data:STvSW (Trek Novel Count vs Wars)

I've always salivated on the raw number of genre books whilst losing myself in the local Waldenbooks, a B.Dalton, Borders or Crown.  I'm no spring chicken, so I can tell you how fantasy, for example, which popularly started with Tolkien, ramped up from two shelves with no label (falling, generically, under 'fiction') to taking up two entire bookshelves, then onto an entire row.  Star Trek (ST) and Star Wars (SW) novels are no exception to the rapid expansion across store shelves.  As ST preceded SW by a decade (the first ST novel was January of '67), it obviates that those novels were readily available.  By the time I was a little lad, they were in easy rotation at the used bookstores (Book Baron, Anaheim, was a favorite and a weekly habit).  SW would first come out in advance of the movie in 1976 (SW the movie would come out in May of the next year).

The first marked difference though is that ST novels first came out as compendiums, or a combination of short stories.  This was the fashion of the time, culling the works of several authors per consolidated novella.  The very first of these were meant for young readers - equating, again at the time, for readers 'of age' (maybe as early as 10 but up to 17).

SW novels, contrarily, started as straight novelizations of the movies: populist for the most part.  However, quickly shifting with extensions of its universe by 1978 with Splinter of the Mind's Eye.  From there, demand exploded with subsequent extensions of the universe, including the exploits of smuggler extraordinaire Han Solo and he ..at Star's End.  It was of these popular novels that the affinity for Solo appeared to strengthen above the Skywalkers.

Now for the raw numbers...I was reveling in the picture I took at Barnes & Noble last weekend, and simply wondering how many books have come out for SW (and then ST)...from there I used GoodReads as the foundation for the count:

There are 251 Star Trek novelizations overall.
There are 376 Star Wars novelizations overall.

That's a whopping 125 book difference, despite the decade lead on SW.

Yes - I acknowledge the differences of each respective zeitgeist.  I would also make an argument in the quality of those novels.  I have found, over many a year reading them, that ST is much more cerebral than SW.  It's more 'hard' science fiction (if there is such a thing, knowing it is a loaded definition), then the populist trappings of what could be assumed as fantasy more than science with SW.

Out of either series, I personally recommend the first 12 of the ST novels, probably avoiding number one and going straight into any other number.  For SW, I am enjoying the latest canon books by James Luceno (Catalyst, Darth Plagueis).

Also pitching to support your local bookstore, so I'm throwing in links for Anaheim:

BOOKTOWN: https://www.yelp.com/biz/booktown-usa-anaheim 
POP COMICS: https://www.yelp.com/biz/pop-comics-and-culture-emporium-anaheim
PHAT COLLECTIBLES: https://www.yelp.com/biz/phat-collectibles-anaheim-2


PS - for Shlitz and giggles, I had to look up the most prolific series and came up quickly with the Perry Rhodan series - Wikipedia states, As of April 2017, more than 2900 booklet novels of the original series plus 850 spinoff novels of the sister series;plus over 400 paperbacks and 200 hardcovers have been published, totalling over 300,000 pages. Having sold approximately two billion copies worldwide alone, (including over one billion in Germany), it is the most successful science fiction book series ever written. The first billion of worldwide sales was celebrated in 1986."

Wowzers - never heard of Rhodan.

short:"Daddy Don't You Walk So Fast" excerpt

...probably a few chapters in from my NaNoWriMo in November...

This is where I could go into an exposition of the details of the travel plans, but I am not that guy.  If I were the type of guy to keep both eyes open for the inevitability of a quirky event, I would at least touch on one of those to move the story along, meanwhile letting you know that we simply didn't launch forward on a tugboat from sunny San Pedro.

My father said his peace: 'I'll make it so you wouldn't want for anything'.

"Fine.  How should we pack for clothes?"

"You'll not want for anything."

"A map?  My pills?  A burner phone from CVS with international SIM card capability?"  Justin, the second youngest was a card.  He was incisive and abrasive, we got on best.  At one point he threatened to have an Excel grid with 100 items that anyone would need to take on a voyage around the world.  I never saw it, and didn't need to.  I'm sure he had it all in that fat head of his.  My brothers were as equally difficult.

There I go, making it quirky with a silly little aside.  It was all too true.  And, with two months to go, I sat with my father for lunch at Newport, restaurant name withheld, but one of many that offer pull up yacht parking.  I was asked to wrap sanity around the arrangements once and for all.

My father chewed through his Firepot Swordfish with amazing ease.  I gave him credit for eating something so spicy.

"Well, I'll pay for it later."  The couple next to us sat upright, visible through my periphery.  Aghast!  I can't say I liked the place for the clientele.  We didn't grow up where we could park our yacht on the landing dock outside and show up for lunch in a breezy Louis Vitton windbreaker.  This was the only place I could get my father to meet me now.  He was agreeable because he knew how much I loathed it.

"Your boys are no longer agreeable if they can at least bring something for the trip..." I paused because it sounded funny on the verge of my lips, "...around the world."  I explained the need for outside contact, the concerns of disengagement from the world, aid kits, satellite phone, special clothing and the whole boring lot.

My father, fully reticent, looked through the dark paneling and at the bright light upon the harbor.  It reflected twice in his glasses.  He quietly, but not slowly, ate his food and drank his IPA.  He was enjoying it.  He found comfort in his age, where he stopped caring what others thought.  I was still marred by it, even in mid-age.

"So, perhaps I should impart upon all of you that this trip, and my impending death..." More stiff backs around us and a slightly dropped salad fork off in the distance, "...that I want to assure you all that I have you taken care of.  There may have been thoughts in the past that I have been distant, aloof, uncaring...this trip is a way for me to make it up to all of you.  Be it known that I watched you, bathed you, read you stories before bed, changed diapers, fed you and the like.  That wicked woman that said otherwise has been nothing but misguided and unfair.

