Category Archives: Marie F Martin

My blog submissions. tags are author, suspense, mystery, family secrets, babies, motherhood.

Shining Light on Your Story

Posted on by under Marie F Martin, Uncategorized

by Marie Martin

A couple of years ago Claudette Young gave a talk to Montana Women Writers about putting light on your writing. “Let your words shine,” she said. I try to remember that with each story I write. The following is the beginning of a new one placed in Montana on a farm in a valley.

Tuesday May 20, 1952

Out across the pasture, a line of western spruce and black cottonwood followed the banks of Trumbull Creek like putting an edge to her land. Stop here, go no farther. Stay on your side and don’t venture onto the grouchy neighbor’s place. Brenda Kay Farley never understood his unfriendliness, but wasn’t overly concerned about it. Folks she liked could come for a spur of the moment visit. Unexpected stopovers by a bad-tempered old man left her frazzled.

Someone walked around the thick trunk of a Ponderosa pine, bushed past ground willows and marched into her field of potatoes. He’d better not flatten any of the young shoots with his big old boots. By now she could tell from the set of the hunched shoulders and arthritic limp, the cranky neighbor headed her way to bitch about something. Wouldn’t do the old geezer any good. Her kids stayed away from his place because she threatened them with dire punishment if she had one more complaint about them playing on his land, chasing his pigs or trying to ride one of his calves.

Before Mr. Ladenburg got as far as the gate on the pasture, two of the farm dogs ran forward barking as if Lucifer himself was crossing their ground. Brenda frowned. Charlie usually led the pack of three black and brown dogs, who guarded the place better than humans could, but he hadn’t come charging with his growl that made most people stop and stand still. 

Just before Mr. Ladenburg reached the first step, Brenda brushed her overlong bangs out of her eyes and stepped out on the front porch, prepared to defend whichever child he came to complaint about.

His strong jaw held a week’s worth of spiky white whiskers, and his watery eyes held a tired look, like he had overslept. “Mrs. Farley, the body of a boy was just pulled from the creek. He was stuck in the culvert on Hodgson Road. His dog was dead too. The boy was still holding onto the leash.”

Brenda just stared at him. Couldn’t have said a word if she wanted to.

“I just thought you should know.” He turned to leave, then turned back. “They’re still cleaning out the culvert. It’s plum full of branches, but they figure something else is plugging it. Creek’s spilling all over its banks and spreading across your pasture.”

Brenda shook her head. “I’m sorry to hear about the boy. Sorry about his dog, too.” Her eyes filled with sudden tears and she blinked them away.

He turned from her emotion. After a few long strides, he turned back. “Something agitating those two dogs.”

You are, she wanted to yell, but held the words inside.

He nodded once as if answering her unspoken thought and walked away.

She shaded her eyes with her right palm, watching him until he disappeared into the foliage along the creek separating their properties. She reached down and rubbed the black ruff behind the brown ears of the dog pushing against her thigh. “What do want, Nancy?”

The farm dog pushed her weight against Brenda again. “What? Where’s Charlie?”

Katty Lou

January Book News

Posted on by under Book News, Leslie Budewitz, Marie F Martin, Uncategorized

Marie F. Martin released a new book titled Where’s Joe on Amazon kindle and paperbacks.
In the aftermath of World War II, mothers suffered from the loss of their sons the best way they could. Some tried to ease their grief by holding their daughters on a leash so tight it became unbearable. Twenty-three-year-old Reba Bicknell has been smothered to the point of rebellion. She accepts a daring ride behind a stranger on a powerful motorcycle which leaves her with a driving need to find him again and ride facing the wind. The search leads her to a slummy tavern where a motorcycle gang cuts loose and hangs free. While watching to see if Joe arrives to join a group of bikers, Reba witnesses the kidnapping of a young girl and reports the crime. Unaware, Reba is about to become the number one suspect and the target of the real killer, a woman with a burning vendetta who rides with the biker gang.  

LESLIE BUDEWITZ: Thrilled to share with you the cover of my forthcoming stand-alone, BITTERROOT LAKE, written as Alicia Beckman. It will be published April 13, 2021 by Crooked Lane Books and Dreamscape Audio, and is available for pre-order now.

From the cover:
When four women separated by tragedy reunite at a lakeside Montana lodge, murder forces them to confront everything they thought they knew about the terrifying accident that tore them apart, in Agatha Award-winning author Alicia Beckman’s suspense debut.

Twenty-five years ago, during a celebratory weekend at historic Whitetail Lodge, Sarah McCaskill had a vision. A dream. A nightmare. When a young man was killed, Sarah’s guilt over having ignored the warning in her dreams devastated her. Her friendships with her closest friends, and her sister, fell apart as she worked to build a new life in a new city. But she never stopped loving Whitetail Lodge on the shores of Bitterroot Lake.

Now that she’s a young widow, her mother urges her to return to the lodge for healing. But when she arrives, she’s greeted by an old friend–and by news of a murder that’s clearly tied to that tragic day she’ll never forget.

And the dreams are back, too. What dangers are they warning of this time? As Sarah and her friends dig into the history of the lodge and the McCaskill family, they uncover a legacy of secrets and make a discovery that gives a chilling new meaning to the dreams. Now, they can no longer ignore the ominous portents from the past that point to a danger more present than any of them could know.

