Roland Yeomans's Blog, page 83

DEATH: #AToZChallenge

https://www.amazon.com/How-Get-Through-Life-Witty/dp/0688112587

"You humans spend all your lives running so from the thought of death that you fail to truly live."  - Father Darael 


I want to alwayslive life so deeplythat death catches me unaware.
WHAT THOUGHTS DO YOU HAVE OF DEATH?
"What if this present 
were the world's last night?"
 - John Donne

This Song Is Quite Evocative and Fitting

CHARACTER: #AToZChallenge_IWSG guest post by the ghost of John D. McDonald

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0670894567/

"Oh, Great Spirit, whose voice I hear  in the winds,  Whose breath gives life to the world,  hear me, 
I come to you as one of your many children, 
I am small and weak,  I need your strength and wisdom. 
May I walk in beauty
Make my eyes ever behold  the red and purple sunset.
Make my hands respect the things  you have made
And my ears sharp to your voice.
  Make me wise  so that I may know the things  you have taught your children.  The lessons you have written  in every leaf and rock,
Make me strong! 
Not to be superior to my brothers,  but to fight my greatest enemy... myself 
Make me ever ready to come to you  with straight eyes,
 So that when life fades  as the fading sunset,
My spirit may come to you  without shame."
Translated by Chief Yellow Lark - 1887

"The true measure  of character  is the smile on a friend's face  when the person  approaches."  - Ingrid Durtz
WHAT ISCHARACTERTO YOU?
IWSG POST
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E2RXHT8/
A deep rumbling voice awakened me, "Hey, kid. Kid! Roland!"
 Midnight growled his "Not another ghost" rowl ...

which was rather funny since he spends most of the time I am gone curled up on the lap of the ghost of Mark Twain.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1580892736/
Though he maddens Midnight by calling him Bambino.

I pried open my eyes. And shot right up.

John D. MacDonald.

Sitting in his ghost chair, spectral smoke trailing up from his pipe into the mists of the night.

"You underlined passages in my book you were reading before you fell asleep tonight. It called out to me in the ShadowLands."

"You're a master, sir. I learn so much from your prose even after re-reading it for the tenth time."

His eyes gazed out over my shoulder to realms he looked like he wanted to forget but couldn't.

"I feel pretty much forgotten, son."

"Not to me, sir."

He nodded. "And because of that I wanted to drop by personally and give you a few pointers on how to write. I wanted you to learn the truth behind my words."

"What truth, sir?""Integrity. 

Integrity is not a conditional word. It doesn't blow in the wind or change with the weather. It is your inner image of yourself,

and if you look in there and see a man who won't cheat, then you know you never will. Integrity is not a search for the rewards of integrity.

Maybe all you ever get for it is the largest kick in the ass the world can provide. It is not supposed to be a productive asset.”

I whispered, "That's what you wrote in THE TURQUOISE LAMENT."

He nodded. "But nonetheless true. At times it seems as if arranging to have no commitment of any kind to anyone would be a special freedom.

But in fact the whole idea works in reverse. The most deadly commitment of all is to be committed only to one's self. Some come to realize this only after they are in the nursing home.”

He sighed. "There are people who try to look as if they are doing a good and thorough job, and then there are the people who actually damn well do it, for its own sake. You are a writer of the later sort.”

He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "The only thing in the world worth a damn is the strange, touching, pathetic, awesome nobility of the individual human spirit."

He put them back on and nudged them up his nose. "I know just enough about myself to know I cannot settle for one of those simplifications which indignant people seize upon to make understandable a world too complex for their comprehension.

Astrology, health food, flag waving, bible thumping, Zen, nudism, nihilism --

all of these are grotesque simplifications which small dreary people adopt in the hope of thereby finding The Answer,

because the very concept that maybe there is no answer, never has been, never will be, terrifies them."

I said softly, "I think there is some kind of divine order in the universe. Every leaf on every tree in the world is unique.

As far as we can see, there are other galaxies, all slowly spinning, numerous as the leaves in the forest.

In an infinite number of planets, there has to be an infinite number with life forms on them. Maybe this planet is one of the discarded mistakes. Maybe it's one of the victories. We'll never know."

