Roland Yeomans's Blog, page 35

IN THE PROPER ORDER

"Significance finds its own order." - Eudora Welty, On Writing

A friend emailed me asking for the chronological order of my books in their series.  
I realized that I do have a few books out there, and reading them in order might make them more enjoyable.
SO HERE GOES

1) HER BONES ARE IN THE BADLANDS - 1927
2) FRENCH QUARTER REQUIEM (the 1st of the mysteries of Lucas, the sociopathic prop master who lives by the words of Marcus Aurelius) - 1946
3) BEWARE THE JADE CHRISTMAS -1946
4) RAZOR VALENTINE ( with Mardi Gras and Valentine themes)    1947
5) NIGHT SEASON- 1948
6) NO RESHOOTS FOR DEATH -  Still to be finished. The filming of THE THIRD MAN in postwar Vienna -1948
** Each of these volumes are written to be able to be read independently. 

SAMUEL McCORD SAGA
1) RITES OF PASSAGE - 1853
2) ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM - 1853
3) DRAGONS OF THE BARBARY COAST - 1857 (with 16 year old Mark Twain)
4) NOT SO INNOCENTS ABROAD - 1867  (Mark Twain, Nikola Tesla, & an insane Abraham Lincoln!)
5) NOT SO INNOCENTS AT LARGE - 1867 (Same cast but in Paris with dragons!)
6) DEATH IN THE HOUSE OF LIFE - 1848; 1895 (Twain, Wilde in Cairo and Tanis!)
7) THE STARS BLEED AT MIDNIGHT - 1895, Egypt  (same cast, star aliens and pyramids)
8) HER BONES ARE IN THE BADLANDS - 1927 (McCord becomes a movie mogul.)
9) FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE - 2005 - (Hurricane Katrina and undead madness)
10) CREOLE KNIGHTS - 2005 - (Hell comes visiting post Katrina New Orleans)
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS  IN HIS SAGA

1) BRING ME THE HEAD OF McCORD! (A vampiric Abigail Adams, oh my!)
2.) HUNTER'S MOON - ( guest starring Wolf Howl, the last Lakota shaman)
3) TALES OF THE LAST WOLF (with color pictures even!)
4) TALES TO BE TOLD AT MIDNIGHT - (Sam at the dying of the universe)


  THE LEGEND OF VICTOR STANDISH
1) CARNIVAL OF THE DAMNED - 1997 (my tip of the Stetson to SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES)
2) THE LEGEND OF VICTOR STANDISH - 2005 New Orleans, ghoul friends, and vampire priests!
3) UNDER A VOODOO MOON - 2005 then to 1834 and Madame Lalaurie!
4) THE RIVAL - 1834- McCord, Edgar Allen Poe, and a vampiric Abigail Adams -- oh, and the ghost of President John Adams
5) END OF DAYS - Ragnarok has come for New Orleans of all places, 2005, with all my major characters in the fray, even Wolf Howl and Hibbs, the Bear with 2 Shadows!
6) THREE SPIRIT KNIGHT - From Ragnarok to the end of all time, Victor and Alice struggle to save their slain friends.


 THE SONG OF WOLF HOWL
1) HUNTER'S MOON
2) END OF DAYS
3) TALES TO BE TOLD AT MIDNIGHT
4) THE LAST SHAMAN
5) RETURN OF THE LAST SHAMAN


THE BEAR WITH TWO SHADOWS
1) HIBBS, THE CUB WITH NO CLUE
2) THE BEAR WITH TWO SHADOWS
3) END OF DAYS

 
THE ODYSSEY OF BLAKE ADAMSON,  LUCIFER'S ORPHAN
1) LOVE LIKE DEATH - 
the clone grown from the tissue found at the tip of the Spear of Destiny makes a fatal mistake, creating a parallel life for himself.
2) LUCIFER'S ORPHAN - the last fae and DayStar torment Blake.
3) LUCIFER'S ORPHAN - JOURNEY OF THE LOST
4) LUCIFER'S ORPHAN - BATTLEFIELD HELL - Hell invades New Zealand
5) THE PATH BACK TO DAWN - Blake awakens to discover there are worse fates awaiting the living than death.
6) BLACK ROSES IN AVALON - To escape DayStar, Blake and the Last Fae travel to time-lost Avalon.
7) LAST EXIT TO BABYLON - Betrayal adrift on the Time Stream.

