A Night at the Concert

I am sipping on my coffee looking for something to write about when the thought struck me to write on last night’s concert at Northern Quest where I work. It was Lynyrd Skynyrd, a southern rock band from the early to mid-seventies until a plane crash in 1977 took out a majority of the original members.

I always admired the songs that played out on FM radio in the days of my youth such as “Tuesdays Gone,” “Whiskey Rock and Roller,” “Give me Back My Bullets,” and my favorite, “Free Bird.” So, for me it was a no brainer to volunteer so I could listen to their classic hits along with their newer songs from their latest album, Last of a Dying Breed.

My responsibility was to look after the port-a-potty area where over thirty were in placed, along with the six different hand washing stations that needed tidying up. So, as I went about dumping trash, sweeping up paper towels or their remnants as I got to reminisced to a less complicated time in my life where my only concerns were graduating from high school.

The performers who remained, along with the newer members, had grayer hair, longer beards, and weathered faces but they played as if they too were still that younger version of their selves. They belted out “Simple Man,” “Sweet Home Alabama,” and of course, “Free Bird,” with all the vigor and enthusiasm of over forty, fifty years ago.

I hope other older bands come to our outdoor concert venue next year so I can volunteer and work and listen to those older songs I grew up on.

My Writing This Week

My loyal readers, I have no real history breaking news or antidotes of world leaders to share this week, just my craft which, as many of you know is a passion I will most likely continue to my last breath.

My step daughter and her husband gave me a birthday dinner last night and one of the topics of course was my writing and what I was doing at the present time. The son in law, I’ll call him Nic, asked if I ever saw the Johnny Depp movie Rear Window. I told him I had and the book that I was working on was loosely based upon the plot of that very story in which a writer has witnessed a murder and decides to write a similar story.

After I explained to him and my step daughter how the plot twists and turns in which the poor writer is in serious jeopardy with the antagonist, he tells me that that sounds like a good story.

As I have mentioned on A number of my past blogs, my technique is to just freely write the story without the benefit of a structured outline showing character developme4nt and drafting it out to its minute detail before putting the story together. I’m a proud pantser and am not about to change. After all, my fiction writers group’s coordinator made it clear that the first draft for a pantser like me, is the outline. After that it is edited, revised, and sometimes completely rewritten before it becomes the final product.

It is how I started the first book I wrote, This Life: My Life After My Stroke,  as well as the Marteau series, my second published book, A Man’s Passion, and I Albert Peabody.  Plotting out a story outline to me is a tedious endeavor that reminds me of when I had to do term papers in college; boring and unimaginative.

I like to think that when I’m writing it’s an enjoyable effort, not something akin to work. Even when I’m working, I make it seem enjoyable and not a drudgery or chore. So, without further ado I present my latest effort called Mobley’s  Dick. It is full of action, suspense, romance, and drama, with antidotes of humor to keep it lively. Richard Mobley is an unpublished writer who thinks he will make the best seller’s list if he can just get out that one book that will open day make him a household name.

He then witnesses a car accident on a street he lives on and the scene escalates into a murder when the driver of one car shoots the other driver. It is later reveal the victim was a news reporter for one of the local television stations. Dick thinks he has seen his opportunity and decides to write this book. What he is unaware of is that no one wants that story written including a certain city government official who wants the mayor to win reelection at any cost, including murder.

That is the elevator pitch I’m revealing to you, my loyal readers. Hopefully later down the line, it will become a best seller as well.

A Time For A Change

As if pried from a cockney accented newsboy in the heart of London, “Hear ye Hear ye, the Queen is dead, long live the King.”

After seventy years Britain’s Queen Elizabeth the second, passed at her summer estate in Balmoral in the Scottish highlands.

It’s hard for me to grasp how Britons feel right now at the loss of someone like her. I definitely felt more sadness at the sudden passing of John Lennon and Princess Diana, than I have of her. Many admire her for her strength and perseverance, though she was not the truly authoritative monarch many of history’s past rulers were. Their power had waned significantly in the past two centuries and her role was more as a figurehead than as an absolute ruler.

Now Charles the third will inherit the throne, though as I mentioned before it isn’t as it was before. His only concern now is keeping the family peace. That is something I truly don’t envy after my own family issues this past month or so. 

More and more it appears as though the role of the British monarchy has diminished so much as to make it obsolete, though I am certain many Britons would disagree. After all I’m just a Yank who was brought up in a representative democracy and we pledge allegiance to our flag and defend our constitution. They pledge sovereign allegiance to the crown. I have to ask though, how much longer before that too changes?

