THE GHOST DANCER'S SHIRT

As a writer I am constantly shuffling and reshuffling ideas, thoughts, images and yes even visions in my head. Things come to me in waves each day. I think somedays I have my own solar system built inside me. I have gravity that grounds and centers me. I am in my own orbit. Ask my husband and my children.

I started The Ghost Dancer's Shirt as a writing exercise while my husband, Jim, and I were living in Kansas. Jim is a managememt consultant, and he was doing something with aerospace in Wichita so we were there for a few weeks. I found the whole experience to be stimulating and numbing. The landscape was so alien and the people were so different from Southerners, my people. I was lost and then realized just as quickly that perhaps I was found. Just like a gospel song. I was saved. There was a freedom to the landscape that was lacking in the fertile south. "The sky was a haven for the claustrophobic." was the the thought I had and it led to the short, "Finding the Yellow Brick Road" which was published in webdelsol by the genius, Michael Neff who operates the "Paris Review of the Internet", webdelsol review.

All things are born of something. I know that. I owe a debt of gratitude to my fellow writer friend, John Jeter who has inspired me with his kindness and his belief in me. Thank you.

I owe everything to James Palmer Brown. I love you.

When I was a little girl I had visions of a Plains Indian, he would come into my room at night, emerging from my closet. He was dressed in full head dress and was quiet, still and brought with him a sense of calm and peace that still to this day I have never experienced. I now know he was Wovoka, the great mystic of the Pauite tribe. His story is remarkable and it is his story which led me to write, The Ghost Dancer's Shirt.

There is some thought that all great writers are eccentric, drunks or just plain crazy. I embrace that idea. I love the way I am flooded by the ideas and thoughts that are given to me by my "eccentric" nature or by whispers from God. Whatever it is that makes me a writer I accept it and praise it. I like to think of William Faulkner and his quote about the need and desire for a writer to speak out of an experience that is necessary. That is the birth of The Ghost Dancer's Shirt. It is a necessary story and the time is near.