Oh, well

I have been immersed in music and magick and all sorts of reading, but not much updating on my journal. I am fast becoming MIA like mentalfuse. I will do my best to write more frequently, but when I get on a track like finding out the real story of a woman who lived and died before I was born and where the biggest Teflon pan in the country can be seen, you can see my dilemma.

I subscribe to a lot of literary magazines and sometimes I can't quite understand why those stories are published rather than some of the stories I submit. It isn't that I don't get some sort of recognition, but I'm getting really tired of long personal rejections. I'd almost rather have an impersonal form rejection because it feels like get an F+ or an A-. It's a mixed message. Almost a D and not quite an A or a B. Personally, I'd rather see concrete, no nonsense grades and responses. I know editors don't have a lot of time and need to streamline their correspondence, but if an editor takes the time to type out a three-page letter, either consider personal correspondence or tell me simply what is wrong and I'll fix it. Something to work on when I am inundated with submissions and queries for my own magazine.

Did it ever occur to anyone, other than me, that Madonna did a good job of portraying Eva Peron in Evita? Of course, it could just be that I love the music and the songs. I have a thing for Andrew Lloyd Webber and I don't care if that makes my tastes pedestrian, but I can see how I would choreograph the musical numbers and the stage placements. Some of my past coming up to bite me in the butt. There was a time when I seriously considered acting, before pregnancy and the decline of my physical form into a breeding cow instead of a strong, curvy, corn fed female. Ah, well, life holds many surprises. I danced in several plays, The Music Man among them, and acted several leading roles before an unplanned and completely surprising pregnancy played havoc with my body and my life. I wanted to write screenplays and plays and indeed even rewrote the second act of A Christmas Carol (the musical version of Dickens' story) when I was in junior high school. I've played several pretty interesting roles, all of which came rushing back at me when I was at the checkout counter of the grocery store this afternoon.

I passed a bin of DVDs sale priced at $4.99. I didn't expect to find anything good, and mostly I was right. I did manage to find one gem, Our Town with a very young and innocent looking William Holden and a fresh-faced Martha Scott, who starred opposite Charlton Heston in Ben-Hur as his mother. I played Emily in Our Town in high school and some of the motifs and themes remain with me today. I had to watch the DVD as soon as I got home, but had to respond to the two calls I noticed on my Caller ID from Beanie earlier today. She's taking an English class in college and I'm helping her with a How-To essay.

Needless to say, my dark chocolate chunk ice cream was melting and I hiccuped my way thru some fried chicken livers while she read what she had written so I could give her my editorial opinion. I was a bit vague and confusing, but my mind was on other things at the time: melting ice cream and my new movie.

When I finally got to see the movie (having pushed OK on the remote several times to keep from having to watch the animated DVD egg bouncing all over the screen), I was greeted with fresh visions. I forgot how young and eager William Holden looked or that Emily didn't die in the movie as she did in the play. I remember dying in the play and sitting in the graveyard near Mother Gibb and Mrs. Soames who enjoyed my wedding to George Gibb. I don't remember having a choice to fight back the specter of death and come to with a new baby in my arms and George looking thru the door to make sure all was well. Still, it is one of my favorite plays and now I can watch it whenever I need a fresh perspective or just a walk down memory lane.

What does this have to do with writing? Everything and nothing. The whole thing is a mental train that keeps stopping at every little station along the way. Literary stories have some deeper meaning and I thought of a family going on vacation with a daughter in college who just graduated, guilted into the trip by one last family trip together, and having to go see the biggest Teflon pan in the country. The thought occurred that the manufacturer gets more out of each little tourist who stops to see this technological marvel than if they had taken the same amount of material and made a lot of smaller frying pans. You can sell a normal sized frying pan once, but you can sell the country's biggest Teflon frying pan forever. It isn't good for anything but giving something for people to stop and gawp at when they're on pointless family vacations just so they can be together for a few days or a couple weeks. More mileage for the manufacturer and a family's relationship with growing children. Makes sense to me, but I wonder if it will make sense to an editor with money they need to part with.

Oh, well, I have run on long enough and it is time. I'll shut up now.

That is all. Nothing to see here. Disperse.

The nature of horror

I have been pondering what makes a story frightening.

I remember my mother told me once that when she saw the original Frankenstein with Boris Karloff (made in 1931) she was about 11 or 12 years old and literally crawled up her mother's coat sleeve because the movie frightened her so much. Unlike my youngest sister and me, she does not like horror movies, books, or anything scary. Beanie and I love horror, but we differ on the type of horror, although there are some horror books/movies that we both like. I prefer psychological horror to bloody slasher movies like Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street. Thomas Harris is one of my favorite authors, as are Dean Koontz and John Saul, all of whom share that quintessential something that takes the every day, turns it on its head and makes it horrific.

I just finished watching Unbreakable with Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson, which was made by M. Night Shyamalan. I have seen several of Shyamalan's movies and they all have an almost laconic movement like a person just out of a decade-long coma who is still feeling their way about their new reality. I didn't realize until halfway thru the movie I had seen Unbreakable before and I don't know why I didn't remember the movie because it certainly is riveting. Bruce Willis is understated and nearly silent as he moves thru his life, seemingly out of place and yet still a part of the events. It is something I've noticed that is peculiar to all the lead characters in all Shyamalan's movies I have seen. There is always a twist at the end that ties up the loose ends, that makes sense of the slow progression thru each event, a twist that is telegraphed throughout the movie, but which you do not always immediately understand. Shyamalan makes a stately progress thru the events, taking his time and carefully, methodically gathering each and every loose thread of the project, weaving them into a coherent whole.

I am surprised by Bruce Willis and Mel Gibson's performances, not only because they tend to be more bombastic, more larger than life at times, but because of the quiet depth of their characters. I am not sure if this is due to Shyamalan's direction or because of something Shyamalan has written into the scripts, but it works well...at least as far as I am concerned. And still there is an incipient horror in each movie, but a psychological horror of what is perceived as mundane until you know the secret--and there is always a secret.

So, what makes good horror? Is it the blood and gore dripping from the pages or taking the mundane, turning it on its head (or the viewer on his/her head) and shining the light from a different angle the way children shine their flashlights under their chins and make themselves into monsters and ghouls?

As a horror reviewer, I read a lot of so-called horror and most of the time I find it difficult to sleep without a prayer of protection because every bump, twitch, shift, and sigh in my silent house could be horror creeping upon me unseen or invading my thoughts and dreams. Most of the time I am surprised to find a book labeled as horror because, other than some colorful language about insides being turned to the outside, there is little or no horror in what could have been quite frightening. For instance, I just finished two novels (Family Inheritance by Deborah LeBlanc and The Wind Caller by P. D. Cacek.

LeBlanc's book took horror to the level that frightens me the most (and gave me nightmares in the bargain) with the mix of psychological and mythological elements and threw in a good dose of Voodoo that forced me to finish the book as quickly as possible to prevent further nightmares. However, Cacek's book had the same elements of psychology and mythology, and even included a healthy dose of good old-fashioned anger and vengeance, and failed to mix the elements with a deft hand, leaving me with a story that could have been wonderfully horrific but remained flat and lifeless. There was plenty of blood, guts, and mayhem, but the violence was gratuitous at best and thrown in for effect at worst, and still the story failed to frighten me or really do more than leave me with a bad taste in my mouth.

How is it possible to take the same elements and good writing skills and turn out two such different novels? It's like giving top quality ingredients to two people and asking them to bake the same cake, one of them turning the ingredients into a cake fit for the gods and the other a cake fit for the trash. Reminds me of one of Michael Cunningham's characters in The Hours. Actually, it reminds me of my ex-husband Nick who could not turn bread, butter, and Velveeta into a simple grilled cheese sandwich that didn't look and taste like crap.

What is the difference? Level of skill? LeBlance and Cacek have turned out wonderful stories in the past, so the level of skill is about equal. Ingredients? They both had the same ingredients, albeit from different parts of the country--LeBlanc used the mythology of the Cajun bayous and Cacek used Hopi mythology. So what made the difference, set their stories so far apart? Good day? Bad day? Vision? Maybe Cacek needs glasses or a piece of the Snow Queen's mirror made in hell to sharpen her horrific vision. Who knows?

It is doubtful I will figure all this out in this post or even in the very near future, but you can be sure I will continue dissecting this particular cadaver to find out all there is to know. Meanwhile, I think I'll go darken the atmosphere and watch Red Dragon again. It's too bad I don't have Silence of the Lambs so I can shiver listening to Anthony Hopkin's soft voiced menace as Hannibal "the Cannibal" Lecter once again. I do so love the shivers he gives me.

