IT'S ALL ABOUT ENDINGS

Guess who had a tooth removed? And who's a bit giddy with Hydrocodone? You're right. Me. The hole isn't permanent. Going for broke with an implant. But since this is a writer's blog, let me get to the point. Just finished watching What They Had. Ah, the trouble with endings. Elizabeth Chomko wrote and directed this little gem, but she had problems with it. The ending. I think she tried to end the film maybe four times.I recognized at least three potential endings. 

We writers? Don't we always struggle to get an ending right? I see it all the time in films and books. Sometimes, I get so philosophically above the craft that I realize no ending's right. When Mertie and I bought our last home in Spokane, Washington, I recall saying, "This is it. This is where I'll end my life." Then Mertie, my darling wife, decided she wanted to make a little more money. She deserved more money, she said, so we came to Vancouver, Washington for a better paying job. Now, I think this might be where I die, yet, Spokane is always on our minds. If only it weren't for the snow.

So you see? Life keeps going on after the artistic ending of any book, story, film or play. When I'm in that mood, endings trouble any creative endeavor for me. Fact is that for each of us there is only one ending, and who doesn't know what that is?

GAMBLING, GAMBLING. LIFE'S ONE OF THEM.

Gambled a bit this morning at the Ilani Casino north of Vancouver. Lost but not much. Still ahead since winning 100 bucks in October was it? I only take $5 when I go.

Find photographer here

Prostate cancer news not so good. My plan is to make it to 88 or 90. However the PSA is increasing rapidly. Have telephone consult with my urologist next week. He's also more cautious in his promises. More later.

On the writing front, I'm hugely encouraged. Last three submissions of most recent short stories to the very best paying markets have garnered three rejections but all three included requests for more submissions. Same thing happened with four poems from my prostate cancer ms. Strong encouragement and invite to submit again. I know the work is good, but they also compete with the very best writers who go for publication in top markets. I might never crack those markets, but I'm in the mix now I believe. 

Three plans currently. Rework the cancer ms, put together a collection of short stories with the new ones plus a few older ones that have gathered good responses. Last, put together a collection of poetry that spans the years I've been writing poetry. The very best, the published stuff, filled in with unpublished I like. Submit these to prestigious contests.

BEATNIK BOOMER BOUNCING TWIXT PIZZAZ AND BLAHS

ASKING: Find this at this link:

Still reworking the short stories to make a book of them. The project could easily take a year. By submitting them to market as I go along and getting another publication or two my query credentials will have more impact. Have been on "Haunted By Henry Miller" for several days. I'm depersonalizing the narrative, not giving proper names to the characters involved. They are referred to as "the young husband" or "the college girl" and other impersonal nouns. The strategy seems to intensify the feeling of manipulation in the story.  

Have sent queries to several more agents for two novels: Ghoul World and The Porn Writer [aka Programming Frank Singletary]. I switch back and forth between the two names, depending how I feel about the agent I'm querying. Another case of how emotions direct our behaviors. Found a solid list of agents looking for science fiction. Will send Ghoul World to all of them eventually. I feel empowered the more queries I send out. 

I'm very upset that the pictures I put into this blog don't show up on Facebook. Anybody know why this change? Probably a battle between giant corps in which we munchkins become single bite size hors d'oeuvres. 

Ever since we moved to Vancouver from Spokane, I've not had the sort of relationships that nurture me as those did in the past. I feel most alive when I communicate by writing. Among people and sober as I am, I often feel unimportant and detached. 

POST PARTUM HURRAH...almost

I do affirm and attest that yesterday, at or around the time of 14:30 Pacific Time (daylight savings) said author, George T. Thomas, heretofore known as The Silent Boomer, in a Starbucks beside Mill Plain Blvd. in the City of Vancouver in the State of Washington did complete, wrap up and, for all intents and purposes, put the quietus to a final rewrite of his novel, Angie's Choice, when said author completed work on said book's final chapter, Chapter Twenty-Two. Said author also reported extreme relief and attacks of "what do I do now?" Further, said author reported he is "put out" that due to certain past incidences of EEM (i.e. extreme exuberation malfunction) he may no longer pop a champagne cork and celebrate as he once did in the distant days of his inglorious past.

