Gerald Everett Jones's Blog: Gerald Everett Jones - Author, page 21
April 7, 2024
It's a Bright New Day in Kathryn Raaker's World
It’s a stimulating half-hour on YouTube.
Wherever in the world, she’s been there and done that. We had an agenda for this talk but it got way out of hand!
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April 5, 2024
Chapter 16: Preacher Finds a Corpse - Bonus Audiobook Episode GP710
Here’s the next post in the weekday releases of the 24 episodes in the Preacher Finds a Corpse audiobook.
Episode GP711 will be posted Monday morning at 8am Eastern / 5am Pacific and the other episodes each weekday thereafter.
May you find the novel intriguing and compelling, and please don’t hesitate to leave your impressions in the Comments section of the posts.
Episode 10 DescriptionGP710 Preacher Finds a Corpse - Chapter 16 (47:57 minutes)Lawyer Angus Clapper tells Evan about the terms of Bob's will and two problems with title to the Emmett farm. He hints at a third complication but can't explain.
Chapter 16
Friday 11 AM
John Knox Village, Lee’s Summit
As Evan arrived at Knox, a copious snowfall had begun. He wanted to take as much time as necessary with Clapper, but he worried weather conditions could worsen and complicate his drive back.
When Evan reported to the reception desk in the vestibule, he had to first sign the register, which he did as Preacher Evans. So he was within his rights simply writing Preacher in felt marker on his stick-on visitor’s badge. The security guard at the desk summoned a pimply faced male orderly, named Darnell, who accompanied Evan to the solarium on the second floor of one of the residence buildings. Perversely thinking about his newly adopted sister village, Evan wondered about the impression he’d give if he’d written Peculiar Preacher on his badge.
Maybe no one would get the joke?
Angus Clapper was seated in a wheelchair with a plaid blanket covering his lap. Clashing with the blanket was his heavy wool hunter’s shirt, also plaid but of a different stripe. A translucent plastic tube hung from an elastic band hooked around his ears, connecting his bulbous nose to a small oxygen tank mounted on the back of his chair.
Evan shook the frail, dry hand Clapper offered him and sat down opposite the fellow at a small rollaway table. The chessboard was already set up.
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April 4, 2024
Chapters 14-15: Preacher Finds a Corpse- Bonus Audiobook Episode GP709
Here’s the next post in the weekday releases of the 24 episodes in the Preacher Finds a Corpse audiobook.
Episode GP710 will be posted Friday morning at 8am Eastern / 5am Pacific and the other episodes each weekday thereafter.
May you find the novel intriguing and compelling, and please don’t hesitate to leave your impressions in the Comments section of the posts.
Episode GP709 DescriptionGP709 Preacher Finds a Corpse - Chapters 14 and 15 (27:51 minutes)Evan does some more data drilling and remembers a time when he and Bob went hunting with Uncle Dick. On his way to see crusty old attorney Angus Clapper, Evan drives through the town of Peculiar.
Chapter 14
Thursday Afternoon
Evan’s Trailer
Evan hadn’t told Otis about the files he found on Bob’s laptop. That Bob had been researching the ownership of the farm was not so surprising. But the fact of the two encrypted files with anonymous labels nagged at Evan. Brownie1993 for the computer had been a lucky find. He’d have to try to guess the password or passwords for those two files.
Brownie, 1993. The year the dog died. Also Bob’s mother. Now we have that in common.
* * *
As boys, when Evan and Bob weren’t poking around AC, they’d meet up at the Emmetts. Bob had permission from his parents as well as from the Emmetts to roam those pastures. Only later did Evan realize it was because Bob’s Great Aunt Molly owned it all (or thought she did). It was a short hike from the Evans’ farm to the Emmett’s, so the boys regarded it as their personal recreation area. Although unsupervised, they knew they weren’t allowed (and didn’t have access to) firearms. But they plinked at everything they saw with BB and pellet guns, and slingshots. Brownie (the First) was there to scout elusive prey. But when she spotted a squirrel or a rabbit or even a mouse, she’d bark excitedly, nonstop. As a result, she’d startle the animal, which would scamper away before the boys had a chance to get off a shot. It was enormous fun, and the boys never faulted themselves for not being expert hunters or crack shots.