One more memory pops into mind, the memory of relating the story of Silence of the Lambs to my now-ex-husband Nick who had refused to go see the movie with me. The lure of telling the tale in Lecter's deeply menacing soft voice was too strong to resist, as was the complete and utter joy of watching Nick crawl up the back of his chair and up the wall to get as far away from the voice and the story as he could. Some horrors are worth revisiting . . . and that is one of them. Mmmmmmm

Babies, time, and hell rides

In The Chronicles of Amber Roger Zelazny wrote about a royal family who were at the center of time and reality. The reality in which the rest of humans live is but a shadow cast by the royal court of Amber and it is in the minds of the royal family that each reality is traversed as they change their surroundings to reach the particular reality they wish to visit or in which they wish to live. Although classed science fiction and somewhat fantastical in nature, Zelazny might have been onto something.

When a baby is born their unfocused eyes try to make sense of the world around them, a world of color blobs that move and speak, sing and touch, leaving a lasting impression, but there may be something else at work. In recent years as physics pushes back the boundaries of space, time, and reality there is a growing belief the universe is conscious, that its particles, down to the smallest muon, quark, etc., may have a consciousness that is interactive.

What if a baby is the bridge between realities, not fully in our universe, but visible because we believe the child to be visible, and yet able to interact with the world/reality from which it comes? Children have to be taught to read and write and yet some children cling to wrong habits of writing in reverse. Could it be that is how they see the reality in which they have come to live? Is their well documented ability to see things that adults cannot see proof they have not completely severed their link with another reality, a reality adults have been taught not to see or believe?

Add to this the possibility that the big bang could have been created in a laboratory and deliberately encoded with messages from its scientist/creator and you have the beginnings of something more than a short story or science fiction/fantasy novel. You have the glimmerings of truth. The signs are all around us and there is plenty of allegorical and cryptic writing to point the way.

The Bible says if we but have the faith of a mustard seed we can move mountains and that we must be born again to see the kingdom of heaven. What if those aphorisms are not religious in nature, but scientific truths? In the very ancient days, religion was used as a tool to preserve knowledge, but a primitive mind, one used to following and believing in the wisdom and all knowing abilities of god/desses, may have mistaken science for religion and began to worship what was meant to be preserved until such a time as mankind's mind was ready to see the truth.

Do we create the reality we see? Are we shadows of a central universe, a central reality that gives us existence and in which our belief is necessary to maintain solidity, dimension? Is a baby the bridge between where we have been and where we may return if we but open our eyes and see past the reality we have collectively created? Does it really matter?

I want to know.

Got a script?

Here's a possibility if you don't mind prostitution.

SCRIPTS WANTED (Pays $1,000.00)

"LMC3 Productions, Inc. need scripts in the 100k to 200k
range, these films will be shot in High Def. Comedy, drama,
horror and children scripts. Big plus if a major chain is written
into story line (i.e. McDonalds, Pizza chain, 76 Union, etc.)"
http://losangeles.craigslist.org/wri/35506003.html

Enough of that.

I have been busy commenting all morning, catching up on the attention my friends and acquaintances deserve, not to mentions reading my well known and sometimes feared personal views around. I had fun. Sorry if the rest of you didn't.

I also noticed something. Several of my friends believe--and often state--that no one would want them or consider them possible intimate partners (even for a night), but that ain't so. I've said this before and I shall repeat it again: when the big one is dropped and food is scarce who do you think will still be standing and living and maintaining the status quo? All of us well upholstered, voluptuously endowed, and insurance table fat/obese people. Yep. All you skinny people will either die in the first blast or you will die shortly thereafter from lack of food. However, the rest of us who planned for the future by storing food where no marauder, thief, or crazed thin mint can get at it...on our bodies. I don't really think we planned it that way, but Mother Nature certainly did by giving us the kind of metabolism that keeps more than it throws away or burns up.

You could see the rise in obesity (at least by insurance industry standards and BMI ratings, which include the likes of Russell Crowe, etc.), as Mother Nature or God or whatever power you choose telling us the end is near and it's time to plan for the lack of a future the likes of which we enjoy now instead of a symptom of rising disease and falling discipline with regard to food.

The really intelligent people, those who are worth your time and energy, know that intelligence, a killer smile, loving heart, beautiful expressive eyes, thick lustrous hair, generous nature, and a thousand other little beauties are worth more than a fashion runway body or even the body of a marathon runner or athlete. It's find if that's the way you were designed by Nature and genetic heritage, but there is much more to beauty than outward appearance. Beauty is no guarantee of what really matters and is usually a sign that someone has been genetically gifted and left the rest to chance. When you do not tend a garden it ends up overgrown by weeds and eaten by animals and the remaining plants are stunted and tough. Beauty is about more than looks. Beauty is in the intangibles. Even Galahad figured that out when he chose to marry the pig-faced girl who saved his life and led him safely thru the dangers and he was rewarded by marrying the princess of his dreams and her inner beauty shone outside as well.

As one friend recently reminded me, intelligence is Uber-sexy. So get over yourselves and show the rest of the world what most of us already know--you are eminently bang-able. Accept it. It's true. In the meantime, get over yourself.

And before a certain person reminds me to take my own advice, forget it. I know the truth and I'm not closing myself off to possibilities, but he'd better be able to track me down because I am never going looking for him again. I hope he has a good map and a better sense of direction.

When you get right down to it, I'm sick and tired of the way people judge the good and worthwhile in life. Their views are skewed at best and downright stupid the rest of the time. Talent, the ability to love, a generous heart, and so many more intangibles are worth more than all the surface beauty in the world. A little (or Tammy Faye Baker style) makeup, some surgery, drugs, diets, and the rest do little more than teach us to value only what the rest of the world values, the rest of the world as defined by Madison Avenue. That's a small piece of real estate with a very long reach, but it's not all powerful unless we make it so. Skinny bodies sell clothes because they don't get in the way of the line and flow of the cloth, but then clothes hangers work just as well and talk less.

If you want to work for something, work on improving your mind, your heart, and your taste. The importance of the rest will descend to its proper level of not important.

When you get right down to it, lean steak is all right, but for real flavor you want a steak with a lot of marbling (fat) and you get many more meals from a well fleshed cow than from a thin cow. When I spend my hard earned cash on steak I want to really enjoy the meal and get my money's worth. Don't you?

Monday, Monday

That's all I can say about today.

Okay, I have something else to say, but it may not be worth writing -- like that has stopped me in the past.

Got a very late start today because of a very late night watching all nearly six hours of Rose Red by Stephen King. It was really pretty good and quite scary in parts, but I felt energized and creatively activated to write some good old fashioned horror. I even watched the bonus feature about Ellen Rimbauer's diary, which was really fictional. Come on, folks. This is Stephen King we're talking about and not Ken Burns.

Anyway, I got up late at the tail end of a very strange dream about being invaded by a bunch of people bringing food and getting together to form a death watch for someone I don't even know . . . or at least didn't know about in the dream. They just barged into my home and set up casseroles and marked out sleeping space without an invitation or a reason as far as I could see. It ended with a discussion about Wicca versus Christianity and being called a devil worshiper and all kinds of weird things, to which I ended by explaining Wicca and some of the fallacies of Christianity. Go figure.

Very strange dreams indeed. They could have been brought on by a coming invasion of my space in August when my landlords have decided they absolutely must come up here for two three-day weekends to stain two sides of the cabin or maybe my imagination is just overly active.

At any rate, I need to put the DVDs back into their nifty Netflix mailers and send them back so I can get more movies this week when I should be writing and researching and doing all kinds of writerly things. It's just too beautiful outside and every time I put Queen and Pat Benatar on Real Rhapsody thunder booms and my phone line de-stabilizes and I end up with silence and no music. It's like something is trying to tell me to get to work and forget about listening to music and playing games and surfing the net when I should be quietly writing while listening to the edifying sounds of Mozart or Rachmaninoff or working on the new website, for which I have not quite designed a logo. Still, I'd rather dance to Freddy Mercury cranked as high as it will go and drive dirt under my fingernails while I play with plants and seedlings and cut herbs to hang and dry. I'm feeling very natural today with overtones of Queen rock and roll tingling thru my dancing and singing muscles.

However, I did do something writerly today. I edited Beanie's essay about Dad and loving animals on a little farm outside of Columbus, Ohio. It was a very colorful editing project and I'm sure she will soon be perusing my journal to notify me I have made further mistakes of spelling and omissions of words. It's okay. She's entitled to a little fun and it helps me since I do little more than run spell check on my journal posts and do not read them over often. All my posts are from the fertile, and sometimes mercurial, soil at the top of my head.

I'll shut up now. Nothing much else to say.

