Story and Photo

Connie — Sat, 12 May 2007 21:05:44 +0000

I have always loved photography as much as writing. I still do my own black-and white processing, though I use a digital camera at work upon occasion. In Snap Me a Future, Shelby McCoy is an art photographer. Her photography both gets her in trouble and saves her when she goes shooting in New Mexico’s Badlands. In Snap Me a Future, they’re called The Hono’ji, a Navajo word for bad space. They are called something different in real life. Since Shelby is dealing with an antiquities thief, I didn’t want anyone to find out where ancient Indian sites actually are in the Four Corners. But, the image of the canyon below is a real place in Northwest New Mexico, and more or less figures into the story.

The picture of the church is the Santuario at Chimayo, a place of pilgrimage and healing for centuries. This is not in Shelby’s neck of the woods. It’s between Taos and Santa Fe. But Shelby would certainly enjoy going there to shoot photos

A Mouth Full of Shell takes place in the eastern United States, where I arrived at age 16 when my father was transferred by his company from the Midwest. The book’s heroine, Betsy Craig, lives with Mountain Birches in her little university town of Mountain View. She is not a photographer, but I believe photos influence my descriptions of her surroundings and life.

She also enjoys travel, and once went to Germany. Maybe she stopped in this Village along the Rhine, called a Rheindoerfchen in German. Maybe she snapped a picture similar to the one I took. This is what you’ll see in many villages as you walk into town from the boat landing.

Imagination on Board

Story and Photo