Excerpt from Revised Book 1
Someone asked me to post a sample of some newly revised material from Book 1-2e. I decided to give an example of something that I did not have to revise much at all, as an example of how close Book 1-1e was to being right. I feel this is a decent enough example of how the book blends several different genres, only one of which is Science Fiction. ===> E
When he awakened, it was to the sound of voices in the courtyard outside his apartment. He knew the voices. They were his neighbors; just about all of them seemed to be there. There was the unmistakable sound of a pop-top on a beer can opening. That meant Paul was there. A radio was playing dance-mix disco music so that meant that Maria was there. Andy sat up, stretched, raked his hands through his hair, stood-up slowly, went into the bathroom and caught glimpse of his reflection in the mirror. For some reason, the reflection struck him as a
peculiarity.
He studied his hands, first the palms then the backs, wiggled his fingers. What a miracle a hand is! He then looked at his reflection again. He couldn’t quite place whatever it was that had been so important before he fell asleep. Everything had strangeness about it, as if something was slightly out of synch with nature or time. He tentatively decided it was just a dream that he could not recall at the moment, that the dream had made him feel stupid in waking. He splashed some water onto his face and toweled-off. Then he paroled a beer from the refrigerator and went out to the courtyard to join his neighbors.
“Andy,” Paul greeted him. Paul was an automobile mechanic who Andy generally liked but he was also the sort who flirted to excess with women, which Andy didn’t really care for at all. Andy had stayed-up late in the courtyard with him one evening and got drunk listening to his war stories about various conquests throughout his younger days.
“Sit down,” Maria scooted over to one side of the bench to allow Andy room to sit beside her.
The others nodded, smiled, greeting Andy silently with head nods.
There was Julie who was a recovering alcoholic who had divorced her husband in the heat of battle over her drinking. She’d found salvation in the Lord and was taking life one day at a time. She had two daughters living with her, the fourteen-year-old had the body of a nineteen-year-old and Andy had almost asked her out on a date before he found out how old she was. Her other daughter was twelve and promised to follow in her sister’s footsteps.
Sam was also there. Sam worked for the postal department, sorting mail. Sam had been a track star in high school. He’d served two years in Viet Nam. Ten days before he was scheduled to leave, he took a bullet in his lower leg. His buddies helped him out of the thick to a clearing where a helicopter evacuated him to a M.A.S.H. unit. His leg was so damaged by the exploding tipped bullet that it had to be amputated from the knee down. The doctor had told him that he was a little surprised there was as much of it left as there had been. He was bitter about the war and didn’t like to discuss it much. Paul, Sam and Andy had gone out on a boat that belonged to one of Paul’s friends for a day of drinking beer and fishing, more of the former than the later as it turned out. Sam had told them about the war, and then made Andy promise to never willingly join the military. Sam rarely got that drunk and generally stayed to himself except for the evening get together in the courtyard.
Tim and Kim, still known as the newlyweds even though they were going on their second year, were also in attendance. Kim was expecting though not showing it that much just yet. They sort of sat off to themselves yet close enough to the others to engage in any interesting conversation that might arise. Andy had lived there the least time but as he sat closest to the conversation he was usually directly engaged.
Ralph and Mike were rooming together, worked opposite shifts but happened to share a night off every so often. This was rare that they had no plans for the evening. They usually went somewhere, always together. They both worked for a grocery store. Ralph ran the night stocking crew. Mike was the produce manager. Although neither said much regarding any relationship they had other than working for the same store and sharing an apartment, the courtyard chorus suspected that they were gay. Andy had decided long ago which side of the fence he came down on with regard to gays. He had met a few couples in Austin, at college. His next door neighbor in the apartment building where he lived in Austin was gay and had always invited him to any parties he threw - out of courtesy because Andy could not have possibly slept during the parties anyway. Andy had always felt pretty much accepted despite his being straight. The parties were parties. To Andy, there seemed a lot less interpersonal tension. As a result, Andy was not in the least threatened in his manhood. He knew who he was, just as they knew who they were.
Sam and Paul had little use for Ralph and Mike and would just as well preferred they stay in their room as to join the impromptu courtyard gathering, except that out of boredom alone, they were present.
Carol was absent. She worked late a lot. She was trying to hold two jobs to help keep her mother in a nursing home. Her mother had Alzheimer’s and her care was to the tune of $30,000 a year! Her mother believed Carol was her sister instead of her daughter. Carol had a hard time dealing with that at first but had overcome it. She had reconciled the disease as having already taken her mother away. All she was doing now was just going through the motions of whatever relationship they might still have. Some days her mother was better and actually seemed to spend a few moments in reality with Carol. Carol cherished those stolen seconds from the traumatic truth of her mother’s premature mental death.