Shorthand

It started when I was looking up quotes from Shakespeare. I have a
tendency to remember the gist of the quote and not always the exact
words, sort of like shorthand . . . the representation of the words but
not the exact words.

The subject was music and two quotes immediately sprang to mind, one from Much Ado About Nothing and the other from Twelfth Night.
Benedick wonders at how sheep's guts can "...thus hale a man's
spirit..." from his body and Count Orsino is lamenting his lack of
success with Lady Olivia. Orsino is in love with love and Olivia is in
love with grief. Olivia has decided to spend the rest of her life
mourning the death of her brother and Orsino wants an end to suffering,
an end to his need to love.

I looked up the quotes just about
the time Diogenes, the eye of the needle, Freddy Mercury of Queen, Mah
Jong, and Michael Moore roamed thru my mind. You think they have
nothing in common? Not so. They are all examples of mental (and
historical) shorthand.

For instance: Diogenes roamed the
streets of Athens in search of an honest man. Or at least that's how
the story goes. Historical shorthand is what we remember. The fact is
that Diogenes, a wealthy peacock of a country boy, came to Athens and
fell as wholeheartedly for the school of cynicism as he did for
fashion. He wore the coarsest clothing, ate the meanest food, and
railed about everything. It was said Diogenes was so overboard with his
asceticism/cynicism that he roamed the streets looking for an honest
man in the daylight with a lantern. In other words, he took great pains
to find something to gripe about. He was a cynic. He hated everything,
unlike Mikey who actually loves Life cereal.

In the Bible
Jesus tells his followers it is as difficult for a rich man to get to
heaven as it is for a camel to pass thru the eye of the needle. He
wasn't talking about a real needle, but something that was well known
to all his listeners--a gate in Jerusalem called The Eye of the Needle
because it was so narrow and short. It's not impossible for a camel to
get thru the gate, but it takes work and a bit of foresight.

I
was playing Mah Jong at the time all these thoughts coursed thru my
mind and it struck me that it is possible to win every game if you can
see the larger picture. Of course the game I play is timed and the idea
is to make points, lots of points, not to solve the puzzle. For me that
is frustrating because I'd rather solve the puzzle than garner points.
The exercise of the mind is more important to me than score keeping.
It's like playing the word games at Merrian-Webster
every morning as part of my waking ritual. Some of the games are
impossibly easy, but they wake my mind and let my brain know it's time
to get to work. I prefer the difficult games, like Dictionary Devil and
(sometimes) Bee-Cubed. I need a challenge, not for the sake of the
challenge but to hone my mental and physical skills. I work against the
clock on Webster because it keeps me focused, but there are no points
for winning, just the satisfaction that I have beaten the devil or
figured out how to spell words I've never before heard.

If
Freddy Mercury of Queen had seen the big picture and known he would die
from AIDS, I doubt he would have been so free with his sexual favors.
Listen to Too Much Love Will Kill You and you can hear the
regret in his words and his voice. If he had only known what would
happen it is doubtful he would have been so promiscuous . . . or he
would at least have been much more careful about condoms and safe sex.
Who knew? We don't see the big picture. We don't see what lies ahead,
especially when we live in the moment. It is the double-edged sword of
Zen belief. The same country in which Zen Buddhism and Mah Jong are
part of the culture offers up enigma, a seemingly unsolvable puzzle.

Play
Mah Jong for points with a time limit and you end up choosing the most
visible and immediate matches to win the game, but that's not the real
point of the game. Sometimes the closest and most visible match is not
the best match if you are to solve the puzzle and carry off all the
tiles. You can't see the values and pictures of the hidden tiles and
thus don't know if that match you just made would be better to have
left until later. You could end up blocking yourself later on. You
don't see the whole picture, which brings me to Michael Moore, the
liberals answer to Rush Limbaugh.

What do all these things
have to do with Michael Moore? Historical and mental shorthand, rich
men, and the nature of truth and cynicism. Didn't think all this had a
point, did you?

Michael Moore started out with a vision, to
uncover the rot at the heart of the apple barrel. He succeeded . . .
too well. He has made some good points and uncovered some truths, but
not the truth, and he has become very wealthy in so doing. We
go back to the Eye of the Needle and that camel again. Does Michael
Moore care about truth any more or is he more interested in funding his
private issues and animosities? Is he Diogenes come again to look for
truth in the daylight with a lantern and really looking for nothing so
much as something to prove there is no truth and no worth in humanity
and government? Does Michael Moore really see the big picture or is he
focusing his lens on what he wants to see, what he wants to show?

Michael
Moore is a showman and could very well be Rush Limbaugh's soul mate,
each the other half of P. T. Barnum's soul. A sucker is born
every minute and both of them are making millions on that simple truth.
That is not to say both of them don't have valid points, that they
don't have some truth to impart, but they are not seeing the big
picture. They are grabbing the easy matches, the ones that serve their
immediate purpose, and will end up ruining any chance to solve the
puzzle and bear off all the matched tiles.

What all this means
to me is that we have to take Michael Moore, Rush Limbaugh, and
everyone else who says they have the truth and use their information as
a jumping off point, a bit of string to follow thru the Minotaur's
lair. Don't take any of it at face value if all you're going to do is
bash the opposition. Moore and Limbaugh are cut from the same cloth:
showman with a political agenda. They are not furthering the pursuit of
truth; they are lining their pockets and laughing at the suckers while
they take the quick match. Do you really want to end up blocked from
solving the puzzle by following them or do you want to solve the
puzzle?

Would either Moore or Limbaugh change the way they
play the game if they saw the big picture? Only they can answer that
question. But what about you? Do you have time to look for the big
picture or are you going to follow whoever has the best historical,
political, religious, or economic shorthand? Your life and continued
existence may depend upon it.

It's easy to take the first answer you find, to misremember a quote or take someone else's word for what they believe to be true. It's much harder to take that information and look for the story behind the easy answer and it takes more work. Take the easy answer, the quick match, and you will rack up lots of points, make lots of money, and never have to think for yourself again. Each person's opinion is a marker on the path, a possibility, but not a road thru the forest or the way to the center of the maze. Easy answers are easy and nowadays it is so simple to take someone else's opinion and make it your own. Think about it. Are you spouting someone else's opinion, someone else's quoting of someone else, or are you going to the source? Truth is out there, but you'll never find it with a lantern in daylight if what you're really looking for is something to gripe about, someone to support your prejudices and opinions.

If you want someone famous and recognizable to support your liberal opinion, go to Michael Moore. If you want the same for your conservative opinion go to Rush Limbaugh. If you want the truth, look for it yourself.

Music is not love and the pursuit of love is not love. Both are tools, markers along the path. Choose wisely.

Stick it to the consumer

Time for another round of Stick it to the consumer

While reading scimon's journal on my friends page, I came across a link about second-hand books that led me to a NY Times article. (You'll have to sign up to read the article, but at least that's still free.)

I'm surprised and I shouldn't be, especially when greed is the main focus of business these days.

When it's all boiled down to basics what remains is publishers upset that they're not getting the original price for books and that second-hand bookstores and resellers are making a big profit and asking for more books. Amazon.com is the focus of much of the article because, since 2000, Amazon has had the audacity to list second-hand books at bargain basement prices right next to the full priced books. *Gasp of horror* What's even worse is that people are buying the cheaper books. Is it any wonder publishers are beginning to worry about their profits leaking to co-ops and second-hand bookstores like Abe Books, Alibris Books, and other private sellers listed on eBay and Amazon? Their profits are being diverted to intelligent people who know the market.

Text book publishers thought they had the problem of second-hand books being resold licked by putting out new editions every two years, forcing poor college students to purchase new books in order to complete their education, but even they have noticed a dip in their profits, a dip of 3%. *another gasp of horror*

Publishers want the whole thing stopped. They want their profits and consumers, canny customers that they are, refuse to play by the publishers' rules. They are seeing the book equivalent of Napster haunting their bottom lines.

What publishers need to do is buy a clue. If they paid attention to the trend in second-hand books, books that someone bought at full price and is reselling or books that publishers gave up on and sold to a remainder bookseller, they might see greater profits. Of course, that would cut off the supply of available books to second-hand and remainder booksellers, but business is business and publishers expect to make a big return on their investment.

If you're not into publishing, here is how it works. Publisher decides to buy a manuscript from an author and print out many copies of the books. If the author is considered a mid-list writer (someone whose books sell about 30,000 - 100,000 books) they order a small print run. If all those books sell they order another print run of a similar amount (or larger if the books are selling quickly) and sell those. If, however, all the books do not sell and remain in their warehouses, they sell the books to someone at a much reduced price (usually for the cost of materials and labor, which is very cheap) and that buy resells the books at rate that includes a small profit margin, but is still much cheaper than the cover price. Those books are called remainders.

