I am writing when I should be asleep, and I am searching for opinions about marketing books again.  Anyone who writes a book has taken a leap of faith that it is something which other people would want to read about, and the two things which, apparently, are large on the list are love, sex, money, and a good story line.  A fabulous teacher shared with me today that his student who wrote romance novels has had great success, so did I ever feel like an idiot, because, even at the age I am now, I think that I could get a pin tip to burn a little romance in along the way, for we do not forget those  things, for passion is simply part of our primitive nature.// I wrote a woman’s story, and there is eroticism in it, as well as the opposite which is sexual abuse.  There are several love stories.  In between though you have American history which had deep roots in the south even 75 years after the Civil War, so you get history in to the Kennedy brothers and the murder of Dr. King, the southern diaspora – south to north, and how America turned its farm families from a life they could manage to the ghettos of rust belt cities, though success stories happen, and some people were able to start new lives ending far better than they began.

I love religion and its origins, so many ways, so many beliefs, and the people who practice faith in organized faith groups, so it was interesting and fun to research that for, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” the book.  I am excited that I have won awards in San Francisco and Hollywood, especially the award in Hollywood, for it was a first place in my division, so I am doing something right.  But I put a whole lot in one book, maybe too much, for it sounds too long at 400 pages, until I tell you they are easy to read pages.  Xanga folks, you have been so kind to let me ruminate over this book, and I am going to dare to tell you that it, were it not for internet publishing books like wildfire, would have probably gotten publlished by a publishing house;  But publishers are few and far between.  You can lose your shirt on the DIY.

Now, I put you in my shoes, and you are me, and you have a book that won an award in San Francisco, and a 1st Place Award in Hollywood as among the most likely to get picked up for a film, and you have worked really hard to get the news out.  Now that you are me, then I want to know how you are going to sell this book?  You give it to your friends to get it started.  You give it to the contest people, because that is what you do.  You give it to people who cannot afford it, but there are still millions of book lovers out there.

How are you going to sell this book.  You may not know, but Xanga is not a good sales platform for anything.  Xanga is more about writing, and I wrote a book, and you watched it grow with me.  Where does one go on the internet to sell a book?  I do not know how to use the internet very well, so I am reaching here for you, my friends to help me figure this one out.

I am aware that Xanga people are smart people, and some of you have had broad experiences in the business world;  But can you tell me where I am going wrong with endeavoring to market my book.  How many of you are going to go out and to purchase a book this weekend.  How many would consider, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” for I am hitting brick walls.  Obviously, I am making some sales, but I need to make much more.  I need Xangans to tell me if they have written books, and if so, how did you sell them?

I may have asked this question before, and I know you have a lot on your mind, but I will ask one more time the question of, “How do you sell a book?”  I obviously do not know.  I hope to hear from several of you who know how to maringket something, for I certainly do not have a clue.  Meanwhile, you can purchase it at Amazon and Kindle, and, “Dear Lord,” do I ever need your advice.

I get enough people checking in to my Xanga spot that things should be going better.  I need a better header for my site, and that is for certain, but does anyone have a clue?

Blessings to you,
Barb

Hello my friends.  I think I may  have missed an awesome chance, because this week Woody Allan  is filming all over San Francisco, and it is apparent to me that he has never filmed about anything about all of us who were out picking cotton when he was debating the demanding issues of whether a boy should materbate under the sheets, over his bed quilt, under his bed, or wait until after dinner, run up stairs to do homework, find his most beloved pair of socks, and turn them into really jazzy screams as if he was imitating a scene where wonder boy meets a cuddly hand swhich will just not leave his passion parts alone while the good guy, Mr. Allan, realizes that a fling with a sock could be almost other worldly,  and with only the one sock, he could find it much easier to wash only one sock, brush his teeth, rest so much bewitter just knowing that his terrific socks could turn in to puppets with whom he would never go out with, and that would be every tall and brilliant girl in his class who would say know, and then he would ask, “Why?”  And they would respond later that it was just because he gave them the creeps!

Meanwhile, back at home his Mom would be picking up a forgotten sock, start some chicken soup, and tell her husband, “Harry, “Woody cannot go to school tomorrow, because his sock is full of mucous, so he has a terrible cold;  or even worse — he has Polio, so I better scrub the whole house down with Lysol, and jerk his clothes off the minute he walks in, and if she was lucky,  he would not have been thinking about a girl, “Darlene DeBlanco,”  all the way home, and in need of hiding himself behind his book satchel as eroticism grew his still developing penile projection device in to full frenzy mode.

When he walked in the door, his mother grabbed his shoulders, kissed his tiny head, and said in a carrying voice; “Show me how you can walk not my little baby, so he would walk, and in all of the confusion, he held the book satchel so close that a Mallo malt bar just squashed which he was hiding as an after and a before dinner snack,” and his eyes got big as saucers as his mother proclaimed that, “Polio,” has spared my little son, my baby just one more time;” but there was no way he would be returning to, “Good Morning Teacher School,” until she had proof  that he would no longer be hacking up wads of snot like that one she found in his sock, and she ended with the pleaful though, “Would you please not blow your nose on your sock when I have a rag box big enough to supply all of Manhattan.”

“I never waste anything,” and he absolutely came down with chills, just thinking of the warm bed he left in the morning plus a wd hole rag bag to sort through his fantasies as he embraced his mother he loved even more dearly, for soon he might have and entire rag bag — like his Grandmother who died to soon with such that desperate feeling that he and Darlene DeBlanco would have ever dreamed about in their Gym, for if he cooled off, from that point on, he was going to endeavor to think of less exotic girls, for he certainly lost three magical days of showing his charming self in a school of hungry girls just hitting puberty, and that was really sad for a boy who romanced his socks, and just once in a hurry did not get all of his early secretions out of the tow tip.

Now his hope for exotic and  maybe even more thrilling sparks would fly from his heart beating in his chest all lay at the thoughts of one of his mothers silky negligees used to entice his father to his Mother’s twinkle in her eyes twice; once with him and once with his sister – Maybe, just maybe she would have a large enough piece of that satiny stuff in their which she kept clean to use for glass wax, for at some point in life a boy’s mind  retreats to ideas their mothers really does not want  to hear about, so he could not let this woman ever know about this tendency for a member of his body which could spring up like a monkey jumping up for a banana after the guy on the street tipped his hat.