"Son, for you, I have packed a small carry-on for our first journey, as we head to the Galapagos then to Tahiti.  It has a toiletry package right from the Macy's counter, all from Harry's and better than anything you deem usable today.  You'll have a tweed travel suit, slacks, socks - all are designed for outdoor and turned inside out for dining in the evening.  Orvis shoes.  You'll each have a smart watch to track our journey, an appropriately appointed all-purpose DSLR, a Moleskine, swimsuit, pajamas, socks, underwear.  A book.  'Final Fridays' by John Barth.

"At various stops along the way you'll gain access to clothes for that trip.  If we have three nights in Udaipur, then there will be an adequately appropriated wardrobe and other items.  If we are snorkeling in the Maldives, then expect some fins and a snorkel.  I have been planning this trip for the better part of a year, and I am no stranger to travel, or to you."

I felt horrendous.  The combination of Dad's thoroughness and my lack of comfort in this restaurant and I didn't touch it.  I had them box it and gave it to my dad for dinner.  We said little after that as I drove him home.

Latter on Skype.  "Well?"

"He's got us covered, fellas.  Just show up."

And we did.  I may not have all the quirky details, but Dad sure did.

...

advice:Stephen King's "On Writing" + Resources

"Verbs come in two types, active and passive...You should avoid the passive tense.  I'm not the only one who says so; you can find the same advice in The Elements of Style." - On Writing, Stephen King

Enjoying King's breezy exploration of his writing - its genesis, its voice.  I hungered to read it, if anything to understand Mr. King's volumetric prowess (happy 69th, btw).  Wikipedia has him at 54 fiction novels, 6 non-fiction, and 200 short stories. Unfortunately, half-way through and I'm no better off knowing his magic tricks for velocity.  (He lists his habit of writing, which must include fingers that simply don't stop.)  But, yes, where I paused is taking a hard look at passive versus active voice.

From the NY Times, "The Pleasures and Perils of the Passive", by Constance Hale:


"The most pilloried use of the passive voice might be that famous expression of presidents and press secretaries, “mistakes were made.” From Ronald Ziegler, President Richard M. Nixon’s press aide, through Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton — not to mention Attorney General Alberto Gonzales — pols have used the passive voice to spin the news, avoid responsibility or hide the truth. One political guru even dubbed this usage “the past exonerative."


From The Elements of Style, which King alludes to often:

"The habitual use of the active voice, however, makes for forcible writing.  This is true not only in narrative concerned principally with action but in writing of any kind.  Many a tame sentence of description or exposition can be made lively and emphatic by sustituting a transitive in the active voice for some such perfuntory expression as there is or could be heard." - page 18

So where did this change occur?  With the drive for simplistic concepts and a packaged coalescence (Apple I'm looking at you), there is data to support that modern English and grammatical complexity has forced us into an active narrative.  Passive, grammatically complex structures make those with less education primarily guess for meaning.  When I read Henry James or Thomas Mann, there was a 'flowery' style that may be less active than say a Mark Twain or a King.

Examples are illustrative and abound at yourdictionary.com:

PASSIVE:
'At dinner, six shrimp were eaten by Harry.'
'A scathing review was written by the critic.'

COUNTER/ACTIVE:
'Harry ate six shrimp at dinner.'
'The critic wrote a scathing review.'

It's easy to see that, in passive, the receiver of action comes before the doer (receiver-action-doer).  It naturally requires the reader to think out of order of doer-action-receiver.

Much to think about as you analyze your own writing.  Interestingly, Grammar Girl recommends that science fiction should always be in passive.  Circling around to me spinning in circles, trying to keep the moon in sight and screaming "no one really knows!"  But, there is a ray of light, in that last chapter of Elements, "'What if I am a pioneer, or even a genius?'  Answer: then be one."

then:Poppy Drayton and Shannara

“Fantasy writing must be grounded in both truth and life experience if it is to work. It can be as inventive and creative as the writer can make it, a whirlwind of images and plot twists, but it cannot be built on a foundation of air. The world must be identifiable with our own, must offer us a frame of reference we can recognize.

“Fantasy stories work because the writer has interwoven bits and pieces of reality with imagination to form a personal vision.”

― Terry Brooks

Drayton as Amberle - with a bit of Photoshop play to the original.

Shannara, written by Brooks, is a set of ten high fantasy novels that have been adapted into an MTV series, starring Poppy Drayton.  The show straddles the line of keeping the spirit of a post-apocalyptic earth -  now embued with magic and a species evolution of humans, elves, trolls, gnomes and dwarves - while spinning a bit of pop through-out (read: sexy).  There is an overtly obvious connection to tap into the Game of Thrones anthologies on television lately, so Shannara is an epic that can span several series.  Specifically, the MTV series is based on The Elfstones of Shannara, which is actually book two in the series, but serves as a reasonable point to follow young characters on a quest to save the world from demons.

Armed with Brooks' quote above, and watching the series on Netflix, you get a sense of the didactic world of Brooks.  There is very sharp lines between good and evil, innocence and cynicism.  Wil Ohmsford is the last of his kind and holds precious magic that can usurp evil, and he must do so in the service of the young queen Amberle, who, in turn, can maintain the 'tree of life'.

And Amberle (Drayton), who's break-out role was on the Downton Abbey, playing Madelein Allsopp, brings an over-vulnerability to Amberle, who has the world upon her shoulders and enemies seemingly on all sides.

Drayton as Juliet.

