JO MOORE FICTION
THE WORKS OF JO MOORE
JOMOOREFICTION@ATT.NET
News
TWO NEW NOVELS AND TWO NEW SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS---TO ORDER, CLICK ON LINKS AT BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE (all titles also available on Kindle)
TO VIEW NEW CHILDREN'S TITLE PAGE SCROLL TO BOTTOM OF PAGE FOR LINK
Critic Peter Kelton weighs in---read his article in the July EXAMINER: (copy/paste link) http://www.examiner.com/x-15737-Albuquerque-Contemporary-Literature-Examiner~y2009m7d28-Jo-Moore-novels-called-a-new-voice-in-literary-fiction-to-trust
THE ANGLO
By Jo Moore (to order click link below)
THE ANGLO is the stirring story of loss and renewal, deeply rooted in the windswept landscape of the High Desert Mesa of Northern New Mexico
Published by The Obsidian Press
"When I set out to write THE ANGLO, my intention was to create a story of the effects of random injustice. The two dominant characters, who are certainly flawed, but certainly not depraved, and whose only real sin was that they loved each other (too much), become witnesses---witnesses to events that would change their lives forever. Events from which it would be impossible to recover. But in the end, when the circle is complete, redemption is inevitable."
Read an excerpt:
“amor est magis cognitivus quam cognito” we know things better through love than through knowledge. It was Aquinas who said it first.
Prologue
Act Three: Purple Verbena and Yellow Chamisa
The desert--- where the wind sculpts the landscape. Where colors change, plants live and die, and the changing seasons sing a musical soliloquy. Spring, still an infant, sweeps the mesa, its breath deep and constant, rising, sinking. Summer, somnambulant, drags its feet in the glaring heat. And fall, ever stoic, its voice deepening, holds its breath, anticipating winter, crouching in wait, mute, yet ready to bite. That is the desert. Ever changing. Why is it used as a metaphor for desolation? As in, it was a desert, meaning barren. Empty. In truth, it could be baked like a crisp tortilla, parched by the sun, or flooded into a thousand tiny finger-lets of rivers, running frantic for fifteen minutes, carving the next generation of arroyos. Until the rains stop and the sun returns. It could be a vengeful void etching the lines of the faces of those who drift through, like the fingerprints of the artist on the sculpture. It is one of those rare places on this planet where you can wonder, is it springing to life or fixin’ to die? The sun, rarely softened by a passing cloud, every particle of dust is in its proper place, it is the mother of all and validates the fourth verse of the Tao---empty, inexhaustible, bottomless. A place to live infinitely. Anyone who’d been to his desert would see---his desert was a cornucopia, dotted with fruit and flowers, framed by eternal mountain ranges. Mountain ranges that feel compassion more deeply than any human. Mountain ranges that observe and witness and stand ready to testify. To his eyes, the sage brush was dancing, though to another’s it may have been still. Desolation was not of the desert. Desolation was what he’d found in the lush greenery along the Ohio River, next to the ebb and flow of Lake Ontario, spreading along his path from east to west, north to south in the fertile Woodlands of Europe. In all their verdant vegetation, their black waters flowing, their sacred rain clouds, taken for granted, for which people of the desert spend a lifetime praying and dancing. He was friends with the sun. To him, the desert was seductive. It meant bounty, fullness, fecundity, flowering life. A spiritual place. Alive and in constant change from season to season. Fields of purple verbena and yellow chamisa bending to the wind that carried the Red-tail hawk searching for the cottontail and the mole. The difference, between his dry desert air and their humid wetlands--- the blooms may be smaller, but they were just as fragrant. Maybe more. And usually there is a bird’s song flying on the wind. Lizard tracks in the sand and mourning doves calling out like the trill of a flute. And snakes that bring the secrets of the under world with smells of sage and sunshine skipping on the sand. And the dark-haired, dark-skinned woman, with the long silver earrings that sparkled like the stars. Stars so close, so familiar, reflecting in her eyes. Waiting for him, in the winter, in the desert. With no rain clouds. A decade or more ago.
ADOBE DREAMS
By Jo Moore (to order click on link below)
Set in the majestic shadow of Taos Mountain, ADOBE DREAMS is the politically charged tale that explores the validity of war, the destuction of our planet, and the omnipotence of love.
Published by The Obsidian Press
"ADOBE DREAMS DRAWS A STRAIGHT LINE BETWEEN THE GULF OF TONKIN AND TAOS, NM
Domestic Collateral Damages Caused by War—The most significant underlying metaphor that this novel addresses is the issue of unnecessary domestic collateral damages that wars create stateside. Namely, domestic carnage to families who lose loved ones, who will be forever waiting for their loved ones to return; loved ones who never return from war, or if they do, they are forever changed. A reality check. Not just soldiers die in war. In ADOBE DREAMS, a mother becomes lost and irretrievable after the loss of her loved one in the Vietnam War. With a son to raise as a single parent, Ann Lindstrom never recovers. These are the numbers that are never counted among the victims of war. But they are just as significant. My intention was to write a serious story that brings awareness and compassion to their plight---to draw a straight line between the Gulf of Tonkin and Taos, NM."
