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.

To be or not to be -- famous

Did the ancient artists who painted scenes on cave walls or laboriously turned over rocks on the desert plateau of Nazca care about whether or not they were famous, if what they did would have hundreds, thousands, even millions flocking to the sites to marvel at their artistry, their vision, or were they crackpots, crazy idiots who had nothing better to do with their time?

Today, the only thing that matters is if a book is a best seller. It doesn't matter whether or not the book is useful or even visionary, if it advances literature or is just plain artistic crap selling out like meatballs at a community fund raiser spaghetti dinner or bean feast.

The latest hype is dedicated to Bill Clinton's autobiography and everyone is surprised at the clamor for the book before it even launches. Small surprise, as the On the Media article states, since the media have hyped Clinton's latest public shell game like the second coming. A 957-page journey into the heart and mind of the most self aggrandizing and unrepentant publicity hound in recent history is worth about as much as a trip to the public library to read in the stacks. But the hungry masses will clamor for their own personal copy like anxious parents stampeding toy stores for Tickle Me Elmo or the latest must-have toy. Give me a break.

When did words cease to matter? When did literature become artistic crap that sells better than gold and lasts longer?

Earlier today I pondered those ancient artists who painted on cave walls, wondering if they were visionaries, priests, or crackpots. Did they know their work would remain for all time and mark them as the voice of their age? Does it matter? Isn't the fact that they existed enough? And if so, why does it matter that a wealthy parasite, who will feed off the bodies of the masses and take a percentage of their earnings for his own comfort for the rest of his life, has found yet another way to dip into the dwindling well and gather more wealth at the country's -- and the world's -- expense?

That time and circumstance made it possible for those ancient artists' work to endure doesn't mean we should be bilked into buying into yet another media hyped book with the staying power of dandelion fluff in a fire storm. How do we want to be remembered when our time is past, by the egotistical sensibilities of a Freudian wet dream or by the vision and words of true artistry? I guess in the end only time and circumstance will determine what will be saved and what will be lost to the ages. Of course, Clinton's book stands a chance of outdistancing everything worthwhile of words, thoughts, and deeds since there will be more of his books left behind for time to attempt to swallow. After all, it is harder to digest a dinosaur turd than it is to swallow a hummingbird's tongue.

High

I'm high. Not on drugs...on books. I found this incredible web site called Book Slut and have spent countless hours reading reviews and info on books and magazines and horror and erotica and so much more but I have to take a breath now. *deep breath* The site has been out there for two years, but I am new to the whole blogging thing and LJ and Dead Journal, and now Blog Spot and just getting around to what most of you probably already know.

In the parlance of Book Slut, I'm a research slut, a reading slut, a slut for all things literate and wordy and wonderful. I admit I'm a bit behind the times, but I've been working and traveling and making my way thru the world and didn't have time for anything else, other than some of my own writing. I have a stack of books on the bench at the end of my bed I have yet to get to read, but I'm getting there. I have boxes of books back in Ohio in storage and I have read all those, some of them more than once, and you should have seen the hundreds of books I sold off before I hit the road and ended up in the glorious Rockies. And that isn't even the half of it. I have been reading since I don't know when. A description from To Kill a Mockingbird is apt. Scout is talking about when she learned to read, sitting on Atticus's lap and watching his finger move across the page until the words began to make sense and she could read. I don't remember sitting on my father's lap while he read the newspaper or a book, but I do remember the moment when the words made sense and I was pretty young.

