C. Michael Bennis's Blog: Newspaper, The North Woods and Exceptional Women, page 4

A thriller with Tequila Slammer danger

 A thriller with Tequila Slammer danger., December 7, 2013
Amazon Verified Purchase(What’s this?)
This review is from: Dangerous and Desirable (Kindle Edition) by C. Michael Bennis

At first the book feels a lot like the author’s book Rules of Engagement, a complicated romance, full of interesting fractured personalities, that is, until we reach the Mexican connection and from there it changes from a romance to a thriller, it’s as exciting as The Bridge on coke with a touch of the original NCIS.

A very exciting well-written read with women who would scare anyone but the books main character; a complicated man, a combination of great kindness or great ruthlessness. Frankly it’s hard to turn the kindle off and I only did so once because I had to.

A wild ride from beginning to end and unlike Rules of Engagement, which is a Dry Martini in a sunlit garden, the pool shimmering and reflecting sunlight, this one is still full of sun, but the drier, harsher sun of a baking desert where you sip your astringent lemon Margarita at your peril.  Reviews Written by Angela Mortimer, Author of Flawed Gods and Hyclos

Dangerous and Desirable

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Tucson, Arizona – C. Michael Bennis has penned an action romance suspense that hits with the impact of a champion boxer’s fist.

Julio Navarro is secretly regarded as the quintessential killer for hire, when he is given the sanction on an equally dangerous female assassin.  Killing was never personal for Julio, until now when he can’t resist falling in love with the intended victim, Ziv Yadin, Mossad’s top assassin. Julio rejects the Mossad mandate, and both Julio and Ziv are sanctioned with a death warrant, which would be a chilling undertaking for any killer since Julio and Ziv are probably the two most dangerous assassins on the planet.

Their love affair is soon tested when Julio’s former lover, Claudia Bazan, sends Julio a message “if you ever loved me, prove it now.” Claudia faces immanent death in Culiacán at the hands of her boyfriend, Pedro Valdez, Mexico’s most fearsome drug lord.

Julio travels to Culiacán, the most dangerous city in Mexico, to save a woman he no longer cares for.  Soon Ziv follows to rescue the man she can no longer live without.

The idea for the novel came from the 1995 film, Desperado, written, produced and directed by that featured film stars Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek.

Setting: New York City, Madrid, La Coruña, U.S. – Mexico Border, Culiacán, and Mazatlán.

C. Michael Bennis is a former toy and advertising industry executive who now lives in Tucson, Arizona.  Dangerous and Desirable is his third novel.

MEDIA CONTACT:

C. Michael Bennis

Email:              c.michael.bennis@gmail.com

Phone:             (520) 444-3964

Web:                www.cmichaelbennis.com

REVIEW COPIES AND INTERVIEWS AVAILABLE

Indie House Books presents an interview with C. Michael Bennis.

IHB Presents a Discussion with Author Michael Bennis
Posted on: March 27th, 2013 by David M.

Assigned categories: IHB Contributor Writes, Interviews

Indie House Books is pleased to present an interview with Michael Bennis.

Michael is the author Signs of Destiny & Rules of Engagement and he graciously agreed to let us to ask a few questions that we are sharing with you. We hope you enjoy what Michael has to say.

IHB: Briefly describe your journey in writing your book.

Michael: In 1978, I submitted my first two novels to St. Martin’s Press and Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.  St. Martins returned Signs of Destiny and The Iberian Jaguar, after four editorial reviews.  Harcourt found the books bright and original, yet returned the novels.  I took a gamble and called the Harcourt editor who was specific about what was needed.

Soon afterward, our only son was diagnosed with terminal cancer.  The solitude and grief after loosing Alex was overwhelming.  We decided to relocate to New York City in order to compete against the best and the brightest, she in product design and I in advertising.  No rewriting.

Five years ago, I began a new novel, Rules of Engagement, that was published in 2009.

IHB: When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?

Michael: My Father was in the Pacific during WWII, and Mother’s parents lived an hour’s drive away.  My grandmother, Frances Dunn, was a classmate and friend of Ernest Hemmingway in Oak Park, IL.  ‘Meme’ was blessed with patience and a marvelous enthusiasm that stimulated my imagination with long discussions about the ‘Lost’ generation and their novels.  Strange, I didn’t decide to become a writer, but rather I always knew.

IHB: Why did you decide to become a writer?

Michael: The idea of writing novels began taking shape at The University of Colorado, where my favorite classes were Journalism, Creative Writing, and Humanities.

Years later, in 1977, I rented a coastal villa in Javea, Spain for one month.  My goal was 2,500 words per day or 77,000 words.  If I reached my daily goal, I could go to the beach or have dinner in El Clavo, the fisherman’s bar.  It was spring and I needed little sleep for the delicious fragrance of citrus blossoms and Mediterranean Sea was exhilarating.  I arrived with a twenty-chapter summary on one page of a short legal pad.  I left with Signs of Destiny.

IHB: What inspired you to write your first book?

Michael: I was studying at Madrid’s Complutense University, when a special young woman told me her friend visited a spiritualist in Liverpool, and was prophesized to die a horrible death in her twenty-fourth year.

IHB: What do you hope readers will take from your writing?

Michael: I’m hopeful readers will experience a remarkable journey quite unlike anything they might have known before.

IHB: How many books have you written? Do you have a favorite?

Michael: I have written four novels: Signs of Destiny, Rules of Engagement, The Iberian Jaguar (being revised), and the soon to be released, Dangerous and Desirable.  A favorite?  How do you choose which of your children is the most beautiful?

IHB: Did you learn anything from writing your book and what was it?

Michael: I experienced a perception rift when Alex died.  Since then, I always rely on the right side of the brain.  If I have a problem, I will focus on it before falling asleep.  The following morning, I will know what to do.

IHB: Are you a full-time writer or part time?

Michael: I write full-time, and fuel the effort by caffeine.  Bursts of inspiration come and go, but the daily work continues.  Often, I end up with false journeys and accumulate large files I will never use.  However nothing is wasted if it brings me closer to my characters.

IHB: What genre do you write in? Is there more than one?

Michael: Actually three: Romance, Paranormal Romance and Action Romance

IHB: Do you hear from your readers? What is their most asked question?

Michael: I receive comments from readers of both novels.  The most intriguing are about Rules of Engagement. Both female and the few male readers share their nostalgia for someone left behind.  The book’s happy ending has them wondering about the love they left behind.  How could they have placed more importance on careers?  Than on the intensely amorous feelings that would never ever again be duplicated.

IHB: Do you ever suffer from writer’s block? What do you do to overcome it?

Michael: I pick a color, say blue.  I used the technique when writing a narrative set in the remote mountains of the Basque country.  Inside the stone house are a slightly deranged but brilliant inventor and his hostage…   I’m stuck.  So I imagine blue flowers on the downward slope that somehow have mistaken the season.  Nearby is an old shepherd watching his sheep graze.  He had only seen the blue flowers once before when he and his wife conceived their first child in this remote place.  Never again had he seen them, until now… when he realizes he must be dying…  Now someone will come for shepherd.

IHB: Where can people find out more about you and your writing?

Michael: Please visit my website: http://www.cmichaelbennis.com for In-depth Information: book awards, book videos, my interview video as featured on The Balancing Act Airing on Lifetime Television, radio interviews as well as ten blogs on writing and personal experiences.

IHB: What is your marketing plan?

Michael: I have a terrific website http://www.cmichaelbennis.com, and I do blog and press releases to promote my books (always with a link to my website).  My Balancing Act appearance was the result of a press release.  Also, I scribe to 35 social media sites, and I have Only Wire software that simultaneously posts my blogs on each of the 35-sites.  I passionately love Indie House!  I enjoy Kindle Select and the sales that follow the ‘free’ books.

IHB: Is your book self-published?

Michael: Yes, both novels are self-published. Rules of Engagement – by BookSurge & Signs of Destiny by Create Space – they are both subsidiaries of Amazon.com.

IHB: What are your thoughts on traditional versus self-publishing?

Michael: The book publishing/marketing scene is in flux.  50% of books sold are eBooks.  No wonder?  There’s practically no overhead if compared to printed books.  The downside:  It would be good to have a paperback book if you do Book Fairs and address book clubs.

IHB: What books or authors have most influenced your life or writing?

Michael: Ian McEwan with Atonement, and I just finished reading Black Dogs.

IHB: What kind of books do you like to read?

Michael: I read everything: Melissa Foster, Jan Moran, Angela B Mortimer, Tami Hoag, Jo Nesbo, Michael Connelly, David Baldacci, Daniel Silva, Iris Johansen, etc.

IHB: What kinds of books do you like to read?

Michael: Okay, it’s strange:  I only read Spanish novels when I write.  Otherwise, I find myself picking up another author’s syntax, rhythm, sentence structure, etc.  It doesn’t happen if I read in Spanish.  My favorite Spanish author is Arturo Pérez-Reverte.

IHB: Please give us a brief synopsis about your current book and when and where it is available.

Michael: “Signs of Destiny” by C. Michael Bennis is a powerful love story where destiny shapes life’s direction and meaning.  Available on Amazon.com.

IHB: If there was one thing you could tell your readers, what would it be?

Michael: I have come to realize that I have two distinctive, guiding personalities. My mother is delightfully feminine. She would place a flower beside my breakfast and the butter would be left out overnight so it will be soft.  In contrast, my father was the son of a Greek, from the wrong side of the tracks, who won respect with his fists. He was an incredible athlete, a beloved Dad, and I once prayed nightly to God, “to make me just like Dad.”  I am an incongruous blend of both parents.  With time, I have become more like my mother, yet Dad is always there. http://www.cmichaelbennis.com.

All Posts

http://indiehousebooks.com/ihb-presents-a-discussion-with-author-interview/

Adobe bricks support timeless memories

Photo © by Jeff Dean (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

La Casa Caliente stretches across a hilltop with unlimited panoramas of majestic mountains and valley. It is a natural building made from sand, clay and water, sun dried in Mexico into two-foot long Adobe bricks. The Mexican tile adobe roof was handmade to perfection. Despite its name, Casa Caliente would remain cool during the long hot Tucson, Arizona summers. The ‘hot house’ designation was a creation of my adman grandfather (Hott is his family name). Simply, La Casa Caliente is a mud masterpiece in the valuable tradition of Mexican homes and in Adobe structures that date back to some of the oldest existing buildings in the world.  We will never know if the  adobe walls  silently archive the presence and the emotions of those who inhabit their interiors.  What if  the Adobe walls were able to speak?  This is what you might hear if that were to happen..

Casa Caliente’s adobe construction  has four bedrooms, seven bathrooms and separate guest’s quarters.  Outside, there is a charming patio with pool, an ancestral olive tree, and a complete citrus grove.   The colorful exterior vegetation includes:  red bougainvillea, desert saguaros, ocotillos, yuccas, paloverdes, mesquites, plus a plethora of colorful desert  plants and wild flowers.There are numerous free-loaders:  resident bobcats (often  with cubs),  a hungry mountain lion, and marauding, serenading coyotes searching for a small dog or house cat.

