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.

FAILURE AND SUCCESS TOGETHER ... BUMMER

Despair about my inability to sleep and consequent exhaustion has finally driven me to seek counseling. First meeting on the 10th of month. I live every moment of my life in a sort of daze, a trance. I feel so dizzy at times that I make mistakes in medicine, and I can't carry on reliable conversations with my care givers. Last week, I asked Mertie talk to one of the KP nurses for me so that good information would be transmitted. I dread bedtime approaching. I seem to have no emotional resources with which to meet my painful existence. I'm quite a wimp.

In the midst of all this confusion and despair, Jessica Gleason, editor at online journal Aberration Labyrinth, accepted two of my poems for publication. They were written in what I think of as my Cannon Street period, quite different from the poetry that came out of my time at Eastern Washington University as I was escaping my addiction to alcohol. The journal fits quite nicely the poetry I was writing at that time. I like the poets I find myself among on the journal's pages. I'm too tired to feel much pleasure. 

THE SILENT BOOMER STILL PLOTTING ALONG

Each day my progress on Delinquent Lives slows as I recognize all the intricacies built into the original and all the connective tissue that will have to be laid down to make for smooth transitions. Currently as I cut and paste segments I have to hope I don't lose my train of thought right in the midst of a cut and paste. My mind is not what it used to be in following small details.  

Obviously, I'm approaching the reconstruction primarily to make the novel more readable for the lay reader who I imagine as very bright but not interested in a novel like Joyce's Finnegan's Wake. The idea, remember, is to create a book that an agent might see his/her way to supporting, to write a book someone other than myself might publish. My friend Carl Tropea read Finnegan's Wake many moons ago, back in our hippy daze. I still recall how he enthused about it. I tried to read it myself but never finished it...as far as I recall.

I'm wondering how much my decade of not writing and working mostly on algebra has contributed to my seemingly clearer vision of the process of writing? Perhaps the alterations my brain went through to understand the schemata of the algebra problem altered my brain as far as it comes to patterning. Is that a correct use of the word schemata?

I'm so far back into the thorny writing thicket that I sent away for Writer's Market 2013 a couple of days ago. I also used Len Fulton's International Directory of Little Magazines and Small Presses in the past. I haven't mentioned those useful books because I was pursuing markets closer to home with the ambition to build local and expand later with a more recent record of successful publications of my poetry, short stories and essays. As I talk about these matters, I almost believe I'm going to succeed. I hope it's not like imagining I'm going to win the lottery whenever I weaken and buy a lottery ticket about every two years or so.

It's raining and 60 degrees outside today, and I'm writing at the Black Rock.

THE SILENT "BEAT" BOOMER AND THE CARROT

Thursday, I sent off a short story contest entry and $15 of my Social Security check to Glimmer Train Press. The contest is for "new" writers, i.e. those writers whose fiction has not appeared in a press run of more than 5000 books. That's just about most of the writers in America. I'm a really old, "new" writer under those terms. Such contests are what's left for writers of "serious literary" fiction nowadays. 

My goal remains steadily before my eyes...to get someone other than myself to publish a book of mine. My own situation isn't so bad. I know personally two novelists whose first books were published by major publishers but who have never—yet—got a second book accepted. Talk about a big freekin' CARROT! By now, the vegetable no longer dangles before their noses. It's stuffed up their _ _ _ _ _! I'm telling you, folks, this writing game ain't for the weak.

There was a time when I earned money for a couple of poems I wrote as witnessed by the two photos. I received money from The Anglo-Welsh Review once upon at time...about $22 in American money. I cashed the cheque and kept one dollar to frame. I'm still proud of that acceptance. The English pittance came my way not too long before I found an agent for that novel I spoke of. I thought I was there, ready for fame and fortune! The bleeding novel was called, at the time, Children Of God. Now it's called Angie's Choice. 

Today, I'm going to forget all my trials and tribulations and, as soon as I pay some bills, I'm going to drive off under the sun to the Washington Coast. Wife is very busy today, and my plan is to stay out of her hair for awhile.

YES...SOME MORE RECENT PUBLICATIONS!

If you want to check out my most recent short story publication which is quite some time back last year, find it at: http://workmagazinearchives.wordpress.com/back-issues/george-thomas-2272012/

Jose Ferrer my favorite Cyrano

Also, I've already mentioned the two poems that appeared in the March 2013 issue of The Vancouver Vector in Vancouver, Washington, but they don't seem to have a link to those poems that I can direct you too. I notice they do show links to everything that each of the various editors has written. Their editorial egos are obvious in that practice and by mentioning their oversight of my poetry in their archives, my ego is also revealed and brought into a duel with theirs for the title of "most swollen".

The Vector's editors might be forgiven their oversight as they are still fairly new at their business. Anyone involved over a long period of time in editing literary magazines and anthologies knows that since most things are published for free in that literary world, the least we could do (when I have been an editor) for our contributors was a short bio note or, at least, a mention of a recent publication. Newspaper people, unhappily, don't share that idea of common courtesy which has been made obvious by the Columbian and by the Vector in recent weeks as I plod my weary way toward a goal of publishing a book before the last of my brain cells wither away and I begin to drool without benefit of the fragrance of a fresh-from-the-oven Ragueneau pastry.

Ah, the ego of writers, specially those like myself who creep about on the edges of recognition and who finds in the slightest sneeze an insult. Cyrano would make much ado about my monstrously swollen nothingness. No doubt he would puncture it with his witty sword.