The Grateful Writer

It's Chrristmas and the writing is going slowly, with so much else to do. But the thinking goes on full tilt. And the reading -- what follows comes from encountering a slim volume used on Amazon, wherein lay the following treasured remarks. They remind me that this is a great time to take stiock and counbt our blessings, and I for one feel particularly fortunate right now -- and many of you contribute to the reasons why I feel that way as I struggle, mostly with myself, to do the work.

If you can read this, consider yourself loved, fortunate, and skilled.

My all time vavorite author, Kurt Vonnegut, said the following in an interview in 1999 that became "Like Shaking Hands With God, a Conversation about Writing," with Vonnegut and Lee Stringer. I needed to read these words, to remind myself that what I am and what I do is a blessing. He said:

"And it's important to retreat from the hoopla on television, and what television says matters and what we're all supposed to talk about. And of course literature is the only art that requires our audience o be performers, You need to able to read and you have to be able to read awfully well. You have to read so well that you get irony! I'll say one thing meaning another, and you'll get it. Expcting a large number of people to be literate is like expecting everybody to play the French horn. It is extremely difficult . . . when we think about what reading is . . . it's impossible. Literature is idiocyncratic arrangements in horizontal lines of only twenty-six phonetic symbols, ten Arabic numbers, and about eight punctuation marks. And yet there are people like you who can look at the printed page and put shows on in your head--the Battle of Waterloo, for God's sake. The New York Times says that there are forty million people in the United States who can't read well enough to fill out an application for a driver's license. So our audience cannot be large, becaused we need a highly skilled audience, unbelievably skilled.. . . . Thank you for learning to do this virtually impossible thing."

The point to me is that writing is something the writer does not for an audience, exactly, but for himself. Lee Stringer added:

"More and more these days I find that people want to boil things down to something simple, something you can grab in a second. I also see that today people are very result oriented. We don't do anything because it's the right thing to do, or for the sake of art, or for the sake of anything unless we can prove that down the road, e, y, or z is going to happen. I guess in that kind of environment it is difficult for what we call literature to exist because a book is not all that practical in short term. It's probably infinitely practical in the long term. But you're not going to pick Timequake (Vonnegut's last novel) off the shelf and learn how to scamble eggs tomorrow. So, in that context, writing is a struggle to preserve our right to be not so practical."

I am learning every day. I am learning a sad truth, but an important one. I won't change the world by writing Ghost Music. I know this; so do you. All I can do is write it, or not, and to be honest, or not, is not a choice.

But I will be read. And for that I thank you. Merry Christmas!

Amber Waves of Curiosity, revised

For some reason my spell check did not work and I blithefully went ahead and posted anyway Please read the revised version instead, with corrections! My bad!

As Catherine so beautifully put it, my novel AMBER WAVES would make a great holiday gift. What more can a person want or get for under a buck?

In this book i have given you a smorgasbord of history. But, after all, history is a smorgasbord -- all you can eat,m choose what you want. One day I'm reading Carl Sagan;s COSMOS and come across the name Christiaan Huygens for the first time, and fall in love. Curious, I did deeper (to the point of visiting the Huygens summer house in Hofwijk, near Den Haag, in the Netherlands). On another trip to Holland, while visiting a good friend in Nijmegin, i happen on the ruin of Charlemagne's castle -- one of many castles he constructed throughout northwestern Europe so he could better monitor his kingdom. The encounter sparks memories from school, and those memories spark further interest. Another day I'm watching Brad Pitt as Achilles in the action adventure flick, TROY. Curious, I read Robert Graves' brief but both fascinating and entertaining account -- well, you get the point.

So this novel is my restaurant, my menu, my delights, selected from the so very many choices out there. One day you want Swedish meatballs, the next fried chicken. Or, in terms of the book, one day you want to hunt the Bull of Heaven with Gilgamesh and Enkidu, the next you crave a glimpse of Cleopatra in her bath.

This being a work of fiction, I am allowed a certain amount of license in what I present and how I present it. The fundamental facts cannot be changed. The characters ;iving through those facts -- and not always aware of how those facts will be remembered or why -- have greater freedom. What makes writing fiction so much fun is to set the characers free and let them tell me, the writer, what to say.

