Perfect setting for a ‘Day of the Triffids’ reality show Note 4
Note 1 – We’re painting the roses blue is a twisting of the song from Disney’s Alice in Wonderland. Painting the roses red didn’t have a good outcome for these ‘card people’.
Note 2 – Haldane’s rule is important because it talks to the preferential sterility or inviability of hybrids of the heterogametic (XY) sex. The rule states that if one sex is ‘absent, rare or sterile’ in a hybrid population, then that sex will be heterogametic (the sex which has sex chromosomes that differ in morphology – in humans, the heterogametic sex is the male sex where the gamete’s sex chromosomes are X and Y).
Note 3 – I know that agriculturised is not a recognised word – wink! – I made it up.
Note 4 – The Day of the Triffids is a 1951 post-apocalyptic novel by John Wyndham. The novel centres around an aggressive species of plant, ‘breed’ by humans, which starts killing people following a natural disaster which leaves most of the world’s population blind. The novel is a pessimistic view of evolution and natural selection, where mankind is no longer adapted to survival, and the upper hand passes to the triffids.
Picture caption: Banner for the WordCrafter Book Blog Tour for Sarah depicting the cover of the book against a background of a Western homestead
The Ute Indians in Glenwood Springs, Colorado & The Legend of Chapita
Sarah is a seventeen-year-old girl who has been through a lot in life already. In Delilah, she was abducted at fourteen and sold to the Ute Indians near Telluride, Colorado. Now, in Sarah, she has found acceptance in the tribe and become Hair of Fire, but a rogue Sioux warrior steals her away from her tribe and takes her to a sacred place hidden away deep in the Colorado wilderness.
This fictional place was created from an actual place which exists just outside of Canon City, Colorado, where one can hike back into a box canyon, where the water from above has worn away the rock of the canyon wall over time, making it easy to believe that the native tribes of the region might have held this place sacred. The real place is not in a location where the story would take my character, but I wanted to use it because the legend associated with it was an inspiration for the fight that transpires when Sarah’s mate tries to rescue her, so I moved the setting deep into the wilderness of the Colorado Rockies.
I read about that legend back in 1985 in the local paper, The Canon City Daily Record, and it stuck with me, perhaps because it is a place that I had hiked to frequently with my husband and kids. It is a tragic love story. I could not access that article when I was researching for the book, but I’ll recount it here to the best of my recollection.
The Legend of Chapita
Chapita was a beloved Ute squaw, mated to a Ute chief who adored the ground she walked on. Torn from her home by a ruthless neighboring tribe in a violent raid, she was taking her to the location mentioned above, where her own tribe caught up with them and there was a great battle. As the chaos of battle unfolded around them, the chief of the neighboring tribe took her forcibly to the sacred circle above, holding her captive on a perilous ledge, threatening to kill her if the Ute warriors didn’t stop fighting and leave the canyon. The Ute chief, consumed by love for his mate, faced an impossible choice – to abandon her or sacrifice everything. In a heart-wrenching act of desperation, he chose to end her suffering with a single arrow through her heart. The echoes of their tragic love story reverberated through the canyon as the Utes emerged victorious, but at a devastating cost.
Picture caption: Chapita, called Queen of the Utes
*Note: More recently, I learned this legend couldn’t be true. Called “Queen of the Utes”, Chapita was the mate of Chief Ouray, and she survived him after his death in 1880 and went on to called a peacemaker. as she continued to strive toward peace in his footsteps. But it is still a cool legend and inspiration for my tale.
Glenwood Springs, Colorado
Lost and alone in the wilderness, young Hair of Fire doesn’t know what to do. Her tribe is on their way to their summer hunting grounds and she doesn’t know how to find them. Determined to find the place called Yampah, the young white squaw sets out through the treacherous mountain terrain in search of the place called Yampah, the place of sulfur springs believed to be big medicine by the Ute people, in hopes of being reunited with her people when they return to their winter lodgings in the fall.
That place is Glenwood Springs, Colorado, distinctive with its shimmering sulfur pools filling the air with the pungent sulfur odor and ethereal mists from their steam, creating a mystical atmosphere of the landscape. It is no wonder the Utes attributed healing powers to bubbling sulfur pools, making it a stopover to soak their weary muscles on their long journey.
Picture caption: a family of Utes outside their teepee
The infamous Doc Holliday spent his last days there, in hopes that the vapors of the sulfur pools would ease the symptoms of tuberculosis. We know today that the vapors may even have exacerbated his condition.
Today, Glenwood Springs is a tourist destination, where people soak and swim in the Glenwood Springs mineral hot springs pool, breath in the misty air of the Yampah vapor caves, and eat or have a drink at Doc Holliday’s Saloon, and visit the place rumored to be Doc’s final resting place in the Linwood Cemetery. For me, Glenwood Springs is the place where the elements of my story come together to tell the tale of Sarah.