8) THE LAST FAE - Tales of the Last Fae before she met Blake.



Tales containing the first appearances of 

Lucas, the sociopathic O.S.S. operative; 

Darael, the Angel provocateur; and 

Luke Winters, the Lakota psychologist: ghosts and gangsters.
 


I EVEN HAD TO GET INTO THE ACT!
I'm on the run through the Shadowlands with only the ghosts of Mark Twain and Marlene Dietrich to help 
as I run afoul of the shades of Shakespeare, Hitler, Jack the Ripper, Bogart, and more!
While Samuel McCord with Victor Standish get into the fray!
Oh, and my first cat, Gypsy, helps, too ... contesting with the Sphinx of Riddles!
29 are audiobooks, 20 are paperbacks, and the Kindle books are as affordable as I could make them.

My WIP: Think Fringe meets Band of Brothers



WHY NOT CHECK A FEW OUT?

AUDIOBOOKS ARE GOOD FOR YOU_ IWSG Post

 

https://www.amazon.com/All-Dead-Shall-Weep-Gunnie/dp/B0C5NW4DNP/https://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/p/iwsg-sign-up.html
I have been waiting for Sept. 9th for awhile now. Charlaine Harris had found a way to keep life in her new series past the third book:
Bring a secondary character into the forefront as I have done with various series of mine.
Now, something has gone wrong. I can get the kindle and hardback still ... but not the audiobook!

Even the ghost of Mark Twain is bummed.

DID YOU KNOW AUDIOBOOKS CAN IMPROVE YOUR WRITING?

A) NO SKIMMING ALLOWED


     C'mon, admit it: you skim over the "boring parts" as you read print.  It's instinctive by now.

     But skimming robs you of the power and purpose of the words you skim!


B) AUDIO LETS YOU CATCH THE PACE, THE FLOW OF THE WORDS


     The sounds of the words will bleed into your own writing.  You will begin to "see" words as images.

     It will limit your use of HE SAID/SHE SAID in every line of dialogue.

     Don't tell me those words are invisible to readers -- only to you as you block them out as you write.

     You'll discover new ways to add pauses to the spoken lines.


C)  YOU'LL HEAR THE WORDS AS YOU WRITE THEM


     Maybe in your voice.  Maybe in the voice of your favorite narrators.

     It will spotlight "kinks" in your paragraphs.

     The audio's will create a Theater of the Mind letting you see words as images.


D) YOU'LL "READ" MORE


     Stephen King stresses that the more you read the deeper your perspective will be in your books.



     You'll read in places you couldn't with a print book: in bed, exercising, gardening, commuting.

     You'll discover favorite narrators and seek out books they narrate no matter the genre and 

your literary horizons will expand, enriching your prose, breathing new ides into your future novels.


E) YOU'LL LEARN


     AUDIBLE has its DEAL OF THE DAY:

     I got Arthur C Clarke's 2001 for $2!  The intro was by Clarke himself, detailing the unique way he wrote the book.

     I got BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S read by Michael C Hall of DEXTER fame (great narrator) for $2!

     Craig Johnson of LONGMIRE fame detailed at the end of one of his books the origin of his hero and how he writes.  Great lessons.


F) YOUR OWN AUTHOR READINGS WILL IMPROVE FROM LISTENING TO PROFESSIONALS.


G) YOUR VOCABULARY WILL IMPROVE

     You'll learn new words from their use in context of the action of the novels.  

     You'll repeat crutch words less as you insert the new words into your prose.


OH, THE GHOST OF MARK TWAINWANTED ME TO MENTIONMY AUDIOBOOK IN WHICHHE APPEARS!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01EUFRKKI
ONLY $15.49!
Elu finally escapes his Mirror Prison only to face an insane Abraham Lincoln and 

the eternal prankster Mark Twain ... which fate is worse would be hard to say!