I was born with a love of books and now I have lots more to investigate and read and catch up. Oh, if I only had a hundred lifetimes and could read everything written: good, bad and indifferent. The feel, the scent, the touch of a book on my mind and heart and emotions, the way I feel when I read a really stellar piece of writing or laugh out loud with the really witty parts, even the groans when something really awful has been written. I am constantly amazed at the wondrous (and sometimes really bad) ways that people can take the basic plots and turn them into stories. I want to hold and caress and read and re-read every single book, but funds are a bit tight now. I need Helene Hanff's bookish and oh-so-British Frank Doel's help to find those inexpensive and wonderful volumes slotted on dusty shelves at 84 Charing Cross Road, although Hamilton Books does a really good job with the $1.95 remainder specials. You can find almost anything, but not everything, and I need everything. I want everything. I want to be fed intravenously and just read. I don't want to sleep or walk or do anything but read and then write what strikes my mind, stirs my passions, moves me. I want to be entertained, appalled, frightened, and transported to worlds of imagination and reality. I want more books.

In the meantime, in my temporarily (I hope) embarrassed financial circumstances, I will have to settle for my first taste of Salman Rushdie and A. S. Byatt from the public library's plastic encased volumes. And I am going to have to revisit Douglas Adams's Restaurant and Hitch Hiker in borrowed volumes. I may even take a quick foray back to the Known Universe with Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson among those crowded and public shelves instead of pulling a well loved copy from my own boxes and shelves. But read I will until my eyes can no longer see and my ears no longer hear and I must learn Braille to get my literary fix.

Time to go dress for the trip and pick up my public copies so I can rush back here to read and wallow and explore yet another adventure, discovering new faces and places and ways to write.

I don't need proof...

I sit here in the semi-darkness, the computer screen the only light in the loft and a small light on in the kitchen downstairs and beneath where I sit, pondering a phone call from my mother. It was past midnight in Ohio when she called and we picked up our usual half-argument about calling late and wasting money calling so often. "Didn't I just talk to you yesterday?" I asked before she could say it to me, although she called yesterday and tonight. "Well, if you don't want to talk to me..." At this point, I give in and our hellos are finished. It's a hold over from all the years of arguing and there is love in the exchange and a bit of laughter within the mock battle.

"Your father got your letter today," she said, her voice soft and almost secretive.

"I thought he might've and I was going to call but I know you would have a fit so I waited."

"He didn't say anything. You know how he is. Then he gave it to me to read and said it was nice."

Nice is my father's highest praise when he says anything at all, which is rarely. He doesn't read books. He reads the newspaper and watches television, but he doesn't read books and that is something I didn't realize until a little while ago. I can't ever remember seeing him read a book.

"Then your father started talking about growing up in that log cabin and how poor they were when his mother died. He said he wanted to give his children everything he never had and then he cried. In 54 years of marriage I have never seen your father cry."

"I saw him cry once at his father's funeral," I said, pushing the words past the growing lump in my throat and the rising tide of tears.

I wrote a poem for my mother for Mother's Day and she keeps reading it and tells me she still cries. I cried when I wrote it and she tells me I will never understand how much it means to her.

I don't have a lot of money and my father has a tendency to kill Bonsai trees, so I decided to make something to give him for Father's Day. I tried to write a poem, but nothing seemed right. Nothing came out the way I intended. Poetry isn't easy for me most of the time and other times it flows out of me like water from a hole in a dam. But my father loves to write letters so I decided to write him a letter.

"Your father put your letter back in the envelope and put it in his desk. He went into his office to write you a letter."

I am a writer and my gift is words. Lately, it seems my gift for words makes people cry, specifically my mother and father. I don't mean to make them cry, but I want them to know without a doubt how much I love them and cherish all the memories we share.
I have been plaguing my parents to sit down with a tape recorder and record all their stories and memories about their life so the stories, those bits of history, will not be lost when they are gone. I have had to face the fact that my parents won't always be there, that they are not the immortals I believed them to be as a child. They still see me as a child and I still see them young and strong and eternally there. We all have our illusions. But I do not want the illusion to include any doubts about my love and affection and respect for my parents and for the journey we have shared. I want there to be no doubt in their minds or mine about how precious and special each moment we share really is, and that includes all the fights and misunderstandings and mistakes, because without the path we have walked together none of us would be who we are at this moment.

My father has always feared letting those he loves know how much he loves them because early in his life everyone he loved disappeared. I think he now knows I understood his love even without the words.