Picture Caption: Promotional banner for Sarah by Kaye Lynne Booth
About Sarah, Women in the West Adventure Series book 2
Picture caption: Book cover for Sarah, featuring a young woman with red hair against a faded background of Ute teepees.
Sarah is a young girl trying to make a place for herself in the world.
Sarah is not the young girl stolen away from Delilah anymore. Now she is Hair of Fire, mate of Three Hawks, even as she blossoms into a young woman and tries to make a place for herself among the Ute tribe.
When she is stolen away from the life she’s made, she struggles to survive in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. A streak of stubbornness and determination take this tough, feisty heroine up against wild beasts of the forest and the rugged mountain landscape to Glenwood Springs, Colorado, where she receives a less than welcoming reception by some.
Will this young woman find her way back to the Ute tribe, which she’s come to think of as family, or will she discover a place among the colorful inhabitants of the Colorado hot springs and mining town?
Follow along on her journey to learn who she truly is and where she belongs in this rough, and often hostile frontier.
For Kaye Lynne Booth, writing is a passion. Kaye Lynne is an author with published short fiction and poetry, both online and in print, including her short story collection, Last Call and Other Short Fiction; and her paranormal mystery novella, Hidden Secrets; Books 1 & 2 of her Women in the West adventure series, Delilah and Sarah, and her Time-Travel Adventure novel, The Rock Star & The Outlaw. Kaye holds a dual M.F.A. degree in Creative Writing with emphasis in genre fiction and screenwriting, and an M.A. in publishing. Kaye Lynne is the founder of WordCrafter Quality Writing & Author Services and WordCrafter Press. She also maintains an authors’ blog and website, Writing to be Read, where she publishes content of interest in the literary world.
Well, I wrote a Bop poem, but I changed the repeated line a bit from the prompt.
Opening Pandora’s Box
This poem is another of my chaos nature poems that depict creatures in an unnatural nature setting. For this poem, I imagined a glass aquarium containing tiny tropical fish. The setting is a desert as what is more unnatural than ocean creatures in a man-made desert. Water is a very scarce resource.
A box overflowing with water
Clear and inviting – consumable
A mirage in this barren wasteland
An illusion – a refraction of light
from the sky, by heated air
Wicked distortion of reality
Pandora’s box once opened, cannot be closed
Temperatures soar, the box sweats
Its glass walls glisten with moisture
Flashes of bright colour disturb its clarity
Translating into thrashing tails, frantic fins
Tiny bubbles rise, pockmarking the surface
Heat saturated liquid starts to boil
Desperation leads to innovation – swarming
Colourful darts combine to thwack one side
Pandora’s box once opened, cannot be closed
Under onslaught, the box lurches
Precious fluid cascading over edges
River of water turns to a river of blood
Box tips! Creatures slither out
onto hot sand; they frizzle and fry
While vital liquid slowly drains into dead sand
Pandora’s box once opened, cannot be closed
Picture caption: brightly coloured fish. Picture from Unsplash.
These are the last of my photographs of doors from my recent trip to Ivory Tree Lodge in the Pilanesberg National Park. You can join in Thursday Doors here: https://nofacilities.com/2024/05/02/back-in-oakland/
Picture caption: guests gathered for tea and snacks early in the morning at Ivory Tree Lodge. You can see the doors into the guest lounge in the background.Picture caption: Close up of the door into the dining area at Ivory Tree Lodge
These are photographs of some gorgeous hartebeest we saw during our trip. Hartebeest is an African antelope and belongs to its own genus, Alcelaphus. I don’t see them often as most game parks with high numbers of predators don’t keep them. They are expensive and tend to get eaten so they are a poor investment. I was very pleased to see this delightful herd.
Picture caption: Hartebeest from the front with its tongue sticking outPicture caption: Hartebeest from the sidePicture caption: Hartebeest standing with its head to one side and chewing grassPicture caption: Two young hartebeest
W3 prompt
This week’s prompt:
II. Destiny’s prompt guidelines
Compose a free verse poem of no more than 12 lines on the theme of ‘belonging’.
Each of us interprets this word uniquely, and its significance may evolve throughout various stages of our lives. Feel free to delve into your personal reflections and follow where your thoughts take you.
d’verse challenge: Quadrille #200: Today, your 44 word poem must contain the word “blaze” or a derivative. This challenge is hosted by Mish and you can read her poem here: https://mishunderstood.wordpress.com/2024/04/29/oasis/
Small bee-eater
On an angled branch of a tree
Unadorned by leaves
Sits a little bee-eater
It’s gorgeous; ablaze with colours
Green, yellow, red, and black
Bzzzz! Its head snaps forward
Sharp beak clicks
A tiny splash of yellow and black
Vanishes down its bright throat
Small bee-eater native to southern Africa. If you look closely, you will see the bee in its beak.Another picture of the small bee-eater.
