Roland Yeomans's Blog, page 18

PICTURE IMPERFECT_ My last WEP story

 

WEP is ending after 13 years. 

Last few years life has stood in the way of me participating, but I couldn't let it slip away into darkness 

without my joining this foray into the love of cinema.

 Some of you may remember Wendy Tyler Ryan 

(her pen name taken from the first names of her two sons)

https://www.amazon.com/Fires-Daughter-Fire-Through-Second-ebook/dp/B09HZCZVLN/

Recently she had a stroke, and her left side is reluctant now to do her bidding. 

Once she published an anthology in which I participated concerning a cursed second hand shop.

As a tip of my Stetson to her and to Denise, I am posting a snippet of my story for her born of my love for my favorite movie, CASABLANCA.

We walked a few more steps when Rose spotted the Café Americain. She stopped dead still. 

Her hot sunset of hair became a waterfall that tumbled over onto her shoulders as she shook her head. 

“Imposs…” she began before stopping as if she, of all people, should not use that word. 

She husked, “I have never seen that building before.” 

I smiled. “It’s been here since the year I got out of the orphanage. You must be new to Bottle Bay.” 

“No, Adam. I am quite old to it.” 

Rose rasped again, “The building is black and white… as is that man standing in front of its double doors. My God, he looks just like…” 

I shook my head. “He has a thing about hearing who he looks like.” 

Rose was breathing shallow. “But he and this building are black and white!” 

“You mean in black and white, sister,” Rick grinned crooked.

 He had walked up to us while Rose and I had been talking. He walked beside me as Rose walked dumbfounded towards the nightclub. 

I understood why Rose was so shaken. I remembered my first time. I roughly pushed that memory aside. 

Yes, I understood why Rose was having a hard time with what she was seeing. 

Rick and his Café Americain were in black and white… just as if they had been scooped out of an old movie film… which, in a way I have never understood, they had been. 

When we walked in, I froze ...

It wasn’t the inside of the café I remembered. 

It was the top balcony of the De Lint Movie Theater – the place that stood on this lot before the café. 

It was the place where I had gotten my first job out of the orphanage and the place where I lost my first friend. The rows of seats were all misty. 

Rose started to speak but Rick shushed her. He didn’t have to worry about me. I couldn’t have talked if a gun had been pointed at me. 

Why? I was looking at myself, that was why. 

The self I was the night Charles de Lint died. 

He was sitting in the end seat in the middle row – his spot. 

I was standing in the aisle, holding with pride the two reels of the original print of Casablanca. “I got it for you, Mr. Charles.” 

He wasn’t old, but his face looked tired and frail as he smiled up at me. “You bought it for me like I asked?” 

“Mr. Blank wouldn’t sell it to you, sir.”

 He frowned. “But you have it in your hands, Adam.” 

“Yeah,” the younger me said with a face that went all puckered. “Mr. Blank is sure an odd duck.” 

Mr. Charles said, “Why do you say that?” 

“’ Cause he asked why I was doing this for you.” 

He looked closely at me. “And you said?” 

“I said I was doing this because you asked me to. A-And you were my friend, m-my only friend.” 

Mr. Charles smiled sadly. “I do believe you are my only friend, too, Adam. So he accepted my money then?”

“Mr. Blank said I bought these reels with… my compassion.” 

Mr. Charles looked at me intently. “And what did you say?” 

“I said it wasn’t compassion, it was friendship, which was way better ‘cause it was a kind of love. You know, like the love Jonathan had for David.” 

Mr. Charles was silent for long moments.

“Me as well, Adam. Me as well. You know I’ve left you this theater and the property it stands on.” 

I stammered, “M-Mr. Charles, you got long years ahead of you. Don’t be talking about dying and leaving stuff to me.” 

He shook his head sadly. 

“Not years or months or days or even hours, Adam. I have minutes. No, Adam, no sad looks. It has been a good life, filled with happy memories, great moments.” 

He weakly motioned up to the projectionist room. 

“Go up there and put those… bad boys as you call them, into the projector. Let’s relive some of those great moments."