So I need to know this, will my books start selling like hot cakes now that you know that I can write about most any subject like Woody being in our town,  Or is this just a fly by night laugh you can have for free.  My thoughts of, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” all they truth which I wrote about is apt to have you laugh tears of laughter,weep out of sorrows, and of joy.  Most writers are sitting on the edge of something,  and I will hold on to hope that this time next year my book may hit the top and brim over like the contents of Woody’s sock when he was young and innocent, and when he discovered his own other body cast of characters.That is the goal, to write what we can dream, then the lights flash, and gold stamps fall from the sky, for we are chosen as a winner. I’ve won an award in San Francisco, and even a first place award in Hollywood,  Amazon cannot print them on my sight though, so I have to print them somewhere myself, but first my gold stickers must come in the mail.  I will wait in patience with love, for you never forget who gave you congratulations.

Before I get any nasty letters, then please know that I made up all of this except for the awards part and how I feel about, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” but Woody Allan has made us laugh through most of our years writing similar pieces which were about others, and San Francisco will be hosting him this week and maybe in to a little more, because he never gave up on life, even when he was engaged in pretty creepy things.  His life and mine would collide like two comets on a direct collision path with earth, for adopted children are just that, and he walked straight in to a door which we all find as unforgivable.  I just look at the best of writers all of the years that I have been writing, and I know about this edge place, but please give us credit if we do one thing well.  Come along for the next journey of my book, for I am going to take it further, just as far as one can go.  You are my wealth, along with my gold stickers which will just look pretty, but they also will point out that I have won some awards, and had y.ou all not come the distance with me, I wouldn’t have had a prayer.  To the point;  Hollywood has given some notice, so I am waiting New York Times, For you to come and to meet a middle aged child;  almost older age; but go easy with those words.  I want to hear from New York to Maine, for The Appalachian soul is part of your states to; just follow the trail, and I will follow you.  Much love and blessings, BHZ

Hello Everyone,

Earlier in my evening, I did my work portion on Xanga, and that is the portion when I sit down and write an ad for “Pinkhoneysuckle.”  I placed my heart in that book, and once every now and then,  I have to stop and endeavor to let folks know that it is available, for it is as if the voices of Bonnie, Mary Sue, Mr. Kirby, George Allan, Bennie, Billie and Agatha are all on the tips of my fingers, and I need to let you know that they were worth writing about.  I see the kids on what we called, “The Retarded Bus,” the van that used to pick up my little broken brother, wash him swagger over the yard singing something, and sometimes he would give a little laugh, and I never knew if it was because he was happy to be leaaving for the day or if he was just uneasy, and sometimes he would sing to drawn out the noise around him, for it would start feeling anxious to him when he was about to have one of his spells, and there are times when I cannot understand how or why I jointed the medical community after I went to college, for every time our little brother, as we always call him — even to this day fell over and started a grand mal seizure; I know that when he turned blue, I always thought it was the end.

Mama had all of her things she would do, wash his face down, hold him tup, start screaming for help in the early years, and I do not know what the other kids did, but I would fall on my knees asking Jesus to bring him back, for I could not bear for him to go, nor could I ever envision my mother as getting over his dying.  Mama was afraid of death as if it was a stranger, and people did not linger long after they went tot the hospital or took to their beds back from around where we lived.  Their deaths were community events, and even your worst enemy would fall over the bodies and wail during the viewings, and those sounds would go with me  throughout the years, for in the country when someone died, it was as if a great storm had come through and selectively taken out part of a family.

In rural places, you need to know your neighbor, and when my Granny Hood died; Lord have mercy, for I thought Mrs. Ruby was going to climb in the casket with her, for she leaned of the corpse all nestled in flowers, and started her funeral yell; “Oh Mrs. Hood,”  “Mrs. Hood,” and she honestly had to be drug away from the coffin.  In later years I would wonder if she was that upset, for everybody in and around Lexie Crossroads would watch one of her boys to look just like Grannys second son, but people kept their mouth shut, and to this day, I do not know if that boy understands that he is really a cousin not once removed — but he is a cousin, and that is just what happened.  I have often thought we should invite him to a cousins lunch or something and ask him if his Mama told him who his Daddy was, but that would not have gone over very big, especially since most folks involved with the knowing can lie until Hell’s Gate, and the door bell stops ringing, but I never thought it was fair to much of anyone.

I’ve often wondered when the Uncle got to her?  Was it when he was drunk and didn’t have any more sense, or was Mrs. ruby just beside herself with love, or as I’ve told you in, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” some women did learn to make a little money on their beds if they were the loose sort, and if their husbands would have a pint of whiskey before the fornication.  Never will I understand why people switched off to the Fu– word when you had a word like Fornrnication, and just listen to that word all that it implies. “You fornication peice of trash, all mixed up with hussey, and jesebel” — These are words one can sink their teeth in to just like a vicious dog gnawing on a bone, and only God knew how many little spots dried up on those sheets to get the critters out the boys and men had brought home from Europe, these creep, crawling little sticky places which were just left until it was so cold your sheets would not freeze to the clothes line.

I could not help help myself,  for if they talked about, “Fornication,”  and Jezebels at church, then I tried to find the nearest dictionary, for I wanted to see what was so vile that it was a free one way ticket in to hell, and the preachers always made it sound like the women brought it on unsuspecting men to the point they just had to tear off some clothes, take something out, and get down to business, man and woman business, the original sins, a bucket of pretty red apples, and Jezebels all over the place putting on the dark red lipstick and washing up in the wash pan just in time for the devil to come in and start making these ladies who were usually out picking cotton with us all,  but then going inside and doing the deed; “Poor Men!”  They had been alone in a nice garden walking and talking with the Lord, then along women came, and a darkness fell over the land, “Fornicators, Idolators, And just being plain nasty kept them out of Temple to fallen women who could not be near the Torah.

My deep thoughts in church snatched that word up to, for it had something to do with Jewish people, and by now those Jewish people should have known not to have been dragging out scrolls when The Gideons had free New Testaments for everyone, a point of view held by all of our loving church goers,  and when Jesus died on that cross, then it was fairly clear that Jezebels and Fornicators did not have any idea where The Son of God was going to take them, for their mark of womanhood, the first blood announced it to the world that not any of that old stuff had a place any more, and children like me should have been spreading the word to keep some of these men from getting trapped by the women who were vile, let their hair grow to their waist lines, made more babies that we could have stacked up on our Mama’s large breast, for that is where a baby stayed at night, the new ones, Mama never dropped or smothered one of her babies.  I think she got some sleep, and those babies, all of us just  somehow just nestled our heads into her body, and we found her milk, and we drank and grew like weeds until she started mashing up our food on the table — what ever she made, and we would begin to sip from a glass, and before a year was up, she would have us eating and drinking on getting around her feet while she worked the day away.

