JANICE KIMBALL'S NEW NOVEL

Please click on "Follow" to follow my blog as I write my first novel, "Max Bird of Aztec Studios" and leave your comments to help guide me. I will post excerpts from the book as I progress and photos taken here at our studios of the characters in the book and our working studios.

Thank you for your help, Saludos, Janice from Wonderland

OUTLINE FOR MAX BIRD—

The story is set in the real live/work art gallery and studios of the writer in Ajijic, Mexico.

This is an expose of Max Bird, a talking parrot poached from the wild and integrated into the human world as the gallery’s public relations director, Maestro Francisco Urzua, a Mexican weaver of mixed indigenous heritage, and Janice Kimball, an artist originally from Detroit.

The story tells of how the three of them came together to create their own reality. In the beginning their art studios were open 5 days a week. Janice, in a desire to find tranquility opens fewer and fewer days until they are not open at all, leaving Max without a job. Max writes his memoirs after Janice hires Betty, who becomes his secretary. Through this process Max discovers that he is not the only one that lives in a cage. Janice and Francisco also live in cages. When Betty snoops into Janice’s computer files Max is shocked to find information that explains her strange human behavior. After that Max and Francisco team up to help her find peace. In the end Max finds freedom for the three of them. The gallery reopens after the woman in blue linen who visited them in the first chapter returns from her condo on the Mediterranean and finds it closed.

A story of love, survival, injustice and rebirth.


A SHORT EXCERPT FROM THE FIRST CHAPTER

The little courtyard was between the storefront and Francisco’s weaving studio. It’s main feature was Max Birds bulky round topped cage that was set up high on a foundation. It dominated the tropical garden and tiny fish pond arranged around it. With Max on top he could see everyone that came in and everything that went on outside the door, the front display area, weaving workrooms on the back side of the courtyard and imagine what went on in Janice’s bedroom and bath tucked in private behind that. He could hear everything that went on upstairs with his super sensitive ears and with a tilt of his head see a lot of it as it was arranged the same as the main floor, the area above the courtyard being empty except for an elevated walkway open to the sky. The stairway leading to it began only 12 feet from where Max’s cage stood and often Janice and Francisco would hang their heads down from the walkway upstairs and check in with him to see if everything was okay.

> Max loved it when the glass doors were propped open so he could feel the breeze as it came in from the street to ruffle his feathers. He knew how to handle being in charge puffing out his feathers to elevate his plumes, stretching himself out full length while clutching the cages round top, hanging onto its bars, facing the entrance for anyone that might be walking along outside to look in and see. He had a way of what might be called “flapping elbows,” with his wingtips folded back and tucked up under his breast sockets, while flexing his shoulders in a macho posture that said he was in charge. There was a flip side to this mannerism. It made him look like he was a cartoon character trying to lift off taking the clumsy cage, as if it were a dirigible with him, but even so it could be seen that he was a credit to his species. He was a red crested parrot with the heart of an eagle.