Roland Yeomans's Blog, page 138

I'M IN LOVE

Just don't tell John Oliver ...

“It's the most emasculating thing I could possibly do to go out with someone who has actually done something valuable with their life."

 “I can’t come home and say I had a really tough day at work today and see her roll her eyes and go, 

‘Really?’ And she would be like, ‘I can’t imagine how difficult it was for you. You clown!’

Rightly, I have no place to whine about anything. 

That’s the problem with living with someone who has fought a war. You lose the moral high ground.”
 - John Oliver


While she was in high school, she was involved in a terrible hit-and-run accident. She had to learn to speak and walk all over again.

After 9-11, she enlisted in the Army as a medic in response to her horror at what had happened.


How did they meet?

In 2008, John was working behind enemy lines at the RNC for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

When convention security chased after him for entering into a restricted area Oliver, who was still on a temporary work visa,

found himself at risk for potential deportation.

 Attempting to avoid arrest and subsequent Breturn, the reporter and his camera crew happened upon a group of veterans who offered to help them hide.

Yes, you guessed it.  

Among the veterans was Kate Norley.  John worked up the nerve to exchange email addresses with her.

A friendship, then a romance happened.  

He proposed to her on St. Thomas in 2010, and they were married a year later.

Kate did all the painful work again when she had a baby boy with John in 2015.
***
I keep hoping the Western will be re-born as a genre 

(my main hero, after all, is an undead Texas Ranger!) 


This movie looks promising:

ARE YOU EXCITED?

Are you excited about this?

 A FAMILIAR HOPE {The Force Awakens} hugely disappointed me:
Same plot points placed on a new movie with Katniss Everdeen for Luke Skywalker.
After 30 years this was the best they could come up with?  Really?
But this Star Wars movie looks to be its own creation ... and entertaining to boot.
What new movie are you looking forward to?
P.S.Life as a rare blood courier has taken a turn into over-drive 
so I have not been able to visit all of you as I would like to. 
Sorry.
Sometimes life is a harsh mistress.

HOW TO MAKE YOUR BOOK A PAGE-TURNER

A book is a journey we do not have to take.  We must be persuaded to do it.
Usually it is the set-up that does that for us: a unique or intriguing situation.
But once the book is picked up, 
it will be the characters who will tug us along to find out what they will do and say next. 
Do they make us laugh?  Do they make us root for them?
As humans, we are driven to seek an understanding of others,
for in understanding them, we come close to understanding ourselves ... 
and perhaps we will not feel quite so isolated, alone.
HOW TO ENGAGE THE READER
1.) EACH STEP MUST TAKE YOU SOMEWHERE 
As I've said: each book is a journey.  Characters, descriptions, or dialogue ... must move that journey along ...
or you are making the reader simply jog in place!

2.) TONY STARK ON A ROAD TRIP
Wouldn't he be a hoot on a road trip to anywhere?  Your characters must entertain in some form or fashion
or your reader will opt for more enjoyable companions.

3.)  WHERE IS THE DARTH VADER OF YOUR TRIP?
Success conceals; adversity reveals.
Is he looming like a storm cloud on the horizon?
Or is she sitting, smiling like the false friend she is, right beside your hero?
Does his motivation make sense to the reader or does he exist merely to be the Big Bad of your story?
Your reader should see that he/she is just one bad day away from becoming that person.

4.) WHERE IS THE TICKING BOMB?
Imagine a tense company board meeting: 
the founder is being betrayed by his best friend in a hostile take-over.
He is bravely, intelligently fighting for his dream while the Judas is smugly smiling.
Unknown to them both, but known to the reader, a terrorist bomb is ticking beneath the table ...
right in plain sight should someone just bend down to pick up a fallen pen.
Tick ... Tick ... Tick.
Can you see all the various ways that could play out?
Your hero staggers out of the board room, having lost it all as his wife rushes into his arms ...
just as the bomb goes off, killing all those within the office.
The Judas in betraying his best friend ends up saving his life.

5.) WHERE IS THE WONDER, THE MAGIC?

It does not have to be literal magic but the wonder has to be there to draw your readers in and keep them.
SAME OLD, SAME OLD plots can become riveting if you spin them.
Robin Hood is the villain; 
the sheriff is the valiant, misunderstood man of honor 
trying to keep peace in order to prevent the King from ordering mass executions of the peasants.
A simple view out of a stagecoach window can become magical if your protagonist describes it so that the reader views it with new eyes.
My tagline to the front page of THE NOT-SO-INNOCENTS AT LARGE is

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but in acquiring new eyes.”
– Samuel McCord
Hope this has helped in some small way, Roland

HAVE YOU EVER FELT LIKE ...

