Contemporary Pacific NW Woman Songwriter Novelist / A Gentle Feminist

I am a strong woman raised in the 60's and 70's in Wisconsin who moved west to Oregon twenty years ago.I began working with people with disabilities and elderly. Then I took a five-year break from social services to work as a forester as a timber cruiser for five years. I lived in the woods during summer, wintered in Alsea Valley. I developed a tough skin working in a camp with mostly men. They called me the queen of the comeback.

.I am a gentle feminist and progressive baby boomer that considers myself a world citizen, I am a songwriter and play guitar and sing in an acoustic rock band called Nervous Rex.

I wrote journals all my adult life and am in the process of writing two novels, and short stories. I have published in Oregon Coast Magazine and in an upcoming winter issue of Eugene Magazine about Watsu water massage. After 30 years of service to others, I myself am disabled with multiple sclerosis and I retired early at 53. I now have a life other than work. My life now is simple, I am limited in how much activity I can do before I have to lay prone to re-coop my energy. I lost the use of one leg and use a wheelchair when out in the community and a cane when inside my house. I spend my time doing advocacy and activism for people with disabilities and other subjects by writing my representatives in Congress people. I attend phone conferences of health and human services bills and follow bill progress in both Washington Dc and in my state capital in Salem. I am an avid reader of fiction and short stories. I enjoy organic gardening and have dozens of pots on my driveway with willow, dogwood and maple trees, and flowers in them.

I enjoy feeding hummingbirds and growing flowers that encourage them to my garden. I have cone-flowers, red salvias, fuchsias, petunias, sweet potato vine, calla lilies stargazer lilies, cannas, yuccas, a palm tree, and a banana tree. I am told I have a green thumb as my house plants are thriving.my specialty is raising African violets and orchids which grow under plant lights on my kitchen cupboards. I also grow Prayer plants, banana plants, shamrock plants, fern, and dracaena.

MS has taught me patience, grace and knowing my physical limitations. It is like having a bucketful of water each day and I can use it ladle by ladle full and I dip it out, but I only have about 12 ladles full to use each day, so I use it sparingly so I have enough to last the whole day. I have to nap in the late afternoon to have enough energy for the night time. My beloved takes good care of me, helping me to do many things I can't do by myself anymore. He is my rock, my buddy, my soulmate.

Listen to my songs on bandcamp under Diane DeVillers https://dianedevillers.bandcamp.com/

Now that I have time to read I can still my mind and read all my favorite authors are Colette, D.H. Lawrence, Carlos Castanada, Anais Nin and newer authors Gabriella Zevon, Eckhart Tolle, Peter Coelho.

The first book in "The Eve Chronicles" is From the Waters of Coyote Springs.

From the Waters of Coyote Springs by Diane DeVillers

Copyright 1996, Word count 52,000

In this fictionalized memoir, Eve is a self-reliant forester, who camps in the remote forest of the Wallowa Mountains in Oregon, doing timber stand inventory. She lives the life of a modern-day vagabond, breaking camp every week or so, as they make their way north through the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest.

It’s the early 1980’s; Eve is in her twenties and enjoys the carefree, but sometimes lonely existence of an unconventional, bohemian lifestyle. She lives in a circular camp with five other strong-willed men and women, who know well the sacrifice required of living on the road, and living a lifestyle of true nomads. They are camped beside Coyote Springs which used to provide water for the Nez Perce Indians, led by the famous Chief Joseph.

Eve joins the crew of these mismatched, drifters who live completely cut off from the rest of the world; living without electricity, telephones and the luxuries most of us take for granted.

Eve is a free spirited, feisty, liberated woman, who was raised during the seventies, when the nation was being changed by the force of the hippie generation with their counter culture values and unconventional lifestyles. She carries with her the hidden sorrows of her past and her relentless search for inner tranquility. She learns to endure the forester’s lifestyle, which at times can be harsh, and physically demanding. She works in wilderness areas where there is no trace of mankind, and where old growth forests still flourish. She works in steep, sometimes dangerous terrain, in the vicinity of the notorious Snake River and Hell’s Canyon area.

