This novel is past, present, and future—a road trip and musical journey inspired by nature, family, and storytelling. Years in the making, I am surprised when a book is finished. Usually, I’m in editing and revision mode so deeply that I don’t see the end of the process clearly. I sense that it’s coming, but I don’t finalize books based on schedules. There’s not one action that says, this book is complete now. Combinations finish books. I hope that you’ll check out my book, Ripe for the Pickin’, inspired by places I love in Tennessee and Tennessee stories, plants, and music. Here’s the book cover, designed by Erica Trout Creative. You can read all about the book on the Thorncraft Publishing website.
Ripe for the Pickin’ by Shana Thornton. Book two in the Family Medicine Wheel series. Available March 4, 2022, through all major booksellers.
We toted the guitar out in the summer heat, after our beach vacation, while we picked blackberries. Silvia’s dress snagged on the thorns. I was writing about a heartache that constantly pulses reminders because of the realization that there’s no way to make up for a past that’s never coming back. I felt the pull of my characters, especially Robin, her confusion over both memory loss and memory resurfacIng, her dreams to rise above her family’s addictions, and the fire in her heart and her pen to write folk songs.
Image Title: Snagged Pickin’. Photos by Zoe Morris and Shana Thornton. Final image by Shana Thornton.
Foraging for plants and folklore, folk music, and family secrets are themes in the Family Medicine Wheel series, and they especially show up in my next book, Ripe for the Pickin’ (Forthcoming March 2022). In the first book, Poke Sallet Queen and the Family Medicine Wheel (2015), young Robin learns to forage for plants from her dad and other relatives. She also meets the friends who become her bandmates. In the next book, Ripe for the Pickin’, Robin shares more about foraging when she was growing up, and she begins her songwriting partnerships. Robin also makes a remarkable discovery in this book and that allows her to learn about her ancestors.
For the past seven years, I’ve been actively researching plants for the book, Ripe for the Pickin’. The research is a big part of my life, and my family usually participates. While we were out picking plants one afternoon, I asked our younger daughter, Silvia, if we could take photos for the book. I wanted them for inspiration. I also asked our older daughter, Zoe, if she would take some of the photos, too. These images are some of the photos we took, and they have been layered, and some even look quilted together.
Title: Pickin’ Tea. Photos by Zoe Morris. Final image by Shana Thornton
Eerily similar to the best ideas in the book is the life that I live:
“Is this the peppery chickweed?” Silvia asks me. A fluffy type grows by the river and has a stronger flavor than the more straggly plants nearer to our house.
She and I pick wild violets for tea every spring. This became the inspiration for a chapter of the book called “Backyard Spring,” and then it inspired a song. I crafted one like Robin might for her band, and I added it to the book. Writing songs was fun, and so different from narrative that I wanted to do it again. I tried. Ohhhhhhhh, I like Robin Ballard and her songwriting journals. I helped her to fill them up.
Silvia eats wood sorrel year round where it stays warm and green close to the house. This became the inspiration for a chapter called “Cowbird Blues” and another song.
We pick the creeping charlie leaves that grow under blackberry canes, and then we pick blackberry leaves for tea, too. And, you might have guessed already…another chapter called “Blackberry Winter Whistlin’ Tune” and another song…
This got us on a songwriting streak. And, I’m in love with it…
I was daydreaming one afternoon while placing images together. I don’t know what compelled me to choose the images or arrange them, but I liked the final result when I stopped my creative daydreaming. This final image contains four photographs with three of them placed on an image of the interior of the Frist Art Museum.
Image Title: Plant Music Pickin’ Compilation. Photos by Shana Thornton, Zoe Morris, and Terry Morris. Final image by Shana Thornton
I enjoy the creativity that the books inspire in my family’s everyday life. We have a cabinet full of tea, a drying rack overflowing with leaves and flowers, and an experimental garden of wild plants, heirlooms, and seeds given to me by family and friends. We water the plants. We drink the tea. We sing.
Right now, as I finish this blog, someone is playing the piano and trying to write a song in the living room, probably Terry. I can hear Silvia singing from upstairs, her voice drifting off while she makes up words and when she finds them, it rises again. From the kitchen, I can hear the water boiling in the kettle for someone’s tea, probably Zoe’s.
Art is meditative and transformative for me. Even if I stare for a long time, the experience is active within me. Moving through a museum or a gallery, gazing at a painting, waiting to view artwork, standing at a distance to see more clearly, and viewing a sculpture with someone else–all of that is more of an experience than the passive idea of watching or looking at something casually. I try to imagine painters on scaffolding when I see an immense canvas stretching up toward the ceiling. I stoop and squint at the tiny forms in a contemporary sculpture exhibit. There is not a way to duplicate the feeling of scale on a computer-generated tour of a museum, and yet, I encourage online tours and know they benefit so many people.
