"Pink Flamingoed" Book 1 Aylesford Place Series by Steve Demaree

Steve Demaree is a writer in Lexington, Kentucky, who has self-published a pile of books, generally on Amazon as far as I know althought I believe he does sell his books on other websites. I believe he has somewhere between 30 and 40 self-published books on his personal page on Amazon. He tends to write books in series with common charcters and common locationis. This particular book, "Pink Flamingoed", is book 2 in a series called "The Aylesford Place Series". I found an autographed copy of book number 2 in that series on a used bookshelf which belongs to the University of Kentucky Hospital Auxillary at the hospital. I bought that book, autographed, for 75 cents. When I got it home and my wife found that it was book 2 in a series, she insisted that I buy book 1, this book, before we read book 2. My copy of book 2 had an address and phone number listed for Steve Demaree so I called the number hoping that I could buy an autographed copy from him since I like to collect autographed books. He answered the phone himself and we had a nice ten minute or so talk about his writing and our common memories of the area in Lexington where we had both lived and, in particular, of Aylesford Place, a little one block residential street near the UK campus. The book series is a use of the street name and the actual book has little to do with actual Aylesford Place as I have known it for the last 50 years or so. But any author is required to invent or appropriate a lot of names especially if they write a lot of books as Steve Demaree does. This book is not quite 350 pages and has a group of characters who, for the most part, live on the fictional Aylesford Place. Their relationships among themselves are much like a large extended family. They all attend the little church on the street, visit each other's homes, and know an awful lot about each other's lives, likes, dislikes, and unsettling habits. They can all be said to be protagonists of a sort to one degree or another. The book does not contain a genuine villian or antihero. Steve Demaree can write in a style to satisfy the heart of most high school English teachers. The book moves on from one very minor crisis to another in the lives of one or more of the primary characters. It lacks real conflict of any consequence and, therefore, lacks any significant conflict resolution. It is readable and every fifty or so pages Steve Demaree will construct a sentence of some consequence or a humorous line which can make you actually giggle. But the book would be far better if it contained a decent and decidedly effective villian. There are no train wrecks, violent deaths, nasty divorces, or crimes of stature to keep one awake at night. The characters live happy, fulfilled lives and no ever seems to break a leg or a more. But I was pleased to see that Steve Demaree did insert a female,wheelchair bound character into the book who is generally realistic and worthy of respect. As a man who has been married to woman who has been in a wheelchair for more than 25 years, that was important to me. That female character, Allison, is the friend of the primary female character, Amy, who is in love with the primary male character, Brad Forester, who is a successful author of mystery novels who has decided to move to Aylesford Place after inheriting his grandparents home on the street. They meet in the first few pages, are still together and apparently in love at the end of book, but conveniently for other characters who enjoy being a part of their lives they are not married at the end. But there is hope for that marriage in book 2. There is also hope in book 2 for the marriage of Allison and her new school teacher boyfriend Chuck. But nothing really dramatic, tense, or dangerous happens in the book. It was a relief to make it to the end.

"An Appalachian Flood Of Memories: Vol. CCXXII" by Lloyd Dean

Several months ago, my wife and I were eating in Cattlemen's Steak House in Morehead, Kentucky, and found ourselves seated opposite an elderly couple whose male half struck up a conversation with me. His name was Lloyd Dean and he gave me a copy of a self published pamphlet of about 54 pages as described in the title above, "An Appalacian Flood Of Memories: Vol. CCXXII" by Lloyd Dean. He stated that it was his one hundred and some double digit release. I thanked him for it, filed it away and finally perused it. It is collection of captioned photographs, a list of the post masters of the Haldeman, Kentucky post office (now defunct), church bulletings, photocopied newspaper articles, funeral memorial cards, and other miscellanous items which Mr. Dean has obviously collected over the years. I don't intend to pooh pooh his efforts to preserve his memories or mementoes of the past. I do some of the same thing myself. But, despite the fact that five of the best years of my life were spent in Morehead, Kentucky, where this encounter occurred, I did not recognize anyone in the photographs and most of the events happened long before I began to attend Morehead State University as a non-traditional student. The back cover of the book contains a lenghty list of other such books or pamphlets which Mr. Dean has produced over the years and says that they can be purchased from Mr. Dean at 6770 US 60 East, Morehead, KY 40351. The book does not contain a phone number or e-mail address but I have been able to locate a land line phone for Mr. Dean which I will not include in this blog post. I will leave it up to anyone interested in seeing some of Mr. Dean's work to either write him or locate a land line number and give him a call. For me personally, the most interesting inclusions in the book were a newspaper story (photocopied) covering the occasion when the Jesse Stuart Foundation bought the old Ashland, Kentucky, post office building which is still their headquarters, and, at the top of the list of Mr. Dean's works on the back cover is an item listed as "Rural Cemeteries of Kentucky --UK (Sociology) 1952". I have intended to call Mr. Dean and attempt to pursue a copy of that paper since I have always been interested in rural cemeteries in this state and several others which I have visited over the years. A good rural cemetery is one of the finest ways to learn a lot about an area when you are new in the locale. You can learn the names which seem to dominate the community, see some obvious stories about unfortunate deaths, marriages of men to more than one woman, women who died in childbirth buried either beside or with their newborn babe, and also victims of our wars, victims of the 1918 influenze epidemic, and sometimes victims of events such as tornadoes and major floods. I never disparage anyone who chooses to write their ideas and beliefs and publish the results. Mr. Dean obviously has loved to make an effort to preserve as much of his extensive knowledge as possible. He is to be commended for that. Lloyd Dean also left much of his local history and genealogical papers to Morehead State University and they can be found at this link although it appears that the collection has not been fully assessed and catalogued.