Have you ever felt hammered by life, isolated from all you once held precious, alone and naked against the night?

VIVIENNE TUFFNELL has written an evocative post:
https://zenandtheartoftightropewalking.wordpress.com/2016/07/13/a-vessel-of-ashes/

Please go and pay her a visit, will you?

This is the comment I wrote her which I thought some of you out there might need to read as well:

"Robert Frost was once asked what he had learned about life. He said: “Three words. It goes on.”

You have power over the moment in which you live. 

The last choice is still yours: 

the choice in how to respond to these troubling times. No one can take that choice from you.

You are a vessel of ashes only if you see yourself as such. I prefer to see you as a vessel of seeds being poured out onto each new day. 

 Grow where you are. Flower when you can. Endure under the blue skies over which politicians have no power.

You will be in my thoughts. I have faith in you, Roland"

Oddly enough today is the day in 1793 that the British poet, John Clare, was born.

Clare was "the greatest labouring-class poet that England has ever produced. 

No one has ever written more powerfully of nature, of a rural childhood, and of the alienated and unstable self."

Of course, he was mocked and shunned during his lifetime, 

spending the last 25 years of his life in an asylum, High Beach, 

when his poverty and depression brought on delusions he was Lord Byron or a prize fighter.

Here is his famous "I am."

I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am! and live with shadows tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest--that I loved the best--
Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil'd or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below--above the vaulted sky. 

WHAT IF BOTH PARTIES ARE THE SAME PARTY?

Bernie Sanders endorsed Hilary Clinton Tuesday which her supporters hope will unify the Democratic party.

But it left his supporters going, 

"Say what??"
"Politics as usual" most folks on the street sigh.  

Sanders will help in dealing with the aftermath of Hilary's email fiasco.


Let's be honest: 
if you or I had shown such bad judgement in sending sensitive government documents via our public servers ...

We would be under the jail right now, not able to run for dog catcher much less president.


Why was she the only  Secretary of State to do this?
Having her own personal server gave Clinton

 -- as well as her closest aides -- 

much greater control over which emails were accessible under public records requests. 

Buy hey, there are so many skeletons in her closet, they could conduct square dances.

She is not the only politician to have skeletons, right?  

But that is just it: the whole system feels dirty, doesn't it? 

If you listen to the candidates on TV during this election, you would think the fate of western civilization hung in the balance 

when voters choose between Democratic and Republican candidates for office. 

When you look at actual governing decisions, 

the difference between the two major political parties is far from obvious.

 There is, of course, a difference in the rhetoric of the two parties. 

There is also a difference in the bases the two parties draw on. 

But it’s not obvious that these differences translate into differences in public policy.

 Why is that?
 Economists actually have an explanation.

 Democracies tend to have a “political equilibrium.” 

Think of a lot of different platforms that voters might vote for. 

If there is one platform that can defeat all others in a majority vote, 

that is the set of policies that politicians will naturally gravitate toward – 

regardless of where they initially start out.

If this did not happen, chaos would be the result.  

Each election would flip major policies back and forth.  No stability.

 Certain Latin American countries exhibit that kind of political instability. 

But most of the developed world does not.

Why?  
It would be bad for the economy.  Major business leaders frown on that.

So Political Parties do not rule.  They are ruled by business interests.  

Will Rogers said,

 "When I make a joke,  you can laugh or not.   But when Congress does it, it's a law!" 

THE NIGHT LIFE OF THE GODS

What a title, right?  
What young boy scouring the bargain bins of the used book store could resist it?  Not me.

