GOOD NEWS BAD NEWS, BOOMER BEATNIK

It's Monday. Two rejections of short stories came in last week. Bad news was mixed with good news. A scan of my abdominal region showed no traces of cancer in that region of my body. Interpreting those two news items according to my stated goal to get someone other than myself to publish a novel of mine before I kick the bucket, they cancel each other out. The failure to get another short story accepted and increasing the value of my bio is countered by good news as to potential life expectancy. 

My wife pointed out yesterday that my greatest success has come in getting poems published here and there over the decades. Speaking of poetry, I just finished rewriting a series of poems I want to put together into a book and enter into contests. Maybe will be called The Alcoholic Life or House Before the Meadow. They were written in a rickety old farmhouse seven miles outside Cheney Washington that I lived in for two years after my third divorce. As to "poet" or "novelist", I counter in my own thoughts with poet James Dickey's success with his novel Deliverance. I was certain my novel Ghoul World would deliver me from the middle class blues. How can a detective caper filled with a future world populated by people who suffer from Necrotising fasciitis fail? I'm thinking of its cinematic values.

Necrotising fasciitis

Six hours ago 108 people were reported to have checked into my Facebook page, "The Silent Boomer". The more people who do check into my blogspot blog, the stronger the appeal to an agent to handle a book of mine becomes. Thank each of you who is following this old writer's struggle in the fields of literature even as the number of fields we labor in shrink.

Tomorrow I go in for a full body bone scan.

THE ODDS AGAINST THIS BEATNIK'S BUCKET LIST ARE PRETTY HIGH

After reading the news....

My bucket list item–to get someone other than myself to publish a novel of mine before I kick the bucket—just fell into a low range of my concerns. The biopsy is in. It's cancer for sure, and there's perineural invasion indicated which means it's likely to have spread into other areas of my body.  Sounds like a death sentence to me, but I still haven't talked to the urologist. I got this wonderful news via the internet and The Vancouver Clinic's website. How wonderful is the modern world, eh? A piece of flash fiction follows.

1. Prostate, left base, core biopsy:
Prostatic adenocarcinoma, Gleason score 4+3=7 (Grade Group III),
involving 60% of the smallest core and 40% and 30% of the larger
cores, total three of three cores.
Positive for perineural invasion. 
/
2. Prostate, left mid, core biopsy:
Prostatic adenocarcinoma, Gleason score 4+3=7 (Grade Group III),
involving 50% of the largest core and 60% of the smallest core.
Negative for perineural invasion.
 /
3. Prostate, left apex, core biopsy:
Prostatic adenocarcinoma, Gleason score 4+3=7 (Grade Group III),
involving 20% of one of two cores.
Negative for perineural invasion.  
/
4. Prostate, right base, core biopsy:
Prostatic adenocarcinoma, Gleason score 4+5=9 (Grade Group V),
with necrosis, involving at least 50% of the fragmented core
tissue.
Negative for perineural invasion.
 /
5. Prostate, right mid, core biopsy:
Prostatic adenocarcinoma, Gleason score 4+5=9 (Grade Group V),
with necrosis, involving 80% of two of two cores.
Positive for perineural invasion.
 /
6. Prostate, right apex, core biopsy:
Prostatic adenocarcinoma, Gleason score 4+5=9 (Grade Group V),
with necrosis, involving 80% and 70% of two of two cores.
Positive for perineural invasion.

COULD THIS OLD BEATNICK GO UNDER THE CYBERKNIFE?

The odds shifted in favor of my getting something published by someone other than myself before I die. In our local paper a feature length article appeared about the CyberKnife at PeaceHealth our local hospital. It displays good success at destroying troublesome and moderately aggressive prostate

cancers with little to no side effects. No remissions reported in three years of use. I'm always happy to throw my lot in with science and technology. Well damn, I just realized on rereading that prostate cancers with highly aggressive natures aren't mentioned. Ah, I'll just stay positive until the biopsy results come in on the 25th.

On the writing side of the ledger, I finished the longer than expected rewrite of my story "Haunted By Henry Miller". The story line remains roughly the same but the tone is altered. In the rewrite before this one, I tried to eliminate names for the characters, referring to them by what they did in life or by their age. You'd read a sentence that began "the young teaching assistant". I was going for an anonymity that I thought intensified the cruelty of the main character, but that strategy has changed. For the better I hope. I learned something about me and writing because of the rewrite. I tend to write characters most like me as unsympathetic and cruel. So much for childhood baggage. Now it's back to the rewrite of The Porn Writer.    

Another major change is in the title of another novel that I just sent out to an agent in Seattle. The novel has passed through several title alterations. It's gone from Children of God, to The Road To Difference to Angie's Choice. Now it's become A Desperate Decision. I place some emphasis on the effectiveness of titles. The Seattle agent is the first agent I've mentioned the bucket list strategy to. Let's see how that plays out. If at all.

BEATNICK BOOMER COMES CLEAN IN THE END

Can't believe how my mind bonks around from one pinball bumper to another. I haven't begun the novel that I foresaw while rewriting the short story, "Personal". That tale, novel or short story, is still dangling in space. Instead, in hopes of preparing a novel more quickly in my effort to get someone other than myself to publish a novel of mine before I kick the bucket, I'm now four chapters into a fourth [or fifth?] rewrite of my novel, The Porn Writer. I realized that I'd buried the first meeting between the two protagonists in chapter three, using the first two chapters to introduce the male of the dynamic duo—I thought cleverly—but in a novel about a relationship, the two "lovers" or "protagonists" ought to be introduced pretty quickly, don't you agree? "Yes, I do agree," I say to myself in a literary aside.  

So much to learn and so little time, I think. You might ask, "Why did you wait so long to learn these lessons?" And I tell you that it wasn't until I was deeply into old age that I grew the maturity to rewrite any long work four or five times to get it right. Thus, I never treated any novel as a process of learning. I was just rushing through, being as "cleverly brilliant" as I thought I was when I was too young to know better.

The biopsy of my prostate takes place Wednesday morning. If you've a mind to keep me in your thoughts as I lie face down while yet another thing is put behind me. I've had several days of moping about the possible cancer. Today is a little better. 

BEATNIK BUMBLES UPON A BEAUT OF A TALE

Find this photo here....

I hope this is short. A biopsy is scheduled for the 11th this merry month of May. Then two weeks following we'll see how aggressive the cancer is. However, more importantly, as it comes to this blog about a writer who is trying to get someone other than himself to publish a novel of his before he kicks the bucket, I'm suddenly smacked between the eyes with a potentially new novel. As you know, I've been rewriting some of my short stories lately with the purpose of putting a collection together to self-publish and to send out individually to see if I can find markets to publish one or two of them and, thus, strengthen the bio that goes out with query letters to potential agents for my novels. Well, I came across this 10,000 word incomplete tale of mine, "Personal", about a frustrated religious woman who responds to a personal ad in a tabloid. The writing is probably some of the best writing I've produced, and, as I've worked through it to get to an ending not yet imagined, I realize it's a potential novel. A novel with rewrites is a two year process, one if rushed. My father had two years from the time his prostate cancer was discovered before he died. I've got to work faster or achieve a better cancer result than my father got. I don't know what to make of my teasing myself about death. I really don't. I'm hoping that under it all is the motive to beat this damn thing and find more time to do the writing I so love to do. And get published to boot!