Andy liked Carol a lot. He let her borrow five hundred dollars to help with the rent and her mother’s expenses, never intending to ask for it to ever be repaid. Carol was right there at his door next payday with half of it and a promise to give him the rest next payday. She asked nothing of anybody and was the most honest person that Andy had ever met in his life. She had no life of her own, though. Her mother had taken ill shortly after Carol’s stepfather had died and neither of her three older stepsisters could do anything for their mother as they had their own lives, families and obligations and none of them lived in Florida. Carol was the only one in the world that her mother had left. What else could she do? She was thirty-five, but looked a little older for all the worry and trouble that she had, yet attractive both physically and spiritually. Everyone liked Carol.
These were the characters of the soap opera called ‘The Apartment Complex’. Andy knew all of them to varying degrees. At one point or another during such courtyard gatherings he had either spoken to each or gleaned it from their conversations with the others. At any rate, he knew just about all that was required for a neighbor to know, perhaps more than anyone would have wanted to know in some cases.
The apartment complex in Austin hadn’t been like this at all. There was little feeling of community there. Perhaps it was too large and impersonal or because many of the residents were students who had to study a lot of the time. Andy liked the courtyard gatherings in Florida. During the day, he found himself looking forward to them. It was always after his workout, shower and nap. For some reason, no one ever left the gatherings to watch a favorite TV show or anything. That was what their VCR’s were for, anyway! The little parties broke-up about eleven o’clock during the week and around midnight on weekends. Sometime people would have other engagements and be absent, but the party still went on.
Mostly Andy listened. He would respond when spoken to, but usually didn’t volunteer to speak. He was a quiet one, they’d say about him in his infrequent absence. They knew that he was a college student. They knew he had a job in the mornings. They knew he was into personal fitness. Paul had found out he knew karate the hard way. Paul had one drink too many one night and got into an argument with Ralph and called him a faggot. Ralph threw a punch. Paul returned it and leveled Ralph. Andy stepped in to break it up and Paul took a swing at Andy. Before Paul knew what had happened, Andy was kneeling over him with a hand on his throat telling him to knock it off.
Sam knew martial arts as well, had learned it while he was in the Army. Sam told everyone that Andy must be at least black belt. That move he put on Paul was clean, precise and extremely quick. Sam knew that Andy could have killed Paul had he intended to. The restraint just short of maximum force was a sure testament to Andy’s level of skill and training. Maria asked Andy flat out once where he had learned karate. “I’ve been studying it since I was a kid,” was all that he had said.
No one suspected that Andy had any real money of his own, other than what he made from working. He did nothing nor said anything to express otherwise. He had bought an old Toyota Corolla when he had first come to Florida. It was in pretty good shape, really, considering it was one of the first model years Toyota was sold in the U.S. He decided to buy it because the owner’s manual of all things was pricelessly amusing. It was written with a bad Japanese accent. In many words the “r” and “l” were exchanged. As a student of oriental language he found this very funny. To think that a very large company with aspirations to market products abroad would allow such a document to be published! Of course, as Andy had learned in marketing courses he had taken in college, many American companies had notched up even more impressive fiascos when first entering international markets.
Misspellings were minor, but interesting.
The phonetics of “r” and “l” are extremely close, even in English although native speakers do not seem to notice. Oriental cultures have trouble with an “r” or “l” sound and a “b” or a “p” sound when it is the initial sound in a word. There is a distinction of the sound in oriental languages that is not so obvious in spoken English.
As Andy sat in the company of his neighbors, his mind would wander to other times and places, most often to what fragmentary memories he had of his natural parents. Andy suspected that his affection for the gatherings were in a sense his feeling of belonging to this social class of America. Had his parents lived, he would have been among these people more so that the daddy-feel-big’s and corporate supreme-high-rectum’s of the world. He sensed that despite all the intelligence he had and the hard work he had put forth thus far in his trail by life he probably could have never hoped to attain the personal wealth that he had as the legacy of his adoptive father. The American Dream had changed that much over the decades.
It still happened that people could accumulate some wealth by being either here, or there, and doing this or that and finding success. It was rare, very rare. Maybe it always had been that way. At present it was more often birthright or lucky intuition than hard work that granted people wealth. An alternative was to do the illegal or unethical to gain some unfair advantage. To Andy there was little difference between illegal and unethical. Yet, in the eyes of the law, some unethical practices might not specifically be illegal. A good many fortunes had been amassed over the course of history by splitting the fiber of difference between the unethical and the illegal.
Those with wealth would undoubtedly argue that point but from all Andy had seen in the course of his overly comfortable life, those with wealth seemed determined to keep their unit close-knit and exclusive. Occasionally there was an upstart who beat the odds. Some of the richest men in the world, for example, had made fortunes by finding the best ideas in others and making them better in some way, then marketing them to the world through licensing fees and aggressive competition. Some may call it smart business, however to others, it seemed unethical exploitation. The difference between the exploiter and the exploited is seizing the opportunity. What is not specifically illegal is often seen as a means to grow entire industries.