She would have had me drug up by my underwear, scrubbed my mouth with soap, and whipped me senseless had she known that I was trying to make sense of all thia Fornicating and Jezebeling had she know that I was even going to scripture to look  us such, for in our house you did not want to run your mouth about such things until you were old enough to worry about getting married, and even then it would not be something that any one would talk about in front of respectable folks, but I am telling you those preachers got hot under the collar, red as beets, and practically down on the floor with all of that Fornication talk giving them some awful feeling of the devil coming into their own pair of Sunday clothes.
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Sometimes when I was rounding up the cows I would see if I could preach like the old masters who put down the plow for the collection plate on Sunday after they got the call to, “Preach the Gospel, and spread the good news,”
which was their time to tell us to turn our Bibles to the pages they were going to preach on; then I was glad not to have had the dictionary search trying to sort out the pure and sweet word instead of getting all fired up about where folks were going to go sleeping around, for it did not seem very important to me, and Hell when it came down to were those freezing mornings when the water kettle had frozen on our heater that night, and our poor mother had to leave her baby next to another child long enough to get a fire started again.  I could not even then imagine getting up in that freezing house to get that old heater crackling with fire wood, but every day, just like clock work, Mama was the first to brave the coldest morning, and it was my guess that the Fornicators just laid in bed, hoping that it would all get done ins spite of their proclivities.

We were so cold that any nice day we tried to clean up better than usual, but even after all I read in Mr. Webster back then,  I would not know the true meaning of, “To fornicate even in to this day.”  I am finding it to be rather sad that we though Mama’s days were easy compared to our school days, and maybe, just maybe she got to hold her babies for a little while, for after standing by the fire which was on the stove and getting some coffee down in his throat; Then he would leave for the day too, and for thof se few hours no one was going to break Mama’s rest with her little one now sitting beside the warm fires of morning.

All of the best my friends, for it is way past time for me to rest.  Love and blessings,
Barbara E Heintz — Author of Pinkhoneysuckle, my blog,and the ;  book on Amazon – Kindle Ready

en It is that time of month when I need to fill those in who have not been following my blog site all of the years, so for the next few sentences, I would encourage off of you who know how I got from Point A to Point B — The information about my book, “Pinkhoneysuckle,”  For Sale, Rent, Kindle or For Bartering – My book and the embroidery of my life to gather together a story about a mid-century growing up, and becoming a young woman with the heavy weight of The Southern Most Appalachians As my home.
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You have seen the cute stories, but not many htesave ever told our third world truth;  Because we felt ashamed as America chose us to take the brunt of post war America with by taking our farm acerage, severly cutting what we could plant, maybe enough money to buy two bags of groceries instead of our larger cotton and tobacco beds — Just enough taken from us to destroy our fathers and our hopes of childhood which had been scant to begin with.

We are dealing with truths that our country,s history had been to get rid of the Indians, Fight a dreadful Civil War, and to make Southerners wallow in their bad luck for about 75 years, so next in line would come, “The Hillbillies,” those who would do anything to remain free to plant their own crops and ask nothing of The United States other than to be self sufficient, to grow and the share their own food, to have enough to get the kids shoes for winter, and to decline what came to be know as, “Welfare,” even if there was a  hungry bunch of kids hanging around the front porches which, though you had to be careful, for some of the boards were going to knock you to Kinupgdom Come, for digging up stumps left a farmer without enouth energy to get up the next day and start it all again.

Women were fit for cooking, cleaning, church, birthing, and preserving food.  Those who stuffed their bellies while we all gathered it in and Mama cooked for them, were rarely there, except with  those who might want to come to see in she was waiting for anothher child, and we kids had no idea of how she got that way.  Come with me to these Appalachian mountains, the ones of my,” Pinkhoneysuckle,” and coming to the end of the story with me, there will be a question all the way through as to whether or not what I write is truth, and I will hold your face within my hands which are usually warm, and I am going to tell you; “Oh sweet baby,”  It is almost all the truth, and our country and all of us were the modern diaspora of America, the shame, and the third world which has been hidden as a National Walking Trail, a National Forest, and the faith of the old friends in the lamplight, so lets go home sweet babies; Let’s go home and rock our mothers to sleep, bind our father tired feet and scream as loud as me may that we are still broken, and the Meth and Moon Shiners know about us, but they also know that their secred is safe, for all souls need a warm place to sleep and a place to forget and to watch a bunch of brothers and sisters pay the price of silence just to come home.

I am going to tell you straight out though, that you are prey, as open as the doe fall comes, and someone gets a taste for the wild meat.  Take care of it all you who go there, for m mountain justice is hard and deadly.  “Kick that serpent lying within you grasp,  and guard my friends; Guard it all, for we know no one’s loss is worth the feds oming in from the darkness.

Barbara Everett Heintz — author of Pinkhoneysuckle on Amazon, the book, Kindle Version; Award Winning Book at the 2012 San Francisco Book Festival as Well as A First Pride Award In Hollywood 2012 Book Festival as Amog Those Most Apt To Have Their Work Converted In To Media of All  Types.

Dear Friends Who Have Now Purchase it;  I thank and praise you for giving me a change. and the touch with Holllywood is wherein my greatest hopes may lie:
God  Bless You, Barbara Everett Heintz — Pinkhoneysuckle , The Book Guaranteed to chage you…

Barb Hz

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I know;  this sounds like overkill, doesn’t it, but it is what I have to say to those who go to my Amazon web page and who purchase my book, or Kindle, or rent it, and I would be a lying shameful individual if  I told you that I remain the poorest of the poor, for no one who goes to Amazon’s book publishing division and  ask to publish any book is searching for grocery money.  We buy the ability to publish, and it is costly for now, and Amazon’s Create Space, no doubt is publishing more than any other company who has the capacity to do so.  As long as they are above board and have name recognition, it is their position to maintain, and they advertise that they pay among the highest royalties in the business,  and I took their word partially because I new that it was a safe place to trust with my writing, and that means a whole lot, that they are not going to purposefully offend or have you involved for years with something you cannot get out of, and the very first people I spoke with sounded so kind and wonderful until I learned that writers who used the other company which I cannot name felt that their lives had been taken from them, for they did not read the fine print, and there were several cases pending in higher courts about that company — “But they sounded so nice, said I to my son, but he knew of the dishonesty, the hurt, and in a case or so, there were suicides involved when very sensitive people felt they had signed their future away; Thus I chose the arm of the larger Amazon. 