I saw the younger me take off in a rush. 

I watched my retreating figure, knowing what would happen next and envying the young me the happiness I foolishly felt running up those carpeted steps. 

That kind of happiness now had cobwebs on it inside the closet of my own memories. 

I was brought out of my gloom by the younger me slipping into the seat next to Mr. Charles. 

The light of the projector went on. Images began to flicker on the screen. 

The younger me leaned in towards Mr. Charles and whispered, “I timed it just right.” 

He smiled ever so faintly. “Me, too.” 

His head slumped to his chest. 

The young me cried out. 

I got out of my seat to go into the aisle and listen to Mr. Charles’ worn-out, silent heart. I watched me sob gut-deep. 

I was rocking  on my knees as I hugged my only friend, now dead. 

With my eyes closed, the young me didn’t see the theater blur like film ruined by the acid of time and neglect. 

I watched the seats,  walls, ceilings melt and change into the interior of the Café Americain. 

All was as it had been in the movie. 

Except there were no customers, no waiters, no Nazi’s, no Ilsa … just Rick Blaine. 

He stood there dumbstruck. 

Rick glared at me. I was still crying, hugging Mr. Charles and feeling my heart bleed out of my throbbing chest and stream down my face. 

I didn’t see Rick pull his gun from out of his right jacket pocket. 

He watched me for a long time, his face impassive and hard. 

I was oblivious to everything but my loss as I kept rocking on my knees. 

Rick’s hard eyes slowly began to reflect my grief and gleam with a similar pain of their own. 

He put the gun back into his pocket. 

“Hey, kid, got any ideas what just happened?” 

I jerked up my eyes, saw him, wildly looked about me, and promptly fell on my butt. “Shit!” 

Rick grinned drily. “I can see we’re going to share many long evenings of stimulating conversation.” 

I stammered, “You’re … you!” 

He smiled sour. “Yeah, I can see that they’re going to be long all right.”

 Rick nodded to Mr. Charles now slumped over a dining table. “Who was he?” 

I looked to Mr. Charles and managed to husk out, “M-My only friend in the w-world.” 

Rick sucked in a breath, walked over to me, and put a hand on my shoulder. 

“It’s a black place you’re in right now. Wish I could say it gets better. I can’t. But you’ll manage to learn to walk in the dark.”

Want to see the full story?

https://www.amazon.com/Second-Avenue-Hand-Fiction-Anthology/dp/0986946680/

It may give her a smile or two which are few and far between now.

Or buy her first novel, FIRE'S DAUGHTER. Then,  that money and attention would be all hers.

DECEMBERING: NO SAFE MODE TO LIFE_WEP post

 

https://writeeditpublishnow.blogspot.com/2023/11/wep-december-challenge-over-to-you.html?m=1
After 13 years, WEP is closing down. 
Sigh. I was there at the beginning, stayed through most of it, then Life had other plans.
Life moves on without us. Time slips through our fingers whether we’re spending itwisely or not ...
whether we even sense it slipping away or not.
There is a relentless forward current to Nature. It sweeps onward like an uncaring river carrying us with her. 
No opportunity to catch our breaths on the banks, for there are no banks to life.
We swim... well, badly... or sink.
There is no Safe Mode to life.
Life has become something of a stretch of rapids for most of us.
I hope today finds you in a better spot than you have been struggling in.
For me ...
Well, it has been interesting ... as in the Chinese curse sort of interesting.
Covid claiming me, blood running during a pandemic, having my apartment destroyed by Hurricane Laura while I was trapped within it. 
That was ... interesting.
Being homeless for seven months as my city was mostly destroyed by Laura and Delta that followed two weeks later.
A massive heart attack last Halloween ... all trick and no treat.
Back to driving rare blood ... but now, with a camera on the windshield, facing me, monitoring for any minor infraction ...
I commit even one, and I am terminated.
Interesting.
But enough about me. What do you think about me? :-)
Mother once told me: 
No one has the right to complain about something that is happening to everyone.
We all have been bobbing along some rough currents these past few years.
I pray that those currents have calmed and you find yourselves in a better place with people who care.
I hope the person you see in the mirror is wiser, if not sadder, at the tuition paid.
We are small only if we allow ourselves to become that way.
Be Large. Live Each Breath. Be kind.
Anyway, I just wanted to let Denise and the rest of you know why I haven't participated in WEP these past few years.
Oh, I even managed, with the help of several friends, to write my Magnum Opus, SAME AS IT NEVER WAS.
{A meld of GREAT EXPECTATIONS, FLIGHT OF THE NAVIGATOR, and BAND OF BROTHERS.}
If you are curious about it:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CNR5T9DW
Oh, and in the print versions, there is even an image of Midnight, my cat, at the end who I managed to keep with me during those seven ... interesting ... months.
He is shamelessly asking for reviews of my book, since he gets extra tuna when I am happy.
Well, this post has certainly taken a turn I hadn't expected ... just like life has for all of us, right?
WEP's site will stay live and after February, will accept posts on how we all are doing.
If I am still working, my battered heart still beating, I will drop in from time to time and say HI.