I’m Done

The house I told you of last month is in my name. It has been a very long 30 days. The frustrating part was that my wife had made certain demands and her daughter who is also going to reside there with her husband and three children have consistently told her they are un-realistic, viable or in some cases, even legal.

To put it in a nutshell, my wife has been making this harder than it needs to be, and it has been a very long and trying month with bickering and the cost of trying to make this deal work. It still might not because of how my wife is acting right now. Hopefully she’ll settle down and see the potential of this deal and just go with it.

I am hopeful that we can all get along on this and be happy with what we have invested. Obviously that can only happen as we can all pitch in and provide a good, positive attitude for all of us. Three of the four of us are willing. Stephanie is the wild card.

Nature All Around Us

As many of you my loyal readers know, I am a lover of nature; the world is a breathing entity of organisms, plants, and animals. My eyes are wide open to all things beautiful and I enjoy admiring any creature that comes into my space.

The other day I was driving home from an errand and saw to my surprise a doe and an antlered stag. I didn’t count the points but I felt certain it was at least a ten-point buck. The doe stood to one side while the buck laid on the grass of someone’s front lawn in front of their house. It is scenes like this, rare but yet not so rare. The other day a buck walked leisurely in front of the house I’m living at presently. It was early morning and I’m certain I was the only one up that early.

Another time at work, I walked by the smokers’ shack between the hotel and the casino and spied a Praying Mantis perched on the wall, camouflaged the same general hue as the wall; a beige-like color that most everyone missed until I pointed it out. Unfortunately, the next morning I came to work and discovered the creature had been crushed by someone’s shoe. Apparently another person didn’t see the mantas in the same way as I do; just another pest to destroy.

Yesterday afternoon there was a brush fire in a wooded area in a place near where I live called Palisades Park. I felt sad because those animals were running away from the fire because it’s their natural instinct for survival. Obviously the trees that were burned or scorched will slowly succumb to disease and die because their natural antibodies were compromised just as ours are if a similar fate should ever happen. Eventually the animals will return as well as the insects, and new plants will emerge from the ashes.

It is after all a part and parcel of our own life cycle of our biosphere. We all see this wonderful thing called life, the nature of it and the beauty of it and then one day we won’t because our own body will die and decay and become a part of this thing called nature.

A Sad Time

The other day I got this Facebook notice from a former co-worker from Northern Quest. She was an African American woman who I knew for years and resigned to have her baby three years ago. So, I was pleasantly surprised that she sent a post to me. Most of the time people who used to be on Facebook friends’ list cancel or delete these former contacts. I assumed she did the same.

At any rate she showed  a collage of photos of her and her daughter. She then mentioned how her two-year-old daughter had passed and was going to buy an urn for her and bury her next to her grandmother at the cemetery.

Two years old! Wow, it’s hard to grasp what she must be feeling right now, how utterly alone she must feel losing her only daughter. The cause was kidney failure which I suppose is something congenital. I couldn’t imagine something environmental would be the cause of someone so young.

I tried doing research on it and of course all the statistical analysis and studies told me very little. At least it didn’t tell me anything except that both enfant and child mortality rates in most of the developed world are going down, and a study done on acute kidney disease was so academic and dry as to make little or no sense to what the author was trying to express.

The hardest job I ever had was when I worked for the cemetery company in Richland, Washington. It was a grave I had to dig by hand on account it was meant for a four-year-old child and an earth mover would disturb the other graves too much. The ground was rocky and the grave was only to be big for the parents to come and visit on those special occasions we all feel is fitting. It was an area reserved for the children who passed from any number of illnesses, accidents or worse. I never like to consider the worse, but that too happens much too often these days. I know the innocent children always go to Heaven. After all, they aren’t corrupted by the evil influence of mankind.

I pray that her daughter is in a better place where her spirit is flying with the angels of Heaven and Jesus is smiling down on her with love and tenderness and mercy.

My Writing This Week

Okay, here is the good news that I have wanted to share for months now but only today am able to tell my loyal readers, my book I Albert Peabody is paid for through my diligent efforts. Like I said it’s been several months of suffering through in which case it seemed someone or something always seemed to get in the way. I don’t know when the release date will be yet, but hopefully, at least this time it will happen before Christmas which is an ideal time for books to get out there to the public.

