Roland Yeomans's Blog, page 46

THE FATHER CRISIS

 

When I was six years old, my father abandoned me on a street in Detroit known as Skid Row to hurt my mother while she was at work.
He was angry for her divorcing him due to his alcoholism, infidelity, and lack of financial support.

My last memory of him was me running after his car screaming, "Daddy! Daddy! Don't leave me!"
There were no Amber Alerts in those days. A street person, Maudie,  and her little dog, Tufts, looked after me for 6 terrifying weeks.
When I developed Double Pneumonia, Maudie overcame her fear of uniforms and took me to the nearest Salvation Army station.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1511548207
I immortalized her and Tufts in FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE and END OF DAYS. 
And I fed the wandering dog who looked like Tufts and hung around Lifeshare for years.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09NRBY5K3
Now, you know the genesis of the street orphan, Victor Standish. He is what I wished I had been on the mean streets of Detroit.
FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO ARE FATHERS, YOU ARE IN CHARGE OF FRAGILE CARGO, WALK CAREFULLY.

MR. PRESIDENT, HAVE PITY ON THE WORKING MAN

 

LIKE ROMEO AND JULIET ... BUT BETTER!

 

ORIGINALITY

I was browsing the headlines of Yahoo this morning when I arose, hoping not to find any new mass shootings,
When I spotted this.


I had a mental image of a Netflix writing room filled with a group of execs drawing in puffs from their joints saying ...
"See, two teenage girls fall in love ...."
"Yeah, better ... one is black, the other white."
"I can see it, man, one is from an ancient family of vampires, the other from a family of vampire killers!"
The head exec nods his head. "Like ROMEO AND JULIET ... only better ... we'll name one Juliet so no one misses what we're doing."

Aren't you tired of actually seeing the boxes being checked off in certain new entertainments??

THE FIRST FOUR

 

“ Give me six hours to chop down a tree,  and I will spend the first four  sharpening the ax.”   - Abraham Lincoln
 The people we surround ourselves with 
are the biggest influence 
on our behavior, 
attitudes and results. 

Who you are around ,

what they’ve got 
you thinking, 
saying, doing 
and becoming,
sets the course of your life.
 “You are the average 
of the five people 
you spend the 
most time with.”  - Jim Rohn

Social scientists say the people you spend the most time with 

tend to shape who you are. 
They determine what conversations dominate your attention. 

They affect to which attitudes and behaviors you are regularly exposed. 

Eventually you start to think like they think and behave like they behave.

 No matter what you believe about what the social scientists say ...

You can agree it is hard to stay positive when surrounded by negative people!

Even if you do what you feel is right, you will not get as far if, around you,

you do not have people who hold you to a higher standard ...

who by their very example show you it can be done.


I am far better now than I would have been

because of the friendship of Sandra Thrasher and the example shown by her entire family.

If you truly are the average of the five people in your life,

what kind of person are you?

Has there been one person who touched your life with wisdom and friendship?

LONG AFTER YOU'RE GONE, YOUR BOOK WILL STILL BE OUT THERE_IWSG Post

 

Writing is not hard. No. 

It's keeping on writing that is hard.

Anyone can start. Not everyone can finish.


Two hurricanes one right after another and a tornado later on certainly almost finished me.

The world's greatest potato peeler was once asked the secret to his success.
He said,  "I peel one potato at a time."

One sentence at a time.
It might spark an idea for a whole page.
Six months of that will birth a novella.

“You can sit there, tense and worried, freezing the creative energies, or you can start writing something. 

It doesn't matter what. 

In five or ten minutes, the imagination will heat, the tightness will fade, 

and a certain spirit and rhythm will take over.”

 – Leonard Bernstein

“Time is the coin of your life. 

It is the only coin you have and only you can determine how it will be spent. 

Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.” 

– Carl Sandburg

Today, sit down and write just one sentence.

Kill your protagonist; open up a trapdoor at her feet; write the first thing that comes to mind.

Don't like it? That is what the back space key is for!

Wish me luck on my slow-go on my latest book.

Lucas is tired of waiting for me to come with a credible way out of the death trap I put him in.

Me, too!

HAS MEMORIAL DAY BEEN MISPLACED?

 

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.

ARE YOU RELUCTANT TO EXPRESS YOURSELF IN PUBLIC OR IN BOOKS THAT THE PUBLIC WILL READ?

 

Voltaire is wrongly attributed to have said:

"I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it."

That sentence is found in THE FRIENDS OF VOLTAIRE.  

Evelyn Beatrice Hall wrote the book under the pseudonym S[tephen] G. Tallentyre,

Oh, do any of you use pseudonyms?  

As a mask of protection or for something else entirely?

https://www.amazon.com/Stars-Bleed-At-Midnight/dp/B09NRKWZTZ/

I once had my Texas Ranger protagonist use "Oriental" for a people and a locale in my 1895 historical fantasy

and received a tart email saying "Asian" was the proper term now. 
I replied that I was writing through the eyes of a 1895 lawman who had never been accused of being proper.

Do you hesitate to write about certain topics or use certain types of characters: trans, gay, racial minority, political party member 
for fear of possible backlash?

(Sold for $46 million at auction in 2013)
Every 6 weeks or so I treat myself to an expensive kind of meal. 
So today, I went to a restaurant recommended to me.

After surviving two hurricanes, a freeze, and a tornado last year and my wipers dying as I drove on the interstate in blinding rains yesterday, 
I felt it was only right to say "Thanks" over my meal.
Silent, of course in these touchy times, but with head bowed, eyes closed, and hands clasped.