The truth is, no one really knows what happened back then, whenever then was. It's all our best guess. We learn new things about such people as Gilgamesh or the Frankish King all the time, revise our thinking, and press on./ We now know that Troy did exist, the Dark Ages were far from dark, and so-called golden ages pop up from time to time as a matter of course. As one of my former co-workers might say, "It's all good."

There just isn't time to learn it all.

So, Gentle Reader, if you become curios, even the tiniest bit, from my book or merely this brief discussion of my intent, make like an archaeologist and dig deeper!

Thanks for listening.

Amber Waves of Curiosity

As Catherine so beautifully put it, my novel AMBER WAVES would make a great holiday gift. What more can a person want or get for under a buck?

In this book i have given you a smorgasbord of history. But, after all, history is a smorgasbord -- all you can eat,m choose what you want. One day I'm reading Carl Sagan;s COSMOS and come across the name Christiaan Huygens for the first time, and fall in love. Curious, I did deeper (to the point of visiting the Huygens summer house in Hofwijk, near Den Haag, in the Netherlands). On another trip to Holland, while visiting a good friend in Nijmegin, i happen on the ruin of Charlemagne's castle -- one of many castles he constructed throughout northwestern Europe so he could better monitor his kinbgdom. The encounter sparks memories from school, and those memories spark further interest. Another day I'm wathcing Brad Pitt as Achilles in the action adventure flick, TRPY. Curious, I read Robert Graves' brief but both fascinating and entertaining account -- well, you get the point.

So this novel is my restaurant, my menu, my delights, selected from the so very many choices out there. One day you want Swedish meatballs, the next fried chicken. Or, in terms of the book, one day you want to hunt the Bull of Heaven with Gilgamesh and Enkidu, the next you crave a glimpse of Cleopatra in her bath.

This being a work of fiction, I am allowed a certain amount of license in what I present and how I present it. The fundamental facts cannot be changed. The characters ;iving through those facts -- and not always aware of how those facts will be remembered or why -- have greater freeedom. What makes writing fiction so much fun is to set the characers free and let them tell me, the writer, what to say.

The truth is, no one really knows what happened back then, whenever then was. It's all our best guess. We lkearn new things about such poeople as Gilgamesh or the Frankish King all the time, revise our thinking, and press on./ We now know that Troy did exist, the Dark Ages were far from dark, and so-called golden ages pop up from time to time as a matter of course. As one of my former co-workers might say, "It's all good."

There just isn't time to learn it all.

So, Gentle Reader, if you become curios, even the tiniest bit, from my book or merely this brief discussion of my intent, make like an archaeologist and dig deeper!

Thanks for listening.

Welcome to Amber Waves

In a serious attempt to get people interested in my first published novel, available exclusively on Amazon Kindle, I dedicate the next few blogs (unless somnething earth-shaking gets in the way). Yes, this is flagrant self-promoition, but, heck, it;s a ripping good yarn, if I do say so myself. So, here goes:

Welcome to Amber Waves, Nevada. Population, 218. Average lifespan, 294 years, three months, seventeen days. Of course, it only takes a few to throw off the curve. Felonies committed, only one in the last forty-three years.

All that's about to change.

MABER WAVES is a novel about immortality, mortality and confrontation. It traces the personal journeys of Jason Edwards and Edna McFadden, better known as Amber, from the time of Gilgamesh past the seige of Troy, through two and a half Golden Ages, inside the death camp at Dachau, to the rough and tumble mining town of Virginioa City and nthe little nstagecoach stopover that became Amber Waves. But Edna/Amber has begun to feel the effects of aging, while a ghost from Jason's more recent past has come back to haunt him -- or it might be the other way around -- and an agent from the FBI, suffewring from a serious case of curiosity, has come mto visit.

Through their mmemories we become witnesses to certain key episodes of history, with humor, mystery, sex, amurder, and a touch ofn the absurd running through it -- as well as that deepest of human emotions, regret. If you like to categorize a story based on other authors' works, I suggest you think of it as Thomas Cahill meets Christopher Moore.