Andy suspected it wasn’t all that easy to make a fortune a hundred years ago either. There were always examples of greedy opportunists to be sure, but many simply had good ideas, excellent timing and were not afraid of passionately pursuing their dream. Every example of someone exploiting others and gaining unfair advantage infuriated Andy and engendered some cynicism within him. Those who have more ambition than insight spoil the dream; where the law is vague and they capitalizes on the flaw. Is that criminal? Not specifically. The governing institutions of the world define what is illegal. Those who break the written law are stupid and live in fear of the legal ramifications for what they have done. True exploitive opportunists circumvent the law to make fortunes until the government intervenes in the public interest to establish boundaries or level the field.
Despite the mind’s apparent penchant for circumventing the law without breaking it, the majority had probably earned their wealth in a fairly legal and honest manner. All the same, Andy felt it had to be easier back whenever than it was now. Andy knew his adoptive father well. He also knew where some of the figurative bodies were buried and only suspected that there might have even been a literal corpse or two sacrificed to the gods of Joseph’s ambition. Despite his general respect for Joseph Henderson, he knew that he hated the manner in which Joseph conducted business. Because of it, Andy did not want the reigns of Henderson Industries.
Andy had slept a dreamless sleep. When he awakened, he did not feel the same at all. He was unsure why he felt different since he awakened. He had hoped that the beer would help. Still the strangeness persisted to the point that he wasn’t even enjoying the conversation in the courtyard. It all seemed mundane and some of it seemed like old news, stale for having been heard time and again. There was also the feeling of disjointedness. It just felt uncomfortable being awake for some reason, as if something was nagging to get his attention, something unrelenting inside.
Several times Maria spoke directly to him and had to repeat her comment or question. She even asked more than once if he was feeling all right, said that his mind seemed a million miles away. Against all efforts to snap out of it, the fog remained and, if anything, it was getting thicker.
Suddenly there was a breakthrough, brief, startling, and alarming. It was a voice from within. There was something alien about it, but also familiar. “I am part of you. We have to talk,” was all it wanted to say.
He’d struggled enough and at the risk of being rude, begged out early and returned to his room. Everyone understood because he was not quite himself. He was the subject of some hushed discussion afterwards. He could tell they were talking about him. Or was it paranoia?
“I am not here to make you crazy,” the voice spoke clearly, and from behind him. Andy spun about, heart racing, panicking, and tentatively he walked into the bedroom, only to be horrified by what he saw seated on the edge of his bed.
“I am you, from a few years hence. There was an accident and somehow I now leapfrog in time and space, but at present this is all new to me. I lack the ability or the insight as to how I can go home. I was inside you, but we fell asleep and I guess things don’t work so easily with the mind domination thing when the one you are overpowering wakes up before you do. Anyway, I have no idea how to get control over you again, so I won’t even try.”
Andy looked away, then back.
“I’m real. You can believe that. I’m also a figment of your imagination, so to speak, because you are the only one who can see me... because I am you. You are not crazy, that is unless I am too - which could be argued at some length. Why I am here is also debatable. You see I also have a future aspect of myself who visits me from time to time. In fact he had just left before we went to sleep. Anyway, he thinks I may be here to prevent life from ruin, the life of someone named Angela who you haven’t met yet. She knows Maria. Maria does her hair. She is a waitress in a bar. My own feeling about my coming here being for her sake is contrary. I think we all have our own little scenarios to play out. You have yours and I have already played through this one once upon a time. I am here and I am not real happy about that except that this was one of the more pleasant periods of my life. I do not know why I am here. I will say that you could have a very interesting summer if you did meet this Angela. She is hot! Of course, it won’t be easy. I certainly didn’t hit it off with her when we met. If you don’t follow through with it, you will still have a very good summer, after your own fashion of liking things.”
Andy felt as if he needed to raise his hand to get a word in edgeways, but he cleared his throat and the elder Andy took a rest. “If this future self that visits you can leave, why can’t you leave?”
“Good question. I’m green at this stuff. The other ‘me’ is not. He won’t share the knowledge. He says I have to learn it by doing. I hate that line of thinking. Just friggin’ tell me the secrets so I can move on with it. From my one and only past experience in this sort of thing, when something is altered to the point of changing things, I shift to the next decision point. I don’t know what I am here to do unless it is to strike up a relationship with Angela. I know how you are with women. I’m you, or I was you.”
Andy sat down in a chair, looked at the ghostlike other Andy on the bed. “I actually come to look like you? How soon?”
“Does it matter?”
“Why didn’t you, err uh I stay in better shape?”
