#CRAFTS WITH ANASTASIA--A MERMAID FRAME AND LITERARY THRILLER FROM AUTHOR DEB ROGERS

Today we are making a Mermaid Frame with Deb Rogers. She is the author of the new literary thriller Florida Woman which is teeming with off-beat crimes and mysteries to solve. Deb lives in the coastal town of St. Augustine, Florida where it’s easy to comb the Atlantic shore for driftwood, shells, and sea glass. Her mom Diane, who painted the seascape in the frame, taught her how to craft with the shells that she finds, but you can also buy bags of shells from craft supply outlets. Learn more about Deb and books at her website where you can also find links for her other social media. 

Mermaid Frame

 

Materials:

Small unpainted wood frame

Acrylic paint (white and an additional color—I used gold)

Sponge paint brushes

Crackle medium

Spray acrylic

Hot glue gun and glue

Assorted seashells

Assorted bits of sea glass, acrylic chips, colored stones, beads, or baubles

 

To create the faux driftwood frame, apply three layers of paint to the frame, allowing each to thoroughly dry. The first coat of paint is the color that will peek through the crackle. It can be any color you choose. I used gold for the example, but a gray tone, black or brown will look natural too. Or for fun, you could use purple or teal for a fantasy look—it’s up to you!

 

Apply a layer of Crackle medium. Allow to dry.

 

Apply your contrasting acrylic paint layer. I prefer white to achieve a bleached driftwood look. Tip: avoid overlapping your brushstrokes because doing so will diminish the cracks. Allow to dry.

 

Give the frame a coat of spray acrylic to protect your layers. Allow to dry as well.

 

Fire up your glue gun for the adornments. This is the fun part! Think about creating a cluster that feels like a collection of a mermaid’s favorite things. I usually start with three larger shells to form the basic shape. Then when they are settled in place with enough glue to create a firm bond, I add smaller shells between them to fill the gaps, then tuck in contrasting bits for a pop of color or more texture.

 

You can use anything in your craft bins or find objects in the floral or hobby departments of your favorite store—including colorful aquarium gravel, pearl buttons, mosaic bits, and jewelry findings. You can even sprinkle in a little glitter or sand while the glue is still wet. I love to center one bead in the cluster as though the mermaid is showing off her prize possession.

 

Florida Woman

Jamie is a Florida Woman. She grew up on the beach, thrives in humidity, has weathered more hurricanes than she can count, and now, after going viral for an outrageous crime she never meant to commit in the first place, she has the requisite headline to her name. But when the chance comes for her to escape viral infamy and imminent jail time by taking a community service placement at Atlas, a shelter for rescued monkeys, it seems like just the fresh start Jamie needs to finally get her life back on track — until it’s not.

 

Something sinister stirs in the palmetto woods surrounding her cabin, and secrets lurk among the three beguiling women who run the shelter and affectionately take Jamie under their wing for the summer. As Jamie ventures deeper into the offbeat world and rituals of Atlas, her summer is soon set to inspire an even stranger Florida headline than she ever could’ve imagined.

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BOOK CLUB FRIDAY--GUEST AUTHOR CHRISTINA HOAG

Christina Hoag is the author of Skin of Tattoos, a literary thriller set in L.A.’s gang underworld and Girl on the Brink, a romantic thriller for young adults. She is a former reporter for the Associated Press and Miami Herald and worked as a correspondent in Latin America writing for major media outlets. She also co-authored Peace in the Hood: Working with Gang Members to End the Violence, a groundbreaking book on gang intervention. Learn more about Christina and her books at her website.

What Inspired Me to Write About Gangs

Having written both a nonfiction book and a fiction book about gangs, people often ask me why gangs? I first encountered gangs as a young newspaper reporter in New Jersey, when I was assigned to write a story about a notorious motorcycle gang delivering Christmas toys to a local hospital. I went to interview them in a small suburban house, very normal-looking apart from the bunch of Harley choppers out front and its rather gloriously hirsute occupants, who insisted they belonged to a “club” not a gang. I was fascinated by them and their chosen lifestyle. They had established their own society with its own rules, dress, language and culture within mainstream society. What drove people to do that? I wondered. 

A side note: A couple years later, I saw one of the “club members” at a New Jersey prison where I’d gone to interview an inmate for another story. So much for the “club,” I thought.

Years later, on a magazine assignment, I interviewed gang members deported from Los Angeles to El Salvador, where they had landed like fish out of water because they’d left Salvador as babies and small children during the civil war. It was a country that they identified with, but really didn’t know. Some of them barely spoke Spanish. They had joined and formed gangs in Los Angeles because their families had moved to predominantly Mexican-American neighborhoods that had long-entrenched gangs.

The Central Americans formed their own groups for protection, but because they weren’t U.S. citizens, they later were vulnerable to deportation when the government started cracking down on immigrants with criminal records. The stories of the young men I interviewed were really rooted in an unusual outcome of both a civil war and the immigrant experience. They ended up staying in my mind to form the genesis of my recently released thriller, Skin of Tattoos.

Talking to the young men in El Salvador also reignited that previous interest in gangs from when I had interviewed the motorcycle guys, and I started reading about and researching gangs in earnest over the following years. I covered numerous gang issues as a reporter for the Associated Press in Los Angeles, talking to gang members, people who worked with them, people who worked against them, ie. cops.

There are many factors leading to gang formation, but in essence, gangs are driven by the universal human need for belonging to and approval of a group, and because some sectors of our society feel excluded from mainstream society, they form their own societies instead. Gang culture is alien to most of our lives and an extreme consequence of socioeconomic marginalization, but everyone can relate in some way to feeling excluded, of needing to belong, of wanting approval.  

Skin of Tattoos

Los Angeles homeboy Magdaleno is paroled from prison after serving time on a gun possession frameup by a rival, Rico, who takes over as gang shotcaller in Mags’s absence. Mags promises himself and his Salvadoran immigrant family a fresh start, but he can’t find either the decent job or the respect he craves from his parents and his firefighter brother, who look at him as a disappointment. Moreover, Rico, under pressure to earn money to free the Cyco Lokos’ jailed top leader and eager to exert his authority over his rival-turned-underling, isn’t about to let Mags get out of his reach. Ultimately, Mags’s desire for revenge and respect pushes him to make a decision that ensnares him in a world seeded with deceit and betrayal, where the only escape from rules that carry a heavy price for transgression is sacrifice of everything – and everyone - he loves.

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