It’s Pearl Harbor Day, which means it is also the real-life birthday of the non-real-life character who has consumed more of my time than any other over the past several years. Yes, it was thirty-nine years ago today that a somewhat depressed Dallas Green celebrated his twenty-eighth birthday in his San Francisco apartment with no one to share it with except a bottle of tequila and the ghost of his dead friend Lonnie.
As for this year, I cannot tell you exactly what Dallas is up to in the year 2019, but I do know that, if he is still alive, he turns 67 today.
I am again spending lots of quality time with Dallas. As of this writing, I have completed the first draft of no fewer than eleven chapters of the next installment of his trilogy. This means I am, relievedly, well over the psychologically significant, albeit arbitrary fifty-page threshold that has always resulted in a creative flow coming much more easily. In fact, at the moment this book nearly seems to be writing itself. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but so far I’m not complaining. I guess I have just lived with this character for so long and with the plot points of this particular book for so long that the first one-third is not quite the struggle of previous books.
The hard part is coming up. I have long had a clear beginning mapped out for this book, and there is also a clear ending as well as certain key moments in between. The rest is an assortment of black voids, waiting for me to find a way to fill in and connect one independent bit with a different one.
The first five chapters take place in June of 1993, and I’m afraid we find poor Dallas again in kind of a bad state, but then things start to look up. For those particularly concerned about his maturation process, I’m afraid that, while he is obviously older, he still seems not to be all that much wiser. Various bits of information are dropped as to what transpired during the twelve-and-a-half years since we previously him.
In the sixth chapter we are transported back to the moment where Lautaro’s Spear ended. We follow Dallas and Ángel to Chile to learn how that turned out. This provides your author an excuse for wallowing in nostalgia, as I immerse myself in my own personal memories of that country, the culture, the people, the Pinochet-era politics, and the pleasures of red wine and pisco.
One problem that keeps cropping up as a result of nailing down very specific dates in the story is that real-life history has a way of intruding. For example, I was well into my writing before it dawned on me that a particular, world-shattering news event occurred on the very same day that Lautaro’s Spear closed on—the day after Dallas’s twenty-seventh birthday. It was the sort of event that could not have possibly gone unremarked-on or could not have had a significant effect on Dallas and those around him. So I had to go back and do some re-writing to reflect this intrusion from the outside world.
As you may gather, this third installment of what now appears to be a trilogy is going to be more expansive the previous two in terms of the number of characters, the number of countries, and the number of years covered. In order not to raise hopes or expectations here, I have tried—and apparently now failed—to avoid using the word epic.
Since this book will presumably appeal mainly to readers of the first two books, I have made a conscious effort to include a lot of what these days is called fan service. I’m not certain, however, this it is not actually the same thing as author service. In other words, I’m including a lot of things that I want to see in the book, while working under the impression that it is also what fans (and I use the term advisedly) want to see in the book.
Anyway, I am getting way ahead of myself. At the rate I usually go, we are still a long way from this book—which still does not have a title, by the way, even a working one for my own use—seeing the light of day. D3, as it is called in my notes, for 2020 or 2021?
In the meantime, if you are stuck for a holiday gift for the readers in your life, I humbly remind you that there are still virtually endless supplies, in both paper and digital formats, of this year’s novel, The Curse of Septimus Bridge. I like to think it is kind of epic too.
Links to sellers are somewhere on this page if you can find them.
My Books
“I actually could not put the book down. It is well written and kept my interest. I want more from this author.”
Reader review of Maximilian and Carlotta Are Dead on Amazon.com
All books available in paperback from Afranor Books on Bookshop.org.
See below on the right-hand side of this page for links to other sellers.
Saturday, December 7, 2019
Friday, November 1, 2019
The Playlist of Septimus Bridge
If you are about to read (or reread) The Curse of Septimus Bridge, here is some good news. Now you can listen to music while you read it. Of course, you were always able to do that, but now you can listen to music that was specifically chosen to invoke the book.
Two years ago when Lautaro’s Spear was published, I shared a Spotify playlist of music I had listened to while writing it. A bit belatedly, I am now doing the same for Septimus.
I do not burden you with the entire list I had playing. That one ran a total of eight-and-a-half hours—enough to ensure that, most days anyway, I did not have to hear the same piece of music more than once. The list I now share with readers is less sprawling and more carefully curated. Comprising thirty-two tracks, it clocks in at just under two hours.
I am not sure if anyone could read the book in two hours, and even if you could, I do not think the various tracks would fall in at the appropriate places, so it is not recommended that you use the playlist as a pacing tool.
