About shanathornton

Listener, reader, storyteller, author of four novels, owner of Thorncraft Publishing and creator of BreatheYourOMBalance® Visit thorncraftpublishing.com for more details.

Music Creates Magic in the Story

Posted on April 20, 2015 by shanathornton

Music is essential to our lives. We use it to change our moods, propel us forward when we need an extra boost of energy, to motivate us, to woo a sweetheart and set the mood, to soothe a broken heart, to comfort when lost, and to give a healing balm during the most challenges times in our lives. We make friends over songs. When I was growing up, my friends and I used to make mixed tapes and stay up all night watching music videos, we made song requests to radio stations at midnight, and later, in high school, my brother and I begged our parents not to throw out the CDs that came with explicit lyric warning stickers. I see my characters the same way–they have worlds of music, too. I create playlists for the characters in my novels. How does music change their moods? What is the role of music in their lives? Are they musicians? Do they sing in the car? Can they “carry a tune,” as my grandparents called it?

I’m like a kid during this stage of crafting a story. I learn new songs, cry through old ones experienced anew, discover a fresh meaning for a tune I’ve never liked in relation to my own life, and notice how music affects the choices we make whether we admit it or not.

Music and food play a central role in the Ballard family, the focus of Poke Sallet Queen and the Family Medicine Wheel, my latest novel. From songs shared during family get-togethers and hootenannies, to town festivals, talent shows, and bands forming during college, music connects people and is one of the guides on the journey of life. We follow our favorite bands and become connected with people over our shared tastes in music. We discover new rhythms and create our own melodies.

I’ve added part of my playlist (some with YouTube links) for the characters of Poke Sallet Queen & the Family Medicine Wheel:
1. Wildwood Flower by Mother Maybelle Carter and the Carter Sisters
2. Rattle My Bones by The Secret Sisters
3. Pretty Thing by Bo Diddley
4. Fever by Tom Waits
5. Tennessee Waltz by Patsy Cline
6. That’s Alright Mama by Elvis Presley
7. Dirty Lie by Bob Dylan
8. Laundry Room by The Avett Brothers
9. Wabash Cannonball by Roy Acuff & the Smoky Mountain Boys
10. Polk Salad Annie by Elvis Presley
11. Wang Dang Doodle by Koko Taylor
12. Karma Chameleon by Culture Club
13. Fortune Teller by Robert Plant & Allison Krauss
14. Live and Die by The Avett Brothers
15. Hurt by Johnny Cash
16. Wildwood Flower by Loretta Lynn
17. Tennessee Me by The Secret Sisters

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Join us at Parnassus Books on May 9, at 2 p.m., for the Book Launch of Poke Sallet Queen and the Family Medicine Wheel

When Daydreams Build Foundations

Posted on April 7, 2015 by shanathornton

Most of my ideas don’t materialize. Probably 85-95% of them are only daydreams and nothing more. I daydream constantly. This can be overwhelming for people who don’t know me well…I’ll start building immediately. That’s the way it goes with my writing, too. So, many stories never make it far until they are deleted or made into paper balls for the wastebasket.

My latest novel, just released, Poke Sallet Queen and the Family Medicine Wheel, began as a short story in Barry Kitterman’s graduate fiction writing course. I was writing from my daydreaming head all of this surrealist drivel, trying to emulate writers I thought were considered cool by people who knew these things. Barry invited a guest author, and she asked, “How many of you are from Tennessee?” A few of us raised our hands. For the next assignment, she asked us to write about our place in the world–to consider what we have experienced, and then to write the fiction story for the next class session. I started “Family Medicine Wheel” with the main character, the country midwife Zona Ballard, who was mysterious, witchy, and creative. That was in 2003. Barry encouraged me to revise the story and put it through the workshop with the class. Instead of listening, as a student will who thinks they have a better plan, I chose a different story to put through the workshop, and experienced something like a battle with my peers over this new story. Later, my wounds healed. An experienced professor who works from awareness and kindness won’t let you down. Barry breathed life back into that story and submitted it to the Languages and Literature Department for consideration in the Dogwood Award. The story won Best Graduate Fiction in 2004.

I graduated, started a family, taught college classes in English, and then a friend recommended that I submit the story to a journal, The Round Table, in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. To my complete surprise, not only did they publish it, but they also chose it as the winner of the Robert Penn Warren Award in Fiction. That was 2009.