Drayton's first major part was in a stage production of Romeo and Juliet, playing the titular role.  This (as she intimates in this interview) was the role she most desired to play.  Having a classical background as well as a great camera presence, makes Shannara a series to binge, especially if you are a fan of high fantasy and a bit of the post-apocalyptic.

As Juliet was her role, I thought of the difficult aspects to play in light of Juliet's last speech:

"How if, when I am laid into the tomb,
I wake before the time that Romeo
Come to redeem me? there's a fearful point!
Shall I not, then, be stifled in the vault, [2585]
To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in,
And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes?
Or, if I live, is it not very like,
The horrible conceit of death and night,
Together with the terror of the place,— [2590]
As in a vault, an ancient receptacle, "

And someone on youtube (of course) has put together this scene study:

And then I return to Shakespeare.
...

...palm trees, the passion of Lorenzo...short study...

The palms brushed one another in the wind like his mother's hands as she pulled the hojas together in preparation of tamales.  He paused as he thought of her, awaiting the hatred to rise in his chest, but it didn't come.  He continued his memory, the smell of the ingredients for atole, the cinnamon and vanilla, would mix with the brusque smells of pork.  He paused again as the memory came back to his mother.  She had large Mexican biceps, a product of cooking materials for hundreds of years, perhaps even longer.  The mashing, the rolling, the kneading.  Her hair was pulled back.  She wore a plain brown dress that he hated.  I hope I never see that again.

There was the hate again.  Lorenzo welcomed it in.  At 19, and high school becoming a memory, he pulled what was a primary drive in his heart.  With high school and all of its pain receding, and a year of working at the auto insurance office smoothing out his other passions, he enjoyed sitting still and taking in the passions of hate.  He hated her.  He wished he could bite her again like she said that he would do as an infant.  He loved hating her.  She never really did a thing to him, but he found her grossly stupid.

He found that the palm trees overhead had blurred from his sight.  He was looking beyond them for that moment, and only the blue of the sky was there.  As soon as he became conscious of this the palms came right back into view.  He took in a deep breath.  Let it go now.  He got what he needed from his undying hatred.

Lorenzo shifted his girth from his back to his side, propping his hand on his cheek.  His long, dirty hair falling in front of his face.  He looked out across the park and only saw a few families enjoying the last light of day.  Parents half-aware, heads buried in their phones.  The kids looking back for acknowledgement, approval.  They don't know how much better...to be disconnected.  He didn't have his phone out because he was mad at Lindsay, ignoring Carlos, while Beth and Laura were mad at Lorenzo.  Good.  The phone was an intruder today.

He pulled out his cigarettes from his front pocket.  He searched for a pack of matches he had taken the other night at the El Calor.  It was an old club on the west side.  He didn't know why Lindsay and Carlos went there.  It was a goof.  Carlos would laugh, but, when he wasn't laughing his face eased and there was something he was getting there.  Perhaps it was the men in cowboy hats and boots.  Carlos would never admit that.

Lorenzo swung his hair back and fumbled with dirty fingers at the matches and lit up.  He stared at the sun and told it to fuck off.  He let the beat from Celani's 'Over & Past' bump across his mind and had no more thoughts for a few minutes.  He wondered where he would go tonight.  Everyone's mad and he couldn't go back to mother's.  Not tonight anyway.

The car.  He'll sleep in the car again, but not here.  There was a park near Sunset that he found before, getting stuck in the area when he almost ran out of gas and had no money.  He searched his pockets for the fortieth time today.  Three dollars and fifteen cents.  There was a meal.  There was no gas.

He sighed and absently flicked his cigarette.  He could go back to work and search his co-workers desks for loose change again.  They were threatening to get a security system put in and Lorenzo felt bad when the memos went out.  If you leave money out...

Lorenzo could only get up by putting his weight on a knee and almost stumble upward.  He flipped up his black hoodie and took another smoke before flicking the butt out into the grass.  Maybe it'll catch fire.  He went to his car and put on Evoke & Bijou's 'Bittersweet' and a pair of $5 sunglasses that he got at Wal Mart.

Tara Hills, Anaheim, Brookhurst and Crescent Ave

     One of the first largesse apartment complexes in north-west Anaheim is called Tara Hills.  Brookhurst Junior High is diagonally located from a gas station that had been there for as long as I can remember.  All the other buildings on the east side of Brookhurst grew over the years.  Next to the gas station, there was a large dirt lot.  The neighborhood kids and I would pull our off-road bikes out to the poorly designed track.  It was a lack of vision on everyone's part, although I blamed the older kids, the one with any strength, for not doing more.  There was one jumping hill.  The rest was a winding dirt track.  After it rained there were puddles that would last for days.  It was a mess and mud would fling up our backs if we rode it.

     In the brown angular complex, with plateau upon plateau of steps and stairwells and courtyards, there was a day care.  These were the days before 'pre-school' (right behind the Rental Office).  There was no learning here.  Shit, even kindergarten, what little exposure I had to it (I was skipped to 1st), was barely enough to be called learning.  The pre-school was loosely structured.  (Apparently it has changed into a Montessori since.)  We were fenced in high gates, surrounded by the tallest complex structures.  Sunlight came in, but there was barely any nature in our small court.  Cities often fail at the natural touch.

     There was a playground with play sand that was infinitely moist.  It was hard packed because of it.  It didn't drain.  If you hit it the wrong way, it was as bad as hitting the meandering sidewalks that flowed around the grounds.  The kids wandered around it aimlessly.  There was simply not a lot to do.  The sand was wet and stinky.  The playground equipment was wet and not fun.  We felt like Clarence did in Richard III.  Our reprieve was outdoors, but only somewhat.  Children's faces were a blur, the earliest memories do that.  We see the macro.

