BEACH WALKS, CHAPTERS AHEAD, CLEAR SAILING FOR WEEKS

the beaches we walked

Over the weekend, in celebration of my 76 birthday (October 20th) my wife and I spent a weekend on Camano Island, north of Seattle, walking the beaches in fog and mist with nary a sign of sunshine, except in the love in our hearts for each other. That's all sunshine. Camano Island is stuck between Whidbey Island and the Washington Coast. Hardly an island at all, a couple of dump trucks of dirt would fill in the slough and creek that separates the mainland from Camano Island. We drove to La Conner, north of Camano Island for fried oysters. In fact, I broke so free of my vegan/vegetarian regime that I put on five pounds in two days of eating, but three disappeared as soon as we returned to Vancouver. Like magic. 

Today, I roughed out ideas for the next two or three chapters of Manning, adding several mysterious deaths that will puzzle Manning and, I hope the reader too. As I've said before, I see the ending, with only one decision to be made there, but getting to that ending should be all the fun of it for the reader.

GHOST TOWN ANTHOLOGY: A CELEBRATION TO BOOM

Vancouver, Washington, I said.
You mean, Vancouver British Columbia, don't you?
No, I mean Vancouver, Washington, that little city across the Columbia River from Portland, Oregon.
So?
Well, I got an interesting poetry anthology to tell you about that hails from that city. 
Oh, no! Not poetry?
Shut up your face and listen.

Christopher Luna (recently named Clark County's Poet Laureate) and Toni Partington have put together a collection of poems selected from the poetry of those who have read at the Ghost Town Poetry open mic from 2004 through 2010. The open mic which includes featured poets from California to Seattle (and points East of the Cascades but West of the Rockies) takes place the 2nd Thursday of every month at a little book store in North Vancouver, called Cover To Cover Books. Google if you don't believe me. Mostly free verse, the collection—Ghost Town Poetry: Cover To Cover Books 2004-2010: An Anthology of Poems from the Ghost Town Open Mic Series—is a lively representation of all that poetry has to offer in the Pacific Northwest. You can't help but be entertained while you get an idea of the kind of poetry that the West Coast has long been known for. Production values are top notch so it's a good-looking book to hold in hand as well as a handsome read. Also, friends, if you've never experienced an open mic event, I tell you that a read through Ghost Town Poetry will give you a delightful taste of that experience. So buy the book and go to an open mic event. You'll be glad you did. 

PS: In January 2014 look for another Ghost Town Poetry anthology by means of which Christopher and Toni will mark 10 years of putting together open mikes at Cover To Cover Books. 

PPS: The Silent Boomer will have a poem in this one.

SILENT BOOMER BOOMS THROUGH ROADBLOCK ...TECHNICALLY

Yesterday, I finally saw my way through the technical problem and came up with a communication system that's plausible. The future of the futuristic novel, Manning, began to have a heartbeat once more. The more you know about how the brain works, the less plausible "thought commands" seem.

photo link

Finger Food Please, George

On other fronts, good things. A poem is to be anthologized in an upcoming anthology out of Printed Matter publishing, Toni Partington's and Christopher Luna's house. Due out in December, I think. Chris and Toni also interviewed me for an article that appeared in our local alternative newspaper, the Vancouver Vector. I also reconnected with poet, songwriter, sometimes journalist, Kurt Lipschutz (aka klipschutz) while he was sailing up the West Coast on a book tour for This Drawn and Quartered Moon. Mertie and I published Kurt in George & Mertie's Place (a monthly microzine my wife and I produced from 1995 thru 2001). Also huffed and puffed up my courage and ventured into Portland to participate at Three Friends open mic, my first reading South of the mighty Columbia River. Featured poet that night was Douglas Spangle whose recent poetry collection, A White Concrete Day, came out from GobQ Books. You can get it at Mother Foucault's Bookshop in Portland.

Today I learned: the more names a writer drops, the longer it takes to get a blog entry finished. Hail Columbia! Roll on!

