Outskirts Press, INC.

Sallie Reynolds, author, photographer, student and teacher of the wild. www.sallysparleys.com Like all writers, I started at age three. Even then I had to have a pencil in my hand to work out what was in my head. The pencil is an an organizing object, a way inside. I began with pages of incomprehensible scribble. Then myths, bible stories, fairy tales, changing as I went. Later: short stories and poems. I rewrote constantly – reshaping, rethinking – the fun part, like making magic beasts out of clay. Real life included supporting children, working as secretary, editor, "executive assistant," teacher. Then, at age 60, I began to really write. In a year, I completed a novel ("Rapture"), a transformation tale. I love large birds, and yearn for free flight so strongly, I often feel it. Writing it, I found when you want anything that much, it has a price. A wonderful editor with a small press published "Rapture," and pushed me for more. "Belonging" has a large canvas; the ugly, skewing forces in the South of the 1940s and 50s, so powerful they crippled whatever they touched. Even a child, simply growing, was marked. So Draft One was what constrained and destroyed: women and men denied meaningful lives. Good people twisted into ignorance and cruelty. But I couldn't write it. I got the harsh and ugly down pat, but not the full human story: Was I/am I the villain? What happens to make us so? Head on, this was overwhelming. So I sneaked in the back, imagining, inventing what would break the pattern. "Belonging" is about a girl who breaks through in that place and time. It's what might have been. But "Belonging" included a person who was very real, and it didn't finish her story. So “Virginia Primitive” tells what was. A small book, a duet for two characters and two times, then and now. It gives voice to real people: Lila and Sally. And Eddie, Dance, Lizbeth, Bessie and her "snake baby," Uncle Chillus. Mr. Perk-ups. A duet, then, with voices accompanying.