Renée Thompson

Dale Hall, CEO of Ducks Unlimited, discussed THE PLUME HUNTER in his monthly column, “Insights,” in the Jan./Feb. issue of Ducks Unlimited magazine.  He compared the characters in PLUME to the characters in the movie The Big Year, saying “…the characters in both works have remarkable similarities.  They all believe their interests were driven by quests to define their individual lives, but soon discovered that their connection with nature—and their own natures—quickly overpowered their preconceived notions of themselves.”  He goes on to say: “No better attempt at explaining the passion and dedication of Ducks Unlimited volunteers and members could be given than this deep and abiding connection with the natural world.”

Thank you, Mr. Hall — this is a fine compliment!

Quick note to let friends and family know I’m appearing on Capital Public Radio’s “Insight” program on Thursday, Jan. 26, from 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m., with Valerie Fioravanti*, founder of Sacramento’s “Stories on Stage,” and Jodi Angel, author of the short-story collection THE HISTORY OF VEGAS.  (You can find Cap Radio on your dial at 90.9 FM KXJZ Sacramento; our segment will run 10-12 minutes.)  We’re appearing on “Insight” as a precursor to the second anniversary celebration of Stories on Stage, where local actor Jeff Webster will read an excerpt from my novel, THE PLUME HUNTER, and Victoria Goldblatt will read from Jodi’s collection.  Singer/songwriter David Berkeley is also scheduled to appear.  He has shared bills with Adele, Dido, Mumford and Sons, and others!  This event is slated for Friday, January 27, 7:30 p.m.

Stories on Stage is located at 1719 25^th Street (between Q&R).  Doors open at 7:00; a $5 donation is requested.

Hope you’ll give the radio program a listen, and come out to see us at Stories on Stage, if you can.  A fabulous night is promised – door prizes, too!

*Valerie was named “Best Friend to Fiction Writers” by Sacramento News & Review

xo Renee

Sue Staats, a Sacramento writer I met in Valerie Fioravanti’s Masters Workshop with C. Michael Curtis (fiction editor for The Atlantic) interviewed me about THE PLUME HUNTER for the Stories on Stage blog, posted here. The interview is the lead-in for this month’s presentation, which features local actor Jeff Webster, reading an excerpt from PLUME, and Victoria Goldblatt, reading a selection from Jodi Angel’s short-story collection THE HISTORY OF VEGAS.  Special guest David Berkeley will also perform.

Please join us in celebrating SoS’s second anniversary this Friday, January 27, at 7:30 p.m. (doors open at 7:00).  We’ll have books for sale, and everyone who buys a copy of PLUME will receive a free copy of my first novel, THE BRIDGE AT VALENTINE.  Door prizes are promised!

Location is 1719 25th Street (between Q&R), Sacramento.  Doors open at 7:00.  A $5 donation is requested.

Every month, the minute I receive my Vanity Fair magazine in the mail, I read the last page first – the Proust Questionnaire.  Afterward, I answer each question myself, marveling that in about ten years’ time, my answers have changed very little.  If you give even the smallest fig (and why would you, really?), you can read my answers here:

What is your idea of perfect happiness?

Reading the Sunday paper on a sunny morning while drinking a cup of coffee.

What is your greatest fear?

Deep, dark water.

Which living person do you most admire?

It’s corny, but my husband.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?

Prolonged immaturity; it took me a long time to grow up.

What is your greatest extravagance?

A hot bath in a luxurious tub.

What is your favorite journey?

The walk around our pasture.

What do you consider the most overrated virtue?

I think they’re all worthwhile, probably because I’m a little weak in several areas.

On what occasion do you lie?

To keep from going someplace I don’t want to go.

Which living person do you most despise?

I don’t despise anyone, although that could change in a minute.

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?

Bloody hell!

What is your greatest regret?

That I didn’t finish college.

When and where were you happiest?

I’m happy now.

Which talent would you most like to have?

Perfect pitch.

What is your current state of mind?

Bothered: my new short story is giving me fits.

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

My shoulders.

If you could change one thing about your family, what would it be?