Casa Caliente Chronology:

May 26, 1954, Robert and Isabelle Patterson, purchased twelve acres of foothill desert, and the construction of Casa Caliente began the same year.

On December 7, 1960 Robert and Isabel Patterson sold the house and property to my maternal grandparents, Maxwell R. Hott and Frances Hott.

Robert Patterson is a direct descendent of John H. Patterson, who founded the National Cash Register Company in 1884. In 1926 NCR became publicly owned, and in 1953 – NCR established the Electronics Division. At that time NCR was based in Dayton, Ohio.  Robert Paterson, a.k.a. Bob Patterson, to my knowledge, never worked for NCR, although his brother, Bill, was Chairman of the Board. Bob was a stockbroker with the investment company, Ball, Burge & Kraus in Dayton, and he continued the same investment profession with Walston & Co. in Tucson.

Bob and Izzy were second marriages. Bob’s first wife, Bunny, was the National Woman’s Trap and Skeet champion. Reportedly the marriage broke down because Bunny was irrepressibly competitive. I have no record of Izzy’s first marriage, save that she was a successful model. Also, Izzy had a twin sister.

Izzy was a breathtaking beauty that stood six-feet tall, and not at all pretentious, despite her stunning looks. She seemed true to herself with an honesty of style that preferred jeans. Bob was considerably shorter, very Yale, quite stuffy and always wore a sport coat, even when hunting deer in northern Wisconsin. They seemed happy together. They had two children: a son nicknamed ‘Speedy,’ and a daughter, Shirley.

In 1959, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were entertained for dinner at the Patterson home. The invitation resulted from Izzy’s friendship with the owner of the Arizona Inn where the couple was staying. The following day, Bob and Izzy joined the Duke and Duchess for three-hole golf, and Izzy got to shout, “Duck Duke,” (as a preference to ‘fore) when a golf ball headed toward the Duke’s head.

My grandparents, Max and Frances Hott, were close friends of Bob and Izzy Patterson long before Tucson. Both families were summer residents in Northern Wisconsin, fifteen miles west of Fifield, where a three-mile lake stretches through seemingly unending pine forests.

Bob Patterson did not enjoy fishing, despite Izzy’s affection for the sport. Normally, he spent time alone managing investments, and afterward he and Izzy would become involved in activities with the children.

Bob was a great salesman and he convinced six to eight lake residents to buy Nipper sailboats. The owners formed the Blue Loon Yacht Club, and began sailboat racing for an annual pennant, which Bob set out to win. He admittedly, took lessons during the winter and won the first year’s pennant. A true sportsman, he willingly offered advice to fellow racers. Sailing rivalry grew keen and the races became very popular as were the social events afterward.

It was natural for the Patterson brothers to summer on the lake because they owned much of the surrounding forest. Oddly, my grandparents were there because of the Chicago Daily Journal. Mother’s maternal grandfather, Wiliam Frank Dunn, purchased newsprint from the paper mill in Park Falls, Wisconsin and shipped it to Chicago by rail to avoid the high price of Chicago jobbers. Frank Dunn was president, publisher and co-owner of the Chicago Daily Journal. While on a paper-buying trip, he purchased property from Jim and John Boyd who were starting Boyd’s Mason Lake Resort. Frank Dunn built one lakeside log cabin that was later increased to three cabins (the original cabin, a guest cabin and a kitchen/dinning room Cabin).

My grandparents met at the lake. Max was standing on the dock wearing a letterman’s sweater from the University of Chicago’s swim team, when Frances paddled in a canoe, dressed in buckskin clothing with a long feather in her hair. She was a striking, tall, slim, raven-haired woman. Max was 5’ 7”, with blue eyes and brown hair. He was smitten and awkwardly tripped and fell into the lake. His wife to be, Alice “Frances” Dunn quickly dismissed him as an idiot.

Prior to meeting his bride-to-be, Max Hott enlisted in World War II, at the age of twenty, where he transferred messages to and from the battlefront on a motorcycle. He was discharged after the war, with the Rank of Sergeant 1st, 3 cl., and studied at Aix-Marseille University with an Army scholarship. Max momentarily broke the 200 yard breaststroke record in Marseille (which was bested on the same day by Chicagoan Michael McDermott).

Professionally Max Hott followed in his father’s footsteps. John F. Hott at an early age successfully bought and sold farmland , and later became manager of the Pepsin Syrup Company. With an unusual advertising genius, the elder Hott devised large–scale advertising campaigns to make Dr. Caldwell Syrup of Pepsin, a dependable laxative, into a household name in America and abroad. John Hott was also the prime mover in forming the Monticello Rotary Club, and he built the beautiful mansion on State Street that was modeled after Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. He was a philanthropist, and his most enduring tradition was to give a fine watch to each local Eagle Scout. (The tradition passed onward, and his granddaughter, Jeanne, awarded the 160th watch in 2005. The tradition continues.

Max Hott inherited his father’s business acumen, and held the title of divisional vice-president of Sterling Drug, where he successfully marketed Pine Balm (daughter Jeanne advised, “Daddy why not put it in a pine cone,” which Max did)  and he positioned Campho-Phenique as a first aid antiseptic.  Max Hott was the only Sterling executive allowed to own his own manufacturing plant – The Pinus Medicine Company – where he manufactured Dr. Caldwell’s Syrup of Pepsin and Pine Balm.

In the 1930’s Max Hott was selected as one of the twenty-five top advertising executives in the United States. The twenty-five executives enjoyed an all-expense paid uproarious train trip from New York to San Francisco where the liquor flowed and the conversation was unforgettable.

In subsequent years, Max Hott purchased farmland, and also Pluto Water, with the famous Red Devil laxative that was available everywhere, even on passenger trains. (When Nature Won’t – Pluto will). The Pluto Corporation was based in French Lick Indiana and ownership came with a box seat at the Kentucky Derby.

Max and Frances had one child: Frances “Jeanne,” who was born May 7th, 1921. She was raised in Monticello, Illinois where there were more millionaires per capita than elsewhere in the US. She was eligible for Daughters of the American Revolution, and was transported by a chauffeur and later with a bodyguard after the kidnapping of Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr.   Jeanne was schooled in Gulf Park College for Women in Gulfport, Mississippi, where she enjoyed early parental permission to smoke cigarettes.  Next, she studied at National Park College in Washington D.C., where she was the cover girl for the class yearbook.  Her National Park College roommate, Barbara, was the sister of Emil (Bus) Mosbacher Jr., who skippered two winning teams in the America’s Cup races., and was the US Chief of Protocol during the administration of President Richard Nixon.  Jeanne was a frequent guest in the Mosbacher home and still has fond memories of the many celebrities she met in the Mosbacher White Plains home that including Tula Bankhead.

Max Hott could never have envisioned his only daughter would marry a man ten years older. Even less imaginable was his background: the son of a Greek immigrant who left his family in Sanga, Greece at a moment’s notice to work as a cabin boy aboard a merchant ship sailing for the port of New York. Steve Bennis was seventeen at the time.

The marriage should never have occurred. Jeanne Hott was in Monticello, Illinois, whereas Chuck Bennis lived in Los Angeles and held a job in public relations for RKO Pictures. The year before, he had been selected with eight other All American collegiate football players to appear in the movie The Big Game, starring Andy Devine. RKO hired Chuck afterwards. The job was to die for and Chuck had no thoughts of changing until his father, Steve Bennis, sent a telegram: “Your Mother is dying. Come home at once.” Chuck immediately informed RKO, bought No Dose pills and drove non-stop for Lincoln, Illinois.

Back in Lincoln, Illinois mother Anna Eckert lingered, and Chuck accepted a position with Lincoln Community High School to teach biology and coach the freshman football team. Prior to this, Chuck Bennis was an Illinois idol. He was the Illini football player who earned All-Big Ten and All-American Honors in 1933 and 1934, and served as co-captain of the 1934 team. Later, he was named “I” Man of the Year in 1978, one year after George Halas earned the same award. The fans also voted Chuck Bennis to the twenty-five-man All-Century Team during the Illinois Football Centennial Celebration in 1990.

The Lincoln High School football coach had never played the sport. Andy Anderson’s appointment was a direct result of being married to a prominent woman who served on the school’s Board of Directors. Anderson, for some unknown reason, scheduled a full game scrimmage with the freshman team. Bennis begged Anderson to reconsider. The freshman team weighed an average of 165 pounds, whereas the varsity was composed of big farm boys, all weighing over 200 pounds. The varsity coach was adamant. The game would occur, and it was promoted in the local newspaper.

Chuck Bennis addressed his team and said, “You’re going to hurt, maybe more than you have ever been hurt in your life. You’d better get used to it.” Thus began a regimen of off-school, full-contact boxing lesions. (Bennis was the former intramural light heavyweight champion). At the school the freshman could be seen training long after the varsity left for the showers. It was commonly accepted the event would be a massacre.

At halftime, the freshman led by one touchdown. At the end of the fourth quarter, the score was Freshman 14 – Varsity 7.  Anderson extended the game by one more quarter, and the freshman increased their score to 21 -14. From that moment onward, the freshman taunted the humiliated varsity to let them play the rest of their scheduled games.

Several weeks later, Chuck Bennis was fired by the Principal and told to get another job at the end of spring semester. Bennis called the University of Illinois football coach, Robert Zuppke, and related what happened. ‘Zuppke started laughing. Bennis said, “Not funny, Zup, I need to work.” There was a pause. Zuppke said, “You have a job. You’re my new head line coach!” And that placed Chuck Bennis within fifteen minutes from Monticello and a blind date with Jeanne Hott.

The merging of the two families was never comfortable. The Hotts were Presbyterian and infrequent churchgoers; the Bennises were devout Catholics and insisted that a priest performed the wedding ceremony.

It only got worse. Bennis’s mother, Anna, spoke German more fluently than English, and attended Catholic mass every day of her life. The father of the groom was the polar opposite of Max Hott, who inherited wealth. Steve Bennis began his business career selling bananas from a cart. Eventually, he opened a confectionary store with silent movies.  Next, he opened two movie theaters and an Opera house in Lincoln, Illinois.  In 1936, he bought the Lincoln Deer Creek Coal Mine. The theater acquisitions continued.  Steve Bennis added two new Lincoln Drive-in theaters, and purchased two more theaters and another Drive-In in Freeport, Illinois.

The disparity between the two families was apparent to everyone, including Coach Zuppke, who took Bennis aside after the wedding and said, “She’s going to lead you around like a prize bull with a ring in your nose.”

Max Hott and Chuck Bennis had an adequate relationship with the help of Frances Hott. Apart from the many cordial family functions, the two men competed for subtle psychological ploys to best one another and to secure an unfair advantage. The situation was a living example of the British author, Stephen Potter’s book: One-Upmanship. Politely stated: they did not get along, and as a result Chuck Bennis never entered Casa Caliente.