“Lots of reasons; mostly I lost interest. I discovered that most people find fitness nuts overbearing, irritating and condescending. Most people are not happy with their bodies and don’t like someone who is in better shape extolling the virtues of a life-style that is completely alien to their ‘American way of life’, whatever that may be in their minds. Fact is there are as many various life-styles as there are people. We are individuals. You can’t generalize too much. Most people do generalize too much. How’s that for generalizing? There is always friction between people because of their differences. But when you love someone, the similarities are what really annoy you most.”
“I bore people, don’t I?”
“Just like I’m boring you. Yes, to be perfectly honest, you do. I do. I have known it for a long time. You came to that realization about yourself and will be better for it. I will say that once people know you, they find you fascinating, as long as you are yourself and stop trying to impress them. You don’t know what other people like or consider important. For that reason, your best intentions to impress people fall short of the mark. So, let people get to know you first. You can stay in good shape if you like. The future for you is not fixed. My turning out as I am now here before you is my life not yours, unless you do as I did. We share only this common moment, really. Oh, our pasts are identical as well, but that’s how this leapfrogging works. You can be anything you want and do anything you want from here on out. You don’t have to do all the things I have done and in the interest of not affecting you either way, I do not want to tell you how things turn out. I am just telling you what you already know. You are not attracting anyone talking about how fit you are. So, just accept people as they are. Don’t judge them.”
Andy had received a lot to think about in a short time, and he slouched in the chair, threw back his head and closed his eyes. “So, this Angela… you’re saying she’s hot?”
“Yeah… She’s scorching! If you let things play out as they did for me, you’ll regret not having pursued her, at least for a little while. Other things happen after that and you sort of forget about her. But...well, I am not going to get into that. Your future may be different.”
“She knows Maria.”
“Yes.”
“Maria introduces us, then?” He asked as the revelation opened his eyes and brought him to the edge of his seat.
“Yes.”
“I thought Maria was flirting with me.”
“She is.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“I am an iceberg.”
“You are.”
“Does that change?”
“Somewhat, but not as much as it needs to.”
Andy nodded. Then, “If I change the events that you know as your past, does that mean you’ll cease to exist?”
Andy laughed at himself, “You’re thinking far too narrowly. Besides, my being here for some reason enables me to recall both the old and the new pasts. No one ceases to exist. That’s not how it works. Don’t think of time as a line but as a plane with lines coursing its surface and your experience is one set of lines as is mine. We share only a past right now, although you are the same person at this moment that I was, you really may not turn out to be as I am. Choices! Do you follow?”
“Each moment makes us someone unique for having experienced that moment.”
“Precisely.”
Andy smiled, “So, I don’t owe it to you to do much of anything?”
“You owe me not a single thing, Andy,” the elder said.
Andy grew silent for a moment, and then the obvious thought exploded, “Our parents, I mean mine, the real one’s...”
Andy read his own mind, “I have considered helping them. It creates a whole new set of problems, though. You’d either grow up to be a writer or a truck driver had they lived. At least those are the two courses I have seen.”
“I always wanted to drive a truck.”
“And be a writer.”
“Yes, that too. So where is the problem in any of that?”
“I am not certain. I think we would die sooner in that course. There is a void of sorts that I cannot see into. I have assumed it is death.”
“That would not be so good, then.”
“Well, and the fact that thousands die as a result of anti-drunk driving legislation not being passed. You see, the guy who went to prison for manslaughter when our parents died found religion and when he was paroled, he began a crusade against drunk driving which resulted in legislation being passed in Texas that actually worked in saving lives. His efforts in Texas were a model used by groups in other states and so many millions of lives were preserved as a result. Now the way this world works, perhaps someone else might have come along to accomplish a similar thing. They might even get more expedient results that result in saving more lives. But that would be the gamble.”
“It’s not worth the risk, then,” both Andy’s agreed aloud simultaneously.
Andy stood abruptly, went to the closet, brought out some nice, casual clothes, and began putting them on.
“You’re going to meet Angela?”
“If that is the only way to get rid of you,” he smiled. “I’m only joking. You are just a bit much to have around. I’m still expecting to wake up except I know I’m not dreaming.”
“People do this all the time, really. Whenever you remember something, you revisit the event. Only you never change anything except in your imagination. Well, I can’t change anything now either. I can give sparing advice. I’ll even stay here if you like.”
“No, no, you are coming with me. I am nervous enough around pretty women. I need moral support. Besides, you have to have more experience with women than I do.”
When Andy left the apartment, the courtyard get-together was still going strong. Maria asked him where he was going, but Andy just smiled. “I have an appointment. I forgot all about it,” was all he said.
An appointment...with fate or destiny or whatever, Andy thought to himself. What if Angela still did not like him? Well, at least he had tried.