     ...
     Famously remembered after a weekend, we found a hole in the middle of play sand.  I walked around it.  It had to have been three feet down.  We all speculated why it came to be.  More than likely it was to be the base for some new set.  I walked around the hole, dying to jump in.  I walked away, the the periphery of the fences and turned back.  The dark shadow circle feet from me, calling to me.   There was magic in there, surely.  I walked back, but didn't leap.  The hole was daunting enough because of the play monitor.  I lay on the side and looked down.  It would prove difficult to get out.

     There was a blur next to me.  One of the larger boys had the same idea, although he didn't have the same measure of reserve.  He jumped right in.  I flew back from the edge and smiled.  He went in.

Seconds went by and I did not see him.  He found the magic portal to another place.  He was riding rainbows on roller skates, eating Fun Dip on the way to the candy slash pizza parlor.  The grey sky cast over all of this.

     Then, out of the hole came an arm, straight up to the sky, then landing in front of me.  Then the other arm.  The top of his dark blond hair barely crested the edge.  "Get me out," he said, "Get me out."  Then as I saw his fingers claw at the wet play sand, not able to get traction to move out, he barely made it out, "Ants."

     By the time I stood up to help, he was kicking and screaming.  I looked down into the hole and he was covered in ants.  Black ants.  Ants that bite.  I can see them, wrapping their mandibles into his cheek.  I tried to help him, but he weighed twice as me.  The monitor saw us and jumped to my side and we pulled him out.  He was crying by now.  "Crap," said the 20 year old monitor as they brushed away the ants.  I didn't see the boy for a week.
     ...
     I didn't like to take naps.  They pulled out this awfully uncomfortable leatherette blue mat.  We laid them out and was in awe at the kids that actually went for it.  I took a nap once, and even then it was for no more than five minutes.  Boring.

     "Just be quiet," the indoor monitor would say.  She was an old woman and not many of the lighter shade of skin went for a brown Filipino kid.  I made squirmy motions on the mat, but tried to stay quiet.  There was no sheet to get comfy with.  It was damn hot on the mat.

     One day, as everyone slept, I turned toward the door that led to the playground.  I saw a new girl walking with her father toward the office.  She had a white blouse and a blue skirt with straps.  She had black Buster Browns and white socks.  And, one of the few times in my life, I was seeing an albino.

     She was pretty.  She had to wear dark glasses, so I never saw her eyes.  She had white curly hair that fluffed above her head.  She looked like Annie.

     Her father held her as they came to the office.  I can see on his face that the decision was already made.  He didn't like what he saw.  I had no idea of the propriety of the day, but he saw something he didn't like.  I took offense, but not exactly sure why.  There was a dissonance from what he saw and what I saw.  What I saw was fine.  What did he see?

     I tried to get her eye line, but, with the glasses, I had no idea where she was looking.  The father spoke with the indoor monitor for some time.  I just stared, laying still.  The father spoke conditionally, the monitor was growing tired of it and her answers became increasingly curt.

     They walked off and I never saw her again.  I learned of disdain.  I recognize it quickly today.

...Leonard Nimoy, Writer and Photographer...(1931-2015)...

I did not grow up as a Trekker (or Trekkie, depending on the era or the preferred parlance), but I knew of Star Trek by the Filmation series.  I would not get interested, really, until the films came out and my friends patiently turned me on to the series.  I find, today, the superior nature and true science fiction, especially compared against the space opera of Star Wars.

I fell across I am not Spock by Leonard Nimoy in seventh grade.  For some reason it had made its way to the Brookhurst Junior High Library.  I volunteered my time in putting books away, so I was familiar with every shelf.  Spock happened to be near the south-west corner of the rectangular building, about four shelves from the corner, two shelves from the top.  Colored me intrigued, which was a color I was often back then, and I read it.

[Remember, pre-Internet, there was a time of the 'word of mouth'.  Spock was one of those controversial books, only surprising if you weren't around in the 70s.  There was heated discussions on Nimoy's gall in writing such a book.  No kidding and why my intrigue.]

Having little context of Spock or Nimoy, other than knowing the latter played the former, it was a confounding read.  Come to find later my confusion was not ill-placed: the title was meant to be provocative, not by Nimoy, but by the publishers.  It wasn't even really about Spock, more about Nimoy.  So, um, there it was.

What was more interesting, when revisiting the late actor's books and photography, he had a writer's mind.  Having watched In Search Of... with a fanatical mind of a prepubescent child, his fascinating narration bespoke of someone who had a scientific curiosity, if not some desire for the supernatural.

He wrote poetry.  He was fascinated in the female form.  He craved mythology.  A provocative culmination of these, is his 2002 Shekhina.  It is the visual representation of the God of Moses and Elijah as woman.  Powerful and passionate - these are women as deity and divinity.

He would pen two autobiographies and seven books of poetry.  He wrote three screenplays, including 1981's Vincent and Star Trek IV and Trek VI.

And for the artistry, poems, recitations, my personal feeling is we never truly got the intellect behind Spock.  I've always felt that Nimoy perhaps felt that he couldn't live up to the gravitas of the character and only passively skirted at the fringes of intellect, never delving in and coming back from that journey.

Word Counts of Short Format Novels

When winding down on "Freeway 1979", I came to a conundrum that intrigued me, 'Fifty thousand words does not a novel make'.  Freeway is an action novel and the tenor of it is crisp and sharp.  I abhor extraneous back story for some of the characters, instead opting that their terse words and actions speak to their past.  The last mile, about four thousand words, had me sloughing through that very exercise.  I felt like I was writing a college assignment that I cared little for.

First Edition Cover

Out of the 50k+ words for Freeway, I think the perfect word count would come down to 32k and no more than 35k.  After that, it will certainly plod.  In response, I thought over many shorter form novels I've read and wondered at their word count.  My admiration for them is that they put forward a bold story and in a format that frames its immediacy.

