Gerald Everett Jones's Blog: Gerald Everett Jones - Author, page 27
October 22, 2023
Book Teaser: 'Get the Cheese: Let the Other Mouse Go First!' by Damian Andrews
My friend and colleague from Oz, Damian Andrews, will be releasing this new book, which may get shelved with self-help, business how-to, and personal development. But its perspective is wiser than those trivial labels. It will take a book-length discussion and a series of amusing fables to describe what demotivational motivation means and how it can not only support your life and goals but also enrich your relationships with friends, associates, and community.
There’s More CheeseThe complete book is set for release in November 2023. Damian’s unconventional marketing approach offers you the opportunity to be a “pre-release purchaser.” Having downloaded the pre-release chapters, you can start reading right away. Then, on or after the release date, you can claim a discount for the full book.
So, want Cheese before everyone else?Send an email to iwantcheese@damianandrews.com if you want an early sample of Get the Cheese: Let the Other Mouse Go First!
For more information, the Amazon book page is here.
Here’s a teaser…
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” - William Shakespeare“Why read this memoir?” asked Kali the QuokkaSince the dawn of our existence—well, our thinking existence—we’ve been curious. We had an inherent need to understand, to grow, and to find meaning. Life is a symphony. The chords of motivation push you forward. You dream big, you want more, and your passions fuel your desires.
It’s not always a smooth road. Doubts, challenging beliefs, and questioning your worthiness can plague you. This could be minor bumps in the road or massive, locked, and fortified steel gates blocking your path.
Yet, what if those negative obstructions were actually your greatest source of inspiration? Is it only a matter of perspective? Could internal and external conflict end with a deeper understanding? One that questions holding onto your prejudices?
Take the title of this book. “Get the Cheese. Let the other mouse go first!” Does it mean strategic patience, learning from others’ mistakes, and being innovative? Or does it mean opportunism, lack of initiative, and over-caution?
Our evolutionary survival has often hinged on identifying something as ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Tasty, nutritious berries evoke a different response than a sabre-tooth tiger. No, “Here, kitty, kitty” uttered back then. As we evolved, the ability to organise vast amounts of “information served us well. We made decisions faster. Simplifying the process of categorising information gave us a greater chance of survival.
We developed a broader thinking capacity. We wondered why we were here and what the purpose and meaning of life is. Finding purpose helps you feel significant. It keeps you from feeling lost in chaos and randomness. Moral and ethical frameworks came next. These helped guide your behaviour. Fostering shared values gives you a sense of belonging and identity.
Control and predictability come from categorising events and actions into understandable frameworks. Do A, and you get a kiss on the cheek. Do B, and your backside feels the sensation of a stinging slap. Plus, shared beliefs about right and wrong enrich unity, trust, and direction. This promotes cooperation and reduces conflict.
Throughout history, stories have imparted life’s lessons. Stories connect you and provide understanding, often tempered with emotional resonance. Their entertainment provides you with a temporary escape from mundaneness and stress. The lessons from stories help you make sense of the world. They provide inspiration and motivation. Plus, they give you an opportunity to reflect and grow.
The stories that follow aim to encourage questions. Are those things that discourage you actually holding you back? Instead, could they be the very key to your most profound growth?
Get the Cheese. Let the Other Mouse Go First! is an invitation to experience the world from a unique perspective.
Feed your curiosity with a paid subscription to this Thinking About Thinking blog. You’ll gain access to all the content that’s here, and you’ll be helping us build our worldwide community through storytelling and self-expression.
October 18, 2023
Book Review: 'Mixed Blood' by Tim Warren McGlue
First, by way of introduction, I must disclose that I was Tim McGlue’s roommate in Paris during l’epoque des barricades in 1968. We weren’t activists. Our group of underclassmen from Wesleyan’s College of Letters was nominally registered at the Sorbonne, but we took classes with tutors, including Roland Barthes, who became famous as the father of semiotics. Most of that, including reasons for the student riots, was over our heads at the time. We probably thought the unrest was a protest against the war in Vietnam. Back then, Americans sometimes received an indifferent reception in France because - having recently abandoned their own stake in Indochina - the French seemed offended by the notion that U.S. troops kept trying where theirs had failed. It turned out - and I don’t remember when I learned this - that the protests were mainly a rebellion against the aristocratic track system of the University of Paris, which not only favored the wealthy but also placed them in cushy jobs after graduation.