Here is John Two-Hawks and Nightwish with lyrics
Alice Wentworth hears Creek Mary's Bloodin her mind as she rides against unbeatable oddsin END OF DAYS

JUNE 6TH - WE REMEMBER MOMENTS

 

WORSELIVES TO LIVE

“Youshall not be the worse for this - I promise you. You will be much the betterfor it. Just believe what I say, and do as I tell you. ” 

– Sentient

 

The Voice,no Sentient, She wanted me to call her Sentient.  Anyway, obviously, Sentient didn’t believe ingiving me a break.

The coppersnowflakes thinned slowly, then faded altogether.

I rockedon my feet violently. No one around me noticed. They were clearly too busy beingterrified. Salty wet spray splashed on my feet.

Oh, Merde.

I was inone of the Higgins landing crafts I had just been talking about with General Bradley.The man still could not stand looking at me … all for something I had no memoryof doing. 

Sentient had been in full control then. Nine out of ten of us would be killed on that damn beach ahead of us. 

Would me bring killed just now satisfyhim? 

Sentientmust hate me.

Beingdumped on Omaha Beach with Sgt. Savalas that midnight to collect sand samples tobe studied to see if tanks would sink or not was bad enough. Now this.

Inside myhead, Sentient was murmuring to just trust Her. Yeah, right. The man beside mewas spilling all the bullets he was trying to push into his pistol clip.

I stiffenedas a strange thing happened: like in the credits of some movies, words appearedbeneath his face. I read:

RabbiAmos Stein. Lieutenant, father of one daughter, Rose,  husband of Ruth Goode Stein. At 31 years ofage, he was already accomplished before enlisting. He followed in his father’sfootsteps, became ordained and received a PhD. Enlisted after the M.S. St.Louis filled with 937 Jewish refugees was denied permission to dock in Miami andturned away. A third of the passengers to be later murdered.

I wasstill me … so far. I reached out and gently took the pistol from his tremblingfingers. “Here, Amos. Let me.”

My righthand tingled. Suddenly cold bullets filled my palm. I thumbed them carefully, calmlyinto the clip as I had seen him try to do.

I gently handedit back to him. “All ready to fight the Nazi Scourge.”

It wasoften said that we all died alone. Maybe. But if you died next to someone whowas just as scared as you, someone who you had touched in a small act of compassion,and whose life was made the better by it even in some small way, did it help?

I would soonfind out.

His mouthwas still a bit slack. “H-How did you do that? W-Where did the bullets come from?”

I smiled sadly. “It’s a kind of magic.”

***

"How luckyyou are to have someone that makes saying goodbye so hard." 

- Sister Ameal

SHADOW-TRUTHS LAST THE LONGEST

 A bit more of my WIP, SAME AS IT NEVER WAS

BECAREFUL WHO YOU LOVE

"Thelessons one learns at St. Marok’s are not always the ones this school thinksit’s teaching."

– Richard Blaine

 

MissMayfair shook her head as if by doing so, she could shake loose the attackingthoughts stinging her mind.

“Enoughof that. I truly wonder if Miss Treadwell graduated from an accredited college at all,judging from the way she used, or should I say, misused the Dewey DecimalSystem. The books in this library are all terribly misplaced and sorted.”

Shelooked at me impishly. “You do know the Dewey Decimal System, do you not?”

Ireturned her look. “It’s one of the few systems I live by.”

“Well,then, you go to the far end of this library, and I shall start here by the deskrearranging the books properly. We will meet in the middle as do allintelligent people.”

Afteronly a few minutes, it was plain her plan would not work, and she muttered,“This is horrendous. Why did Stearns hire her if she knew so little aboutlibrary science?”

I did notthink he hired her for her brains, but I kept that to myself. It might lead herto thinking how he had tried to “sell” her to one of the houses ofprostitution around this orphanage for her body. Least said, least egg on myface, and one less foot in my mouth.

I smiledand said nothing. I caught my heart beating faster as I walked closer to her. Ifrowned. First love is dangerous only when it is also the last. Sadly, first love is only slightly less perishable than human life here in the French Quarter.

I was surprisedto see the thin, stiff-bound “On the Perceptual Content of Quantum Theoretical Kinematics and Mechanics” by Werner Heisenberg in my right hand. Though it hadbeen written in 1927, I still found it fascinating.