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April 3, 2024
Gerald and John Christian Discuss the End of the World
I didn’t say “prevents,” but John might say it’s not a concern.Preacher Evan Wycliff is often a doubter. John Christian says he’s an atheist. What is Gerald? An I-don’t-knowist? Click here to watch on YouTube.
Host John Christian says he’s left Christianity. He’s a Canadian self-published author, music composer, and podcaster. His show is Tell Me About Your Book, where he speaks to other self-published authors about their work. It streams weekly on YouTube.
John retired from film and television editing in 2017 after a brain aneurysm ended his career. In 2018 John began writing books.
Among these is The Way to Kialo, a fictional account of John’s personal journey from evangelical Christianity to atheism. That led to a second book in the series called The Barnabas Trail, which deals with the subject of anti-intellectualism. The third book of the trilogy is The Kialo Expansion. It confronts the awful subject of bigotry. All three books are a continuing story that takes place over a period of 28 years.
Paid subscribers to this blog get the audiobook Preacher Finds a Corpse. Find episodes here.
Fourth in the Preacher Evan Wycliff mystery series.
Feed your curiosity with a paid subscription to this Thinking About Thinking blog. With a paid subscription, you’ll gain access to all the content that’s here, including podcasts, and you’ll be helping us build our worldwide community through storytelling and self-expression.
If you’re a free subscriber here, upgrade to paid for $5 per month or $30 and get access to all content, including Thinking About Thinking book reviews, thoughtful essays, podcasts, and audiobooks.
Chapter 13: Preacher Finds a Corpse - Bonus Audiobook Episode GP708
Here’s the next post in the weekday releases of the 24 episodes in the Preacher Finds a Corpse audiobook.
Episode GP709 will be posted Thursday morning at 8am Eastern / 5am Pacific and the other episodes each weekday thereafter.
May you find the novel intriguing and compelling, and please don’t hesitate to leave your impressions in the Comments section of the posts.
Episode GP708 DescriptionGP708 Preacher Finds a Corpse - Chapter 13 (33:26 minutes)Evan returns to the sheriff's office to review the autopsy.
Thursday 11 am
Sheriff’s Office
Otis offered Evan a chair in the private office, closed the door, and handed him three documents — Edie’s signed power of attorney, the medical examiner’s report, and the sheriff’s case report.
Evan scanned the POA’s terms and conditions, which were concise but meticulously worded. Edie was giving him authority to “make decisions and execute agreements regarding all matters pertaining to my personal affairs, effective immediately and revocable forthwith on notice, whether oral or written.”
“Wow,” Evan said. “Isn’t this unusually broad? And open-ended?”
“On the face of it,” Otis surmised, “she’s a distressed widow. Can’t be bothered. Trusts you completely.”
“And?” Evan asked cautiously. “What’s her agenda, do you think?”
Otis leaned forward, lowered his voice, and said, “Could be she wants deniability. That is, if she decides to do something other folks might not approve of. Like maybe, try to stop the demolition?”
“I’d like nothing better, sheriff. But, turns out, it’s not up to her. Not at all.”
The sheriff looked genuinely surprised. “How’s that?”
“The Corps of Engineers is telling me it’s not her land. If she’s not the landowner, she has no standing to appeal. Because there was no assertion of eminent domain in the first place.”
“What?”
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April 2, 2024
Chapter 12: Preacher Finds a Corpse - Bonus Audiobook Episode GP707
Here’s the next post in the weekday releases of the 24 episodes in the Preacher Finds a Corpse audiobook.
Episode GP708 will be posted Wednesday morning at 8am Eastern / 5am Pacific and the other episodes each weekday thereafter.
May you find the novel intriguing and compelling, and please don’t hesitate to leave your impressions in the Comments section of the posts.
Episode GP707 DescriptionGP707 Preacher Finds a Corpse - Chapter 12 (21:33 minutes)Evan meets with his boss Zip, who shares gossip about locals, including Shackleton, who manages a bank.