Maybe a Warren Buffet or his close friend, Bill Gates, if they wanted to could start a do it yourself publishing competitor,  but there are few others with pockets deep enough to shake Amazon’s dynasty for those of us who lived with the dream of getting a book out someday.  I am not a slouch in going around and asking for book store shelf space, but  I have had some family issues of health and some of my own problems which has kept me from getting out and begging the few larger book sellers to give me a chance.  For now, I know they have a back log of the tried and successful, so I would have to work hard  to get shelf space away from those already set in the market and taking their books on to other media.

My book was planned for years, for I was going to tell an American story which would leave your voting public asking the question of, “Why did we never understand this was going on fifty years ago, for maybe we could have made a change in the outcome of the lives of many who justly qualify now as fully impoverished, not only financially, but the miscarriage of justice where millions of American Citizens became displaced with no hint of responsibility on behalf of those who had always been the first to volunteer in war, the first to live with the integrity to provide for their families and others organic and good food as part of their labors; and our great war hero, “President Eisenhower’s administration broke families apart, especially in the south to get people up to the cities of America by taking away their ability to farm the land and care for their families as was the tradition, because we needed, according to the folks in Washington, cheap factory labor to get this country back on its feet, so I would see the building blocks for a story that needed to be told as from month to month, then from year to year, we and so many other children saw our father’s go away with tears streaming down our faces, for it was so scary to see the world as we knew it crumbling.  It seemed as if we had gone from farms of hope to looking out over the land once covered in cotton, all measure of grain, and products some did not even know we grew, such as sugar cane.

But we were part of the master plan to get Americans in to cars, new homes, and ideal communities, because we were a country leaving the land, headed to higher goals.  It was no longer a chicken in every pot, that old atage;  No, it was that lower subsistence farmers were a dime a dozen, and they are nothing but work horses, so lets get the post war housing built for the boys, and move these,  “Hillbillies,” and they’ll make a few bucks and get by.
So the book was being written as we all cried like babies as we saw our fathers getting in some old car that may or may not make it to Chicago, Detroit, Cincinnati, Cleveland, — The endless list of places where factories like GM, Ford, and tool makers meant more than a bunch of weeping kids and their Mamas back home.

I was writing the book when the dollars in the mail which Dad could send were not going far enough, so then our folks, instead of enjoying the little time together, were in a physical and mental struggle, and we kids knew that the razor strap was going to come out to shut up our weeping when the battles would become so ruthless that every one of us knew that we were a hair away from a murder suicide about to happen, because people go crazy and do irrational things when their amour is gone, and the garments of living on self pride and the feeling that parents could provide for children was taking away the last bits that had made people proud enough to send their kids to school over the back roads with hope that someday those kids might even come around to being able to be a part of a  better time when it was alright to bring up a child knowing they might help out a little with the crops, the home place, and all of those things which made Agrarian America sound like the old frontier where people could accomplish anything by the work of their hands.  “Yes, dear friends,” this book was developing in my head with a few chapters beginning to emerge which I would share some day.”

I planned that you might know about us and how we went from being somewhat alright on in to being, “Those hicks,” who, when people opened their mouths, the rural accents gave us away as if we were branded as we heard they did out west to the animals.  The cowboy tales we heard were usually when out under the western sky someone had been rustling cattle, those damned no goods, and then; behold the Marshall was going to come in and see the branding marks all mixed in with some no goods cattle, and those son’s of  a bitch were going to be starring at the other end of a rope, for naturally during the rustling time, they had murdered somebody’s boy whose name was something out of the King Jame’s Bible version which was always saved when the rest of the house was burning down, because Lord knows;  There were no fire brigades out where the cowboys roamed.
 
Branded — by the way we spoke, the way we dressed, and with the dirt under our nails until we learned to trim them ourselves — That was the southern farmer and a family if he brought one was dealt with among the decent folk who knew very well there was not one whole brain among any of us.  You certainly did not want your white kids or your nice little black children hanging  out with the likes of us, for you might end up being branded too.  This is how I began to develop the story which I kept in my heart until I phoned the fine folks at Amazon one day.

Then all of you came along, and some are buying my books, and when I say that I want too thank you, bless you, and hold you dear to my heart, it is not all about the money, for the truth is that it will take a while before I realize the investment of money.  What makes me feel such overwhelming gratitude is that you want to read the story, somewhat like the old hymn which said; “Tell me the old, old story, and write on my heart every word,” That is why I want to hold you near and with all that is in me to say, :Thank you for buying my book, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” for when you do then one more, then maybe a few more than that are going to know what happened to American citizens at a period of history when most people were celebrating an end to the long war years, mending what the could the feeling of loss, watching the American cities grow, but if you are reading my book, then you are finding out how very much more the content of the Character of a nation showed its evil and scorn by preying on the ones who had the least.  I beg you to endeavor to understand that I may never make back the money I have thrown in to this whole project, beginning with my memory of being a little girl, and being able to share with you what my friend in Hollywood, Bruce, has called a diaspora of an entire group of people who went back in this country as far as The American Revolution. 

I might just see two books, sometimes even four, now and again, because I have no name recognition to get this book out to the people of America, and if you knew me, the real me, then you would know that my branding iron was placed deep into the annals of time past, but it has taken this long for one person to get a book out about one of America’s deepest and darkest sins.  Can you understand what joy that makes me feel to know that the book is carrying the words never before spoken so loudly and with the intent to educate a nation about what happened to a large portion of agrarian America who were left without a voice.