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.” 

- Sister Ameal

DECEMBERING: A RATTLESNAKE BY ANY OTHER NAME

 

https://www.amazon.com/Rattlesnake-C-Lee-McKenzie-ebook/dp/B0CNJLNKHV/

I lovedthis book and C. Lee McKenzie is an all-time favorite of mine. 

When I heard it had elements of the supernatural in it, I just had to read it.

For those of you who know my novels, you will understand.

 It was riveting and written in such a way the prose drew you in and kept you turning each page.  

There is suspense, mystery, and a dangerous, forbidden love to boot.

Her portrayal of the pathos, confusion, and loneliness of Catherine, 

the ghost caught in the limbo between the living and the dead, is so well done that your arms long to hug her ... if you could only touch her that is.

Jonah, new to the town but not to trouble, finds that the desert town of Rattlesnake is just as friendly as its name ... 

with deadly inhabitants like Boone, the bullying store owner and his dysfunctional son, Snake, who more than earns his nickname.

A feisty aunt, his quick-witted sister, Allie, add to the relocated family dynamic.

Oh, and did I mention the abandoned gold mine on their property ...

whose gold may not be a thing of the past ... but the very secret which is binding Catherine to this plane ... and a wrongly solved murder.

Jonah and his sister discover that entering a ghost's world is not just a step into the past ... but into deadly peril and mystery.

https://myjustsostory.blogspot.com/2023/12/rattlesnake-by-cleemckenzie.html
Want to know more of how Lee wrote this fascinating novel? 
Go to Elephant's Child's blog and learn more of how Lee crafted it.
It's an engrossing interview.

The MAGIC FORMULA for Writing a BESTSELLER

 

You might think the above image suggests that formula includes sexiness, mystery, and ... 

cats.

Midnight made me include that last.

But while the BESTSELLERS of the last 100 years may have included those, 

what they ALL possessed was a hotly contested SOCIAL ISSUE of its day ...

RACE, SEX, POLITICS, ALIENATION ...

Some large, unresolved, deep-seated nation-wide conflict in the minds of those who don't ordinarily read.

Even more important, those bestsellers focused on 

fractured families, outsiders, iconoclasts who go their own way irregardless of the outrage from those around them.

And above it all is   THE DREAM

Be it the AMERICAN DREAM, the DREAM DEFERRED, the DREAM PERVERTED, the DREAM LOST, the DREAM INVADED.

It is some form of that DREAM which drives the protagonist ever onward or downward to an unknown destination.

We Americans are innately suspicious of institutions, public or private, and 
of strangers professing only good for us.
After all, the hand reaching out to feed us may actually be intent on feeding upon us.

Focusing on the mind is all very well and good, 
but the thing all bestselling authors possessed was the ability 
to connect to the heart and to the innate needs of the readers who read their books and then urged their friends to read them as well.
LAST THOUGHT ...  FIRST LINE

SCARAMOUCHE:
"He was born with the gift of laughter and the knowledge that the world was mad."