MissMayfair’s face went suddenly pale as she looked over my left shoulder. La merde.I turned around, expecting the worst and getting it. “Bent” Murcham.  

Where the late unlamented DonnyJenkins liked to hurt people. “Bent” liked to kill them. He had proven more usefulto Stearns than Donny.  So much so that the Headmaster had gotten rid of all hisvictims, not just the ones Stearns had pointed out to him.

"Bent" flashed a shark’s smile. “You never made it to your cot at the dorm last night,Dickie boy. And we had such a nice party planned for you and everything.”

His eyesgrew as cold and flat as wet stones on the beach. “Me and the boys liked Donny and Stearns.”

“No, youfeared them.”

His face grew as remote as a surgeon's face might just before he amputated a leg. "You should fear us."

"I do ... like I do coiled rattlers."

Remember This Heartbeat ... For It Is the Beginning of Always

 

I received a few emails asking if my snippet of my new novel was its beginning.

I realized perhaps I should give you a taste of the start.

                                                

                                      “I held an atlas in my lap,

ran my fingers across the whole world
and whispered
where does it hurt?

it answered
everywhere,
everywhere,
everywhere.”

- Warsan Shire

 

 

“For Man there is no being good, merely no present opportunity to bebad.”

– Sentient           

 

It isalways something of a bother to time date these entries.

You see, Ihave hopscotched along realities and possibilities for so long that I shouldhave mental whiplash.

In a time yet to be, a strangefellow with the stranger name of Snoop Dog told me: ‘You’ve got to go backin Time if you want to move forward.’

Childhood is pretty far back,isn’t it?

So. let’sstart there, shall we? For as long as I can remember, I have heard the Voice.Not voices, mind you. I am crazy. Just not that crazy.

If youare religious, you might be thinking Isaiah 30:21 Whether You Turn Right orLeft, Your Ears Will Hear a Voice Behind You, Saying, This is The Way; Walk inIt.

No, Inever thought the Voice was God’s since it was female. One of the first thingsGod made was Man. If God was female, the first thing She would have made wouldhave been chocolate.

The Voiccwas always faint. Sometimes nearly loud enough to understand a word or two …but not quite. It was quite maddening.

In somenightmares, the Voice sounded louder if I took one way or lower if I tookanother. The nightmares went better if I went along down the loud path. But notalways. I guess that fearful uncertainty was what made it a nightmare.

Whatcould a kid have nightmares about, you ask? I was an orphan at St. Marok’sin New Orleans. If you were a native of the “Twilight City,” that lastsentence would explain everything. Of course, the radio and newspapers beingfull of Hitler steamrolling all across Europe did not exactly fill my head withvisions of sugar plumbs as dance partners.

Besides,the waking hours in St. Marok’s were nightmare enough. Located in one of themost dangerous parts of the French Quarter, it received no church or cityfunding. How Headmaster Stearns kept the place running was a mystery to me. Whywe were all malnourished and hungry was not.

Only theprettiest of the girls and most handsome of the boys found enough food on theirplates. The rest of us were not envious. Those orphans soon disappeared.

The talkwas that Stearns sold them to the different “Houses of Pleasure” allaround us. Was it true? Who knew? I just knew I was glad I was nothing special.

I kept tothe middle of  the pack. The scared, dumborphans hunched in the far back. They may as well have hung a sign around theirnecks in red paint: ‘Don’t pick on me.’ What bully could resist that,right?

I wassmarter than that. Too smart … and stubborn. I refused to do less than my bestin all the tests. That particular bit of brilliance on my part shone aspotlight on me for all the dim-witted but burly bullies.

It alsobrought me to the attention of Sister Ameal and let me know that the Voicecould do something that scared me to the bone.

Thatfateful morning, I heard a low buzzing in my head as I started down the secondstory stairs to my algebra class. Suddenly, my whole body twisted sharply to myright smack up against the wooden railing without my willing it.

Swish!

DonnyJenkins flew past me as he missed the shove he had aimed at my back. He tumbledawkwardly down the stairs to land with his head bent all wrong. I did not haveto be a doctor to know he was dead.