In the process of this discovery, I found this site: http://www.hemingwayapp.com/.  It's promise is that it will analyze your story and find ways to whittle down what it considers too much.

Novels that came immediately to mind were:

Old Man and the Sea - Earnest Hemingway 6,162
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald 47,094
The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane 47,180

The Snows of Kilimanjaro - Earnest Hemingway 9,162

Of them, Gatsby is just a powerhouse.  All of them are memorable.  Others came up like, 

Old Yeller - Fred Gipson 35,968 and Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis 36,363.  Taunt prose and an efficiency of words.

First Edition Cover

All told, I have 18k words of inefficiency.  Nothing beyond what should be considered notes.  It'll be integral on the second pass, I'm sure, but it was painful.

For grins, I checked in on my favorite novel of all time to see its word count: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain 110,668.

Sometimes it takes as many words as you need to tell that story.

8) NaNoWriMo 8(

...they played Brahms and I played the coat check girl...

The theater was small, too small to his liking.  It stood with a squat facade and although you would expect the incongruity of a larger ceiling, it was laughably small.  The paint was shabby and he knew, by having recently trumped Savannah in growth, the city council were probably already itching to stamp this building out and build something that would overshadow anything in the State.  The orchestra would not rival New York's, and would have been hung had they played this 'well' in Austria.


It sat some two hundred persons.  Thaddeus rolled his eyes where some of the men had to stand.  The box office had oversold the tickets.  He amused himself during their loose rendition of Brahms'  Tragische Ouvertüre by almost talking himself into lifting the front register.  When he was younger, it was so simple as the outside staff was non-existent, either eating dinner or finding a way to listen to the concert themselves.  This piece was new, so there was great interest from the elite and all of Atlanta's finest were assembled tonight.  He calculated some $400 dollars in the register tonight, and almost $20 in the staff's pockets where they already skimmed - overselling tickets never seem to make their way into the books.  The owner would be furious, but would be hard-pressed to prove anything.

The bold glorious intermission occurred and he made all of his mental notations.  The ostentatious rabble of the riche bared their breasts that Thad would have thought himself on the beaches of some Pacific Island shore.  The brown-skinned heathen would scarce wear grass as a dress, by the stereograms he had seen recently at Lord & Taylor.  Here they wore dark silks and velvet taffeta.

Here, on pale bosoms, were the catalog of the jewelry that would be slowly relieved of these ladies in the next year.  There, hanging from button holes, were timepieces that were equally valuable.  The men, typically as young as Thad, were the ones pulling them out more often.  You see, they wanted for them to be admired.  "What's that you say?  Oh, this old thing, man!  Why it is my father's 14k gold Elgin.  Not much too speak of.  It had seen service during the Mexican War.  My father had it on his person as he fought alongside General Scott.  An amazing piece actually!"

I warmly greeted many of the men around the whiskey bar.  All were smiles and gentle nods.  None were prone to conversation.

As the intermission concluded, I hung back and offered my seat to an older gentlemen that wore a British Crimean War medal.  He, hunched with the ravages of time more than war, happily took to it, and I wandered over to the lobby.

I hung back and made eye contact with the coat check girl.  She was a little thing, not yet out of her teens.  It took time to show my interest, and she eventually (invitingly) smiled.  I finished up the cigarette used as a prop to have her look my way and sauntered over.  I lightly smiled.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_K%C3%A4sebier

"My what a pretty little thing you are."

"Thank you, sir."

"No sirs, miss...?"

"Minnie...Minnie Houlson."

"Nice to meet you Minnie," he kissed her hand gently.  It was soft, not sullied by time.  He gave her his name and continued his catalog of names and finer things.

"Now that jacket, that looks like a friend of mine from downtown.  Goes by the name of Johnson."

She giggled, "No, that's Hartlet.  January Hartlet."

And the game continued, punctuated by moments of genuine affection, useless trivia, familial names, Brahms, eggs, weather and nothing else.  However, at the end of the forty minutes, when Minnie would be called away by a sullen-in-the-extreme woman by the name of Gertie, Thaddeus had a dozen or more names to tie.  He took out a small notebook and made a furious rout of notes.  They lacked copiousness, but would be later made up for at home.

The concert finished with a flourish, as well as some poorly timed decisions of the brass, that led to the downfall of the strings.  The conductor had stormed off the stage to the delight of the patrons, who cheered anyway.  The symphony was new and its benefactors understood the luxury of time and its eventual riches.

Thaddeus watched the coat check girl from a distance, handing out the coats: Richmond, Parque, de Elyes, Brogue, Latchfield, and so on.  All he had to do was follow the jewelry out the door and into the night.

He also understood the luxury of time and seen tonight that patience was in order.

...measured...

How shall we measure it
Is it physicality?
The rush of blood through our members
The blush response
In tears then?
In long and languid sighs
When reciprocity is figured like an equation that ends falsely
An irregular sum
A null statement; the sum or product was false to begin with
Then what was this that was felt
Far to look backward, inward
If by feeling then how measured
For I felt and feel
In tears and sighs
My God how I apologize.  Measure it thusly?

Perhaps in works?
In poems and drafts and art
In sketches and of clay
How many to prove? 
Words as proof, as better parts where the whole may be lacking
I know I know
I know it like the song I capture in a sigh
The declarative made when ended in a tear stain
The ink run
But not far enough.

Is it time?
If it is not enough now, would a year suffice?
Is that how it can be proved.
Two or more.
Twenty?
If the sense of novelty can be stripped away in the nearness of now
Would then you see?
If, combined, I stack all these as a whole in two decades or more
And lay them at your feet and earnestly lie, a poorer comparison
would be proved
But the physical will pass as it should
But the art remains
But will it prove?  When I am gone?