Sound familiar?
Available in paperback and ebook from Polyverse Publications and booksellers worldwide.
Anyhow, McGlue, who hails from Indianapolis, unaccountably was wonderfully fluent in French. I’d had several years of study myself, but I could barely get a few words out. My short stature and dark features made me look like a Belgian or a Brit if the locals caught my atrocious accent. But my friend was tall and sandy-haired, sporting cowboy boots and corduroys. When they heard his mellifluous speech, amazingly, he was “un cowboy de Far West qui parle couramment!”
Ah, yes. Enough of personal history.
McGlue has thoroughly researched the life and work of his nineteenth-century forebear, William W. Warren, who grew up on the edge of the western frontier, son of an Ojibwe mother and a white trader father. As historical fiction, Mixed Blood: Last Winter in America is both earnest and ambitious - coming in at 498 pages.
Besides coping with his mixed-race parentage, Warren’s world is colored by the U.S. government's forced removal of Native Americans from their ancestral lands in 1850s Minnesota, as it had been occurring in the Midwest for decades.
Warren's learning both Ojibwe and English languages and embracing the traditions of both cultures cast him in the role of interpreter and mediator between the Ojibwe and the white settlers.
At the heart of the narrative lies the tragedy of Sandy Lake, a pivotal event that forces Warren to confront the harsh reality that progress, as defined by the U.S. government, must not be halted. Unfulfilled promises of food and annuities result in hundreds of Ojibwe deaths from starvation, disease, and exposure. This crisis prompts Warren to believe that safeguarding the oral traditions of his community must be his life’s mission.
The novel's crux is Warren's decision to embark on a perilous journey to collect and record the oral histories of the Ojibwe elders. His manuscript, History of the Ojibway People, becomes a beacon of hope in the face of cultural erasure. His journey to New York during a harsh winter becomes a symbolic struggle against failing health, his own laudanum addiction, and societal bigotry.
The novel masterfully describes Warren's challenges as he struggles to find his identity, race, culture, and history. Predictably, Warren's publishers reject his manuscript. White culture has no wish to hear versions of history as told by the vanquished.
Sound familiar?
The novel recounts Warren's untimely death in 1853, marking the end of a dedicated individual who strived to preserve his tribe's legacy. However, the recovery of his lost manuscript eventually completes his mission. Published in 1887, History of the Ojibway People became prominent by offering a unique perspective from the words of Ojibwe grandfathers.
The existence of Warren’s book is not a fiction contrived by McGlue to tell a story. It’s hardly surprising today to read its catalog descriptions, which point out that indigenous people may disagree with Warren’s account.
Let the debates continue!
Historical fiction is all about today. Contemporary minds look back on events through lenses colored by everything that has happened since. We might identify with our forebears, but we can only guess at their thoughts as if translating from some obscure tongue.
McGlue's narrative resonates with themes of courage, sacrifice, resilience, and the determination to preserve a unique and valuable culture.
Why should we care about history - especially the painful incidents that might make us cringe?
Anyone who thinks seriously about thinking knows the answer.
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October 15, 2023
Book Review: 'The Marriage Plot' by Jeffrey Eugenides
These days it’s the billionaire boyfriend or the rockstar, but the arc of the romantic love story is much the same as it was in Jane Austen’s era:
If she doesn’t get the guy, she’s toast.
I wrote this review years ago and posted it on Goodreads. It has stimulated a long discussion thread and 242 Likes. This book and The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes have made me think about thinking more than perhaps any others.
A theory of semiotics suggests that we wouldn't have notions of romantic love if we hadn't been told stories about it.
Masterful on many levels.