SILENT BOOMER STRUGGLES WITH HIGH TECH NOVEL FEATURE

Cyborg_variant_2_by_mojette

I only have this to say about the past week's writing problems. First, loss of sleep, created by political concerns, made creative thinking almost as impossible as grass growing in the middle of the Sahara. Possible, but you've got to know the way to the oases, and my camel broke down. Next, without going into too much detail, creating an implanted communication system for the human brain produces some interesting complications that I've struggled for several days to clarify. If people could read minds, they'd have the same difficulty my characters have, trying to employ my interpersonal communication system. Every time I think I've got it solved, I see another wrinkle that is implausible. Futuristic fiction and plausibility conflicts...Ce la gear!

PHOTOS, THOUGHTS AND WRITER'S BLOGS

One of the ideas that came up in Mickler's workshop on blogging and self-publishing was that a writer's blog ought to appear about once every other day and ought to include at least one photo to draw the attention of readers. This blog has been silent for several days because I've been too busy writing to have anything of interest to say. Now I've reached a rough patch, a writer's block (?) or something. Perhaps the governmental shutdown has created the block? 

Yesterday, my wife and I did go to a Chris Luna poetry reading at the Lan Su Chinese Gardens in Portland. He was accompanied by Beth Karp on piano. Very fine presentation. Here's a couple of photos from the interior of the Gardens. 

Today, the Humanist's presentation is on whale evolution. It's fascinating to me that whale ancestors left the ocean and, later, returned to it via evolution. Getting ready to go, looking forward to it. Wow!

MANNING COMMENCES INVESTIGATION, CLIENTS ANONYMOUS

Soldier of fortune, retired, or nearly so, black ops agent and ghoul extraordinary, Charley Manning begins his investigation:

The warehouse reeked of rot and death, a pungence much stronger in that confined space than the everyday odor of putrefaction that ghouls encountered on the everyday streets of Planet Earth. Decapitated ghoul bodies lay scattered on the green linoleum-tiled floor. The Buck Stops Here game show flickered silently on a large TV set mounted on one wall. A set on the opposite wall was dark. Tattered sofas and plush chairs, a card table with an abandoned cribbage game on it, a coffee station, cabinets loaded with videos, and the i-pads lying about suggested the room had been a social area. A 24 count cribbage hand lay face up on the card table. Blood pools on the floor under the necks of the corpses revealed that the deceased were posties and preebies. The pools beneath the posties were smaller because of a postie’s thicker, slower-flowing blood.

The next two very large rooms were filled with bunk beds, cots, folding chairs and free standing closets. Several washrooms and group showering facilities opened off the obvious sleeping quarters. More bodies in those two rooms than in the front room. Some had been decapitated in their sleep, never arising from their cots. Their eyes, if they still had them, were closed in sleep on the pillows. Manning’s first conclusion was that this facility was…had been, he corrected himself…a disintegrarium. Adding to that impression were the headless corpses still strapped in the restraining chairs used in disintegrariums to keep mad posties from attacking one another and attendants. The next very large room erased Manning’s first impression. 

Enjoy!

WHEN SILENT BOOMERS ARE GONE: FUTURE WORLDS

When writing about an unfamiliar world of the future, in order to communicate his vision of that future, a writer must invent terms for futuristic places, conditions and cultural artifacts that don't currently exist. Otherwise, he'd be forced constantly to use longer descriptive passages each time the reader encounters the situation, place or thing. I'm building a lexicon, and at my age, I need to write it down in order to keep track of some of the terms that are mentioned less frequently. For example, the AutoPort Cab company which features driverless cabs that zip around town, controlled by satellite and on board computers. The initial reference calls for some explanation. After that, just the cab company name suffices. Same with "tric", short for a electric auto. I don't imagine it's good practice to make slang too burdensome, so these tactics must be used sparingly, but Anthony Burgess who wrote the dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange certainly didn't coddle his readers, but, then, I'm not Anthony Burgess, and A Clockwork Orange is a novella...that is...fairly short.