I enjoy not only going to see artwork in exhibitions, but the art that I view often becomes part of my own creative process. In the exhibitions that permit me to do so, I take photographs of the artwork on display as well as the space where the exhibition takes place. Later, back at home, in the middle of the night, or when I am parked in a line of cars waiting to pick up one of my daughters, I layer the images. The act of layering images pushes my brain into a new creative space and actually helps me to write imagery in my books. I don’t often share my visual processes, other than a photo of places where I run and that sort of thing on Instagram (IG). I did enjoy layering nature and yoga images for a series on IG, but otherwise, I don’t usually share these images and how they inspire me. I’d like to change that and share some of them on my blog sometimes.
This series of images, the most recent I’ve created, uses photos I took from the recent exhibitions at The Frist Art Museum in Nashville: “American Art Deco: Designing for the People 1918-1939” (ended January 2, 2021) and “Medieval Bologna: Art for a University City” (exhibit up until Jan 31).
Immediately, I was shocked to notice a coincidence between the Art Deco exhibition and my new book–that I actually wrote the dates of 1919-1939, in the novel, Ripe for the Pickin’ (forthcoming 2022), as one of the primary time periods. As my friend and I entered the Art Deco exhibition space, the sequined gold flapper dress made me think about my own character’s gold pageant dress in the first book of the series, Poke Sallet Queen & the Family Medicine Wheel. Robin and her aunt discover the dress in a Nashville store where they rummage through boxes of designer clothes. In another room of the Art Deco exhibit, I swooned over the fan, as it reminded me of Miss Emy, Robin’s grandmother, who carries a fan everywhere and does not stereotypically “flutter” it, but rather uses it as a judge might wield a gavel. Naturally, I thought of putting together a picture I took of the dress with one of the fan. Unfortunately, I cannot find the titles or artists/designers of these two pieces on the online guide for the exhibition.
I layered my own images with pictures I took at the exhibit, too. Photo 2 is my reflection in the Spartan Bluebird Radio during the exhibit juxtaposed with a forest where I ran this summer and which was inspiration for part of the next book’s setting. Radios are a part of the story since Robin is in a folk band, and I wanted to imagine that one of the characters, maybe her relative, had one of those bluebird radios. I also like that this dates the radio and me, as I’m wearing a mask because they are required in The Frist.
The radio: Walter Dorwin Teague, designer (American, 1883–1960); Sparks-Withington Company, manufacturer (Jackson, Michigan, founded 1900). Sparton Bluebird Radio (Model 566), 1934. Wood, glass, and metal, 14 3/4 x 14 5/8 x 6 in. Collection Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art, Denver, 2004.1850.
Photo 3 is a photo I took of a Steuben Glass bowl that contained Jimson Weed by Georgia O’Keeffe, and I layered it with a photo I took of Paul T Frankl’s Modernique Clock. I often write about plants and time, and the confusion of the psyche in trying to reconcile human constructs regarding schedules and nature’s own rhythms and shifts. Plants connect the characters in this book series through generations. After I put the two pictures together, the result reminded me of an Alice in Wonderland-type of image, too.
Of course, to create these images, I am using copyrighted works, but they are my images of those works, and I am not selling, duplicating, or distributing the images, so they don’t infringe upon the original works of art. I’m also citing those original artists. My layered images don’t even come close to using mastery at a level of the original artists/designers, but they do fulfill an artistic purpose for my fiction-writing. (See this website and/or a lawyer for the rules of legally appropriating and distributing copyrighted artworks).
The clock: Paul T. Frankl, designer (American, born Austria, 1887–1958); Warren Telechron Company, manufacturer (Ashland, Massachusetts, 1926–1992). Modernique Clock, 1928. Chromium-plated and enameled metal, molded Bakelite, and brush-burnished silver, 7 3/4 x 6 x 3 1/2 in. Collection Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art, Denver, Gift of Michael Merson, 2010.0670.
The bowl: Steuben Glass bowl with Jimson Weed image, 1938 Glass, 14 inches in diameter. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of Mrs. Flora C. Crichton 1997.13.1Designer: Georgia O’Keeffe. Clear glass bowl with Jimson Weed etched in center from design
Finally, I liked the snail cocktail picks from the Art Deco exhibit layered with an illumined manuscript from Medieval Bologna. There was no connection to my story. I simply like the idea of the slow passage of time symbolized by the snail and the old age of the manuscript.
Nothing compares to the experience of looking at the artwork, standing in front of it, taking in the scale of it, noticing the texture, focusing on the colors and form, how it shows itself in the space. However, I do enjoy this process of layering and creating even more meaning for myself.
I don’t have the details about the snail cocktail picks or the illuminated manuscript, but here are links to all the information online that The Frist Art Museum offers and online tours:
Gifts: They’ve been given as surprises, remedies, offerings, “think-nothing-of-its”, unintentional helpmates, and quick fixes. They’ve shown up the past month more than usual and it’s not my birthday. First, I haven’t written about the gifts during and from the No Business. As we left our house, I asked Terry, “Did you pick up my running shoes from the stoop? I didn’t see them.” He said, “Yes, I’m looking at two pair.” When we got there, Terry unloaded the vehicle and realized, we didn’t have my running shoes. We had the old pair with busted out toes, an in case of an emergency pair, and his shoes. But not my shoes. Total panic. He said that he would drive back & meet my dad to get the shoes. Oh no, I didn’t want anyone driving around that much and then trying to crew me the next day. I had a flash! The Hoka representative was there at the runner check-in, and they were sponsoring the race. If they had my shoes…
She said that many runners were having alarms. No bivvy, no headlamp, but shoes….they did have my size! “Put them under the tent after the race,” she said. Hugs and happy dancing. I borrowed those shoes and gave them back as instructed.
