. Casa Ocio walls whitewashed

in cactus milk. Coconuts on the lawn.

Palm fronds bowing, rippling like sea anemones.

Heavy mahogany Hemingway digs.

Gecko chirps from behind a gilt frame.

Cool terrazzo marble pulls sand from toes.

Double rain showerhead. Full throttle bottle bar

under a palapa. I ponder the power

of local masonry to withstand hurricanes,

why it seems odd to name them after men.

Beneath an arbor of pink bougainvillea

sit my dubious nephew, delicate girlfriend,

doubts sinking slowly into the deep

purple cushions. We are going to town. To Playa.

Soft brown doves adorn neon.

Turtles bask on green tile mosaic. Red house

hosts a party tableau of orange Fanta, blue corn

flowers, flags of paper lace, chocolate pan de huevos.

We smell agave, chili, vanilla, coriander and anise,

hear mariachis blaze a mighty La Bamba. Gobble

pumpkin tamales, snow-white beach cooling our heels.

Mongrels expire at the feet of professional urchins

soliciting pesos. I will not cry, select a white handkerchief

festooned with poinsettias embroidered by his mother.

No, I can’t buy them all. Though downcast he will not cry.

Our Lady of Guadalupe provides. Protects.

Christmastime but it’s Mary I see. Everywhere. To the faithful

the forever virgin manifests in reefs, rays and schools

of gobies and fairy basslet. In the crystalline water

of a cenote near Merida. In the mynah’s cry.

They live in Mother Mary’s shadow, warm as her embrace.

Queen of the Americas imperial as the iguana

gnawing hibiscus, sunning atop Tulum’s serpentine stairways.

She is wing carved into rock, three pelicans soaring above.

Even Mary, standing on the moon, presiding over the jungle

in a cloak of stars, could not stop the calendar,

marauding anthropologists or games to the death.

On every altar she towers over the crucifix, candles,

iron crosses, golden grapes. She is under their skin,

her miraculous portrait inked onto their muscles.

Hammered in copper, in tin. On murals.

Santa Maria assures and comforts all

her Mexican children. Heals. Entirely and ever

Virgin Mary is the horizon, sea and sky colliding

in azure, cobalt blues. Sacred to all. Taxi drivers.

Marimba players. Deejays and charros. She waves

from the cruise ships, watches over fire dancing,

blesses the portrait of two young lovers lost

in a car crash. Her people feel the harbour of her arms

around them. Her mercy. Infinite. Close.

First comes Mary. Holy Mary. Mother of God.

I’m once again participating in the 12 Blogs of Christmas with eleven other writers, organized by Martin Crosbie. As part of the event, we are to write about—not surprisingly—Christmas. Many of the other eleven bloggers have written about fond or funny memories of Christmas. Last year, I wrote about my fraught relationship with Christmas—acknowledging the magic of Christmas but also the busy-ness, commercial aspects, and guilt associated with Christmas (we have so much, and so many people have so little). So I can’t do that again. Most of my stories about Christmas go something like… we got too much, ate too much, spent too much (even though we don’t spend that much), stressed about a turkey, and were really happy to be able to go skiing and eat leftovers on Boxing Day.

I exaggerate. I’m sure I’ve had some nice Christmases, but since I’m often up to my elbows in a turkey, and have not had any famous disasters, they are not the stuff of stories. Then again, my memory is famously poor—all that living half the time in another world. This year I’ll be sure to burn the turkey, so I have something to tell you about next year (Hmm, I’m getting a strong turkey vibe here. It might be time to start serving Christmas steak).

To me, Christmas is about gratitude and reflection on a year gone by. In an effort to dredge up some Christmas spirit (and not seem like cross between Eeyore and the Grinch—I promise I’m actually not—Christmas commercials make me cry), I decided to do a post on the 12 writing things I’m most grateful for this Christmas. That’s not to imply that there are not a lot of non-writing things I am grateful for (there are so many of those things), but this is a writing blog (and I think this sentence is a triple-negative) so…read more…

Jennifer lives in the mountains of British Columbia where she can be found writing, hiking, skiing, borrowing dogs, and evading bears. She also works as a climate change researcher, evaluator and strategic planner. She has wanted to be a writer since she first read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and didn’t want to come out of the wardrobe.

Jennifer writes science fiction, romance and dystopian fiction for children and adults, including In the Shadows of the Mosquito Constellation and A Pair of Docks, which was a bestseller in children’s time travel fiction. She has also contributed to several anthologies, most notably Synchronic: 13 Tales of Time Travel, which hit #16 in the Kindle Store.

You can subscribe to her blog for writing tips, industry insights, and two free short stories at www.jenniferellis.ca, and check out her writing on Amazon at: http://bit.ly/jenniferellis. She tweets about writing, cats, and teenagers at @jenniferlellis.