...through the ripples how they shine...08sep14...

the yellow pad and all of what it affords, sep'14

Endlessly working like a Tolstoyan laborer in the harsh freeze of the Tundran farm.

Half-way through the second draft of my first full novel 'Filipino Cookbook', getting it prepped for a professional editor.  This was the outcome of last year's NaNoWriMo and I've been polishing it as much as I have the ability to.  Polishing it with the care afforded the small Native American child, using his small hands to polish the inside of an abalone until it sparkled in the sun.

Gearing up for this November's wicked ride with a narrative re-study of a script I completed back in 2004, 'Freeway 1976'. Seemingly, I know the ending to it, but it has been lost in multiple transitions from one computer to the next.  But, having not committed it seemed to have a latching effect, and it is in my memory locked.  That'll be this year's novel.

In between, doing a study of another concept, 'Thief'.  It is a response of sorts, where I challenged myself with the question, if I could not create a game, what would the story be?  You'll note it in the last couple of entries on the blog.  Thanks for visiting, and if you haven't done so, please check out the Store for anything you may be interested in.  No pressure.  It's always there.  :)

...being of a restless mind, Thaddeus always awoke at the first sound of a carriage wheel...

NEXT MORNING.

Another spoon of peach preserves on his toast as he scrutinized the diorama of Atlanta.  The grey early light stole through the sheer curtains of his foyer.  Furniture was still arriving by rail.  Thaddeus had pulled a seat from the sitting room, the only one with wax covered feet, as he would do several times a week.  His Southern staff probably thought him strange, but, as would always be the case, in his calling, was to accept their perception and they would leave him be in time.  No one appreciates the strange or the different.  They would much rather have the expected.

For the restless Timminick son, the first order of business in any city was to commission a piece for his mansion: a diorama of the city that can be read by candlelight.  These were rarely small.  The Atlanta diorama was six by six foot.  Thaddeus could brag of others, like the work commissioned for Tsaritsyn, which was overly done at fourteen feet square.  That was only the case because of Saratov, the man was induced to build the biggest map because of the interest of one of the Tsars.  He would do nothing to specification.  It was not an inducement to allow the city to receive it as a gift.  It still sits in the city museum today.  A man by the name of Arkhil, whom he knew in India, was the one that taught him such small, but powerful, tools to use.  The map was key.  Thaddeus was the one to see a different approach: hide it in plain sight.  To this end, his persona (which he affectionately named, the Phantasm), fashioned himself a minor cartographer, hanging more than two dozens maps of antiquities on the walls, and more than four handsome globes.

The instructions of the diorama would include the relative enlargement of the quarters of the city that one could consider 'opulent'.  The homes nearer the museums; the homes nearer the theatre districts.  Those what folks can separate themselves with a systematic series of parks, gates and streets.  Delineated by electric lamps or gas lamps, or worse of all: none at all.  Thaddeus had no desire to be there.  It did not fit the business.  "Please enlarge these areas by a fair factor of four, if you can.  I would very much like to see the places of the upright be outlined larger than the rest of the city.  Include every wall, prodigious trees and window - for they all, together, form the beauteous part of the city.  Is it not the heart?"  The crafter would wholeheartedly agree and make fine work of it.

He slightly angled the chair to look down Peachtree [Street], then twisted to scrutinize Ivy.  Thaddeus first hit the Healy building on Forsyth five nights ago, but took nothing.  It was a run to start getting a sense of the city.  There was factoring that needed to be considered.  But it really came down to the response of the police and the demeanor of the city.  Healy was also an advantageous place to view the relativeness of location he would be visiting over the next couple of years.  [Much of this work was heavily reliant on scouting and foresight, if the popularized beliefs that it was all the base traits of pick-pocket.]

American cities were unique in that the places of amusement were staying up later and later still.  It would not be uncommon that the noveau riche were playing about in their casinos and at parties until three in the morning.  Such factors would not work when visiting those places, but it did hold that now their residences were clear for pilfering.  The unfortunate thing was they would take their best baubles and cash with them.  Thank Fortune that they've yet to discover the safety of a bank vault.

His mind is wandering again.  He asked for coffee and moved the chair back as he awaited it.

Build up Arkhil would say to him.  Make love to the city.  A true lover takes his time with a woman, he makes her thrum: call out for more.  Do this incorrectly and the city will betray you, as surely as you are betraying it.

He looked across the body of Atlanta and found a series of homes purported to be the noveau riche.  It was in a cluster of homes near Spring.

Thaddeus put the map out of his mind and walked to his study.  He carefully eyed the mail and found that he had already received the requisite invitations for a personage of his status arriving to the city.  He would use his secretary to start in reply.  He would make every gathering he could.  The first days were crucial to his cause.  He pulled a clippings book that he had his staff formulate months ago.  There were names he would have his secretary initiate meetings with: Jennings, Lavoie, Billings.

He dressed and called for his carriage.  He would go to the office today.  Thaddeus Timminick had a reputation has a mechanical dealer with a catalog of patented goods in both tools and metallurgy.  His real calling, however, will always remain a secret.

...my father's 1967 Thorndike Barnhart Comprehensive Desk Dictionary...

I keep my father's venerable Desk Dictionary close at hand.  It retains the deep rooted smell of Carlton 100s Menthol.  He chain smoked for all of his life, easily hitting up two to three packs a day.  His meager collection of items when he passed are in air tight boxes.  My boys and I will occasionally seek them out to smell 'Geegaw'.  The books, in particular, retain the smell excellently.  This smells of both old book and smoke.