IT JUST SEEMED THE THING TO DO:
"The rape was the best thing that happened to her."

THE OUTSIDER:
"Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can't be sure."

1984:
"It was a bright, cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."


An arresting first line is crucial to grabbing readers and urging them to turn the page to find out what happens next.
May your next book be a BESTSELLER.

DECEMBERING: WHO DO YOU WRITE REVIEWS FOR? IWSG Post

 

The uber-capitalist Jason Rutherford, founded a company bywhich self-published authors could buy 

positive 5-star reviews on Amazon, which helps boost sales to the masses.

John Locke started as a door-to-door insurance salesman, wassuccessful enough to buy his own insurance company, and then became a realestate investor. 

In 2009, he turned to writing fiction. 

By the middle of 2011,his nine novels, most of them suspense tales starring a former C.I.A. agent,Donovan Creed, 

had sold more than a million e-books through Amazon, making himthe first self-published author to achieve that distinction.

His secret? He bought hundreds of dollars of positive reviews.

https://www.amazon.com/Rattlesnake-C-Lee-McKenzie-ebook/dp/B0CNJLNKHV/

C. Lee McKenzie has written a riveting, absorbing YA novel that will be published on the 8th.

She takes us into the perspective of a puzzled ghost and makes us care and root for her.

Also she wraps us into the intrigues of a small desert town bullied by a mercenary store-owner and his dysfunctional son.

Lee draws us into a star-crossed love between a newcomer teen and a frightened girl, the unwilling target of the affections of the dysfunctional son with the lovely, but appropriate, name of Snake .

The more positive reviews your book has, the higher it willrank in Amazon's search results, increasing your book's discoverability. 

Thiswill ultimately lead to more book sales. 

Amazon's algorithms have changed. 

I have read that unless your new book garners 30 positive reviews within the first month of publication, it will sink in the rankings.

Acquiring a large number of bookreviews on Amazon is difficult, especially for new or unknown authors that arestill building a readership.

SO WHAT TO DO?

The goal of platforms such as Booksprout, StoryOrigin, and BookFunnel

 is toconnect authors with readers.

I believe that in this world of darkness, we are the light for our friends trapped in it.

So when a friend asks for a review, I give it. Do You?

Who do you write a book review for, really?

The cardiologists tell me that SAME AS IT NEVER WAS will probably be my last book. I hope not.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CNR5T9DW

It is on Kindle Unlimited, so if you have it, you could download it essentially for free.
I am not asking for a review here ... I think that is prohibited on IWSG posts.
But when the thought of Christmas presents comes to you ...     :-)

If you don't drop by again before Christmas ... Have A Blessed Christmas!

DECEMBERING: NO INTERNAL DIALOGUE?

  30 to 50% of people don't have internal monologues! 

As in theydon't have conversations with themselves in their heads. 

And as someone who often internalizes my thoughts like dialogues between 

the ghosts of Mark Twain, Freud, and Harlan Ellison ---

or constantly asking myself: "What am I missing?"

 this factabsolutely baffles me.

Most of us have an inner voice: 

that constant presence thattells you to “Watch out,” or “Buy shampoo,” or 

“Urgh, this girl’s so vain and not like one of the weather kinds!”

 Formany of us, this voice sounds much like our own, or at least how we think wesound.

I write my books usually in first person:

to me it  makes sense because we (the readers) need to know what’s goingon in the story.

But I have friends and readers who are thrown off by my protagonist

thinking to himself or remembering a like incident in the past ...

It derails their enjoyment of the action.

Current science says it is possible for people to live without innermonologues. 

Those people just happen to think in a more blatant version compared 

tothose of us who do have inner monologues. 

Also, it doesexplain a lot about the current world today.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

DECEMBERING: ART ISN'T SUPPOSED TO BE EASY_GHOST OF HARLAN ELLISON

 

Ghost of Harlan Ellison here:
For a brief time, I was here; and, for a brief time, I mattered.
I am not surprised that I am still kicking around despite being dead.  
Life always managed to beat me on the head like a Hong Kong gong  ...
so why shouldn't death?


