Misery Dogs

Part III

CLEVELAND [June 26, 2006] --- There is a friend, a Ph.D. -- entomologist by training, bug killer by trade -- who says spiders are sentinels. He talks about their value, that they eat bad bugs and generally do no harm. But their presence alone means there are bugs to eat, thus indicators of a problem.

In six months on the road in the American West dogs were sentinels. Bad weather and bad people were accurately predicted by a four-legged companion. A dog saved the wanderer from a female predator in San Francisco. A dog came along when a Good Samaritan was about to show his true intension and kill the traveler with a small caliber round to the head. More than five times during this journey dogs changed the course of action, the very timeline of this life, and averted tragedy. They even mitigated misery on more than one occasion. And that is the final part of one wild night in Boulder, Colorado. Dogs saved a life; directly and with intention, they prevented certain death.

Dogs are not the only sentinels in life. There are peaks and valleys that follow a fairly consistent course. Most writers – perhaps creative people generally – experience times when it is a challenge just to face another day. Some watch carefully as life uses natural rhythms to ease the suffering and rise from the depths. That is the difference between us and them: we experience the trauma, the fear and the hopelessness; they watch. They say, “How could someone sink so low?” as they quickly pass by. The writer stops and remembers, or maybe envisions the way it is for the desperate. After all, desperation is the beginning of any good fiction, and real desperation leaps from the page. How many of you have ever been homeless? Broke, hopelessly addicted, violent beyond control, selfish in the extreme and literally watched another person take over your body and mind as though you were held prisoner in your own skin. It is not advisable, but it is great training for this craft. It won’t make you a Bestseller, but you’ll never suffer writer’s block.

So as this writer drops to his knees today in gratitude for life and a release from at least part of those deep wounds, he also remembers dropping to his knees on that tree-lined boulevard just above the chaos of The Hill. It was 1972, and all demons were present and accounted for. He was homeless, addicted and broke. It did not matter if the Boulder Police were to take him temporarily, or the frost already gathering on the grass would permanently end his misery. It was one of those times, one of many past and many more to come, when he felt beaten. He fit the blanket so that as much was beneath him as over his tall, thin frame. The moisture would soon render the underside useless. One last look, making sure his low profile was not in direct line of windows. And then sleep.

They say that falling asleep in a fatal cold is a comfortable end. That your dreams just get deeper and deeper until there is nothing left. And when it is time to reverse the process, as in normal sleep, there is no rise back to the surface. What happens then no one knows. As the night got colder, there was a sense of movement on both sides. It was not the rousting the traveler expected, nor was it the end of time. It was two dogs, perhaps the two the man was exercising earlier in the evening. They might have been sent by him, or they might have sought the warmth of a third body out of instinct. Whatever the case, the Husky and the Chocolate Lab provided just enough heat to save the homeless man from certain death. They moved away as the sun peeked over the lowlands and the traveler woke in time to see them dash off. They were not the first Misery Dogs that came along when they were needed most. But it is hard to imagine a stronger intervention.

The lesson of those days and nights, living between sheer panic and unnatural bliss, was that there is a Driver in the Universe. The clock should have stopped more than ten times in those short months, but it did not. And the puppet, the pauper, the poet, the pirate, the pawn and the king are all here to tell the tales. It would be nice to have the way clearly marked today. It is not. Misery Dogs have a way of changing shapes, which is fine with me, just as long as they stay close when the night gets deathly cold.

Misery Dogs

Part II

CLEVELAND [June 24, 2006] --- There is a recurring dream whereby one loses his mind. It has happened to all of us, right? You are at a gas station and four different conversations start and fade with no clear connection or memory. You suddenly remember to fill up your car and move it to the pump, once charged, you turn to find no car! Another conversation starts somewhere among the pressboard seats in the “food court” and the thought comes: “where’s my car?” A young girl wanders in and says, as though the thought were aloud, “you mean the running car, the one with no driver?” So you dash down the street trying to catch the one thing that can save you from abject poverty, only to have a docile Afghan hound stand in your way. Playful at first, the hound turns vicious and won’t let you by. That’s when you hear it, your car smashing into the appliance store window and you wake up.

There’s that dog again.

In an obscure silent film, An Andalusian Dog – if you tripped over it the late 60’s, early 70’s, no surprise here - Salvador Dali and the equally oddball director Luis Buñuel explored a chilling descent into insanity. This is relevant for our untethered American boy because the whole trip was a journey into the surreal. It was 1972, and, as the great John Lennon characterized some six years before, nothing is real…and nothing to get hung about. Boulder Colorado that early summer was about as mythical a memory as exists in this young life. The riot that began with the mere sight and sound of the president on the screen and on the radio was in full force down below. It didn’t matter what he said, Nixon, just the sight of him was enough to spill into outrage all over the streets.

Here’s a fact often lost in any recounting of the war: not everybody was against it. Some of those in favor were very active Americans, mostly men just beyond draft age or in some cases those who had served and viewed the protests as an indictment against them (often, they were correct). And even at this late date some of those on both sides of the issue clashed in anger. On this night, this riot, a pickup truck decided to ignore the fact that College Street had become a spontaneous promenade. The driver gunned the engine and darted into the crowd, injuring six and sending a bicycle forty feet into the air. The man behind the wheel, it was later learned, was charged with reckless operation. The man on the bike is still alive today, we know that he can still speak and move his head slightly as he conducts classes and research from an elaborate wheelchair at the University of Colorado.

That night none of this mattered. What was important was personal safety and relief from the exhaustion and the cold creeping down from the mountains. Even warm days so close to the Rockies can produce painful, deadly frigid overnights. The traveler had stumbled into a safe neighborhood, but he was not out of danger. The fortified wine and other drugs were wearing off fast. Lack of food was pressing on his body and spirit – we have all been here before – and his legs were acutely aware of the uphill climb.