It is true that I give you a story which is profound, but I did my best to gather the specks of light, and to give you laughter to ease the pain of evening finally knowing the things which should have been in every American History book by now.  Instead, we have our buddy, the guy who finds some joy in the word, “Redneck,”  and we have on our televisions the swamp people, the bedroom lives of people who are supposed to make you burst with laughter, for another sub population of America has been filmed to advertise antacids ir fast food joints, and these folks, for a while will take home a lot of money.  I cannot compete with such corporate sponsored  folks who will get  book deals magazine covers, and maybe a beer label with their shining and happy faces,

But each book I sell is one more start in a new month and in a new day when people feel that I have a story to tell, some people to introduce you to, a blip in history about we who lived off the land, and asked very little more than a pair of shoes, and whatever coat someone could spare to keep us warm.  The books bought validate that we existed, that I had a life of my own, and that maybe, someway and somehow, the needs of the home folks will shake to the core someone who will decide that the time has come to recognize the forgotten.

God bless and keep you for buying, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” and may you someway within your being fatham that sometimes a person, a writer, a woman growing older can tell you help educate a nation, one by one, and then geometrically — A few more, and I shall live knowing that the child, then the woman told the story which, unless you were there, then you did not know.  Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Author of, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” on Amazon – Kindle ready, and openly asking you that if you have something good you found in this book that I wrote word by word on my heart; Then as a last kindness could you please send the word to Amazon that it was worth reading.  You can find that space on my Amazon page which asks for comment  and reviews.

In Love, Hope, and Thanksgiving, I am, Barbara Everett Heintz, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” My book and blog.

Hello all of you sleeping angels.  I look out over San Francisco where sometimes I will discover that I have written most of the night, and most of you have Saturday planned, so I can envision morning, the young and in love will be in laughter, and we who are a little older – Heck, maybe older than some hills like to rest under the warm covers, to hear the birds chatting in their sweet language trying to message us that soon the night will be over, and we prepare for that morning choir. 

In early life, my mother wanted us up before sunrise to care for animals or the little brothers and sisters, so in warm covers, I can see it all once more.  Some mornings our hands were red with fire, and maybe this is beyond your comprehension, but we did not ever own a pair of gloves, not one pair of mittens, and I cannot remember many children who had them.  I think the farm mothers just never had the time to know how to knit, or maybe they figured we could lean into the dairy cattle enough to get the wood in, the morning milk, and she had never known a world to sleep  until the sun came up.  It used to seem pathetic to me that we could not rest longer until I read, “The Trail of Tears,” which told of the Cherokee and the Creek, the tribes in North Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama, and the happy portions of it told that especially the women liked to go to the streams and to bathe to greet the morning sun.  My mother was part Cherokee, and something remained of the custom of greeting a morning, and not wishing to offend the Mother sun, or her daughter, the moon.  For the Cherokee it was a happy time, for the work would be done and they could raise their arms in joy for a new day, so our Mama never until she was old, gave up the custom of beginning the work before dawn.

I now wish that I had known that she felt joy, such joy in early hours, and I  wish that she would have gone with us and that we could have greeted the new day which was beautiful in her woods, though it was removed from the world, and when I hear the first bird awaken to begin the morning song, I think of her, and know that I have stayed up much too long, a habit of my later life after spending so many evening caring for my patients, or being with my children on summer nights when their father worked, so I would wait for my husband to come home, and hope that the evening would last just to talk, to love, to rest enough to do my chores, for I never demanded of my daughters what was demanded of me, and they had their own rooms, bathrooms, all the gloves and clothes a girl might have ever known, but I had moved in to a world where, “Greeting the Mother Sun,” had disappeared or the welcoming of, “Daughter Moon,” was apt to be practiced by new age groups who were about as Indian as a turnip, but it was alright.  They could pretend to Pow Wow, pretend to know of the most basic life events and of what they longed to love of a people and time who were not always their own.

In the land where we would find pink honeysuckle, and where arrowheads were sometimes in the fields to the quick of eye, our mother knew secrets she could not tell. I speak a lot about her in my book, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” and wonder why we needed to be cold where women once even made the thread to weave the cloth for what was to be worn on their backs, the new dress for the growing child, not a scrap ever thrown away, clothes that let large bellies filled with child grow free with a top that fit over the sight where the baby was growing on waiting to be born;  Was it there where we learned to be cradled and longed to feel warm, and did our Mama show us to the Mother Sun, I want to ask her, and tomorrow I want to feel well enough to at least welcome the mid day, for I am of Cherokee blood under this British skin; Oh, you ask how much?  I am enough to have gone with cousins to the valley my mother left to climb her mountain climbed by ancients before, and from there she could survey and contemplate that it was a beautiful site, especially when the mountain laurel was in bloom or violets were purple, dogwoods white, or the limbs were cracking like cold hands when the wind decided to howl.

I saw that she had warm gloves, a scarf for her hair, and warm gowns which she could wear, and the sisters and brothers tried too to keep her warm and safe.  Our father loved his baby with her coal black hair and blue eyes, and they would greet Mother Sun just as they wanted to when we were gone to other places.  You did not know that I was such a daughter, closely born to a family who would not die along, “The Trail of Tears,” for they hid within the woods there, the cunning ones who would make it to continue some ways of the elders. But deep within me, I see the children along that tral, their hands cracking from the wind, just like mine, the brothers, the sisters when the wind hauled, so I want to be warm now, and see them passing by, and I would like to be the wise ones who knew to march together, holding hands, defying the wet ground, wailing over the dead, but finding a warm place, resting closely when they could, to form the human blanket each night to crawl within, for to greet the morning would mean life, and only hands together could act like the mittens which no one could buy.
It is a cold evening in San Francisco, so I must; Yes I must bid, “Good Night,” and take the guilt of warm covers as a sign that I have more to give.  Barbara Everett Heintz,  Award Winning Author For The Book, “Pinkhoneysuckle” on Amazon

Hello You Early Rising East Cost Friends of My Heart,

Today, I have learned so much about the tea plant that I think we should talk seriously about tea.  Also,  I wonder how many of you are drinking really 100 proof Cherry  Juice like you would get at a health food store, for I have been told it helped a friend to lick Fibromyalgia, along with vitamins A E C D, and just rest, but the vegatables and fruits were super important too.  I am looking toward trying to get my broken body in to better health here, and I know that we need both worlds of medicine, but I am so fully in an infammatory crisis that I am out to do battle with non western medicine ways.  Never take my advice though, but I hope sharing somethings about what we do for our health and well being, and please baby boomers, especially, and you younger folks no a lot, so please share.