However, lots of people buy books at the cover price, or on sale at bookstores when they can't move the stock in a specific amount of time, and they read the books and sometimes sell them again to a second-hand book buyer for half the cover price or less. Those enterprising booksellers then resell the books and make a little profit on it. With the advent of the Internet and eBay and easy access to advertising and information, regular people who bought the books at the cover price or on sale are reselling those books themselves and making back some of the money they spent to buy other books or even other things, like paying rent and utilities or saving for a trip to the grocery store. And publishers do not like this trend. They feel they have been cheated out of their profits. Right!

Second-hand bookstores have been around since the beginning of publishing. The problem is not the secondhand bookseller, but the fact that s/he is making a hefty profit from what has always been a marginal living at best. Stores like Half-Price Books, Abe Books, Alibris, etc. have latched onto the Internet and turned a marginal business into a multi-million-dollar enterprise that is taking small bites from publishers' caviar and now publishers are sitting up and taking notice. Well, I have news for them, if they want a bigger piece of the pie there are other remedies that do not include lining up second-hand booksellers in their sights.

First, they should keep authors' books longer instead of dumping them after a few weeks. It also wouldn't hurt to actually publicize the books and give each author the attention and publicity they deserve and which will result in more sales of those books. Second, they should consider charging more realistic cover prices for their books, prices more in line with what they spend to produce the book and not try to make all their billions in the first batch. This will mean they will have to print more books at the outset, but it's better to sell a million books for a dollar than it is to sell one book for a million dollars. The amount is the same, but the impact is greater and more noticeable. Third, if they can't get with the first and second programs, they should continue what they have been doing and let second-hand dealers and individuals make a little money at the expense of the publishers' short-sightedness and stupidity. What's next, forcing libraries to charge for each book checked out? After all, this is America and the name of the game is FREE enterprise.

Publishers have no right to complain that books are being bought and resold and sometimes even resold again. It is a sure indication the book is worth reading and consumers want their own copies. Pay attention, publishers. If a book is being sold and resold and resold again it means people really like the book and they should have kept selling them in the first place. Such sales is an indication that a mid list writer, someone who has performed well over a long period of time, is worth more than the publishers gave them. Publishers should rethink their strategies and put out new and inexpensive editions of books that are hot tickets on the second-hand shelves. The wheel does not have to be reinvented all the time. If it works, use it. If it sells, make more of them.

Publishers should realize they can't have it all and if they are going to let big pieces of food drop to the floor with the crumbs the food will be eaten.

Starry days

There are days when I just don't feel like getting out of bed and then there are days when getting out of bed is the best thing I do. Today was one of those days.

I got up rather late (for me) and checked e-mail and downloaded music before I took care of my plants. Took a cool shower and got ready to pick up the mail. I can't walk down the driveway or out the front door to check the mail. I have to drive into town. But I had something on my mind besides Ben & Jerry's ice cream and Cheetos. I wanted to talk to the clerk at the Snooty Coyote, which is a combination quick stop shop and liquor store. It's the only real store in Tabernash. I live in a rural mountain community. What do you expect?

Anyway, I talked to the clerk whose husband is the groundskeeper of the golf course at Sol Vista in Granby about 14 miles down the road. I have ideas for articles running around in my mind, marketing ideas, slick magazines that pay fat checks for well written articles and pictures (someone else will have to take the pictures - I suck at it). I hit the jackpot.

Sol Vista is owned by a woman who inherited mega millions and operated the golf course at Berthoud pass about 20 or so miles up the road. She is from Brazil and moved up here when she fell in love with the skiing and some canny guy. She stayed. She pumped millions into the failing Berthoud Pass golf course and finally gave it up to open up the golf course at Sol Vista, which has been renamed to something more in line with the neighborhood. I won't give away everything just to keep you hungry vultures from stealing my ideas, but I have the basics for at least six, and probably ten, articles in various magazines: golfing, travel/tourism, airlines, enterpreneur and women's magazines for a start. That should make enough to live on for the rest of the year and I have an in with the groundskeeper's wife. Not too shabby. I may even do a series of articles about the triangle here--that's my idea, too. I live in the center of a triangle formed on the west by Denver, on the east by Vail, and the north by Steamboat Springs, all of which are well known tourist stops. The area is pretty rural and very beautiful with wildlife and plants and trees you can't see anywhere else in the same way.

For instance, I was driving up the mountain to my cabin and stopped to watch a doe grazing on the side of the road. I turned off the radio and watched/talked to her for several minutes while she ate. i know. It's a little rude to talk when another is eating, but I just couldn't resist it.

Today has been very productive, but it has also been very pleasant and fulfilling. I received my $3.00 copy of Much Ado About Nothing and turned it on while I read a quick note from my father that contained a little green surprise.

I had already sent my check for the ghost story to be banked and checked the rest of my packages. (There were quite a few) I received two copies of Five Points magazine to study so I can submit what they want to see, some self burning charcoal for home made incense, a sample copy of Commonweal magazine to check them out, another horror book to review, a fifty-cent copy of the collected works of Jane Austen, and a few more magazines. Halfway thru the movie my mother called to say hello and congratulate me on another good article (I send her copies of everything) and I just got off the phone with Beanie who was on her way home from a college course on writing.

After the movie, I transplanted some very tall and burgeoning tomato plants, basil, thyme, and mint and watered the plants again since the promised thunderstorm has not dropped its wet burden yet. At least my sinus pressure headache is gone, which means the low front is moving away and I can quit worrying my right eye is about to explode from the socket. Ever since I moved up here I have had sinus pressure headaches before big storms. I've become a better barometer than the glass and fluid-filled kind.

Beanie and I talked about focus in writing, the use of the word "you", and how to show versus telling a story with description and sensory details. I so enjoy talking about writing, so much so you'd think I was a writer or something.

Queen is on the computer and I feel absolutely energized and excited. The hummingbirds are buzzing the deck and greedily slurping the new syrup I put out this morning and my plants are finally growing in the summer sun that has at last deigned to make a daily appearance this week. All in all, networking has proved to be quite lucrative and I live in the most wonderful spot on this earth. How could this day be anything but wonderful?

Okay, I'll shut up now, but go outside and enjoy the sunshine or the moonshine or just the air that ruffles your hair and think about me picking out a constellation with my telescope to research and write about for a new magazine on beginning astronomy. Life is wonderful and I'm blessed.

That is all. Disperse.

Learning magazine speak

I received my first bid for printing Living Voices and I realize I don't know anything about card stock and weights. There are so many choices in cover finishes: lacquer, glossy, UV, etc. All pages have to be figured in multiples of four because there are four sides to a folded sheet of paper. I don't know how many stories I will have or if there will be any stories at all. The printer offered a bid based on 24 black & white pages with full color covers inside and out. I'm not even sure I want to go with something the size of a magazine like Writer's Digest or The Writer or if I want to go with something more like a literary magazine. I asked for further information, but I am a little out of my depth yet. It's like swimming for the first time when your feet don't touch the bottom. There is that instant of breathless shock and momentary panic before you remember you can actually swim and you're not going to drown. I'm still feeling for the bottom.

Beanie sent me the first draft of her essay about Dad and I marked it up in color . . . my usual mode of editing. She wrote things I didn't know and it was an interesting essay, but she needs to work on run-on sentences and the use of ITS versus IT'S, not to mention removing the ubiquitous THAT from her sentences, but most people have that problem. All in all, I'd say with a little judicious pruning and refining she'd have a very publishable essay where the wonderful story doesn't get lost in the grammar shuffle.

Then I received an SOS from a former colleague at R&T. She was given an August 1st deadline to finish editing an essay from someone I edited in the summer issue. No big deal. The essay was pretty clean and in the author's usual style of tongue in cheek comparisons of writing to food, which is always fun to read . . . like looking thru someone else's mind for a moment or two. It took about 20 minutes to edit and I sent it back. I guess I'm on an editing jag, but hopefully I am done for the day. I need to focus on my own writing and I'm on a writing high right now. Must be the nightmare I had last night and the energy that galvanized me into action.

I finished my essay for Parabola and got the confirmation they received it and would notify me in a month whether or not my words would appear on their pages. Strangely enough I have had several queries accepted by them, but this is the first time I have been able to break thru the block/barrier that kept me from being able to write anything at all. I just dried up on the vine as if the acceptance was some sort of cork to my energies and words. It has been very difficult for me to break thru the barriers for a while and I despaired of being able to break into print in Parabola despite my fondness for and study of myth and tradition most of my life. I'm sure you have read my thoughts and mental wanderings on these pages (and if you haven't then you should if for nothing else than a quick laugh) so there is no lack of desire and volubility, but when push came to shove and money was a possibility from my writing I froze. The thoughts swirled and drifted but I was unable to catch them and put them into any kind of coherent form until the deadline was long past. I pray that I have reached the end of that stop-gap.