The Hillside was spotted with two acre lots and massive, slopping front yards. Fences of hard, green vegetation separated one estate from the next, and only a man exercising his dogs lent any sign of life. It could have been a museum panoramic depicting the ruling classes of the Roman Empire. Thoughts like that were clear indications that the traveler was losing it.

All he had was his blanket, and the only place to fall was on someone’s front lawn. A really bad idea.

Misery Dogs

CLEVELAND [June 21, 2006] --- The wide-faced setter was relentless. “Keep petting or else,” those expressive eyes seemed to say. The arching snout drove home the point as the visitor tried to free his hand to explain yet another financial truism to the dog's owner. Beamer, the dog, was clearly more interested.

The moment brought back another episode in The Days and Nights of Motley Traveler. This is a good one. It has dogs and mountains and those tall, thin trees that seem to suggest wealth. The traveler always marveled at those trees, especially when they line wide driveways and stand guard for white stone estates.

Back in Colorado, before the unfortunate encounter with the Bull and I-25, there was the arrival in Boulder. Ask anyone who has been there, Boulder Colorado is unique. Part rich, part desperately poor and all college town, the city is literally carved out of the foothills of the Rockies and suffers from the same dissociative disorder that fills the hunting shacks and mansions along varied ridges. Boulder is remembered as being on a permanent tilt. Nothing was as it seemed and the only thing constant was the up side and the downward side of almost any vista. Neither were the people very straight forward. Mountain or town, there was a common strain of independence among the folks illustrated by a staunch distrust of authority. But again, this was 1972; the genesis of Trust No One.

Arriving in Boulder was a shock to the system in many ways. Discovering The Hill in the afternoon was a sensory buffet of sex and drugs. Street people had a new and very twisted status that attracted some college girls. It was the high school prudes and those living in the shadow of daddy’s shotgun who smashed into freedom like a head-on with a Freightliner. They were out of control and the sheer audacity of these newly discovered, freewheeling men thumbing their noses – and other body parts – at responsible society was a mainline aphrodisiac. Only mild exaggeration for effect, this, but there was a surprising number of shark’s pilots in halter tops competing for the attention of the blurry boys and brain damaged men.

This was College Street, Broadway and the edge of the university, The Hill. And 8500 miles away the war in Vietnam was about to be lost. The country was resigned to the fact that a bad war had taken its toll, more than 58,000 American lives (and almost countless others) and become an ignition point for the smoldering anti-American shockwave. Yet by nightfall, for some forgotten reason, The Hill erupted in protests and violence.

This was no place for a young black man in dirty denim. The worst part about the riot was losing contact with the two women who were becoming devotees. It was a strange feeling from the start, they approached with clear intensions and all that was needed was a place, preferably inside and away from prying eyes. Then Nixon had to go on TV and empty out the bars and frat houses. It was the most spontaneous convergence of anger ever witnessed, before or since. The only thing left to do was leave the scene, preferably before becoming part of the unfolding story.

As the crowd moved, only one escape route seemed not cordoned by the quickly arriving police units. These men were trained for events like these and their primary goal was to protect private property. So why they did not block the wide boulevard is still a mystery. The stranger was not frightened; he had seen worst in his relatively short time on the road. Walking tall out of the gathering mess and up the garden-lined road must have seemed natural. It certainly felt natural, and as the shouting and sirens faded, pulled by gravity, distance and blown away by the fresh mountain breeze, it was as though he had walked into another century. High-end homes with soft lights in the windows were surrounded by invisible security, both real and consigned. Proximity to The Hill not withstanding, what happened there never came here.

Yet something did, the traveler did. Now what?

To Bleed or Not To Bleed

CLEVELAND [June 17, 2006] --- Heroes are always put to the test. It happens in fiction and it is just as likely to happen in real life. Try to think of a story, a good story whereby the character we are to care the most about is not tormented. It just does not happen. And there is a good reason. Humans are by nature empathetic creatures. Most of us feel something for anyone - and often anything - that suffers. It is the easiest emotional bridge to construct from words, scenes and situations. The most famous paintings in the world that depict a human or animal form are the ones where there is palpable melancholy. From the mysterious Mona to the wounded Vincent we are drawn. Picasso's Guernica injects a horrific event, the bombing of the Spanish town of Guernica, right into the heart of any sane viewer. There are far more examples proving this tenet than one can count. It’s just the way we are built.

And while that hero is being tested, there is the needy; the perpetual, terminal, heart wrenching needy. Where is her hero? This person is almost always a woman. He’s busy fighting demons, some set upon him by the very person he is trying to help, if unwittingly so. Now you’re talking drama!

Today, just two and a half car lengths up front, a woman creamed an Audi and clipped a van. Her Jeep Liberty was smashed beyond recognition in the front, but the real damage was to her emotional state. There were no injuries, except for a punch to the throat suffered by the offending driver. Yet in just a few seconds it was apparent that this was just one more thing in a long line of collapsing dreams. Her eyes were black holes of emotional upheaval. “I’m afraid to look at my car. I’m supposed to be in court today. I have insurance, but just enough, none for my car.” It was just 9am and the start to a very bad day. She looked like a person drowning as she walked to the police cruiser. Even a vivid imagination could not fit all the miserable splinters of this broken life. The tattoos and old fashioned hair style suggested a lifetime of trying to please someone else, a man. The dower expression revealed the impossibility of the task. The court date suggested the end of trying. Now this.

Where was her hero?

