Announcing the Debut of Changing the Prophecy

I am delighted to announce the publication of Changing the Prophecy.

More than fifteen years ago, I published The Call to Shakabaz and now I offer you a sequel. The new book takes the four protagonists back to Faracadar for more adventures, with an expanded cast of characters. Changing the Prophecy is available in print format only from all the usual places that books are sold (bookstores and online). Please note that if you want copies of The Call to Shakabaz, the best place to obtain it is from me. Email or message me to purchase a copy.

The beautiful cover image for Changing the Prophecy was designed by Anjelica Colliard. If you choose to enter the pages of Changing the Prophecy, I hope, as ever, you enjoy the journey.

Here’s a Little More About Changing the Prophecy:

The Four return to Faracadar in this sequel to The Call to Shakabaz that charts their adventures through a siege of Big House City, the dungeons of the Final Fortress, Compost’s garbage labyrinth, an alien-run prison camp, an attack of flying tacos, a voyage to the bottom of a dying ocean, and more. They apply their ingenuity to the task of overturning an ancient prophecy and preventing the environmental destruction of the land by mysterious creatures in cahoots with Sissrath as he lays his evil plans. Revisiting beloved characters and introducing the Prophet of the Khoum, a reformed geebaching who struggles to keep a straight face, and a resourceful Latina friend, this year’s return to Faracadar finds the Four choosing to take action rather than accepting defeat as a foregone conclusion. While the danger of environmental destruction in Faracadar threatens to undermine hope, the heroes and heroines of Changing the Prophecy refuse to allow the doomsayers the last word.

Changing the Prophecy

Watch this space! Coming soon is the arrival of Changing the Prophecy. This sequel to The Call to Shakabaz takes the four protagonists back to Faracadar for more adventures, with an expanded cast of characters. I will be announcing availability very soon. Changing the Prophecy is published by my own Woza Books and will be available in print format from all the usual sources for books (bookstores and online sellers). 

About Changing the Prophecy:  The Four return to Faracadar in this sequel to The Call to Shakabaz that charts their adventures through a siege of Big House City, the dungeons of the Final Fortress, Compost’s garbage labyrinth, an alien-run prison camp, an attack of flying tacos, a voyage to the bottom of a dying ocean, and more. They apply their ingenuity to the task of overturning an ancient prophecy and preventing the environmental destruction of the land by mysterious alien creatures in cahoots with Sissrath as he lays his evil plans. Revisiting beloved characters and introducing the Prophet of the Khoum, a reformed geebaching who struggles to keep a straight face, and a resourceful Latina friend of the Goodacres, this year’s return to Faracadar finds the Four choosing to take action rather than accepting defeat as a foregone conclusion. While the danger of environmental destruction in Faracadar threatens to undermine hope, the heroes and heroines of Changing the Prophecy refuse to allow the doomsayers the last word.

If you or anyone you know wants a copy of The Call to Shakabaz, the best place to buy that book is from me because all the remaining new copies are in my garage (not many left). A bookseller would have to buy it from me to sell it to you. Copies are available directly from me for $10 plus shipping. Email me at amy@wozabooks.com to buy one.

More information will be coming before long. Hopefully in time for the holidays.

 

 

 

The Return

Until recently if you asked me how the pandemic changed my life I’d have said that fortunately I was insulated against its worst effects and it didn’t change my life much. I would have been wrong. I just couldn’t see it. What opened my eyes? I went to synagogue in person for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic and when the Torah was taken out of the ark, I cried. I had not been in the presence of the Torah for more than two years. I am someone who would not describe herself as religious (spiritual, but not religious), who does not believe in the monotheistic Judaic god-figure, and who was attending a service at a congregation where I didn’t know anyone. It made me mindful. I had a long think about the last couple of years.

Why did I imagine the pandemic had not changed my life that much? To begin with, like many writers, I tend to be reclusive. I’m easily exhausted by social events. I often leave gatherings early or bow out altogether. These days I feel increasingly uncomfortable in large groups, preferring the small dinner party or nature walk with one or two friends, where I can follow a conversation better since I have poor hearing. I had no problem staying home; no problem conversing with people on screenchat with subtitles so that I could understand what they were saying better than in person. I went out maybe once a week to buy food and pick up books at the library (left in front in a paper bag with my name on it). With my reliance on lip-reading, I couldn’t communicate with people in masks and therefore avoided contact outside my home more than most. I missed the gym, but I developed a workout to do at home. I had been working from home for 20 years so my work life did not change. Living in liberal America, everyone I knew wore masks, used hand sanitizer, was super careful, and then got vaccinated as soon as they could when that became available. I didn’t know anyone who had contracted the disease, let alone been hospitalized or died of it.

