November 22, 1963 -- November 22, 2013

 President Kennedy's Grave

with the Lincoln Memorial in the background

 

   I knew this year would be worse than last year or eleven years ago or forty-three years ago. I knew the media would fill the days leading to my birthday with questions and comments and constant reprise of the Zapruder film. That's right. My birthday.
   Sometimes Thanksgiving falls on my birthday, but the anniversary of President Kennedy's murder always falls on my birthday.
   November 22, 1963, my sixteenth birthday. My world was already dangerous. We were in the middle of the Cold War. My best friend's father had flown in the Berlin Airlift several years before and we had been afraid a Third World War would start then. President Kennedy had threatened the Soviet Union if they did not remove their missiles from Cuba. And we had been afraid of nuclear war then. Women's magazines had recipes and diets and articles about home bomb shelters. We had tornado drills at school and bomb drills.
   Fear was already a backdrop for my life. But like other almost-sixteen-year-olds, backdrops are just that. Mind catching each time they change, but quickly moved to the background as the activities of  life took center stage. And each time the scary moment passed, somehow my sense of security was recovered and all the dangers of the world receded.
   And then a man murdered President Kennedy. An English-speaking, white American whom I would not have recognized as different from my neighbors or me had I met him on November 21, 1963. And he did it in Dallas, Texas, a city more like my Oklahoma City than any other major American city. It was too close to home. It would not recede into any background.
   The murder of President Kennedy was the end of my sense of security, just as Pearl Harbor must have been the end of my parents' and the murder of President Lincoln must have been for Walt Whitman's generation and the burning of Washington, D.C., must have been for the young people of the War of 1812.
   Each of us must surely come to the realization that the concept of 'security' is false. That the concept of ideal is illusion. For me it came with the assassination of JFK. For my son it was probably the Oklahoma City bombing. For my daughter, fifteen years younger than my son, it was September 11. I don't know what it will be for my grandchildren, but it will surely happen. And the event will be just as shocking and just as threatening. It will not recede into a backdrop but become the next layer of tragedy on which our human condition rises.
   For every tragedy that reminds us how fragile and flawed we humans are, there are countless triumphs. The English burned our capital city, but with each generation we come closer to achieving a class-free society. And truly, so do those English and the rest of the world. President Lincoln was murdered and freedom and equality for all may have been delayed, but with each generation we come closer. And Pearl Harbor did not begin the end of human civilization, but began the end of another in the list of tyrants who would subjugate humanity. A long list that each generation faces.
   I gave up on security and ideals a long time ago. Fifty years ago, to be precise. But I do not give up on humanity. And hope is a great replacement for security.

On Re-reading The Wheel of Time

 

 

I do not have a history as a re-reader of fiction. Nonfiction, certainly. But there the point of re-reading is obvious. To check a date, to confirm a fact, to pursue a deeper understanding. But fiction? I do not feel the need to recheck fictional facts or fictional dates. And, for that matter, if I didn’t understand it the first time through, I only read it because of some obsessive-compulsive need to complete the damned book once I started it and I surely was not going to start it again. There are too many good novels out there and too little time. And I have not historically considered fantasy very high in that endless list of good novels.

But something is different about The Wheel of Time. The first time I read it, I was in such a hurry to find out what happened next that I missed the construction of the plot. I did not consciously appreciate the character development. I was only dimly aware of the author drawing me into an addictive relationship.

The story-line is straight forward. The hero grows to young adulthood in The Two Rivers, a simple agrarian society. An egalitarian culture that respected work and common sense. Where social status was determined by an individual’s contribution to the community. A narrow society that had little contact with the wider world. The hero and his hometown friends are pulled away from their comforting and comprehensible way of life and thrown into the fascinating, exciting, and always dangerous rest of the world.

The fourteen volumes of the series add up to one long chase scene. The author chivvies us along as the characters flee certain death or chase dangerous villains. From battle to battle with no time to rest, until we miss our reasonable bedtimes and delay our real-world duties. Until we get to Tarmon Gai'don, the final battle, and find out if the good guy wins and preserves The Wheel of Time and saves the whole world.

Simple. Typical American, Abe Lincoln story. No high-born hero necessary.