I sent out queries to editors of several print magazines, some that I respect and to whom I have submitted my work, and received an answer from one of the founders of Glimmer Train. They are far too busy to respond fully but offered to answer specific questions and that is good news. I really respect the two sisters who created and run Glimmer Train. Lord knows I have entered enough of my writing in their contests and have submitted for publication. Haven't broken thru that barrier yet, but I think that time is coming soon. I am getting closer to their tone and type of writing.

I also received a positive response to a query for an interview. I snagged James Redfield of The Celestine Prophecy fame. I want to know about his self publishing and how he feels about the self published to mass published success he has attained, how he got there, and some info about the movie being made from the book which is finishing principle photography at this moment. I guess that means he will grace the cover of the debut issue of LV and should attract a sizeable bit of attention and readership, if for nothing else than his celebrity status.

If my luck continues, I should be able to line up quite an impressive cadre of well known authors to tell their stories and give us all a peek inside the publishing world. They can show us all what it really looks like to be a successful author living on the fruits of their literary labors. Who knows? I may take this is as a good sign and go after John Grisham, John Updike, and a few of the other notables, although Ray Bradbury is at the top of my list. I would love to have him on the cover of the debut issue of LV, but I'll settle for having him on any issue.

Now I have to figure out how to entice subscribers to buy something they won't be able to read until December and that what they're buying is worth the price of admission. I also have to figure out a price. Any hints or suggestions? There are also advertisers to approach and convince they are buying into a promising and lucrative market and I'm thinking about airlines who service the destinations where the stories and characters in those stories, essays, and articles live and have lived. Nothing like giving a place a bit of character, a place where life has been lived and continues to be lived in every day obscurity.

Oh, well, I'll shut up for now. But I'll be back.

Weekend

This entire weekend I have focused on nothing more than pleasure and relaxation. There has finally been some heat and little rain, for which my plants were panting, and a whole lot of sunshine. I have taken a small share of the sunshine, but mostly have been playing mahjong and trying to increase my pattern recognition abilities. I really should give it up though since it takes too much time from other more important things like writing.

I have been wrestling with Cupid and Psyche and C. S. Lewis's version of the story, trying to tease some sensibility of friendships and obsessions out of it all with very little success, and yet it still bugs me. I need to just forget about being intelligent and write, but that is one of my failings . . . I actually expect to be able to write something--anything--intelligible. I have become spoiled and arrogant and probably should just forget about making sense.

The whole premise of my article is that the question that arises from the pairing of ugly and beautiful people. Ever notice how some people tend to gravitate toward their opposites, either in order to make themselves appear more beautiful, more talented, or just more while others just want the leavings that fall from the beautiful partner's table? To be sure there are those who don't care so much about appearances, but those outside the friendship usually see the pairing as advantageous . . . and not a little sad for the ugly one . . . and desirable, especially if they are of the more appealing looking kind of observer. They say opposites attract, but you seldom see a handsome man with a plain or ugly woman, especially nowadays when most people focus on the superficial beauties and forget there is more to a person that should matter. It is not uncommon to see a fat or ugly man in the company of a beautiful woman, although that happens less and less as men become more aware and obsessive about their appearance and how they are perceived by society. It seems we as a society are becoming more superficial in a time when we should be more aware of and trying to develop deeper and more lasting qualities. Ah, well, as they say, beauty is fleeting, but sometimes I wish it would flee a lot faster until we are all reduced to a more level playing field.

It occurs to me that beautiful people often tend to ignore more lasting and substantial abilities of intelligence, wit, etc. in favor of ways to make themselves more beautiful, relying on that beauty to smooth the way and get them whatever it is they desire. I wonder if that means as a society we are becoming more stupid and less substantial. There is always room for improvement, but if we continue on this downward spiral we will soon find ourselves ignorant children bred to sustain ugly underground dwelling Morlocks.

Start-ups

The feeding frenzy has begun and I haven't even gotten used to the idea that I'm going to be a publisher.

I sent out the information about the new ezine, Living Voices, yesterday and specifically noted that I would not be accepted submissions until August 1st and people are sending them already. I didn't even look at the submissions. I don't have time right now. But I am finding out about starting a new venture.

I want the magazine to be more than just an ezine. I want it to be a print magazine with real paper and real print, so I have to contact publishers and see about prices and put together a budget so I can pay writers and find out how much I really have to have for expenses and enough to keep me in food and necessities. Then I have to put all this together into a report so I can begin sending out grant proposals. I am also finding out about how to get advertising for the magazine and I came up with the idea of having a major corporation sponsor each issue, which will be quarterly to begin with. I'll post content on the web as well, but I really want a print magazine. I have approached Southwest Airlines. I have to start somewhere.

I will check out other airlines, too, because I think it's a good match with a magazine that talks about people in different regions and parts of the world (I hope). Tie in the regions and people with ways to get there and I just might be able to pull it all together. I also have to work out an advertising budget. That should be fun. I've been involved on the fringes of advertising all my life and handled placement of ads when I put together the security industry newsletter I edited and wrote for three years, but this is very different.

I also contacted the owners/editors of Glimmer Train magazine to see if they would be willing to discuss how they got started. I also contacted James Redfield, who wrote The Celestine Prophecy and is currently finishing a movie based on the book, to do an interview for the debut issue. I have a little different idea, something more interesting to writers: dealing with self publishing and the hype that followed the book. I am also going after J. K. Rowling and Sir Arthur C. Clarke about interviews for future issues, or the debut issue if James Redfield says no. Getting big name authors for interviews will have to be an ongoing process, but it's one I can handle. I did it for The Rose & Thorn over the past year and was pretty successful. I'm just going after bigger fish and working it into a business plan.

Yikes! I just realized I used the words "business plan" in a sentence referring to me. That's frightening. I don't remember ever wishing to become a productive adult. I just wanted to be a hedonistic dilletantte of a writer, not a publisher, but that is where I'm headed.

I am gaining some sort of name recognition since authors are approaching me to review their books. They can't possibly have read my review or they wouldn't ask. LOL I guess it pays to write and get it out there.

But back to the business plan. My goal is to start a publishing company and publish my own magazine and books based on the magazine. Living Voices is about the small stories, the people that make up history but that history never notices. I envision anthologies of regional stories and stories covering certain periods of history. I'll start with America, but I want to expand to encompass the people all over the world. Think about the people that make up nations, the faces behind the country's facade, people who do not necessarily agree with national and international views of them and their countries or their politics. The big names will always make the news, but what about the average person in the street? Those are the stories that are worth preserving, the truth of the day to day existence in and around historical markers. Anyway, that's my goal and my vision.

The next few months should prove interesting as I find out how to put this all together and whether or not I can put it all together. I'll keep you posted. You might actually be interested in how it all works and if not . . . ?

Time for me to shut up and get busy. I have an essay due for Parabola magazine tomorrow and I need to get cracking. I do have my own fish to fry. I guess sex and a personal life aren't going to be an option for me for a long time. Oh, well, I won't miss what I haven't had.

That is all. Disperse.

News

December 2004: Living Voices Magazine: Preserving the Past and the Present for the Future.

J. M. Cornwell, prose editor and chief webmaster for The Rose & Thorn until June 2004, is launching a new E-zine, Living Voices, a literary e-zine with an edge. Stories of the past, present, and future; stories you can't forget and want always to remember. The little stories and moments that define history, stories that touch on big historical events or happen outside of written history that focus on a moment caught in time. Think about Emily in the graveyard in the play, Our Town. These are the voices that will be preserved in Living Voices.

Living Voices will accept submissions beginning August 1, 2004.

GUIDELINES: Someone once said that life is in the details, the moment to moment minutiae; that is what I want to see. Stories your grandparents, uncles, aunts, and parents told you, the stories of their lives before, during and after wars, old letters, your stories and memories.

Submit your memoirs, fiction, nonfiction, retellings of stories of your past and your family's. Take those moments into the future or the past or onto other worlds as long as the character is the main focus.

NONFICTION: Essays, memoirs, family stories/histories, author interviews, and book reviews to 2000 words.

FICTION: Maximum 3500 words. No confessions. Genre fiction must be character driven.

POETRY: Any style up to 50 lines.

TIPS: Prose or poetry may be complex and literary but must contain a moment worth preserving, like an insect in amber. I want to see the stories of people and not the broader canvas of world events. Show me why I should, and why you do, care or remember that one moment.