Down onthe first floor, Headmaster Stearns roared, “Mr. Blaine, what did you just do?”

Now, whatelse was wrong with me? The Voice was bad enough. Now, this?

My headstill spinning from having lost control of my body to some outside force, Isaid the first thing to come to me.  “Gotout of his way, sir.”

A few ofthe knuckleheads behind me chuckled at that. Stearns was not amused. I cursedat myself for not thinking before I spoke.

“Youthink that funny, Mr. Blaine?”

I forcedout of a fear-thick throat,  “N-No, sir.”

“Indeednot, young man. You have just bought yourself a one-way trip to the reformschool with that stunt.”

“No, hehas not, Stearns!” a harsh voice snapped from the open front door.

I lookeddown and saw for the first time the wiry body of Sister Ameal. It was an oddname for a nun, so I looked it up. I spent a lot of time in the library. I meanwhen you were threatened there at least they whispered.

Ameal wasa parish in Coimbra, Portugal. Maybe she was originally from that country, Tome, she did not look Portuguese, but I was hardly a world traveler … at leastnot then.

“Time is not a line but a dimension, like thedimensions of space. If you can bend space, you can bend time also, and if youknew enough and could move faster than light you could travel backward in timeand exist in two places at once.”

– Sentient

END OF A DRY SPELL

 

I have been struggling with the last novel in my DARK HOLLYWOOD series for nearly a year now.

I decided to try Mark Twain's remedy and start writing an entirely new novel.

It worked.

Set in early WWII New Orleans, my story can tap into already researched material.

Think of it as FRINGE meets BAND OF BROTHERS.

In two days, I have written over 3000 words.

Sister Ameal slapped me aside the head and tugged me into the library with a jerk of ironfingers around my left arm. The slap had been a hard one, too. Sister Ameal wasnot a soft anything. Of course, Miss Mayfair saw the whole thing. I sighed. Idid not have bad luck, mind you, just strange luck. It still suckedlemons.

It didmake Miss Mayfair smile though, so it was not a complete loss. Her smiles weresomething to see. I never saw eyes so green or hair such a color … strawberryblonde I believe they called it.

Yes, Iwas smitten. She was not that much older than I was. Dreams, fragile thingsthough they are, were all you had to get you through a place like St. Marok’s. Thereare so many fragile things when you think about it. People break so easily, andso do dreams … and hearts.

We wrapour dreams carefully deep inside us so that when they are crushed no one seesthe bleeding but ourselves. And our hearts? They are the lonely graveyards forall the dreams that could have been … but weren’t. Perhaps that is why SisterAmeal seldom smiles. The weight of memory keeps the corners of her lips down.

What ofme?

Once Ioverheard Headmaster Stearns speak of me to the last librarian:

“If youwere to try and pick him out of a group of boys, you’d be wrong. He’d be theother one. Over at the side. The one your eye slipped over.”

That wasall right. To be noticed at St. Marok’s was to die … not young … you agedquickly at this place ,,, but to die before you could get the hell out of here.

I don’t knowwhy I bother telling you any of this. No one gets the emotional jolt fromhearing your life story as you did living it. They hear the details, not all of course, for nothingbores a person so much as hearing the dregs of another’s hurts.

Peopledon’t get how the death of one dream, the stinging betrayal of one hope, cancolor, not just one day, but a whole life. Unless it is their dream, theirhope, their life.

But letme get back to Miss Mayfair’s smile. It is worth getting back to, and itsmemory warmed many a bleak day for me.

Shesmiled wider. “So, this is the young man to whom I owe my rescue?”

I shookmy head. “I just pointed out that Mr. Stearns lied about you not being here,ma’am. It was your father and a few of his men that did all the heavy lifting.”

Her faceflinched as if this might have been one of the first times she’d been called “ma’am.”I felt much the same way some time later when I had been called “sir.”Of course, I had been posing as someone much older. But I am getting ahead ofmyself. That happens a lot when you travel through time.

Someclaim that I was a madman, and some think that I was just a man with veryspecial powers. But they all miss the point. Whatever I was … and am, I changedthe world … or Sentient did through me.

All mendream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dark caverns of their minds,wake in the day to find that it was but fluff. But the dreamers of the day aredangerous men, for they act on their dreams with open eyes, to make thempossible.