Just be kind enough to leave it to proper etiquette, share what you have worked had, for how long, the treatment, and are you cured.  This is about your best life.  I love you my angels living with cancer and desparate chronic conditions of all kinds where life seems really fragile, but you may have something to help another person you know going through your same serious problem get through a day.  I would love to hear from you.

But tomorrow, I am going to talk about tea as medicine, and how many know that tea is the same shrub or bush affected in taste by the soil it is grown in, how it is processed,  cured, or aged.  We will have something about Lipton, for we’ve alway enjoyed just our old friend from the past, but I have learned that we do not drink tea in the way, especially, the Chinese do, and we can try it for things which ail us, and the varieties of taste and texture from one tea true is among the most amazing things I have ever heard about.

I spent the day talking to my friend, David Farland, a real writer who you might look up, but since my writing prizes in San Fran and Hollywood;  I was at a brick wall, so we can talk about the disaster of what has happened to writers, but I just thought for a few days that we could put our heads together and talk about tea, how it is meant to be prepared, what it does that might make you and me healthier, But throw in other things you believe in strongly that has made you a more well person,  Let us see if we come up with condenses which others might benefit from.  Do not turn this in to a taudry sex one upmanship.  Sex and health have a lot to do with life;  But please be a bit more private about your proclivities in the sexual arena.

Come on!  What has made a major or a minor difference in your health and well being which we all can benefit from.. I double dare you to be the first to comment, and think from head to toe, also share things which made conditions worse..Tea is mine for tomorrow; Now please start adding your pathways of help.

Blessings To All, Pinkhoneysuckle Blog — And Amazon – Kindle Read Book

The straight question; What have you done or used to overcome or to alleviate symptoms of both acute and chronic health problems;  What Worked,  No kidding on this Xanga Health Helpers Exam Room!!!
 

Pinkhoneysuckle  is endeavoring to come down to earth after my book award in Hollywood, and I think you know the feeling of when you are beautiful pitcher of honey, and it is poured on warm cinnamon cakes as every guest walks by, and then suddenly I, or maybe you and I, we feel empty, smudged, and need to be cleansed in a soothing water that has bubbles and warmth and maybe smells like a sprig of lavender before we can be used up again.  You must let them handle you gently, and do not be afraid that your standing, suds dripping to the floor, for the warm towel is cuddling your body like the memory of an old love you were supposed to have forgotten.  Just nestle into it, be soothed, and I can grant that without even as much as a wrap, you will be ready for the next moment when you are held in large and sweet bare hands once more, all ready to be filled again with some thing or feeling wonderful.

The week has all but passed since I was celebrated by my co writers, some people who are apt to see an Academy Award some day, so your balloon of every color of flower on the forest floor has landed, and you must step out and decide what is next in the pantheon of what the project of writing a book has meant to you and how much further can you take it on the graveled roads which wear the soles of shoes and tires out far more quickly or just stay as empty and naked as inside you feel right now, go out on the street and shout, “I give up; Do you hear me?” I just give up, but something speaks, and it tells you there is lots of work to be done, so in only a few hours, then you know that you are going to try to go to wine country just before the grapes are harvested and when all of the harvest of vine and garden are filling every larder, for a winter is coming on, and thus you decide that it might be a good thing to go to Sonoma then and take the beautiful book on a trip to Santa Rosa in September, and you wonder if they have the tiniest space, perhaps the least logical space in the village of books filled already, or will you be the 100th on a waiting list that might get in if a more senior regular dripped out or if a pregnant writer winds up dropping out, because her baby decided to not wait the three weeks she had counted on, so a new plan keeps evolving, so I begin to cinch the robe against the breast that nursed my babies — all five, the tithe that cannot be broken no matter how much any child might decide breasts the love now were the first they had ever known.

That is a truth which  should be carved in stone for when your child decides that it hates you just because in hormonal rage, they need to hate, not in some rouge tatoo but perhaps upon a stone that will go with your dust or ashes to remind each generation that comes along that not only did you carry them in your body, not only did you give birth however you had to just for them to take their first breath, but you were their first drink, and I even cried when I was thirty eight, for I was still too weak from giving birth to twins, so not enough milk was coming for the two little girls, and I was not healing from the surgery fast enough, so I had to bind the breast for comfort and let them have the bottles, so I could measure every drop to see that they could take more and more, but the tears would not stop flowing, for I was learning to held them in each arm, and rock us all to sleep, but three weeks;  That was all the time we had before a glass bottle and rubbery nipple took my place.  We mothers who nursed our babies are like the way it feels for our children to feed, and we are not to stupid to understand that in some sense; it is the unsevered cord when we are holding babes in arms.

We are all such vessels, our men with the perfect seed, our bodies ready for the planting, and when I was young, no one told me why once per month in addition to the ridiculousness of  blood and nutrients emptying out the uterus when a child was not implanted — We became raging like fire for some days where we did not want just to be loved per usual we wanted to make love with passion beyond the every day; yes the love that was almost unquenchable, for it was nature’s way of giving the greatest and longest period of hours when we could, not only satisfy a longing, not only bring passion to its scream to be fulfilled, but to capture the seed and seal it as only a woman’s body can. 

It is hurtful to aging women that some men never get past needing these hours even when they are older, because even though women hormonally must deal with the depletion of most of which allowed her to give birth, most can still find the too forgotten realization that to make love is within them, but the males who desire the mark of children must go to younger women judged for beauty and the magic of medicine per usual has answered the needs for men to continue sexually in a manner more similar to their youth, and some few young women earnestly love them, but equally as true is that many young women want the financial security of the older man and tolerates the relationship presuming they and children will last to love again.  Some older men need nothing but the youth to be tempted and to comply, and once again we simply accept the truth that the older woman when youth is lost bears the body marks of the passage earlier, so if our husband’s need the Barbie dolls then we have little but our mate’s choice of what they can live with.  It sounds so harsh; doesn/t it?  But much of life is harsh, and only we can change it in to the beautiful painting, the poem that shares our thoughts, or the book that shares the larger poem of every soul’s existence.