Submissions may be sent to LV Submissions and must contain SUBMISSIONS and the type of submission (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, interview, or review) in the subject line.

Living Voices is also looking for poetry, nonfiction, and fiction editors. Send your background and qualifications to J. M. Cornwell to be considered.

I guess that makes it official.

Uncle

I give up. I'm tired of fighting.

Today, has been a day of changes, some small and some pretty big. It all started with finding out my Prodigy e-mail address will be discontinued as of mid August. I've had that e-mail address since I went online the first time nine years ago. I run all my writing thru that e-mail address and I have to give it up. I have no idea how many people who have some of my submissions will respond after the e-mail is defunct and I know that sending them a notice will make no sense to them if they haven't even reached my submission yet. It would only confuse things if I send them a note letting them know now. I'll just cross my fingers and hope they will pay attention to the phone number and the snail mail address, especially when sending checks.

I decided to look into setting up a business account just for e-mail, but that makes no sense. I've been threatening to start a magazine of my own, so I did. The new magazine is called Living Voices and will be located at Living Voices in the next few days. It's not active yet, but the domain name is registered and it's mine . . . at least until they renew it automatically in two years. *deep breath*

The past year has been full of changes for me. I lost a comfy job when they down sized me and was thrown into unemployment and writing full time. I have done more in the past few months than I have done for the last several years, but starting a magazine of my own was a bit of a stretch. So many friends, peers, and colleagues told me I should stop spending my energy and talents on unappreciative people or on others period. Two names spring immediately to mind, but I'm going to take the high road and let you read back thru old entries to figure out who I mean.

*Deep Sigh* I just paid out a chunk of money to do this and I will have to make it work. I want to be able to pay writers and poets, but I also want to take this magazine to print within the next two years. I am biting off a big piece of the literary pie and I know a lot of magazines have folded, but it's still worth the effort. I'll send out a general announcement and press releases and make guidelines available and then the feeding frenzy begins. I can't wait for the priceless pearls among the sand.

I guess it's time to get a shower and run errands, go to the post office, and get outside so I can let out the scream of shock and surprise I've been holding in all morning since I decided to do this. Please excuse me. I need to go scream. Thank the heavens I live in a secluded region.

Okay, I'll shut up now.

Fairy tale tales

Classical musicians took folk songs and children's ballads and turned them into classical masterpieces. Think Beethoven, Bach, Grieg, Mozart, etc. It seems modern writers have done the same thing with fairy tales. Even the writers at Tales from the Crypt, which was a copy cat version of Stephen King's Creepshow, have plumbed the fairy tale depths and Stephen King has co-opted a few of his plots from the fairy tale sources.

What brings up this particular idea? A. S. Byatt's Possession is a story about a man who is caught up in an unknown liaison between a married 19th century poet and writer and an unmarried poet who has become the darling of the women's movement because of a long torturous poem about The Fairy Melusine, which is the tale of a woman who married a knight who promised never to follow or watch her on Saturdays. He kept his word for many years until he either cut a hole in the door or watched thru the keyhole to find his wife was a serpent from the waist down. The story is a reverse retelling of Beauty and the Beast, except the beauty is the beast.

Tales from the Crypt used the fairy tale in their rendering of a coupling of a gargoyle who fell in love with an artist, and so on. Even Hans Christian Anderson's The Little Mermaid, which MGM used to such lovely purpose in Danny Kaye's portrayal of Anderson, the Danish storyteller whose statue stands in the main square in Copenhagen. Not bad for a Hungarian folk tale to have made such an impact on so many writers and storytellers. You can see vestiges of Fairy Melusine in Fairy Tell True, of which I have written before in this journal.

Sheri S. Tepper won the Locus Award for her novel, Beauty, which takes several fairy tales and weaves them into one woman's life: a sleeping beauty, Cinderella, and so forth. In fact, Sleeping Beauty has sparked many a writer's imagination and even ended up as a really marvelous Disney movie before Disney took itself so seriously into the monopoly of theme parks and all things fantasical market. Tannith Lee, mistress of all tales dark and romantic, in her White as Snow compendium of fairy tales retells several fairy tales, among them Rapunzel, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty, adding her own dark twist to the tales.

Makes you think there are only a few plots and everyone keeps working them and working them. Does that make them derivative or inspired? One actor in a movie said he couldn't listen to Music of the Night from Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera without the song, School Days, School Days, running thru his mind.

Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast shares more than its title with the fairy tale and even with Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac. They share the tale of Beauty falling in love with the Beast and realizing only as he dies in her arms. And it was all based on the original French fairy tale, which is obviously taken from the much older tale of Psyche and Cupid. Even C. S. Lewis found the story interesting, but he felt it lacked something so he wrote Till We Have Faces, giving Psyche's sister a part in the tale and a motivation for Psyche to undergo the trials she undertakes so she may be reunited with Cupid.

Fairy tales are not original to Europe. Cinderella's prince has found her slipper in many countries. For instance, Charles Perrault's tale of the beautiful young girl at the mercy of her evil stepmother and stepsisters, has her counterpart in Yeh-Shen who is much older than Perrault's Cinderella.

Don't have an idea for another story? Borrow a fairy tale.

Where does it all end? Hollywood is all for taking stories and ideas in the public domain to make billions and it's obvious writers and musicians have no problems with adapting folk music and fairy tales to form the frame for their original ideas. Are there really no new stories, no new plots, no new ideas or is everything built on the obviously strong bedrock of the past? I guess only time will tell if anywhere there is an original tale, an original story, and original writer, musician or filmmaker. Will it be you or me? Wanna race?

Afternoon Delight

I need to get something to eat, go to the post office, and buy groceries, but first I have news. I sold a story.

The story is called Just a Prayer Away, but knowing there will be people who might misinterpret that the name will be changed to Just a Breath Away. The story is for an anthology of ghostly encounters. It's the first sale in a while and I'm excited, ecstatic, and excessively out of my mind with happiness and a sense of accomplishment, especially since I just wrote the story yesterday. It happened many years ago, but I never put it down and I didn't tell any family members about it, so the story will come as a big surprise . . . and possibly a shock. They don't believe in ghosts.

Anyway, I feel like more good news is on the horizon. I can feel it . . . or at least I think I can.

kaiberie asked me yesterday about any romance I might have lying around, but I don't read romance and I don't write it. Well, I haven't written much. Just a couple books here and there that went absolutely nowhere because I lost the urge or the something that keeps a story going. Basically, I just ran out of enthusiasm and gas. One book is finished, but it's not just romance; there's intrigue and secrets and seduction along with the romance, so I don't think you can strictly call it a romance. I need to get it edited and sent out once I can get access to the hard drive it's on.

But I was thinking last night, while I was watching Persuasion, another Jane Austen movie, that I love romantic movies: An Affair to Remember, Sleepless in Seattle (anything with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks), and so many other wonderful Jane Austen books/movies that maybe I should stop worrying about the kind of books I associate with romance and write a few of my own. I wrote one yesterday but I don't know how it will be received or if it will even be published. However, I could be missing out on something that would fulfill a need in me and be a lot easier to get published. Something to think about, especially when you realize that the biggest (and hungriest for new material) genre market is romance. And romance doesn't have to be the Harlequin cookie-cutter kind of romance, but something like An Affair to Remember or Sleepless in Seattle or Jane Austen or a thousand other really wonderful, complex, rich, and multi-faceted stories. I may have to retrench and add it to my meager repertoire. Nothing wrong with getting paid for falling in love with a story and making myself cry. Kathleen Turner did it in Romancing the Stone (not to be mistaken for Romancing the Bone.

Romance author, Joan Wilder, whose books are read all over the world and translated into a hundred different languages, goes to South America to rescue her sister and ends up in the arms of erstwhile trapper and mercenary of the heart, Jack T. Colton. But Joan Wilder is a dyed-in-the-wool writer of romantic fantasies of the Harlequin type and that's not what I want.

I want smart, funny, sexy, hot, seductive, and wonderfully romantic romance. Sounds like an oxymoron, doesn't it? You know what they say: no stone unturned means you might miss the big [insert object of wealth]. Besides, I'm a glutton for rejection punishment and I haven't had enough of that lately.

On the flip side, The Sun hasn't sent me their usual overnight delivery for rejection for the two stories I sent them. That is good news. Usually, I get a rejection back almost before the envelope leaves the post office. I sent the stories May 31st and no news is good news from that front.