We are so proud to include this review from The Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award: (a short excerpt follows the review)
Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Review---
Life works in mysterious ways and along with that sentiment, relationships fall in between. ADOBE DREAMS is a culmination of deep contemplation and inquiry in terms of one's life, that interchanges between son and mother. The story is set in the quaint Taos, New Mexico mountains, the narrator of the story is trying to come to terms with the events that have affected his life, which appears to center on the dreams he had about his mother and the era of his birth, which she admits was unexpected, the late 1960s and early 1970s during the Vietnam War.
Interspersed with a collection of childhood memories of his mother and her reactions after finding out about his father's death in Vietnam, the narrator attempts to piece together each link to understand and solve the distress he may have been feeling about his mother. The story delves into his humble middle-class upbringing, and gives readers an inkling of his supportive role after the loss of his father.
ADOBE DREAMS is an insightful book that uses memory and history as a backdrop. And with that, the story is refined and interesting. Indeed, it is a book worth reading.
Read an excerpt:
Part One
Chapter 1 Taos County, NM
The Shadow of Taos Mountain
The morning air was cool and misty as the sun rose late over the canyon ridge to the east. Diagonal rays penetrated the fog filter like white lasers in a light show, burning off the morning dew. It had rained the night before, a cold March rain, but the pine needle covered canyon floor was not muddy. I spotted the small adobe from the ridge above and reined my horse straight down the canyon wall--- a path I knew she usually had better sense than to attempt. I made a beeline. I was anxious to get home.
~
When someone’s gone, and you know they’re gone, they are gone. No search is necessary. It is over. No more action, thought, strife needed. But when someone is gone, simply missing, and no proof is presented, no definite conclusion, no truth evident of the fact that it is a fact---it never becomes a fact. If it is always in doubt, in the fog, clouded by question---maybe, just maybe, it never happened. Maybe it was not true. There is always that hope. And the search continues, justified or not. I think it never stopped haunting my mother.
I was born late, two weeks past term, and two months after the helicopter in which my father was riding was shot down, somewhere near the seventeenth parallel, close to the border between North and South Vietnam. Why? They called it the “De-militarized Zone”. Quite a name. Maybe I was delaying the inevitable, maybe I was hesitant to leave the safety of my mother’s hermetically sealed womb, maybe I was just asking for one more day, please, just one more day, to stay as close to her as I could. Never willing to cut the cord, until forced to. Or maybe it was actually her, unwilling to let me go. We were a unit. That my father didn’t want to fight a war, any war, of any type, on any foreign soil, had no bearing on the fact that he was there, fighting a war---so we could fight the Communists over there and not here on American soil. Not exactly an original thought, but one they choose to use from time to time…a means to their end. This is just history. I’m not passing judgment. It was dead of winter, 1970, when his helicopter went down and I remained within the depth of my mother’s innermost sanctuary, safe and warm, in the mountains of northern New Mexico. A bitter wind blew hard over the sacred Taos Mountain that winter, bringing record sub-zero temperatures, with record snowfall. My Mother always said that my father would not have attended my birth, anyway, even had he been available, since he loved the snow so much. He would have been cutting turns somewhere on Taos Mountain.
TURQUOISE AND OBSIDIAN
By Jo Moore (to order click link below)
From the author of ADOBE DREAMS and THE ANGLO, a short story collection from and of the Southwest. Fourteen stories, homegrown and handspun, in the fragile ecology of the desert mountains of the great Southwest. Rich in characters and rooted in the earth.
Published by the Obsidian Press
"I wrote these stories over the span of thirty years---living on the land, in the mountains, with the Old Timer homesteaders as my mentors and guides. They taught me how to garden, how to raise bees, what to feed my horse, how to peel a viga, and how to live in silence. They showed me by example what was important, and what was not. They are all gone now, and I am nearly one of the next generation of Old Timers here in the mountains. They bequeathed to me their legacy of respect for our Mother Earth and the clear blue skies above."
Read an excerpt:
"thy will be done... a day in the life"
A red-tailed hawk soared low to the ground through a blank blue sky that hadn't seen a remnant of a cloud for six weeks. It was dry, and the obstinate spring wind dried the ground further. The earth below was brown and brittle, save for the locoweed, which thrived green and lush and in abundant bloom. The cottontails stayed underground to avoid dehydration---emerging from their cool subterranean warrens only in early morning to sip the dew that might have formed the night before. But there was no avoiding the starvation, above the ground or below. And those that did surface from their warrens were food more fit for the turkey buzzards than the hawks--- ribby and tough from losing weight. Even the ancient deep-rooted black pines shed their browning needles in defense against drought--- the fewer needles they had absorbing and transpiring moisture, the better their chances for survival.
