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Friday, March 1, 2013

Celestial Blue Skies a Novel by Maggie Collins






            I began looking to the sky with Celestial Blue Sky since 2008 which is to say I have been working on this novel since that time. It has been a long journey, but I am almost there because Battered Suitcase Press will publish my novel in March 2014. 
           Celestial Blue Skies is a coming of age story about young Creole and biracial Celeste who lives in poverty with her mentally ill mother, her grandmother, Maymay, her Aunt Bumblebee, her Uncle T-Red, her three illegitimate sisters, and her cousins. Celeste learns how to fend for herself and her sisters at a young age while also fighting rumors about her mother, Tut, the whore of Belle Place, a sleepy one traffic- light Southwestern Louisiana town.  Her mother Tut wants to leave all of them and live with a man she finds working in the sugarcane fields. Maymay fears that Celeste will end up like her mother. Will Celeste end up like her mother, or will she redeem her family from hoodoo and the Curse of the Mulatto? Will she find love herself with someone with a culture just as exotic as hers?
I was born and raised under the clear blue skies of Loreauville, Louisiana. I majored in English at the University of Louisiana and later earned a Master’s degree from the University of New Orleans where I earned the title Educational Diagnostician. I have two boys and a wonderful husband.
An excerpt of my novel was published in Louisiana Cultural Vistas. Celestial Blue Skies which was once titled The Curse of the Mulatto was a 2009 finalist finalist for the worldwide William Faulkner William Wisdom writing contest. It also placed as a finalist in the same contest in the 2011 competition as Celestial Blue Skies. I am a Center for Black Literature fellow where I met wonderful friends and was able to work with the talented novelist Ernesto Quinonez. I am using this blog to promote my book and the Creole culture of Southwestern Louisiana. I hope that you will comment and support my upcoming novel. You may also follow me on Facebok and Twitter. 
Celestial Blue Skies March 2014