In the meantime, I had other daydreams, and they were becoming another book. A book that I considered my first, as pieces of it were written in another creative writing course taught by Barry Kitterman. So, the book, Multiple Exposure, became Thorncraft’s publishing debut in 2012. I forgot about “Family Medicine Wheel.”

My daydreams for Thorncraft began to grow, and I wanted to help other women authors get their work out to the world. I learned about publishing from my experience as an Editor for Her Circle Ezine, an online magazine that focused on women’s arts and activism around the world with a heavy emphasis on literature and visual arts.

Thorncraft grew with Beverly Fisher’s novella Grace Among the Leavings (2013) and Melissa Corliss DeLorenzo’s novel, The Mosquito Hours (2014). A good daydream doesn’t remain in that realm–it leaves a paper trail.

My friends and family who read “Family Medicine Wheel” long ago, or knew about it, continued to ask if I would ever build anything substantial out of that daydream. Last year, I returned to that world and made a novel out of it by merging it with Poke Sallet Queen, a NaNoWriMo novel draft I wrote in 2011. From its beginnings on paper, that dream has taken 10 years to materialize. Finally, we are here, and I invite you all to celebrate with us at the book launch.

BOOK LAUNCH: FREE & open the public. PARNASSUS BOOKS, Nashville. May 9th, 2 p.m. Click here for Parnassus website: http://www.parnassusbooks.net/event/author-event-shana-thornton-author-poke-sallet-queen-family-medicine-wheel

Book will be available for purchase from Parnassus Books at the book launch. The author will read and sign copies. The author will also donate a minimum of 10% of her royalties from the book launch to Clarksville-based food bank and shelter, Manna Cafe Ministries. Also based in Clarksville, Thorncraft Publishing strives to consider our impact on the world and make it a better place.

Facebook Event page

Poke Sallet Queen and the Family Medicine Wheel advanced praise:

“Reading Shana Thornton’s highly original novel will make you want to get your own family stories to the page. You’ll meet larger-than-life characters like Hoot and Zona, Aunt Cora and Jane, Miss Emy, and Nenny, the matriarch, who rolls her own cigarettes and knows all the secrets of the family medicine wheel. You may even find yourself signing up for a writing class like the one that sets the narrator, young Robin Ballard, to interviewing her aunts and grandmother, tracking down her homeless father, and digging out the family secrets, lost journals, and recipes that make Poke Sallet Queen & the Family Medicine Wheel a most surprising and satisfying fictional family history. (At least, I think it’s fiction!)” –Mary Helen Stefaniak, author of The Turk and My Mother, and The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia

When Robin Ballard takes a writing course in college, she goes searching for answers about her homeless father and wanders into the secret lives of her relatives as they gradually reveal their personal histories. Set in Nashville and the surrounding rural towns, Poke Sallet Queen and the Family Medicine Wheel offers a look into the superstitions and changes of a middle Tennessee family from the 1920s to the 21st century. Based on novel events, homework assignments, old magic recipes, drunken revelries, senile remembrances, midnight songs, some tall tales, some folk tales, and the lost journals, Robin Ballard tells a “true” Tennessee family history.

“When I’m given a book to review, I like to open it up at random and see if what’s on the happenstance page resonates at all. This time I found the heroine Robin Ballard singing Mother Maybelle Carter’s ‘Wildwood Flower’ at a beauty contest she does not expect to win. She is someone I recognize, who trips over a cord as she’s leaving the stage, whose family’s knowledge ‘comes from the dirt’ not from ‘parchment scrolls and crests that open doors.’ This character is humble and honest, and the book refreshingly natural and just different enough. I like it….” -Rheta Grimsley Johnson, author of Enchanted Evening Barbie and the Second Coming

“Vibrant in detail! Meet and fall in love with the characters of Poke Sallet Queen and the Family Medicine Wheel and along the way, learn the secrets of great story-telling.” — Bud Willis, author of Marble Mountain: A Vietnam Memoir

“Shana Thornton has a fresh, unique voice and talent. Poke Sallet Queen and the Family Medicine Wheel is a lyrical tale of love in the lush Tennessee hills, of generations gone by, of people appreciated for simple things as much as the passing on of their history. There is mystery, sorrow, laughter and knowledge in these unforgettable characters. Shana writes a magical story that stays with you long after the final page. As with one of the characters, ‘She knows real magic.'” -Virginia Brown, author of Dark River Road and the Dixie Diva mystery series

Visit Thorncraft Publishing to read more advanced praise and to browse all of our titles and events.

