SILENT BOOMER EXCHANGES SPAGHETTI FOR TURKEY

Have been doing nothing for the last several days except play games and eat because it was turkey day for those who aren't vegans and spaghetti day for those of us who are, and Mertie and I had family over from Spokane and down from Seattle to feed and partly house. Looking forward to tomorrow and return to sci-fi script I began two [?] weeks past. But I also had the emotional energy for a novel enter my brain tonight and perk up my synapses. If it's still with me tomorrow, I might try to type down the beginning scene for it. It would open with a half-ass suicide attempt and continue from there, backwards and forward in time... maybe. Today, I sent out two queries for my novel The Man In the Mirror and a question about my novel Angie's Choice to a small film company, wondering if they'd like to read it with a movie in mind. Hope everyone had an enjoyable and dietary Thanksgiving. Jeez, we ate so many bagels and pieces of pie with ice cream made with almond milk that our dietary regime blew South with the wind. Current reading is Yukio Mishima's Confessions of a Mask, basically a confessional novel about his homosexuality in the 1940s and 1950s.

SILENT BOOMER AS EDITOR, PUBLISHER AND HUMORIST

From 1995 through 2000, wife Mertie and I published, and I edited George & Mertie's Place, a monthly microzine that appeared February through December. Lately, I've been putting together a list of those poets and writers who appeared in our microzine. In doing so, I've come across cartoons that "Art Clip" and I put together in arrangements that tickled my fancy. The two items on the left are samples of my work in that vein.

The list of men and women we published during those years is quite interesting. At the time we published them, I never paid much attention to who they were or their reputations. I was interested only in what they wrote. As I've  compiled the list, I've Googled a few names and am very pleased to discover more about them. I had no idea of the extent of the work they've done and still do. I've sent off some emails to a few, merely to touch base and see what they're doing now. Quite exciting. Sadly, one of those we published was Madeline DeFrees whose name I did know of at the time. I discovered that she died on November 11, 2015...8 days ago.

FOURBYTWO ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP BOOMERBEATNIK

Ten days between entries here. Sorry. Last night and this morning, this old writer got to work and submitted five short stories for consideration at five literary magazines. Also sent two more queries about my novel, Programming Frank Singletary. Feels productive. My reading at this time is the anthology, Cutbank 83, which I received as part of my unsuccessful entry into its recent short story competition. Some of the work within its pages fascinates me. A style I don't yet understand, but I'm willing to understand, at least as willing as Copperfield's Barkis ever was. I believe some young writers might be trying to write stories as robots might write them or by revealing their tales through the eyes of a person without free will. Not sure. Just a guess. I'd like it to be true as it's about time writers align ourselves with the facts. I may be too old to catch up or on.

Also, the most recent FourByTwo is in my hungry clutches. As usual, the look of the little magazine is classy and the poetry sassy. That word choice and rhyme are almost so awful they ought not be connected to the fine thing that FourByTwo is. I'm showing you a couple of poems that are by klipschutz. The other poet is Michael Earl Craig. Craig, by the way, hails from Dayton, Ohio, my own birthplace. Most of the time, I select for sample the poet who is not klipschutz, but this time I went the other way. This is not a comment on Craig's work. It's just that I thought klipschutz ought to have a turn in this blog. Money is becoming an issue for them. Doesn't it always?

THIS BEATNIK, HIPPY, SILENT GEN NEWS

Sixty degrees outside and the lucky ol' sun beaming down. Me inside all morning, crafting and whooshing off query letters to agents for my several novels. I'm trying to pay attention to one suggestion that an agent mentioned in an interview—personalize the query if you can. That takes some time consuming research, and, a man my age, how much time do I got? A writer's gotta be almost as creative in writing query letters as he is writing the novels, the poems, the short stories themselves. 

Even though I don't smoke, I took the photo from an online magazine called The Daily Sheeple, an alternative magazine, it says, to help the sheeple "wake the flock up". So it says. I decided I didn't want to know more, even though the alternative news might be tailored for this writer, hissef. I'm not a sheeple, and I'm far too wide awake for my own good as it is.