Like I mentioned some time ago I am currently working on a new project called Mobley’s Dick. It’s a mystery suspense thriller, a bit tongue in cheek and also some romance to go with it to add some spice that I rarely do with most of my books. I also decided to use my Spokane Fiction Writers’ Club as a bit of a backdrop to the story, though it isn’t a centerpiece of the main plot.

I blew the dust off one of my second draft manuscripts called Luke Warm: A Nick Roberts Mystery. The detective is a down and out PI whose partner is murdered in the first scene. A news reporter named Luke Warm witnesses the shooting after he and his girlfriend end their date at a theater in Missoula, Montana. They partner up and soon discover there is much more to this mystery than just the murder of Nick Robert’s partner.

So here we are again looking at my next up coming projects in its various stages of metamorphosis. I am hopeful with the help of some marketing companies who have helped me these past months, these projects will begin to blossom into something quite successful.

I Don’t Know About You, But…

I’ve been just on pins and needles feeling like Gumby, being pulled in different directions because of this home deal, my book promotions and marketing, my wife and of course my own writing which has suffered the most.

I’ve been escaping by reading my Kindle books and going to work, which has benefitted my sanity somewhat. One would think that working at a job would be stressful enough, but in this case, it has been like an aphrodisiac because I can push everything else to the back burner for eight hours and not have to deal with buying a house, marketing a book on another promotion campaign, or dealing with the woman I love and am married to.

It’s when I get home after work that I have to revisit that zoo. My room mates are understanding to my predicament though they haven’t experienced exactly what I’m going through, they at least empathized with me; both are divorced.

The newest book I’m trying to write has been tough because of all the other pressures I’m having to put out as a priority too. It’s supposed to be a murder mystery where a writer witnesses a murder, gets the idea to write something similar and eventually finds himself in trouble for it when he tells the wrong person his plan. It’s floundering from neglect right now, and I’m not certain on what path to take at this point. It’s almost tempting to place that project on a back burner until these other issues get resolved.

But, I have to do as all recovering alcoholics do; take one day at a time and rely on sobriety and not dwell on trying to getting everything done at once. I always read the Serenity prayer that goes: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.

Here It Is

As many of you know my wife and have been living apart these past ten months and we are about ready to sell the house on Rowan. That is almost complete and buyer just has to sign the title agreement and it’s hers. We think we have found our place outside Cheney and Airway Heights which are towns outside Spokane. It’s 4.5 acres with a mobile home, a barn in the back, a shop, and unused pasture that will eventually be mine and Stephanie’s new home, either a modular or conventional house.

Our realtor told us the zoning rules and yes we can have another residence but it can only be no more than 800 square feet, but we can add upward, meaning a second story. There are other issues related to this and we are free to petition for an exemption. It still isn’t a for sure thing, but if we can make it work so be it. In the interim her daughter, children and husband will inhabit the mobile home, which is a nice sized double wide, though it’s a bit old: 1976. My wife and I agreed to live in a camper and the truck camper until our house is built hopefully in the following year.

Point Of View

Last night my writers’ group had a class in point of view. In case my loyal readers are not aware or have forgotten what they learned Junior High and High school English, point of view is the perspective of how the writer want to present his characters, such as first person: me, myself, or I, second person: you, or third person: he, she, them, they.

It isn’t a hard and fast rule on which genre point of view should or shouldn’t be used. They all work. As an example, I used a second person point of view story I wrote recently that was related to a larger book called A Case of Mistaken Identity. In this book are two different characters who are identical in appearance and age. I used one character in the second person and the other in the third person. Both meet each other briefly before one of the characters dies. But that too is a ruse.

One of the main points of using any point of view method, like anything concerning plot or character development, is consistency. You can’t just suddenly switch from first person to third without warning the reader first either through a break or chapter change. It would confuse the reader and force him or her to just give up on the book entirely.

I personally prefer third person omniscient where the narrator actually is more god-like being able to manipulate the characters and get inside their heads to bring their own thoughts out for the reader. But I have also used Third person limits such as I did in A Man’s Passion. This next book that is set to be published, I Albert Peabody, is in first person because it reads more like a memoir. This life: My Life after my Stroke, was also done in first person because it too was a memoir based on my life experiences though I used a fictitious name for the protagonist.

Point of view is a necessary element in drafting any story to engage the reader and make him or her feel something toward that character, be he the protagonist or antagonist, point of view helps the reader define an emotional feeling toward that particular character. This is so that in the end of the story we either cheer for the good guy or weep over his demise. That is what good story telling is all about.