Chapter 12
Thursday 8:30 am
Zed Motors
Evan found Zip “the Zipper” Zed IV in the service bay of Zed Motors, the family-owned Ford car and tractor dealership in Rockville. In the scheme of things in this part of Southern Missouri, Appleton City in St. Clair County is a one-silo town, nearby Butler (in Bates County, as is Rockville) is a two-silo town, and Springfield — more than a hundred miles to the south in Greene County — is the nearest big city. Rockville is a wide place in the road, with a population of about a hundred-and-sixty souls, which at any given moment might be growing or shrinking by a significant percentage, depending on what’s happening in the beds of its lovers and invalids. Locating the dealership in this smallest of small towns instead of on the main drag of AC may have had something to do with the price of land or that the founder had expected the community to grow more than it ever did. As it was, Zed Motors was only a short side-trip from the teeming metropolis of AC, and Zip relished being the little town’s undisputed business leader.
Zip was admiring a new delivery, a factory-new, late-model Ford TW-25 tractor. His service tech Max Alumbaugh was checking it over meticulously with the engine running, hooking up diagnostic connectors to a dashboard display to step through a sequence of metrics and detect any variances.
Zip glanced up from the maze of cables, j-boxes, piping, and valves surrounding the tractor’s massive diesel power plant. The owner of Zed Motors was ten years younger than Evan, having inherited the business five years ago when his father’s meticulously maintained Studebaker Golden Hawk hit a patch of black ice and collided with a telephone pole. Zip had won a degree with honors from the UM Rolla in mining and metallurgy with a minor in business administration.
Lack of confidence was not among Zip’s shortcomings. Evan wondered whether, after a few more years, Zip would grow bored of running the dealership, although being a big fish in a little pond must have had its perks, including a loud voice in regional politics.
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April 1, 2024
Chapters 9-11: Preacher Finds a Corpse - Bonus Audiobook Episode GP706
Here’s the next post in the weekday releases of the 24 episodes in the Preacher Finds a Corpse audiobook.
Episode GP707 will be posted Tuesday morning at 8am Eastern / 5am Pacific and the other episodes each weekday thereafter.
May you find the novel intriguing and compelling, and please don’t hesitate to leave your impressions in the Comments section of the posts.
Episode GP706 DescriptionGP706 Preacher Finds a Corpse - Chapter 9, 10, and 11 (37:45 minutes)Coralie, waitress at the C'mon Inn, gives Evan another reason Bob was depressed. Evan breaks into Bob's laptop and phone and finally gets some hard evidence. Still unable to make sense of things, Evan has an imaginary debate with his deceased fiance Naomi.
Chapter 9
Wednesday 8 pm
C’mon Inn
In the evening of the day of Bob’s death, Evan found his appetite. He gratefully polished off a light meal of polenta and scrapple as he sat at the counter of the C’mon Inn. Cora had refilled his coffee cup faithfully with fresh-brewed Farmer Brothers from the glass carafe it seemed she never put down. To her credit, she didn’t disapprove of his stirring in a couple of packets of Folger’s crystals to thicken it up. Followed by his usual megadose of sugar.
The brain runs on glucose. That’s sugar. There will either be time enough for me to mend my ways, or there won’t.
The place was abuzz with the news about Bob, but no one suspected Evan had any special knowledge of it. Edie wasn’t talking and neither was Chet Otis. Evan kept to himself, not just because of his ontological crisis but also because he intended to keep his inquiries confidential as long as possible.
It was a slow night at the diner. Only two booths were occupied, and Evan was alone at the counter. He was still dressed in the down jacket and jeans he’d had on since early morning, so he didn’t look different from any of the other men in the place. They’d all parked their ball caps next to their coffee mugs. Cora was the type who was chatty and gossipy enough if you engaged her, but she knew to leave you alone if you were in a mood and wanted to keep your thoughts to yourself.
People say she’s slow. She might not have made it out of grade school, but there’s something glowing inside her
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March 31, 2024
This Week's Audiobook Episodes GP706-GP710
Here’s a list of the next five weekday releases of the 24 episodes in the Preacher Finds a Corpse audiobook.
New episodes will be posted each weekday morning at 8 am Eastern / 5 am Pacific until all 24 episodes in the book have been released.
May you find the novel intriguing and compelling, and please don’t hesitate to leave your impressions in the Comments section of the posts.
Monday, April 1GP706 Preacher Finds a Corpse - Episode 06 - Chapters 9, 10, and 11 (37:45 minutes)Tuesday, April 2GP707 Preacher Finds a Corpse - Episode 7 - Chapter 12 (21:33 minutes)Coralie, waitress at the C'mon Inn, gives Evan another reason Bob was depressed. Evan breaks into Bob's laptop and phone and finally gets some hard evidence. Still unable to make sense of things, Evan has an imaginary debate with his deceased fiance Naomi.