https://www.amazon.com/Night-Life-Gods-Thorne-Smith/dp/0345287266/
I, of course, took off the tattered cover when I read it at home or at break in school.  
I fought to stifle my laughter that came with every page.
What can I say?  
I was an easy audience:
lonely, ostracized, and yearning for fantastical adventures, courtesy of my discovery of Edith Hamilton's MYTHOLOGY.
Who was Thorne Smith?
 Thorne Smith was a massively successful fantasy writer now largely forgotten who posed himself the question, 
“What if someone could turn the various Olympian statues in the Big Apple’s museums into flesh and blood?” 
 Smith’s answer was The Night Life Of the Gods (1931), a cheerful Shaggy Dog of the New York variety, 
and a fine example of a book that no modern publishing house would touch with a thirty-nine-and-a-half-foot pole.
I guess which explains why editors treat me as if I were wearing leper robes since Thorne Smith greatly influenced my writing.
 If Thorne Smith’s name is sounding suspiciously familiar,
perhaps it should, as he is the earnest scribbler behind Topper (1926),
 the very same Topper in which Cary Grant later starred (as a ghost), 
and which eventually became a staple of early television, featuring Leo G. Carroll and sponsored by Jell-O.
 Night Life Of the Gods unquestionably belongs in the canon of 20th century fantastic fiction
 (H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard were contemporaries of Thorne Smith), 
but in character and temperament, its closer kissing cousin is Hollywood — 
specifically Tinseltown’s beloved screwball comedies, 
a genre in which breakneck pace and the witty banter of the endlessly idle rich drove masterpieces like  
Holiday, It Happened One Night, and Bringing Up Baby.  
Hunter Hawk is a scientist who has discovered how to turn flesh into stone.  
His leprechaun love, Meg, knows how to turn stone into flesh.
With Night Life, the banter is almost all that holds the book’s first 150 pages together, 
since Smith unfolds his tale as a series of antic but disconnected incidents, 
most of which do nothing to advance the story or raise the stakes.
But you are having so much fun with the antics, you really do not care.
Finally, Hawk and Meg visit New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, and first Mercury and then Bacchus are freed from their places. 
In short order, and in a total hodgepodge of Greek and Roman families, 
Hawk and Meg revivify Neptune, Apollo, Diana, Venus (de Milo), Perseus (complete with Medusa’s severed head), and Hebe, cup-bearer to the Gods. 
 With nearly all 21st century fictions revolving around the idea 
of taking damaged characters and bringing them, if not to a useful epiphany,
 then at least to some new phase in life,
 it is downright startling to encounter a work where no such considerations ever existed––
where hi-jinks themselves are the only horse in the race.
And truthfully, do we not all stand in need of a fine hour of good-natured laughter? 
If you like to laugh, do not pass up this book.
WHAT WAS THE FIRST BOOK  THAT MADE YOU LAUGH OUT LOUD?

A MIND WORTH KNOWING

"Before Man goes to the Stars, he should learn how to live on the Earth."
 - Clifford D. Simak

"These are the stories the Dogs tell when the fires burn high and the winds blow from the North.

'What was Man?' they will ask.  or   'What was War?'"
 - Clifford D. Simak

  
City, a patch-work novel of  eight short stories written from 1944-1951, 

was a hauntingly beautiful series of tales told by intelligent dogs and robots about the legends of long gone humans. 

You just don’t get more sense of wonder than that.

Clifford D, Simak wrote a different kind of science fiction. 

A kinder, gentler science fiction. 

His characters were adults, ordinary people from the mid-west, 

and his stories often had the feel of small any town America. 


 In 1965, Mr. Simak wrote ALL FLESH IS GRASS ...

which doesn't even have an entry in Wikipedia!!  

As you can see from the cover, it details the story of a small town placed under an invisible dome.

Like King's UNDER THE DOME, 

it tells how being cut off from the world makes people act different, and of course, there’s the mystery of who put the dome over the town and why?

Simak was honored by fans 3 times with Hugo Awards and the Science Fiction Writers of America made him their 3rd Grand Master.

It's hard to believe Stephen King never heard of him.  He heard of John D. MacDonald.  Sigh.



Decades before Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton (1990), MASTODONIA (1978) was published.  

It has the feel of something written in the 1950's, full of wonder and awe. 

It is a charming wonderful tale of time travel. 

Simak's characters are always so engaging and full of life, 

it makes the simplest of them lovable and almost tangible -- even the strange entity that is Catface.

I am currently listening to it on audio book.

  A Novel of Lost Souls ...

Robots refused entry into Catholicism, search out the most remote planet they can find at the rim of the galaxy: End of Nothing.

They labor for 1000 years, building their own vast computerized Pope, dumping into him all the data their "sensitive humans" have found throughout the galaxy with their mental probings.

Enter two human lost souls:

One, Tennyson, a Doctor on the run from a political upheaval on his planet, 

The other, Jill, a reporter looking for the story of her life.

Then, the unthinkable happens, one of the sensitives says she has discovered the literal Heaven!

Murder, betrayal, and intrigue follow.

 Best of all in this cast of charmers are some wonderfully Simak-ian robots: 

a beguilingly crusty electronic Pope and his splendidly idiosyncratic robot Cardinals. 

Mark of Goodreads says of it: 

"Simak's books have such a gentle folksy voice, as if Prairie Home Companion decided to write science fiction."

***   “It's just a bow and arrow, but it's not a laughing matter. It might have been at one time, 

but history takes the laugh out of many things.

