STILL KICKING

 

I haven't published on my Google presence in a long while, and I don't understand how to wrap text around a photo yet, but it's nearing midnight so I'm publishing it as is. I hope I'll do better next time. 

Last year was really something. Three short stories published in three literary magazines, and poetry accepted by six other literary magazines. Southern Poetry Review  just published two of my poems, but they accepted in 2024. Southern Poetry Review is a long time well established magazine of poetry only. I feel happy to be published here. To be honest, I am happy to find my work published anywhere at my age of 87. The prostate cancer is also well in check, and the doubling rate is a mere 3 1/2 years. 

Hi Anybody Listening, 

Long time since my last entry. I'm still kicking and submitting at 86 years old, and publication still continues to happen. Two stories so far this year. One already out in Flora Fiction and another due soon in Chiron Review. I'm also turning out some science fiction or fantasy or what-ever-they-call-it now.

....https://florafiction.com/slingshot-by-george-thomas/

FINDING HAPPINESS WITH PHILIP ROTH

 Hello. It's been more than a year since last I made an entry here. The  supposedly aggressive prostate cancer is still under control it seems. I'm still alive, entering my 7th year with it. Working at rewriting the short stories I wrote several years back. They entered my room all in a rush and needed haircuts. They are experiencing homelessness, and that means they are homeless however you slice it. My poems are better at finding homes than my stories, and that's a shame, but young editors aren't looking for older writers with the sensibilities of white European writers. They crave work by those who have been shut out for centuries. Not fair, but since when has any literary period been fair to those whose style isn't sought for? I fear I'm truly out of date, but that makes it harder on my old homeless stories. Old stories don't do well on the streets. 

 

Hey, I just stood up to stretch my legs and found a biography of Philip Roth by Blake Bailey. One of my all time favorite authors. If you haven't read American Pastoral, you've missed one of the best books about the 60s ever written. I hope his bio's not too definitive. I like a smooth read.

NORTH DAKOTA QUARTERLY SHOWS GREAT TASTE

There I was yesterday, pretty discouraged about having the energy to keep rewriting Ghoul World, and I go home to discover that North Dakota State (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About) has found one of my poems, IN A MODERN LIBRARY, entertaining enough to put in their literary magazine. Good for them. I've always liked that poem myself. Seventeen rejections before it found a home. You know? If you don't have a big name reputation, then you experience a lot of rejection before something hits. It's just the way it is. I keep joking with Mertie that Ghoul World will hit and movie royalties come pouring in after I'm dead.

I mean, the novel includes a future Earth, a plague, a mystery, a private investigator, corporate greed, a poison vagina (my wife giggles at the thought of it), automatons, Neanderthals (what?), necessary and acceptable cannibalism (can't be helped), good aliens, space travel, global travel and a perfectly designed planet for a great environment (Alteregoia). What's not to like? It's well written too with a minimum of misspellings and grammatical errors. It just takes an agent with a large enough imagination to take it in.

MAILER AND ME AT AGE 84

Still working on the rewrite of Ghoul World. But I'm not
making much headway. Too many days, I get this sort of headache from sinus problems that blocks any clarity, and nearing the end of my life, I need clarity to go on. I don't really know what mentality it is that holds me back now or won't supply an adequate motivation to continue. I recall a visit to Mailer that someone made near the end of his life. The caller asked if he was working on anything. Mailer halfheartedly replied, "Yeah," but I didn't believe him. 

This photo is of Mailer at age 84, the same age I am as I write this. He's got more hair than me and more best sellers too, but I think I'm still handsomer and looking more fit than he does. Of course, I don't think he stopped drinking. I'm not sure of that, but not boozing can works wonders on your health.

GHOUL WORLD, GHOUL WORLD, GHOUL WORLD

Me behind reflections on my glasses with crooked smile as I begin the unknown number of another rewrite of my science fiction novel Ghoul World. You know? I believe in this novel. I knew it was a good idea when it first struck me in the head a decade or so back. Agents are dumb things, looking for I don't know what, but they are sure missing a good book with a potential to be turned into a sci-fi movie.
 