This is what I wrote:

Dear Dad:

I wanted to send you a card, but funds have been tight. I thought about writing a poem, but wasn't sure if that was something you'd enjoy or even read more than once. Then I thought about just writing, knowing how much you love to correspond, and giving you a taste of my memories.

Most of all I remember dancing with you, my pudgy little hand in your strong giant hands, so gentle and yet so protective. Spinning me around and making my skirt fly out in a circle while you held Carol or Jimmy on your hip. I remember having to go to bed by myself while you carried Carol, telling me I was a big girl and too heavy to carry, but I went to my room and laid on the floor, pretending to be asleep, so you would have to pick me up and put me in bed, hoping I wasn't too heavy for that short little trip. I remember your smell of sunshine and after shave and the feel of your hands and fingers as you combed my wet hair into long curls and ringlets just like Shirley Temple. I remember the deep etched dimples in your cheeks and the crinkles around your eyes when you smiled and the sound of your laughter that tickled my heart, my ears, and my soul. I remember a green clad Santa carrying an olive drab duffel bag up the snowy sidewalk when Carol and I were making snow angels on the front lawn, your shoulders covered with falling snow and the unmistakable vision of you walking toward us.

I remember the wonderful smells that came from the kitchen when you cooked and the times you decided to teach us all the value of a dollar by making the meals from your childhood: cornbread and beans with fresh onions and fried cornmeal mush. You thought we'd feel sorry for you but all I felt was glad because the taste and smell of those meals linger with me still. I even buy cornmeal mush to fry and simmer beans in a pot all day just to be closer to you when I am far from home. I remember sharing secrets with you and learning about your childhood, scenes that have never faded from my imagination. I remember the log cabin sinking into the ground among the tobacco fields behind Great Grandma Cornwell's house in Cynthiana and the smell of the barn where tobacco leaves dried in the shadowy darkness. I remember riding roller coasters and exciting rides with you at Cedar Point and how much joy you got from just being alive.

I remember watching with pride as you marched in parades on base in Panama and other Army bases, knowing you the moment I saw you by the twinkle in your eyes and the distinctive way you walked. I remember purses you sewed from banana leaves when we lived in Panama and how you enjoyed the snakes as much as I did. I remember you lying on the tin casing of something or other in the back yard on our house on Terrace baking and broiling in the sun with your own concoction of baby oil and iodine, and the way you smelled of apple cider vinegar. I remember the way you worked with the German Shepards we raised and the way you played cards on weekends with your friends.

I remember the letters and pictures when you were posted to Korea and other places we could not go and the excitement and happiness I felt when we saw you again, not to mention the stories and tales of your adventures while you were gone.

But most of all I remember wanting to find a man as good, kind, devoted, loving, and wonderful as you to marry and spend the rest of my life with. I wasn't successful because you are a one of a kind item that has never been reproduced or can be replaced. It doesn't matter that sometimes you have a short temper or love to gossip because you are the best father a girl could ever have. You are a constant reminder that there are miracles in the world and I see them every time I look at you and remember and each time I hear you tell me you love me. I can still remember the first time you said those words to me and I never tire of hearing them. I love you now. . .

As always...

Free music

It seems that while I was sleeping the government, specifically Orrin Hatch, Rep senator from Utah (somewhere I used to live), is helping to draft a bill to curtail music theft on the Internet. I read it at News.com.

The article says, "Proponents argue that the bill focuses on curbing illegal activity on the Internet. "In the film 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,' the leering 'Child Catcher' lured children into danger with false promises of 'free lollipops,'" said Senate Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. "Tragically, some corporations now seem to think that they can legally profit by inducing children to steal; that they can legally lure children and others with false promises of 'free music'."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't music that comes over the air waves, AM & FM, free music? And can't you copy the music from the air waves, just like copying a movie on VHS, onto casette tape or burn that onto a CD? Can't you even make copies of that music and give it to your friends or copy your tapes and CDs and give them (or sell them) to your friends, relatives, etc.? Doesn't that also make music that you can listen to over the Internet air waves from Internet radio stations fair game?

