Dolls Behaving Badly: Cinthia Ritchie Guest Post
I often wonder what type of writer I’d be if I didn’t live
in Alaska. Maybe I wouldn’t even write. Or maybe I’d write more intensely, more
lyrically. Maybe I’d read classical literature and wear four-hundred dollar
shoes and actually comb my hair in the morning.
But I’m not a big-city writer and I’m not sophisticated. I
don’t know how to walk in high heels and I’ve been known to cut my hair with my
partner’s toenail scissors. I wear
outdoor gear even indoors and Xtratuf boots during spring break-up and barely
flinch when encountering fresh bear scat on the hiking trails (encountering an
actual bear, however, is a bit more flinch-worthy).
Alaska has its hold on me. I love it, terribly and
uselessly. It beats me up each winter, leaves me struggling in the cold and
dark and then, just when I’m ready to pack up and leave, spring arrives and
soon after the long summer twilight, when the sky dims but never actually
darkens so that when I hike up in the mountains past midnight, the air waits silver
and muted and magical.
I moved to Alaska twenty-five years ago because it was vast
and far away, and because I wanted to live on the edge. I wanted to shuck off
convention and live more simply, more honestly. I wanted to live close to the
wilderness. I wanted to run mountain trails and see wolves and foxes, lynx and
coyotes, bears and moose. I wanted to get lost in the sky. I wanted to smell
the salt of the inlet in my hair.
Mostly, I wanted to write in a place that would allow me to
be fearless and uninhibited.
Alaska offers me that. It’s different than living and
writing in, say, Nebraska. It’s so immense up here, and the land seemingly goes
on forever. Sometimes when I stand on top of a mountain and look out over steep
ranges of surrounding mountains, I find great comfort in the knowledge there
are places still untouched, still wild. Still free.
I feel this as I write. I feel the pulse of Alaska, an
energy that feeds me, almost like a breath. Usually I write late at night,
after I’ve come back inside from running or hiking in the mountains or, on
tamer days, walking the beach with the dog, the tide flowing and the air heavy
with silt. I sit down to write and often I don’t even change my clothes, I sit
down muddy and sweaty and smelling of the outdoors. And I write. Often I write
through the night, the twilight lifting in stages so that the shadows flicker
with silver and lavender and blue tints, before giving way to bright daylight.
Winter, when the darkness stretches out thick and consuming, I write after
walking the beach and sometimes the northern lights appear, that faint green
light that grows and expands, yellows and pinks, reds and purples joining in
until a chorus of color waves through the sky.
Alaska electrifies me. It feeds me. It makes me want to
write. I don’t know if what I write is what I’m meant to write or if I become
seduced by the wild nights, the mountains, the smell of damp spruce and alder
trees. Maybe I’ll end up missing that one cue that I’m supposed to follow, that
one thread that might lead to literary success, but no matter. There are enough
writers living in New York, Chicago and beyond to fill the world with literary
works.
Me? I’d rather write in Alaska. I’d rather write like a wolf, with teeth bared
and breath hot and words falling like blood from my wild and undeserving hands.
About the book: With
a quirky sensibility and belly-laugh inducing prose, Cinthia Ritchie’s debut
novel, DOLLS BEHAVING BADLY (Grand
Central Publishing; Paperback Original; On-Sale: February 5, 2013; ISBN:
9780446568135; 352 pages; $13.99), shares the story of the loveably eccentric
people living in a small Alaska town.
Why Alaska? Because as Ritchie herself says it’s the only place that’s
ever felt like home. DOLLS BEHAVING
BADLY features a sardonic 30-something single mom named Carla Richards who
is trying to find her own sense of home and make a good life for her son—without
drowning herself in the bathtub in the meantime.
Carla
is a lot of things: a divorcée who’s slept with nineteen and a half men; a
waitress for the most popular Mexican joint in Anchorage, Mexico in an Igloo;
and a single mom to a precocious eight-year-old boy named Jay-Jay whom she’s
supporting along with her pregnant sister Laurel and her live-in, teenaged
babysitter Stephanie. Carla is also an aspiring artist who makes erotic dolls
for extra income, and an avid Oprah devotee. She’s just one delinquent utility
bill away from having collections kick down her door when inspiration knocks
instead.
Cinthia
Ritchie is a former journalist and Pushcart Prize nominee who lives and runs
mountains in Alaska.
She’s
a recipient of two Rasmuson Individual Artist Awards, a Connie Boocheever
Fellowship, residencies at Hedgebrook, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the
Arts and Hidden River Arts, the Brenda Ueland Prose Award, Memoir Prose Award,
Sport Literate Essay Award, Northwest PEN Women Creative Nonfiction Award,
Drexel Magazine Creative Nonfiction Award and Once Written Grand Prize Award.
Her
work can be found in New York Times
Magazine, Sport Literate, Water-Stone Review, Memoir, Under the Sun, Literary
Mama, Slow Trains Literary Journal, Sugar Mule, Breadcrumbs and Scabs, Third
Wednesday, Writer’s Digest, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Cactus Heart Press and
over 30 other literary magazines and small presses.
Her
debut novel, Dolls Behaving Badly, released
Feb. 5 from Grand Central Publishing/Hachette Book Group.
Links:
Website:
www.cinthiaritchie.com
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/cinthiaritchie1
Purchase links:
IndieBound:
http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780446568135
Thanks so much, Marcie! The post looks great. Cheers and big hugs from Alaska.
ReplyDeleteWhat I love about Cinthia Ritchie's book is what I love about Cinthia Ritchie, the woman. What you see is who she is. No BS, no pretenses. And who she is and what she has to say, is plenty. Plenty enough, that is. I cannot wait for her second book! Thank you for the great guest post and for introducing me to your blog ~
ReplyDeleteSounds like a fun read - thanks for the heads up!
ReplyDeleteShelleyrae @ Book'd Out