In Hindsight, a Spectacular Year

Woe is me for being sooooo far behind in communicating. It’s all been bottled up inside. Writer's block is a situation akin to constipation--except, sometimes great works don’t emanate in the end. Just shit.

However, these are the things weighing on my mind….

Two short stories have been accepted, by Big Pulp and Bewildering Stories, and await publication in 2009, and an article on the first shots fired in the Civil War will be reprinted in the Camp Chase Gazette. I also await publication of my article on Holling Clancy Holling in the American Book Collectors of Children’s Literature newsletter; I especially want to send a copy to the dear lady in Michigan who helped in my research… Several other stories need rewrite as I face the devil who sneers at my inability to express myself in the ways I want… My research into Bacon’s Rebellion looked complete until I discovered Thomas Wertenbaker’s Virginia Under the Stuarts written in 1913; this added an entirely new dimension to the rebellion.

Other quotidian chores included holiday shopping and entertaining. I’m in the spirit of Christmas early and lovin’ it. The family letter is written and about 70 cards are in the mail. The presents are all bought and there are a few bottles of wine to split with family and friends.

An additional task has been of my own making. I’ve begun leading a new writing group of a dozen area people. We’re gathering at the Ocean County (N.J.) Library twice monthly for a chance to critique, compare notes and share in a love of writing and reading.

This has been a very good year. The usual blessings—knock-on-wood good health, low stress, excellent wife and family—make it so much better in the face of the tribulations so many people are facing. But the writing has also gone well, with 10 short stories and articles published during the year. Most happily, there are the small joys, like my granddaughter exchanging thoughts on the literate life from her vantage point of a 15-year-old using an iPhone. There is hope for the future.

Meet You at Fictionwise

I’m pleased that Fictionwise is now carrying Cruising the Green of Second Avenue. Look for it (at a pleasantly discounted price) at www.fictionwise.com. Simply key the title into the search engine at the top left of the site. You’ll even find an excerpt from “Frank Cassidy and the Canarsie Chick.” By the way, someone has figured out the book takes 100-141 minutes to read.

Christmas is coming. Make a reader happy with a gift and an author happy with a royalty.

The Magic of Childhood

I left a mistaken impression here on Sept. 26 that Written Word Magazine (http://www.writtenwordmag.com/) was nearing defunction. It’s very much alive, but its Web site was coming up oddly on my PC. I’d wait interminably, wanting to go out for a long walk or a short beer, until the graphics loaded. Then—huzzah!—there in its archived June 2008 issue was “The Wishing Pool.”

This has been one of my favorite stories, written in January of ’06. Why? My childhood days were ominous, filled with omens, portents and symbols. The child matures when the signs come together. I put together a few of these signs and secret codes in “The Wishing Pool.” I’m happy, not only for its publication, but because the youngsters in the story nibbled at my heart. Perhaps I once was “Otto,” making bets on when the first snowfall would close school and wondering when my father would come home from his business travels.

My own childhood days in a small Oregon town were filled with tokens as powerful as having a Lone Ranger pistol ring. They were as mysterious as the X-ray machine at the shoe store where we watched our toes wiggle while the salesman sought out our Buster Browns. We believed in 1946 that the dead cat we found in the bushes had died violently. Why else would its mouth have turned into that horrible rictus? It was poisoned—and this was our nexus of fear: To touch it would be death for us too.

We were in awe of tramps, like the one who reputedly lived in the willow grove by the Northern Pacific tracks who carried a shotgun loaded with bacon rind. Yes, bacon rind, my brother, Chuck, explained: This was so he wouldn’t actually kill you when you were shot for intruding. We knew tramps left secret messages on our houses, messages hidden so carefully that only other gypsy tramp initiates could tell whether this house or that one would offer a welcome.

Every event, every glance, every crack in the sidewalk was filled with meaning. Dogma was established by my friends in second grade. “If you step on a crack, you’ll break your mother’s back.” And, there was World War II revisionism, “No, no, if you step on a crack you’ll break Tojo’s back!” And each of us guaranteed a little good luck by stamping on a Lucky Strike pack.

