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My BooksTo write a good scene, remember: Every scene has an EVENT Every scene has a FUNCTION in the narrative Every scene has a STRUCTURE Every scene has a PULSE From the introduction: Inspiration, analysis, reflection, restructuring, rewriting, and editing are different parts of a grand process we call writing. Demystifying that process will give you a greater sense of control over your work...We are not beginners forever, but we never stop learning. Occasions of Sin: A Memoir
“Scofield investigates the insistence of desire, the inability to transcend the body and the indissoluble bond between mother and daughter...a narrative of survival..." --Jean Barker, San Francisco Chronicle 10/11/04 “This is a tale filled with longing and loss as well as a powerful sense of what it means to be holy and what it is like to sin.” --Mary Morris ------------------------------------------------------ MORE PRAISE FOR OCCASIONS OF SIN: "...evokes the complicated and all-consuming nature of Scofield's love for her mother ...succeeds on its own unflinching terms." Washington Post Book World "It was a time when grown-ups made divinity in stifling hot kitchens and kids caught fireflies in Mason jars at dusk. And always in the background were adult voices warning of God's will, "the way they spoke of the weather, something hovering or moving in like a cold front."...Facing her 60's, having pushed her way back through memory and family history, the talented author must feel an enormous relief." The Houston Chronicle "...the ghosts that haunt Scofield will haunt you, too." Karen Joy Fowler "...a wonderful memoir, with its tender undercurrents of sorrow and luminosity." Bob Shacochis _________________________ "A daughter's attempt to piece together the mystery of a mother lost before her child was old enough to understand her, and before either one had learned her own worth as a woman." --Boston Globe Scofield investigates the insistence of desire, the inability to transcend the body and the indissoluble bond between mother and daughter...a narrative of survival..." --San Francisco Chronicle Plain Seeing
At the heart of Plain Seeing is the myth of beautiful Emma Laura, whose Hollywood dreams are destroyed by the birth of a child. At 21, that child, Lucy, tells her lover: Gringa: A Novel
A young Texas woman wanders the dark side of sixties Mexico. “Written on nerve-edge and with gusto, the book is superbly supple in its portraits of character and place, as Scofield, with terse and lyrical strokes, records every mood and wayward impulse of her heroine… with compelling urgency and clarity, employing an enviable economy of language and image.” Michael Upchurch in the San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle, Jan. 22, 1995 A Chance to See Egypt
This story of a widower in Mexico proves that the story we choose to tell is the life we choose to live. Tom Riley is an unlikely hero. The death of his wife has left him "tilting, out of balance." He thinks of himself as a man on pilgrimage to memory, but strongwilled women, including Mexican peasants who defy stereotype, introduce him to a mystery and beauty he never imagined. Fates converge, secrets are revealed, and open hearts are filed. This is a fanciful tale of love's charms: an illustration of the mystical in an ordinary man. Walking Dunes From Publishers Weekly: “Basin” (think Odessa), in West Texas, is the setting of Scofield's impressive third novel, following the American Book Award-winning, NBA nominee Beyond Deserving. Here she draws a finely etched, sensitive portrait of an intelligent, imaginative but flawed young man coming of age under difficult circumstances. David Puckett is desperate to get through his senior year in high school and escape Basin forever. Aware of the social abyss that divides him from the country club set he encounters on the tennis tournament circuit, David becomes even more dissatisfied with his bickering parents--his sour, acerbic father, who has abandoned the family once before and will again, and his exhausted, slatternly mother. As he blunders his way through relationships with four young women, David discovers different aspects of his own nature and makes ethical choices that determine his future. In the end he sacrifices his better instincts for expediency, and breaks his own heart. Scofield's subtly nuanced portrayal of the awkwardness, confusion and inchoate desires of adolescence is remarkable for its balance, insight and cumulative power. She describes the West Texas weather and social climate with the same keen observation that distinguishes her depiction of character." ©1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. An Amazon reader’s comment: "Walking Dunes is a true story. I lived next door to 'David' as a child. I don't remember Sandra Scofield but she had to have been there. This book captures life in West Texas like no other." |