In real life heroic things do happen. Just not with any predictable pattern. The observer to this potential tragedy has problems of his own, but today his car is running (he avoided the accident by a tenth of a second), and he does not have a court date. Problems mount and deadlines pass undone. Torment is relative. Yet there is something for the writer to learn from this emotional vantage point. In a recent long-form interview with Dean Koontz (three hours on the radio) this highly successful author revealed the violence and turmoil visited upon his home by an alcoholic father. He spoke openly of constant threats and in the end a potentially fatal assault. His own father had the knife against the author’s neck. There was no doubt that the demented man could and would finish the deed. How it got to that point and why Mr. Koontz was not murdered is probably fuel for millions of words contained in his excellent suspense novels. There is no substitution for suffering first hand, not in art.

So put your heroes in a vice and squeeze. Remember your worst moments and how they became resolved (if they did not, we would have little to talk about).

And to you dear readers, remember that a hero without struggle is like a camera without film. No mistakes, but not much to look at.

The Bull, The Bible and The Bologna Sandwich

Part Three

CLEVELAND [June 14, 2006] --- This was not the first time the traveler faced death. The mere act of waking up on this journey gave equal weight to all possibilities: eating, having sex, clocking fifty miles or getting killed. They were different sides, different combinations of the same crap-shoot. There was a fluid nature to this existence that had become accepted, if not proven. Something else was in charge.

This was 1972. The young man was 19 and missed going to war literally by the bounce of a ball. The draft lottery placed his birthday in line with the random number, 311. “They’ll take women and children before they take you.” That was the way he completed the good-fortune anecdote. In fact that recruiter had used those words for his friend, Rick, a year older and with his help transformed into a junkie in less than a week. Rick's number was 17; next stop Viet Nam...

Rick and his gentle girlfriend Sandy were a part of the plan in the beginning. Three people hitching to the Arizona desert had both advantages and disadvantages. Not as dangerous with a girl, Rick surmised. But after spending every waking moment together and chasing the same ghosts, personalities clashed and their roads parted. As far as the young man knew the couple was still in Tempe. Rick tried to treat his bad back acne with a straight shot of the Phoenix sun. He ended up with second degree burns from his neck to his waste.

They would love this, he thought, convinced that the acrid separation left his former friends with ill-wishes. This was as bad as it could get. Out of water and freezing in his leather bomber, the traveler wanted to drop to his knees and give up. Then the sign flashed in the lights of the passing cars: Rest Stop, 2 miles. It was as good as the Gates to Heaven. All he had to do was push on another forty minutes. Forty minutes! He said it aloud, louder and again in a scream. Nothing he could do would give meaning to the increment; the grouping of sounds was used to propel one nearly dead leg to surpass the other. It might as well have been forty days. There was nothing left. The Bull had won. It was not Bataan, or the Trail of Tears, but a death march nonetheless. There were five, maybe ten steps left and with that he was not going to change the outcome.

There may have been a break in the retainer fence – or nothing more than a trio of wires to nominally prevent wildlife from bounding out onto the road – but getting to the berm was almost instant. The cars carried their own speeding streak of foggy corona, expanding in bursts with each approach. The noise was crushing, but distant enough to let the traveler detach it from the danger he faced. The choice was simple; neither carried any more passion or fear than the other. Take the forbidden step to solicit a ride, or the physical step onto the road and out of this life.

There is no more to the night. In thirty-four years of periodic searching, the events that took place between pondering that choice and waking the next morning simply do not exists. There have been times in this difficult life when the notion that it really did end there, and all this is but a dream --a grotesque and foolish dream-- seemed perfectly reasonable. What did follow were sunshine and the sounds of families and cars, the feel of dew on the blanket and the sights of birds playing in the sky. Colorado has a special smell, especially away from the cities. It is clean and thin, allowing the vegetation its place in the world. That smell greeted the awakening. And so did the small brown bag next to his head. Inside was an apple, a plastic wrapped sandwich and a tattered pocket Bible. The New Testament. The traveler looked around to see if he could spot the givers. He had a mind of what they might have looked like: clean-cut kids in Chevys or a minister, family in tow, in weekend-wear, still looking like he is in uniform. But no one fit the profile. He ate the apple first. It was the most wonderful piece of fruit ever! The simple sandwich was filling and the even the small brown book held new comfort. There was a ride just up the road at a diner and before nightfall, three days in Colorado was just another camp fire tale.

(Member’s Note: Unlike some of the short pieces featured here, this one is true. It happened to me and it happened in 1972.
– Chuck)

The Bull, The Bible and The Bologna Sandwich

Part Two

CLEVELAND [June 12, 2006] --- Walking was not a problem. The traveler liked it. He would have loved it if not for the rubbing at his heels from his boots and the lifeless road. That was the first diversion; noticing that the road was far from void of living things. Creatures large and small seemed to react to the passing human. Some repelled, some attracted by the massive presence. Scent, sound or something else alerted the dragon flies, the tiny lizards, the beetles, the birds and biting insects that predator or prey was near, and then gone.

It was 1972, and the road was long. Gravel played with western heels and fatigue began to sap the surety from the steps. He looked around and it seemed that every other car was topped with a crown of lights in aluminum racks and sided with the lurid insignia of the Rocky Mountain State’s highway patrol.

This was not fun. The once gleeful traveler was facing nightfall, and the Grateful Dead song (Truckin’) and the Edwin Starr song (Twenty-Five Miles) were limited company. Singing aloud at the top of his lungs gave some solace. For those hours he understood why churches and Men’s clubs sing as part of their service. The image of his father, eyes wide with enthusiasm, leading grown men in a rousing rendition of the Alpha Phi Alpha Anthem came to mind. His whole family came to mind; part fatigue and part good-bye.