At first I wasn't drawn to any of the three characters in the love triangle - Madeleine, Leonard, and Mitchell. Each seemed deeply flawed, and they are. Except you read along and find that Eugenides thinks we all are, just as deeply in our unique ways, and are none the lesser for it. That's the way people are, and the way life goes. We stumble through it, thinking we are somehow in control, and it's what happens nevertheless while we are furiously busy making other plans, or simply fretting about making up our minds.
October 11, 2023
My name is Gerald and I'm a book addict
Forget to eat. Yes, that’s true enough. I’m most productive in the morning, but I rarely miss breakfast, starting with strong coffee. Working through lunch is a real risk. But forgetting to pee or stand can be downright uncomfortable. If stressed, neglecting to stand while peeing is permissible, perhaps mandatory, depending.
Love a rainy day.When I lived Back East, I did like those chilly, rainy days with a log on the fire and perhaps a blanket around me in the easy chair. Now that I live Hollywood-adjacent, rainstorms are infrequent but tend to be of biblical proportions, followed by muck and mudslides. At the very least, I’ll be too worried about roof leaks to muster the required attention span for anything longer than a blog post.
Picture my dream home with shelves?My Kindle can hold a thousand books. I have LPs, CDs, and DVDs in storage. I don’t know what to do with them. Practically all of those discs have scratches, so they’re hardly collectible or salable. I could try donating to a school, but then their question would be, “What are these?” I could try finding a library, but then Siri would ask, “What’s a library?”
Book better than the movie?Almost always, yes. But in the case of just about all of the screen renderings of John le Carré’s novels (The Night Manager, the most recent) - very nearly as good as. Bestselling novelist James Patterson admitted in his Masterclass that only two of his mysteries have been made into movies, and for one of those, the producer kept only the title. I can remember at least one other time they used just the title: The Joy of Sex was a movie inspired by a derivative how-to book, its title borrowed from The Joy of Cooking.
Dream of book worlds.As for me, not so much. I’m chilled when a fictional book world seems truer than my reality, when a story makes me pay attention to what I may have been missing all around me. But I will say that fantasy reality seems to be particularly effective at helping tweens escape into safe, alternate worlds where they can learn to contend with monsters and demons that stand in for the genuinely fearsome bullies in their daily lives.
No chance of recovery?Oh, I don’t know. When your friend publishes a book you fear may be better than any of yours, you may stop reading and start to write.
Or, drink enough, you’ll pass out and at least get some rest.
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October 8, 2023
Mystery, thriller, or suspense?
The reviewer here seems to appreciate picking up on clues, making guesses, and ultimately finding out (sometimes on the last page) what happened, who did it, or why - or any and all of those deliberately missing elements.
A mystery may be a puzzle that craves a solution.
Suspense - especially the way Alfred Hitchcock defined it - has the audience knowing more than the victim or the investigator - and tantalized by anticipating when the lethal blow will be delivered.
Anticipating and guessing may be thrilling. But perhaps a thriller need not be either mysterious or suspenseful. In the entertainment business, at least, thriller as a genre implies violence.
All three elements are likely to be stirred into a potboiler.
Perhaps these genre labels are most useful to bewildered librarians and booksellers who must decide what goes where on their crowded shelves.
Next question: Is literary fiction an oxymoron or simply redundant?
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October 3, 2023
Kindle free today only
Are you considering a shape-shifting, role-switching lifestyle change? Moira steps out of the courtroom and onto a stadium concert stage.
Amazon has also reduced the paperback price.
Best of all the indies and the Big Five novels submitted in the Romantic Comedy category.
Feed your curiosity with a paid subscription to this Thinking About Thinking blog. You’ll gain access to all the content that’s here, and you’ll be helping us build our worldwide community through storytelling and self-expression.
September 30, 2023
Guest Post: 'The Knife Witch' by Susan diRende
If you’re puzzled as to what genre she’s writing in—I’d call it fun.
A village kitchen girl has few choices in life until a slip of her knife causes invading barbarian pirates to think she’s a witch. They kidnap her to get the “witch” bounty offered by their home coven. She goes willingly enough with only the clothes on her back and her favorite boning knife.