At one time two advertisements ran nearly side by side on the elevated Chicago ‘L’ line: The first ad was for Max Hott’s Dr. Caldwell’s Syrup of Pepsin with the tagline — “Pull the trigger on lazy bowels” (where someone wrote in white paint “and shoot yourself in the ass”). Nearby, an ad featured the testimonial of handsome athlete, Chuck Bennis, who drank a certain brand of milk.

Oddly, after the wedding, Chuck Bennis gave up the coaching he loved to manage his father’s coal mine. Champaign is located fifteen minutes from Monticello where the Hott’s lived. In comparison, the Bennis hometown of Lincoln, IL, was an hour away.

Lincoln was a vibrant picturesque community that was named by attorney Abraham Lincoln and christened with a watermelon before he became famous. Lincoln had a growing economy and an established polite society. There was an English Tudor-style hotel, frequent band concerts, carnivals, and later, after the war, Lincoln received one of the nation’s Chautauqua’s, created by President Roosevelt to bring entertainment and culture for the whole community.  Lincoln was also the proud hometown of William Maxwell, who wrote award winning novels and held the prestigious position as the New Yorker fiction editor.  Albeit exciting, Lincoln was a little rough around the edges with the Chicago Street bars. In contrast, Monticello was pristine, unspoiled, flawless–just what you would expect of the one-time wealthiest town in America per capita.

The new couple moved into the upstairs apartment of a family home, and Jeanne Hott at once became a celebrity. She was nineteen when she married Chuck Bennis who was socially unacceptable in Lincoln. That quickly changed by virtue of his beautiful bride.  A year later, Jeanne had her first child, Charles Michael Bennis, who at once became “Mike.” Soon Mother and son would begin commuting between Lincoln and Monticello during WWII.

Chuck Bennis was Rear Admiral (Admiral of the Fleet) Ralph E. Davidson’s personal communication officer aboard the USS Franklin.  Both the Admiral and Bennis survived each of the two devastating kamikaze attacks. Effectively, the Franklin was a blazing inferno twice, with horrible death tolls that nearly destroyed the Franklin. (Years later, Bennis took a an Asian cruse and remained below deck. Whenever he looked out over the water he saw dead bodies floating everywhere).

After the war, the marriage was strained. Jeanne was the beautiful only child, who was raised with servants and was continually doted upon by loving parents. Chuck was one of six children: five boys, the youngest died of Rheumatic fever, and one sister. Chuck inherited his father’s self-determination and the proven ability to succeed beyond belief. He would never admit it, but he carried sadness from the war.  The marriage was blissful or baleful. The self-reliant couple might have remained together for their child, and probably because Jeanne could never face her beloved father and say, “you were right.”  The marriage improved with the birth their second child,  John Maxwell Bennis in 1948.

The Historic 1953 Centennial brought excitement to the marriage when Alben Barkley, the United States Vice President, visited Lincoln and stayed in the newly built home of Chuck and Jeanne Bennis.  He was also taken for an aerial view of the surrounding Logan County in Bennis’ Ryan Navion.  The marriage seemed to benefit from the expanded social functions, and the entertaining of Lincoln friends in the box seat at the Kentucky Derby.

The Hotts had inherited the William Frank Dunn log cabins in northern Wisconsin, and both brothers, Mike and John, spent summers ‘Up North’ with their grandparents. It was the annual touchstone for two boys who measured each year by the coming summertime’s  trip to the cabins.  Jeanne would be there for some of the summer, with Chuck flying into the tiny airfield for short visits.

In that same year, 1954, I was trout fishing with Max when he had a major stroke in a remote wilderness area. I heard him call out for help, and I came at once to find him sitting upward on the ground. He had one urgent question, “Do you know where the Jeep is?” I admitted I didn’t.

He winced and admonished me, “Pal, don’t ever walk into the woods without knowing where you are and how you entered! See that big blue spruce on the hill? You can see the car from the tree. But you can’t walk there directly. You must circle around a treacherous bog.”  The journey to the car took three hours. I was twelve and Max was fifty-four, and we often interrupted our exit so I could shoot the .38 caliber Smith Wesson he carried for bears. He insisted I drive when we reached the Jeep. He unexpectedly smiled and acknowledged how my grandmother had been teaching me to drive. It would be a good lesson, he reasoned,  if I were to drive back to camp. I suspected but never knew how fearful he was of dying.

On that day, the lives of Max and Frances Hott changed. The Mayo Clinic in Rochester gave Max two years to live and insisted he retire immediately and move to a less stressful location. As a result, Max and Frances donated their home on an entire city block to the University of Illinois to become the Hott Memorial Center.   The elegant home contained formal gardens, a ballroom dance floor over the garage, and an extensive library with many first edition signed books, plus the many glorious interior effects.

Max and Frances moved into a small Tucson ranch house on North Camino Kino, in the Catalina Foothills Estates. Four years later, Max was still alive. He was taking art lessons and becoming an accomplished artist. They had social friends and bridge clubs. They read books about the desert and became enamored with their new location.  Soon, they were invited by Bob and Izzy  to dine in their newly constructed home, where they expressed their genuine appreciation for their newly constructed home

In 1960, Bob and Izzy gave Max and Frances the opportunity to buy their new home before it was listed. The negotiation ended at once with the Hotts buying the home. Bob and Izzy had grown tired of Tucson; Bob always had a sense of wanderlust. Perhaps, he could have been disillusioned with the Walston & Co. brokerage business in Tucson.  The Pattersons soon moved to Charlottesville, Virginia and into their Stockton Creek Farm where Bob and Izzy owned a historical colonial home with a large Angus cattle operation. Years later the place would be advertised in Vanity Fair as a plantation.

Max and Frances adored their new home. I was always a frequent visitor from the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado. However in 1963 – 1964, there was a sudden lapse in letters from my grandparents.  At the time, I was studying in Madrid at  Complutense University.  Normally, I received weekly letters from my grandmother who finally wrote, “Hell is paved with bricks of good intention.”  I would never know until I returned stateside at the end of the summer that my grandmother was diagnosed with colon cancer in 1964, and suffered severe radiation burns from the treatment that eradicated the cancer but left her with a colostomy. She had feared surgery and never told the radiologist when she was in pain.

In 1968, I moved with my wife from New York City where I was a stockbroker with Blair & CO. to become a stockbroker with E. F. Hutton, in Tucson. The move allowed for timeless, unforgettable memories in Casa Caliente. Especially significant were the afternoon dialogues with my grandmother ‘Meme’ to discuss literature and writing. I was always fascinated by Meme’s stories of Ernest Hemingway, from when they were high school chums in Oak Park, Illinois. I never met the members of the Hemingway family who occasionally visited Max and France in Tucson.

Max and I frequented the tough cowboy bars where he knew everyone. This included Stumpy’s in Trail Dust Town, and Jim Eddy’s Hidden Valley Tavern on the corner of Tanque Verde and Tanque Verde Loop. It was always exciting, especially during the summer outdoors fiestas.

On one such occasion a Yaqui Indian dropped dead. The next morning Max and I went to the bar and found the dead Indian lying on the pool table. The usual patrons were drunk. They had been drinking all night in memory of the handsome Yaqui actor who had performed in many of the Westerns that were filmed in Old Tucson. The actor had no family so Jim Eddy checked if the man had to be embalmed before burial. The municipal authorities advised Jim how the fierce Yaqui Indians had never accepted peace with the US, and that for all practical matters they were still at war, and were certainly not US citizens. The actor was buried behind the bar in a six-foot grave.

Meanwhile the winds of change were blowing. In 1968, my parents became separated after twenty-six years and filed for divorce. (Both parents would eventually remarry).  Max Hott’s health was precarious and he passed on in 1969. My grandmother would follow him three years later.  However before her death, Frances would attend the wedding of Jeanne and Warren Gallagher. It was a happy and festive occasion, and the beginning of thirty-two years of a blissful relationship with much of it spent in Tucson, where Jeanne and Warren enjoyed membership in the Tucson Country Club and the Mountain Oyster Club.

Warren bought a vintage red convertible, MG TC, and he and Jeanne delighted in touring the countryside around Tucson.  Warren had a penchant for  wearing ascots that might have been reminiscent of the days when he spent four years as a B-24 navigator with the 392nd Bomb Group based outside London (the 392nd suffered heavy losses of both aircraft and aircrew during its combat experience in World War II).  The house, still referred to as Casa Caliente, was the scene of happy frequent social events, and Jeanne and Warren adapted to their new life between Lincoln, IL and Tucson, AZ with aplomb. They traveled extensively about the southwest and Europe.   Professionally, Warren was a sales agent for corn and soybean farms as well as cattle ranches, and they especially enjoyed the National Western Stock Show, and previewing famous ranches.  The Irish in Warren came out in laughing eyes and unusual rules. Guests had to leave by the same door they entered. Mother and Warren were intuitive and it was most visible in the kitchen where they often worked without dialogue. They enjoyed a vibrant social life in both Lincoln and Tucson. Warren had seven sisters and he fathered two daughters, so he was always comfortable with Mother. He was a gracious host, and he will be long remembered by those who knew him. Their enjoyment of one another lasted thirty-two years until Warren died in Tucson in 2001.

Health reversals precluded my Mother, Jeanne Gallagher, from traveling to Tucson after Warren’s death, which occasioned the sale of Casa Caliente.  I had moved to Tucson, so that painful assignment naturally fell like a heavy weight over my shoulders.  The house was hardly altered by my mother, and the faint fragrance of Nina Richi perfume still persisted.  It is sometimes  hard for logic to prevail over emotion.

http://www.cmichaelbennis.com/

Falling in Love with your Fictional Characters

The purpose of this blog is to open the channel of communication between writers and their fictional creations.  It’s also a guide for falling in love with beings that have no existence until they are imagined and brought to life.

Believable human drama has one inalterable characteristic: the reader or viewer identifies at once with the lead character.  For example, we’re on the edge of our seat when the starry-eyed lover pursues beyond rejection for one last chance to seize the love of a lifetime?  Or we’re waiting with bated breath as the battered, beaten hero pursues beyond hope for the final chance for justice?  We’re actually there in the story, cheering on the rejected lover and the battered hero, while fearing and hoping it will end happily.  Could you ever imagine the author felt the same way?

Conversely, have you been disappointed with a romantic comedy the media hyped?  Did you arrive with high expectations that fell totally flat when you realized there was no amorous chemistry between the lovelorn actor/actress?  Seriously, the emotional charisma between a man and a woman is there or it isn’t.  You can’t fake it, and neither can the characters in your narrative.

Remember the advertising slogan:  It’s the sizzle that sells the steak! Consider for a moment, the juxtaposition of plot and characterizations.  The plot can make nerves sizzle and readers frantic, but the plot goes nowhere without reader involvement with the characters.