Too Much Instant Gratification: Not Enough Anticipation

Posted on October 21, 2014 by shanathornton

Running the Crazy Owl marathon reminded me that I grew up in a time of waiting. I waited for satisfaction–waited for film to be developed, waited for the movies to make the long process to VHS, waited for a ride, waited for a computer to boot up, waited for letters in the mail, and in most all things, waited to move on to the next level without any real sense of what it would look like, how it would actually be. Maybe that’s why I took so long to run an official full marathon, even though I’ve trained enough for it before now.

Race began at the Iriquois Steeplechase

The run brought back memories of my past friendships. Beauty. The wonder and magic of the forests that I shared with my best friends of all time. Some have gone their own ways. We aren’t part of each other’s life anymore. We shared the owl dance under the tall trees by the fireplace. We imagined they were disco owls– the sun, the moon, our strobe lights and flare…the beats echoed in our cadence of running.-~dancing, and walking up the limestone trail–it chipped away and was reshaped by our steps. We laughed, “whoa!” and listened to the pieces roll away and smack rocks and bushes tumbling down into the hollow.

Memory: My college Rumi (artist-chef-philosopher-wild sage college roommate) and I taking photos. Reloading another roll of film in the camera, exploring the forest and trying to capture the essence of tree, light, fern, moss, earth. (During the marathon, I remind myself that film is closer to the scent of some earthiness than the iPhone.)

On my parent’s back deck, I had shaved my college Rumi’s head maybe a week before our hike, so she’s bald in all the pictures. Her blonde hair floated off into the forest.

We hiked, talked, click click the pictures at Percy Warner. Afterward, we parked up where you can look down West End and the whole of Nashville from the hill with all the other smokers, the college students, the grunge and angst seething from us, but some deep red smoldering was there, burning. We waited. The Tao te Ching contains a phrase, “The greatest talent matures slowly.” Waiting a little, but not like apathetic waiting. No, college Rumi and I owned creative waiting–we would create something–the dialogue of plants, the orchestra of hand gestures, the blooming of noodles and food. We waited for photographs to process–film to develop. Images printed of Percy Warner Park–sunflares capturing the ghosts of those hills. We were there. I ran past us.

The Crazy Owl stirred me on and around and up again. Remember: I was with D in the car listening to Jimi–it was all crosstown traffic and watchtowers as we wound through the forests and bumblebee hollow at 2 am, talking men, and God, and Goddess dreaming. Talking shit. Talking. Loving at 16-going-on, then lost and winding on the roads of 20-something. Stopping at a swing set, singing, “Say, say, what about when we grow up and have babies?” Now, late 30s, all the stages of my life have passed at the park.

The Belle Meade stairs in grade school. The field trip. The passing on the way to Cheekwood exhibits. And I descend them first this time, and run around the flagpole, feeling like I’m 8 & racing my third grade classmates. I climb the stairs again, slowly. It’s a long walk to the top, and I know it well, but a volunteer points to the direction. He laughs, “Wish I could say it was the last big hill.”

Wish you could see the stairs going up in the shadows

Early 30’s: running and hiking with my Mom, and just being where I am, where I have been on the Warner Trail. Discussing everything with her there–childbirth, generations, what’s funny, what’s lost, what hurts, what heals, and my family’s history, my family’s now, and where we’re going both literally on the trail and in the future. The Farrell Road trail knows all my secrets and desires.

Another water station. A volunteer reminds me, “It’s just a walk in the park.” I laugh.

I realize in this run–I am my future self. I understand my motion and then I am dizzy and slow. Slow. Be. Walk. Slowly. Soak. It. In. Even the emotion. Let it. Allow. Ahhhhh.

I almost stopped. I did stop. Sat down on a bench momentarily and another runner checked on me. Walked. Walk in the park. Take it easy, baby. The hills are enchanted when you let them in. All the runners who passed me were encouraging. The support rallied me to get out of my head. I worked too hard for too long to let it get to me. Grateful for true dirtbags because they won’t let you fail. They motivate and tell you that you are great and awesome when you look and smell like shit.

Within all of that, I actually broke my shell and talked to some other runners. I admitted that I felt intimated, and they understood! So happy to talk with fun people during the race–women and men with more experience than I, and I learned so much just by being near them. Thanks to Donna, her friend who fell and couldn’t finish the race (I forgot his name), and many other unnamed runners.