That rat, Clemens, had the gall to lure me here to Meilori's by baiting me with my own words:
“In these days of widespread illiteracy, functional illiteracy... 
anything that keeps people stupid is a felony.” 

Clemens said , 
"So write to the dreamers who visit Roland's electronic newspaper and tell them what's what."
 

What's what?  And to think I once respected the guy.  Never meet your heroes.
All right.  
He wants me to elucidate, to illuminate, to unravel the Gordian knot of your dreams.  

I'll point out some road marks but not all of them.  

Eternity is calling me, 
and I want to wander. 
I hear some of you moan, "I like 'having written,' but I hate writing.  It's hard work."
Well, f___ you, of course it's hard work.
Everything worthwhile is hard work.

If it weren't hard work, everybody would be doing it. 
Art isn't supposed to be easy!


You think Michelangelo didn't feel the jolts of his hammer 
against the pick slamming into the marble as he sculpted David or the Pietà?
He felt it all the way up his damn arms to his neck and back down his spinal column in spasms of a Niagara Falls of agony .
Art should always be tough. 
 It should demand foot pounds of energy for every good sentence you manage to pound out on the paper.
Nothing good comes from coasting.

 You never reach glory or self-fulfillment unless you're willing to risk everything, 
dare anything, put yourself dead on the line every time; 
and once you become strong or rich or potent or powerful 
it is your responsibility to help the weak become strong.
Which is why I am writing to you guys, shouting, 
"The road ahead is damn hard. Nobody guarantees you can make it to the end.

Nor should they.
But if you believe in yourself strong enough you can walk it.

It is up to you, and you alone, if you make it to the end."


 
 I don't know how you perceive 
my mission as a writer,


 but for me it is not a responsibility To reaffirm your concretized myths and provincial prejudices. 


It is not my job to lull you 
with a false sense 
of the rightness of the universe.  


This wonderful and terrible occupation 
of recreating the world in a different way, 


each time fresh and strange, is an act of revolutionary guerrilla warfare.
 I stir the soup. I inconvenience you.
I make your nose run and your eyeballs water. 

 But enough of that. 
I am gone, and you are not.
Like the wind crying endlessly through the universe, 
Time carries away the names and the deeds of conquerors and commoners alike. 
And all that we are, all that remains, 
is in the memories of those who cared we came this way for a brief moment.

 Remember that and write well ... and live better.

MARK TWAIN_HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

 

"Sometimes I wonder  whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on  or by imbeciles who really mean it."  

- Mark Twain.

Ghost of Samuel Clemens here. Now, it might be MY BIRTHDAY,

but I thought I would give YOU the birthday present!

We beloved literary artists are like that, don't you know.

While babysitting Roland's apartment while he's off galivanting around on his rare blood runs,

I've wandered over to his friends' blogs ---

who in tarnation named them that? Sounds like I'm going to sink in tar like one of those dinosaurs when I visit one.

Anyway, being the beloved literary genius that I am, I noticed a lot of you have been writing on how to get folks to like you,

to hang after you,

and to put their faces on your "wanted poster" as it were.

WHAT YOU BOYS AND GIRLS WANT TO KNOW IS HOW TO WRITE A SEDUCTIVE BLOG!

The answer is ... Easy.

Be easy.

Be seductive, don't you know.


1.) What you learn by picking up a cat by the tail, you can learn in no other way.


In other words, learn by doing. Experiment. Gals do it all the time. That dress doesn't draw any whistles? Put on another.


Try something in your blog new and different. If no one comments, drop it faster than a politician does morals upon election.


2.) Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most.


I mean, make your visitors laugh. Your blog is your home. Folks go where they feel comfortable, accepted, where they leave feeling better than when they came.


3.) Your blog is your Mini_Me novel. (And yes, even ghosts watch movies.)


And like in your novel, You need not expect to get your blog right the first time.


Write your post like you'd write a page in your novel.