Over time that changed. All of my children and grandchildren have had it by now. Most of my closest relatives have had it. Many friends have had it, despite vaccinations and following guidelines for being careful. Some have had it more than once. I have still not had the disease, but I expect to get it eventually.

As the Torah reading proceeded at services last Saturday, I reflected on my life before the pandemic and my life now. How could I possibly have thought not much had changed? After 43 years of living in and loving California, I bailed and moved to Oregon. Duh – change. I have more than the pandemic to owe for that move but the pandemic certainly turned the tide. I was looking for a better living situation for us to age in place, better medical care with more options, more resources for seniors, smaller house and yard to manage. I was looking for a place not as heavily impacted by global warming. In California, we lived in an area burning up and drought ravaged. We spent half the year on evacuation warning. For six months out of the year I drove around with my photo albums and handmade quilts in the car in case I had to run for it. My gardens barely breathed under water rationing. We often had bad air from nearby conflagrations. Then the pandemic hit, and I saw my new (second) grandson once right after he was born then not again for seven months. When he was seven months old, I saw him for a few days and then didn’t see him again until he was nearly a year (except on the computer screen). I missed the entire first year of his life and will never get it back. After that we agreed on the move. We simply had to live close to the grandchildren if we wanted to have them in our lives, if we wanted to be a part of their childhood and enjoy watching them grow up at close range. The logistics of making that happen were, of course, extremely complicated and stressful. Glad that’s behind us. But I wonder how long it would have taken us to actually do it, to make the move, if not for the pandemic. The separation from our grandchildren it caused galvanized us into action.

I remember well our arrival in Portland when we went to see the baby at seven months during the first year of the pandemic. We drove, stopping only to use a few rest areas along the way while wearing gloves and facemasks and dousing ourselves in sanitizer. We arrived in the evening to find our Zev (just turned three) playing in the front yard with his mom. He had only seen us on screenchat for seven months. We got out of the car and walked over to him. He asked us, “How did you come to Earth?” Who knows what goes on in the mind of a three-year-old? Perhaps he wondered how we got out of the computer.

Beyond the move to the Pacific NW, the pandemic changed my life in many other ways as well. My book group dissolved. I joined a movie group on zoom and it still meets. My father and brothers and I began a weekly family zoom that has resulted in stronger connections for all of us. Given that my father is 93, the weekly zoom matters a great deal. I also zoom regularly with a group of my women cousins and we have become closer and more in touch with one another’s daily lives. I have a weekly screenchat with one of my closest women friends; a time we hold sacred and a weekly conversation that helps keep us sane in these difficult times. Ironically, the social distancing of the pandemic brought me closer to friends and family and increased rather than decreased the time I spend with many members of my inner circle.

Deep psychological effects of the pandemic crept up on me, impacts that I did not recognize, admit, or understand for quite some time. I find these hard to tease apart from the damage to my soul caused by the sad state of the world. How much is pandemic blues and how much is Jan. 6 disgust, Supreme Court grief, mass shooting trauma, institutionalized racism rage, anti-Semitism fear, environmental destruction despair, and on and on? Sadly, I have lost a lot of my creativity. My imagination feels blunted, often paralyzed. This happened slowly like the proverbial lobster in the stew pot. Somewhere at parboil I stopped believing that anything I write will make a difference. I gave up on creative writing and quit caring that I have entire books that I have written that have not been published and few people have read. What’s the point when human life will soon vanish and no trace of us remain? On what day did I abandon my calling, one of my greatest delights? In what hour did I lose faith?

Lately I notice more and more features of pre-pandemic life re-emerging. Fewer people wear masks. More people will unmask so that I can read their lips and understand them. Events are starting to take place again, often outdoors, nevertheless happening. I have invited a few people over for dinner. I have gone to the home of new friends for a meal. I still wear a mask at the store, the gym, the library; but the world is tentatively opening up again, poking its head out from the shell and feeling the sunshine on its face. As the return unfolds, I find myself poking my head out in an entirely new place with different people, landscape, air, water, light. It’s quite an adjustment. I have to keep reminding myself that I’m no longer a Californian, a definition of myself that I was attached to and loved for a long time. My morning walk has changed dramatically. Where I once walked a path among desiccated grasses surrounded by stands of thirsty oak trees on the edge of a dried-up lake, now I walk in a damp maple and fern semi-rainforest. Where am I? Where did I come to Earth? Where has everybody come to Earth? I call it “the return,” but truly there is no return, only forward motion into the ever-unknown. I want some things back. I miss California oak trees. I miss creative writing. I miss faith.

My new daily walk.