Shawnee and Mayhem continue to wreak havoc on the Killzme Corporation—the largest animal trafficking ring in the country—by killing one poacher at a time. The stakes grow increasingly higher when the nefarious group retaliates by putting a bounty on their heads.
Meanwhile, the traffickers set their sights on capturing Orca for profit and pleasure.
With a ticking clock and no place left to hide, Shawnee and Mayhem alternate between undercover surveillance and clandestine battles to save their loved ones and the Innocent Ones from Killzme’s evil plans. Skills are tested. Tenuous alliances are formed. Not everyone will make it out alive.
Set in a world of cultural wonder, environmental threats, and looming danger, this heart-stopping eco-thriller will have you glued to the page from the first sentence to the last.
My review
Merciless Mayhem is a different genre of read for me as I don’t read much in the thriller line. It is this book’s eco based plot line involving a group of characters who are determined to help save wildlife from exploitation by ruthless corporations, that attracted me. It turned out to be a good decision, and I thoroughly enjoyed the fast paced and exciting storyline that revolved around the exploitation of orcas and other sea creatures for financial gain.
The reader is introduced to Shawnee and Mr Mayhem and it is soon apparent that the pair have recently been embroiled in a nasty showdown with a corporation called Killzme which captures and sells endangered animals. Shawnee’s grandfather, Jacy Lee, goes missing, the evidence pointing towards a kidnapping, and the pair know the kidnappers are employees of Killzme, seeking revenge. Mr Mayhem comes up with a conservative plan to rescue Jacy Lee, but excludes Shawnee in an attempt to keep her safe from danger. This does not suit Shawnee, who sets off on her own with one of Mr Mayhem’s crow companions, to rescue her only surviving relative. Shawnee is captured by Killzme and, as a result, becomes involved in new Killzme animal operation. After this fast and captivating start, the story keeps going at a bottleneck pace guaranteed to keep the reader engaged.
Mr Mayhem is a mysterious character. His wife died saving Shawnee at an unspecified earlier date (I have not read the previous books), and Mr Mayhem has not recovered. He is still grieving and has embraced the friendship of Spirit Ghost, a white crow, her son, Poe, and another crow called Odin. These three birds all play supporting character rolls in the story. Mr Mayhem is devoted to saving wildlife from evil corporations like Killzme and has adopted Shawnee as his assistant. He is a ruthless man, who will stop at nothing in pursuit of his objectives. He is happy to kill for his cause.
Shawnee is young and still learning. She doesn’t have particularly good self-control and can be unpredictable and misguided in her behaviours. Devoted to her grandfather and also to wildlife, Shawnee does her best to learn from Mr Mayhem and become a good fighter for the cause. She is headstrong and comes into conflict with Mr Mayhem and his crow friend, Poe, but her heart is in the right place.
I found the information about the Cheyenne traditions, culture and spiritual beliefs very interesting, although the use of two names for each character did require some getting used to. In the beginning, I found it quite confusing.
This is a great story, but the book does contain scenes of attempted sexual assault and graphic violence which some readers may find disturbing.
Here is your assignment! Choose one of the artworks contained herein, and write a poem inspired by the artwork. Simple enough, right? There’s just one catch–you may not use the word cat anywhere in your poem, including the title. Other feline terminology is acceptable. Do let us know which work you have chosen in your post.
Picture caption: Book cover for Paradise on the Pike
Today, I am delighted to welcome talented author, Sarah Angleton, to Roberta Writes with a post about her new novel, Paradise on the Pike.
Guest post: Sarah Angleton
Paradise on the Pike is a historical mystery set in Hagenbeck’s Zoological Paradise and Trained Animal Circus on the grounds of the 1904 World’s Fair in St Louis. By 1904, Carl Hagenbeck was already a well-known name in the animal trade, as a pioneer of more humane zoo design and gentler training methods. He brought those things to the Fair, which has been identified by some historians as the largest human zoo in history, where thousands of indigenous peoples from all over the world were on display.
The novel explores this uncomfortable parallel and the complexities of the uglier aspects of a world’s fair also defined by its awe-inspiring displays of industry and wonder. In the following scene, protagonist Max is beginning to question the quick, possibly racially motivated, assumptions made by detectives in the investigation of a murder at the Animal Paradise. The scene also incorporates a historical account included in a biography of Hagenbeck animal trainer Reuben Castang, in which Lizzie the elephant makes a surprise visit to Cheyenne Joe’s Cowboy Bar just outside the fairgrounds:
An apology half formed on Max’s tongue, stopped only by the simultaneous shift of every saloon patron’s attention toward the wide swinging doors as a large, gray elephant stepped inside Cheyenne Joe’s.