 We've shifted to the digital age without looking back.  It's done.  I get it.  However, memory serves us rightly: why not look at the technology that served us for hundreds of years and come to an affectionate understanding of things?

The Desk Reference of yesteryear was a must.  Books were, at one time, a commodity.  Most of the middle class, and very few of the poor, had more than a single bookshelf in their homes.  That is why libraries proliferated after the Depression - they were simply necessary for those that were not part of the elite.  Democracy was available from the Public Library.

And - the home had its own bit of democratic knowledge.  There was always a bible, a dictionary and a family cookbook.  That was the world.

And, as I flip through this poorly kept Dictionary, as best as my dad I kept it, the glue has dried and cracked.  The binding is falling apart.  The pages are intact however.

A jackal squares off with a jaguar across a lake
of memories, or a portal to another place.

The Dictionary was not only 'it'.  It was a reference.  The Thorndike Barnhart I have open before me has: an etymology key, language abbreviations, pronunciation key, foreign sounds, the list of the editorial advisory committee, a preface (pointing out this version has 80,000 words, comprising 99% of the words used in newspapers and magazines, fiction and non-fiction), a grammar section, punctuation, manuscript formatting, proofreader marks, letter writing, and forms of (salutary) address.

The world was truly here.  What is a hauberk and what does it look like?  What is a plebiscite and what power do they hold?  Who knew that a pincer can also be called a chela?

The Dictionary is available.  It was your Internet.  It would expand your understanding and nuances of The New Yorker, or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, or The Doors.

There is a section from "J" that has an unprecise square cut out from it.  It was something woefully important, I'm sure.

My earliest scribbles as a child.  I know them well.  I didn't have
access to paper so I have several scribble where I could.  Was paper
a commodity in the seventies?  Come on!

...Sylvia Plath at Yaddo 1959...

Yaddo: The Grand Manor (1959 - all poems that follow are also attributed to the same year):
"...The fir tree's thick with grackles.  Gold carp loom in the pools."

The Manor Garden:
"History Nourishes these broken flutings, These crowns of acanthus, And the crow settles her garments."

Selected excerpts: A Poem for a Birthday:
I. Who
"This shed's fusty as a mummy's stomach: Old tools, handles and rusty tusks.  I am at home here among the dead heads."
II. Dark House
"This is a dark house, very big.  I made it myself, Cell by cell from a quiet corner....It is warm and tolerable In the bowel of the root."
III. Maenad
"This month is fit for little.  The dead ripen in the grapeleaves.  A red tongue is among us.  Mother, keep out of my barnyard, I am becoming another."
IV. The Beast
"...Fido Littlesoul, the bowel's familiar.  A dustbin's enough for him.  The dark's his bone.  Call him any name, he'll come to it."
V. Flute Notes form a Reedy Pond
"This is not death, it is something safer."
VI. Witch Burning

 

A draft of  'Ariel'.

"It is easy to blame the dark: the mouth of a door, The cellar's belly...What large eyes the dead have!  I am intimate with a hairy spirit."
VII. The Stones
"Drunk as a foetus I suck at the paps of darkness."

The Colossus:
"Counting the red stars and those of plum-color.  The sun rises under the pillar of your tongue.  My hours are married to shadow."

Sylvia Plath spent a fall in Yaddo from early September to before Thanksgiving of 1959.

Flora on the Yaddo Grounds

Dark Wood, Dark Water:
"This wood burns a dark Incense.  Pale moss drips In elbow-scarves, beards From the archaic Bones of the great trees."

Mushrooms:
"Overnight, very Whitely, discreetly, Very quietly Our toes, our noes Take hold on the loam, Acquire the air."

...the moon's light on the white desert sand...

It was 109 today and the relief of night was anti-climatic, 98: this is Cathedral City.

The moon bragged of its brightness and did so by blotting out the stars in the sky with its own selfish aura.  The only constellation I can gather by what little stars were visible, is what is known in Asia as the 'Seven Stars of the Northern Ladle'.  I find it much more romantic than what it is commonly called here.  The other stars that are making its light known are mostly twinkling in the red spectrum.  There is simply too much haze in the air today.  The Seven Stars of the Northern Ladle look much closer here in Palm Springs than back home.  [I math check my perception and it is simply closer this time of year.]

Pictures of the moon.  I finally grappled enough of the Lumix to get what I need out of it.  Shutter priority in some cases to get the night shots much more in line with what I expect.  The other is to use the self-timer to avoid the natural shakiness that is prone to the light bodies of today's camera.

As I walked around the Holiday Inn, I found a fence in which to use as a brace for the shots.  A small brown rabbit, no bigger than my cupped hands together, was startled and ran toward the edge of the little spit of grass that was planted on the outskirts of the pool.  I can see its white tail illumined by the moon's light.

I took a few shots with the standard settings and all had little definition: just a bright orb, like an unthrilling, malshaped light bulb.  But then I switched over to shutter priority and moved the dial to 1/100.  That gave me the familiar pattern of the moon, with detail to prove it out.  Luckily there was enough light, or else it would have stepped down too far and I would have gotten nothing.

I jumped in the kidney shaped pool after I was satisfied with the shots.  Three jets pushed out from its outer edge into the middle.  A few underwater breaststrokes and a few above-water crawls.  I went under the water for as long as I could, easily going over a minute.  A group of teens were throwing a ball around, making as much use of the time as they could.  Mine were screaming and splashing one another in the face.

The real refresher was the shower.  It had the coolest water of the day.  It only spurted out a light, but wide, cone of water, with little pressure, but it was cooling.  I stared at my hands, which reflected the moonlight.  I did as I would as I was little: fill them up and stare at the moonlight within it.  I watched as it fell so close to the hungry, parched earth just two feet from me: little grew around it.  The sand did not sparkle, the light was too dim.  There was a dull beauty to the thousands of them reflecting back the glow on the white sand.