That's not to say there isn't some free downloading and burning going on, but we aren't talking about people pirating music to make and resell CDs at a much more reasonable cost, but people listening to music over the digital air waves and burning a copy.

I'm not against making a profit -- and the music companies have made an obscenely large amount of profit at the expense of the consumer and the artist -- but doesn't this begin to smack of another loss of freedom? Think about it. If you can't download music from the net and burn it onto a CD or capture it on your MP3 player, then legally, with this bill in place, you also will not be able to do the same with music on the radio, television, or tapes you currently own or have borrowed from friends. It may seem like a big leap from a bill to shut down theft of music on the Internet, but it's really not. Give them an inch and the government will soon take a mile -- or much more.

A lot of this comes from the music industry who are down in the mouth about low bottom line profits. They are matching current sales since the advent of Internet music theft and piracy with sales in the recent past that show a distinctinly downward trend. Let's face it, the music industry has made us dance to their tune, like the mice in Hamelin dancing to the Pied Piper's tune, every time a new innovation in listening pleasure hits the market place. Old 78s gave way to 45s and LPs, which gave way to 8-track tapes, which gave way to casette tapes, which gave way to CDs, which gave way to MP3s and personal players like iPod. Every time a new way to listen to music comes out the consumer has to buy their favorite music on the new format, thus producing a very big spike in music sales, which the music industry execs believe should continue.

But let's be realistic. Even if a bunch of kids burn copies of their favorite music from Internet web sites, how much does that really amount to in dollars and cents? It's just like Bill Gates and Microsoft so upset about people sharing computer programs and causing them to lose a few hundred thousand dollars in a multi-billion dollar industry, so they made the new program CDs single use, which means you can't share files or programs and you can't even use the same program on more than one computer in your own home unless you either buy multiple programs or multi-user programs, which cost a great deal more.

What bothers me most about this, other than the beginning of the end of personal freedoms, is that the major American past time is no longer baseball, football, or even tennis and soccer, it's making money no matter how many people you have to step on or kill in the process. It doesn't matter that these corporate executives and bean counters make more money than they can possibly spend in their own or their offsprings' lifetimes for a good ten generations, but that it has all come down to money and the acquisition of money no matter what.

These wealthy piranhas talk about money as if it was the American dream, but that's not so. The American dream was a home of your own, a family, and a reasonably comfortable lifestyle. But watch out, folks, because that has been change, irradiated by greed and inoculated by selfishness to the point that the American dream has been perverted into wealth at any cost...and that includes the little people who make these people wealthy in the first place.

I'm not advocating theft, but I do believe there has to be a limit to what the greedy can take away from us. The question is whether or not we will continue to let the wealthy make policies that open the way for more loss of the freedoms we have all taken for granted or if we will all rise up and show them they can no longer climb to the top on our backs.

You don't realize it yet, but you and I are the ones who put the coins in these greedy biscuit eaters' pockets. We have the control and the money and if we keep it in our hot, grimy little fists they will not be able to take anything more away from us. We outnumber them and, as Rome found out in a very costly and dangerous campaign against an untrained band of slaves and gladiators, we can end their tyranny. Question is when will you get enough and put a stop to the greed and the parceling away of our freedoms bit by sneaky bit.

The Child Catcher indeed lured children with lollipops and treats, but this time it's the people who are being caught and sold a prison for the price of sugar candy.

Behind Friendly Lines

Several years ago I was given an assignment to interview a woman for a front page article in a local newspaper. I spent a lot of time with the woman as we talked about her past. After backing up the interview with a great deal of reading and research I wrote the article only to have the lead watered down, politically dampened, because the publishers didn't want to be controversial. That has always bothered me. When I sent a copy of the article to the woman I also sent her a copy of my original article, which I do not have here (it's in storage in Ohio). But the thought of how my lead was killed continues to bother me. So I offer the original lead here and a new lead closer to what I originally wrote. You decide which is more powerful and more telling.