But the plot. It’s only during this re-reading that I appreciate the true superhero of this story. It’s the author, Robert Jordan. Not only did he construct a coherent world, invent characters in numbers of which Cecil B. De Mille would have boasted, and imagine more daring exploits and dire circumstances than I can comprehend (even after having experienced them vicariously during the first read through) but he got me to read fourteen volumes of fantasy.

His characters are introduced in the first book. So many that during my first reading I forgot their names and their faces until they appeared again and again throughout the story. Now as I read, I remember what they will do, who they will prove to be. I see how the author has drawn them in 3D and full-color. It’s no wonder I cared so much about them.

Their own individual stories weave and wind, over, around, and through each other. When I read it before, I would be frustrated when Jordan left whatever character we were following to follow another. And then again, when he would leave that character to follow yet another. And then again and again, until they came together only to move apart again. A dance of stories, sometimes a stately minuet, but more often, a square dance that I would have to follow without a caller to say what the next movement would be.

This time, I do not worry about what will happen next. I watch the intricate steps and recognize the changes in rhythm. I see the story as though it were a dear friend’s face, at once familiar. And still intriguing as the light plays across angles and planes reflecting all manner of thought and emotion.

When asked in the past to name my favorite novel, I would say John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. But I think now I must say The Wheel of Time is my favorite novel, though it be fourteen books long.

Portrait of a Writer

 

 

 

 



Spoiler alert! I tell how my novel Murder on Ceres ends.
  
   It's been a long time coming, but I am a writer. What did it take? A novel.

   I've been writing since the Third Grade. In those days it was short fiction and poetry. I didn't know I was writing short fiction. It was just stories. But I knew when I wrote poetry because it rhymed. My teachers were always supportive. When the weather outside was too cold or too rainy we stayed indoors during recess and the teacher read my stories. My status among my peers was guaranteed--writing and tether ball.

   There was never a suggestion that I should submit my work for publication. I don't think anyone I knew had any personal experience with the publishing world. In fact, I was a Senior in High School before I met anyone who'd been published. I don't remember his name, but I remember listening to him talk about a story he'd had accepted by a major magazine. Playboy, actually. Such an exotic publication. Not available over the counter in my small Oklahoma town. And then he said that of the national magazines that published fiction, they paid the most money. Money? How cool was that! Of course not even he envisioned quiting his day job. He was the editor of the local newspaper. Journalism, however, did not qualify as writing as far as I was concerned. After all I wrote for our school newspaper and later for that same small-town, twice a week newspaper.

   But I came to understand there were writers actually living and working in the real world, right then.

   College expanded my world exponentially. I went to poetry readings. They read famous long dead poets like William Shakespeare and Emily Dickenson. They read recently dead poets like e. e. cummings. Antiwar poets like Amy Lowell from my grandfathers' war. And their own antiwar poetry from our own war. And sometimes it rhymed, but more often not. Somehow poets did not qualify in my mind as writers. After all I could and did write poetry.

   My resume became an amalgam of the American working life--office worker, newspaper reporter/photographer/editor, welfare caseworker,  fast-food store manager, oil field hand, etc., etc., ad infinitum. I took up saying I was preparing for a career as a writer or a stand-up comedian.
  
   Well now I've done it. I completed the first draft of a novel.

   Murder on Ceres  takes place in the future when the center of civilization is located on the many colonies off Mars. Humans continue their exploration and exploitation of the universe. They choose their own evolution. They live longer, healthier lives. Nations and wars of nationalism are things of the past. But, for all their progress, humans are still humans and murder happens.
   
   My hero, Rafe Sirocco, a newly-minted police detective investigates his first murder. Dedication to his job endangers his marriage, the lives of his young wife and their unborn child, and, in the end, his own life.
 
   And how does this who-done-it come out? I typed these final words.

"The   End"

 

   And became a writer.



Trapped on the Highway

This short piece of fiction received Honorable Mention in the Flash Fiction competition at Rose State Writing Short Course, September 27, 2013.

 

Two days. There’s no way.

I was supposed to be at Uncle Henry’s funeral Tuesday. Aunt Jenny’s going to get everything. He never liked her, but he said you had to be there to inherit. Can’t say I ever liked her much either.

I can’t just sit here.

Millions down the drain.

Listen to that ass. Why doesn’t he just shut up. What’s he got to complain about? He’s four cars and a stock truck ahead of me. Upwind of that damn farmer. He doesn’t have to smell those animals. Why are stock trucks even allowed on public highways?