So we are cleaned and polished, dressed with sweet oil, and the touch of the warm towel, and the yesterday which made us tremble with excitement is, for now, packed away.  All seems at least bearable, and we make plans;  Sonoma; early Autumn, a place I love where the farthest of the Spanish Missions was built in California.  I am on to something here, so tomorrow I can return to my place, and you will find out of me what you did not notice, the little chip broken long ago, not deep enough to cast away, nor would you want me to be, for we are all vessels, and we each are a little damaged, but we loved before any of us examined the entire piece. We are painted over again and again, and someday the last coat of oil will begin to crackle and all that is underneath will become that which we wish to see, but would it not be a shame had the Dali been thrown away with so much beauty still to treasure. 

In our nakedness we are trying to hide like children, and we feel such pain when something wonderful is passed.  We do not know where or if we can have the thrill of some moments we had one week ago, so it takes some courage to begin to plan for the days and ours to come, but we damn ourselves in to mediocrity if we do not at least endeavor to fill our empty selves, then we are in trouble — So you stand at a distance and see one feeling whole enough to wear the robe, to offer the naked self, to admit that youth left before I planned it for myself, but I have found a fork in the road, and the gravel looks soft to bare feet, but I will take my barren self and make the journey to the next dream, and to each mother when they feel longingly for the days of beauty, of nursing babies, the husband who remembers the insatiable vessel that was me, then –then I have gone no where, but I am still each place where you are away from me.  Do not share our secrets, and do not look for me in other eyes, and when you have looked at Barbie Dolls; just be assured that I have known Superman, The Great Hulk, and maybe a cowboy or two, but five cords we made together, and their names are forever up on the nursing stone.

Who could possibly go to Hollywood, come home, and witness a miracle — That you have seen, That you have heard;  And you are jumping on board to read my book, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” by Barbara Everett Heintz, and God Bless My Brother — Robert Van Everett, who wrote his exquisite monologue for me, a brother, like me who held it all in his heart until, at times, his heart would almost burst.  He would look at me or the other brothers and sisters when we had to part from one another, and he would mourn;  We all would mourn, for we knew that it would be a long time until we would all see each other again.  Yes, we are like lost children when we must say goodbye, because we never even were able to know each other as children, and I was the one of the  eight that actually lived on both Sand Mountain, Alabama, and Lexie Crossroads, Tennessee, and after me came our broken brother, for whom I did not understand anyone’s shame.

Hollywood has never met the likes of me before, for at my age, I should be so skilled at saying goodbyes; the goodbye to friends, to our parents, to the world hidden from each of your eyes, but Van and I are over a decade in age, and we shared the dreadful pain of leaving home and then trying to return again, just to be with our folks when things got better, just to see the old white  rose bush which has traveled from state to state of which Mama took a cutting and moved from house to house, that sacred rose which you would fix your tear dimmed eyes on, for you wanted to stay a little while longer and  to pretend that all days and hours had been like the homecomings; All eight of us got to see our folks on their 50th wedding anniversary before all the dying times began, and Mama and Daddy had got the new house looking like a sweet home by then, and everything was planned to help our folks know that we understood now, as adults should, why people like them just could not do much better for us.

You see; we had to become familiar with our own cracked and trampled selves to understand that their lives hardly began until they were 60, for when your village, your town — Worse, the people you call extended family have decided that you are their mop up crew to clean and toil for them, because; just because they know that you have few choices, for however horrible it was for us; Their sorrows were greater, because they only could say, :”Yes,” to the pirates of our integrity, and all they knew to do was to break the switch, or raise the belt and start whipping us as they did the mules of the field.  It relieved something in them, but holding on to who they were compared to the people they became would have left us with the same loss of as much life as our parents did in bearing up to the rules which dictated your class.

Van wept as we all wept when we left home as adults, because we knew that every soul would doubt our stories, so who could we share it with outside of a brother or a sister — Certainly not to our own children, but we wept as if we were leaning over a fresh and unmarked grave each time we had to say our goodbyes.  “How can you weep over this God Forsaken place you left so long ago, asks the doubter and the fool,” and I might have to say to them that, “We are newborns as a family,” and we still have so little time to share all that had passed before us.  Mama wanted our brother, Robert, after he was a teenager to just quit school and farm the land, for she expected that he was tall and strong and then he was a man; wasn’t he?  No he was left alone in the birth line, so he was left behind by a brother six years his senior who was all of our parents hope for help toward a better life.

And then came the two sisters who were just enough older than me to be what my friend calls, “The Irish Twins,” a common enough term, for we looked like a Catholic family compared to the small families of our kin.  Next I would be born, and the ice, the cold, the house empty of food that January day was foretelling the future, and within four years, our broken baby came home, and Mama’s distant stare even told me, a full six plus five years old or so when our James came home, that I would never have a partner for school or for my life ahead.  Mama’s big blue eyes held on to a blue baby who was too weak to feed and if you looked at her long enough, her crystal Irish eyes showed the little blue brother lying in her weakened arms could not stay for very long before he was taken to a Shriner’s Hospital in Nashville.

Bless the Shriners with all of their unknown truths and oaths, for they have taken care of little children for as long as I have heard their names, and they would take our baby and try to make him better. Aunt Doris Reeves would take Mama to see him a few times, and I did not understand this, Nashville, and I did not understand about our new baby and why Mama cried and Dad became even more bitter, and everything that had been evil now came down to our bunch, the field hands, needing to be home a little more, for our Mama wanted to be with her baby.  Daddy had a secret fear that he may have caused our brother’s brain for being bad, for his hitting Mama never ended even though we would beg her not to struggle with him — “Just stay out of his way, for he’s not right, and don’t get him upset,” but she would not listen to children.  The old demons of her past told her that was all she was worth, and having her sick little baby gave her some kindness which she could only experience if she went to the hospital where James was kept.  He had rickets, unheard of in mid-century, brain damage, but they did not know how badly, but until the next baby was in her womb within two years or so;  She took a little kindness in Nashville, and I liked the days that she would go away.

Robert and I cry more than most of the others, because we neither had the grandmother’s attention given to the older brother, and each of us found ourselves with no one our age to lean on, so we cry for the lost years; we cry in times of joy, and we sob in times of sorrow.  I know that some of the others feel equally alone, but there are copying skills which Robert and I did not have to fall back on, because in our growing up time we were like post standing alone.  Mama thought our Robert Van was a man, because he grew tall so soon and so strong from sawing the winter logs with Dad, but in that body was a boy who had wanted to play like other boys, to be mischievous bursting pumpkins from a high place in the fall, or rolling tobacco leaf to catch a smoke like the older men, maybe even the joy of going to a river, dangling his feet over, and surprising us with a big old catfish for a supper time.