Wednesday, April 3GP708 Preacher Finds a Corpse - Episode 8 - Chapter 13 (33:26 minutes)Evan meets with his boss Zip, who shares gossip about locals, including Shackleton, who manages a bank.
Thursday, April, 04GP709 Preacher Finds a Corpse - Episode 9 - Chapters 14 and 15 (27:51 minutes)Evan returns to the sheriff's office to review the autopsy.
Friday, April 5GP710 Preacher Finds a Corpse - Episode 10 - Chapter 16 (47:57 minutes)Evan does some more data drilling and remembers a time when he and Bob went hunting with Uncle Dick. On his way to see crusty old attorney Angus Clapper, Evan drives through the town of Peculiar.
Lawyer Angus Clapper tells Evan about the terms of Bob's will and two problems with title to the Emmett farm. He hints at a third complication but can't explain.
There are four novels in the Preacher Evan Wycliff mystery series. We’ve produced the first one as an audiobook. Your support here will help us to record more!
In Which I Explain 'Boychik Lit'
PrefaceI recently reissued the Rollo Hemphill Misadventures series, and a new generation of fans seems to be discovering its amusements. I felt I had to write this apologetic Preface to excuse my crustiness.
When the notion of reissuing Rollo Hemphill’s misadventures floated past in my stream of consciousness, my next thought was, Hey, those stories are evergreen — why not? But more practical considerations of the publishing marketplace prevailed, necessitating this explanatory note.
My concern isn’t that the characters won’t be relatable or their follies any less funny in the glare of freshly fired-up high-wattage attention. No, the problem is one of perceived technological obsolescence. The first novel in the series — My Inflatable Friend — was released in 2007. To some of you in the shivering audience for whom first impressions can be cool if not downright cold, that era might not seem so long ago. But to others, the crusty tale might as well have occurred just before the undocumented end of the last Ice Age. (There have been more than one, I’m told. Hence the rush to print again, lest the next big freeze overtake us. Hmm. Some in fire, some in ice. We probably don’t get to pick.)
When the first novel in the series was released, cell phones existed but weren’t yet what you’d call smart. Email was a thing, surely, but social media had not yet turned the world’s great newspapers into ezines for old folks.
Some Luddites still clung to their fax (facsimile) machines, especially those who insisted that electronic signature was an oxymoron.
Some movie crews who were filming were still actually using film. Likewise for shows taping.
Into this latter-day Age of Innocence schlepped poor Rollo, whose challenges getting attention from females, then avoiding journalists and G-men, could no doubt have been helped by the option of sending the occasional exculpatory text message. Emojis wouldn’t have hurt his cause either, and an amusing animation, especially if cloned onto his bodily image as a wisecracking avatar, might have put him right over the top. (Or on the bottom. At the outset, positional advantage was far from his foremost concern.)
Back then, climate change could have been mitigated — or didn’t exist — depending on which talking head you credited. In fact, “the end of the world as we know it” was mostly a worn-out sci-fi theme, hardly a topic of almost unremitting daily conversation. A pandemic was a post-WWI episode, not feared to be repeated because threats such as Ebola and AIDS had presumably been contained. The James Bond movie franchise was still going strong because male guilt, belatedly dredged up by #MeToo, had not yet made it necessary (spoiler alert!) to kill the legendary rapist off.
And — perhaps most significant for the sake of Rollo’s first episode — lifelike robots designed for intimate uses may have been in development but were certainly not yet ready for the likes of Rollo.
Mind you, Rollo’s stories need not be read in sequence. Rubber Babes exists in its own quirky paranoid reality, and Farnsworth’s Revenge is no less sweet when not saved for last, but the through-line of Rollo’s lurching character development does flow in a bobbing chronology through these books. Wise readers will know better than to regard him as a role model. Rollo’s problem — if you insist on calling it that — is paradoxical: No matter what scheme he tries or how it fails — he persists in falling ever-upward.
I could wonder, though, whether male-centered comic humor can be written anymore. Men seem more pathetic than funny now, as do some who oddly claim to be both white and marginalized. Satire might still be a useful term, but nowadays its connotations tend to be political. Rollo does get enmeshed in complications on an international scale — but he has no agenda other than self-preservation.