Wistful for the Old-fashioned Country Childhood

Time folds in on itself. Has it really been this long since I lived with young children? Now they are all more than thirty years old and not easily entertained by building a fort of furniture and blankets. Do children still do that? Times have changed. My three grew up mostly without the internet. None of them had a cell phone before they turned 16 and got their driver’s license. Social media and text messaging did not exist. If we wanted to see a movie, we went to the movie theater or rented a video. Many independent or controversial movies never made it to our small town. Our house was so far out in the woods that for many years we didn’t get TV at all, and when we finally did get TV we had maybe three stations. My children recited and memorized the times tables instead of relying on a calculator. If someone gave one of my children a gift, I expected them to write a thank-you note and mail it. Who writes actual thank-you notes anymore? We ate home-cooked meals every night, heated the house with a woodstove, and read books out loud every evening. Ron and I raised resourceful, thoughtful, creative, capable children.

With grandsons now two and four years old, I enjoy plotting things to do with them. This has recently led me to contemplate how many children coming up today have the kinds of old-fashioned experiences that my children had. Some of the disparity from then to now is not a time disparity but a place disparity. Many more children grow up in urban and suburban areas than rural areas so some of the things my children did are things that country kids typically do and city kids typically don’t. That hasn’t changed from then to now. For instance, my children rode horses. How many children growing up today have ridden a horse? My children know how to bank a fire so that it smolders through the night to keep the house warm. Most children don’t rely on a fire to heat the house.

This line of thinking led me to compile a list of things that I think all children should have experienced while growing up. I would be curious to know how 16-to-24-year-olds score on this list and to learn how many of them had most of these experiences. My list is very much the product of a mom raising country children in the Northern California climate. Nevertheless, I believe that childhood should include these experiences. Here’s a cursory checklist.

Have you ever….

Made hand-cranked ice cream

Rode a horse

Cared for an animal (pet or livestock)

Seen the Milky Way at night in a place far from light-bleed

Built a fort from chairs and blankets and sat inside it and read stories

Planted a cover crop in a vegetable garden in the fall

Baked bread and baked pie with a homemade crust

Collected firewood

Started a fire in a wood-burning stove or fireplace

Slept with a hot water bottle

Put kitchen scraps into a compost pile

Tended a vegetable garden

Read a book before bed by candlelight

Participated in a family read-aloud

Made a puppet show

Gone fishing and eaten the catch for supper

Eaten venison

Flown kites

Rode in a wagon

Distributed homemade holiday cookies to the neighbors

Caught bugs and looked at them under a magnifying glass

Made Christmas tree ornaments

Written and mailed a thank-you note

Made a sachet with lavender (from your own garden?)

Made things out of colorful pipe cleaners

Collected feathers

Gone on a treasure hunt

Driven a stick shift (manual transmission) vehicle

Drank well water directly from a well

Gone swimming in the ocean

Dug clams on the beach and roasted them over a campfire

Danced in the rain

Made something useful out of wood

Sewn clothing

Made candles

Drawn a map

Gone to museums of natural history, science/technology, culture, and art

Seen a live play, heard a live concert, seen a live dance

Swung on a tire swing

Heard frogs croaking their mating song in winter

Made popsicles out of juice

Gone cherry (or berry or apple or peach or etc.) picking

Canned and preserved fruits and vegetables in the summer to eat in the winter

Put up applesauce

Climbed a tree (sat in a tree to read a book?)

Painted a rock

I could list many more such things but let this suffice. I can’t say that I did all these things as a child myself because I did not but I think my children did. I remember fondly and with pride that one year Yael put up quarts of peaches, Akili stayed home from school to watch the vet spay the cat, and Sudi went out on the deck every night for a month to observe the moon to write about it in his moon journal (a school assignment). My children attended a small country school where families brought their pet goats along to the Spring Sing. When my children went trick-or-treating on the street where their school was, one of the teachers handed out warm, fresh, home-baked chocolate chip cookies instead of candy, and of course the cookies were safe to eat right there on the doorstep. The world keeps changing and the pandemic challenges parents every day to raise children in harrowing circumstances. I don’t say it’s easy.

My husband and I raised survivors and optimists, and the human species needs such people in this world of climate chaos, injustice, and horror. I have said it before, I say it again, I wanted to give my children an enchanted childhood so I moved to the forest. That sounds like the description of a Miyazaki film. Maybe that’s why my children and I love Princess Mononoke so much. Add that to the list – all children should see it. Once my son said to me, “Only the three of us know how truly miraculous our childhood was at the Ranch.” All of them live in the city now, but the forest is in their blood. 

