Let's Speak The Same Language

Sunday, June 28, 2015

IN EVERY OLD SILENT BOOMER IS A CHILD

Art about imagination found here:
If I don't improve on the number of entries I put up here, I may lose potential readers of this writer's blog. I notice all the single visits or the odd two visits as readers check in to see if I've put up new material. Actually, nothing much is cooking except my hopes arise anew as I think of new ways to improve the four books I'm rewriting currently. For example, I'm considering changing Programming Frank Singletary to a third person narrator rather than the first person, Frank, who now narrates the fiction. As far as rejection letters or acceptances? Still no new events. I've decided to put Chapter One back into Ghoul World. The chapter goes a long way toward informing the reader of how the Rotting Plague works on human biology. Odd, that I read something into one rejection letter and IMAGINED that removing Chapter One would answer the complaint I IMAGINED was being made. Tonight, my wife and I were watching a science fiction movie, and I noticed the writer made a mistake I continually am learning to avoid...extra words and illogical reality. The piece of dialogue went, "I felt almost like I was drowning." If the character "almost" felt like he was drowning, then he couldn't have felt as if he was drowning. He either felt like he was drowning or he didn't. I told Mertie the line should read, "He felt like he was drowning." She suggested, even more forcibly, "He was drowning." The character was not describing an actual near-drowning event. The remark was a psychological remark. Another word I overuse is "just" as in "I just wanted to get your opinion." Wouldn't, "I wanted to get your opinion" work just as well. Granted...I do see occasions where "just" is justified, just between you and I [me].  

Monday, June 22, 2015

GALLERY 360 BOOK FAIR A TRIUMPH

They bought my book, Tenderfoot
I sold four books at the Gallery 360 Book Fair put together by Peggy Bird and promoted strongly by Clark County Poet Laureate Chris Luna. Mertie came down to Gallery 360 to take a look and bought 9 books from one of the other book sellers...children's books for her nieces and nephews in Spokane. We're losing money, but who cares, as long as writers and poets get the money. We're heading to Spokane during whatever week of July holds the 13th... Mertie's birthday. 

The young man, above, opened Tenderfoot and began to read the following poem: 
SKATING THIN ICE
 
Stepping from the landlocked trees to ice,
On thin, steel blades, the skater leaves
His two sure feet and sails;
     He skims the grey-smooth ice on out

To places where the firmness softens and water's deep.
There, black holes gape and bubbles rise
Through thick, black water like thoughts of gods.
     That far out on flying edges,

The skater's body quails with soaring fear,
And shore fires cast a fitful light
On small musings that freeze like cubes of ice;
     That far out

The rugged shore and threadbare trees
Seem dreams that edge a frozen universe
Where bubble thoughts drift up through thick
Black air on spumes of mist to burst away,
     And water's deep.

I told him I thought the poem was about taking intellectual risks, about thinking like an atheist...or something like one. 

Still no news on the novels and short stories I have in circulation. Down to two chapters on the rewrite of the novel Programming Frank Singletary that was once upon a time called The Porno Writer.

Monday, June 15, 2015

HIP BEAT SALES EVENT!!!!!!!!!!

I'm the one on your right. I've got absolutely nothing to report on my goal to get someone other than myself to publish a novel of mine. No recent rejections or acceptances. I'm still busy on another rewrite of the novel I used to call, The Porn Writer. Now it's called, Programming Frank Singletary. It remains a story about sexual dysfunction between two damaged people told with pornographic detail. However, if you all live in the Vancouver, WA area, stop by this coming Saturday, 20th of June, at Gallery 360 between noon and 3 where several local authors, myself included, will be selling our books. I have two poetry books for sale. 

However, if you're not local, you can find both my poetry books on Amazon: Tenderfoot and Gray House By Cold Mountain. The second one is X-rated. 

Thursday, June 4, 2015

POET, SILENT BOOMER AT GALLERY 360 IN VANCOUVER

Putting on my poet hat in 16 days. On Saturday, June 20th, from noon to 3, I [and several other writers] will be at Gallery 360, right next to the Farmer's Market, hopefully selling one or two of my books of poetry, during the book fair put together by Peggy Bird. Thank you, Peggy Bird. Come down, sample a locally grown tomato and pick up a book from any of the writers at the fair. Click on Gallery 360, above, and the complete list of participating writers is there, down the page a little ways. 

My books will be in two piles. Gray House By Cold Mountain will be marked "MUST BE 21". It's sexually explicit in the latter half. The other, Tenderfoot, is a collection of my poetry from my thesis that found their way into print here and there through the years.

Today was a frustrating novel day. I discovered I'd lost all the work I'd done on Wednesday and, after 4 hours of slogging away, I was right back where I finished on Wednesday. I lost some pretty good writing too.

Monday, June 1, 2015

FORGING A NEW TITLE

Find photo here
I'm considering a major change in my novel, The Porn Writer. I'm trying it on for size. The new title to be Programming Frank Singletary or The Programming of Franklin SingletaryAnd the first three lines of the novel will be as follows: "First, we must agree. I’m a robot of flesh and blood. Everything else follows from that during those days I shared a second floor walkup on Main Street with Rosereo and Irma." and so it goes. This alteration will cause not much else to change in the novel either but it's an entirely different take on what happens in the novel without changing anything that happens. Over the past couple of years I keep toying with how to approach a novel in which all characters are portrayed as the robots that neuroscience is proving we are, and nothing will jell. The few times I've tried, the language feels awkward, but, then, maybe the expressions only feel awkward because reality is changed. I think DeLillo's work probably shows some of the ways I might go at this late time in my writing career. I mean, after all, DeLillo is all of a year older than me.