My original inspiration for these novels was my admiration for the novelist and poet Peter De Vries. In the mid-twentieth century, his male-centered comic novels ridiculed religion and extramarital sex — often in the same book. However, the whiff of controversy, so delicious in his day, has not aged well, and some would say positively reeks. In Forever Panting (my favorite), an out-of-work actor divorces his wife and marries his mother-in-law, continuing to lust after his ex. In Slouching Toward Kalamazoo, a female high-school teacher carries on an affair with her tender-aged male student.
Such themes are not exactly fodder for popular humor these days.
Lest you think I’m preoccupied with peters, I’ll confess that the works of Peter Lefcourt also influenced me. The Woody is brilliant, and by virtue of its inside-the-Beltway setting, it qualifies as legitimately political satire. (Alas, whether Lefcourt was satirizing Gary Hart or Bill Clinton or both is a question not likely to be explored by any contemporary book club.) And he wrote Eleven Karens when it was still possible to bestow the name on a newborn girl.
As well, when I began to stir the pot of silliness on my own, the publishing business had finally been taken over by women — along with the belated recognition that, for decades if not since Gutenberg, the most avid readers have been women. The genre chick-lit had come full flower. Appreciating the polar opposites such as De Vries and Lefcourt, I coined the term boychik lit as a lodestar for sinking ships helmed by ill-fated peters.
So, by way of further explanation — as if any more of my rants were needed to cheer you on to root for Rollo — I append my essay “Boychik Lit” at the end of the book.
Thank you for the use of the genre. If Rollo’s exploits bring a smile, you needn’t tell anyone.
Feed your curiosity with a paid subscription to this Thinking About Thinking blog. With a paid subscription, you’ll gain access to all the content that’s here, including podcasts, and you’ll be helping us build our worldwide community through storytelling and self-expression.
March 29, 2024
Chapter 8: Preacher Finds a Corpse - Bonus Audiobook Episode GP705
Here’s the next post in the weekday releases of the 24 episodes in the Preacher Finds a Corpse audiobook.
Episode GP706 will be posted Monday morning at 8am Eastern / 5am Pacific and the other episodes each weekday thereafter.
May you find the novel intriguing and compelling, and please don’t hesitate to leave your impressions in the Comments section of the posts.
Episode GP705 DescriptionGP705 Preacher Finds a Corpse - Chapter 8 (26:15 minutes)Evan argues with Edie, who nevertheless lets him go through Bob's personal things to find evidence.
Chapter 8
Wednesday 2 pm
Taggart House
Edie was not behaving like a new widow. She was dressed for some meeting or social event. She had on a crisp print dress underneath her tailored herringbone overcoat with a velvet collar. She carried a designer handbag and had on matching pumps. She wore a hat that might be considered smart these days, but Evan wouldn’t know. She’d taken some care with applying her lipstick, which was a deep, wet-look red.
Evan’s first task this afternoon would be to look in Bob’s office for an address book, the most likely place to find passwords. He’d brought two laptops and two phones, both his and Bob’s. Not owning a briefcase, Evan had the laptops in an oilskin bag to keep them dry. The cold, crisp morning had turned into an afternoon drizzle.
Edie seemed pleased his return was punctual. She was forthright. “Did you take care of the arrangements?”
“I will authorize the cremation if we see no complications in the autopsy report, which we’ll get tomorrow. And I made some calls. The cremains will be delivered to Hill and Sons. They’ll provide a silver urn and a hand-carved walnut case with the appropriate Masonic emblem. His parents are buried in Rockville Cemetery, and I need to file that paperwork with Bates County. The car from Hill and Sons will take you and me to the cemetery after the memorial. I booked the church service and the reception at First Baptist for Saturday morning at ten. I reserved the obit notices in the papers. Do give me the family and guest list so I can make sure they’re all notified. It’s kind of late, but I’ll do what I can to reach the ones out of town.”
“Thank you,” she said curtly. She was already moving toward the door. “I wouldn’t know where to start. The door will lock behind you when you leave.”
“I know you’re in a hurry, so let’s talk more about this later. Maybe I can help Josh calm down.”
“Don’t bother with him. What’s done is done.”
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Gerald Everett Jones - Author
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