I kept going and go, go, go. I can see my husband in my mind–and just at that instant, I get a text from him. “Breathe” and another text, “you’ve already done great”, and more texts and more encouraging messages. I am done. Yes, that’s Right. Done is coming up, so I get going. And I know he’s there with another memory for me and him and my girls at this finish line. I could hear my daughters’ laughter half a mile before the finish. My children and their laughter echoing over the hills, the trails, the roads–all my selves there to embrace. It was the real epic–what you want to get from your(soul)self, the place, and the people in one day.

If you can visualize it, then you can achieve it. Anticipation is what you need.

Yoga Trails among the Trees

Posted on September 11, 2014 by shanathornton

Yoga grabs at me in mid run. I cut across a field, kick off my shoes, and stand in eagle pose for as long as I want. At first, I teeter when trying to focus on a leaf in the river. I blame the river for flowing. For moving. How can I become still in a posture if I can’t focus on an inert wall in a house or yoga studio? I focus on the tree, and the leaves rustle, so I topple over.

Everything is moving, trembling under the surface, even if it holds a stagnant appearance. Tiny vibrations and changes are happening all the time. I plant my foot in the soil and feel the slight tremble. I don’t tell my foot to be still. I work with my body’s subtle, natural movements. My toes anchor to the soil, and I slightly, oh so slightly, waver constantly in the pose and breathe and forget I am moving and the river is flowing and the trees shake. I realize that there’s no way to stop the motion that’s constantly inside of living things, myself included. Sitting still most certainly feels bad to many people. Cells rattle.

I notice the turkey tracks in the dirt around me. The deer imprints her motion in the mud. She brings her babies, and I see the hoof prints all around me as I sun salutation and balance in half moon pose. I look up–the tree is growing and changing all the time, shifting, adjusting to the sun and soil and water. We only think the trees are still, but they aren’t. Life is moving in them, through them, not just around them, all the time.

I began a new practice with old habits in order to free myself. Trail running has been part of my routine for almost seven years. Yoga has been in my life, on the side, since I was in eighth grade. I would pick it up enough to learn a little more each time and then toss it aside without complete devotion. I didn’t stick it out, but it has never gone away, and I know more than the basics to the practice and way of life. Until last year, there were days when my practice was only a sun salutation. Most days, I tried crow until I popped my nose on the floor. I learned new ways to stand in tree pose. I became brave with a headstand and handstands against a wall.

Yoga and trail running give me glimpses of nature I would otherwise miss. Both of them allow me to enjoy movement and change. Not sticking with a specific program but truly flowing through my daily life offers the most creative freedom.

“Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.” –Antoine de Saint-Exupery, from The Little Prince

Going into the forest, into nature, has been fun for my family, especially my children. I learn more about stretching, meditating, breathing, laughing, and being from the children, when I follow along with their natural play, which includes all of those things. They choose their own places in the forest that seem even more enchanted once we finish. We look for shapes in the trees, the shadows, the filtering sunlight, the riverbank, and we try to imitate those forms with our yoga poses. My husband takes our photos on the trails he clears. Sometimes, the results are beautiful.

Other times, we simply have fun and fall over and laugh and enjoy being together.

Our changes opened a new way–like the trails we have been blazing this summer.

Some days, I see the turkey stretch and know it’s time for me to bend and flex. In the afternoons, the young deer race one another out of the trail heads and sprint across the fields. We share.

I go out every day to imprint the paths and pack down the new ones. At first, my line was soft and barely noticeable, but my daily devotion to the trails and my practice reveals the deep meaning of my intention. One step at a time. Back in the spring, my oldest daughter took the first steps by planting some seeds about a young adult book centered on nature and yoga. I’ll be sharing more details with you soon about the new projects evolving out of our new practice.

In my observations, the turkey have taught me a lot about yoga, too:

“Why they always make serious face in yoga? You make serious face like this, you scare away good energy. To meditate, only you must smile. Smile with face, smile with mind, and good energy will come to you and clean away dirty energy. Even smile in your liver. Practice tonight in hotel. Not to hurry, not to try too hard. Too serious, you make you sick. You can calling the good energy with a smile.” –Ketut Liyer, Balinese healer from Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. Smiling when I practice close to the wild turkeys in my backyard–they stretch & sun salutation too.

Reverse warrior

shanathornton

writing about literary inspiration

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