And when they dropped food and water, didn’t he get as much as anybody? Probably more than I got. Two days. Guess I should be grateful it hasn’t been hot or I’d smell like that farmer’s dumb animals. “Dumb.” That’s a joke. Nothing silent about them. I’ve got something in the glove box for them and that guy up ahead of them, too.

Screaming? Now what? Where’s that coming from? The car behind me? No. Two cars back. Some woman. Looks like she’s pregnant. That’s all we need. Probably in labor. Why is she even out in this? Some people make no provisions for themselves.

What? A helicopter?

Taking someone out, you say? Probably the pregnant woman. Normal, healthy people get shunted aside. Told to be quiet. Take what we’re given and be satisfied.

That is the biggest damn cop I’ve ever seen. What’s he saying? Me? He’ll help me?

I tell him this is a dangerous situation.

“Yes, Ma’am. It is. May I have the gun, please?”

A Broken Bicycle

 





 

Grace and I are in Midwest City, Oklahoma, for the Rose State writing conference. So how do we pass the time before Opening Ceremonies?  We do a writing exercise. The prompt: You wake up by the side of the road lying next to a bicycle with no memory and no wallet. What happens in the next hour?   Page 52 from 642 Things to Write About.

 

   “Hey, mister.”

   The funny little man seems to be talking to me.

   “What’s your name?” he asks.

   My name. Odd, but I can’t think what my name is. I think it’s something common like Bill or John. I don’t know.

   “That’s my bicycle you know.”

   He’s glaring at me like I’ve done something wrong. Actually I didn’t know it was his bicycle. What do I care whose bicycle it is?

   He’s shaking the mangled bike at me. “Look at that.”

   I can see it’s broken. What has that got to do with me? My head hurts.

   “You’re responsible.” His face is as red as his hair.

   “Look. I’m really sorry.” What else can I say? I don’t know how I’m responsible. I’ll give him a few bucks to fix the damn thing. It looks old anyway. Well, shit. My wallet’s gone.

Maybe he’ll let me catch it tomorrow. “I’m sorry.”

   “You said that already. I want to know what you’re going to do about it.”

   He looks threatening. Like someone less than five feet tall can look threatening. And wearing bright green pants? I don’t think so.

   “Don’t laugh at me, mister,” he says.

   Maybe he is dangerous.

   “No. No, of course not.” I need to sit down. My head really hurts and I think I’m going to be sick. It doesn’t seem funny to me either.

   “Do you see that kettle?” He’s pointing at an old iron kettle. Not huge, but maybe a three-gallon size.

   “Yes,” I say. “It’s broken, too.”

   “I know it’s broken, too,” he says and clouds up like he’s going to cry.

   In fact, the sky has clouded up, too.

   He sits next to me and blubbers, “The gold’s all gone.”

   “I’m sorry,” I say. And I really am, but I don’t know what he’s talking about. I really don’t.

   And the next thing I know lights are flashing and this big guy in a uniform is bent over me asking, “What’s your name?”

 

Check out Graces take on this writing prompt at   http://bit.ly/19G1ySG



Broken Plates

Grace and I are at it again. Here is the writing prompt we used today. From page 260 in 642 Things to Write About. Start a story with the line "My mother broke every plate in the house that day."

 

   My mother broke every plate in the house that day.

   Not every one. She didn't break the commemorative ones that hang on the wall in the dining room. You know, the one of the Methodist Church built in 1915 and the one with a picture of the Bad Lands in South Dakota. None of those.

   But all of the ones we ate on. The ones my grandmother gave us. Not Momma's mother. Dad's mother.

   They were pretty plates. They had roses on them. And the cups were lovely. Small with a pedestal on the bottom. Dad always complained about those little cups. He said you couldn't get more than a mouthful in them and that got cold before you could drink it.

   Ever the peacekeeper, Momma would refill his cup and say, "But your mother worked hard to get us these."

   There was nothing he could say to that. Grandma did work hard. But, she never had much money.

    That day, in the middle of the afternoon, I found Momma and Grandma sitting in the living room. They watched Days of Our Lives while the dining room looked like a hurricane hit. White bits of china blanketed the floor like hail--a tiny red rose here and there.