M. FRANCES ERLER has completed her “Peaks at the Edge of the World” fantasy saga with the publication of the seventh book, “Where All Worlds End” this year. This religious fantasy explores a world of the 31st century, where Rebels are struggling to defend themselves from an evil Galactic System which has taken over earth as well as the entire Milky Way galaxy. A fearsome new foe has appeared in the form of a red dragon. Is this the devil himself? Will they be able to defeat him with aid from allies who have traveled forward from the 21st century to help them? Who will survive if all worlds end?

Nancy Rose

Posted on by under Marie F Martin, Montana Women Writers, Nancy Rose, Uncategorized

By Marie F. Martin

Poet Nancy Rose visited the February meeting of Montana Women Writers and read three of her poems to our gathering. I enjoyed her haunting cadence and choice of words so much I asked Nancy if I could share one of her poems on  our blog.  She kindly agreed. but then I had a terrible dilemma. Oh my, which one do I choose? I opened her book and began  reading.  This is the one I finally chose after a nice time in a comfy chair dwelling on her words.

Night Music
Hey, firelight music
Your playful beat says get up and dance
Move my body so freely
Every creak and groan is gone
Drum vibrations moving through me
Taking me out of my body
Into a wide night sky.

I’ve been wanting all summer
To climb into the Big Dipper
And swim all night in the star pool
Backstroking with the northern lights
Dancing overhead

I would come back
Resplendent in moonlight
Breathing deeply
Trailing stars
Oh, yes

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This is the start of her author blurb on the back cover. Nancy Rose is a rare flower of the Kentucky hills.

Nancy in Tilley hat11872163_10207508544181210_8684247256154328239_o (2)

Nancy now makes Montana her home. Her website is www.NancyRoseMT.com

 

(Originally published March 14, 2016)

 

 

 

 

My Grandfather’s Poem

Posted on by under Marie F Martin, Montana Frontier Fiction, Montana Women Writers, Uncategorized

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By Marie F. Martin

Some time in the middle 1930s, my grandfather Yeats wrote the following poem.  He homesteaded a Montana flatland spread just north of Gilford, near a town named Goldstone.  In the evenings after chores, he wrote the rhythms that ran through his mind while doing endless chores in his Red Chief tablet .  The ranch is gone, the town is gone but the poems live on.  I have several newspaper clippings from the Havre newspaper and tried to scan different ones, but the letters were too small to read.  I chose this poem to share because it shows determination.  My heritage goes deep into Montana soil, but also the desire to put words on paper was passed along.  In the photo is my father on the tractor and my grandfather on the combine.  This is before  Mom and Dad were married.  Yep, she married the hired hand.

Wheat for 40 cents

By William Yeats in the 1930s

Oh, please tell me how the farmers in Montana
Can ever pay their taxes and the Rents,
And keep their poor old trucks and tractors running,
When they have to sell their wheat for forty cents?
For at that price you cannot make expenses,
And keep your equipment up in shape,

When you know its worth at least six-bits to raise it,
You can’t help that you’re Just an ape.
Now the tractor needs a set of sleeves and pistons.
For the way it is pumping oil near breaks my heart.
And I’ve cranked and cracked, till my poor back is broken,
Trying to get that cussed thing to start.

The timing gears are rattling and banging.
The old crankshaft is getting mighty flat,
The radiator leaks like a spraying fountain
And nothing that I do seems to help that.
Twas many moons ago it shed the skidrims,
The broken worn out lugs have lost their grip.

And every time the plow hooks on a boulder,
The tractor stands still while the clutch does slip.
And the old truck isn’t faring any better.
To tell the truth, its nothing but a wreck.
And some day, crossing the O’brien coulee,
I’ll have to spill and break my dog gone neck.

When in the rattletrap I go ariding,
I thank the Lord, my heart is good and stout
As in the cab I sit with nerves aquiver
A listening for the rear tires to blow out.
Yes, it sure is great to be an honest farmer
A horny-handed tiller of the soil,

But right now, I’d pass for a first class scare-crow,
All smeared from head to toe with grease and oil.
Didn’t dare to go to church on Easter,
For through my shoes the folks could see my toes.
Indeed there’s very little joy in living,
When you’re wearing gunny sacks for underclothes.

They say, of everything there is surplus,
Just what to do with it nobody knows.
Now really, if there’s such an awful surplus,
Why can’t I have a suit of Sunday Clothes.
Oh, I’m sure if people only had the money,
There’d be an awful jam in every store.

They’d soon clean up that over-rated surplus,
And have them jumping round, a rustling more.

(Originially published October 16, 2013)

The This and That of a Writer’s Life by Marie F Martin

Posted on by under Marie F Martin, Montana Women Writers, Uncategorized

My Sis who has reached the ripe age of eighty has finally learned something she’s been searching for her whole life. Norma is a hefty strong gal who was a nurse in a major hospital for years called me and said, “Guess what? After all these years of searching for a twiggy body, I was just told by the ear doctor I have skinny ear channels. It’s the first skinny thing I’ve ever had.”

 

I was sitting in the doctor’s office waiting room with my cute mask on when an older gentleman came in. His eyes lit up a little above his mask and he said, “I’m smiling.” I said back, “I have lipstick on.” The other people in the waiting room cracked up. What a fun moment.

I try to take a thirty minute walk most days and I always wind myself through the the residential area near my house under shady maple trees. I usually pass a school about half way through my walk and have always sat on a bench there for a minute to rest. benchNow I just look at it wondering who has sat there, and if they were healthy, or a carrier of the Covid virus. I pause a little, but don’t sit down, just walk on by.

First harvest of green peas. Yummy in my tummy.