When the mountains fill with snow, Eve spends the winter with Joey, one of the other foresters in the crew. He takes her to his hand-built log cabin in the Pacific Northwest temperate rain forest of Alsea River valley, near the Oregon coast. Joey is a reclusive man who expects nothing from anyone; he is self-sufficient and keeps to himself most of the time. They live the winter in total isolation, fishing from the river, harvesting the apples from his orchard, and living out of his well stocked root cellar. They make extra money by climbing up into the second growth forest above the cabin and picking salal, bundling it into bales and selling it to florists in the area.

Eve finds herself becoming more than just a friend, although he remains shut off and reveals nothing of his past. She begins to transforms herself, by letting go of having to be always in complete control. She becomes torn between her definition of independence and her need for love.

Surrounded by a tranquil, mystical river world, Eve searches for the strength to love again and to take the risk of becoming venerable, and above all to trust the instinct of her reoccurring dreams.

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Felix and Eve Copyright 1984 26,000 word novella

Felix and Eve, a fictionalized memoir is about two people from very different generations that live together for the summer. The elderly Felix hires Eve to be his live-in caregiver while he recovers from heart bi-pass surgery. Eve at 29 is a counterculture woman who is in between a friendly divorce and a stream of ever changing relationships and jobs as she makes her way up and down the Oregon Coast. In a relentless search for what she feels is freedom and living the life of a liberated woman, she is supporting herself and making her way toward self actualization.

Felix and Eve both have strong and unyielding personalities but are forced to find compromises in what turns out to be a humorous summer spent together. The story takes place on the southern coastal town of Gold Beach, Oregon along the remote Rogue River.

Felix and Eve spend the evening’s playing cards by lantern light out on his porch. He tells her the stories about his life and the days when he worked for the notorious Al Capone, when he worked in the illegal breweries during the days of America’s prohibition. And what about his mysterious, old Packard that is locked up in the garage like Fort Knox, which Felix forbids anyone from going inside? Eve who has an active imagination thinks the truck of the car could contain some secret; a suitcase of money, or the remains of some unlucky soul?

Eve is in charge of cooking meals, light housekeeping and running errands for Felix, whom is not in the least excited about living with someone and in no uncertain terms lets her know how he feels about his invasion of privacy. It comes down to whose will is stronger: his bristled, stubborn manner or her independent, free spiritedness.

Eve discovers that Felix dwells mostly in the past, and that he relives his memories by the stories that he sometimes tells her more than once. Felix’s house is literally unchanged since his wife’s death decades ago, and Eve realizes that she must live with the ghost of his wife, down to her clothes still hanging in Eve’s bedroom closet. Both Felix and Eve need to move on in their lives but for now are adrift in a time between huge life events.

Felix and Eve, who started out with nothing in common, develop a love for each other that some would say was at times too close, but to them was a love each of them needed from the other, at a time in life they were most vulnerable.

The Arrangement: By Diane DeVillers Copyright 2011 48,000 word novella.

Eve is a retired, baby boomer, who now owns property on Moon Mountain in Eugene. Every year she receives the same letter with a skeleton key in it with the request that she come to Catalina Island. She leaves her home and well tended gardens in the hands of her good friend Vinnie, who lives in the back yard of her property in a canvas yurt. Their relationship for over a decade remains in flux, as both are fiercely; independent people and they enjoy the freedom of a counterculture lifestyle.

Eve is a self made, successful woman who knows her own mind. She comes from a generation of liberated women who supported themselves and sometimes chose careers over having a family. In the early eighties she was drawn out west to Eugene, because it’s been referred to as “a smaller version of San Francisco and Madison WI”, where a strong alternative lifestyle still remains. She reminisces about the good old days of the seventies, when she had her whole life ahead of her, living during an exciting time in American history, where men and women had casual love affairs and didn’t ask for more beyond the moment.

Eve flies to Catalina Island, and turns the key in that door she knows so well. She spends the summer taking care of an old friend and re-exploring the island and listening to the local people who still speculate about the mystery surrounding the drowning of Natalie Wood that happened in the Catalina harbor so many years ago.