MacDonald husked, "Not on your side of the grave."

He blew out his cheeks. "But I came here to talk on how to write better not to speak of the damned. Speaking of which, I wrote THE DAMNED because I knew the locale.

I was interested in what would happen if a lot of people got jammed in the crossing. I knew a lot of things would happen."

He smiled crooked, "And that, son, is the definition of a story."

His smile dropped from his lips like the weight of sin. "I found living it in the ShadowLands is the definition of Hell."

He looked back to me. "Now, for writing characters:

We're all children. We invent the adult facade and don it and try to keep the buttons and the medals polished.

We're all trying to give such a good imitation of being an adult that the real adults in the world won't catch on.

Each of us takes up the shticks that compose the adult image we seek."

He brooded a look at me. "Which leads me to what character should drive the actions of your novel. I think that most of us have a greater liking for strong and solid people than we have for the wimps of the world.

With strong people you can tell where you stand. Nobody, of course, is too strong never to be broken.

And that is my protagonist's, Travis McGee, forte, helping the strong broken ones mend."

He put out a forefinger.

"One, people want to spend time reading about someone they would like to be, doing the things they would love to do if they could.

And getting away with it.

No one wants to pay to be depressed and defeated, Roland. That comes for free in life."

He put out a second finger. "Two, writing is an adventure in and of itself:

I remember when I first started out --

I had four months of terminal leave pay at lieutenant colonel rates starting in September of 1945, ending in January 1946.

I wrote eight hundred thousand words of short stories in those four months, tried to keep thirty of them in the mail at all times, slept about six hours a night and lost twenty pounds.

I finally had to break down and take a job, but then the stories began to sell. I was sustained by a kind of stubborn arrogance.

Those bastards out there had bought one story “Interlude in India,”

and I was going to force them to buy more by making every one of them better than the previous one. I had the nerves of a gambler and an understanding wife."

He looked off into the shadows. "Mostly, an understanding wife."

He turned to me. "I can't find her in the ShadowLands, Roland. And it's killing me."

I cleared my closing throat. "I'll ask Samuel McCord ...."

He shook his head. "He's already tried, son. No luck."

He sniffed sharp and drew in a breath. "Where was I? Oh, yes."

He stuck out a third finger. "Three, series and first-person narrative. You're doing that with your Sam McCord, Victor Standish, and Dark Hollywood series.

Remember a series is only confining if you let it be so. If your imagination is large scope so will be your series.

As for first person narrative -

First-person fiction is restrictive only in that you can’t cheat. The viewpoint must be maintained with flawless precision.

You can’t get into anyone else’s head. The whole world is colored by the prejudices and ignorances of your hero.

Remember the child in your hero.

Adult pretenses are never a perfect fit for the child underneath,

and when there is the presentiment of death, like a hard black light making panther eyes glow in the back of the cave,

the cry is, "Mommy, mommy, mommy, it's so dark out there, so dark and so forever."

He rose and slapped his upper thighs, "If you forget what I've just said, remember this --

If you want to write, you write.

Unlike with brain surgery, the only way to learn to write is by writing. Take Stephen King --

Stephen King always wanted to write and so he writes --

books and fragments and poems and essays and other unclassifiable things, most of them too wretched to ever be published.

Because that is the way it is done.

Because there is no other way to do it. Not one other way.

Compulsive diligence is almost enough. But not quite.

You have to have a taste for words. Gluttony. You have to want to roll in them. You have to read millions of them written by other people.

You read everything with grinding envy or a weary contempt.

You save the most contempt for the people who conceal ineptitude with long words, Germanic sentence structure, obtrusive symbols, and no sense of story, pace, or character.

Then you have to start knowing yourself so well that you begin to know other people. A piece of us is in every person we can ever meet.

Okay, then. Stupendous diligence, plus word-love, plus empathy, and out of that can come, painfully, some objectivity.

Never total objectivity.

It comes so painfully and so slowly.

You send books out into the world and it is very hard to shuck them out of the spirit.

They are tangled children, trying to make their way in spite of the handicaps you have imposed on them.