 If the arrow is a joke, so is the atom bomb, 

so is the sweep of disease laden dust that wipes out whole cities, 

so is the screaming rocket that arcs and falls ten thousand miles away and kills a million people.” 
***
WHY DON'T YOU GIVE CLIFFORD D SIMAK A TRY?

These are the stories the Dogs tell, when the fires burn high and the wind is from the north.
Read more at: http://www.azquotes.com/quote/897548

SIGN OF THE GREEN DRAGON at Meilori's!

The ghost of Mark Twain rose from his table at the haunted jazz club, Meilori's,  and drew back the chair for C. Lee McKenzie with a flourish.



Lee sat down gracefully and frowned, "Where is Roland?"

"Oh, the boy is a gad-about.  He is somewhere.  I thought I would conduct the interview, don't you know?"

Lee cocked her head.  "Do you hear that?  It sounds as if there were a struggle close-by."

Mark Twain shook his head.  "Nope.  Didn't hear a thing."



Lee said, "I am so grateful for you and Roland doing this interview for me.  SIGN OF THE GREEN DRAGON comes out August 3rd."

The ghost of Mark Twain nodded.  "I like the way you write, Madam.  You get right to the point and say it as it is.  

Folks who write using foreign and flowery words are impudent and supercilious.  It's as if they say: 

"Translate for yourself, sluggard.  I am not writing for the ignorant masses."

Lee said, "I am writing for teenagers, Mr. Twain."

Mark laughed, "In mass those critters are more ignorant than most I would say!"

"Mark!"

Mark feigned uncomprehending innocence.  "Just what is this here of book of yours about anyway?"

"A crumbling map from 1859, found clutched in the bony grip of the long dead, sends three young boys on a dangerous adventure 

where an unsolved murder, a modern crime, some lost ancestors and ancient Chinese dragons reveal the true meaning of treasure."
  
Mark turned pale even for a ghost.  "This occurs in San Francisco?"

"Yes, Mr. Twain.  Why do you ask?"

"I fell in love in old San Francisco as a young lad in 1851.  She was a Chinese gal, the prettiest thing I ever laid eyes on. There were dragons in that adventure, too."

Though a ghost, his eyes filled with tears.  "It did not end well.  When two innocent hearts love, there can be no happy end to it."

Lee placed a gentle hand upon his ghostly one.  "I am so sorry.  What happened?"

Mark Twain cleared his throat.  "The story will be at the end of THE NOT-SO-INNOCENTS AT LARGE.  But only if Roland finishes it."

He sniffed and forced a smile.  "Now enough about me. What do you think of me?"

Lee slapped his arm, and Mark smiled for real.  "I meant -- what about you, Ma'am?  What's your story?"

"I love to write for young readers. Sign of the Green Dragon is my third Middle Grade novel. Alligators Overhead and the sequel, The Great Time Lock Disaster were my first two.

 I’m proud to be a hybrid author with three Indie books out along with four traditionally published young adult novels: 

Sliding on the Edge, The Princess of Las Pulgas, Double Negative and Sudden Secrets. It’s fun to know both sides of this writing business."

Mark Twain made a face.  "Writing for me was like passing kidney stones.  I had to do it but it t'weren't no fun!"

Suddenly, there was a shuffling under the table which rocked as Roland emerged, slipping off the ropes which had held him.

"Eek!" went Lee.  She turned to Mark.  "How could you do that to Roland?"

The ghost of Mark Twain shrugged, "When a ghost asks a fella not to write about his first love, he ought to pay the ghost some attention."

Roland grumbled, "We'll talk about this later, Mark."

He turned to Lee.  "Where can people get your book once it is published."

Lee wrote the links down for Roland.

http://www.amazon.com/Sign-Green-Dragon-Lee-McKenzie/dp/1532721250 
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/619550
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/sign-of-the-green-dragon-c-lee-mckenzie/1123482000 
https://store.kobobooks.com/en-us/ebook/sign-of-the-green-dragon
Lee took a long drink from her ice tea, found it was whisky and soda, coughed, and hurriedly left Meilori's.

The ghost of Mark Twain smiled broadly, "Another satisfied customer!" 

I GIVE UP_IWSG post

Hibbs and I are giving up, setting out for new horizons.

"Never give up" is the kind of thing you often hear people say in the movies.

However, in real life, unlike the movies, 

when things don’t go to plan,

 no subtle background music kicks in to emphasize that in half an hour’s time you will bounce back and achieve your dreams.

Now, Writer's Digest harps on the "Never Give Up" mantra  – 

partly because their writers want you to buy another book called Never Give Up on Buying Books About Never Giving Up.  