Farmhouses crept by on the right, while the normal pace of the world zoomed along in cars on the left; white lights turning to red. Hunger was physical. There were little indications when the tank was low: depression and fear. How many in America get so hungry as to notice the true symptoms? Not just stomach pangs, but the real mental darkness to malnourishment? Feeling better after eating something was almost as sure as taking a drug; lesson number three learned in exile.

Darkness came hard, like popping a roadside flare that exhausts too quickly. It started with the sun dropping an explosion of red and turquoise on the distant mountain range. It was a moment of relieved suffering. The entire vista was bathed in gold. Somewhere the thought of the nearly ignored poem came to mind. What that English teacher from the east must have seen to inspire the composition; the verse that let the country discover her lyrical travelogue. The purple mountains’ majesty framed the universal grandeur of our personal star, and nothing in that light could be bad. For an instant, he hoped that he had been wrong most of his life, and that God is real.

But night follows every sunset and with that came a dank blanket of loneliness and cold. He had walked fifteen miles by the time the stars and half-moon became nearly the only illumination. Got to keep on …WALKIN’! Now the threat, the promise from his uniformed nemesis was even more omnipresent. Cloaked in darkness, every car was a Bull Cruiser and every exit was as empty as the last.

Once a fat kid reaching 300 pounds on his six-foot-two frame, now he could feel his pelvis rub against the waist of his jeans. His thighs only touched where bridged by his scrotum. The road had transformed him. Omnia mea mecum porto, he carried all he had in the world. It was so different, he had become so different, and fear was nearly rendered impotent. Lately it occurs to me… What a long, strange trip it's been.

Next: Still Have That Book

The Bull, The Bible and The Bologna Sandwich

In Three Parts.

CLEVELAND [June 9, 2006] --- Heading south through Colorado was the most efficient way to get back to Tempe, but the news around the camps was peppered with horror stories about the zero tolerance with which the CSP, the Colorado State Police, treated hitchers. The Bulls, as they were called, were not about to let their highways and exit ramps become littered with the suburban refugees wearing their long hair, filthy jeans and holding cardboard signs.

This was 1972, and the world was a road song and a coast-to-coast commune, if that’s what you wanted.

Half of the youth of America was in the jungle and the other half was working hard to avoid what had become a grinder of body and spirit. Trust No One Over 30! Fight The Power! Smoke, drop and screw – sorry – make love to whatever or whomever came along. The desert was I-40, I-10, I-25 and I-17, and the way stations were generous and filled with like-mined people, mostly.

Admittedly, it was fun, freefalling through time. What happened yesterday was not important; what will happen tomorrow is an adventure. But it was right now that mattered, and by definition that was a body of work. The present is the ultimate art.

We practiced the pursuit of thrills, elevated sensations and the next high. A certain often repeated conversation centered on the permanent state of euphoria. “Man, this is IT! I’m gonna stay this way forever!” Then the morning came and those brothers and sisters returned to being strangers; strangers with crash attitude. It was time to go.

The road then was also a freefall. Waiting for the generosity of a stranger in a car was more than a crap-shoot. It was dangerous and frustrating. But this traveler was bullet proof, and if something deadly should come his way, so be it. Death is just another adventure. I-25 was the corridor to the Magical Passes. Using the spirit guide of sexual desire and the addiction to new sensations, the traveler perched on the roadside out of Boulder and waited. No thumb, no sign, just a smile aimed at the drivers who dared make eye contact. Most did, after all, what do they have to fear? And some slowed, stopped and offered a ride; at least enough to get the affable young man from the wild college town to the main road just south of Denver.

The white cruiser seemed to come from nowhere, presaged by popping pebbles off the high performance tires and the hot breath of a non-stop engine. The man slipped from behind the wheel with a little teeter-n-bounce off the seatback. Then, after staring traffic into the far lanes, he turned his mirror shielded eyes toward the young man in the denim jacket. “Hitchhiking is against Colorado state law, son.”

“I know that, officer. I wasn’t hitchhiking.”

“Son, I won’t treat you like you’re stupid, please afford me the same courtesy.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now, I tell you what you do. You see that retainer road over there? I want you to grab your things and head on down that road. If I see you so much as look at apassing car or putting your thumb anywhere it don’t belong, you will call the Douglas County Holding home for a time indeterminate.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And, son, I will be watching.”

Next: Lay Down and Die

Alive and Wellbutrin in America

CLEVELAND [June 6, 2006] --- Nearly all members of Publisher’s Marketplace, at least in the Writer and Independent category, have day jobs. The creative people here are struggling to find a place among the professionals. Some have collected a few checks through their writing, but most are still working toward and waiting for that moment of truth: The Magic Call.

Few of us can afford to sit by the phone or continue to scratch out more drafts and new manuscripts to feed the pipeline. There comes a time when creditors want to be paid. So many of us sell things, or make things or perform the motions that chug the engine of this capital driven machine. It’s not bad; it’s just the second choice for making a living…in most cases.

For this future Bestselling Author the days are filled with this really cool performance art called "Today I am a New York Life Agent!" It is, “An Emotional Triumph,” raves the Financial Digest. “This is a Council Agent in the making!” blasts The Field News Daily. “Collins has what it takes, what legends are made of,” shouts Underwriting Matters.

Thank you, thank you. But insurance man is still Plan B.

Yet there is something about this job that satisfies the terminally curious fiction writer. Being a New York Life agent, as opposed to any other insurance professional, means two basic things: learning and prospecting. Once you manage these two tasks, you can win. The learning is daunting. There are over 150,000 variations on more than one hundred different products. But the prospecting is the hard part in many ways. Most shingle-hanging professionals understand the difficulties and there are men and women getting very rich by packaging and repackaging the process.