Summer camp is a childhood institution in America, but for one Columbus woman, contemplating photos of herself as a child at "camp" brings back bittersweet memories of those times.

Here's the rewritten version:

While Hitler and the Nazis rounded up and confined Jews, homosexuals, Gypsies, and dissidents in concentration camps throughout Europe, America, in the wake of Pearl Harbor, rounded up Americans and confined them in camps. Their only crime was a Japanese heritage.

As American pundits debate the merits of demanding an apology from the Japanese for their role in the war that concluded with an atomic blast 50 years ago this month, Karen Jiobu looks back with mixed emotions on a childhood spent in part in an American internment camp.

In March of this year, Jiobu and her husband, Robert, their son, Eric, and other relatives and friends, gathered at the former Butte Camp internment site in Arizona to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their liberation, and to remember a family member who had died at Hiroshima.

In a halting, trembling voice, Karen Jiobu said in a recent interview: "I really never thought about camp until after I went to the reunion and took a communications class. I had to give a speech. I decided to talk about my experiences. I didn't have many memories. As I gave my speech, I started to cry. I didn't realize I felt such deep emotions." She smiles slowly, eyes bright with unshed tears.

Karen, now in her mid 50s, is an executive director of a medical laboratory here. She speaks willingly, but in a soft voice, of her experiences as a Japanese-American child growing up in a nation filled with fear. Her brothers and sisters tell their stories as though the happened to others; her mother and father never talked about their internment.

Robert Jiobu, a professor of Asian-American studies at OSU, declines to discuss his experiences at Amache, Colorado, where he was imprisoned on an isolated Indian reservation. Many more Japanese-Americans also prefer to remain silent.

Karen was three years old when she "went to camp." Her father, mother, grandfather, three brothers and three sisters went with her. Another brother was born at the camp, she said.

Karen's father, Mr. Yoshimoto, was a second-generation Japanese immigrant, a Nisei, born in Hawaii and educated in japan. Her mother was a first-generation immigrant, an Issei, from the west coast. Karen, a Sensei, or third-generation immigrant on her father's side, and Nisei on her mother's side, call herself "Nisei-and-a-half." She says she is American-, as was her father.

Karen describes her father as "a strict man who sought only to make a better life for his family." Before the war, he provided camp housing for laborers he contracted with for local grape growers.

After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, catapulting U.S. forces into Word War II, Karen's father worried about his family's future freedom. He feared repercussions.

In the meantime, U.S. officials, themselves fearful of Japanese involvement with Germany, had been keeping a wary eye on the japanese-American community on the west coast through FBI investigations. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) had been changed from the protective jurisdiction of the Department of Labor to the punitive control of the Department of Justice, and an Alien Registration Act was enacted in June 1940.

Though FBI agents failed to find any evidence of subversive activities among the Japanese-American population, they continued to watch-and wait.

The future that Karen's father dreaded became reality on February 19, 1942 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order No. 9066, which forced more than 100,000 Japanese-American families to be incarcerated in hastily constructed wood-and-tarpaper barracks in the desolate, arid, harsh interior of America on Indian reservation lands.

"I was only three years old when a stranger came and told my father we had three days to pack. Many things were sold or left behind," Karen said. The Yoshimotos were taken to Stockton, California and housed in animal pens on the fairgrounds. They had to clean out the horse stalls at the Santa Anita racetrack stables where they lived while waiting for other internees, who were being assembled, processed and assigned.

Karen's family was sent to Gila River, a bleak expanse of scrub, rocks, and desert just outside Phoenix on the Pima Indian reservation.

"I had never seen so many Japanese people in one place before," Karen recalls.

Freedom could be obtained-but at a price. Draft age Japanese-American males could secure the freedom of their families by signing a loyalty oath.