I would give a pretty penny to get them all back home and take one last good swing at every one of them. Page by page. Digging and cleaning, brushing and furbishing. Tidying up.

Are you and I all together so far?

Diligence, word-lust, empathy equal growing objectivity and then what?
Story.

Story. Dammit, story!

Story is something happening to someone you have been led to care about.

It can happen in any dimension -physical, mental, spiritual – and in combinations of those dimensions.

Without author intrusion.

Author intrusion is: ‘My God, Mama, look how nice I’m writing!’

Another kind of intrusion is a grotesquerie. Here is one of my favourites, culled from a Big Best Seller of yesteryear: ‘His eyes slid down the front of her dress.’

Author intrusion is a phrase so inept the reader suddenly realizes he is reading, and he backs out of the story. He is shocked back out of the story.

Another author intrusion is the mini-lecture embedded in the story. This is one of my most grievous failings.

An image can be neatly done, be unexpected, and not break the spell. In a Stephen King story called ‘Trucks,’

Stephen King is writing about a tense scene of waiting in a truck shop, describing the people:

‘He was a salesman and he kept his display bag close to him, like a pet dog that had gone to sleep.’

I find that neat.

Nice. It looks so simple. Just like brain surgery. The knife has an edge. You hold it so. And cut.

The main thing is story.

One is led to care.

Note this. Two of the most difficult areas to write in are humour and the occult. In clumsy hands the humour turns to dirge and the occult turns funny.

But once you know how, you can write in any area.

Write to please yourself. I wrote to please myself. When that happens, you will like the work too."

His deep eyes locked onto mine. "Life is a coin, Roland. You can spend it any way you want. But you can only spend it once."

And with those words, he was gone. His wisdom stayed. I thought I'd pass it on.
 
Midnight just wants his undisturbed sleep back.
***
Here is a tune that John D. MacDonald likes:

BEAUTY: #AToZChallenge

https://www.amazon.com/dp-0385478542/dp/0385478542/
“For attractive lips, speak words of kindness.
 For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people.
 For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry.
 For beautiful hair,  let a child run his fingers  through it once a day.
 For poise,  walk with the knowledge  you’ll never walk alone." - Father Darael
WHAT MAKES SOMETHING OR SOMEONE BEAUTIFUL TO YOU?

ADAPT: #AtoZChallenge

ADIEU

That was going to be my first and only word for this A to Z challenge
 But Kalpanaawrites came to my rescue
Her post:http://www.kalpanaawrites.com/assistance-atozchallenge/
She showed me how I could adapt my limited timeto daily posts.
(Winston Churchill in the Sudan)
So my word for this day is
ADAPT
"We are shaping the world faster  than we can change ourselves, and we are applying  the habits of the past to our present." -  Winston Churchill
Do you think many of our present conflicts are results of our being unable to adapt?
 My theme for this challenge is:  Why Are We The Way We Are?

Shades of STRANGER THINGS

WHY DO YOU WRITE?

We tumble from womb to tomb ...

    from one blackness towards another,

        remembering little of the one and 

            knowing nothing of the other,

              except through faith.


Life distracts us, with happiness or struggle, 

    from seeing the tides that are drawing us towards 

        those clusters of events called 

Crossroads.
More tragically  for our being blind  to them.

The star, the wheel, the butterfly ...

    all are in an unseen state of turmoil,

        waiting for some signal that 
               the time has come.


Then, the star explodes,
The wheel of Fate turns, making a poor man rich,
The butterfly mates and dies.

STORY can say all that is unsayable in the world ...
    How can we resist attempting that?

Life has a way of bruising us 
    until we long for some passage out of ourselves.

That's what STORY does ...
    for a few precious moments
        it takes us out of ourselves
            to become someone other than who we are.

Each of us is a myth within our minds.
    We make it up. 
    It is the STORY of ourselves          we steer our actions by.
        It is not the truth of our life.  
           We could not bear to look at that.
It is the illusion which helps us keep on going in life.


Man alone
    tells STORIES to understand his world.


I believe that there is one STORY 
in the all world, and only one,
 that has frightened and inspired us.