Believe it or not, this is not about the day job. It is about one especially troubling fact only this particular day job could unearth. In the process of insuring an individual, certain medical questions have to be considered. One is the prescription drugs a client takes on a regular basis. By far the most prescribed drugs are in the family of anti-depressants. Everyone seems to be taking them and the reasons are baffling. It also seems the wealthier the patient, the more he or she might have these drugs offered by reputable doctors. These are people who have accomplished much, and have much to lose. And there are those who certainly would be lost without them. This is not an indictment but it is a disturbing trend.

Some doctors are giving the drugs to people who are going through tough times. Some seem to be giving them to those who are having trouble coping. But are so many really clinically depressed, or suffer severe generalized anxiety disorder for which these drugs are indicated? Or is this American Life so bad that it takes mind-numbing chemicals to get through the day?

There is no secret that this essayist is intimately familiar with artificial escapism. Alcohol to the alcoholic means not coping with the challenges of the day – of life – and literally drowning ones sorrows in a haze of dulled reality. Many people who are on these drugs need them desperately, and we should be thankful that they were created. But when so many are having such difficulty as to need these powerful alterations, one can’t help but wonder if we are trading one old, discredited crutch for a modern techno-chemical pseudo solution.

Just a thought.

Snap, Crackle and Pop

CLEVELAND [June 3, 2006] --- Reading a number of reviews this Memorial Day Monday, one can’t help but notice the use of the word “crackle.” There a certain graphic sensibility to the verb that has attracted everyone from George Will to the freshman reviewer in a Community College monthly. But it makes you wonder exactly what are they talking about.

One story where the reviewer used the term was in Michael Connelly’s The Narrows. Here, Mr. Connelly – a much admired writer – does what he does best: places us on the shoulder of his investigator and runs a case. The only thing crackling is the reality in which the reader is treated as the danger comes and goes and the crime is eventually solved. But the beauty of Connelly is that soon you forget you are reading a story and you are simply there.

Perhaps it is not fair to compare the work of a beginner with that of a seasoned professional. Connelly has written 14 published works, 10 of which are following the adventures and day-to-day challenges of his two favorite characters. Both these men are deeply flawed and for them nothing comes easily. It is not a fair comparison, but we all do it.

Upon reading these reviews and others, most of us do the same thing: we go back to our work and see if it crackles. The likely outcome is that it does not. Unless the manuscript has been through a rigorous editing process, it is still filled with personal impressions that swirled just below consciousness when each sentence, each scene was initially composed. Those passages dull the performance and invariably slow the story. We know this, and in successive revisions we tried to remove the obstacles. But there they are, months and sometimes years later.

Then comes the snap judgment: the work is trash. This sets us up for a very long day. It’s no wonder you don’t have a deal. This is not necessarily reality – in some cases it might very well be – but a wink is as good as a nod to a writer blinded by self-doubt.

There is still good news. Just as the vagaries of defeat are conjured by an exhausted spirit and a confused mind, so are the possibilities of success. Monika likes to remind her favorite writer of the difficulties well-known authors had, and often still have in getting their work out there. This is by far the most subjective art form in existence. Always has been and always will be. Someone will love a work and the very next person will hate it. The place to start that fan club is with the first person to read and understand the story. That is by definition the creator.

So here is a fact that crackles like the fire consuming earlier drafts: love your work. Popular or not, accepted or not, it represents years of a life and the mining of deep emotional veins. No matter what happens, no matter what anyone says, these six books and whatever might come later, are products of inspiration and a commitment to do something no one else can. Lots of people write books, but no one else can write my books!

Mea Culpa

CLEVELAND [May 31, 2006] --- The corrasion was relentless: this is no time to drudge the sour lake of war, especially Americans at war. The previous story hit hard and there was a point to be made.

It was the wrong time. Right place, but wrong time.

The book shelves, end caps and standees are filled with opinion about this conflict. Blogs are as numerous as sand in that brutal desert. One more changes nothing. But the piece previously in this space misrepresents the writer.

We’ve seen it before, the changing face of war. Not the face of those young men and women who bravely pile on the heavy armor and confront a population as unpredictable as the equipment they are issued. It is the face we show them when they return home. In the beginning there were lots of anonymous thank yous, even a surprise gift of paying a dinner check and other gestures. It happened all over the country and one can only hope it is happening still.

So here’s a pledge: starting today that relentless show of gratitude returns for those in uniform. Secretly pay a grocery bill at the check-out, perhaps throw the debit card in for a fill up; say and show real appreciation for the sacrifices they have made.

Heroes come in all sizes and do all kinds of jobs. For whatever reason, there is not a man or woman in the service of this country who did not ask to serve. This is not 1969. And no matter the geo-politics or the ultimate judgment of history, they deserve our respect.

No one asked for this, except the better part that exists in all of us. We know when something is right and when something is misguided or simply dead wrong.

That essay was inappropriate and for that I am truly sorry.

What is appropriate is the acknowledgement of those who have passed from this life having left a little of themselves behind. They have left the world a better place; a place with a little more freedom and a little less fear. They were soldiers, sailors, members of the Air Force, the Coast Guard, the National Guard and Marines.

They are our rock.

