These Rough Cuts read like short stories or vignettes — a way to taste a sample of my novel.
The cuts and edits I’m making now are parts of the story I really wanted to tell. I wanted to tell the true history, as I lived it, of the agricultural industry in the Pajaro Valley at the end of the 20th Century, and the transition from pesticide-intensive mega corporate ag to sustainable, organic, small-scale farming. But it seems that some pieces and bits of the story are going to have to be told another time, maybe in another novel, or a memoir or social history, or perhaps written down by someone else. As a matter of fact, one such book does already exist—Cultivating a Movement: An Oral History of Organic Farming and Sustainable Agriculture on California’s Central Coast. And the author, Sarah Rabkin, is one of my book’s “mothers”—one of the people who encouraged me to write Fruit of the Devil.
It’s often said that “writing is revising” so, I’m going at my darling novel with a butcher knife, hacking off arms, legs, and internal organs. “Killing my Children”, as they say. Herein, on blog posts labeled Rough Cuts, some of the amputated parts of Fruit of the Devil are buried. Buenas suerta, mis niños.
*To find “Rough Cut” posts fast, click the pull-down Rough Cuts menu on this page.*