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Another Comment Re: Jeff's Blog
Jeff,
Well, I guess this feature is working again.
First of all I love the story, especially the line early on about a tongue too big for the mouth. I wish I had written that!
I continue to be amazed with your attention for detail. I wish I had the level of talent that you display when I was your age. Perhaps I would not have wasted so much time writing 20,000 pages of drivel that I eventually threw away.
Which brings me to comment on your insights concerning writing and being a writer. You are exactly on target with how I perceive things. I will say that I have always held the suspicion that there are a great many of the society that have 'the bug' but do not choose writing as a vent for the pent-up pressure.
Maybe society can be divided into the have and have-nots in more than just an economic sense. I would agree with your assertion that a writer is an artist. I would even go so far as to say that the world is pretty-much split in the manner of expression of their individuality. It could even be further broken down into those who create or nurture and those that destroy or denigrate. There would be a buffer between that consists of those who do little but exist or even subsist and perhaps there is a continuum of variation in degree even among this fairly large group.
I think there are a good many that have 'the bug' that turn to alcohol or drugs. Their penchant for seeing and even pointing out what is not always obvious to others is the source of ridicule, rejection and derision. I think it is for them, those that are still able to change the course of their lives that some of us that write may want to serve as inspiration. I have been inspired in many ways but I am most inspired by anyone with the artistic 'bug' that defies conventional wisdom and the naysayer element to succeed.
I know that you understand the concepts of Richard Fenton's somewhat simplistic approach to positive thinking in business and sales. I really believe his model is generally correct, that failure and rejection is a way station on the path to success. I also believe as he seems to that those who are the most successful have not yet decided that they have arrived at their destination. The successful never quit succeeding or taking risks.
A writer takes risks every time he or she writes. It is the risk of exposing some guarded secret or some privately acknowledge foible. A writer differs from the masses in that he or she has a compulsion to reveal the qualities of character as well as the darkest parts of human nature that each of us would just as leave forget. We deal with the human condition in what we write, and deal with it daily in a deeply personal way, because we see it through our perception. What makes a writer different is the odd way of seeing things and the innate ability to translate observation into common language that hopefully others will understand and appreciate.
This is what I wanted to say about your post. I'm kind of glad that this feature was disabled yesterday because it gave me another day to put a little more thought into my comments.
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My friend, Jeff Goguen started a blog a few days ago. I mentioned him in an earlier post. His passion is linguistics and he is not only a good technician with the language but gifted or cursed with the 'bug' as he refers to it; he is a writer and a very good one at that.
I invite you to click the link either in the title of this post of at the end of the post and check out his blog. I am in almost complete agreement with his comments about writing and being a writer.
I think that some people use the terms writer and author interchangeably. To be sure, in some cases a writer is an author. To be an author is to be a writer that has had something published. It doesn't mean that you are no longer a writer; it just means that you have as a writer completed something and it has been published. It is my understanding (from what someone in the industry told me) that you can claim to be an author for seven years after being published. That would mean that you must publish every seven years to continue calling yourself an author.
Jeff's assertion is accurate though, some authors are not writers just as some who write, even those that write very well and are not writers. Lately to be an author seems to be more about being famous or being an established writer with a following. Apparently there was a time when it wasn't that way.
I suppose that in these days almost anyone can self-publish almost anything. Perhaps that is the present vehicle of the exposure of new talent in writing. The avenue is the Internet and it can take many forms of which this type of weblog is but one. There are some purists that would acclaim this self-publication is a type of vanity publishing, demeaning not only the vehicle but the relative merit of the material presented. I would counter that ghost writing a book for a famous person and purporting that it is something that he or she authored is worsv that vanity publishing, it is an outright deception. There is nothing wrong with self promotion, folks. A writer either does a lot of that or never sells anything. Jeff states that a writer cannot help but write. Even the frustration of the process and the rejection of publishers cannot dissuade or prevent a writer from writing. For the sake of the most effective and immediate exchange of ideas, I could not imagine anything more useful than a weblog.
Despite the negative comments about self-publishing, it is somewhat ironic that the weblog has been used by many very recently to communicate news information that the mainstream media were rather hesitant (for whatever reason) to pick up. I would never be so quick as to condemn an emerging medium of exchange. After all, we are in the middle of a revolution within the Information Age.
My kids use the term 'old school' to refer to anything that obviously was the way things used to be done. It doesn't make it wrong or bad but just dated, perhaps. If it still works then it can exist along side the 'new school' innovations.
I interact with the general public on a regular, daily and continual if not continuous basis. That is one of the things I love about working in retail. I am also around technology and innovation that are at the cutting edge. I know about 'stuff' before the existence of the 'stuff' is widely known. I provide this information and knowledge as a resource to my customers and I hope they appreciate it and come back to buy even more 'stuff'.