"Never Give Up! Never Surrender!" was the rallying cry for the fun movie, Galaxy Quest ...

 as if a go-getter attitude alone could break down locked doors or blow up enemy spacecraft. 

However, in real life persevering against the odds can seem like a never-ending and not particularly fruitful process.

The agent, Jean Kitson, was once asked if writers should ever give up.

 She said this:

 "The absolute worst that can happen is that you’ll spend a chunk of your time doing something creative that you love, and for a lot of people it may never go any further than that.

 But if you don’t consider your writing a waste of time in itself, if it’s feeding a need in you, then it is not wasted." 

 So what have Hibbs and I given up?

The thought that I am ever going to be a successful, self-supporting author.

There are worse fates.  I know.  I have survived some of them: 

house fires, cancer, being forced out of my city by hurricane, surviving alone on the streets of Detroit and New Orleans.

There are, indeed, worse fates.

It has empowered me, freed me.  

I can enjoy my writing again.  I can rejoice in the successes of my writing friends instead of whining: 

"Why them? Why not me?"

Why them?  Why not them?  

We don't know how they got there, their background, their support system.  

Lightning hits where it hits.

So no one is buying my books.  Life happens.  

I am not in the major data flow of the internet and have no clue how to get there.

So Big Surprise -- 

I am the tiny mushroom growing unnoticed in the abandoned cellar of the Internet.

I am now free to grow better in my writing from chapter to chapter 

with the pressure of the worry of "If I will succeed" gone.

I am not going to succeed.  

Not all fights can be won.  But that doesn't mean you stop fighting them.

I focus on the wonder of "Creatio ex nihilio" --

to create something from nothing.  How cool is that?

If we are not careful, we start to believe that the Destination is Life.  No.

The Journey to that Destination is Life.  

High School was not Graduation.  

It was all those years, those friendships, those hurts ... that was High School.

And those years were over so soon -- never to come back again.

I reward myself now when I have completed a difficult chapter.  

I try to end my writing day on a high note of laughter or sense of satisfaction of a hard task done.

I focus on the next paragraph.  

I let the last chapter take care of itself.  I will get there eventually.

And you?  

You will get to the end of your novel eventually if you keep on.  

Worrying, stressing over if you will ever become a successful author will only rob you of the joy of creation.

Give Up the Burden of Worrying Over Success. 

Embrace the Moment, Savor the Thrill of Creation.

That tiny voice cheering you on from the cellar?  

That's small mushroom me.  Wave back.

The Journey is the Reward. ***
Oh, the best thing said of my writing?

Chrys Fey: 
"That gave me chills and tears in the eyes."

IF THE WORLD WAS ENDING TOMORROW

"If today was your last day
And tomorrow was too late
Could you say goodbye to yesterday?
Would you live each moment like your last?
Leave old pictures in the past
Donate every dime you have?
If today was your last day.

Would you call old friends you never see?
Reminisce old memories
Would you forgive your enemies?
Would you find that one you're dreamin' of?
Swear up and down to God above
That you finally fall in love
If today was your last day."
- IF TODAY WERE YOUR LAST DAY; Nickelback

If you close your eyes tonight and never re-opened them, what kind of last day would you have had?

 The world will be gone.  Time is set to be an echo.  You have 24 hours left in which to exist. 

It could happen.   The funny thing about life is, trouble never comes from where you expect it. 

You spend two months worried about interviewing for that big job promotion, 

then on your way there, you get attacked by a pack of wild dogs. 

That's just the way it goes.
Super-volcanoes, a Verne-Shot (which combines the super-volcano scenario with an asteroid strike, fun, right?), 

Gamma Ray Burst from our sun, 

engineered diseases or something totally out of left field could end life as we know it.

But for you ... for me ... the world could end tomorrow.

Heart attack, mugger, or drunk driver.  Any of those three could end your life suddenly.

"There is only one time that is important: NOW.  

It is the most important because it is the only one over which we have any control."
- Leo Tolstoy  


Appreciate your job if you can ...

If you just "Survive" your job, you are wasting 71% of your life. (5 out of the 7 days of the week.)


Forgive if you can ...

What someone did to hurt you was their fault.  Carrying it with you for each day afterwards is all on you.


Focus on the NOW ...

The Past and the Future are illusions.  NOW is the only reality.  

If you grasp after ghosts, you, yourself, are not living.  You are making of yourself a ghost.


Each moment matters for it may be our last.  
Think of all the shooting, bombing, or air crash victims.  They thought their lives would go on for years.

Appreciate what and who you have while you have it and them.

Here is Stephen King on my favorite novel of his, DUMA KEY