Song My: Sadly Sung Again

CLEVELAND [May 30, 2006] --- The fellow at the counter seems nice enough. Balding with thick folds of skin constricting his eyes and perhaps his vision, Bill meets a stranger with wariness. “You gonna buy something, or you just fishing.” It is not a question, more a well rehearsed response to a constant trickle of the curious who, with little or no research, track him down over the years. “I don’t talk about that stuff no more. Never did, really.” The rest of the sentence would have gone something like this: “now if you ain’ta looking for a watch or a ring, I’ll ask you to leave my store.” But this is different. He is not the focus of national indictment and scorn. History has moved on and most have forgotten the name so prominently associated with the Greatest Blunder inside the metaphor for A Great Mistake made by the Greatest Military ever conceived. Now Bill Calley Jr. is an expert witness, a fraternity of one with a unique point of view toward a revolving history.

This is, of course, hyperbole. The visit to the small jewelry store in Columbus, Georgia exists only in imagination; though the former Lt. William Calley Jr. – the man convicted of massacring 109 civilians in the Vietnamese hamlet of Song My, known as My Lai - was last reported in just such a job. And there have been many blunders in wars, by all armies; most gone unreported. When the primary task is to kill people and break things, there is no such thing as neat and clean. When the goal is to pacify, there is no gentle way to proceed. It is the very nature of warfare that feeds atrocities. But this military is great because it represents freedom, at least more freedom than routinely experienced in most places. And it does not come to conquer. Not anymore. No matter how you feel about the current events, any reasonable person must concede to that. From Sherman’s March to the Sea, to the fire-bombing of Dresden, this country, our country, has done horrible things in war. The citizens of this country do horrible things in time of peace. Yet when the greatest evil is heaped upon the act, it is often the motivation that is sited. And there you have a Great Debate, if that is your desire.

Motivation, wisdom, imperative, even legality of the War in Iraq is not the focus here. Those things are challenged bloody in an arena where there is no clear winner.

So setting that aside, unless you are among those fomenting revolution – and there are many – or you have your ticket to Canada and a nice place in the Saskatchewan River Valley all staked out, then lets own up to being Americans. It’s not that difficult. When African Americans had the chance to pick up and leave the country that had enslaved them, all but a hand-full decided to ride out the storm. Most are glad great grandmother and great grandfather made the choices and sacrifices they did.

Now comes Haditha and the Anbar Province; a fantasy writer could dream up deadly dunes and strange aboriginal warriors just from the names alone. These are real places with real blood and bone and real heartbreak. To hear soldiers and marines tell it, it is the hell hole in the middle of the sandbox. Your mind goes first, then you watch yourself do things you could not even imagine doing a few months, a few days before. Here it appears that marines went mad. Mad with fear, frustration, anger, poor training or poor command; it does not really matter. For at least five hours they owned that dusty town and exacted revenge. 19 marines had died in one form or another within a kilometer of the town of Haditha over the previous ninety days. And to the minds of the men who tried in vain to patrol and control the area, there were no innocents. They nearly matched their fallen in dead Iraqis, body for body, some women and children. These are the facts.

In My Lai the villagers were lined up in front of irrigation ditches and mowed down. A group of soldiers – American soldiers - experiencing what is often called the psychosis of battle did horrible things; and those men who are still alive today cannot escape the nightmare. They became a mob with blood blindness; a collective killing machine. The village was burned to the ground and in doing so ignited our country’s darkest days.

The black fire burns again. The marines who swept through Haditha are vastly different from the platoon of misguided and miserable that pillaged in the jungle almost forty years ago. These men actually used their training to carry out what in hindsight can only be called an atrocity. What they saw then, in the moment of attack and counter attack, in the place where killing seemed the only course of action, only they know with certainty.

Soon we will have a new Lt. Calley. A new face of American recklessness will appear on TV screens around the world. Perhaps for the first time he will be a Marine, sharply dressed and standing plank straight. He will take his punishment, in the current climate, perhaps the ultimate punishment. And some will say, “see? See what happens when mighty, arrogant America goes to war on false pretenses?” But others will say, “see? This is the face of war, any war.”

This is us.

2006

Making History

CLEVELAND [June 1, 2005] -- A man shoots a President. It was a practice that ushered in the modern era, from McKinley to Reagan. The three men who took dead-aim at commanders-in-chief, and the one who brought down a would be President Robert Kennedy, were all part of the small secret society known as the Knights Templar of America, a discredited group with no affiliation to the famous European defenders of the Holy Sea. So they say. What if the man who threatens the life of Mrs. Clinton (or Ms. Rice, if you prefer) as she takes the oath of the highest office in the land was captured and subjected to the most sophisticated interrogation technique ever devised? In his hallucinogenically induced cooperative state, he tells the whole story. Thus “A Group of the A” is seeded and ready to write.

Of course none of the above is true, except that four men did either succeed or attempt to kill Presidents and a would-be President in the twentieth century. The rest is the framework of a story yet written, at least in that form. The intriguing aspect to A Group of the A is that if it were written, and done well enough – marketed well enough - to gain popularity, then how long would it take for the premise to be debated, debunked, revived and ultimately become part of the American groupthink?

In this the Age of Giga-transfer Rates, information is not only shared, it takes on a life of its own and becomes reality by sheer mass. A game show produces a pop star, another game show creates a mogul, a movie creates a culture, a wildly popular novel spawns a near Christian schism, and a faulty news story causes multiple deaths. History has developed a unique form of ontogeny, grown from the pieces and parts that are both fact and fiction. What is astonishing is that this process is speeding exponentially toward the point where the distillation of truth can no longer be trusted. And history is as short as the last sentence – the last word – and as pliant as the imagination.

Any good story, like any good lie, has just enough truth to cast a shadow of reality. Even science fiction relies on theories of advanced technology; fantasy is anchored in well-known myth and legend, and mystery and thrillers feed on real human fear. So for the writer to discover a little known fact, or a part of history that remains off-stage, and develop a story from it, he or she already has a distinct advantage.