Max joined the others in turning toward the door where Lizzie struggled to slide her bulk through a doorway constructed with room enough for a cowboy to enter on horseback, but evidently designed without the consideration of an elephant’s requirements. From behind her boomed a sharp command from Reuben Castang. “Lizzie, crouch!”
With remarkable coordination, the elephant pushed her head forward and stretched her thick legs, dropping her back so she could inch her way through the frame as a cat might slink under the bottom edge of a fence. The cowboys sitting closest to the door whooped and jumped up to pull tables and chairs out of the way. At another word from her trainer, Lizzie settled on her belly in the empty space. Walking in behind her, Reuben carried a large piece of red and white checkered cloth that he luffed like a great sail over the top of the animal’s back, doing his best to smooth it over her as it fell.
“Joe!” Reuben called, stretching out a hand to indicate the recently displaced cowboys. “Drinks and sandwiches for the gentlemen at the elephant table. It’s all on Lizzie.”
Cheers and guffaws filled the saloon as the cowboys slid chairs back up to their unusually gracious hostess and attempted to balance their drinks on her back. Reuben took a bow, in complete command of an audience with much lifted spirits.
Max chortled along with them, glad for his accusatory comment to be so amusingly overshadowed. He turned to Lorenz and said, “Not a bad elephant show for a white Englishman.”
Lorenz shook his head and stood. With mirth on his lips, he lifted his mug in a toast to Reuben. “Never underestimate Reuben Castang. I should know that better than anyone.”
Lorenz reclaimed his seat and drained the last swallow of beer from his mug, before saying, “Look, Max, I wouldn’t worry too much about this murder business. The police have less evidence against Inesh than they have even against his tiny sister. And maybe there’s something to this gangster theory. They’ll be free again before you know it.”
“What do you mean they’ll be free?” Max asked, his question nearly swallowed by the noise of the boisterous crowd as Lizzie, apparently tired of playing the role of picnic table, stood to send food and drinks spilling to the floor.
Fearing the distraction would prove too great, Max repeated his question. Lorenz shrugged and ran his fingers through his thinning hair. “I’m sure there’s nothing to it at all, but they arrested Shehani, too.”
Max couldn’t speak. The muscles of his neck clinched, forcing waves of pain through the back of his head where the information he’d just received should be processed but instead was being violently rejected.
“Why?” It was the one word he could manage at last.
Lorenz failed to notice the question, absorbed as he was in Lizzie’s antics. The elephant shook off the last remnants of sandwich stuck to her hide and turned to squeeze her way out the door.
“Oh, God in heaven.” Lorenz pushed back his chair and slithered out from behind the table. “There she goes.”
Lizzie had managed to wiggle outside and bellowed a loud trumpet that faded as she ran farther away, Reuben scrambling behind her into the night.
The Blurb
1903
Twenty-year-old Max Eyer is still reeling from his father’s recent death when a mysterious stranger’s offer to buy the family farm outside of Hamburg, Germany presents to him and his mother an unexpected opportunity to make a fresh start in America.
Welcomed by his uncle’s bustling family in St. Louis, Max finds employment on the grounds of the upcoming 1904 World’s Fair, where he is hired as a zookeeper at Hagenbeck’s Animal Paradise on the Pike. Max’s enchantment with the trained animals shows, ostrich rides, and water sliding elephants is rivaled only by his fascination with Shehani, a beautiful Sinhalese woman who captivates the crowds of fairgoers by dancing among the lions.
However Max’s paradise unravels when a grisly discovery leads to an accusation of murder against the woman he loves. His efforts to uncover the truth may save her, but in this fantasy land of the fair where palaces are temporary, animals roam free, and people are on exhibit, will his own dreams be shattered by an ugly reality?
Sarah Angleton is a storyteller and history buff who has degrees in both zoology and literature and still isn’t quite sure what she wants to be when she grows up. A Midwestern girl at heart, she spent a brief time living and writing in the beautiful Pacific Northwest before settling near St. Louis where she currently resides with her husband, two sons, and a very loyal dog. She is the author of Launching Sheep & Other Stories, a humorous look at history from the perspective of everyday life, historical thrillers Gentleman of Misfortune and Smoke Rose to Heaven, the historical family saga White Man’s Graveyard, a Paradise on the Pike, a historical mystery set in the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis.
This month I’ve featured African painted wild dogs for my In Touch with Nature post. They are highly endangered so seeing them in the wild during our January bush trip was a real treat. They have very large and interesting bat-like ears which enable them to hear very well.
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