Admit it fellow writers? The first plan of action is the action when embarking on a new narrative.  What’s a story without a plot?  The plot is the powerful engine that makes NASCAR racing exciting!  Really?  The number-one spectator sport is all about motors?  No, it’s about the drivers!  The multitude of spectators identify with their favorite driver.  It’s the same with writing fiction.  The reader identifies with a favorite character, and he or she actually becomes that character for the short duration of the story.  Albeit, NASCAR would be bereft of fun if there were no motors, however the novel just might survive without a plot, and a few have.

Let’s posture that you sort-of-know where you’re going.  You’ve prepared a broad-brush plan for a narrative and you might have a rough outline.  This is an ideal moment to begin working on your characters.  You might wonder where wildly imaginatively writers get their unforgettable characters for a narrative?  From the same place doggedly resourceful writers get theirs.  They begin by identifying the distinctive feature or quality their character must possess to enable he or she to play a specific role.

Grab your classic Director’s chair and sit with an 8 ½ x 11 pad, clipboard and writing instrument.  This is totally sans electronic paraphernalia, and it’s important that you’re free from interruption.  It’s also a little spooky.  You’re becoming the casting director for your narrative, and you will interview and select the actors/actresses who will be able to match their talent with their prospective role in the narrative.  This is a heady moment.

Free the mind from everything except the names of the characters you have written.  Each character must audition for his or her role in the narrative.  No weaseling out.  Please continue and note the characteristics or attributes of the perfect candidate.

The next step is to annotate each character:  full name, date-of-birth, Astrological Sign, occupation, parents names and their nationality, residence address, car make and year, high school and college degree, summer work, fulltime work.  Construct a full bio for two or more leading characters.  Be sure to add religion, opinions, beliefs, fears, turn-ones and turn-offs, likes/dislikes, superstitions, phobias and favorite idol.  Name the strongest and the weakest characteristics for each individual.  What troubles he or she?  What brings happiness?  Then note clothing-shoe-apparel-sizes.  Does he wear cool or ugly shoes?  Is she wearing stiletto heels or scuffed flats?  I hope you can appreciate where this is going.  With this data, you will have the flesh and bones of a real person.

More than likely, the characters you need to write about do not exist, except as figments of your imagination.  This problem can easily be remedied with your personal computer.  Please go to Flickr from Yahoo, and enter attractive women or attractive men into the search box on the Home page and scroll through the many photos.  Better yet would be to describe the character (pixie hair, tall dark man) by searching for specific characteristics.  This may seem like a nebulous concept, but that printed photo will be frequently invaluable when you are writing descriptions.

You have had time to think about your characters.  This is a perfect time to add an additional dimension to your character.  The plan: go to the Museum of Natural History if you’re writing an historical narrative, or visit your best department store if you have a contemporary timeline.   Your purpose is to select garments for two characters that you can perfectly describe from the bio notes.

Please pay primordial attention to the clothing you have selected.  At this point the clothing is flat.  Take whatever time you might need to go where your creative energy lives.  This is the epitome of character design. You will begin to see and feel the characters as they dress in the clothes before you.  The wardrobe is a personal matter, and the clothes you select must agree with the personality of the character.   Don’t be surprised if you have goose bumps.  This is the threshold of an incredible experience?

This is also the moment for a warning:  beware of the conscious mind’s protective impulses to regain control.  You might experience fearful thoughts:  ‘your checking account is overdrawn!’ It’s amazing what lengths the conscious mind will invent to regain attention.

The conscious mind keeps us out of trouble, but it also interferes with creative imagination.  For example, learning a foreign language is difficult because the conscious mind prevents fluent thoughts.  It insists on examining what you’re about to say in another language and it will train you to conjugate verbs and perform sentence structure in your mind before speaking.  It is always successful.  No one wants to appear stupid.  Truthfully, learning a foreign language is only successful when the subconscious becomes inundated by sensory input.  This occurs via an intensive language course or by living in a foreign country.  At that time, the foreign language becomes a mental-compartment where thoughts and words flow without the conscious mind’s interference.

Similarly, this is what happens with creative thought.  Think of your imagination as a separate compartment where creativity flourishes.  This is not paradise.  Creative thought is delicious thought.  It’s intoxicating.  It can also overwhelm the writing process and send the writer down remote pathways that result in lost time and seemingly worthless data.  Yet something significant occurs on the ‘misdirected’ pathways:  characterizations are reinforced and the resultant understanding is more valuable than the lost time.

Perhaps a horrible thought has just occurred!  You have suddenly realized you’ll never stop thinking about your story?  Mozeltof!  Of course, you’ll become a menace to those about you.  It’s embarrassing how candlelight dinners, romantic interludes and business meetings are a sham in comparison to what’s troubling you subliminally about the story. Those pesky dilemmas never cease. They even sneak into your dreams.  No problem, right?  You’re in control of the situation.  You think?  Wait until you loose control of your characters and they begin acting on their own without your omniscient guidance!

It’s an odds on favorite you’ll distrust this and waist time, but there’s no denying that you have created real characters when they can stand up to their creator and do whatever they please.  It’s horrible!  They might do things that you personally would avoid.  Relax, it’s okay, they’re not you!  You wonder how could you fall in love with imaginary characters?  A hint:  They are no longer imaginary!  They’re accompanying you 24/7.

Learn to listen to your characters.  Don’t ever put words into their mouth!  Hold it!  What are they feeling when they speak.  They will tell you.  They’re real individuals wrestling with a problem you have created for them.  Let them work it out.  Your characters need to be free of your control.  They will always get it right.

There’s a secret way to further open the channel of communication with your characters.  Lie in bed each night and relax.  Clear away the day’s events from your mind.  Then just as you are abut to fall asleep, visualize your favorite character, or any character in your narrative that might need further building.  Then gradually fall asleep with your character.  You will be amazed what you will know when you awaken in the morning.

Additionally, there’s an exercise that enables the writer to truly listen to his or her characters.  It’s called eavesdropping!  Begin listening to every conversation, especially the ones when someone speaks to you.  Pay attention.  What’s going on with the speaker?  Observe the face, the hands and the gestures.  There’s much more happening than the words you hear.

Underneath their dialogue is an emotional feeling that might actually belie what’s being said.  If you hear, “that’s ‘okay,’ you may discover contrary emotions.  There could be horribly painful feelings that shout anything but ‘okay.’  Observe the telltale signs of insecurity, such as anxiously grasping the thumb inside the palm of the hand?  Be fully there, observant and listening?  Now look at the eavesdropped conversation from your character’s point of view.  As hard as it might be, you must remember: the story is not about you.  Your characters will respond for themselves, and it will not be your response, but theirs.

One exception:  You must have at one time experienced the emotions you plan to write about.  For instance, have you known the emotional turmoil of being hopelessly lost in the fever and chaos of love?  Only to have it slip through your fingers?  Remember the horrible pains of jealousy?  Do you recall how you wanted to hurt the person who took your love away?  Could you possibly recall the anguish, the torment, even the torture you endured?  Can you admit now that you were irrational?  If so, that’s very good!  You can collect on those painful feelings to write an incredible story.

In the same way, have you ever been bullied by someone bigger, more important or more powerful?  Did you suffer helpless rage?  Did you take them on anyway?  Now is the time to cash in on painful experiences.  Only there’s a difference.  You are dragging someone you really care about through a difficult situation, and you can’t help.  You can only trust they will get it right.  You fret and worry, but there’s no panacea.  You’re following from behind, chewing your fingernails and watching, recording and trusting!

At the end of the narrative, when your work is finished, don’t expect elation. Instead be prepared for horrible sadness.  You will have lived in a different time and in a different place with very real personalities.  You might astonish friends and family with comments such as, “I’ll have the Porter House steak, blackened on the outside and blue on the inside, the way Jane requests it after her Iron Man contests.  It’s interesting how some characters are always there.  They’re that real.

Writing fiction is secretly Zen’s journey into meditation, wisdom and enlightenment? The experience never ends although the story does.  Expect to be troubled with nostalgia until you climb back in the Director’s Chair and begin a new narrative.  Only now, you might have tender loving support from some curious former characters.

http://www.cmichaelbennis.com/

C. Michael Bennis is a toy and advertising industry exec. He lives in Arizona, and The Rules of Engagement is his first novel.  He has completed four novels.  The second book, The Signs of Destiny will be released this fall.

Dying is what changed Rafael Valverde’s life. Coming back from the dead and lying comatose for six weeks altered his perception. Before the crash he was a chameleon masquerading as a businessman. Now he is a struggling artist, free to pursue his mother’s genetic heritage, when he begins to paint rings, watches or pins which that not there, but which should have been on the subject at the time.

Enter Alison, a sylphlike blonde woman whom he first saw in a state of unconsciousness. Her sea-green eyes immediately identify Rafael as the prophesized love that will ignite her fatal destiny.

Love Letters and a Recipe for Paella Valenciana

I confess I wrote love letters to H’s heartthrob while at the University of Colorado.  It was love at first sight for H when he saw her at CU’s Norlin Library.  H didn’t know her name, and when he did, he was too embarrassed to talk. So I volunteered to help.  I never imagined the love letters I wrote for H would make their way through the entire sorority.  It was a fairytale come to life.

Truly, H was special and the depths of H’s feelings for this woman were truly amazing, albeit he hardly suspected he would have to reveal his deepest feelings or the process would be ill fated.  H agonized over the pathway to expression until he finally found the way to vocalize his most sensitive feelings.  The moral of the story is that I had no idea I could help H influence the feelings of a young woman I had never met. H was desperate, and oddly, there was a similar desperation between writing love letters for H and needing to duplicate Paella from Valencia, Spain.

For background, I lived in Madrid, Spain for years, I went to school there, and I would still be living in Madrid  save for an unexpected medical emergency that returned us stateside.  As a family, we enjoyed life with dear Spanish friends, many of whom I had first known as a student at Complutense University.

I was writing novels, my wife was a successful designer and our son attended Spanish schools.  Frequently astonished Spanish parents would say,  “I look at your son with white blonde hair and blue eyes.  Then I close my eyes and I only hear Spanish kids playing.”

Memories of Spain followed us back to the US.  Truly, life in Spain, as we knew it, was about family and friends.   The years passed and the departure from Spain became definitive.  Yet the wonderful memories never vanished.

Paella had been a recurring motif of countless reunions.  For one year, we lived in the seacoast village of  Javia, an hour’s drive south of Valencia, where I regularly watched the preparation of many Paellas.  Surprisingly, when we were stateside, Paella became more than the signature dish of Spain.  Just as H needed love letters to charm his sweetheart, I had needed Paella to bring the charm of Spain stateside.  This creative idea should not have been difficult.  I was naturally inquisitive, and I stood beside the ppreparations of countless Paellas in restaurants, in homes and on the beach.  Yet there was a problem.

