THIS BEATNIK'S WEDDING TOAST WAS A SUCCESS. LAUGHTER AND TEARS.

USS Hornet a WWII vessel

Sorry, folks, there was my daughter's wedding, but now I'm back with an intention to push rapidly through to the completion of the Manning novel. Things are starting to round out toward a satisfying if disturbing finish. Finish could still be a year away, but I'm over some sort of mental hump for the time being and seeing my way through to completion. Also, the final dusting off of The Man In the Mirror is pretty far done now. I'll soon have two completed novels to send around: it and Angie's Choice. Angie's Choice has had an agent in the past, and I see it as a pretty successful adventure novel with a potential for a motion picture much like the movie called The Desperate Hours. Frank Sinatra was the lead as a bad guy in the 1955 release of that film that came out as I prepared to head off to the Navy at age 17. Nothing much else to add at this time, but felt I had to put something here in a vain attempt to keep a regular offering of blog entries. Supposedly every other day. Not. 

WILL IT BE A TOAST OR A ROAST? HIS DAUGHTER'S UPCOMING WEDDING

cabinet and decor in the complex my physician's office is in

A busy and joyous time ahead. A week from today, September 20th, I give my daughter away. It's a difficult writing task also as I'm to make a toast. Given the divorce twixt her mother and I when she was four, the toast is problematical, specially since everyone tells me, "You cannot use the d word. It's a wedding, dummy, and you don't bring up divorce there." My daughter has overcome many difficult times that I would love to recount at her wedding. All her adventures, every darn one of them, make her the wonderful and marvelous person she is today. Unfortunately, all her triumphs are out of bounds material as there will be people there not in the know. 

Two weeks from today, thanks to Christopher Luna's invite, I'm one of several featured poets at the Angst Gallery for the September 27 event: 100 Thousand Poets for Change/ William Stafford Centennial Reading I'm to read a poem by Stafford and one of my own. Stafford was the outside poet I chose to read my poetry ms. I'll read one of my poems he would have read. By and large, he approved of my ms, and, sometimes, I realize how I failed to realize the promise he suggested might lie ahead for me. 

I'm still red penciling my last time through the novel, The Man In the Mirror. More than halfway through this final touch up, the more I read it, the more I like it. Hope an agent will like it too. 

The Manning novel continues apace. Just over the next ridge line, maybe two, I foresee the end of that novel journey. 

BEATNIK SILENT BOOMERS DO WEAR TIES

Oh, happy day! Today Mertie and I are celebrating our 14th wedding anniversary. That's the corn pone anniversary isn't it? Corn pone i.e. unleavened cornbread in the form of flat oval cakes or loaves, originally prepared with water by North American Indians and cooked in hot ashes. I ought to have a photo of Mertie to put in here, instead of just me, but I'm at Torque Coffee to write and dressed to meet her after work at Grant House for dinner. I took this unusual tie and brand new haircut [WHAT HAIR, you say] photo just now at the Torque. I don't have any photos of Mertie on this laptop. All our photos are on the desktop Mac, and I don't need a photo to call up her lovely face. 


The writing has not felt so good since the early months when I was afire with the original story line. I'm moving ahead steadily now, though I still take pains from paragraph to paragraph, working to remove roughness of prose and phrasing. At one point awhile back, I told myself I ought to just plow ahead and worry about polish later, but I can't seem to stick to that plan. 

Well back to the novel.