My eyes mingled the light from the water droplets and those of the sand, a second or two of diamonds in my view.

There is a wide gully that connects the Cathedral Canyon Country Club with the Morningside Country Club.  It runs into white desert sand right outside the pool's gate.  The gate is the marker between the wilds of the night and the cut grass functionary of the hotel.  I stand almost naked under the shower looking out, wondering what the rabbit thought of me.  A wet soul shimmering, his darkened eyes looking blankly toward the light sand.

Described Gully Cathedral City and Palm Springs 2014

...a visit to Yaddo in Saratoga, NY State...24jul14...

Yaddo (yeah dough) is an artist colony that was bequeathed (through a trust) to future artists to use the grounds as a place of contemplation and collaboration, it is located near the Saratoga Race Track in Upstate New York.  The estate was given over by Spencer and Katrina Trask, he a venerable financier and she an author.

Walking the grounds does induce in the spirit of the artist a sense of contemplation.  It is far from overly showy, and instead is conducive to the temperament of those that are taking the inward journey necessary to create their art.  The grounds lack contradiction - with a wide open lawn, several fountains, marble benches and statuary that set a fixed gaze on order.

 

The natural font (the picture of the mound of rock below) allows for a gentle sound of falling water, proving the contemplative attributes of rain as it falls softly on the rounded stones below.  From it, it runs down a small rivulet.  The rounded cup of water hosting a small nymph playing lithely under the shadows of the thin trees. Overlooking this is a small plant of blue Harebell.

There are koi.  There is a small lake that does not allow fishing, so I could only imagine the creatures lurking in its muddy depths.

   




One could imagine the footfalls of so many authors as they walked alone around these gardens for months at a time.  It is thought that Poe worked on "The Raven" here.  Some 5,500 artists since its inception have used the grounds to help in their work.  The NY Public Library has archives of some of the material available to view.  There are even rolls by type of media the artist uses, like this roll of writers.

Having just read much of Sylvia Plath's poetry in Manhattan, I was pleasantly surprised by my Aunt Pam's insistence on visiting here.  Then, seeing that Edith Wharton spent time here as well, I was induced to purchase The Touchstone at Albany Airport.  I was captivated all the way home by the novella and finished it by the time I touched back down at John Wayne.

"Thin as ferns and fronds,
The woodland settles down,
Drowned in that still pool,
Where stars will stream and drown"
- The Lake, Edith Wharton (at Yaddo)

...May is Short Story Month...http://shortstorymonth.com/

As May is Short Story Month, here's some links to read a few.  Full disclosure, I'm a whore.  The retail books on top and a few excerpts below those.

POWDER BLUE GENTLEMAN: iTunes, Lulu, Barnes & Noble - includes "These Old Hands of Mine", "Awaiting Art's Tide", "The Knight", "Fervidis"

HEART-SHAPED BOX: iTunes, Lulu, Barnes & Noble - includes "Carpool", "Chase", "The Tragedy of Teraku and Binjin"

BING CROSBY & THE INTERMINABLE DA VINCI: iTunes, Lulu, Barnes & Noble

...
BING CROSBY...first three parts here, here, here and so forth...
CEYX & ALCYONE...a purposeful attempt at a tonal story
BLASTER..she carried her laser pistol with authority
PERFECIA...what we find when we dig through the dust of the past
MISS KITTY...on Wattpad
MAY, SHE THREATENED
SKIN
CHARLIE GUEST...on Wattpad
NUMBERS GAME...on Wattpad
NICK CAGE & JAY-Z: IN TIME...on Wattpad
WHAT ABSINTHE
OBVIOUSLY, POISON
PRESAM
EULOGY
LE MORT
THE SEQOI A STUDY
...that's what we call, in popular parlance, a veritable crap load.

..."semper legunt"...classics in pdf for your e-reader...17mar14...

WRITING:
Beowulf
--- Beowulf Teacher's Guide, Penguin
Illuminated Bible
Shakespeare's Sonnets
1984, George Orwell
---1984 Teacher's Guide, Penguin
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Moby Dick, Herman Melville:
Clockwork Orange, A Film Study, UCLA
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
How to Write Poetry Guidebook, The Poetry Trust

ART:
Getty Virtual Library
Artist Reference Books

TECHNICAL MANUALS:
Old Technical Manuals
TRS-80 Technical Manual
The Zenith Radio Story

...a few to here, to date...18aug13

August is slipping away like satin through a soft hand.

- Jay-Z and Nikolai Czage break free of King Uros' castle in the latest installment of The Time Traveler H.O.V.A.
- Spent time on Filipino Cookbook today, I'm enjoying the way my protagonist's behave like gentlemen of a different time.
- Went through the entire blog history early this morning to pull  snippets of other stories to make sure they are captured:

WATTPAD:
- CHARLIE GUEST
- MISS KITTY
- PROCTOR ELECT
- NUMBERS GAME
- TIME TRAVELER H.O.V.A.

SCIENCE FICTION:
- TEH SEXEH BLASTER
- THE LAB
- BLUE  - io9.com writing prompt
- BUS STOP - io9.com writing prompt

FANTASY:
- PACE SHORT PIECE
- GHEYMOND FITZGERALD
- ARYNA of OEASTERN

MYTHOLOGICAL:
- CEYX AND ALCYONE

ROMANTICAL/ PICARESQUE:
- PERFECIA
- LATE 50s
- WICKED
- POISON
- SELFISH CREATURES
- THE NIGHT
- OVERBOARD

Thanks for visiting - I appreciate it greatly!