The hawk circled high now for a better overall view of his Mother, Earth. Silica glittered in the sun from the pink sandstone in the canyon below---rocks that used to be red when it rained, but had faded to pink in the dust. A rooster crowed from somewhere and adrenalin filled the hawk's bloodstream. He flew high in figure eights, desperate to find the rooster's whereabouts undetected. Close to the dry arroyo running north and south and just west of the pine-topped ridge, the hawk spotted the farm. He tucked his wings and landed with a rush in a dead pine top east of the farm, an excellent vantage, and no one, not even the turkeys, had spotted him yet. He surveyed the situation: two fat dogs asleep by the house, a flock of turkeys in a dusty pen to avoid, hens and chicks ranging free, and two guineas--- they would be a problem if they sounded their cursed alarm. But the temptation, along with the hunger, outweighed the risk. The hawk dove fast from the treetop, and with all the velocity he could muster, hit the gold hen with the chicks, determined to remain unintimidated by the guineas' squawk or the dogs' attacks. He gripped his talons deep into the flesh of her tender breast and flapped his enormous wings hard to regain altitude. Negotiating his way below treetop level and around branches, he found a path to a clearing and soared higher, as high as he could, burdened by the extra five pounds. His tendons strained until he could take no more, then he landed a quarter of a mile away on a high ridge---safe enough for now. His pointed beak tore at the pink flesh and he hungrily swallowed whole chunks of the bloody warm chicken meat. He would maintain, at least for another day.
OTHER OBSESSIONS
By Jo Moore (to order click link below)
Not the usual stories, not the usual storyteller. A collection of 21 stories rife with characters caught in the vortex of human obsession. Fiction/Short Stories/Literary
Published by the Obsidian Press
"Everybody’s got an agenda. And the characters in OTHER OBSESSIONS surely do. My intention was to explore the strange and bizarre internal thought patterns that come to possess us as human beings. No matter where we live, no matter our socio-economic status, human nature lends itself to obsession."
Read an excerpt:
"The Bookseller"
I
A fuchsia glow lit the sky outside the Bookseller’s shop. It was that perfect mix of pollution particles and sea mist and setting sun. The Bookseller looked up and down the street through the frosted window before pulling the door behind him. His glance up at the third floor of the building across the street was only furtive. He didn’t want to offend.
The scar tissue on his psyche was healed over but still red and proud. The wound had been so deep, so wide, so gaping, he doubted its flesh would ever heal smooth. The remorse still cut him deep. What had he been thinking?
The first time he saw her she was not at all browsing, but went directly to the Trollope section. It was then he knew he must do something. It was then he knew he couldn’t. She was maybe thirty, thirty-five. (Turned out she was a young looking forty-two. But this would only be discovered years later, and only by careful calculations and investigations backward in time by the Bookseller.) So young, so fresh, so brilliant. But, certainly young enough to be his daughter. Or at least nearly. She paid cash for the Trollope and exited quickly, nervous, embarrassed, as if she had possibly purchased pornography. The Bookseller watched as she, in her haste, carelessly crossed the street without looking. Brakes screeched, a horn blared, as a car swerved to miss her. She never looked up as she entered the building directly across the street and east from the Bookseller’s shop.
Weeks passed before the Bookseller caught his next glimpse of her, and only by chance because he arrived fifteen minutes early to the shop one morning for some extra cataloging. She emerged from her building bundled in a gray wool coat and matching gray neck scarf and babushka. She looked left then right and turned north. Her ankles looked too delicate to support even her slender silhouette. He watched through the fogged window (fogged from his own breath) as she made her way to the stop for the number 6 trolley. On the corner by the light. At the very corner where the winter whipped off the sea and cut through the crossroads always bringing a shiver up your spine. She worked downtown. But where? Perhaps the city government offices? Perhaps the county’s? Or the Capitol? Certainly she held a position of great importance and stature with an intellect like hers. Someone who has the deep appreciation for language as she does must surely be an official.
That very afternoon she walked again through his door. Her glance was downward. He hurried to the back of the shop. Again, she went directly to the Trollopes. He couldn’t see the title as his assistant handled the cash (again) transaction. The Bookseller craned his neck round the Dostoevskys where he’d stayed hidden, only to be caught red-handed, in his own shop, by the darting eyes of the beautiful blue-eyed (he could see that much) frail young woman with impeccable taste in Victorian Literature. Who in the dickens was she and why was she tormenting him so?
About the author---
Jo Moore holds BA's in both Literature and Journalism from the University of New Mexico. She is author of two novels, two short story collections and seven illustrated works for children. She is currently working on her third novel. She lives in the mountains of New Mexico where she works as a sculptor and a writer.
To order copies of THE ANGLO, ADOBE DREAMS, TURQUOISE AND OBSIDIAN, and OTHER OBSESSIONS, visit the links below: (all titles also available on Kindle)
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