Okay, it's time for me to shut up and get some things done. I have movies to watch and I want popcorn for a change. I also want ice cream, decadent Godiva chocolate raspberry truffle ice cream and a pizza with everything, including anchovies. I want to plant my big butt in the most comfortable chair in front of the television and wallow in some more Jane Austen and Philip K. Dick.

On that note, you really should check out the sound track from Blade Runner. From pulse pounding beats to wonderful jazz riffs, the music is really wonderful. As many times as I've seen the movie, this is the first time I've listened to the soundtrack and I love it. A little Eagles from Hell Freezes over and a lot of the soundtrack of Blade Runner makes a great complement to exciting days of acceptances and immediately mailed checks.

That is all. Disperse and go write your own stories.

Ghosts and Romance

When I think of ghosts and romance I think of Rex Harrison and Gene Tierney in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir and especially the last scene when she is an old woman and has died in her chair. Captain Daniel Gregg reaches down and takes Mrs. Muir's hand, telling her it's time to go. She rises up as Captain Gregg's young and beautiful Lucia, just as she had been when they first met and she rented Gull Cottage despite its reputation for being haunted.

Unfortunately, that's not the kind of ghost and romance I mean today. I have been busy.

I was waiting for a picture of my grandmother, which I received from my parents a week or so ago, so I could write the ghost story of her visit after she died. I wrote that this morning and just the memory of that special night still brings tears to my eyes because I know she's still near me and just a breath away. It's why I cry when I hear Josh Groban sing Just a Breath Away.

The story is for an anthology about ghosts and I have already been accepted and will even be paid. How cool is that?

The romance is for another contest. I wonder if I should just quit sending my writing in to contests and get back to writing for whoever will buy my words, but in a way it's a training ground, a chance for me to exercise my literary skills (or lack thereof) and get into the habit of writing more and more often. I am pretty proud of the story about a couple of teenagers who once lived across the street from each other and found out eight years later that they had always been in love. There's one little scene where they're walking down the beach one evening at Daytona and he kisses her. He gave her her first kiss when she was ten years old in a tunnel of love at an amusement park and both of them remembered the kiss but never said anything. The story's about summer and broken hearts that need the right moment and the right words to mend.

So, two stories down today in addition to the seven I wrote over the weekend. I do need to get back to the book, but I'm not quite ready to dive back into that deep pool. Not yet anyway.

I finished Rushdie's Fury and it took a surprising turn a little over halfway thru when Professor Malik Solanka falls in love and writes a fairy tale that launches another successful line of dolls and fuels a revolution in Lilliput-Blefuscu where his lover is from. But the ending, surprising as it is, turns out to be a joyful, silly, and wonderful moment when he realizes what is really important to him. It's a little more romantic than I expected Salman Rushdie to be, but it's my first foray into his world. Instead of jumping into another Rushdie world, I decided to try A. S. Byatt's Possession instead. I read a synopsis of the movie with Gwyneth Paltrow and decided to check out the book first. It's a big one, but so far it's intriguing. The first few pages involve theft of history and a professional war between two scholars intent on the same poet. Could be good, but I'll reserve my judgment until later.

I did pick up the other Rushdie book I ordered, which was finally at the library, and checked the mail. I had nothing new to review until today when I picked up the mail. There was a box of five books, nonfiction and fiction, awaiting me and I haven't had a chance to get thru the library books yet. I can see I will be spending a lot of time reading for quite a while, especially since AuthorLink got their problems straightened out and are sending me another horror novel to read and review. Feast or famine, but at least there is a little money in the offing and that never hurts. Don't you feel sorry for me facing a mountain of books I have to read and review? *grins* Or is that jealousy I see in your virtual eyes?

I think I also upset an LJ user when I noticed one of the quotes he posted was from one of my favorite books, The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. He considers her a pain in the head that just won't go away. However, I upset him when I said that his favorite, Hemingway, was without substance. Hemingway was a great reporter, but as a novelist his work is a skeleton without the muscle, flesh, and skin. I loved The Old Man and the Sea, but his books were more like movie scripts than novels. The characters are wraiths moving thru a ghostly panorama, but that's just my take. Not everyone likes the same authors, or even dislikes the same authors, for the same reasons. If we did, there would be no reason to have more than one or two writers or poets in any generation. Just pick the one everyone likes and forget about the rest. That's what is so wonderful about writing; there are so many different styles, viewpoints, characters, and worlds to visit. Some you like and some you don't, but than the gods there are lots to choose from. It's like trying a new food. You never know if you're going to like it or not until you taste it.

Just like I didn't realize until I got my father's letter today that I didn't know that much about his childhood. The log cabin he showed me when I was a child is where he was happiest and that was before his mother died. There is a whole history of my family and my father's life I know nothing about. I wrote back and told him I would like to know more about his life and about my grandparents. Hopefully, he'll share that with me and with my siblings. It's strange to realize you don't know much about your parents or what they were like, what they loved and dreamed and hated, and what made them into the people who were the center of your universe as a child.

Well, that's enough prattle for one day. I'll shut up now.

Disperse.

Opinions

Many of you are either writers or like to write or you wouldn't spend so much time commenting, reading, and writing in your blogs. Some of you may even aspire to publication some day, but you're afraid your words and your stories aren't good enough. Granted, there are some who yield metaphor and words like a Samurai and others who fumble and stumble across the keyboard or paper, but that does not mean your words aren't worth reading. The main fear is whether or not anyone will read or care about what you write or, worse yet, that someone will have something bad to say about your writing. Don't worry. You won't be disappointed.

One thing you can guarantee is that someone will hate what you write and decry it from the cyber heights as the worst piece of drivel ever penned by an illiterate ape. That's a given. It is inevitable. But that person who denounces you as a talentless hack with pretensions to intelligence read what you wrote and read it all the way thru or s/he would not have commented about how your ending lacked force or insight and how you failed to tie up all the loose ends or even provide a reason for the story Think about it.

Ever since man climb down out of the trees and stood erect, clutched a fire-charred stick and drew a picture for his tribe, wo/man has been a perverse and erratic creature. Even in biblical history, Adam and Eve knowingly did what they were told not to do -- eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Like they needed help with the evil part. It is part of wo/men's nature, that perversity of spirit that makes them go where they are told not to go and do what they are told not to do. It's a fact of life. We like what we have been forbidden to touch or have or even envision. Without that perversity of nature we would still be a half-step above the animals.

In this day of blurb envy and acquisition, writers pray for someone with a recognizable name who will read their words and give them a literary pat on the back with a quick little sentence or, hope beyond hope, paragraph they can use to promote their book. All that back patting and those kindly words are effective as praise goes, but what about a book that touts its own mediocrity or mishandling of the intricacies of language and societal mores and morays? Wouldn't you be more likely to see what the fuss was all about? Wouldn't you be more likely to pick up a book that screamed in bold three-dimensional letters that the book is garbage and the writer should be banned from any form of writing? Think about the sign that says the paint is wet or the dark basement where strange and ominous sounds scream, "Don't go down there." What are you more likely to do?

Wo/man is perverse so it is time for writers to become equally perverse. Write what you want and pray for critics the way a stand-up comic prays for hecklers so that the spark will start a literary blaze that will rush across the plains and excite everyone to weigh in and give their opinion. The more people who dislike your book means there are more people reading your words and they took the time to buy your book. Whether they keep it or not is immaterial, but I'd be willing to bet they will tell their friends they have to read the junk between the covers just so they won't be called a liar or delusional. A sale is a sale and a reader is a reader.

Every time you think you lack talent, think of the nasty person waiting in the wings to snap up your book just so they can loudly shout from the cyber heights, in print, and maybe even on the air waves and microwaves that your book is the worst piece of insanity to ever see print. Being a hack is not necessarily a bad thing. Look at Stephen King and Dean Koontz and so many others. Even Clinton's book deserves to be read and quietly shut in a cellar, but at least get it from the library and spend your money for some really putrid tripe so you can feel confident that you are no less a writer than they.

Conceit is a good thing. Get some. Borrow it, steal it, or beg for it, but develop it and pray for long, detailed, and lousy reviews. It's your right.

What would it take?

I received my e-newsletter for the Erma Bombeck Writers Workshop this morning and read an article about a woman who was invited to send a demo for the possibility of being the host of a new reality TV show. She writes about the unlikely chance and how having her own website made it all possible, that and remembering to add the link in her info when she attended the workshop back in February. She goes on to say she has had more luck with placing her writing since she put up her website in October 2002 than when she was doing the send a copy and SASE for File 13. Makes sense, especially since the Internet is the most effective and quickest way to research a lot of people in a very short time.

