BEATNIK FINDS MOM IN JUDY

Got another poem accepted for publication in near future in O-Dark-Thirty. I don't know exactly when the issue will come out. Payment is a copy of the journal. I sent three poems and they took one of them—Rice Harvest. The poem they took is extremely subtle and musical too. I had given up on getting it published until I saw their call for poetry from veterans. The poem is about Vietnam, and the death of young men in rice fields. Short stories still going out and coming back.

Still laboring—very slowly—on the short story ms, rewriting each tale one last time. Far too many days, dizziness plagues my sensibility. Today—head clear—I'll get some work done as soon as I publish this post.

Recent viewing: Once Upon A Time In Hollywood and Judy. Both worth a look if you've a mind to. Judy reminds me of my mother's dramatic ways.

ROAD WORK AHEAD: SILENT BOOMER OPENS SEGMENT 23

According to my every other day blog entry schedule, I need to be saying something just about now, but I'm always a mite off kilter and a trifle out of synch. I've been more or less stuck for a week, dithering and dallying around with an impaction in my writer's colon. However, day afore yesterday, while walking my hour—this time inside of Freddy Meyer's place—I came up with the next to last scene in the Manning novel. Fits very nicely with the opening I've set in Vietnam where fisherman Qwan Bak Ti is sliced up by a band of wild humans in the jungle darkness. With my finish at last congealed into something interesting, my interest flared up again and set my pants on fire.

Found ant here

So, this morning, I put in my minimal hour and commenced a start into Segment 23. I felt pretty good about that. It's as if an ant atop a leaf on the forehead of George Washington on Mount Rushmore could, for a moment, see all the way into Colorado, his ultimate destination. Things will soon be emerging out of the darkness and events lining up toward the finish of Manning, my future best selling novel and movie. Many miles of sentences, however, wait to be fashioned.

IF AT FIRST YOU DON'T SUCCEED, TRY AGAIN, DAMN IT

Father & Marie

Today, it dawned on the Silent Boomer that I'd have to pick up my marbles and go back to start. Charley Manning can't be a detective at the Portland Police Bureau. The conspiracy he's investigating might go as high as D.C. and as far as China. He's definitely (probably) got to look into some happenings in Vietnam. Cohorts in a writer's meetup once remarked that you had to have your plot down firm before you began or you'd be lost. I can't pin my plot down yet. I know how it ends, but I'm not sure how to get there. Too many interesting angles to explore.   

Tyrone Power

Today, Manning was reborn as a "soldier of fortune," something along the line of a black ops Captain From Castile, a novel by Samuel Shellabarger, originally published in 1945 and made into a movie with Tyrone Power in 1947. My father was never much of a reader, but he said that Shellabarger's novels were his favorites. I found that novel on his shelves and read it while still living at home. [Holy cow, a paperback edition of that novel starts at $72.88 at Amazon!] 

In '47 I'd be ten, just about right for loving a filmed adventure like "Captain From Castile" with Tyrone Power. Liked him specially in "The Razor's Edge" based on Somerset Maugham's novel. I fancied myself a Larry Darrell, searching for meaning in life, but I never went to India. Suddenly, nostalgia just seized me by the throat and choked me up.