TOO MUCH TOO LATE

When I look at authors who seem to have some sense of themselves in the world, I realize that a blog is not enough. They have web presences that appear very professional. They list all the work they have done and all the honors, and they work hard at making themselves look very professional. I have some of those and I could push a few to make them more important than they are. I could see my way to doing it, but at my age with the prostate cancer dogging me, I tell myself, "It's a little too late, isn't it?" Now I'm feeling a bit sad for myself.

A DIRTY MIND

It's been months since I last checked in. My genetic clock still ticks down, and I continue to send out work for consideration after doing a tuck here and there. I've been concentrating more on fiction and less on poetry even though poetry continues to be my strongest suit, according to the editors at the helm of literary magazines. I fear my age is reflected in the short stories, and I think young editors fail to realize there might be a market among seniors for stories based in the not to distant past.  

A surprise arrived in the mail, a royalty check, pictured above, from my publisher, AuthorHouse. Someone bought a poetry book or two from them. Thank you, my anonymous supporter(s). I hope one of the books, Gray House By Cold Mountain, did not shock and/or the other one based on my MFA thesis, Tenderfoot, demonstrated what I am capable of in a more serious mood. I believe in the first book as it demonstrates more authenticity than the second. Yes, I have a dirty mind as do the minds of most serious writers. 

WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT WHEN YOU'RE DYING

Squinting, the balding author demonstrates a recent literary magazine his poetry appears in, a magazine that paid him 30 bucks for his three poems. Also, continuing a streak that began late last year, a poem in the 8 line lüshi format has been accepted by Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine. 

 

Today, I'll continue to rewrite and submit rejected poems, and I may put a chapbook of 30 lüshi together and submit it to contests along with a recent chapbook of cancer poems I'm submitting called What You Think About When You're Dying. 

 

Odd thing about the cancer chapbook. I began writing it almost as soon as my prostate cancer was diagnosed. At the time, I didn't know it would be fatal. Thus, much of the poetry is rather lighthearted. I seem unable to write a poem that includes the frightful sense I'm actually dying of prostate cancer. I guess I'm going to go "gentle into that good night" rather than "burn and rave at close of day: Rage, rage against the dying of the light" as Dylan Thomas suggests. Odd too... I have sometime thought of my father as being too passive in his life. Now it turns out I'm also rather passive in death.

I'M DYING AS A MATTER OF FACT

Today is 122221.  Now, what grammatical term describes that numerical oddity? 

Anyway, it's been a long long time since my last blog entry. I think I know why. I'm dying of prostate cancer. My cancer is not the slow kind that causes doctors to say, "You'll probably die of something else." It's more aggressive and normal doses of hormones don't seem to stop it, so I'm recently taking massive doses of hormones. Those and other drugs I'm taking create fatigue. My peppiness is petering out.

Of course, I could die of something else with all the hormones I'm taking, but my heart and lungs are fine. I'd probably live into my 90s (I'm 84) except for the prostate cancer. My body's first reaction (huge drop in PSA) to the massive hormone doses caused the doctor to say, "Maybe 3 more years?" Good news, I suppose. 

Anyway, with that morbid info out of sight in my synaptic self, influencing all my thoughts, moods and decisions, I imagine my motivation to write may be waning. However, for a couple of weeks recently, I went on a submission kick and sent off a couple-a-dozen short stories that I wrote in the years before and after I turned 80. Results pending.  

As to poetry, another poem was published online today in Brief Wilderness. Interesting tale follows. The poetry editor thought the poem might be hard to understand, and I wrote a para to explain how easy it is to understand. They published my unpolished explanation along with the poem. Had I known that? Ah! Ahem, well?

This past year has been the most successful in all my years of submitting. To those few who still hang around to read these, thanks for your patience. Right now, in Starbucks, I'm pretty fatigued. Time to go home, sit in my recliner and doze off, watching TV.

WRITER'S BLOCK AND THOMAS JEFFERSONS

Last time, I reported twenty dollars were on their way for two poems. Instead, the amount will be 30 dollars. They await me in Paypal for three poems appearing in the current issue of Teach. Write. Literary Magazine. One of the poems was rejected 18 times over several decades before finding a nest to nestle in. As editors constantly report, "Thank you for sending us your work. Sorry, these do not fit our needs. Perhaps they will be a better fit elsewhere." Of course, I fine tune my poetry every time I send it out, and so it goes. Sometimes, I'll see a revision that totally alters the poem, its arrangement on the page, even its underlying analogy.