Again, there is that “What If” we all seem to ask when sitting down to a blank page.

This persistent PM member currently has a big What If on the screen. It is fueled by the notion that a part of American history is so painful and so misunderstood that it defies reason, which makes it infinitely attractive as a backdrop. The topic is Slavery and it is almost never discussed without flaming passions. Even within that era of cruelty and incalculable divisions between men, there were realities that to this day are hidden beneath a blanket of shame. Rape was common. Children born of white slavers to their property were also common, and the practice of infanticide, especially males, was widespread.

The Window

CLEVELAND [June 3, 2005] -- The music of 1972 was something of a cosmic convergence. From The Allman Brothers’ Eat a Peach to Stevie Wonder’s Talking Book; Todd Rundgren’s masterpiece Something/Anything and the debut of Eagles and America, the year was a creative tsunami, with most riffs and rhythms still filling the air. The Best Seller list from that year defines an era. Fredrick Forsyth led the way for so many thrill riders with his Odessa File. and The Day of the Jackal and Herman Wouk’s filled in historical blanks with the dramatic Winds of War. 1972 was the first time anyone heard I’m OK, You’re OK, or dare speak of the Atkins Diet or Open Marriages. It was what this observer calls A Window; a time when creativity peaks. Some take part, some watch, but all are swept up in the change.

In the most recent contribution to Pop Culture, Malcolm Gladwell (Blink, The Tipping Point) has discovered that human existence is not without certain patterns. A keen observer and wonderful writer and journalist, Gladwell has made a fortune peeling back the onion skin and revealing that the true engine that drives us all is not a constant flow of direct current, but rather a wave of energy that overtakes us and carries us along in its relentless wake. Like unfettered buoys on a rough sea, most are not even aware of the change in perspective and the rise or drop in abilities. And in spite of all our protestations, this is a single engine, not several billion little ones each with individual direction and purpose. One might say that even in his intellectual zeal and brilliant compositions - and perhaps contrary to his intent - Malcolm has proven the existence of God.

Creativity is God’s way of opening The Box. Each of us has finite talents and finite time to make good use of them. Perhaps one of the most creative and innovative performances of the last two decades is Blue Man Group. A recent trip to Chicago - a favorite destination - afforded an opportunity to sit tenth-row center for this amazing display. One could not help but wonder how these original three men, Chris Wink, Phil Stanton and Matt Goldman, discovered the combination of music, mischief and innocence and twisted the recipe into a prime example of collective creativity. Most audience members willingly loose their individuality and become the fourth Blue Man. As with so much true art and true innovation, the results are infectious and lasting.

All creative trends have one thing in common: they are never discovered by those seeking their path. What is commonly called Research – especially market research - does not measure the current flow of the collective; it merely analyzes the road already traveled. Like a detective studying the debris left behind by the course of events, it is nearly impossible to predict road ahead. Mr. Gladwell so much as admits that the process is not a thinking one, but a series of decisions made in the Blink of an eye.

Creativity is not part of the wall that contains our lives; it is the periodic window that comes along quite unexpectedly. Unfortunately, most are blinded by the sudden glare and disturbed by the break in the smooth patterns and predictable surfaces that is The Box. But sometimes, whether by circumstance, courage or insanity, we become fixated on the window and the possibilities that exist beyond self-imposed boundaries. Few are lucky enough to recognize this event, and fewer are willing or able to take advantage. But there comes a time when the pent-up energy of innovation and ideas, of new perspectives and the desire to break free is so overwhelming that it carries all of us along. That is when things change in dramatic ways. That is when the window of opportunity becomes the opening to endless possibilities.

Here’s the dirty little secret. After generations of this, a new race of women – mostly women – appeared in the south. These exotic women were desired by the white men of the towns, farms and plantations and shunned by many of the black men for a variety of reasons. Not the least of which was angering the top of the food chain and the very real threat of beatings, castration and even death. After a time, these women began hiding their children and, if they were white enough, sending them north to avoid the pain of slavery and the stigma placed upon them by family on both sides of the color line. What became of these people; too white to be black yet with a genealogy that was well-known at home? What if they had taken a different path to freedom; met a different type of benefactor and settled into an entirely different post-slavery existence? It happened, you know. Much of the outline above was quite real over more than two centuries of The American Disgrace.

The great William Faulkner toyed with the idea in a number of novels, most clearly in Light In August. But nowhere is the treatment quite the same. Nowhere are the details quite so intimate. Yet for this writer, there is a world unfolding; a history that must have been, yet never taught. What happened, and how these facts are twisted into Evidence of a Restless Spirit, the near finished sixth book in The Radio Murders™ Series, just might be history’s different story.

Crashing The Party

CLEVELAND [June 7, 2005] -- Most of us know what it’s like to stand outside while the party raves on. The shadows in the windows, the lovers spilling out onto the grass, the smell of cologne soup, smoke and booze, perhaps even more exotic and alluring aromas, all seem to mock one's underdeveloped sense of self. You couldn’t possibly fit in, you silently scold, even holding the bottle of mid-shelf bourbon and a pocket full of pills. Your clothes aren’t right, you’re too fat, your penis (tits) is too small, you kiss like a carp, you’re too white, too black, too Asian, too short, too tall, there is something wrong, you should be parking cars and taking tips. You should dissolve into the ether and provide the worthy a breath or two.

You are nobody.

That’s what they would have you believe, those revelers inside; the ones with books on the tables and posters in electric frames. And it is not even the ones with their names gloriously bantered about who posit the notion that there is no more room at the table. Hardly, they were here not that long ago, watching the flow of human exuberance fill the mansions and penthouses and four-star party rooms. They know what you feel, or at least did, and they need you. Not as a peer, but as a paying admirer, willing the dive into the covers, marvel at the ineptness of the prose and come away thinking, believing, I can do that!

