Carol Jeffers
Hello from the downstairs studio at OurWriteHouse, where I, Carol, have completed a draft of my latest project. With the help of Beethoven and Chopin, Rachmaninov and von Williams, I am now in revisions of a book-length manuscript, Smoke of a Great Fire, a non-memoir memoir meant (no first person) to explore the treachery of truth and doubt, faith and proof from several (medical and lay) points of view. Like my earlier book-length manuscript, The Question of Empathy, this, too, is a non-apologetic hybrid form that relies on metaphor to straddle fiction and non-fiction. Smoke of a Great Fire still belongs to literary non-fiction, but borrows from the novel without asking permission. Not an experimental form, this, but an approach that feels right to me—a means to tell a story, mine. Here's the pitch:
Smoke of a Great Fire:
A Novel, A Memoir, A Truth
by Carol Jeffers
At sixty-five, a pair of unlikely twins known only as “O.S.” and “O.D.” suffer yet another loss, one that leaves them in a wobbly world searching for a new identity before they are gone forever. Time is short, and with the help of their live-in care-giver “C.J.” they navigate between memory, truth and hope as they work to write a memoir that will explain what the medical world could not. They struggle mightily with fundamental questions—Had they made things happen, or had things just happened to them? Had they been the fire or the smoke? Had they seen too much or seen too little? And like most everyone, they wondered if they would be remembered for who they were or who they weren’t. Their story, surreal as it seems, was a chance for healing, for accepting a new identity that could give some comfort to C.J., friends, neighbors, colleagues and doctors who care about them. In his author’s note to Moonglow, Michael Chabon says “In preparing this memoir, I have stuck to facts except when facts refuse to conform with memory, narrative purpose, or the truth as I prefer to understand it.” And so has Carol Jeffers in Smoke of a Great Fire.
Odd, though, when the writing is going well and the structure feels sound, the music falls away, only to resume its rhythmic play as a dialogue or descriptive passage nears its end.
REALLY BIG NEWS!
Published by Koehler Books,Carol's book is now out!The Question of Empathy: Searching for the Essence of Humanity. Available on Amazon in hard and soft cover, as well as eBook formats.
Other News
Carol’s The Question of Empathy manuscript was named a semi-finalist in the 2017 Pirates’ Alley Faulkner Narrative Non-Fiction Book length contest.
Carol's short memoir piece Covenant will be published in Persimmon Tree in 2018.
In our explorations of the human condition, we have come to understand the importance of being both centered and interconnected so we are open to projects that otherwise might seem daunting. This has grown steadily over the years and our partnership now blooms in this place and time where together and separately we seek compelling stories. Welcome to Our Write House.
NEWS
The first chapter of Carol's book Blueprint has been published in the April 2024 issue of The Write Launch
https://thewritelaunch.com/2024/04/blueprint-july-1993/
"The House," an excerpt from Carol's novel in progress (Blueprint) is in the April 2023 issue of The Write Launch.
Blueprint | by Carol Jeffers | The Write Launch
Gene has been busy writing for InPark Magazine, here are a few articles from the past 8 months (Sept. 2022-April 2023):
SPRK of inspiration | InPark Magazine
2023 Thea Awards: Shaking things up | InPark Magazine
EXP: Engineered to succeed | InPark Magazine
WhiteWater: Come for the water, stay for the play | InPark Magazine
Alterface: Making fun of everything | InPark Magazine
Attractions by UNIT9: Experience design, reinvented | InPark Magazine
PGAV Destinations: Designing destinations, cultivating leaders | InPark Magazine
Bay Laurel Advisors: LBEs and branding | InPark Magazine
Gene’s review of full design firm PGAV (Aug. 2022)
PGAV Destinations: Designing destinations, cultivating leaders | InPark Magazine
Read Gene’s take on Eleventh Hour’s new service for employers (June 2022)
Eleventh Hour launches The Collab Experience | InPark Magazine
Gene took another look at Technifex (April 2022)
Technifex: Bring us your impossible ideas | InPark Magazine
Miziker Entertainment profile by Gene (Nov. 2021)
“You made us love our park again!” | InPark Magazine
And revolutionary new tech from Alterface
Alterface: The Happy Wander | InPark Magazine
See Gene’s look at Belgian firm Alterface (June 2021)
Alterface: Taking guests to the other side of the story | InPark Magazine
Read Gene’s review of Luc Petit’s new Chinese attraction (Nov. 2019)
Luc Petit CREATION: Storyboards & dragons | InPark Magazine
And his look at special effects firm Technifex
Technifex: FauxFire® and real people | InPark Magazine
Gene's Loaded Question just published in Winter 2021 issue of Passager Journal. Click here to read
Carol's piece The Basket, has just come out in Vol. 4, Issue 2 of Ponder Review, Fall 2020.
Carol's piece, A Sign, has just been published in Streetlight Magazine.
Click here to read
Here's one of Carol's pieces published in Entropy magazine
Click here to read
Carol's piece Woman for All Seasons has been published in Wild Roof Journal.
Click here to read
then scroll down to second piece.
Gene's piece in InPark Magazine
on Technifex's first 35 years.
Click here to read
See a review of Luc Petit CREATION's
new China show in
Gene's Inpark Magazine article
Click here to read
Read an indepth review of Carol's books The Question of Empathy in the June 2019 issue of Wordgathering
Click here to read
The issue also includes Carol's essay Seeds
Click here to read
Gene's Loaded Question short memoir was a Finalist at the 2019 Tucson Literary Festival Competition
Carol's piece "On Configuration"
has just been published in Wordgathering!
Click here to read
Carol's piece "Sea Wall" has just been published in Connotation Press!
Click here to read
Gene co-authored
"Theme parks greet Chinese tourists" in
Bridging Tourism Theory and Practice, Vol. 7
Gene Jeffers
almost written itself as it evolved, characters real and imagined springing to life as the exploration deepened.
What is emerging is a historical novel set in the midst of the Hundred Years War and the Great Western Schism, a time of plots and intrigues, of betrayals and alliances. History intertwines with fiction, a coming of age tale of a common man is being woven around real people and events that set the stage for Joan of Arc and a future line of French kings, inalterably affecting Western European history.
In the process of exploring this story, a new appreciation for the Middle Ages has emerged, an understanding this was a period of continuous change both political and social, an era of travel and commerce, a time when religion and myth were seen as part of the everyday world. In short, a time not unlike today's world. While six hundred years may have passed, and we now enjoy mobile devices, jet planes and central heating, very little has changed in the human psyche and in the way we interact with each other. We fool ourselves temporarily into believing otherwise, in placing our trust in the illusions of progress, but in the end, millions of years of evolution cannot be overwritten by a few mere centuries of "civilization." Then, as now, it is up to each one of us as individuals to resist our ancient origins and seek collaborative rather than competitive approaches to our problems and challenges. A Sea of Glass seeks to explore that tension.
As the upstairs writer, my current quest began with unanswered questions while visiting the Apocalypse Tapestry in the Chateau d'Angers, France. In 1400, the guidebook intrigued, this immense 550 by 18 foot work of art was transported 500 miles for a wedding in Arles. No details, nothing more. How did they do that? Why did they do that?
Slowly the curtain of time that has hidden this story has been pulled back through research, visits to known historical sites, walking where people stepped more than six hundred years ago, all in search of the story behind this monumental transport. It is a story that has
Photo by Phil Hartley