I am adangerous man … and Sentient even more so for not being a man.

MissMayfair obviously saw none of that as her smile warmed. “How old are you, Mr.Blaine?”

Shequickly held up a long-fingered hand. “No, don’t tell me. It does not matter,for I hear Stearns held you back in school two years running for some imaginedslight or other.”

I myselffelt the slights were not so imagined. I could have a sharp tongue. I neverlost sleep over that fact.

Herfingers became a contemplative nest for her chin. “Stearns, even Sister Ameal,say they can never recall your face once you leave them.”

She shookher head. “I do not see how that is possible. Your hair seems all colors, agrove of trees in autumn, deep brown, and wine-red.”

MissMayfair chucked softly, ”An untrimmed tangle across the top of your head. Yourcheeks pale without being anemic. Full lips eternally in an amused smile atsome jest only you hear. You look like a friend; like someone you have knownall your life.”

SisterAmeal looked as uncomfortable as I felt. I was reconsidering applying for thisjob. Then, I reminded myself that often we don’t see things as they are, but aswe are … or what our needs are.

Life isall illusion.

We simplydo not have enough facts to understand life. Not really. The word “illusion”comes from the Latin “illude,” which means to mock or to deceive.

There isan optical illusion about every person we meet. There is no ‘us’ and ‘them.’It’s an illusion. We are all human beings.

Well,except for Sentient.

I hadmade it this far at St. Marok’s through luck and pluck. I was running about aquart low on pluck. And Luck was merely another illusion, trusted by theignorant and chased by the foolish. I tried to be neither one.

It was asgood a fool’s errand as any other.

***

What do you think of it so far?

And Yay! I sold another audio book.

ARE YOU SONGS UNFINISHED?

 

Call me the Turquoise Woman
My names have been so many over the eons. 
 Even I have forgotten some of them by which fearful two-leggeds spoke of me.
Poor two-leggeds 
You think you know so much, but so much of what you know is sadly not true at all.
And Reality has no mercy on those who walk unwise paths.
You can only know what you have experienced. And what you have experienced  is so little and so little of that is seen  for that which it truly is.
You often see only that which you expect to see and are blind to that which is outside your framework of thought.

I look out from my consciousness surrounding this planet that is my body,
and my horizon spans the swimming bodies of my sisters who wheel in their sweeping dance of gravity about Father Sun.
And You?

Your minds are much like unfinished songs.
And nothing makes you so aware of the fragility of life as songs unfinished.

 HERE IS A SECRET
We are all songs unfinished.
We start with names ... 
but what illusions are names.  
You look about you and think you see me, but you do not even see yourselves.

You perceive yourselves as myths you breathe into being 
within your minds to mask the truth you are loathe to stare upon too closely.
The Lakota called me the Turquoise Woman.  
The Greeks called me Gaia.  
The Ancient Egyptians called me Hathor.

I call all of you temporary.  Some I call cherished.  
Many of you are merely a rash that itches all across my surface.
Bemused, I watch you scurry over my skin, bemoaning you are bringing an end to me.  
I would laugh were it not so tragic.
You are merely bringing an end of life to yourselves.
DO YOU KNOW WHAT LIFE IS?
A firefly's flicker in the night,

the breath of a buffalo in winter,

a cloud shadow that races across the green grass to lose itself in the blood-red of the sunset. 
Do not try to understand me.
I look, not only down upon you,

but out across the vast glittering sea of eternal night.

The colors of my thoughts are the Northern Lights

and the reach of them is from horizon to horizon and unto the vastness of the stars.

The electro-magnetic field of my body gave birth to my consciousness

long before there were human hands to chisel stone into mute, blind idols

or to brush your world in blood on cave walls.
  Your only true contribution to me was your language.

Before you crafted words into being, my consciousness was unfocused.

I listened with wonder as you spoke to one another,

slowly piecing the concept of language together in my thoughts.

Through the prism of your languages, my awareness crystalized.

I became aware.

Now, I know a haunted melancholy. 
Like a windmill's blades, my thoughts dip into my memories.