It should be noted that said author also reports a contradiction, in that said novel, though finished, is not finished? Said author said he may invent an entirely new discussion in Chapter One of Angie's Choice in which the two couples talk about "Boomer stuff" rather than have a conversation about old time radio advertizing jingles as is now the case in said novel, he said. The said author further stipulates he believes the reader must be drawn closer to his four characters (Angie and Curtis Davis and Larry and Marcia Chadwick) as they sit chatting around a table cloth covered table at a restaurant dinner, so that said reader will be drawn to follow said couples deeper into the novel and care more about the horrific things that happen to said couples when they become the said hostages of said two paramilitary killers are even more affecting, he said. The author further said, with a shrug of his shoulders and a sad look on his features that he's having fourth thoughts about the book's title and the said use of the word "said", he said in my article about his said project.

report submitted by Sad Sadie Said, Turkish folk singer

SILENT BOOMER AS BAIT FOR ZOMBIE ATTACKS

the open bay (trap) door

I sit in the spacious concrete cavern of Torque Coffee in downtown Vancouver, Washington (not B.C., Canada). We await the next  attack of the undead. The bay door is thrown open to a sunny day, inviting wandering zombies to enter. I sit in plain sight of the bay door as bait. It's an ambush. Across the street, the shell of the local Hilton stands empty, all its personnel zombieized by earlier forays. Bellhops in their bellhop caps make comical zombies, if you can imagine. Remember that bellhop who used to call for "Phillip Morris"? Imagine him as a zombie.

Before I slipped from my home office this morning, I put one last spit and polish to yesterday's rewrite of Chapter Nineteen of Angie's Choice. I planned to begin rewrite of Chapter Twenty at Torque, but (stupid me) I forgot to download that ms with its alterations onto my thumb drive. I can't get more work done today. Oh, I suppose I could work on Chapter Twenty here and save the ms under a different file name, then interweave the two versions by cutting and pasting to the latest ms that sits on the desktop of my desktop computer at home. Trouble is I'd risk erasing valuable changes I made this morning. 

This old Silent Boomer is not immune from making mistakes while transferring data from thumb drive to computers, ms to ms, and vice versa. It's too risky for a hard of hearing old man with poop-stained underwear (an easy target even for stumbling zombies with poop-stained underwear themselves) to accomplish without an occasional error or four. So I'll wait. I've made sufficient progress the past two weeks. Time to relax and enjoy a zombie attack or two.

BOOMING DAMN BRAIN DAMAGE!

Photo filched from the Black Rock website

Anymore, I don't think of it as writer's block. I now call it old age brain damage! Been several days since that last writing jag left me. This morning I sat in the Torque coffee shop in downtown Vancouver and had to write a letter to the editor just so I wouldn't feel so burned out. Then I ate a lunch of five sushi rolls and a banana while sitting by the Columbia River in my parked, beautiful as any horse to me, Yaris. Later a stroll along the river in the overcast chill of Vancouver perked me up. Now I've driven east and sit near my home and Costco (where I'll do a little shopping). I'm sitting in a Black Rock coffee shop which I enjoy very much. A chain...all in black and white it is. Feels alive to me here, like someplace in a modern city or in the future even. Yeah, in the future...that's what they've aimed at. The future. I'm hoping to live another 25 years and stay as alert as I feel now. Part of what has happened, I think, is I lost sight of my goal to write for Boomers, Silents and the last of the WWII generations. Then I start thinking GREATNESS again, and it all goes to hell in a hand basket. That picture above is a feel of what they're attempting. Couldn't find an interior for the place I now inhabit, typing this.