 Humans are caught, in their lives, in their thoughts,  in their hungers and ambitions,  in their avarice and cruelty,  and 
in their kindness and generosity  in a net of good and evil. 

 Do they struggle towards the light or embrace the darkness?

There is no other STORY.
 A soul, having emerged from the cocoon of this life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: 
Did I make my time good or evil? 
Was my life worththe pain of my birth?

WHAT IS THE PARTICULAR MAGIC OF WRITING THAT KEEPS YOU DOING IT?

BOOK TITLES_Do You Fret Over Them?

I have unintentionally stumbled into writing what I call the  DARK HOLLYWOOD CYCLE
Silhouettes in the Key of Scream Perchance to Nightmare Beware the Jade Christmas and Razor Valentine




 Although I didn't realize it at the time:

It started in 1927 with Her Bones Are In the Badlands: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FPFOJNO




But the majority of it really begins in 1946 and so far into 1947.

Did you know that a hurricane hit New Orleans in 1947?  

A time when hurricanes were not named.

Which led me to toy with a movie being made in the city during that time.

Hence

That story may yet be written.  However, my muse threw me a curve ball.

The novel insisted upon bringing in the Hollywood Blacklisting which started in 1947

and

 J. Edgar Hoover conning Jimmy Stewart into informing on his friends 

for the House of UnAmerican Activity Committee with lies.

Hence


A nightmare gave me a new start to my gestating novel:
A diary entry from the protagonist's dead love who had been drawn into a policewoman's body.
She is accompanying James Stewart to meet Hoover. 
Ingrid Durtz hasn't flown since the flight over enemy lines which ended in her death.
The diary excerpt is a recollection of that flight and the compassionate response by Jimmy Stewart.
The following chapter follows the protagonist as he is once again drawn back into the murky arena of espionage
as he helps Wild Bill Donovan former Head of the O.S.S. during WWII
in investigating the eerie mystery of the Ship of Dead Men, 
the Ouran Medan.
Again a new Titlecame to me
I might even keep this one!

Do you fret overyour book's title?

With FREUD and MARK TWAIN at Meilori's

"Humor is a means of obtaining pleasure in spite of the distressing events that interface with it."
 - Sigmund Freud

“I believe that words are strong, that they can conquer what we dread when fear seems more awful than life is good.”
- Mark Twain
 



 "Vienna," I said to Freud's question of what occurred to me at the letter V.  

"Berggasse 19 to be exact."

Freud sucked in a breath and nodded, 

"Of course looking at me how could you not think of the address 

where I lived for 47 years, seeing patients every working day for eight or more hours?"

Mark Twain and I joined Freud in sucking in our breaths.  



As sometimes happened at the haunted jazz club, Meilori's, magic stirred echoes from the past atop our table.

In billowing mists, a scene from over 70 years ago in Vienna slowly took shape:

The sign on the building reading ''Prof. Dr. Freud/3-4'' had already been removed 

and a swastika flag had been draped over the doorway. 

Freud was one of many thousands of Jewish Viennese who were harassed 

in the weeks and months after Hitler's triumphant entry into the Austrian capital in March 1938. 


 When the Nazi commandos barged into the apartment, Freud's wife, 

Martha, in her unflappable Hamburg way, asked them to leave their rifles in the hall. 

Mark Twain smiled at the courage shown by the unbowed woman.

The leader of the intruders stiffly addressed the master of the house as ''Herr Professor."

In a brisk, rough manner, the commander, with his men, proceeded to search the vast apartment. 

Finally the Nazis left.

Martha Freud, in quiet dignity, went from room to room, straightening up the shambles they left in their wake.

With only a slight tremor to her voice, Martha informed her husband they had seized an amount of money worth about $840. 


''Dear me,'' Freud remarked, ''I have never taken that much for a single visit.''

Mark Twain sputtered a laugh and studied the man as the billowing scene evaporated atop our table.  

"Doctor, I don't much care for you.  But damn, you and your Mrs. had sand."

He cocked his head at Freud.  "And who would have thought you had a sense of humor?"