In misty after-images, 
I see your fleeting lives walking prayer-soft across my green fields only to fade into the inflamed oblivion of the sunset. 


No, rather try understanding yourselves and the boiling storms within you.
If you come close to self-awareness, you will better understand those about you ...
who are stumbling in the darkness of their own refusal to see life in all its facets.

1.) UNDERSTAND THE NARRATIVE OF YOUR LIFE
Your narrative identity is the story of your life; but it is more than just a story. 
How you understand your narrative frames both your current actions and your future.

2.)  STEP ASIDE EACH DAY TO REFLECT ON THE DAY BEFORE
This enables you to focus on the important things in your life, not just the immediate.

3.)  LOOK INTO THE MIRRORS OF TRUSTED FRIENDS
All two-leggeds have traits that others see, but you are unable to see in yourselves. 
I call these "blind spots."
 Do you see yourself as others see you? 
If not, you can address these blind spots by receiving honest feedback from people you trust.

4.) DO NOT MERELY LEARN FROM YOUR MISTAKES BUT FORGIVE YOURSELF FOR THEM.
It will help you to forgive others. 

I END WITH SEVEN WORDS:
Live well. 
Soon I will miss you.
If you want to see more of the 
TURQUOISE WOMAN,
listen to THE LAST SHAMAN: http://www.amazon.com/The-Last-Shaman/dp/B00DO91AIU/ Only $6.08!
OR Listen to 
 https://www.amazon.com/Hibbs-Cub-No-Clue/dp/B00Q3HFAKY/

GHOST IN THE NIGHT_A Memorial Day reflection

 

It was that moment between waking and dream. I was sitting on my apartment terrace. The night spoke to me in its velvet silence.

Owl happily was not speaking my name. He perched on the cypress branch opposite me, studying me as I was admiring him.

Brother raccoon scurried into the bushes below, carrying some prize in his front right paw.

My ghost cat, Gypsy, twitched her tail on the window sill, the mysteries of ages whispering in her half-closed, green eyes.

My own eyes were heavy. Too many miles driven. Too few hours slept.

I put the period to the last sentence of my blog post about Marlene Dietrich with the troops in the front lines during WWII :

**
One afternoon after VE Day, she was walking through a little French village. All around her was rubble, and she couldn't understand why -- all the buildings along the street were still standing with curtains blowing frilly and snapping clean-crisp in their windows.

Then, she looked through one of the windows to see that there was nothing behind it. The fronts of the buildings were still standing, but everything behind them had been destroyed. There wasn't a single living person past the false fronts of those caricature buildings.

Only one lone doll lay forlorn in the rubbled middle of nothing.

With her face cupped in trembling hands, she stood in front of that window, weeping silently, refusing to be comforted ...

"... for there is no comfort for the dead," she whispered.
* * Beside me a husky voice intoned, "Keine Komfort für die Toten."

I went cold and still, sliding my eyes as far to the right as they could go without moving my head. My mouth became salt.

Marlene Dietrich.

In a frilly black night wrap and not much else.

She was perched over the top of a wavering, insubstantial leather chair like a cougar ready to strike.

"You write so beautifully of me. Why?"

"Y-You were brave, selfless -- entertaining the troops on the front lines with a death sentence from Hitler on your head."

I cleared my fear-thick throat. "People have forgotten that."

She reached out and stroked my cheek with chill fingers.

"It is not important for the world to remember me -- only that I did not forget myself when I was needed."

"And words like that are why I write of you."

Marlene fluffed my hair with ghost fingers. It tickled.

"Do you know what they call you in the ShadowLands, liebling?"

"N-No."

"Sänger von Träumen -- DreamSinger."

"I - I don't understand."

Her ice blue eyes hollowed. "One day you will."

In ghost whispers, she murmured, "Death and love."

"What?"

"I thought I knew them, liebchen. I was so sure. I died. Then, I saw life with new eyes."

She leaned forward, her eyes suddenly sparkling. "See you in your dreams, liebling."

And like a cloud robbing me of sunlight, Marlene was gone. I was alone. Well, not quite.

Gypsy, my ghost cat, was in my lap, yawning. It takes a lot to shake up the granddaughter of Bast.
***
I meet her ghost again in GHOST OF A CHANCE:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1534981861Amazon forces me to increase the pricefor this and other of my bookscome June 20th.

