We Endure Abuse to Survive, Part 1 by Karen Tate

An important topic. Most of the time abuse is hidden, leaving the victim even more isolated

I considered myself savvy and educated and an advocate for peace, fairness and equality. I thought abuse was something that happened to others, not me. But it was happening to me. It had happened to me and I didn’t see the danger signs as my life careened off the road. I became aware abuse and the resulting trauma can happen to anyone. I came to realize we have to examine all aspects of our lives for both blatant and insidious abuse. We must recognize it and take steps to eradicate abuse from our lives and society. That’s where I’ve been on for the last five years and I’m only now able to begin to share that journey. To write a new book, Normalizing Abuse, and bring my radio show, Voices of the Sacred Feminine, back on the air after a long hiatus.

Part One

If you knew me before…

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Looking for a publisher

Hi,

I finished my PhD novel The Buried Chameleon. The title relates to a practice among the indigenous Khoi tribes. During drought they buried a chameleon to bring rain.

A short synopsis

Amberike from Abyssinia, 10 years old, arrives at the Cape of Good Hope with her older sister, Gilda (12). They are housed in the slave lodge. They are separated and Amberike does not see her sister again. While adjusting to life at the lodge Amberike meets the Cook, Klaas, Arrie and Maria who becomes her substitute mother. The Cook, a writer from Indonesia falls in love with Amberike. Her body maturing is noticed by the men at the lodge and Klaas and Arrie take a special interest.


Amberike attends the lodge school where she catches the roving eye of Egbert, the teacher. He wants her to learn manners and asks Meine’s wife, Anke, to take Amberike under her wing. Anke admires Egbert and agrees. Egbert and Anke have an affair. When it is found out Meine sends Anke away and sells Egbert’s slaves, ruining his future plans.


The Cook has the compulsion to run away from his enslavement. Although Amberike develops a crush on him she has to compete with his desire for freedom. She contracts smallpox, aborts as a result of it, and when she recovers she uses her acquired immunity to help the Cook assist the Khoi, for whom the epidemic has devastating consequences.

I self-published my collection Eye of a Needle: And other Stories but do not really want to go that route with this novel, although my stories did well, with the Department of Education buying it for school libraries. However, the sales on Amazon never took off. At most I sold about 20 copies.

I was so busy completing the novel and writing my reflective essay that I never got around to looking for an agent and/or publisher.

Manifestations and Memory: A Look At Trauma, Hauntings, and “Rememory”

I was searching for “rememory” one of the processes in my new novel and came across this article. Slave memory in South has largely been repressed and forgotten. Excavating such a history has been a real challenge.

BSU Digital Literature Review

Written By Elizabeth Palmer

Sigmund Freud writes that the uncanny is a distinct “class of…frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar.” He goes on to rhetorically ask how it is “possible…[for] the familiar [to] become uncanny and frightening.” What frightens us most are the things which we can almost recognize. Sometimes, that almost recognizable thing is memory. In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, the word “rememory” is used when the main character, Sethe, recalls moments that have been forgotten. She is faced with these uncanny re-memories—moments that are not quite familiar because they have been tucked away for so long—and at their sudden manifestation, becomes haunted by their existence.

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How to Get a Fellowship: Tips to Write a Kickass Proposal

The Productive PhD Ninja Blog

Writing fellowship/grant proposals and putting together applications for these can be both time-consuming and emotionally taxing. It’s a long process, success rates for the competitive ones are anywhere between 5-7%, and you have to make time for it during what would already be a busy semester or quarter. And there’s a good chance that you will not get it. I know… I have been there… a LOT.

If you follow me on Instagram, you know that I am a proponent of perseverance. 🙂 So it won’t come as a surprise to you that I have written more fellowship proposals in the last four years than anyone else in my PhD program. Even though I have not won most of the fellowships I have applied for, I still have the highest number of fellowships anyone has received in my cohort. So the first advice I have for you is to keep…

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A new poem I’m working on

STAG-LERS ABOARD

A dominant partner will

brawl

to regain lost control

like an alpha god will

fight to the end

the will to win so

severe

The law becomes an

obstacle

The will becomes … law.

A steamroller will

crush

to rebuild a lost path

in the jungle of

She and He

no matter the configuration.

A rabid peer will

like a stag butt horns

like a rooster peck

coxcomb erect.

The Book Deal: Territorial Rights

Ask the Agent

The Book Deal: Territorial Rights

Most people think of book deals as just that: a author gets paid by a publisher to publish his/her book. But it is a little more complicated than that. The book deal is a  negotiation that includes, not just how much the author will get paid, but  also what “subsidiary rights” will be granted to the publisher for exploitation. There are numerous revenue generating opportunities when you write a book. They include: right to license in the English Language in the UK and other English speaking countries, translation rights, audio rights, e-book rights, sale of abridgements, magazine excerpts,  movie/tv/performance rights, merchandise spin-off rights, and many more. All book deals include negotiations of  which of these sub-rights are being granted to the publisher and what will be the revenue split between publisher and author.

Today we will talk about territory rights. These are important deal points…

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Slave novel done

At last I’ve completed my novel. After working on it for four years I was very relieved to send the final draft to my supervisor recently. I’d been writing on it through Covid and many personal challenges.

The first draft of my reflective essay received good feedback and I have sent in an Intention to Submit. My examiners are waiting (two international examiners and one local one) and now I’m freaking out, feeling all short of breath and scared. I’ve been working hard towards this goal so why the fear? Maybe fear of failure? Anyway I’m here now and have to push through.

I also have to find a publisher for my novel. I think it’s a good novel but I’m sure all writers think that 🙂

Turning Wheels (1937) by Stuart Cloete

A book I recommend.

Reading 1900-1950

Book Review by Sylvia D. Between 1835 and the early 1840s some twelve to fourteen thousand Boers (Dutch/Afrikaans for “farmers”) who were descended from settlers who had come from western Europe (mainly from the Netherlands and north-west Germany and Huguenots from France) to settle in Cape Colony, migrated eastward and north-eastward – the Great Trek. It was this mass movement of settlers that eventually saw the establishment of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. The voortrekkers, as they were known, were seeking to escape British control and were in search of new land. The family of Stuart Cloete (1897-1976 and pronounced “Clooty”) had settled in the Cape in 1652 and he was able to draw on the writings of his great-grandfather to write a novel about the Great Trek entitled Turning Wheels.

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