“The greatest achievement was
at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn, the bird waits in
the egg, and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are
the seedlings of realities.” James Allen
Emily Dickinson wrote that
hope is the thing with feathers, and every debut author hopes they’ll find the
perfect thermal to help their literary dreams soar. Feathers and fingers
crossed.
Recently, I read about a fun
experiment that taught parrots to FaceTime new feathered friends. The parrots
loved their parrot-to-parrot video-calling system and could peck at a screen
line-up of birds like an old-school gym class picking candidates for a team.
How did the parrots feel when they didn’t get selected? Lousy. I would know
from personal gym experience!
I don’t consider myself a birder. Still, birds
are always on the fringe of my consciousness. I hear them, even when I can’t
see them. I find a closed window, a form of imprisonment, and an open window,
the gateway to chatter and birdsong that punctuates my life. When I travel to
Costa Rica, the mewling song of the toucan is ubiquitous and soothing. In
Florida, finding a sleeping osprey on the railing of my balcony is like avian
nirvana. But there’s no yin without yang because birds on the balcony leave
poop. Good and bad experiences are almost always intertwined. Every radiant
peacock feather has a pointy end.
While writing my novel, I
discovered that being a bird brain is considered a compliment. That’s because I
read The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman while writing and, believe it or
not, used the book as research for my paranormal sci-fi novel. My alien
protagonist, Dob-Dec, loves birds, and even though he isn’t impressed with
human brains, he thinks that bird brains are very significant and intelligent
for their diminutive size. I do too. The intelligence of birds is a thread
throughout my novel, and if my book had a soundtrack, it would be the exotic, undulating
whoop of an oropendola. As an author, I hope to have a career as varied as the
song of mockingbirds. I want every novel to have a different genre or melody.
And don’t get me started on
the beauty of birds. And speaking of flight, my ARC copies are flying into the
inboxes of early readers, blurbing authors, and book review websites. Keep your
fingers and feathers crossed that my book garners some good peeps and chatter! My
next newsletter flies into your inbox on July 17.
“Each day has a story that
deserves to be told, because we are made of stories. I mean, scientists say
that human beings are made of atoms, but a little bird told me that we are also
made of stories.” Eduardo Galeano
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