   And those two women in front of the TV as calm as could be. I always thought my mother loved those dishes that Grandma gave her. Add to that the fact that Momma hated the sound of breaking glass worse than thunder. And I'd never seen Grandma just sit when anything needed cleaning up. I was afraid to imagine what was going on. 

   "Sit here Rosie, darlin'," my Grandma said to me patting the couch between her and Momma. "I won the Powerball today. Your Momma can have any dishes she wants."

Check out Grace's response to this prompt: Click  here

Celebrity Writers

Do you know who this is?

 

   He's a celebrity author. He is one of the "world’s bestselling and critically acclaimed thriller writers" according to the publisher Simon and Schuster who's coming out with an anthology of stories from 23 thriller authors next year.

 

   Admittedly my sense of celebrity seems not to fit that of our general society. I have little interest in athletes or entertainers. Though I can admire the feats of a Michael Jordan or a Maggie Smith, I can't say that I would go out of my way to sit next to them at dinner. Though to be at table where they sat next to each other might be interesting.

 

   Celebrity writers, on the other hand, I would go out of my way to sit next to at dinner or at the same table or in the same hall. Wouldn't it be grand to listen to Ken Follett and hear him say in person that he did not sell his first novel nor indeed, his tenth? If he who has written so many good books and been so often published did not sell his first one then there is hope for me. And J.K. Rowling whose Harry Potter series was rejected by umpteen publishing houses before Scholastic picked it up, then my Rafael Sirocco series has a chance.

 

   Okay, for those two celebrities, it's more about me.

 

   Sometimes my admiration is for writers who have lived through and written about history that I'm interested in. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s novels are among the best in American fiction, but for me his celebrity status comes from his own life experiences. He was a World War II prisoner of war held in Dresden, Germany, during the Allies' bombing and subsequent firestorm there. Later, his work with PEN International to focus attention on the plight of writers being persecuted in their own countries.

 

   Maya Angelou is in this same category of celebrity writers because of whom she had known--from famous leaders in our country's civil rights movement to unknowns in that same struggle. I get a thrill every time I drive through Stamps, Arkansas, because I know she lived there as a child.

 

   Then there are some of my favorite authors--John Irving, Robert Jordan, John Lescroart (That's his photo, by the way.) Diane Mott Davidson, Donna Leon, Patrick O'Brien. These are the writers I come back to time and again. Not because they feel like celebrities to me. I'm not even particularly interested in meeting them. It's their characters that I would like to spend time with, talk to, or just admire in person.

 

   I would like to know:

 

   John Wheelwright, best friend to John Irving's Owen Meany, from A Prayer for Owen Meany my favorite novel. It's about growing up. It's about friendship. It's about living with disability and mortality.

 

    Egwene, the country girl who becomes the head of the greatest institution in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time world. She is only one of literally a world of characters with whom I would gladly spend time. Well, all except the truly scary villains and terrifying creatures. Those can stay on the pages of the book.

 

   Dismas Hardy and Abe Glitsky and their families from John Lescroart's San Francisco based crime novels. Beginning with the first of these novels we meet these people and follow them as they build their lives together. Maybe we could all meet at Lou the Greek's for lunch.

 

   Goldie Bear from Diane Mott Davidson's culinary mysteries. We follow Goldie and her best friend (who happens to share the same abusive ex-husband whom they both refer to as 'the jerk') and Goldie's son as they get involved in murder mystery after murder mystery. Goldie does meet and marry a Colorado, sheriff's detective named Schultz. Nice man. Nice country, since that's where I live. Goldie is a caterer so naturally there are recipes included, most of which I've tried in my own kitchen.

 

   Commissario Guido Brunetti from Donna Leon's murder mysteries set in Venice, Italy. This  policeman knows the vicissitudes of the Italian justice system but works to solve crimes and bring the bad guys to some kind of reckoning anyway. He loves and respects his wife. The stories don't always have an ending that satisfies my just-desserts sensibilities, but they feel real and I understand Brunetti's cynicism. Couldn't we have a great discussion about right and wrong?

 

   Patrick O'Brian's Jack Aubrey from Master and Commander and the other books in this series that follow the British navalman through the Napoleonic wars. And let me just say Jack was hot in the books before the movie folk cast Russell Crowe to play him in the movie version. I might even flirt a bit.