Short Story or Vignette???

Since the time I entered Upward Bound at Alice Lloyd College when I was about 14, I have known and been friends with a fairly large number of published authors.  During my first summer in that program, I met and became friendly with Albert Stewart and William Howard Cohen both of whom were major American poets.  Albert Stewart was also the founder of Appalachian Heritage Magazine and a mentor to numerous young writers throughout his career.  William Howard Cohen was an internationally recognized expert on Haiku and served as the American Cultural Delegate in the area of poetry at the Mexico City Olympics in 1968. Cohen was also an outspoken and highly effective environmental advocate who fought bravely and well against strip mining in Appalachia. He also mentored numerous young writers in both Eastern Kentucky and Florida where he lived the last years of his life.  I have always been extremely proud to have known and been friendly with both men.  During that first Upward Bound summer, the program directors also brought Harry Caudill to speak at one of our assemblies.  His strongly negative book about Appalachia, "Night Comes To The Cumberlands", was still in the height of its popularity and he was considered by many to be an expert on Appalachia.  I can say that I met Caudill and I can also say that I am proud that, as a native Appalachian, I was not pleased with him and still am not.  I have said all the preceding, a rather long winded introduction, in order to say this once again, I have known and been friends with a fairly large number of published authors, learned a great deal from them both about life and writing.  And that brings me to the title of this article, Short Story or Vignette???

Which is it, a short story or a vignette is a question which is frequently asked by readers and writers about short works of fiction.  It is also a question which should be asked even more frequently, especially by the numerous people who mistakenly believe they are writing short stories.  As a result of having known the writers I have known, I have come to regularly either buy or be given books by many people some of whom are genuine writers and some of whom only wish to be but have managed to make it into print anyway.  I have in my possession at this time several books written and published by people I know and labeled as short story collections.  A sizable portion of those "short story collections", most of them self-published through vanity presses, do not contain a single actual short story and are, instead, collections of vignettes some of which could have been turned into short stories by a skillful writer, and others which Leo Tolstoy, Flannery O'Connor, or William Faulkner could not have stretched enough to make them an actual short story.  That brings us to the key question I hope to address in this article.  What is the difference between a short story and a vignette?

A commonly used definition of the term "short story" runs something like this:  the term short story most often refers to a work of fiction no shorter than 1,000 and no longer than 20,000 words. An actual short story should contain these five essential elements, characters, plot, setting, conflict, and theme. An equally common definition of the term "vignette" runs something like this: a brief, evocative account, description, or episode.  A less common definition of the term "vignette" runs something like this: a vignette is a cute little story which, on a good day, might include one or two of those key elements of a short story but never by any stretch of the imagination will a vignette contal all five.  By that I mean that a vignette is something a first grader might tell her mother when she returns home from school. Two or three old men sitting in the local country store, gas station, or barber shop swap vignettes.  Old, blue haired widows do the same in beauty shops, meat markets, and boutiques.  While I almost never say anything this personal or negative to any of my friends and acquaintances who have produced collections of vignettes which they insist on forcing to masquerade as short stories, I really do not like buying, borrowing, or being given such collections of vignettes which a vanity press has managed to make a buck on while perpetuating the misbegotten dreams of the people who cranked them out on a PC or antique Underwood in the lonely silence of their home.  

It is also interesting that, for a skillful writer, it is not necessary to produce a work the size of "War And Peace" in order to tell a good story with all five of those key elements, characters, plot, theme, setting, and conflict. While I despise what is now known and inordinately popular as "flash fiction", I also recognize that it is possible to tell a great story with a bare minimum number of well chosen, well organized words.  The best example of this I can think of is the classic Kate Chopin short story, "The Story Of An Hour".  This incredible little masterpiece of roughly a thousand words contains every one of those five key elements and perfection to boot.  With an opening sentence of less than thirty words, we meet the central character, Mrs. Mallard, learn that she has a heart condition, that she is/was married, that her husband is dead, and that someone cares enough about her to "break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death."  Then the story goes on in the remaining 950 or so words to work in a couple of absolutely masterful twists in which she weeps loudly and publicly in the company of her family and friends, retreats to her bedroom where she realizes with great joy that she is "Free!  Body and soul...free!" and then, as a combination of that great joy and her aforementioned heart condition, she dies without her family and friends ever knowing how happy she was to anticipate that freedom.  That my friends is a short story.  And I haven't even mentioned that in those thousand words, Kate Chopin threw in a train wreck.  

I am not completely opposed to vignettes and often use them myself, sometimes in the middle of what I believe are short stories I produce, sometimes in country stores, gas stations, and barber shops with my illiterate friends, and even at rare times in beauty shops.  As an addendum to this little article I will also insert a short list of some of my other favorite short stories and suggest that you read them sometime if you haven't already.

Desiree's Baby by Kate Chopin

The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson

Parker's Back by Flannery O'Connor

Ugly by Guy de Maupassant

A Rose For Emily by William Faulkner

Big Two-Hearted River by Ernest Hemingway
A View Of The Woods by Flannery O'Connor