Freud smiled sadly, 

"I have found humor to be a means of obtaining pleasure in spite of the distressing events that interface with it." 

Mark grimaced, "Leave it to a Saw-Brains to take all the joy out of a laugh by dissecting it!"


He looked at the table-top as if still seeing the Nazis invading the home of harmless citizens.

"What is it that strikes a spark of humor from a man? 

It is the effort to throw off, to fight back the burden of grief that is laid on each one of us. 

In youth we don't feel it, but as we grow to manhood we find the burden on our shoulders. 

Humor? 

It is nature's effort to harmonize conditions. 

The further the pendulum swings out over woe the further it is bound to swing back over mirth."  

Freud nodded.

"Humor must not professedly teach, and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever."

Mark Twain sat up straight.  "I wrote that!"

Freud smiled drily, 

"Yes, eventually even fools get some things correct.  The law of averages always has its revenge." 

I made a face.  "As apparently do professors."

NEW ORLEANS GHOSTS VISIT SOUTH AFRICA!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07N75DRKC
TOP REVIEWS

Tonja Drecker    (5 Stars)

A STRANGE & EXCITING MYSTERY
When I dove into this one, I wasn't really sure what to expect...
but whatever it was, this story was much better.
 The author creates a dark but beautiful and enticing atmosphere in the French Quarter. 
The setting is placed on the first day of the Carnival in 1947, 
where reality, death and magic interplay and form a wondrous world.
 Nuestra Señora de la Santa Muerte is portrayed with an exquisite, dark elegance 
as she leaves a trail of death in her wake. 
But that's only the beginning.
The characters are vivid with personalities so potent, they jump from the page.
The addition of myth and magic add an alluring spice. 
It's a wonderful concoction which pulls in and presents a show all of its own. 
Add the well crafted wording and clever dialogue, and it's an intoxicating mix.

Don't miss Tonja's new book, Music Boxes!

 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07N7HZFHT/


C. Lee McKenzie    (4 Stars)

SURREAL ENTER STAGE LEFT
In Razor Valentine you enter 1947 during Carnival 
where the natural laws don’t exist and where death is a dark and dangerous beauty. 
In this world, unlikely people struggle to live and love. 
Death is always imminent and confusion is queen.
 Caesar Romero comes to life as the suave, sophisticated actor 
he actually was on the Hollywood screen decades ago. 
You can almost hear Jimmy Stewart drawl his way through the story, 
and the author pays him the respect he earned in real life during the war years.
Yeomans does an elegant dance with the English language. Something I always appreciate.
For the full reviews,  go the Amazon Book Page

 http://www.ronelthemythmaker.com/blog/
New Orleans' spirits and ghosts are notoriously unreliable and fickle, 
but they are supposed to visit Ronel Janse van Vuuren's blog this March 16th.
Pay her blog a visit and say HI.  
If the spirits are not there yet, 
they are probably sight-seeing and scaring shop-keepers and tourists alike!

For Those Underwhelmed by CAPTAIN MARVEL

DO YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE?

"The world is doing its best,  night and day,  to make you everybody else."  - E.E. Cummings
Try as we might not to be blinded by society’s prescriptions for happiness, 
we are still social creatures porous to the values of our peers.


We seem lost, myopic about the things we believe will complete us as human beings, habitually aspiring to the wrong things for the wrong reasons. 


We are beings profoundly different from what we imagine ourselves to be. 
The things we pursue most frantically are the least likely to give us lasting joy and contentment,


  “It is impossible to escape the impression that people commonly use false standards of measurement — that they seek power, success and wealth for themselves and admire them in others, and that they underestimate what is of true value in life.”
― Sigmund Freud

 “I cannot cause light; the most I can do  is try to put myself in the path of its beam." - Annie Dillard

“No one can build you the bridge on which you,  and only you,  must cross the river of life.” -  Nietzsche

You can't grasp the concept of the soul, of your psyche.
Like a dust mote or a ghost, 
it can only be seen out of the corner of your perception.  Looked for directly, it disappears.
Like happiness or contentment, it comes to you while you pursue a needful goal or easing another's pain.
  What do you think is  the path to self-awareness?