Stop the presses! (I always wanted to say that.) Publishers are actually looking for talent on the net in blogs. I guess they get tired of reading and giving obscene advances to celebrity autobiographers after all. Sites like Book Slut and Arts and Letters Daily started out as personal blogs and ended as some of the most visited sites taken seriously. Iraqi wo/men are blogging and telling the story of their lives and the realities with which they live every single day. They are the real correspondents behind the lines and in the thick of battle. Of course, the Iraqi parliament has been threatening to shut down or limit Internet access for a while, but I doubt that will happen, even though they were handed the reins of power yesterday (two days ahead of schedule), while the coalition forces are still there. They still want to appear to be forming a democratic government despite the fact that historically they have been either a monarchy or a despot-controlled government. Just because democracy works for us doesn't mean it will work for their centuries' old traditions. They have been around a lot longer than we have been.

Even the Chinese have figured out that baby steps get you where you want to go a lot faster and safer than begging to be shot in Tiananmen square. Young Chinese have decided that quiet revolution is best and focus on worming their way thru the apple instead of taking a big bite and finding a bullet or a razor blade in their mouths. One such Chinese changeling is Mian Mian of Shanghai whose first book, Candy, was banned. She wrote about sex and debauchery, which came from her own experiences, at the end of the 20th century but has switched to promoting music, writing a newspaper column about relationships, depression, and her views on life, embracing the media she once turned her back on. Mian Mian also writes about fashion and is quite the clothes horse. Her parents, who spent their lives under Mao and his successors, are proud of their daughter and her revolutionary ways even though it seems they really don't understand her. Mian Mian is just one of the new revolutionaries taking their country back by millimeters and changing the world by being the change.

I also read an article by another Erma Bombeck conference attendee who styles herself a life coach who works mainly by phone. Lynn Colwell says she helps her clients see they can have the writing dream, if it is really their dream, something for which they would sacrifice everything, if they want it. She says most of her clients would be happy being able to write one hour a day. I don't agree. I do agree that it is something for which you must be willing to sacrifice yourself and some of your normal every day choices, but I don't agree that it can be satisfied by one hour a day . . . at least not for me. I write more than that in my journals every day. I do agree that you must make some sacrifices, but it can be done by nibbles instead of in gulps. If you really want to write and you want it more than anything else, give up 30 minutes of television a night. Just 30 minutes. Shut yourself away, tell your spouse/partner and children (if you have them) they are not to disturb you for that 30 minutes for anything less than the house burning down around their ears and only if it is headed in your direction. Take that 30 minutes, put on music that fits your mood or the tone of what you're writing or just something you enjoy but that does not interfere with your thinking or your writing, and write. It doesn't matter if at first all you end up with is gibberish. What matters is that you are building a habit, one that will take you where you want to go if you are really read to travel the writing path. Free write -- write whatever comes into your head. Loosen those mental and physical writing muscles and keep going no matter what. Use a timer if you like, but keep writing and don't stop for anything. Make sure to go to the bathroom before your trip and have everything you need at hand so you don't have an excuse to get up and look for something. Prepare for the writing journey the way you prepare your bag for that all important labor and delivery trip to the hospital. Don't be caught with your pencils unsharpened, not enough paper, or games on your computer. Set a timer if you must, but apply your butt to the seat and keep it there for 30 minutes.

After that 30 minutes, resist the urge to immediately critique your work. Leave it for the next morning or during your lunch break when you want something to read. During those 30 nightly minutes do nothing but write. In a way it's like a clandestine date with your muse and if you treat it that way it will be easy to build the writing habit.

It takes six weeks to form a habit and three months to make it permanent. So what are you waiting for? Choose 30 minutes of television you can do without. Don't worry about the laundry or the dishes or anything else. Just write. You'll be surprised how much you can get done in 30 minutes and how good you will feel about your choice and yourself. If you decide writing isn't for you, you'll find out soon enough, but give it a chance. Live your dream and see where it takes you.

In the meantime, I have a ghost story to write for an anthology and some romance to dig up or invent for kaiberie.

I'll shut up now.

Generosity personified

Having trouble writing that first sentence of your story or novel? Tobias Seamon has the answer with his free first sentences to kick start your writing.

You no longer have to worry and pull out your hair over that all important sentence, the one that grabs the editor by the throat and never lets go. Talk about generosity.

I wonder

Sometimes I wonder if high brow literature is beyond my grasp. I have Virginia Woolf and sometimes she seems incomprehensible or long winded. The sentences sometimes take up half a page and I end up going back. Then other times she is as clear as crystal. Could be my mind failing me, but I prefer to think she's a bit incomprehensible at times.

Because of one of my favorite movies, Bridget Jones's Diary, I have decided to check out Salman Rushdie at last. I got his Satanic Verses, but decided to start with Fury and it was a good choice. Fury is about a professor of philosophy who turns his back on the university's politics and dead ends to make dolls. One of his dolls, Little Brain, time travels and converses with the great philosophers. But she grows out of his control and becomes an international industry, to which he kept a financial interest, that has made him wealthy beyond his wildest dreams. He isn't happy. He is furious and begins to drink and walk until he finds himself over his sleeping wife and son with a carving knife in his hand. He stops himself and leaves the next morning to lose himself in America, that bastion of capitalism without the weight of a past or heritage, and into the midst of three murders by the Cement Murderer of three beautiful, talented, intelligent and obscenely wealthy young women. The cast of characters who provide the path of discovery to the roots of his fury and his salvation are an intricate and realistic group with agendas of their own.

The prose is rich and textured and the impotent fury that boils and seethes is as omnipresent as the national debt. I can hardly wait to finish this and go on to more of Rushdie's writing. If this book is any indication, I am definitely falling in love. This is the kind of writing that weaves history, language, ethnicity, and wisdom into a masterfully layered treat for mind and soul. Quite simply, Rushdie blows me away and makes me want to write better, richer, and a lot more.

It's strange that a man who looks like the embodiment of evil could write with such beauty and darkness and make it sublime.

But I have lots of writing of my own to do and I cannot spend another day and night dozing and reading like I did yesterday.

Despite being so tired and worn out from the 24-hour writing challenge (and I'm going to do another at the end of July -- I'm such a glutton for punishment), I didn't sleep much. I dozed and slept for a couple of hours and then laid awake, which gave me the perfect opportunity to read with a really good reason to lolligag in bed. I read To Kill a Mockingbird again. I love the simple straightforward prose and the unvarnished and uncompromising look at a small southern town before civil rights when cotton had been deposed as king and whites still ruled in all their naked contempt and loathing for men, women and children who were so much better than they. Harper Lee illustrates the clash of prejudice and decency and the traditions and old habits that maintained the fiction of who was better than whom with the simplicity of a child's vision.

I am surprised Harper Lee never wrote anything else but, as she said in an interview once, she never needed to write another book. She said all there was to be said. Harper Lee was cousin to Truman Capote who mourned the fact that he had written so much and had so much less acclaim, especially when his first novel was such a startling horrific tale. In Cold Blood was the first of book of its kind, a book that splashed blood on middle America, but like most shock, its value was devalued quickly into a sideshow freak. Truman was a competent writer, but he refused to dig too deeply into his heart or his past, except in short stories about his strange upbringing and Breakfast at Tiffany's. Truman Capote should have stuck to what he did best and forget the envy that stalked him in Harper Lee's literary wake.

I read both books in high school and still, even though there are bits and pieces of In Cold Blood I remember, it is To Kill a Mockingbird I return over and over, savoring the story as if reading it for the first time. I remember nearly all of Mockingbird because it continues to resonate in spite of how much time has passed between when it happened and now. I still see Atticus Finch pushing his wire rimmed glasses up on his head to sight the rifle with his one good eye and bring down a mad dog in the street in front of Boo Radley's worn and shadowed house. Everything from the book is etched forever in my mind the way some books do. There are few books I revisit so often or with such relish and I know there will be others. I am sure I will revisit Rushdie's Fury again, finding new and different nuances in the banquet of his prose.

Okay, enough of that. I need to forget about other writers and polish up a little Paradise Hell and move on to the next story. I could rhapsodize for hours about books and writers I have known and enjoyed, and even writers I hate and whose work is merely tripe, but I need to get to my own writing, to texture and shape my own prose. I am not conceited enough to believe what I write is great, but it is mine and I have stories to tell. One such story began nibbling at my mind yesterday when I woke up the first time and is now gnawing vigorously on my resolve to finish other tasks. But then I have always been fascinated by the difference between waking and dreaming realities.

Just curious, but have you ever awakened from a dream disoriented and unsure of where you were, not because you were tired but because your dreams were so real, so immediate and tactile you weren't sure which was more real? I still wonder which world I woke up into and which is real. I could still be dreaming, but somehow I know this is reality because my dreams are somehow more real, more solid, more.