Go to work and revamp or rewrite it.


God only exhibits his thunder and lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention. These are God's adjectives.


You thunder and lightning too much; the reader ceases to get under the bed, by and by.


The time to begin writing your post is when you have finished it to your satisfaction.


By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is that you really want to say.


4.) You can tell German wine from vinegar by the label.


By which, children, I mean to not have your visitors leave your blog with their mental faces all screwed up in distaste.


A.) No bragging. Not even if it's true.


B.) No slandering others not there. Not even if it's true. Don't make your guests squirm.


C.) Do help.


You know some of those literary potholes you twisted an ankle on? Point those out to those who follow after you. Make the road you walk easier for the next fella after you.


5.) It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.


The same for your post. Your blog is the only YOU most folks will ever see. Make sure a first time visitor gets the best YOU that you can offer.


To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement.


To condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence, is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself...


Anybody can have ideas --


the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.


And that's all the wisdom I can presently conjure. I must have a prodigious quantity of mind :


it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up. Don't be a stranger, hear? You don't want to miss my next brilliant gem of a post.
***

NOIR-vember: THE CREATIVE PROCESS

 

Authors get their ideaseverywhere. 

Newspapers, TV, movies, other books, overheard conversations,dreams, nightmares, people we've met, loved, hated, been married to. 

Andsometimes we have no idea how we got an idea!

As I posted chapters of my SAME AS IT NEVER WAS on this blog, 

I could hear the ghost of Harlan Ellison screaming into my ear: 

Hear Neil Gaiman's response:

I was browsing for books to read for research on my sequel to 

SAME AS IT NEVER WAS: OVER THE RIVER AND THROUGH THE WORLDS ...

And an AH, HA! moment:

Occurred to me!
A whole new section of my fantasy came to me, and it seemed to flow right out of the end of my book.
People who do not read this post will think this series of events had been in my mind from the very start.
Where do your ideas come from, my friends?

NOIR-vember: PROMOTE YOUR BOOK IN THE NEWS!

 

Get an entire article about youand your book on major news sites: 

Yahoo, Fox, ABC ... even THE VIEW!

Click to see if you qualify!!

Let me save you the trouble ...

Do you have money?

Are you desperate?

Are you stupid?

YES!

You qualify.

That site gets an impressed tip of my Stetson, for it is one of the more clever phishing ploys I've seen in a while!
You want your book in the news?
1 -- Write something newsworthy
2 -- Not easy in this MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING world.
3 -- Have Taylor Swift write a new song: "Roland's too ugly to miss ... but my aim's improving."

WANT TO WRITE A BESTSELLER?
1 -- GET NOTICED       But not in a way that will mean you have to make bail!
       WORD OF MOUTH --
        Tilt expectations on their ears. 
        Make Robin Hood the villain preying on the poor; 
        the Sheriff of Nottingham the hero, trying to keep King John from laying waste to Sherwood Forest in retaliation for Robin stealing the taxes.

Which is what I do in my latest, SAME AS IT NEVER WAS. 
On the centennial of Eisenhower's birthday, I make him King Saul to my hero's young David.
Will it work? Beats me. Which leads me to the next approach.

I call it the TONY DANZA WAY ...
As a struggling boxer, he auditioned for THE WARRIORS. 
The agent was ho-hum about how touch he could portray.
Tony told him he was fighting at the Garden that night -- come see how tough he was.
Tony thought he'd blown the audition. He fought a vicious boxer that night.
Knocked down three times, the mat hitting his face like concrete, he got up each time.
He might be knocked out, but he would not give up.
He threw up his arms that last round, blocking the blows with his arms, 
waiting for the man to pause, then throwing out a punch.
The blows seemed to go on for hours.
He threw out his last punch, feeling he didn't have another left in him.
The blows to his thrown-up arms never came.
He carefully opened his arms ... to see in astonishment the other boxer knocked out on the mat.
Back in the locker room, Tony looked up to see the casting director walk in and say,
"That was the best audition I ever saw."
You just never know.Keep on swinging, my friends.