For several years, I was a member of the Board of Directors of the Spain-US Chamber of Commerce, and I frequently quizzed Spanish businessmen and restaurateurs why Paella was always disappointing in US restaurants.   The customary answers were:  “It can’t be done!  The rice, the water and the air are different in Spain.”  Soon I began to appreciate that no one really expected a US recipe could taste the way Paella tastes in Valencia — where they make the best Paellas in the world.  Finally, persistence and many lousy attempts led to a truly fabulous Paella recipe, and I was regularly preparing Paella for twelve or more people.  Then I stopped making Paella for twenty years.

At one distant time, Rafa and I would bicycle from Madrid into the Guadarrama Mountains.  The trip took from four to five hours.  On leaving, we would customarily say,  “Adios, Soldado” to the boy with the blue eyes.

With Quixotic intent I once again set about to write love letters in rice.  The occasion was the May arrival of an especially sad birthday.  On that day,  I mounted the bicycle I had not ridden since last summer when I was injured.  I looked upward and said, “Adios, Soldado.”  Then I grinned, “Hey Rafa, how about some help on the hills,” and I rode uphill for three hours.  I was exhausted when I returned, yet I felt terrific.  Then I made the most delicious Paella.

You’ll be the judge if you prepare this recipe. (Please let me know-Contact info at end)

“There is only one rule.”  My friend, Jose Hilario Olloqui, explained to me in the family restaurant, Mauleon, during the San Fermin Fiestas in Pamplona.  “Everything that goes into a paella must have a flavor.”

US – Paella from Spain

The Rice:

The fine Spanish Valencia rice is not readily available.  No problem.  Arborio rice — used for making Risotto (a kissing cousin to Paella) — is perfect.   Arborio is plump and absorbs water easily, and the cooked product is soft and a little sticky.  Arborio rice is readily available (Dell’Alpe brand in Safeway).  Beware! Paella is all about the rice, and to use anything other than Arborio is to court disaster!

I should mention this recipe does not include traditional seafood items, especially clams and mussels, (which might best be avoided in non-coastal areas during the long hot summer).  Shrimp are included in the recipe since the frozen variety is delicious and readily available everywhere.  If you can buy fresh shrimp, please serve with the heads-on and increase the flavor.

The total truth:  Paella is very romantic.   It is totally ahead of the candlelight dinner because of the special relationship that exists between the artist and the cuisine.

Paella for Four

Before we begin, Three Quick Caveats:

(1.) Never add plain water.  If you need more liquid, use chicken stock

(2.) Gather, prepare and lay out all the ingredients beforehand.

(3.) Paella is best cooked over a gas flame (The Gas Grill is excellent)

(4.) Move the pan frequently to compensate for irregular heat.

(5.) Don’t leave the cooking site.  Have someone fetch what’s needed

The Necessary Items:

16-inch metal paella pan

Stainless Steel food mill

Mortar and Pestle

Metal Spatula

Rubber Spatula

Ingredients:

2-cups Arborio short-grain rice

5 cups Chicken Cooking Stock

6 –Tablespoons Pure Olive Oil (Extra Virgin is for salads)

8 large uncooked shrimp (head-on shrimp for flavor)

1 whole chicken quartered (or buy pieces: legs, thighs, breasts, etc.)

1 red pepper (sliced into strips)

1 green pepper – (sliced into strips)

1 onion, thinly sliced

6 fresh garlic cloves, peeled and thinly sliced

2 Tomatoes – thinly sliced, discard stem ends

¼ teaspoon red Spanish saffron strands

2 – teaspoons sweet paprika

Fresh spring garden peas (or canned)

2 Imported Fire Roasted Red Peppers, sliced into thin strips

(Safeway Select Brand)

6 tender, young French green beans (Haricot Verts)

3 lemons

Instructions:

(1.) Cover the bottom of the Paella pan with 6 tablespoons pure olive oil (again: not extra virgin olive oil) and adjust the flame on high for simmering.  Place one sliced garlic sliver into pan until it begins sizzling.  Now add all garlic and onion slices, using the metal spatula separate and to press down upon the garlic and onion slices. The garlic will be done first (moist, light brown color) and the onions will take longer to turn a caramelized color.  Be patient.

(2.) Remove garlic, then onion slices and save on a plate for later.

(3.) Now place chicken pieces into the paella pan and fry over a medium flame, with skin-side down. Turn and separate the pieces while cooking.

(4.) Apart, bring 5 cups Chicken Cooking Stock to a boil

(5.) When the chicken is ½ done, add tomatoes, red and green pepper slices.  Then cook everything together until the tomatoes are soft, soupy and bubbly.

(6.) Now add the 2-cups Arborio short-grain rice and simmer for five minutes with chicken, tomatoes, red and green peppers.

(7.) Insert the 5 cups boiling Chicken Cooking Stock into pan.

(8.) Use the stainless steel food mill to grind the sautéed garlic and onions through the holes in the bottom of the plate and into the paella pan.  Transfer the remaining substance on the food mill plate with the rubber spatula

(9.) Use the mortar and pestle to crush and grind the saffron

(10.) Add two teaspoons sweet paprika to mortar and use the pestle to mix with the saffron, then add both to the paella pan.

(11.) Cook with bubbling heat for five minutes

(12.) Lower heat to moderate and ‘cook’ the rice slowly

(13.) Add raw shrimp and green beans

(14.) Cook until liquid level in the paella pan is just below the rice, while paying particular attention that reservoirs of liquid are at the edges of the pan are absorbed

(15.) Garnish on top with peas and fire roasted red pepper strips

(16.) Remove from the heat, cover with aluminum foil for 20-minutes

(17.) Cut lemons with paring knife around the middle section with crisscross incisions ‘/\/\/\/’ then break apart.  Use to garnish the outside of the paella pan.

(18.) Uncover and serve.

The fundamental recipe does not adapt well to change.  No problem adding different meats, chorizo, seafood, even a vegetarian Paella.  Beware of switching to brown rice.  It’s very disappointing (I’m sorry)

Truthfully, the most important ingredient is what the chef is feeling.  There is a beautiful Zen to cooking Paella. Maybe you will smell the Mediterranean, or the morning sunrise over the water, or you might imagine enjoying Paella on the beach in Valencia.   Remarkably, the Paella will turn out in explicit harmony with the feelings of the person preparing this exquisite dish.  (P.S. A good Rioja wine is recommended for the chef)

Please send comments to: Email: info@cmichaelbennis.com

About the Author:  C. Michael Bennis is a toy and advertising industry executive. He is bilingual in English and Spanish and lives in Tucson, Arizona.  Rules of Engagement is his first book.

For more inforation, visit http://www.cmichaelbennis.com/ and see the video of Show Host Danielle Knox interviewing C. Michael Bennis on The Balancing Act Airing on Lifetime Television.

“Michael is an award wining author who does not disappoint with his latest novel Rules of Engagement. It’s a thrilling love story set in exotic locales, filled with mystery, twists, turns and of course passion and romance.”

US Author Recalls Madrid’s Carabanchel Prison

January 1964. The cold permeated through the wool sports coat, the cotton shirt, the pullover sweater and the light wool slacks and sox, and I tugged the grey wool blanket more tightly over my shoulders. It would be hours before I could open the single window to the sunâs warmth. Warmth was not a consideration in a high-security lockup that was built by political prisoners for political prisoners.

I had spent the night reading by the light of a single glass bulb until I hunkered into a tightl...

US Author Recalls Madrid’s Carabanchel Prison

January 1964. The cold permeated through the wool sports coat, the cotton shirt, the pullover sweater and the light wool slacks and sox, and I tugged the grey wool blanket more tightly over my shoulders. It would be hours before I could open the single window to the sun’s warmth. Warmth was not a consideration in a high-security lockup that was built by political prisoners for political prisoners.

I had spent the night reading by the light of a single glass bulb until I hunkered into a tightly drawn ball, where I spiraled downward in deep slumber until emerging back home in full color on a hot summer’s evening. I was about to share dinner with my parents and younger brother. Before me was a delicious charbroiled hamburger on a sesame bun with slices of Bermuda onion, summer tomato, and copious condiments. There were also ample servings of buttered corn-on–the-cob and Mother’s delicious potato salad.

In the other place, Moorish Trumpets blared and metal doors slammed against the wall in my corridor. The sound of military boots moved toward my cot. In moments, I felt the pressure of a boot pressing downward against my rump… ‘This could not be happening. I was safe at home.’ When I looked upward, there were green uniforms and a brown wooden paddle, inches above my face.

Some actions occur so rapidly they could never have passed through the brain. A split-second later, the paddle-totting man tottered unsteadily four arm-lengths away, while I stood awaiting what would happen with two uniformed men beside me.

“¡Carajo!” Bristled the guard with the paddle. He took a deep breath and made a point of arranging his jacket “¡Coño! Nights are for sleeping. Don’t read at night, and he took hold of the book, “understand?”

He held Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon (originally published in 1932, four years before the Spanish Civil War). The book is about the magnificence of bullfighting and considers the nature of fear and courage. The guard leafed through the book’s photos and nodded to himself. Then he turned to me with a severe expression, “Understand?”

“Sí, señor.” I was now aware that I could be secretly observed.

“Ojo, Jillipollas!” He extended the wooden paddle. Then slowly he turned it over. Small ‘windows’ displayed the cells in my corridor with the number of inmates inside each cell. “Coño, nights are for sleeping!”

The three men turned and left, and moments later, I received breakfast – sweetened coffee in a metal bowl with bread. Periodically, someone would strike my door and yell, “No sleeping!”

I was already conditioned to be wary. Before Carabanchel, I was confined in an eighteen by twelve foot basement cell for three days and nights, beneath the Security Police headquarters. On the outside, this was a beautiful 18th century red brick building, in the Puerta del Sol. Inside, it was tough crime detection and severe law enforcement, while I waited in a dank, smelly basement cell with a teenage drug pusher, two belligerent criminals, five illegal Portuguese laborers and four American-hating Cubans who were in Spain for political activism (The Cuban Missile Crisis occurred in Oct/Nov 1962). Cell dialogue was nonexistent, and the twelve of us sat on a cold cement platform, that also served for sleeping on individual grass mats beneath a single wool blankets.

The basement ambience was latent with belligerent hostility, while happy Madrileños above us went about their daily activities. Lavatory facilities were reached with a guard’s escort, when he was available. The teenager cried frequently while I waited in silence for the sudden Cuban aggression that was likely to happen.

The origin of my internment began in early evening when I returned to the apartment building with my German shepherd puppy, an English girlfriend and her older sister. Three men blocked the entrance. I suspected robbers and prepared a response, when one of the men grabbed my arm. I popped his hand off and prepared to fight when the same man smiled and flipped his lapel to show a jagged, yellow and red badge.

“Charles Michael Bennis, you must come with us.” He hesitated, still smiling. “I suggest warm clothing, maybe a sweater and jacket. I’ll wait for you.”