During the run, I covered nearly 40 miles and got the messages I needed for my novel. This book has been in progress for over a year, since I began a major rewrite. So, I’ve been cranking out the ending since I got back from the No Business, nearly a month now, and I’m dreaming about the characters and places. Part of my next book, Ripe for the Pickin’, takes place out in Big South Fork territory, and the run couldn’t have been more perfect for giving me exactly what I needed to finish it. This book is a sequel to my favorite book that I’ve written, Poke Sallet Queen & the Family Medicine Wheel.
I also ran with Coasty, a physician and a fun trail partner, during the run, and he gave me a great pep talk about a book. I’m ready to head toward that one. I hadn’t thought about it until he suggested the idea, and I can’t stop thinking about it. Something different.
My mom brought this plumeria flower to me and it stayed lovely and fragrant through the day
A couple of weeks after the run, I returned to a place that has been pivotal for inspiration during my writing—Mound Bottom and Mace Bluff at Harpeth River State Park. I had planned a field trip for the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Clarksville. Growing up, I was fortunate to attend many field trips through school to places all over middle Tennessee, from the Hermitage to Shiloh and many places in between. I’ve noticed that schools don’t take field trips anymore so I’ve tried to take my children and youth I work with to historical locations. In all of the field trips I took, I never learned about Mound Bottom and Mace Bluff, though I lived there from ages 10-20. The State of TN didn’t purchase the land until more recently, so I couldn’t have visited as a young girl.
Thankfully, you can sign up for a visit. Mound Bottom is gated and only available for tours with a guide. We were fortunate to have Aaron Deter-Wolf as our guide. He is the TN State Archaeologist in Prehistory and the co-author of Mastodons to Mississippians: Adventures in Nashville’s Deep Past (Vanderbilt University Press, 2021). When I asked about his book, he gave me a copy. I read it within two days and was fascinated by all that I learned about middle Tennessee history that I didn’t know.
I felt everything coming together so that I could finally finish this book—a book that readers have been asking for me to deliver. Last year, I thought that I had it, but Rita, my hardest editor, said, “No, this is not it.” I had to rewrite almost the whole book. It has been over seven years since Poke Sallet Queen & the Family Medicine Wheel, and I will be thrilled when readers know if there’s a treasure or not on the Ballard farm.
Rita has read the latest draft and given her approval—“this is it,” she said. She is happy, and I am relieved.
____ what I wrote about the No Business after the race on my social media:
STARSTRUCK—Ohhhh, I love Big South Fork even more. I will see it again. I’m smitten. I was before, but now I’m fully in love. I’ve been bit & will be going back to the No Business 100.
The course is beautiful—creek crossings, gorgeous rock formations, bear shit dotted trails, mossy stones, slippery roots, small waterfalls, fall flowers blooming red, yellow, white, pale purple mushroom, bright orange spongy fungi, fern fronds to hold birds…
I loved the conversations with other runners. I was impressed by people who have completed it multiple times. I was equally impressed with learning that this was the third & fourth attempt of some runners to actually complete the course, & I understood just how challenging the course & timing are in combination. The No Business follows mostly single track trails, riddled (filled to the brim on some stretches) with the usual obstacles of the forest. I saw several people fall and catch some air, and all sprang back up and kept going. “Fall seven times; stand up eight.”—motto of all trail travelers & an ancient Chinese proverb.
I did manage to stay upright, & I made it just over 39 miles, completing the Blue Heron loop, & then I made the decision to Drop. It was dark on the trail. I couldn’t eat and didn’t want to be unwise traveling through the night unable to eat. Earlier in the day, the 80 degree heat & 89% humidity got me all of the sudden, & I vomited a few times. After that, I felt good & continued for a few hours, but my throat and mouth were chaffed from the vomit. When I tried to eat, everything set my mouth & throat on fire.
My legs & feet, the rest of my body, felt great when I dropped. I wanted to be smart. Maybe my head overthought it, but eventually I was bound to run out of energy if I didn’t eat & kept going.
The next day, Terry & I went out on a difficult hike, pummeled more elevation, & I could eat. I recounted the run & started to plan for next year. I evaluated what I can do better & how I can better prepare my mind for the aid stations of this specific course.
I have been sad the past couple of days because I just wanted to continue the journey. I’m not a collector of medals or buckles. I’m a collector of stories from the trail, & I was so looking forward to all of those during the night of the No Business. I’ve been sad that I have to wait until next year to try again, but I will.
I looked into the stars at the top of Blue Heron before going down into the Cracks in the Rocks. The sun had set a reddish pink as we climbed the hill there & tiny piercings of stars shown on the other side of the sky when I turned to look backward at one of the “tops” & I had an answer that I was seeking. I felt satisfied that I would be returning.
shanathornton 