Oh, and in regard to “The Wishing Pool,” sometimes kids know everything and understand very little. You know this. You were a kid once, weren’t you?

Kid Stuff and Deadly Games

Did the adulterous couple run off together, or are they dead?—or is there more to their disappearances? This is the question Mike, the cop from Newark, has to unwrap. This Chinese puzzle of boxes within boxes has just been published in Big Pulp (http://www.bigpulp.com/chill_giersbach_boneyard.html). Yup, another mystery, this time with a Jersey detective who’s up in Connecticut’s “Forgotten Corner.” Then the strange truth comes out.

Oh, by the way, the Forgotten Corner in the state's northeast quadrant is the land that time passed by. Back in Newark, people call those places graveyards.

And the Black Dog Legend? There are still believers there, but that’s another story.

Where Have All the ’Zines Gone?

Bad news in my in-box. Head honcho Ace Masters of Written Word (http://www.writtenwordmag.com/) wrote early this month that the magazine is on the rocks because someone has hacked their PayPal account. I noted in June that Chad Plunk, who founded and ran Short Fiction World (http://shortfictionworld.com/) closed the door on my submission before making an editorial decision regarding it.

I fondly remember Mud Rock, a fine print magazine, which folded January ’07. Now, Mouth Full of Bullets, a terrific mystery-detective magazine, is also defunct. There’s a continuing shake-out of many magazines, and the current weekly e-newsletter from Duotrope (http://www.duotrope.com/) notes five dying or unresponsive Websites, as well as a description of other fledging publishing enterprises. How come the volatility of Web publishing? Is this indicative of inept editors or over-energetic amateurs?

BJ Bourg, publisher of MFOB, wrote to me, “I've spoken with a few editors who were forced to shut down their magazines/e-zines, and nearly all were due to financial or health problems. Neither is true in my case. In actuality, you helped me solidify my decision. I read a message you posted on WordTrip (http://wordtrip.com/) where you mentioned having to ask me about the Spring Issue and then having to listen to me talk about working two jobs and publish the magazine. This made me realize two things. First, there was no law saying I had to publish a magazine. I was doing it for the sole purpose of helping other writers. When writers have to start asking me when an issue would be coming out or when I would be able to send payment for their story, that was the point when I was no longer helping them to the best of my abilities. Second, I realized I was putting MFOB before my family because I was putting every spare, non-working moment into MFOB, when I should have been spending it with them."

Ah, life. Where would it be without death—in love, finance or publishing?

An Inconvenient Truth—or More?

There’re countless reasons to be counted among the fallen. Theological, physiological, logistical…and ecological. This theme seemed to match itself against a neologism I ran across in the New York Times. Glenn Albrecht, an Australian philosopher, coined the word solastalgia to describe a form of homesickness or nostalgia one gets when still at home. Albrecht makes particular reference to environmental change in one’s surroundings due to development or climate change.
Thus, marrying solastalgia to the fallen resulted in “The Curious Reason Greta’s Heart Stopped Beating,” my whimsical look at the extremes in our culture. Super-editor Lisa Logan at MysteryAuthors--a Californian, environmentalist and founder of The Green Writing Challenge--may have recognized this situation.
Read it in its entirety at MysteryAuthors.com –http://mysite.verizon.net/mysteryauthors/. (Click on the “Minute Mystery” in the right-hand column, then on the contents page for June in the left-hand menu .)

A Nice Review of "Cruising the Green"

Coffee Time Romance has just given Cruising the Green of Second Avenue a nice “three cups” review. They say, “The life and times of Jake is [sic] once again fodder for a fascinating look into bachelorhood in the ‘60s. New York City is at the heart of it all for Jake and his friends. Their stories prove that at some point we all need to grow up and move on. Their roaring twenties have up and gone, and now Jake is finally ready to be an adult. But did he wait too long to realize that there can be life beyond the Big Apple? The quick wit and humor are back with this second installment, and worth the read.

Read it all at http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/BookReviews/Cruisingthegreenofsecondavenue.html --and then buy a copy at http://www.wildchildpublishing.com/content/view/426/125/. Help support a writer who needs periodic maintenance and accolades.