Princess Mononoke

Lost in the Machine

Have you noticed how businesses, particularly within the healthcare industry, have insulated themselves from client/customer contact to an alarming degree using the technological machinations now available to them? I give you a case in point. In July I got a referral to a gastroenterologist (GE) to discuss digestive issues. “Digestive issues” turned out to be an understatement since, if you read my previous blog post, I had a destroyed sigmoid colon that was removed with major surgery. Anyway, back to the GE. The earliest appointment they could give me was in mid-October and it was a telemedicine consultation. I took it and I kept it even though I had the surgery in the meantime. I thought perhaps the GE would have some insights to share. A few weeks before my appointment, I received an email telling me to call the GE’s clinic to have them set up an account for me in their patient portal to provide “paperwork” prior to the appointment. Fair enough. I began trying to call the clinic. Every time I called, I went through a voicemail maze and was put on hold. Sometimes I waited on hold, other times I couldn’t wait around. Twice I waited on hold for 20 minute and never got through to a person. The email about calling the office was sent from a “donotreply” address so I couldn’t respond. The website offered no avenue for contact.

More and more businesses, particularly health clinics, employ the machinations of impenetrable phone and web-based systems to manage incoming communications. When I actually connect with a live human via one of these machines, it takes me a moment to recognize that I’m talking to a person and not a voice message, bot, or assistant-algorithm. I never did get a live person at the GE clinic prior to my telemedicine appointment, which turned out to be a colossal waste of time. The doctor had no helpful advice and doggedly tried to convince me I needed a colonoscopy, despite the fact that I no longer had a sigmoid colon and that surgeons had recently thoroughly examined my colon with my abdomen split wide open using their eyeballs and not a camera on a stick. After I politely cut the session with the useless GE short, I suddenly realized that I had still never communicated with her office.

I tried calling the office yet again, one last-ditch attempt, and once again went through the voicemail maze and spoke to no one. I had never once received an email with a viable address to which I could respond. So I reverted to that 20^th century mechanism called pen and paper. I mailed a letter to the clinic and chewed them out for being so inaccessible and I enclosed photocopies of my insurance cards so they could bill for my worthless session with their clueless GE. A few days later, I received a text message from their office confirming that they had received my billing information and the woman who texted me actually gave me her direct-line phone number! So I called her. We discussed the problem I had reaching anyone in the office and she apologized and said they are having systems issues. Ya think?

That clinic was an extreme case, but I have had similar difficulties getting through to healthcare providers and businesses. My husband has had bizarre and unbelievable experiences attempting to order health supplies to support management of his diabetes. He has literally spent hours on hold with no other option. Businesses seem to have given up on the notion of front office staff and are invested in these machined systems that keep clients at arm’s length. It’s infuriating and unviable.

Here’s another story about getting lost in the machine. We have a subscription to the New York Times for home delivery of the Sunday paper to our door and it includes access to all digital content. I read the NYT every day online, Ron plays the word games on his phone, and we enjoy getting newsprint on our fingers while reading an actual paper on Sundays. It’s an old-fashioned pleasure. When I first set up the subscription, many years ago, I received a special rate for it. That good rate lasted for a year. At the end of the year, I called the NYT and asked if they would extend the rate. They did. And they continued to do so for years afterward. Every six months I would call and ask for an extension and they would give it to me.

So a few weeks ago, the good rate expired again, and I called as usual to extend it. The person I talked to said they had no deals available to offer me and my rate would be doubled starting that week. I thought perhaps I had just had bad luck and gotten a mean person or a person having an off day. So I tried going on the chat online and asking if I could get my rate extended. At first I got an assistant-algorithm that couldn’t figure out what I wanted but eventually it passed me off to a chat-person, who also declined to extend my good rate. I waited a few days and called in again and once again was told that the rate couldn’t be extended. We decided to switch to an all-digital subscription, which is less expensive than having the Sunday paper delivered as part of the deal. We couldn’t justify paying so much just to have a hard copy of the Sunday paper when we could access all the content online anyway.

I called the subscription office and explained that I wanted to cancel our Sunday paper subscription and switch to a fully digital subscription instead. The agent then asked, “If I could give you a special rate on the Sunday subscription, would you keep it?” I asked what kind of rate and it was the rate I had originally wanted to keep to begin with. So of course I accepted her offer and now I have the rate I wanted in the first place. Explain to me how this is an efficient way to do business.

I have a friend who just turned 90 who has no computer. She doesn’t know how to use one. Without online banking, she pays her bills by mail. She drives to the AT&T store in the nearby shopping mall to pay her phone bill in person with a check. If she encounters something that is only doable online, she calls a younger family member to take care of it for her. When I want to send her pictures of my grandchildren, I go online at Costco and have prints made, have them delivered to my door, and mail them to her. I’m beginning to think that she is onto something. The convenience of doing everything online or from smart phones is no longer a convenience when more and more transactions require hours on hold or getting lost in the system or a complete inability to make the necessary connection. Lately, I find myself longing for a simpler life, a life outside the technology machines.

This is me reading the Sunday paper a few years back when we first got our subscription.