What I hear everyday is that 'I am not a technical person' or 'I am not a computer person'. There are other variants as well: 'I'm not very computer literate, computer savvy or whatever'; 'I'm not a geek'; 'I know next to nothing about these computers' or my personal favorite 'I don't have a clue'. You really don't have to be a geek to be proficient in the use of a computer anymore. The technology has developed rapidly to be sure but so has the technology of making the interface more user-friendly. I work with this 'stuff' everyday but it does not mean that I do not have to adapt to the changes as well. There was a time before I was good at this 'stuff'. When I was acquiring computer skills the user interfaces were much less friendly. However, if I can learn this stuff, then anyone can.
I think my point here is that technology is not going to go away. So it is counter intuitive to burry your head in the sand and try to ignore it or even worse refuse the even acknowledge that it might be of some use, interest or benefit in making your life different if not easier. One of the strengths of the human race is adaptation to change. It is why we survive even though we are not the strongest or fastest of the animals on Earth. At some point the 'old school' needs to visit the 'new school' before the 'old school' is supplanted and replaced. Better yet the 'old school' can be remodeled into a 'newer school' approach.
That is why I would advise those in the publishing industry to take heed of some of the innovations that the Internet can offer to the end user, the reader. The reason that the printed text style medium still exists is that it is still a little inconvenient to curl up in bed with a computer monitor in order to read a book. That does not mean that books will never be replaced. I personally hope that they never are. It is my experience that every time someone says something like 'that will never happen’ it eventually happens and usually much sooner than later. It would be prudent to prepare for the changing world especially if one's livelihood depended on prediction of consumer trends. If it comes to pass that hard copy books disappear altogether I would not want to be caught clueless in the competitive world of the Internet.
I suppose that advice could extend to almost all of the mediums of information and entertainment. Embrace and incorporate the new, or else be replaced.
I was an 'old school' writer. I had a typewriter; isn't that quaint? I used to write reams and reams literally of typewritten drivel. I thought at the time that some of it would be good enough to use so I kept everything that I wrote in boxes. I mentioned in an earlier posting that I purged those 20,000 pages at one point. It could have been more than that I don't know. What I kept I eventually digitized sometime after I bought my first PC. Why? Because it is a hell of a lot easier to compose, edit and revise on a computer. I adapted and I am glad that I did. I really do not think that I would have ever finished a book otherwise. The ancillary contributions of working with computers contributed to the actual plot as well. Being connected to the Internet brought me into contact with not only friends that have served to inspire my writing but also friends who had purchased and read my material.
Thanks Jeff, for getting me thinking along these lines. Check out his blog at
http://meditativeentropy.blogspot.com/
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Progress Report On Book 1-2e
I have no really clear idea as to where I am in terms of 6x9 11 pt type set pages but I am well past half-way through editing, revising and at times rewriting One Over X - Episode One: From The Inside To The Closer. Having essentially read the book for the first time in over two years, having had the feedback and input of many readers that I have seriously taken to heart and into account, I kind of feel like I am producing the new and improved next model of something.
Okay, I am the author. I get that. Although I have to go through the whole registering thing with the Library of Congress for a second time, paying my fee to have the copyright registered again, it seems worth it to materially alter the book. Don't get me wrong. There are many things that I love about Book 1-1e. I will still argue that the notorious and even infamous 56 pages of narrative early on in the book served a purpose other than to lull the reader into a near comatose state. But, yeah I heard all the criticism and I could see the point. I appreciate the help, folks. I really do. I would also like to sincerely apologize to anyone that I may have inadvertantly swore at in the process of receiving the good intentioned criticism.
I probably need to explain how Book 1-1e came to be as it is. It was grossly over-edited and yet it had errors, typos and mistakes. That can and did happen as there were too many versions of the text being shuffled back and forth. At some point a wrong version of this got mixed with the right version of that and you have a novel revised by committee.
I could use convenient excuses like I was working my ass off at the time or that I was distracted in this way or that. I may have even trusted others to do what really should have been my charge all along I should have spent more time focusing on the first book instead of continuing to write the series. Still, things progressed in the weay that they did and a lot of very good material came from it, even some material that created a better series of books and a whole new storyline that I really feel carried the entire series and has served to produce a second series as well.
I assume the blame for everything that was wrong with Book 1-1e just as long as I get credit for everything that was right. All along, it was a very good story. It has spawned five other books directly. Along with the additional plotlines and such that are directly attributable to something that happened just shy of five years ago, it inspired a sequel and even a prequel. Granted as I have said Ela'na and the fantastic world that largely she engendered had a lot to do with why I wrote so much and carried the story forward for as long as I have. But Book 1 is where everything began.