Thirty minutes later, I was inside his Seguridad office with my passport. We were speaking in Spanish about bullfighting, when he asked, “Why are you here?”

“Perhaps you should tell me?”

“I would tell you if I knew. My orders were to detain you. The university provided the address of the first pension, which referred me to the second pension, where I learned of the apartment. The order to detain you came from the justice department in Calatayud. Perhaps, that is the key to why you’re here.”

“I had an automobile accident in the mountains above Calatayud.”

“Were there fatalities? Serious injuries? Are you in the US military”

“No, no, no… I was on the way to Zaragoza for the Festival of Pilar, and the last great bullfights of the year. I study at Complutense in the Faculty of Filosofía y Letras.”

His face grimaced, “We don’t arrest drivers unless they occasion a fatality. Perhaps a small child was killed on the highway, and you’re being blamed for it?’

Then he sent a man to escort me to the dungeon while I experienced chilling fears.

Each day, the arresting officer brought me to his office for coffee, and we reviewed why I might have been detained. On the third night, I was with the officer when a telex arrived with instructions to transfer the detained Charles Michael Bennis to Carabanchel, Prisón Provincial de Madrid.

“What have I been charged with?’

My friend grimaced, “You have not been indicted.” He showed me the telex. He seemed as perplexed as I was, but he reasoned, “You will be more comfortable there.”

Then he allowed me to use the telephone, but not to call the US Embassy. It was okay if I had someone else call the embassy, so I called my friend from New York, who said he would take care of it. I was also allowed to invite several friends for a farewell visit. Afterwards, I was again escorted to the basement cell.

The next day, I was processed, photographed, fingerprinted and taken for a farewell visit with two Spanish brothers from Asturias, the American from New York, an American bullfighter / trumpet player and a German- American paratrooper. The English girl with the sea-green eyes stood shyly behind. It was a quiet sendoff. We kept a brave front, with jokes and practical gifts: oranges, cartons of cigarettes, and one book, Death in the Afternoon by Ernest Hemmingway. The English girl brought a jar of peanut butter, “American food,” she said.

My reliable New York friend had spoken several times with Ambassador Woodward, who remembered me from a cocktail party at his residence, and promised to intervene in my behalf.

Moments later, I entered a transport van with six other men and five women (who would be dropped off first at the woman’s prison). The women humorously tried to proposition the driver into making a nonscheduled stop. It was a fun but hopeless dialogue with the driver negotiating, and the women guaranteeing.

Eventually, the women noticed me. They were naturally inquisitive to know why an American would be going to Carabanchel? I volunteered to be guilty of hitting a fruit truck head-on at a reckless speed, when a woman sadly asked, “There were deaths, no?”

“Not that I know of.”

The women looked strangely at me, until one of them wished that “I would not leave Spain with a bad impressions of their country.” The rest of the women agreed.

Once inside Carabanchel, we men stood naked as we were processed and fumigated. Afterward we dressed beside our possessions, when the man beside me grabbed my oranges. I’m embarrassed to write what I said. However he backed off.

The worst moment occurred when I was alone in the solitary cell – compliments of the kind policeman. I had come to Spain not knowing anyone, yet I had loyal friends that held back their fears and wished me well. I was fortunate to have met Ambassador Woodward, thanks to my parents and our US Senator; however his help might be questionable if I were charged for the roadside death of child. I was considering the possibility that I could be indefinitely confined to Carabanchel Prison.

The cell was approximately seven by eight feet. The bathroom accessories included a sink (no mirror), a toilet bowl attached to the floor without a toilet seat or a water tank (‘flushing’ was achieved by a guard with a water bucket). Other amenities included a military style cot with a wool blanket, and a small window (with a view of a prison wall and a section of the roof) that was only reached by standing on the cot.

Suddenly, I was showered with anxiety and I nervously paced my cell’s perimeter. Panic was about to set in when I dropped to the floor and quickly snapped out military pushups until I crumbled with exhaustion. I knew my survival might hang in the balance of strength and agility, but it was the endorphins that truly quenched the panic.

The days passed slowly. I wrote letters, especially to the English girl with sea-green eyes whom I imagined was on her way back to Liverpool to be with a boyfriend who was famous for being famous. I read for hours, made prison notes and exercised intensively, as I was doing now, when a small, youthful guard opened my cell. He was there to advise me that I had an appointment with the Jefe de los Servicios after lunch.

Quickly, I asked. “What happens there?”

He looked perplexed, “You’re asking me?”

I acknowledged, ‘A disciplinary action might be sanctioned to punish the forcible shoving of a prison guard.’ A sense of hopelessness inched into my mind, yet I quickly escaped into the memory of my beautiful sports car. In Spanish, “Jaguar” has a guttural, onomatopoetic sound that closely resembles the growl of this ferocious animal. In 1963, the E-Type Jaguar was featured in the Spanish media but scant few were in evidence. I owned one. It was the most beautiful gift of my lifetime. The red E-type had a truly exciting design with ferocious performance; it was the icon of 1960s motoring.

In the mountains, I was so inspired by the Jag’s legendary rumbling exhaust and the magnificent cornering abilities that my speed soon greatly exceeded prudent velocity. It was nine p.m. in the dark mountains, the snail-paced traffic had spread out, and I forced the Jag’s powerful engine  to make up for lost time. With exhilarating speeds and loudly squealing tires, I darted through hairpin curves. This magnificent vehicle unbelievably negotiated the mountain roads with racecar proficiency… until I encountered a fruit truck straddling the center of the road. The high-speed collision could have gone two ways: I could have been thrown off the mountain, or I could have been thrown into the mountain. The later occurred.

Two days before, on the day the “Day of the Jaguar,” the Señora served the expensive delicacy of roast pig for lunch, and afterward her husband, a former Zarzuela singer from Bilbao, and a resident banker in the pension accompanied my to the Hotel Tyrol cafeteria where we took delivery of the Jaguar. The automobile arrived in shining splendor, and the three of us squeezed into the open convertible for the maiden voyage to the pension. Once there, the children had secured parking place, and went upstairs to the pension for cold Basque cider.

In prison, I could rationalize how the accident prevented me from becoming a celebrity playboy. I had an opportunity to experience the drawing power of the E-Type Jaguar when I drove the past Filosofía y Letras with the top down, prior to leaving for Zaragoza. Years later, I learned the wrecked Jaguar was featured on the cover of ABC with reference to a rich American playboy. Without the red Jag, I was just another student, singing in the Tranvia, as we tipped it, side to side, from Argüelles to my faculty.

Today, lunch was salted, desiccated fish with garbanzo stew and an orange. Not bad, really… when the youthful guard returned to take me to the Jefe de los Servicios Penitenciarios de Carabanchel. The door was closed when we arrived. He knocked, “Permiso?”

There was noise of movements. Then the door popped open and I stared disbelievingly into a sea of green uniforms, many with decorations. We stood facing one another, and I silently said, “Oh shit!”

A moment later, the group parted and I stared into the eyes of my friend from the first pension. ‘R’ rose and gave me a big abrazo. “You want to write a book, eh? Welcome to the subject matter!”

Then he became serious. “You must call the Señora. She is sick with worry! You know how distrustful Basques are! The Señora told the Court’s representatives you had returned to America. She figured you did something and she was trying to protect you.”

I started laughing, “That’s it! The arresting officer and I could never understand why I was detained.”

“You think The Senora is responsible?”

“Yes I do. The Jaguar is being rebuilt in the Coventry factory while the British insurance company is assuredly ignoring the trucker’s inflated repairs and loss of wages. Meanwhile, the Judge’s last best hope for resolving the case –el Americano – is on the lam out-of-legal jurisdiction.” I broke out laughing…  “Promise me, you will never tell the Senora!”

“I promise. There’s a rumor the US Embassy is involved.”

“I was a guest in the Ambassador’s home for a cocktail reception, thanks to our US Senator. I’m hopeful Ambassador Woodward might spring my release.”

“Then you will be getting out.” He smiled. “You must know the Señora is coming to visit you this weekend. She would cry if she saw you as I see you now! Worse she would blame me! You must call her and laugh and tease her like always. You do that and I have something for you.”

I called the Señora and she shouted, “Miguilito.” She was insistent, and asked many questions in a strong voice I had never heard before. She wanted to know how badly I missed her cooking? I said she would be furious if I told her the food in prison was better. “Liar,” she shouted, and then she roared with laughter. I knew everything was okay when she began telling me about the children’s activities.

Afterward, ‘R’ handed me 150 Spanish pesetas in prison cardboard money, the equivalent of $2.50 in US currency. I would be allowed into the courtyard, a place accessed only by the sentenced prisoners.

“You must get a haircut and a shave. For the Señora, no?”

I nodded. “When?”

“Now, ” and the same youthful guard motioned for me to follow him.

This was Spain’s notorious prison that housed perceived enemies of the state and heinous criminals during the Franco era. Dark rumors persisted of men being taken from their cell and executed in the middle of the night.

I entered the prison without fear. I was immensely happy to be standing in the sunshine and to breathe fresh air. ‘This is what life is all about,’ I thought as I watched men walking around the perimeter while others gathered in groups of two’s and three’s. Nearby, men were actively involved in handball, which I played in college. I approached the game to watch.

When one of the players missed, the ball bounced my way, and instinctively, I hit the ball back against the wall… The game immediately stopped. The players stood and stared, until the tallest man walked toward me. “Hola, muchachito.” (Little boy)

“Hola chiquitino,” I replied (smaller child)

The handball player roared with laughter. “¡Cojonudo!”

His name was Manuel, and he took me to meet his buddies.

The first man I met was small and slim and he extended his hand to point to a jet plane flying overhead. “From your Air Base in Torrejon. It must be a good to look up and see that. You’re in here, Americano, but your planes control the skies. My daughter is married to one of those.”

The next man I met was truly frightening. He was small but mighty with a physique that seemed to have been carved out of stone. He looked at me with limpid brown, unseeing eyes. His mind had gone.

Manuel was distressed when he explained, “This is a great Basque warrior, who expected to be executed. However Franco’s men used him for sport. They put him in a railroad car with another soldier from the North. Only one man could survive. After six combats, with men he fought beside, he came out as you see him now. He is a tragic hero, but he doesn’t know it.”

Our next stop was to the prison barber, where I lathered my whiskers and waited in line for my turn. When the time came, I climbed into the barber’s chair and let Pablo deftly shave my whiskers with a strait razor.

Manuel winked, ”Maybe you should ask Pablo why he is in Carabanchel?”

I ignored Manuel.

“Fíjate, Pablo. Have you forgotten? Tell el Americano why.”

Pablo remained focused on his work.

