9:50am | Barbara Ardinger, author of Secret Lives, has provided the Long Beach Post with two excerpts from her novel, set in the historic Rose Park neighborhood of Long Beach.
From Chapter 1 of Secret Lives:
Two of the women have barely avoided being attacked on the street by gang members. They perform a ritual to help protect their neighborhood of Rose Park.
As the chanting and drumming grew to their howling, screeching climax, Herta stood up. She reached out with both hands as if to grasp the power, and she focused it on the covered basket on the teacart before her.
The chant peaked, an orgasmic release of energy skirring around the circle, an incandescent elemental energy—
There! Herta caught the almost visible power in her hands and flung it into the basket with all the force she and the circle now embodied.
“It is done.”
Silence now.
Breathing heavily, some of them still swaying, the women sat for many moments with their eyes closed. Herta sat with closed eyes, too, feeling the energy return to ground, feeling it flow back to its source.
“Girls,” she said at last, “we’ve done it. We have empowered our guardian. … As you all know, under the full moon in Cancer, I prepared a small nest in a box. I built it upon agate and jasper for strength and protection, upon petrified wood for transformation and great age, upon obsidian for grounded fire. I lined this small nest with the molted skin of a snake for rebirth, with bears’ claws and sharks’ teeth for ferocity, with owls’ feathers for swift and silent flight. I prepared this nest for three fresh eggs, laid on the day of the dark moon. One egg I painted white, one red, the third, black. Now we will see which egg hatches. And what hatches. We have birthed our avenger.”
She gestured toward the teacart. “Listen.”
They heard pecking and scratching, the splintering of an eggshell, the familiar sounds of hatching. And then unfamiliar sounds … a harsh bark, a cough, a rough hiss.
Herta lifted the large oval basket that covered the nest. “Look.”
There it lay, a box lined with gold cloth that cradled a bed of stones and a nest lined with snakeskin and claws and teeth and feathers. Two of the eggs lay intact, unfertilized, unhatched. But the black shell lay in pieces.
And sitting on the edge of the nest was a tiny, green, four-footed animal, its pale golden wings still plastered damply against its scaly sides. Its golden eyes were barely open.
“Our guardian. A creature as old as the heavens, as fierce as the fiery powers of earth.”
“Draco,” said Cairo. “The dragon. Symbol in the eldest times of the pole star.”
“The dragon,” said Brooke, “is older than humankind. And contrary to the teachings of men, it is not an evil creature. It is not an adversary that must be slain. The dragon is the all-powerful guardian of wisdom. Here is our fierce-flying avenger.”
From Chapter 2 of Secret Lives:
“Aha, my pretty one,” cackled the hag in the pointed hat. “I’ve got you now! You’re in my power. You’re mine, mine, mine!” Still cackling, she held her squirming captive up close and peered at it until she was satisfied with what she saw. Then she smiled fiercely and set the animal back on the counter, keeping one gnarled hand on its back.
A youngish man in faded chinos and a washed-out University Accounting Team sweatshirt approached. “Oh, Aunt Bertha, here you are,” he said mildly, looking around the pet shop. Three or four suburban mothers had backed away, pulling their toddlers with them. “Stop cackling,” he added. “You’ll scare the children.”
“Phooey,” Bertha replied. “Wendell, you know kids don’t get scared. Their mothers get a little spooked, though.” She whirled to face one such mother, an anorectic young thing standing near the firmly-lidded piranha tank. The mother pulled her Ralph Lauren skirt and sweater set closer to her body. As the old woman gave her a cheek-splitting grin, she inched around the tank, then reached back to yank her four-year-old son after her. “Stanley,” she said, trying to interest him in a school of guppies cavorting in formation in another tank, “look at all these pretty fishies.” Stanley pulled back toward the piranhas.
“Boo!” The witch clapped her hands and there was a minor tsunami in the guppy tank.
Wendell had a sudden coughing fit, the mother fled to the safety of the next aisle, and young Stanley squatted under the piranha tank like a miniature granite idol. What would this weird old lady with the purple hair do next?
“You really shouldn’t act out,” Wendell said after he’d stopped coughing. “And you coulda got arrested for taking that hat from the costume shop. Luckily, I was able to convince the manager that you’re merely senile. He let me pay for it.”
“Attaboy.”
“It is fetching, though. Goes with the cackle. Is this another Margaret Hamilton period coming on? Do we get green skin again?”
September 29, 12:30pm | Local Long Beach author Barbara Ardinger has released her eighth novel, Secret Lives, set in Long Beach’s historic Rose Park neighborhood. The novel tells of the adventures in a year in the lives of a circle of magical women, old and young.
Secret Lives is described as the author as “big novel about big issues—aging and death, the way our society treats its senior citizens, women’s friendships, the powers of love, the theory and practice of magic, the rebirth of the Goddess and Her ancient religion. It’s about the untidy mysteries of human life.”
Those interested are invited to view and print the free Reader’s Guide on Barbara’s website, There is also a Facebook page for Secret Lives.
Ardinger holds a Ph.D. in English Renaissance literature and works as a freelance book editor for inexperienced authors. She has been a Long Beach resident since 1996 and has lived in three neighborhoods. She is an active member of the North Alamitos Beach Neighborhood Association (NABA), and is a CERT volunteer. She has taught classes in writing and public speaking at local universities and community colleges, but says she prefers being self-employed.