Soldier of fortune, retired, or nearly so, black ops agent and ghoul extraordinary, Charley Manning begins his investigation:
The warehouse reeked of rot and death, a pungence much stronger in that confined space than the everyday odor of putrefaction that ghouls encountered on the everyday streets of Planet Earth. Decapitated ghoul bodies lay scattered on the green linoleum-tiled floor. The Buck Stops Here game show flickered silently on a large TV set mounted on one wall. A set on the opposite wall was dark. Tattered sofas and plush chairs, a card table with an abandoned cribbage game on it, a coffee station, cabinets loaded with videos, and the i-pads lying about suggested the room had been a social area. A 24 count cribbage hand lay face up on the card table. Blood pools on the floor under the necks of the corpses revealed that the deceased were posties and preebies. The pools beneath the posties were smaller because of a postie’s thicker, slower-flowing blood.
The next two very large rooms were filled with bunk beds, cots, folding chairs and free standing closets. Several washrooms and group showering facilities opened off the obvious sleeping quarters. More bodies in those two rooms than in the front room. Some had been decapitated in their sleep, never arising from their cots. Their eyes, if they still had them, were closed in sleep on the pillows. Manning’s first conclusion was that this facility was…had been, he corrected himself…a disintegrarium. Adding to that impression were the headless corpses still strapped in the restraining chairs used in disintegrariums to keep mad posties from attacking one another and attendants. The next very large room erased Manning’s first impression.
Enjoy!
When writing about an unfamiliar world of the future, in order to communicate his vision of that future, a writer must invent terms for futuristic places, conditions and cultural artifacts that don't currently exist. Otherwise, he'd be forced constantly to use longer descriptive passages each time the reader encounters the situation, place or thing. I'm building a lexicon, and at my age, I need to write it down in order to keep track of some of the terms that are mentioned less frequently. For example, the AutoPort Cab company which features driverless cabs that zip around town, controlled by satellite and on board computers. The initial reference calls for some explanation. After that, just the cab company name suffices. Same with "tric", short for a electric auto. I don't imagine it's good practice to make slang too burdensome, so these tactics must be used sparingly, but Anthony Burgess who wrote the dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange certainly didn't coddle his readers, but, then, I'm not Anthony Burgess, and A Clockwork Orange is a novella...that is...fairly short.
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| Father & Marie |
Today, it dawned on the Silent Boomer that I'd have to pick up my marbles and go back to start. Charley Manning can't be a detective at the Portland Police Bureau. The conspiracy he's investigating might go as high as D.C. and as far as China. He's definitely (probably) got to look into some happenings in Vietnam. Cohorts in a writer's meetup once remarked that you had to have your plot down firm before you began or you'd be lost. I can't pin my plot down yet. I know how it ends, but I'm not sure how to get there. Too many interesting angles to explore.
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| Tyrone Power |
Today, Manning was reborn as a "soldier of fortune," something along the line of a black ops Captain From Castile, a novel by Samuel Shellabarger, originally published in 1945 and made into a movie with Tyrone Power in 1947. My father was never much of a reader, but he said that Shellabarger's novels were his favorites. I found that novel on his shelves and read it while still living at home. [Holy cow, a paperback edition of that novel starts at $72.88 at Amazon!]
In '47 I'd be ten, just about right for loving a filmed adventure like "Captain From Castile" with Tyrone Power. Liked him specially in "The Razor's Edge" based on Somerset Maugham's novel. I fancied myself a Larry Darrell, searching for meaning in life, but I never went to India. Suddenly, nostalgia just seized me by the throat and choked me up.
I've been weeks working up what's become a 5 page back-story for the new novel. A complex history has developed that I find quite intriguing. Looking through photos on the web as stand-in inspirations for my main characters, I've found a lover for my detective and a face for his robotic partner. Faces for the Huynhymns might be harder to find, but I think I've got the Neanderthals covered pretty well. The ghouls I'll leave to your imagination.
If you think you're hearing things, well...?
More good news: a recent effort at humor was accepted in an online issue of 50plusnorthwest.com.
Last Saturday, was privileged to be offered (by Chris Luna) the opportunity to read a poem at the Peace and Justice Fair at Esther Short Park in downtown Vancouver. Received an unexpected honorarium of 25 dollars. Add that to the 22 dollars I earned in 1978 from the publication of two of my poems in the Anglo-Welsh Review, and I'm fat as far a being a poet on the outskirts of the known world of poetics is concerned. Of course, I've not put a value on all the copies I've received of the magazines I've appeared in. The 6 years Mertie and I published the microzine, George and Mertie's Place, we did have subscribers, but we never broke even. Didn't plan on profits in the first place.
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| F. Scott himself |
I see blog
readership is down. The holiday weekend? Even I would be bored by the constant
drum of "writing steadily, writing steadily, writing steadily" that I'm
producing lately on this blog about the novel I call Manning. I
think creative writing is harder to sell with a blog than a
product like "wedding cakes" or "toilet paper" or the skills of those
who want to teach you how to write. I see a comparison between those who
used to sell get quick rich schemes and those who are trying to cash in
on everybody's secret desire to be poets and writers. Well who can
blame them? Only poets aren't the romantic dreamers most people think they
are. They just keep writing and writing, and that's all they have to
sell...is the product of those long hours of sitting alone over a pine
desk that may soon supply material for their coffins. Pity the poor novelist, then, as his ordeal is longer.
Speaking of novelists, ladies, listen to this bit of fudge from F. Scott Fitzgerald in my favorite novel of his, Tender Is The Night.
Dr. Richard Diver is touring WWI trenches with friends and a
17 year old who is enamored of him. Dick waxes philosophical through much
of this scene, then he observes,
"...Rosemary
burst into tears. Like most women she liked to be told how she should
feel, and she liked Dick's telling her which things were ludicrous and
which things were sad."
Don't get mad, my friends. Perhaps this is only a situation that a very young girl can put herself into while following after a famous older psychiatrist, but Diver does say "women"? Too much Zelda, do you think?
