Laurel Anne Hill



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Laurel Anne Hill

Author and former
Underground Storage Tank Operator

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Laurel Anne Hill Writes IPA “Silver,” But Edits “Gold”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

March 22, 2022/ Contact: Laurel Anne Hill/ laurelannehill@gmail.com

 Local Author Wins Again!

Laurel Anne Hill, born in San Francisco, receives national recognition

through the INDEPENDENT PRESS AWARD®!

(Orinda, California) — The INDEPENDENT PRESS AWARD recognized Laurel Anne Hill’s most recent fantasy novel in the category of cross genre as a Distinguished Favorite (silver award). Also, the anthology she edited on behalf of California Writers Club (CWC), San Francisco Peninsula Branch, won gold in the anthology category. Both books were published by Sand Hill Review Press in San Mateo, CA. Sixty-plus years ago, while an impoverished student at San Francisco’s Polytechnic High School, Laurel had entered every essay contest she could. She’d won enough money to pay for four years of tuition and books at San Francisco State. “All these years later,” Laurel said, “I’m delighted to be able to inform our CWC anthology contributors—a few of them first-time published authors—that they ALL are now “award-winning” authors and poets.

In 2022, the INDEPENDENT PRESS AWARD had entries worldwide. Authors and publishers from countries such as Australia, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Jordan, New Zealand and Switzerland participated. Books submitted included writers based in cities such as Anchorage to Memphis; from Berkeley to Philadelphia; Calgary to Sydney; from Albuquerque to New York City; from Princeton to Santa Monica as well as others.

“We are thrilled to be highlighting key titles representing global independent publishing.” said awards sponsor Gabrielle Olczak.

The INDEPENDENT PRESS AWARD competition is judged by experts from different aspects of the book industry, including publishers, writers, editors, book cover designers and professional copywriters. IPA Award Winners and Distinguished Favorites are selected based on overall excellence.

Plague of Flies: Revolt of the Spirits, 1846, by Laurel Anne Hill is a historical fantasy novel with its roots in magical realism. In 1846 Alta California, Catalina Delgado daydreams about her future: roping cattle, marrying Angelo Ortega and raising children. But now, invaders from the United States—the Bear Flaggers—have declared war against Mexico, her country. Bear Flaggers have imprisoned one close friend of her family and murdered others. What fate might befall her parents, grandfather and younger brothers? And what about her best friend, a Costanoan servant girl? How can Catalina, only sixteen, help protect all those she loves?

The spirits provide Catalina with answers, but not ones she wants. Plus she fears the strange spirit man who rides a black Andalusian stallion through the sky. For the sake of all she holds dear, Catalina must risk her reputation as a chaste young woman, her future with Angelo, her life and her very soul. When hopes and dreams clash with cold reality, Catalina finds the fortitude to accomplish what only she can do.

Fault Zone: Reverse, an anthology for which Laurel Anne Hill served as Editor-in-Chief, consists of a total of 47 pieces of short fiction, short creative nonfiction and poetry. Topics range from a cross-county hitchhiker sleeping with San Francisco Pigeons to old-growth oak trees plotting against humans who have despoiled their California valley.

For more information please visit independentpressaward.com; and to see this year’s list of IPA Winners and Distinguished Favorites, please visit the website pages: https://www.independentpressaward.com/2022winners
https://www.independentpressaward.com/2022distinguishedfavorites

 About the Author

Laurel Anne Hill—author and former underground storage tank operator—grew up in San Francisco with more dreams of adventure than good sense or money. Her close brushes with death, love of family, respect for honor and belief in a higher power continue to influence her writing and her life. Laurel classifies her recently-published third novel, PLAGUE OF FLIES: REVOLT OF THE SPIRITS, 1846, as historical fantasy/magical realism. This book relates the gripping tale of a young Latina in Mexican Alta California during the early days of the Bear Flag Rebellion. Her second novel, THE ENGINE WOMAN’S LIGHT (a spirits-meet-steampunk adventure set in an alternate 19th Century California) has won a total of thirteen honors and awards, including a Kirkus Star. So far, PLAGUE OF FLIES has received the Distinguished Favorite award from IPA, plus four honorable mentions from other competitions and some terrific reviews. Laurel is the author of over thirty published short stories and many short nonfiction pieces, including one scientific paper. She also serves as Secretary for the Polytechnic High School Alumni Association. San Francisco closed Polytechnic fifty years ago. Laurel swears that the spirits of her beloved husband and her Mexican ancestors (especially her great-grandmother, a poet, who immigrated from Mexico to San Francisco around 1860) continue to inspire her writing. More information at https://laurelannehill.com.

Laurel’s Update on the Definition of White Russians: (The people, not the cocktail.)

 


Thanks to “FamilyTree” (https://www.familytreemagazine.com/heritage/russian/genealogy-white-russian/) I’ve come up with two definitions of “White Russians” as follows:

In the 18th and 19th centuries, the term “White Russian” described ethnic Russians living in the area between Russia and Poland (today this includes Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia and Moldova). By the 1920s, the term was more commonly used for Russians who’d opposed the Bolshevik Revolution and supported the imperial government. More specifically, it meant those who fought against the Soviet Red Army in the Russian Civil War (1918 to 1921).

So my uncle, mentioned in my post from March 4, might not have come from the area between Russia and Poland. He could easily have been born in the heart of Russia and opposed to the Bolsheviks–Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (aka Lenin) included.

I don’t expect the real truth to step forward any time soon. I haven’t been in contact with my father’s side of the family for many years. 

Regardless of any of the above, please pray for Ukraine.