Manuel volunteered, “Pablo is from a small village. He was a happy man with a childhood sweetheart. They planned to wed. One day, the village tough guy violated Pablo’s girl when she walked home from school. Her face was beaten and bruised, and she sobbed in Pablo’s arms. She begged Pablo to forgive her. She had tried to fight…

“A week later, the tough guy came into the barbershop where Pablo worked. He specifically requested a shave from Pablo. They still talk about it in the village. How Pablo slit the man’s throat, right where the thyroid protrudes. Zzzip the neck was severed and Pablo held the man’s face to watch his own death in the mirror, as the blood spurted everywhere before the dying man’s eyes!”

Pablo was now shaving my neck, and he warned, “Don’t move.”

My Adam’s apple bulged and I had difficulty swallowing.

“Don’t move or I’ll cut you!”

Manuel was laughing at my predicament. Now, everyone was laughing. My Adam’s apple bobbed and bulged until Pablo smacked me on the top of the head “Tranquillo, hombre.”

Afterwards, I met many prisoners who were presented by name and profession before imprisonment. The story of ‘Pablo’s shaving el Americano,’ had everyone in stitches, and the laughter echoed in my mind as I returned to my cell to begin writing.

The following morning, the US Embassy’s first secretary arrived to take me from Carabanchel. I was delighted to be free but I hated to leave behind everything I had written. I walked out a free man but for some time, I would have an inordinate fear of police and captivity.

The US Secretary was inquisitive. “Tell me about it?”

“It was dirty, the food was lousy and I was cold at night. Otherwise, it was okay.”

“Okay? You were inside the most sinister prison in Europe. Any problems you might like to discuss?”

“No problems. I had a single cell.”

“How did you finagle a single cell?”

“The arresting officer arranged for it.”

“Be thankful for that and to Ambassador Woodward. He secured your release by convincing the Calatayud Judge you were from a fine Illinois family.” He studied me with a quiet observation of my mental and emotional state. “You’ve been through an incredible experience.”

“Being locked up in prison without knowing why is the worst part. Otherwise, I was bored, except for the afternoon I spent in the courtyard.”

“You were in the courtyard? You have to be convicted and sentenced before you enter the courtyard. How did you possibly maneuver your way into that unsafe place?”

“I have a friend, whom I sat beside at dinner for two months until I relocated pensions without ever knowing he was Jefe de los Servicios Penitenciarios de Carabanchel. My friend gave me access to the courtyard so I might shave and be presentable when the pension Señora visited me in prison.”

“That man is no friend!”

Chills of recognition rushed through my body, and tears came to my eyes. “He is a very dear friend. I promise you, the courtyard was safe when I was there.”

“You’ve had quite an experience.”

“I’ll never forget it.” Strangely, at that moment, I thought of the women who rode with me in the prison van. They feared I might leave Spain with a bad impression of their country. On the contrary, I would forever hold a place in my heart for Spain and Spaniards.

The windup: Rules of Engagement begins in June of 1964, when in real life I picked up my sports car in London, met a French woman and traveled Europe with my American friend from New York.

Also, The Signs of Destiny (working title) soon to be released is set in Madrid and New York. The story features an English girl with sea-green eyes, and a car crash — featured on the cover of ABC.

. . .

C. Michael Bennis http://www.cmichaelbennis.com/

Rules of Engagement — a passionate summer romance between a Parisian debutante and a University of Colorado graduate ends in heartbreak, until they meet 22 years later for a final chance to reignite an unforgettable love. (Fast-paced, unbridled passion, endearingly naughty characters and the softest sides of true love… with tantalizing rules).

Zen & A Novel’s Inception

You’ve decided to write a novel, now where to begin?

The pathway to writing begins with desire.  Imagery of glamour and excitement are only illusions, for creative writing is fraught with disappointment, rejection and continued determination.  Just the setbacks in plot alone can render a writer helpless.  Then there’s the bad secret awaiting around the corner when you have finished the first draft: It’s called rewrite, rewrite, rewrite until you can spit sparks across the room.

Desire to become an author is the first reason why a magnificently intelligent human being would ever take up writing.  Before we go further, please forget the dollar signs.  Definitely clear your mind of watching the cinematic version of your first novel at the Festival de Cannes.  Today, the publishing industry is undergoing a dramatic change. Barnes & Noble, the world’s largest bookshop chain is up for sale.  Borders Books announced Sunday evening (1/30/2011) that it was delaying January payments to vendors and landlords in a move to conserve cash. Or as John Steinbeck once observed, “The profession of book-writing makes horse-racing seem like a solid, stable business.”

Yes, there is money in writing novels.  It comes from promoting yourself as a brand. This involves creative and aggressive strategies to achieve widespread recognition.  Be assured: if you do not promote yourself, no one else will!  More later in a subsequent blog post…

Passion is the second and most the driving reason to write a novel.  The emotional link with characters of your own making is beyond belief.  You’ll be unable to shut them out. They will rule your life.  So powerful is the link with these special individuals that I suspect we writers would at once hunt for them in the hereafter when we exit stage left.

We’re now at the threshold, the moment of truth.  You have made a dazzling decision: you’re committed to writing your first novel.  This is a heady moment.  Your head is full of possible story lines.  The trouble comes with knowing which way to go.  Welcome to the Zen of creative writing.

There is an incredible ally on this significant journey.  Help is available 24/7.  No, I’m not referring to the Internet, but rather to the meditative state, where the subconscious or unconscious mind is actively involved with providing suggestions. This is the part of the mind that never sleeps and works continuously when you are unaware.  Have you ever noticed when you go to bed with a problem how the resolution is waiting when you wake up in the morning?

Regrettably, unconscious thoughts are not directly accessible to ordinary introspection, but rather they are capable of being tapped and “interpreted” by special methods and techniques such as meditation.  First, there’s some serious work to be done before enlisting your subconscious.

This is the moment to know about the ten genre categories under the heading General Fiction. They include: Children’s, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, Romance, Science Fiction, Short Fiction, Thriller, Suspense, Westerns and Young Adult. A kind suggestion: consider selecting the genre you most enjoy reading.  Your own preferences for fiction, cinema and theatre productions should offer a clue.

Once the genre has been selected, you’re ready to consider a story line.  This could come from a plethora of life experiences.  There might already be a story that has been haunting you for years. This is the way my first two novels came about.

My first novel, Rules of Engagement, is based on an unforgettable summer romance in London.  Although the relationship never progressed beyond London, I imagined what it would be like if we were to meet again.  Would the magic still be there?

My second novel, The Signs of Destiny (to be released this year), is based upon a long-ago dialogue with a female companion from Liverpool, who told me the tragic story of her young friend who visited a fortuneteller and learned she would die a horrible death six years hence on her 24th birthday.

Ironically, both ideas popped up out of the subsconscious.

Your own history may yield ideas, and the subconscious will be a pool of inspiration as well as your screening room.  Truly, there is not a plethora of possibilities.  The significant themes will soon become clearer to you.   Be sure to think about story lines as you lie in bed in the twilight between being wakeful and falling asleep.  The most amazing results emerge from this powerful ally.

There are many ways to elicit the subconscious.  My favorite is via exercise.  Please know this evolves a significant caveat: you must be proficient in the form of exercise to open the subconscious while the body is working.  Bodily safety cannot be a concern!  The result is a double whammy.  You come away with great ideas and you’re simultaneously charged with delicious endorphins.  It’s a win-win situation.

There is another way to dip more deeply into the subconscious.  Thoughts, images and sensations occur in a person’s mind during sleep.  You would be amazed to learn what is going on in your subconscious during sleep.  To find out, place a writing pad on the nightstand beside your bed.  Then set your alarm clock to awaken you at intervals during the night.

Write down, with each interruption, what you were dreaming about.  With time, you will no longer need the alarm clock and you will begin to retain your dreams when you normally awaken.  Eventually, you will be able to record from four to six dreams or more after one night’s sleep.  Make note to differentiate dreams in black and white and those in color.

Hopefully by now you should have your story line.  This is the moment to think through the development of your story, the individuals involved and the locale where the story takes place.  You are on your own…  It’s your story.  This is also the first draft.  Don’t worry there will be changes later.  Most importantly now is how the plot and the characters flow together in the narrative.

If you haven’t done so already, it’s time to look in the mirror and seriously say, “I’m writing a novel.”  Be positive.  Control your trembling hands and wobbly knees.  Continue looking until the eyes in the mirror look back at you with authority and conviction.

Please remember you are not telling a story.  The interaction of the characters will tell the story.  On the Internet there is a plethora of information about plotting.  You will find advice on how the darkest moment occurs midway through the novel and how everything will be resolved at the conclusion. Most of this is self evident if you are an avid reader of the novels in the genre of the story you are writing.

Technical guidelines to writing are important.  It’s good to know them.  It’s bad to be inundated by them.  For example, have you have ever taken a golf lesson?  The intricacies of the perfect golf swing overwhelm neophyte golfers.  The fun of the sport is quickly extinguished with the intricate instructions on hitting the ball correctly.  It takes time before you can ‘feel’ how to hit the ball correctly.  Beware the same instruction on writing might disrupt the flow and ‘feeling’ of your narrative.

It’s your story.  You and your subconscious know where you are going.  The most important thing is to write and the complete first draft.  Be sure to let the reader ‘see’ your characters and the location where the story takes place.

There are tools as you begin on the journey to complete your first novel.  First, pay specific attention to everyone around you.  Notice how some people stand at the edge of subway platforms while others wait further back. Or on a crowded street, observe how some make eye contact while others look down.  Experiment by making eye contact with a perfect stranger and then smile.

Be sure to notice people during meetings:  Do you remember the sort of good-looking lady who comes to each session appearing frumpy and dishevelled.  Then one day she appears with lipstick and makeup.  The transition is remarkable.  Something significant has just happened.  Imagine what that might be.

The most important thing of all is to sharpen your listening skills.  Of course, you hear what is being said when people talk to you!  But did you really listen?  Or were you concentrating on a clever response?   Did you notice facial expressions and body language?   Stay with it.  Keep focused. The moment has arrived to go beyond the words and to listen carefully to what is being communicated.  Once again, your incredible subconscious will assist you. Don’t be fearful of asking the speaker, ‘Am I hearing you say ________?  This is not nonsensical!  It is primordial and will determine if your characters become real and the dialogue you write will achieve everything you intend.

A final word:  The response to a compliment is never ‘Thank You!’ It’s the most terminal remark in the English language.  Example: Someone says you look great.  Try responding with, ‘Oh, why do you think so?  What’s different?’  Isn’t that the answer you really want to know?

In closing, there are two recommendations.  (1.) Go to http://www.eharlequin.com/ and scroll down from Harlequin Extras.  Read the Writing guidelines. (2.) Join a National Writer’s Organization: I belong to Romance Writers of America http://www.rwa.org/.

Romance Writers of America is dedicated to advancing the professional interests of career-focused romance writers through networking and advocacy.  There are terrific RWA support groups in almost every major U.S. city and they exist to help you become a publisher author.