In revision I have been reading everything. Anything that was unclear, confusing or didn't make sense to me, I have rewritten. Hopefully it is better, now. Hopefully that is because I have evolved as a writer. I really do not want to write a Book 1-3e. It should not be necessary.
I have to tell you though that I am reading this book with fairly fresh eyes, all thing considered. Of course as the author of ten other books that are based on the same general themes and shared characters, I know a lot more now about what I was writng about then than I did when this book was first submitted for publication. Frankly I am amazed at how little of the plot that I have had to revise considering all the other material that I have written that is based on this first novel. In fact the plot is essentially unaltered except for having had to correct a wrong name or word here and there, the changing of which corrected the focus and lessened some of the confusion that readers have voiced at certain points. Even in its original form this one book established a firm base for building some pretty elaborate storylines.
Reading Book 1 now it is almost as if I am a first time reader. That has been an interesting even if often sobering experience. I had forgotten some of the detail in Book 1. Occasionally something is fresh enough that I go, "Wow, that was pretty clever." Or, "Holy crap, I actually wrote that!" Sometimes I have sat back and wondered what int he world I was trying to say; those are the things I had to fix.
One of the amazing things that has happened is that I have found minor characters that I love and feel that they support the depth and overall quality of the fantasy world, creating an illusiont hat these characters are read people. At times I have thought in terms of why didn't I develop them further? There is time in that only two of the books are in print. But then I also know where everything else leads and to develop them further would create some unnecessary distractions.
In the future I may want to write books based on some of these minor characters. Edgar in Book 1 is a case in point. Where in the hell my warped mind came up with him, I am not sure. He reminds me of some people that I know but no one so much as a guy I worked with in a Bridgeport Connecticut home improvement store, someone named Steve. Granted Steve was not a total pain in the ass like Edgar seems to be but he was all about protocol. I suppose he should be, he was an advisor to the Mayor at some point in his career and even though he was sturggling at the time to get by like all the rest of us that worked in that store, he had an appreciation for quality things and the parts of life that make it worth living.
Steve was a great, caring person but was also arrogant and self righeous. I know that may seem contradictory but it is also the case that people are a complex balamce of many attributes. That dynamic in him was just as marvelous as it is in any other real person. I think a lot of people in that store were convinced that Steve was gay. I can see why but it never mattered as far as working with him. He was competent and dependable and that is all that ever mattered as far as working with him. He had the ability to be enthusiastic even iif he was not feeling good. His positive outlook infected others and may the store a more friendly and helpful work environment. You need to have a few Steves in every work place and it is completely whatever his private life, personal preferrences in interpersonal relationships.
At some point I went over to his place at his reqyest to fix his computer. That was about as far as I ever ventured into his private life. To me he seemed a classic anal rentetive sort and his residence was meticulously well maintained. He had decorted it to be comfortable, functional and make a statement about his personality and personal tastest. Steve bought a few quality things but did not clutter his surroundings with the display of the things that he liked.
I honestly doubt that he was gay. I never asked and since he never offered the information or came onto me it never was an issue. He was a great person and I respected him a lot and always enjoyed working with him. I looked forward to our conversations.
I think I have mentioned my experiences in Austin. I lived in a part of town in an apartment complex that I could afford. It happened to be populated with gays, tranvestites, bi-sexuals, hookers, Blacks, hispanics, Whites, Asians and a couple of rednecks (which I consider a whole 'nother category from Whites. My apartment complex was a strange corssection of the American meltingpot in that it was not demographically balances wither to the general population distribution of America or even of Austin. At times it was a fascinating place to live and was perhaps a perfect location for an aspiring writer to sense the diverse fabric that made Austin a very vibrant and unique city to experience.
Anyway I never had issue with anyone in that apartment complex. I was accepted even though I come from a long and not particularly distinguished line of rednecks and the others may have had every expectation that I might be a White Supremest Racist asshole. Anyway I could be wrong about this but I have developed a sort of sixth sense about people. I can generally tell a lot about people just from spending about three or four minutes of them.
Steve could be Gay. He could be one of those people that eat from both sides of the buffet table, as one of my redneck friends likes to refer to bi-sexuals. It never changed what he did for the store or what he contributed to the quality of the days that I spent in that store. What I appreciated was his geniune friendship.
When I was in the military I learned that one way to categorize those around me was in terms of those I could count on to cover my back and those I needed to cover. I know the military distorts, dissects and oversimplifies everything about the human condition into black or white issues of extreme contrasts when everything about mankind is in the gray scale between. I would have counted Steve among those that would have covered nmy back. There was nothing fake about him. He was always exactly what he was: the real deal.
So maybe I will work on something about Edgar ne Steve. At this point I do not see it as a novel but maybe a novella or at least a short story. I can write short stories now. I have given myself the permission.