On Writing, A Samovar, Disorder and Duty

Prerevolutionary Russian Samovar in a State of Present Day Disorder

 

I doubt I have more than a couple Russian or Ukrainian strands of DNA in my genome. However, one of my aunts married a “White Russian” in the 20th Century. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the term “White Russian” described ethnic Russians living in the area between Russia and Poland (today this includes Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia and Moldova). Among my family stories is when one of my cousins traveled to post-Stalin USSR to try to find any living relatives there. No luck.

Long before I became a writer as an adult, I read the novels of many classic Russian authors. Later I read the then more contemporary works of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Vladimir Nabokov. Right now, I have an electronic candle lit in front of my antique samovar in support of the Ukraine. My house is a mess. I have not yet officially added the appropriate blue and yellow colors to the shrine, except through the usual backdrop of clutter. But that is my life since my beloved David became terminally ill and passed.

As a writer, I believe in writers helping writers. Just as I believe in people helping people worldwide. As I donate to charities (such as UMCOR and Doctors Without Borders) supporting human needs in conflict-torn countries, I also freely give of my time to help other writers on their journey.

Thus I support organizations such as the California Writers Club, the Greater Los Angeles Writers Society (GLAWS) and Women Writing the West.

Anyone signed up for this weekend’s California Creative Writers Conference? (https://www.wcwriters.com/ccwc/index.html) If so, I’m on the programs warning about writing scams (March 5) and describing what I wish an expert had told me before I started writing (March 7). I participate without monetary compensation, as do so many others.

Many writers in this world continue to be silenced. Russia is only one of many places this occurs. All of us with a voice must continue to speak our minds.

Plague of Flies: Revolt of the Spirits, 1846

Cover art by Julie Dillon

A “Spirits meet the Bear-Flag Rebellion” YA Historical Fantasy. Published in 2021 by Sand Hill Review Press.  Buy Now.

In 1846 Alta California, Catalina Delgado daydreams about her future: roping cattle, marrying Angelo Ortega and raising children. But now, invaders from the United States—the Bear Flaggers—have declared war against Mexico, her country. Bear Flaggers have imprisoned one close friend of her family and murdered others. What fate might befall her parents, grandfather and younger brothers? And what about her best friend, a Costanoan servant girl? How can Catalina, only sixteen, help protect all those she loves?

The spirits provide Catalina with answers, but not ones she wants. Plus she fears the strange spirit man who rides a black Andalusian stallion through the sky. For the sake of all she holds dear, Catalina must risk her reputation as a chaste young woman, her future with Angelo, her life and her very soul. When hopes and dreams clash with cold reality, Catalina finds the fortitude to accomplish what only she can do.

Laurel And Hidalgo, Part V

Hello readers! Welcome to the fifth episode of On the Hidalgo Treaty Road: the twisted path leading into and out of the Mexican-American War in the Nineteenth Century.

The History of Alta California:
A Memoir of Mexican California by Antonio Maria Osio

Once upon a time, our ancestors passed on family and community histories through oral storytelling. Over time, some narrators embellished the stories and/or inserted their own opinions. Others didn’t. Oral storytellers could drift from a topic and then return, without any publisher’s editorial team waving red pens in protest. Thus, traditional oral storytelling differs from when the typical modern author performs a reading of his or her own published work. Hold that thought.

Antonio Maria Osio knew how to engage a reader in the style of “written” oral storytelling. He used a conversational omniscient narrator. Although not a scholarly man by today’s standards, Osio was scholarly in comparison to many others worldwide during his time. And he knew how and when to draw upon his own knowledge of classical literature. He certainly engaged me, despite the hard fact he appears to have been less sensitive to the plight of Native Americans than I am—typical of his times, even for people with mixed DNA.

So, how did Antonio Maria Osio accomplish writing his meaningful memoir? He looked many truths in the face without forsaking the ability to interject a bit of humor or even sarcasm. For example, his witty description of a group of angry Californio women speaks volumes. “A snake which is seized by a falcon and dropped for the first time is not as angry as those women were at that moment.” And his description of Don Mariano Chico, was beautiful. “Don Mariano Chico will prove for no reason at all with the tip of his sword that three plus two do not equal five.” I love his description of one particular mission padre who tried to fend off a more-than-likely well-deserved attack by Native Americans: “His arms, quickly loading and firing, moved even more skillfully than they did when he was collecting alms.”

If you decide to read The History of Alta California: A Memoir of Mexican California, please read the introduction before the rest of the book. The introduction provides information about Osio’s manuscript, written while the fate of Alta California in the hands of the USA still burned fresh in his mind, and before Hubert Howe Bancroft approached various Californios years later to obtain their biographies. In fact, it appears Bancroft—pushing his own paternalistic agenda—later stole and included his own (and less accurate) version of Osio’s story in his library—now at the University of California in Berkeley. Thus the translation of Osio’s original work by Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz (and published by the University of Wisconsin in 1996) shines with particular importance. Plus well over 100 pages of notes, biographical sketches, glossary, bibliography, and other information follow Osio’s remembrances translated by Beebe and Senkewicz.

I doubt we are related, Señor Osio, based on my research of my Mexican family ancestry. Too bad. If we were (and I knew it) I would have tried harder to write at least one story with a conversational omniscient narrator. Guess I’ll just continue writing and reading all my stories (such as Plague of Flies: Revolt of the Spirits, 1846, recently accepted for publication by Sand Hill Review Press) with a first or close third person point of view. If we happen to meet during some future Day of the Dead, please don’t hold my more modern writing style against me.