I was startled by a rough hand on my shoulder shaking me hard.
I looked up. 
A very sharply dressed businessman. "That's offensive, and you know that!"
I sighed, "I know I obviously offended you."
"That's right."
"Then, look the other way."
The businessman gestured to a man in a tie coming out from the back. "This man is engaging in offensive behavior!"
The man looked like he was having a very hard bowel movement, obviously knew the businessman, and wanted to keep him happy.
"I'm afraid you're going to have to leave."
"I just got my meal."
"That was not a request."
I sighed, got up, and left my waitress a tip. There was no point that she got punished along with me. She hadn't prayed ...

although with such a boss she might have stood in need of it.
SO, HOW WAS YOUR DAY?

HAS THE KINGDOM OF SHADOWS LOST ITS SCARY?

 

“Lover," she whispers, and closes her eyes.
It falls upon her.
"Love is like dying.”
―  Stephen King
I could not let Friday the 13th pass without my own nodding to it:

“Last night I was in the Kingdom of Shadows.   If you only knew how strange it is to be there. It is a world without sound, without colour. Everything there — the earth, the trees, the people, the water and the air — is dipped in monotonous grey.   Grey rays of the sun across the grey sky, grey eyes in grey faces, and the leaves of the trees are ashen grey. It is not life but its shadow, it is not motion but its soundless spectre.  Here I shall try to explain myself, lest I be suspected of madness or indulgence in symbolism. I was at Aumont’s and saw Lumière’s cinematograph — moving photography” — Maxim Gorky, 1896 The first horror films are surreal, disturbing pieces, owing their visual appearance in part to expressionist painters and in part to spirit photography of the 1860s,

and drawn from Gothic literature. They draw upon the folklore and legends of Europe, and render monsters into physical form.
“Dreading dusk, fearing night, praying for dawn.”
―  Gregory J. Saunders

The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1919) Often cited as the 'granddaddy of all horror films', this is an eerie exploration of the mind of a madman, pitting an evil doctor against a hero falsely incarcerated in a lunatic asylum. Through a clever framing device the audience is never quite clear on who is mad and who is sane, and viewing the film's skewed take on reality is a disturbing experience.
 “Within its gates I heard the sound
Of winds in cypress caverns caught
Of huddling tress that moaned, and sought
To whisper what their roots had found.
(“A Dream of Fear”)”
―  George Sterling , The Thirst of Satan: Poems of Fantasy and Terror   
Nosferatu (1922) Described as the vampire movie that actually believes in vampires, Nosferatu gives us a far more frightening bloodsucker than any of its successors; Shreck is simply inhuman.  Shadow of the Vampire (2000)  is a fascinating reworking of the Nosferatu legend: a compelling, if fanciful reconstruction of the film's creation. Starring Willem Dafoe, John Malkovich, &  Eddie Izzard.

“Until that afternoon in October four years ago,I hadn't known dogs could scream.”
―  Stephen King    Perhaps I am a cynic, but the field of horror movies has gone incredibly dry. Protagonists are hard to like or sympathize with, and because of this we have no fear of the monster.  What was once a genre that relied heavily on the emphasis of a musical score is now a genre that suffers from the bloat of bad thrash rock.  The worst culprits are films that try to keep us scared the entire time, not seeming to realize we need room to breathe.

You may not agree that The Exorcist is the scariest movie ever, but it probably also isn’t much of a surprise to see it at the top of my list.

 

William Friedkin’s adaptation of the eponymous novel about a demon-possessed child

 

and the attempts to banish said demon became the highest-grossing R-rated horror film ever and the first to be nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars

“Alone. Yes, that's the key word, the most awful word in the English tongue. Murder doesn't hold a candle to it and hell is only a poor synonym.”
―  Stephen King   WHAT WAS A RECENT HORROR OR THRILLER THAT MADE YOU SHIVER?

Echoes of Mother

 

Alex's comment to the last post made me remember how 

Mother and I would use to sing a particular song when we were walking home from the movies at night. 

I thought the ghost of my mother might smile at the memory ... and some of you might need a smile as well.

WHEN MOTHER'S DAY IS NOT HAPPY

 

Mother’s Day can be a miserable day.

Countless women and children mourn for a mother-child relationship that is not as it should be.

The Hallmark cards and commercials depict Mother’s Day as all smiles.

 But for many people, the celebration taps into pain and sorrow.

For mothers who lost children before childbirth, during, or after, the Day can be hollow and mocking. 

To those mothers if they have a world-view that includes an afterlife, 

the thought of an eventual reunion can bring some comfort.

Mother’s Day can be an opportunity to not only celebrate but to remember and comfort others. 

The day need not be happy to be important.
 To adults grieving the death of a mother, whether a few months ago or many years,

 ask them what was special about their mothers.

“What do you remember most? What lessons did she teach that remain in you?”

 To a mother whose child is across the globe fighting in a war: 

Pray for peace. Let her talk about her fears. Don’t try to take away her fear, just listen.

 An estimated 56 percent of all abusers -- physical, mental and sexual -- are women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The most common form is psychological. 

Neglect and emotional abuse are every bit as damaging as sexual abuse.

 Numerous studies have shown that maternal behaviors

 like constant criticism, withholding affection or humiliation can take a toll on children,

 adversely affecting their academic achievement, social growth and self-worth.

 Learning to move forward from a painful past is difficult, though not impossible.

And psychiatrists still don't understand why one sibling fares well psychologically and the other can be destroyed.

So if you had or have a loving relationship with your mother, treasure the blessing that so many others did not or do not have.