FOR MEMORIAL DAY_THE DOG WHO COULD FLY

http://www.amazon.com/Dog-Who-Could-Fly-Four-Legged-ebook/dp/B00GEEB7QM/

Czech airman Robert Bozdech found himself shot down with his wounded pilot in a grim no-man's land, 

between German and French forces at the beginning of World War II. 

It is January 1940 and the German army is shortly to begin its surge across the rest of continental Europe.

 In an abandoned farmhouse where Robert and his French pilot take shelter, 

he finds a starving puppy amid the rubble. 

Not weaned yet, the emaciated dog is able to suckle warmed-up chocolate from Robert's finger.

But a puppy left behind would make noise that would alert their Nazi hunters. 

Robert takes out his knife and lowers it to the puppy's throat. 

He looks into trusting brown eyes.  

He puts the knife away and the puppy inside his bomber jacket.

Along with the pilot, he and the puppy make the terrifying and arduous journey to safety.  

But that is just it: 

there is no safety with the Nazis butchering their way across all of France.

So Robert & the puppy, along with six other Czech airmen, 

eventually escape to Britain to serve in the Royal Air Force, 

along the way facing not only a saga of obstacles and dangers 

but the added challenge of smuggling along a dog Robert names Ant ... 

later changing it to Antis for a reason I leave for you to find out.

 Long before Robert and his mates are welcomed into the RAF, Antis wins Robert's heart. 

His loyalty, courage, and intelligence, even as a puppy, 

create a bond of love, one that survives some of the most challenging circumstances.

 Antis was awarded the Dickin Medal, the animal equivalent to the Victoria Cross

Before France capitulates, Robert returns to fly with the French Air Force 

in a last-ditch effort to slow the advance of the Germans, joined by Antis. 

(Later Antis would fly with Robert in the RAF.)

"It seemed almost the most natural thing ... for Ant to leap onto the wing of the aircraft and climb in beside him ... 

The perils of the mission didn't seem to worry him ... His ears pricked up a little as the punching percussions of machine-gun fire filled the gun turret,

his nose twitched at the thick cordite fumes that drifted all around him, 

but other than that he didn't ... stir from his laid-back position prone on the metal floor."

 During the course of the war, Antis saves lives by hearing, and warning his master of, 

the approach of German bombers long before they could be detected by air defense. 

And after one horrific attack, 

he becomes a rescuer, sniffing out survivors in the rubble of a building.  

Even being buried by a falling wall could not stop the bleeding, crawling Antis 

from digging out his last rescue: 

a young girl who would have died but for Antis.

You will laugh, sigh, cry, and ultimately cheer this warm loving story torn from the bloody history of WWII.

You will be cheered by the ingenuity and never-say-die spirit of both man and dog.  
I am currently listening to the audio version of this wonderful book.

To give equal time to kittens:

THE GHOSTS OF MEMORIAL DAY

 

We enjoy stirring videos of Memorial Day with graves draped in colorful American flags

as lovely music plays in the background.

We watch and listen to stirring Memorial Day parades, 

flags snapping in the breeze and bands playing stirringly as they march in unison.

People in our country's neighborhoods will be having the biggest and best barbecues, 

but the forgotten spirits of those slain upon a thousand distant foreign fields 

might take us to the cemeteries on Memorial Day.

Would they tell us that we could eat all the barbecue we want on the Fourth of July 

if we just murmured a small thanks over their graves today?

No one sets out to be a hero, and certainly no one wants to die a bloody, violent death.

But thousands upon thousands found themselves in terrible situations where they needed a hero, 

so that is what they became.

They died so that we would have a chance to live as best we could.

 We couldn’t enjoy sun-drenched summer days like today without their sacrifice.


Living in the world today is a challenge unlike one that has ever been seen in the past. 

But as thousands rose to the occasion when all seemed dark, we, too, can rise to tackle the obstacles facing us.

Yes, today is a day where we mourn the loss of precious lives and innocence.  

But today is also a day where we celebrate the victory of the human spirit over darkness ...

and this gives us hope.