Not a bloody thing.

If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be?

This is the most ridiculous question, and I refuse to answer it.

What is your most treasured possession?

We have a dog, and we’re her masters, so I would say Donner, our Lab.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

Sitting in a stadium at a football game; I do not understand the attraction.  Also, a world without birds.

Where would you like to live?

I love the Wren Ranch, but I’ve always wondered what it would be like to live on Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge.  You can stand on a hill and turn a full circle without ever seeing a telephone pole, a cellphone tower, and in some places, a road.

What is your most marked characteristic?

I’m incorrigibly tidy, which hinders my writing sometimes.

What is the quality you most like in a man?

A sense of humor, and in my imaginary world, a movie-lover.

What is the quality you most like in a woman?

Reciprocity — someone who, when you tell her your secrets, tells you hers in return.

What do you most value in your friends?

Generosity of spirit.

Who are your favorite writers?

Annie Proulx, Conrad Richter, Wallace Stegner, Ron Carlson, Larry McMurtry, Caroline Leavitt – who is, by the way, the most generous writer I know.

What is it that you most dislike?

Cruelty to children and animals.  On a smaller scale, it really bugs me when a clerk says “no problem,” instead of “you’re welcome.”  That’s the geezer in me, I guess.

How would you like to die?

With a bit of warning and a bottle of Seconal, to help ease me through.

What is your motto?

“You’re overthinking it, lady.”

To my astonishment, I received this chalk drawing in today’s mail; it’s from Clyde Huyck, my high-school art teacher, who sent a note along with the drawing, saying it was a sketch of Maggie, his favorite character from my new novel, THE PLUME HUNTER.  “She was tuff, smart, brave and determined,” he said, adding, “I happen to be an expert about those women.  I live with one!”

When I was a senior, Clyde (Mr. Huyck, back then) inspired us with his wit and talent, and encouraged us to think originally, and to use our imaginations.  In 1971, at age eighteen, I didn’t have the confidence I do now, and I was afraid to try anything that might make me look silly, or set me apart from the crowd.  But when I wrote my first novel, THE BRIDGE AT VALENTINE, I often thought about my teacher’s words.  I worked hard to create a fresh plot and unique characters, and was rewarded with a “very original and very appealing” blurb from Larry McMurtry.  I wrote Clyde to tell him how much his advice had meant to me — and what it had garnered — and when he received my letter, he called that very day.

While he confessed he couldn’t remember me, he thanked me for thanking him, saying my compliment had meant the world to him, and that he was happy to know he’d made a difference in someone’s life.  A short time later, I sent him a book, and we’ve corresponded many times since then.

Tonight, it was my turn — as well as my honor — to call and thank him.

In lieu of a bona fide post — and because it’s New Year’s Day and I’m about three weeks behind schedule in every aspect of my life, both personal and professional — I’m cheating and posting this puppy photo instead of meaningful text.  Donner is nearly thirteen weeks old now, and weighs in at sixteen pounds.  Here, she looks like a peanut, but she’s our peanut, and we love her.

Does THE PLUME HUNTER pass Marshal Zeringue ‘s The Page 69 Test?  Read about it here.

Thanks for featuring my novel, Marshal!

I just finished Nora Ephron’s I Remember Nothing, and it’s the first time in the longest while that I didn’t want a book to end.  Remember is a series of humorous essays on aging — the jacket flap describes these discussions as giving voice to “everything women who have reached a certain age have been thinking…but rarely acknowledging.”  Gray roots, age spots, turkey necks, and such.  At fifty eight, I know what she’s talking about.  Just this year I’ve acquired the beginnings of serious arthritis, so much so that the third finger of my left hand looks like a soldier on steriods.  I’m having trouble opening peanut butter jars, and everything with screw-tops. Prescription bottles give me fits.