The price was too high for Mr. Yoshimoto. "My father refused to sign," Karen states. "He was an American, born in America, raised in America, and treated like a criminal because of his race. He was hurt and angry. It's like being the victim of rape. Everyone wonders what you did to deserve it. We did nothing; we were just different."

At Gila River, Karen's entire family was housed in half of one barracks building. Her aunt and her family lived on the other side. A wall separated one family from another. "There was a pot-bellied stove, and mother always told me to watch out for Gila monsters," poisonous lizards common on the Arizona desert. "I played and had fun. I don't remember much," Jiobu commented.

"My older sister Bev was 16 when we went to camp. She graduated high school there." Karen has Bev's high school yearbook. It shows the haunting faces of young men and women playing basketball, baseball and attending meetings, school and dances at the camp. "I can remember running up a hill to see movies at the amphitheater the government built," Karen recalls, with a smile. She points to a photo of a large, flat-topped hill. "The water tower was on top of a butte. That's why the called it Butte Camp.

"When we went back to the camp in March [of this year] I picked up a piece of barbed wire and kept it. I shouldn't have; it's probably illegal. I thought it was from the camp, but my brother, Bob, told me they took the barbed wire down after six months and put up chain link fences."

Karen has two albums full of pictures of Block 30 where her family lived. "Not everyone had to go to camp. Bev had a friend who lived near the camp. She was Japanese-American, too. Her family wasn't interned." Karen's voice breaks.

"Once when Bev wanted to visit her, she had to write to Washington, D.C. to ask permission. Even when she wanted to spend the night with her friend, she had to write to Washington for permission."

Some Japanese-Americans were never interned because they lived outside what the U.S. government considered the "danger zone" on the Pacific west coast.

"When Bev graduated from high school she left. If you were old enough, you could leave early if you moved to the east coast and had someone to sponsor you. Bev's sponsors lived in Michigan."

After the war ended, Karen stayed in camp because her father refused to sign the loyalty oath. "He was angry and hurt. He was American. He shouldn't have had to sign." Eventually Karen's family was freed, though her father never signed the oath.

When they returned to California, the Yoshimotos settled in Woodbridge in a house on two acres. It was very different from the home they had left in 1943. They had to start over. "Before we went to camp my father had just bought his first new car."

While striving for some normalcy in this post-war world, the Yoshimotos suffered a serious setback. News finally reached them from Mrs. Yoshimoto's family in Japan, where two of her sisters owned a slipper shop. One sister had left the city and asked the other to stay behind and mind the store. That day an atomic bomb destroyed their home in Hiroshima, killing one of Karen's aunts. "My aunt always blamed herself for leaving her sister at home. My mother was devastated. She never went back to visit.

"After the war I saw the Hiroshima maidens. They were young women disfigured in the blast who were brought to the U.S. to have plastic surgery. They visited all the Japanese-American communities and spoke. I can still remember seeing their veiled faces."

Karen has no picture of the Hiroshima maidens, but she has an album full of photos, souvenirs, and memories from a recent visit to Japan. The blasted, broken carcass of a building sits like a stark monument amid modern Hiroshima's cars, people and temples. The shadowy figure of someone caught in the hellish atomic blast is darkly etched on two marble stairs. A children's memorial rises through flowering trees where it is decorated with heaps of thousands of brightly colored origami chains. "It is so beautiful," Karen whispers.

"When I talked to Bev, she reminded me about what happened after we moved back to California. My father saw someone coming up the road and ran out to look. He said it was a stranger. He called to mother and told her to pack. Mother didn't questions him. She began to pack. I hadn't remembered that until Bev told me.

"Father always lived with the fear that the government would send us away again. I don't understand what [the government was] afraid of. Most Issei were too old to fight the Nisei and Senseis were Americans.

"I just wish my parents could have lived to see President Bush personally apologize to all the Japanese-Americans who were interned. A couple of years ago the government gave each survivor $20,000. The apology was enough; I was very touched, but the money made it real for [the rest of America]."


What's your verdict?

This article originally appeared in Columbus Alive!, an alternative newspaper.