I've reported writer's block several times in this blog. Now I'm dealing with a different type of writer's block. Some of the drugs I take, now, to delay my death by a high risk form of prostate cancer create fatigue, prednisone for one. This morning, as I sit at my local Starbucks, I can barely concentrate. I'm working on a rewrite of a story that includes brothers, sisters, friends and brothers and sisters-in-law. For the life of me, I can't keep them straight in my head. It's impossible to write when my brain is dazed like this. At least, it's not a hangover these days. 

Keep at it my friends. I've had more success this year than at any time in my life, and I'll be 84 the 20th of this month. Still, three more sarcastic poems to come out in Sequestrum. I like the company I'll appear with in that fine magazine.

A CHECK FOR 20 DOLLARS

Not much time between this entry and the last, is there? But, hell, I got more promising news. Another submission has found success. Poetry again, a set of 3 poems accepted by Sequestrum, more poems published this year than stories. Yet, I'm still anticipating submissions to Fiddlehead and Prairie Schooner, each of which invited me to send another tale.  Writer's block still troubles me. I started a fresh story a few days back, but it died a quick death. Perhaps the check for $20 from Sequestrum for the poems will dynamite the blockage (that's right, a check).

 

Why, I wonder, does such a successful year as this come by as the news about my prostate cancer grows darker? We're into a new drug now, and if it doesn't work, then, I worry, my hoped for 4 to 5 more years of living won't happen. I'm trying to keep my thoughts in each day rather than in a future day. I'm surprised I worry so little. Still, I have days that are inexplicably darker, and I think it's a sign that my synaptic self is more aware of what I face than it allows my consciousness to consider.

By the way, fellow writers, I'm submitting more work, more often than at any time in my recorded history.

OH, THE FEAR/PAIN/JOY OF SUBMITTING

Odd things happen with writers and their submissions. Currently, having finished another rewrite of The Porn Writer, I'm not trying to submit it, believing no one will want to publish my disturbing glimpse into the lives of desperately troubled people, and I'm also suffering writer's block. I clearly expect if I sit down to my computer, nothing will appear to write about. I'm too old and et cetera....

Then, an email arrives from the prestigious Prairie Schooner with the editor's message, "Although we have decided against using 'Buffalo Wallow,' we were interested in your work and would be glad to see more of it during our general submissions period, which will open again on September 1, 2021."

The creative urge fires up again, but my problem is the story "Buffalo Wallow" is an old story, written years ago, and all my recent stories are empty of the style I attempted back then. What to submit? One of my old stories or a new one?

A PUBLICATION PLAN

Time sure disappears. Last entry in this writer's blog was June 22. I'm more than 4/5 done on 6th? 10th? rewrite of my novel The Porn Writer. I'm reworking poetry constantly as they straggle home bedraggled and d(r)ejected from the fields of literature.

The August issue of Better 

Than Starbucks is here, 

online or ready to be bought 

and printed at Lulu. My poem Afterthought sits inside, a lüshi in the 8 line form of Chinese poet Hanshan.

Read the other day, the "publication plan" of a fellow writer. He said his goal was to get 100 rejections next year. Do you know how hard it is to get 100 rejections? I'm lucky to get 2 or 3 a month.

"Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?" from a Ronald Reagan campaign speech, 1980. And we wonder why the Republican Party has deteriorated so badly.

 

ILLUMINATIONS

One of my poems just appeared in Illuminations 36, and another has recently been accepted for August 2021 in Better Than Starbucks. This year continues to be very sweet.  

Also in that Illuminations are two poems by Professor Emeritus Ron McFarland of the University of Idaho who is connected to my Eastern Washington University days. I've linked to his page. You'll find his publications and bio there. He was deeply involved in establishing University of Idaho's literary magazine, Fugue. We published one of his poems in the second issue of Willow Springs, the literary magazine I co-founded in 1977 with fellow students in the MFA program at Eastern. We were very happy to receive his poems in our early days. Those who have founded literary magazines knows how important early poems by established poets are to building a reputation.

Professor Emeritus McFarland

 

 

 

 
 

VICTORIOUS IN SEVERAL WAYS

More good news on the writing front. Two poems have been accepted by Teach. Write. for its Fall issue. Thank you, editor Katie Winkler. One of the accepted poems was rejected 23 times and the other 15 times. I have considered both of them to be some of my best pieces of poetry. The magazine is an interesting publication published and edited by a composition teacher. Her call is for writing from those who have experience at teaching composition. The first six months of this year have been very successful for me.