At fifteen, he headed north like all of the men, got a job, married at age seventeen  with absolutely no idea of what marriage really meant other than a paycheck and getting a baby along the way, but he can take that up with you in another place, and in another story.  I just wanted you all to know why some people cry until they are drained like an empty vessel into a cavern where all tears are collected to bathe lost souls.  Tears are as automatic as laughter, and we Americans, like our British Isle forefathers and even the more stoic German and Dutch who populated our chores saw crying as a weakness when it is as natural as love, and equally as painful.  The romance language countries seem to have a healthier respect for the need for tears, beautiful tears which empty us until we can weep no more.  Sorrow and love may bring tears, and goodbyes of all kinds, for life is so short, and the journey so unknown that to leave those who even lived a portion of our lost youth reminds us of how sacred it was, the few times to be together, and the newer generation does not appreciate that planes were not used like shuttles as they are now, plus one even had to worry then about gasoline money.

When we got together, we found the things we could laugh about, and our love for laughter is no different than yours, but the time for laughter being broken brings the remorse, and thus we weep.  We are the third world children on the southern border where the towns to nowhere somehow became our roads to home.

Our sweet boy has grown older now, and the seizures still turn him the blue of a sudden death, but the caring people where he lives just bears them as they come along and baby him as we did.  It is a true story that Mama put him next to the TV set, for we all loved Oral Roberts and Mama though James might be healed right through that TV when Mr. Oral said to put out your hands and to be healed, but even after she sent them some dimes of our milk money she got some stuff back about prayer and the need for money to continue his ministry.  I never thought I would hear our mother utter an ugly word about a preacher, but after she opened her envelope of the healing experience, I could hear her in the kitchen saying these words, “Shit, they ain’t nothing but a bunch of no accounts wanting your money,” and from that day forward,,  Mama would only let us watch Preacher Oral when he was having a revival or something.  She much preferred to scare us to death with The Reverend Billy Graham who always preached about the end of the world, and I want you to know if it ends as Reverend Graham interpreted literally from the book of Revelations, then most of us need to be seeing if we have any old asbestos rugs lying around, for the end of time is going to be worse than hell!

My flicked and foolish computer just kicked out an entire blog, so I believe it was, “Them,” who kicked it out, for I was giving you word for word exciting moments of my last evening in Hollywood when a note was left under my door that GC — Maybe, George Clooney was reading my book, and that soon I might be counting starts when suddenly I was asked to run downstairs in my silver satin slippers, disguised with my crushed velvet evening robe which had been sent up in a box that just said, “incognito,” so I put on heavy make up, my pink double rimmed glasses, and the jewels bought at the old Woolworth store;  You know, I just had to cover myself not to be recognized immediately by the papparzi, but tasteful enough that GC might understand that it was me, the award winning, Barbara Everett Heintz, HollyBook  Festival Wild Card Boolk for Hollywood 2012 – My Pinkhoneysuckle, which you may find on Amazon, Kindle, or Create Space, not that I would brag, having won an honorable mention in San Francisco, as well; but I will return to my story as you contemplate my name and the book, “Pinkhoneysuckle:”

I carried a copy of the book down in to the lobby, and all the people at the desk seemed to be pointing at the Hotel Bar, so I rushed in, and there, a man, looking stunning in black, with the appeal of Clark Gable as he stood holding a scotch and water, something I would immediately recognize, and I knew that finally I was about to me, George, you know that, George Clooney, the Clark of this day and age.  Even near him I got this scent of lavender with a trace of spice; Perhaps, cardomen, and my heart was beginning to pace rapidly, and he began to turn around, the eyes, astounding and the frame everything I had dreamt about before he was born, and there was a little swagger in the way he moved his head, an unlit cigar in one hand, woodsey, tranquil, and for that second;  It was he and I, alone to discuss my book and what to expect over the next months to come as he put someone to
work on the screenplay, and then, I simply feel on my chair and swooned, if I may steal a term from another wonderful Xangan who goes by the name, “Slinky,” maybe you know her, but she wrote a poem about how to swoon, and what I thought was being dizzy was similar, but dizzy does not capture — Slinky’s, “Swoon Time,” No it was that moment, that hour of the night when breathing is a little deeper and the lights are not out, just on two people whose eyes meet at one glimpse, and there he was, “Clark Gable,” and he looked at me dressed in my scarlet with my silver satin slippers, and he said; “You know I’m dead now, don’t you kid,” but I reached for him and arms came around me as if it was the most wonderful and warm hug ever given, and he whispered in my ear;  “Baby, if you ever need me;  Just say, “Scarlett,” and I will be here at The Roosevelt Hotel where my friends and I all play.  He touched my hair, and I completely forgot about George for the moment, Breathed in the nicest scent that was mine to own, saw Clark lift his glass, and he smiled as he put a back hat on, the lights twinkling outside being the lights of long ago, and I could hear him remind me, “Scarlet;” Just say it and I will be here, and then he walked out in to the mid century night of long ago, and the heat against the cool air of the ghost simply made me tremble, for it was no sooner there until it was gone,

I cannot let this story get out too soon, for the reality seemed to take  be back to a bed with a spring which was killing my back, but I went to sleep,  and in the morning folded the red scarlet and the sating slippers to show at some other time when I would dare to dream.  I came away thinking that it was a moment when I was a novelist, a winner, an over whelmed speck of long ago which time had no way to erase,

The melancholy of it all was that my book was gone, but the beautiful spirit who had taken it was smiling down on me beginnin the prologue written by my brother, and since time had no meaning to him, and he had his heaven chosen for now, he had gone, my book in his hand, figuring I wouldn’t miss it anyway.

After that meeting, I put metting George Clooney in my back pocket, for what is he going to meet me in, “Black silk and pearls,”  That is what you recommend, my ghost and lonely boy, and with those thoughts, I left Hollywood a book award in hand, a meeting with a coveted man for whom all school girls found their first breath hard to take as they wanted to go away with the wind and with him.  It is strange, don’t you think, that ghost only like it when the lights are down low and the night comes on?  But those arms, those warm arms felt as real as a new baby brought to my shoulder, and like them;  That moment was all mine.

Pinkhoneysuckle,
Find your stranger in the long night;  Just be certain you remember who they really are, and, “Good Night.”