Available in paperback and ebook formats from Aqueduct Press
Dubbed “Knife Witch” by the barbarian captain, Volzh, and his crew, she saves the ship—twice—thanks to what they insist is magic and she protests is nothing more than an itchy disposition and her mad skills at carving and filleting. They start to think of her as “their” witch, and she starts feeling responsible for them as if she actually had the power to protect them. Which is not what she wants. She doesn’t see herself as capable of defeating anything larger than a chicken headed for the soup pot. That she manages to skewer a kraken before it sinks them all does not help her case. Side note: the kraken is telepathic and develops an amorous fascination with her. Claiming she’s just a kitchen girl, she goes on to wreak havoc with the evil coven, an even evil-er Empire, the kraken determined to marry her, a world-breaking volcano, and the gods themselves.
Be as must be.
Knife Witch by Susan diRende offers seafaring, kraken-haunted adventure centered on a kitchen maid from a coastal village whose “luck” turns out to be witchery. She soon endears herself to a band of pirate raiders and to the reader. It’s pure pleasure to discover, along with diRende’s spiky narrator, how magic and other forces work in this novel’s archipelago universe. Thoughtful readers will appreciate diRende’s dissections of monstrousness and barbary, but the tale itself is primary: you have to root for this sharp young woman with knives stashed in her hair as she outwits every power ranged against her, from small-town bullies and corrupt witch councils to far greater natural—and supernatural—entities. —Lesley Wheeler, author of Unbecoming and Poetry’s Possible Worlds
Susan diRende’s unique voice marries funny to fantasy in this rollicking feminist tale of a kitchen worker who discovers she’s a powerful witch after she’s captured by pirates. She takes on krakens and kings, not to mention other witches, all while protecting others (including a dog and the pirates) and doing good (mostly). And she does it her way. —Nancy Jane Moore, author of For the Good of the Realm and The Weave
Susan diRende’s published works range from serious academic to sci-fi space farce. Her art and videos have been shown in exhibitions and film festivals in the United States, Mexico, Belgium, and New Zealand. She has won numerous awards and grants for her writing and art from, among others, the Artist Trust, the Philip K Dick Awards, Seattle Arts Commission, Montgomery Arts Association, and the Dixie Film Festival.
Feed your curiosity with a paid subscription to this Thinking About Thinking blog. You’ll gain access to all the content that’s here, and you’ll be helping us build our worldwide community through storytelling and self-expression.
September 24, 2023
Guest Post from Melbourne: Being a Close Observer with host Damian Andrews
Here’s the audio version of the talk I posted as a video session.
Connect the dots. Read between the lines.Readers do better in the real world because they’ve already been there, done that.Connecting Los Angeles and Melbourne, SHAIR.care show host Damian Andrews and I talk across the Pacific Rim about the essential human trait of curiosity and how our experience of the world benefits from being close observers. When we read about spies and detectives, we’re learning how paying careful attention enriches our lives, helps keep us safe, and even promotes healthy and inspiring relationships.
Feed your curiosity with a paid subscription to this Thinking About Thinking blog. You’ll gain access to all content here, and you’ll be helping us build our worldwide community through storytelling and self-expression.
Mick & Moira & Brad - #me-three?
September 22, 2023
Book Review - Hollywood: The Oral History
Not exactly a coffee-break read. But don’t just buy it as a desk reference (although you might want to keep it nearby).
Jeanine Basinger was founder of the Cinema Studies Department of Wesleyan University, and Sam Wasson was among her most studious students. (Both have done well.)
Harper hardcover edition. Fine for casual reading laid out on your lap, but if you want to be able to search for stuff, buy the ebook as well. There’s so much in here, you will forget where you found that memorable snippet. Of course, you could dog-ear and underline, but you may want to keep your copy collectible!
Basinger joined the Wesleyan faculty the year after I graduated. There was no film department or major for me. My team shot a 16mm short in Humanities 101, a mandatory course we called “Freshman Sandbox.” I did get a chance to study the works of Robert Bresson and Sam Fuller in a course Larry Loewenger taught in the art department. (Larry also did well.)
Short story even shorter - I missed becoming a member of the Wesleyan Hollywood Mafia by a year. Ah, so. God must’ve wanted me to write books.