Other fiction genres have similar support.  If you begin to feel like Sisyphus in Greek mythology that was compelled to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only to have it roll back down…   then find help.  There are excellent writer’s chat rooms.  Yet in the end it’s always a singular journey.

May you have the hindsight to know where you’ve been, The foresight to know where you are going, And the insight to know when you have gone too far.  (Irish Blessing)

http://www.cmichaelbennis.com/

What Not to do in a Haunted Villa

Praia da Luz, Algarve, Portugal is the setting for five (out of twenty chapters) in Rules of Engagement that I wrote between 2007 and 2009 and then published in 2010.  However my history with Praia da Luz began forty years before I ever wrote Rules. The purpose of this blog post is to relate the uncanny events that occurred when I retreated to ‘Alec’s villa’ alone in 1978 for four weeks to write The Iberian Jaguar. Only much to my chagrin I was not alone in the villa.

At the time, my wife, son and I resided in Madrid, and Praia da Luz was our favorite destination for sunshine, flowers, sea and truly fabulous food.  It was where our bilingual four-year-going-onto-five-year-old son played on the beach and conversed in Spanish with Portuguese playmates, and then sobbed when it was time to go to bed.

Luz always proved to be an elixir that made everything seem right, and it was also an excellent place to write, especially in February when the days are warm, the nights are cool, and the off-season are truly affordable.  This is also a glorious time when almond blossoms color the foothills in pink and white, and in this setting I now planed to complete the novel Jaguar during a four-week retreat.

Already I had written the first 25,000 words, and I was very optimistic the story would be captivating.  This was not a foolhardy plan.  My first novel, The Signs of Destiny, was written in a solitary villa in the quiet Mediterranean village of Javea, Spain.

On the designated day, our family of three set off by car off from Madrid to Praia da Luz.  It was a 802 kilometers/498 miles journey, so we brought supplies to occupy Alex, that included a drawing pad, crayons, puzzles, and an activity coloring book.  We also stopped frequently, and kept our son occupied with spotting games, such as who could yell ‘toro’ first when we saw the frequent Osborne Black Bull Billboards that appeared everywhere on the highways and hillsides of Spain.

We arrived in Praia da Luz and moved into a townhouse for two nights.  ‘Alec’s villa’ (in Rules) was currently occupied by the British Broadcasting Corporation and would not be available until February first.  We already had a family itinerary:  First were the morning trips into the foothills for lavender honeys from the bee man and whole grain, freshly baked bread from the bakery.  Later, we would take lunch in Lagos.  Afterwards, we planned a return to Luz for Alex’s play dates on the beach where he and his Portuguese friend spent fun-filled hours with Alex’s Tonka dump truck.  At sunsets, we walked hand-in-hand along the shore and watched the local Portuguese fisherman returning with the catch of the day in their sturdy ocean boats with the all-seeing eyes painted on the prow.  The time flew by as it always in Luz.

After two fun days, we moved into the villa.  The layout was rectangular, where the front entranceway offered three destinations:  Directly ahead were French doors leading to the open living room – dinning area with a large hearth; to the left was the kitchen; while to the right, an extensive passageway led to three bedrooms and two bathrooms.

My wife and I selected the bedroom at the end of the hallway (as did Alec) with the Hare Krishna Mantra written on the door and signed by George Harrison.  The same Mantra also appeared on the bedroom door closest to where we would be sleeping.

After moving in we occupied the rest of the day watching Alex play on the beach.  Afterward, we enjoyed a very early dinner in Portimão and returned to the villa before dark.  The day was uneventful, Alex went to bed willingly, and my wife and I settled down to read novels before the warmth and fragrance of the hearth, as sadness crept stealthily into the living room — were going to miss one another.

Sometime around ten p.m., we heard cries and screams echoing through the hallway.  We were there in seconds and found Alex sleeping.  This was the boy who always needed reassurance when he awakened with fright. It was as if we imagined the screams and cries we heard.

We returned perplexed to the living room, until the screams and cries ruptured the silence in an hour or so, and once again our child was sleeping soundly when we entered the bedroom.  There was no way we would leave Alex’s room, so we bedded for the night, and my wife whispered, “I don’t feel good about leaving you alone in this villa.”

The next morning over coffee, my wife looked concerned, “We could get our money back.  You could return to Javea and write.”

“I’ll stay.  If this didn’t chase the BBC away, it’s not going chase me away.

I drove my wife and son to Faro, where they would fly to Lisbon and connect to Madrid.  They were returning to our warm apartment in Madrid, to Alex’s classes at the International Primary School, and to my wife’s assignment to decorate the corporate headquarters of a Fortune 500 Company, while I remained behind with work to be done and melancholy feelings of solitude.

After returning to the villa, I went for a long run through the picturesque foothills down to the Black Rock on the beach, and wonderful endorphins activated my body’s opiate receptors.  The feelings of vulnerability vanished.   Afterwards, I wrote for the rest of the afternoon, until loneliness overwhelmed me, and I escaped the villa for dinner in Portimão.

The villa was in total darkness when I returned and I admonished myself for not having left a light on in the foyer. This was not a big thing but I felt uneasy.   I also did not feel like writing.  So I read Guillermo Cabrera Infante’s entertaining novel, Tres Tristes Tiigres (I never read novels in English when I write since  I instinctively adapt the cadence, rhythm and structure of what I’m reading.  Not so in Spanish).

Occasionally I would look behind me toward to foyer, as if I expeced to see someone there. Several hours later the cold air from the hallway crept into the living room and settled about my neck with an uncanny ability to upset my thoughts. Then a dog began barking somewhere and the wind kicked up outside the villa.

It was definitely bedtime.  I was missing my wife and small son when I turned off the lights in the living room and walked into the lighted foyer by the front door.  Unexpectedly, I was feeling apprehensive about walking in front of the bedroom with the crying sounds.  A moment later, I knew  I was not alone.  A sixth sense told me there was danger waiting in the hallway.

I flipped the hallway light switch but the lights failed to turn on.  Strangely the hallway lights had worked before.  Now, I faced the dilemma of whether or not to turn off the light in the front foyer.  That option meant walking down the hallway in total darkness.  The other option, of course, would be to leave the light on in the foyer and walk down a partially lighted hallway.

I stood unmoving before what was most certainly waiting for me in the hallway. With a sudden act of bravado I turned off the foyer light and walked slowly down the darkened hallway with my fist cocked, ready and admittedly ridiculously useless against a nonphysical being.

In a few moments, I reached the bedroom at the end of the hallway.  My adrenalin was rushing, as I switched on the ceiling light, which fortunately worked.  I could see nothing, however I was certain something supernatural waited vey near to where I was standing.  Moments later I perceived the presence was a female wo exhibited a growing repugnance for my intrusion.

“Hey, I have the right to be here and I’m not leaving!”

Somehow I perceived I had just worsened my situation.  It was uncanny how I knew she was becoming angrier by the moment.

I faced where I sensed she was and removed my clothes.  Then I tossed them onto the adjoining bed.  Somehow I knew I was steadily infuriating the presence.  I could feel her anger swelling when I turned off the light and climbed into the cold sheets.

I was certain something would happen.  Nothing did.  I put my hands behind my head and waited.  I continued to wait until I perceived she had left.  For the moment I felt safe.

Minutes later, I sensed her return to the room and I tried to mentally reach out to her, “Why?” I asked.  But she was already gone.

Suddenly all the villa’s storm shutters on every window and door began slamming back and forth against the outside wall.  They shook for three or four minutes.  Then a respite of silence followed until the three bathroom toilets all flushed at the same time.  At that point, silence ensued.

The following morning, I went to Lagos for espresso coffee, a croissant and a visit with the real estate agent, where I learned nothing untoward had ever occurred at the villa.  There was no recorded sinister history with the villa nor in the in the surrounding countryside.  Also, no tenants reported manifestations of a supernatural origin.  Then the agent raised her eyebrows and smiled with cynicism.  Assuredly, I was quickly becoming the eccentric American writer.

I returned to the villa and found Maria — the combination cook and housekeeper– in the kitchen.  We communicated — she in Portuguese and I in Spanish — and I left with an extensive shopping list of items to buy in the Lagos central market.  I now knew I would have  caldo verde for lunch, and pan-fried chicken, acelgas, roast potatoes and salad for dinner.

It was a good moment to relate my spooky experience to Maria who listened seriously, and replied, “Senhor, será sonámbula.”

In English, sonámbula is a female sleepwalker.  This was the only explanation I ever received for what became a nightly occurrence that never failed to frighten me.  I also refused to discuss the issue further lest I be perceived as a kook.

My posture with the presence was adamantly inflexible. There was no way she might scare me off!  Of course, this was false bravado.  Besides frightening me at night, I frequently sensed her nearby when I was writing.  I had given up being angry, I was now terror-stricken when I felt her close to me.  A vivid imagination is a weird faculty when I considered the downside of my predicament.  I seriously suspected the spirit might try to possess me.  Admittedly, I had read novels and watched movies that related the horror of malevolent forces.  The only good in such evil was to escape, which I had no intention of doing.

Strangely, my writing was prolific.  It was amazing how focused my mind became when I seriously doubted I would survive the expiration of the lease.  My fear was worsened by her uncanny habit of scaring me when I least expected.  The only antidote during the day was to run while at night there was no escape to run.

As an experiment, I befriended the small dog that seemed to be always hanging around the villa.  I needed a companion desperately so I fed him and invited him into the villa.  Later, the little dog accompanied me to the bedroom.  It felt good to have him there, and I read in bed while he slept contentedly beside me. It was cozy and comforting… until the presence began her nightly routine of slamming shutters and flushing toilets.  At once, the little dog went berzerk and nearly clawed apart the door to escape.  Afterwards, he only returned briefly during the daylight hours and refused to enter the villa.

The writing was the most creative and original work I have ever done.  Maybe I wanted to leave something behind if I failed to survive.  I came to the villa with a goal and I would not be deterred form achieving it.  It’s incredible how focused I became until the day I left the villa and headed back to Madrid.  I’m ashamed to admit that I shouted every obscenity I could think of at the presence in both English and Spanish.  Then I climbed into the car and returned to Madrid with my completed novel and my life.

Oddly, it never occurred to me that her nightly scare tactics, the ability to imitate my son’s cries and the capability to cut the power to the hallway light at night were the sum total and extent of her powers.  I always awaited the sinister encore, but it never came.  It was impossible for me to imagine she might have had an ulterior motive.  Truthfully, I was frightened and fearful of her.  If she desired my attention, she might have better gotten it by hitting me in the head with a hammer.  She didn’t have a ghost of a chance to get through to me.

Almost exactly one year later, my wife, Alex and I would suddenly be flying from Madrid to Boston for Alex’s treatment in Dana Farber Cancer Center and Boston’s Children’s Hospital.  Alex was diagnosed for Burkett’s Lymphoma.  At the time, early detection was the only hope of survival from this insidious lymphoma.