Age 18/19, I volunteered to be sports editor for Naval Facility 109 Boondocker on Antigua in what was known as the British West Indies at that time. Antigua is now self-governing and a member of the British Commonwealth. We called our paper the Boondocker because Antigua was considered to be way out in the "boonies" as military people have always called duty stations located in far away places. At that time in 1957, cruise ships did not dock at Antigua. That duty station, if it still existed, would not be considered to be in the boonies now. Interesting to me, is that in my time in the Navy, I was stationed on four islands: Key West, Puerto Rico, Antigua and Nantucket. All were or are now party islands.

PS: Please notice WP (winning pitcher) Thomas on the sports page. I pitched for our victorious Operations softball team. I believe we won the league that year I was stationed on Antigua.
 

ANOTHER TALE APPEARS OUT OF NOWHERE

Just finished the first draft of another story, The Arby's Hat. I used to meet a lover in a room in an old three story hotel that had become a place for off campus students to rent. The room was on the second story of the hotel, and the top of the Arby's hat was level with the window. Such is the setting of the tale when a knock occurs at the door. Who is it, you may ask. I hope someday, the story appears somewhere so that you can read it.

We are having wonderful weather here in Vancouver, WA. Eighty today and a brisk breeze flowing from the Coast, 200 miles away. Now, back to my first rewrite of The Arby Hat.

 

REJECTIONS I CAN ALMOST LOVE

What can I say? So close, yet so far. A story published last month, two poems forthcoming soon and this near miss, rejected with high praise. I knew as I wrote these recent tales they are fair to good. This one caught the eye of the very respected Fiddlehead magazine. All this happening as the battle with my prostate cancer moves from my urologist to an oncologist, a sign the disease is worsening. The visit with the oncologist, though, left me with hope for several more good and useful writing years. 

I want to visit Wales this year or next, the home of my ancestors and Dylan Thomas whose work I once upon a time could not get enough of. Those were also my drinking years. 

What a conundrum. I'm hesitant to submit something else to Fiddlehead that might spoil their good opinion of my skills. Ain't that a dandy form of writer's block?

 
 

GRIM REAPER BRINGS GIFTS

Just discovered the College of Charleston's literary magazine Illuminations has accepted my poem THIRST. It will appear in the June 2021 issue. I now have two poems awaiting publication at the same time. Add those to the short story that just appeared in Kestrel, and I'm having a run of publication longer than at any other time in my life. 

Wouldn't you know that would be how it turns out... a run of success just when the Grim Reaper moves into my cellular basement to take up temporary residency there? This morning I was moved to tears and laughter as I took my morning drive. Death made everything feel more alive this morning, even my Barclay's Choice Privileges credit card seemed more colorful, more vibrant in my hand as I offered it to the barista. On my sunny morning dive, for a second, I looked forward to, embraced the experience of dying, a transcendent moment for certain which quickly passed. Then, thinking about my dearest wife, wanting to convince me to stop eating butter as if that will stop the cancer from spreading. To be loved so by that dearest to me of all humans? Wow! More tears of joy. Then laughter as I listened to KBOO, playing an old hit like Crying by Roy Orbison. Suddenly, young love fell into the absurdist camp, all my pain as a young man, all my divorces and love tangles became comedy of the highest order. Wow, such a surge of emotions the Grim Reaper brings with him!

THE SUN IS DEFINITIVELY OUT, BUT THE WIND....

The sun is blazing today, but a fierce wind blows, making a walk problematical. Got my two free copies of Kestrel in the mail. A very professional journal. I'm trying to read some of the poetry and stories in it other than my own. I have a difficult time reading contemporary work. I do. Seems a writer must be dead and well established in the cannon of literature before I give it the time of day. When I take the time, I find interesting stuff all the time, but time is really short now for me. I'm reading Hemingway and a contemporary Japanese author Haruki Murakami who's been translated into scads of languages. Now I learn his novel Norwegian Wood is not a representative work. Many of his younger readers were disappointed by it. A love story, plain and simple. I understand some of his other novels employ fantastical scenes and imagery.