Perhaps, perhaps not. There is nuance in success, intangibles in art that makes it attractive, compelling and marketable. That essence escapes you while the moment presses hard, and there seems no chance, no chance at all that you can ever be them.

Then something happens. Someone says something that is not completely discouraging, not totally dismissive and not baffling on its face. You get an agent (although others tell you they aren’t worth the paper the contract is written on) and you finish another chapter. You become lost in your work. And it is working. You fall in love with a character, you hate another and the clash makes your heart race and your fingers speed over the keys.

You don’t care what they think. This stuff is good, very good! Yet the party raves on. And you know that even if you are not invited, you need them. This is not a hobby, something you do after nine hours of doing something else. It is the red cells to the workday white corpuscles; right now you need both, but with a little luck, a little help, you can generate all you need by writing your stories.

So you yell! You scream like a banshee and prance around as though having a seizure, right there on the sidewalk. You threaten the late-comers and spy on the lovers, now fully engaged behind the azalea. You do things you would never do. In the real world that means marketing yourself. Take out an ad; write a blog, or something resembling a blog - minus the personal pronouns; develop contacts and email religiously. Never spam, but make interesting observations that promote a positive image. You rewrite your manuscript, making it as good as it can possibly be, polished and interesting. Irresistible. Never mind that they tell you the party is for buggy makers at the dawn of the automobile; just so much room for the shrinking market, just so many names on the shrinking book aisles at Wal-Mart. Books have been around for centuries. They said radio would kill them, it did not. They said movies would replace them, they did not. They said TV would surely render them obsolete, didn’t happen. Now they say the Internet will swing the final hammer-blow, nailing the final nail. Maybe, maybe not. But before you close up shop; before you sell off your presses and trade them for servers; do you think you have time for one more name on the roster? One more title on the table, one more poster on the curtain? Before the doom that has been predicted since Gutenberg fashioned the “A” finally happens… can you help a brother out?

I Got Your Cozy

CLEVELAND [June 10, 2005] -- As stressful as it is to receive rejection, it is a part of a writer's life. We hear gruesome stories of now famous authors dealing with years of rejection before one editor finally sees through the cotton candy of convention and gives this new voice a chance. The editor, his or her imprint and the author are later described having a good laugh while sipping Roederer Cristal at the party celebrating a new Lead Title. It happens, but perhaps not as often as those in the business of selling dreams would have us believe. We can collect rejections by the ream, but we only need one acceptance. It was a particularly interesting rejection that began this thought-stream. That and some astute observations offered by Sarah Weinman from her listening post at BookExpo America.

The rejection was from Penguin/Berkley Press in declining The Murder gods, book five in the series. It was useful only in the sense that it specified the type of work they are accepting these days: “Over time our mystery program has become more and more reliant on cozies.” For those who find this delineation as jolting as did this PM member, here is a definition from mystery writer and editor Stephen D. Rogers “A cozy is a mystery which includes a bloodless crime and contains very little violence, sex, or coarse language. By the end of the story, the criminal is punished and order is restored to the community.”

Humm, really?

This is exactly not what one finds in any volume of The Radio Murders. This is the romance version of murder. It is Nancy Drew and Murder She Wrote. It is fine for some, but this dreamer of delightful nightmares would rather wrap sandwiches at Subway (what kind of cheese do you want?) That is not to say that composing these small tales of confusion and personal drama is not worthy of the business they attract. There is plenty of room, one hopes, for many different methods and voices. Literary agent and PM member Deborah Carter specifically asks for cozies to stay out of her in-box. Ms. Carter is someone who is quite relatable in that she came from the Recording Industry, as this writer came from Radio. There are few places where cut-throat is more aptly applied, and where competition is a contact sport.

Then there was the observation made by Ms. Weinman as she stalked this year’s BEA. Ms. Weinman seemed to suggest that the avenue to the general mystery reader was widening, not collapsing as so many feared. Although she lamented that this fact seemed lost on the pros. Sarah wrote: In a way, each panelist had a wildly different perspective that was both good and bad…. ( USA Today’s Carol) Memmott's view of the mystery world is so geared towards the big-name authors (it was almost a joke how many times she mentioned Michael Connelly's name) that it seemed irrelevant (and dangerously close to being out of touch) since mystery readers are looking more for people who they haven't heard of yet.

Looking for new authors? That seems to fly in the face of what publishers are telling us. It is the established authors who get consideration, while the new authors - even the agented ones - are climbing over each other like lost souls in the horrible sand. Yet evidence exists, at least anecdotally, that Ms. Weinman is correct. There is a thirst for new mysteries and a half-life for established authors in equal proportions. We seek out new thrills and new characters with new warts, who live in places in which no respectable person would ever venture except in a good story. It is perhaps a conceit, but the inside of Radio, and the mentality that would gladly travel the third circle of Hell for ratings, is just such a place: quite interesting, sometimes riveting, but never cozy.

This is a violent world. In spite of revisionism and selective memory, it has always been and probably always will be. The language and behavior of desperate people in desperate situations are to this recovering alcoholic, like Jack Daniels was in a former life: wonderful and deadly. There are many ways to break into publishing, if one is to believe the thousands of books, newsletters and websites devoted to creating such a career. But none will deliver the kind of satisfaction we seek unless it involves honest, diligent and unyielding self-expression. In the greater examination of a body of work, the only thing that survives the slashes of envy and ego is the little bit of you embedded in each sentence.