Nora is sixty nine, which, she says, is old.  But not really old, of course.  “Really old is eighty.”  Here’s what else she says:

In these days of physical fitness, hair dye, and plastic surgery, you can live much of your life without feeling or even looking old.  But then one day, your knee goes, or your shoulder, or your back, or your hip.  Your hot flashes come to an end; things droop.  Spots appear.  Your cleavage looks like a peach pit.  If your elbows faced forward, you would kill yourself.  You’re two inches shorter than you used to be. You’re ten pounds fatter and you cannot lose a pound of it to save your soul…you take so many pills in the morning you don’t have room for breakfast.

She’s philosophical.  Realistic.  And I like that.  I like, too, that she has created two lists, the first, “What I Won’t Miss” (when she dies), and the second, “What I Will Miss.”  Which got me thinking about my own lists, and what I might put on them.  Here is a sampling:

What I Won’t Miss

• Litter on roads and trails
• Television in general
• Sharks
• The taste of milk
• Serious, damaging wind
• Talking on the telephone
• Puffy eyes
• Rush Limbaugh
• Crowns and cavities
• My first-grade teacher, Miss Chambliss (she once taped my mouth shut to keep me from talking; another time, she made me walk to the blackboard, draw a circle, and stick my nose in it…I was SIX years old, for crying out loud!)

What I Will Miss

• Steve
• My kids and family
• Donner
• The Wren Ranch
• Hot baths
• Reading in the bathtub
• Silence
• Birdsong
• The Beatles
• Brisk walks every day of the year (if I’ve a mind to)
• Swirling leaves
• Lavender sachets
• Pasta and grilled chicken
• Chocolate cake for breakfast, when there’s a delicious slice around
• Tent camping at Grover Hot Springs State Park
• The Northern California coastline

I think it says something that my “will miss” list is longer than my “won’t miss” list, and that I’m not the pessimist I think I am.  And after reading I Remember Nothing, I think, too, I can begin to accept aging, and to graciously cope with it.

This morning, a little after 4:30 a.m., our Lab pup Donner woke up and began to whimper — her signal she needed to go out.  Steve and I are taking turns with this responsibility, and so it was my turn to bundle up as quickly as possible (the puppy book recommends giving up on PJs altogether, and sleeping in sweat clothes), throw on some boots, then gather Donner from her puppy crate and carry her to her “spot” beneath the redwood.

While I shivered in the cold, waiting for Donner to do her thing, one of the goats — Lady Baa Baa — started bellowing from behind a thicket of shrubs on the other side of the fence.  It startled me, since the goats almost always sleep in their shed, and don’t make an appearance until a bit after dawn.  Donner was startled, too, and she scooted my way, where I scooped her up and carried her into the house.

After Steve got up, I told him what happened, and we guessed our little Toggenburg heard me talking to Donner, and assumed I was talking to her.  That made sense, and we didn’t think anything about it until Steve checked the critter cam…and there was Mr. Fox.

The creature made his first appearance around 10 p.m., and may have come back around in the wee hours, just before I came out with Donner.  But I’m not overly worried about it.  The Brothers Grim (Boo and Basil) are Nubians, weighing in at over 100 pounds each, and I have no doubt they’ll give that fox a run for his money if he so much as breathes on them.  And though Baa Baa is smaller, she might be tougher, as she’s held her own with the big boys for nearly sixteen years now.

Donner, our California girl (black Lab pup), is the newest addition to the Thompson household.  We brought her home just over a week ago, and the puppy book warned us that while everything she does is sublimely adorable, our nearly nine-week-old darling is not “special.”  Soon enough, she will adapt to her surroundings, and begin behaving as most puppies do — demolishing shrubbery, making mincemeat of the carpet, and destroying the Christmas tree.

First, however, she must pass through her “fearful” stage.  At eight weeks (the puppy book says), Donner may cry and carry on, and behave as though grass is an instrument of torture.  This is where we are now, and why Steve has taken to bundling his sweet baby in his jacket when the two of them meander through the pasture.  (A young dog never knows when a pine cone might sprout legs and careen violently toward her.)

Day by day, however, Donner grows braver.  This morning brought a surge of courage, and she attacked her green stuffed monster with vigor.  This afternoon, who knows?  The goblins may return again, but if they do, Steve will reassure her with ice cream-flavored “pup pops.”  It’s the least a daddy can do.