This book is an edited compilation of interviews with legendary filmmakers, most of them from the studio era that employed contract players and craftspersons. The source is the archives of the American Film Institute. Chapters are organized by work roles, and quotations from disparate sources are organized by topic and viewpoint to form conversational threads. Billy Wilder will seem to be commenting on Melvyn Douglas, who opines on something Bronislau Kaper says, which follows John Cromwell - as if they were all sitting around a table at The Stork Club. And, yes, most but not all of them were men. There are a few survivors in here, including Peter Bogdanovich and Basinger herself, who apparently knew Frank Capra well enough to characterize his laugh (but she does not explain the circumstances).
Full disclosure - I have not read it all. I did digest two sections: Directors and Writers. In our era post-New Wave, it’s widely held that directors are auteurs, yet none will boast they could make an award-winner from a bad script. In the studio system, writers worked with collaborators often not of their choosing, few directors liked them, and they were off the picture and onto the next before shooting started. The notion of major studios as film factories is a truism today. But striking among these conversations to me was how Edward Dmytryk, award-winning director of Crossfire (1947), described his feelings then about the industry’s place in history:
If we had all known that they were going to be still running these pictures forty or fifty years later… and asking us to get up and talk about them… we probably would have shot them differently… We thought the movie would go out and be run for a few weeks or a few months in the theater and then would be completely forgotten.
In these pages, the filmmakers alternately praise each other and talk trash, share gossip and debunk it: “Hollywood [is] the most cruel, the most despicable town in the world” (Ridgeway Callow) “But it’s a myth” (Stanley Donen). For most of these gods of cinema, it was a place to work and a paycheck.
George Cukor admired Ernst Lubitsch but couldn’t understand Citizen Kane. Fred Zinnemann admired Alfred Hitchcock but advised against imitating him. Vincente Minnelli was a superbly talented decorator from Broadway who stressed over details in the shot that showed up as little more than a quick blur on the screen. Norman McLeod rarely spoke above a whisper, even when coaching actors on set. John Ford bossed his cast and crew through gruff intimidation but was beloved by most of them, who called him “Pappy.”
One reason Frank Capra seems exceptional for his day is how he behaved like an auteur before the concept existed. Although his screenwriter Robert Riskin famously insisted “the Capra touch” couldn’t be put on a stack of blank paper, Capra made sure his vision was in the script, then fused the roles of director and producer, placing creative control above all else. For me, as an author who was an early self-publisher (with print-on-demand even before ebooks were a thing), I feel the same way Capra did about the importance of reaching an audience with an authentic voice. He put it this way:
I traded money for power to make the films I wanted to make… It’s me expressing myself… It was more important than money because I knew that the money would roll in if I ever got really successful. It never really rolled in, but it kind of accumulated a little bit toward the end.
These days, for self-expressive content creators, it accumulates at pennies per click. Case in point, Substack, bless ’em. What’s old is new again, and holding your own against “the front office” is as important as ever.
If the Motion Picture & Television Fund Retirement Home had a branch in Heaven, you’d swear Basinger and Wasson were eavesdropping!
Mick & Moira & Brad just won Gold in Romantic Comedy in one of the few competitions that’s open to both indie and mainstream publishers. (Ahem, unarguably best of the best.)
Dare I mention it’s a Hollywood story from behind the camera?
Feed your curiosity with a paid subscription to this Thinking About Thinking blog. You’ll gain access to all the content that’s here, and you’ll be helping us build our worldwide community through storytelling and self-expression.
September 20, 2023
Do I understand romantic comedy?
I was “thinking about thinking” even then. Would she have said I wasn’t paying attention? (I’d ask her if I could remember who she was. Was this a setup? We were dressed for a date, but I still had training wheels on my bike and exactly 25c in lunch money.)
* Sneak announcement *Mick & Moira & Brad just won the Winner prize in Romantic Comedy in the 2023 New York City Big Book Awards (official announcement this Friday).
Feed your curiosity with a paid subscription to this Thinking About Thinking blog. You’ll gain access to all content here, and you’ll be helping us build our worldwide community through storytelling and self-expression.
Gerald Everett Jones - Author
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