For 99 cents on Kindle, how can you go wrong? Neverr has fun been so reasonably priced!

Off Target

Just a quickie today.

Have you seen the ad on TV for Target that shows a young boy playing with a set of soldier like figurines, then attacks them with a giant stuffed Rudolph the Red nosed Reindeer? It is very funny and somewhat pointed -- Dad is watching, and obviously feels bad because his son doesn't have a proper monster to attack and destroy his troops. Flash to a monstrous T-Rex like creature in its packaging, available at Target -- Santa has elves, you have Target.

I like the ad. But what I really like is the message opposite the one Target intends. I see a young child using what he has available in order to enact the storyline he created -- in other words, using his imagination.

That;s what toys are for -- to awaken us. So don't be so shy about giving your son a Rudolph plush, okay?

Postal Blues

Back to blogs. This one is about one of my least favorite subjects, the Postal Service. Having been retired from that institution for over a year, it seems I still pay attention to the news when it blurts out. Whether that is my own self interest, watching closely to make sure my pension is safe -- I don't trust what politicians tell me -- or out of some perverse sense of loyalty to a company that went out of its way to . . . well, I shouldn't go there. Not yet.

The news yesterday reveals that the PO is dropping its guarantee of overnight delivery within the same zip code zone. Again, this business is planning to compete with other like businesses by CUTTING service to its customers and decrying, they'll get used to it. After all, the Internet ether has replaced Bill paying and catalog shopping for so many, so what if there are still a million or two people out there who don't have the Internet or don't trust the ether to protect their identities.

Not that the service is all that great. Admittedly, even as a former employee, I am aware that much mail is being lost out there. I myself have lost half a dozen packages while an eBay seller, with considerable loss. A close friend and businesswoman reported to me that a package she ailed half a year ago containing $3500 in merchandise, equipped with confirmation and tracking, was lost, and all she gets from the PO is "Oh, well." The same individual reports the loss or delay of several bills "in the mail." This kind of empirical data shows that the Postal Service has forgotten the Service aspect of its job.

Frankly, the Post Office doesn't care.

Ask a carrier or a clerl or a mail handler on the job, and THEY care. But their hands are tied and their throats are being systemmatically choked. and if they want to keep their jobs in todfay's hostile climate (not that it was ever friendly -- the term Going Postal entered American jargon for a reason). they bhave to swallow hard the changes thrown at them in the name of progress, allow the work to be piled on to fewerr individuals, and, in those immortal words, suck it up.

Again, I wonder if the Post Office wants to fail. After all, how does a business that laready has cut almost half its work force since I began there three decades ago, and over 100,000 jobs in the last few years, continue to lose money? Then it hit me in one word: Congress. The Postal Service is the onbly private business answerable directly to Congress. Congress must approve any and all suggestions, adjustments, and price hikes, often tying the hands of those who actyually might know something about running a mega business. And, frankly, our Congress isn't running anything well these days, except for animosity and debt.

British TV

The future of NBC's Prime Suspect is itself suspect. The show is facing cancelation after I think six episodes (I stopped watching after five). Once again, it goes to show that American adaptations of British television series rarely works. There are notable exceptions -- Sanford and Son, the Office come to mind -- but the failures are much more glaring and common. Coupling -- one of the funniest shows ever put together in Britain: need I say more?

This gets me to wondering: aren't there any American writers with new ideas anymore? Between so-called reality shows that don't need writers, to remakes of terrible shows from our past into feature length movies, to Brit TV fiascos, it sure looks that way. But I know differently. There are plenty of good ideas out there: my own book, Amber Waves, could supply the basis for a series that could run indefinitely -- if anyone were looking -- and provide interesting historical references along the way without getting too serious. Yes, it would be entertaining, if I do say so myself.

So Hollywood moguls, check out my tome on Kindle, and talk to me. I know this is shameless self-promotion, but look what HBO did with Rome, and Rome is only one of the places I would visit in my series.

Just don't beast it to death or miscast a Southern rebel to play the Scot.