I would like to get one of the shorter things published in a magazine to legitimize my efforts. Whether a magazine has the insight or vision to print something from a virually unknown, obscure writer does not matter to me. I write and that is what I do. It might be a birth defect. I don't know why but it is part of who I am not just what I do. I will write until the day that I can write no more which will most likely be the day that I wake up and realize that I died at some point and forgot to notice. I write to help, assist, inspire, entertain, and participate in the overall human experience.
Having prefaced this last remark with all that has preceeded it I have to tell you that the war is over. I have declared a general truce with the forces that have always opposed me in all of my efforts and in exchange those forces have granted me a special amnesty. If I just lost anyone there, well you will have to read a good bit of the way into the first series to know what is really going on.
What I want to get acorss is that above anything else, I want the books to succeed. Even if I have to make deals that I might otherwise reject. What I have created has taken on a life that is largely beyond my control really. It is now important beyond me or even the contribution to literature. What is in the books is important to everyone that will read them in the future. Even if I die before they books are ever well received, I need for them to be available to others to read.
Trust me that it all will make sense. It is about a basic as I can get as to why I even bother to write night after night.
E
A Friend in Need
This morning while I was restoring a Toshiba laptop (er notebook as you cannot call them laptops anymore because using them on your lap can overheat your legs and apparently contribute to sterility in males) to factory specifications for a customer, I received a most pleasant surprise. It is always delightful to get a phone call from a close friend. No matter how busy I am at the time I try to drop everything else so that I can talk for a bit.
My personal muse was not feeling well. She is recovering from a cold. She has been going through some tough times and handling a lot of financial issues. She is however still taking classes and still busting her ass to get ahead. As ever she serves as an inspiration to me. It is just that I feel very bad that all I can do for her is to tell her that I really appreciate her friendship. Need I even say it again that Book 1 would have been a very different novel had not been for her - not to mention the next ten books. Such is the curious impact of a personal muse.
We spoke for about fifteen minutes or so. I was due for a break so I took one. Most of what we discussed is sort of private in regard to her situation so I will of course respect her privacy and not post any of it here. It was just a very nice thing for her to do and it made my day.
One of the things that I can discuss is her cats. She is a cat person, of course. Her two cats, Jetta and Raja are mentioned in Book 1. Taking some literary license I made Raja into a male Wolf. In reality Jetta and Raja are sisters, born of a mother that was also Ela'na's pet in the past. From what I know of the cats I believe that they both think that Ela'na is one of them. From what I know of Ela'na she is as much a Cat as a human or even a Wolf. That really should come as no surprise to anyone as she is the inspiration for Wolfcat Goddess, Ela'na. Those of you that also know her, those who were members of the original Wolf Pack or any subsequent iteration might find this of some passing interest.
Ela'na is a stage name from back when she used to perform. She even had a last name which was also a stage name but as it is irrelevant to this discussion there is no point in mentioning it except to say that there was also a story about it. Anyway there is a link between the name Ela'na and the tender of the Tree of Knowledge in the myth upon which some of the story of the Garden of Eden borrows heavily. Once she told me that there was a secret link between her stage name and The Garden of Eden. Having read the myth in my studies, I immediately knew what she was talking about. I don't know but that might have impressed her just a little bit. At any rate I found it to be one of 'those' coincidences. Then of course as I have instructed everyone that has read Book 1 there are no coincidences.
When she founded a chat group that was focused on her unique persona, some of the chatters decided that since she professed to be a cat goddess that they would be Wolves. Wolves are nobler than dogs and apparently having the canine genetics would still love to torment cats. All of that happened well before the first time that I happened into one of Ela'na's chats.
Enough of the background (everything else can wait for another time or it is already included in Book 12 anyway), back to the parts of the conversation that were cute. Jetta was lying next to her head and sleeping comfortably purring into her ear and she was afraid to move for fear of disturbing her.
I don't know everything but what I do know is that Ela'na is a first class lady and even if she is not a goddess then she really deserves to be. The childhood she had to endure should earn her many 'Brownie points' with the All Mighty. Other than that she has the prettiest face I have ever seen in my lifetime and her personality is about as humanly perfect as anyone I have ever talked to. There is very little if anything that is wrong with her, in fact. I know, I know, people are people and each of us has flaws. As perfect as I might think I am my shit still stinks. Ela'na is very down to Earth and open, even too candid at times. She modestly claims that she is a pain in the ass. She probably can be. It is human nature.
Sometimes I think that my impetus to succeed as a writer is somehow tied to her. All else aside about the standing inside joke about her being my personal muse, I believe there is at least enough truth in it to be respected. I know that is a strange thing for an author to say but it is what I feel. You will eventually read Book 6. When you do you will understand some of what I am saying. After you have read the second series, you will see the full range of characters that emerged from her inspiring me.
E