Some of the songs were obvious, indeed, inevitable choices. Three—“Maria” by Blondie, “Lola” by the Kinks, and “Bella María de Mi Alma” by Los Lobos—are actually referenced in the novel. Some music is there simply to set the mood. Soundtrack music was included from a couple of television influences, specifically Robert Cobert’s score for the original Dark Shadows series, Danny Elfman’s music from the 2012 Tim Burton movie version, and also a Johnny Jewel contribution to the recent revival of Twin Peaks. Other tracks were included because they tied in nicely with events depicted in the story. For example, who knew that Electric Light Orchestra once recorded a track called “The Battle of Marston Moor”?
A few tracks were selected purely because of their titles and, happily, they also fit in with the general mood of things. How lucky to find suitable tracks with titles like “Septimus” (from the soundtrack of Matthew Vaughn’s Stardust), “Astaroth,” “Justine’s Theme” (from the soundtrack of Ben Wheatley’s Free Fire), “Izanami,” “Koschei,” and “Netherworld.” As it happens, Septimus in Stardust was played Mark Strong, and he would not be a bad choice to play Septimus Bridge. Also, Justine in Free Fire was played by Brie Larson (no relation), and she would not be a bad choice to play, well, just about anyone in the book.
As unlikely as it might seem, one track appears on both the Lautaro’s Spear playlist and on the Septimus Bridge one. Elvis Costello’s “Oliver’s Army” appeared on the former because the song was actually mentioned in the book. It appears on the latter because of its connection to historical events depicted in the story.
As with the previous playlist, interested filmmakers are invited to peruse it for possible soundtrack material after a movie deal has been negotiated. Also, it would be good if you have Mark and Brie’s phone numbers in your rolodex.
Two years ago when Lautaro’s Spear was published, I shared a Spotify playlist of music I had listened to while writing it. A bit belatedly, I am now doing the same for Septimus.
I do not burden you with the entire list I had playing. That one ran a total of eight-and-a-half hours—enough to ensure that, most days anyway, I did not have to hear the same piece of music more than once. The list I now share with readers is less sprawling and more carefully curated. Comprising thirty-two tracks, it clocks in at just under two hours.
I am not sure if anyone could read the book in two hours, and even if you could, I do not think the various tracks would fall in at the appropriate places, so it is not recommended that you use the playlist as a pacing tool.
Some of the songs were obvious, indeed, inevitable choices. Three—“Maria” by Blondie, “Lola” by the Kinks, and “Bella María de Mi Alma” by Los Lobos—are actually referenced in the novel. Some music is there simply to set the mood. Soundtrack music was included from a couple of television influences, specifically Robert Cobert’s score for the original Dark Shadows series, Danny Elfman’s music from the 2012 Tim Burton movie version, and also a Johnny Jewel contribution to the recent revival of Twin Peaks. Other tracks were included because they tied in nicely with events depicted in the story. For example, who knew that Electric Light Orchestra once recorded a track called “The Battle of Marston Moor”?
A few tracks were selected purely because of their titles and, happily, they also fit in with the general mood of things. How lucky to find suitable tracks with titles like “Septimus” (from the soundtrack of Matthew Vaughn’s Stardust), “Astaroth,” “Justine’s Theme” (from the soundtrack of Ben Wheatley’s Free Fire), “Izanami,” “Koschei,” and “Netherworld.” As it happens, Septimus in Stardust was played Mark Strong, and he would not be a bad choice to play Septimus Bridge. Also, Justine in Free Fire was played by Brie Larson (no relation), and she would not be a bad choice to play, well, just about anyone in the book.
As unlikely as it might seem, one track appears on both the Lautaro’s Spear playlist and on the Septimus Bridge one. Elvis Costello’s “Oliver’s Army” appeared on the former because the song was actually mentioned in the book. It appears on the latter because of its connection to historical events depicted in the story.
As with the previous playlist, interested filmmakers are invited to peruse it for possible soundtrack material after a movie deal has been negotiated. Also, it would be good if you have Mark and Brie’s phone numbers in your rolodex.
Wednesday, September 25, 2019
Back on the Apology Train
How times flies. This month marks five years since the release of the paperback version of Maximilian and Carlotta Are Dead. That half-decade certainly went by quickly.
The paperback’s appearance followed by nearly three months the book’s debut in Kindle format. As with my latest book, The Curse of Septimus Bridge, I initially published the electronic version of Max & Carly exclusively for the Kindle. That exclusivity period ended three months later with the appearance of other digital versions in other online stores.
The paperback version of Max & Carly was actually something of an afterthought. I had bought into the idea that paper books were on the way out and the future was digital and so had not bothered with a physical edition. Enough people, however, kept asking for a paperback that I finally gave in—and happily so in the end. Still, Kindle sales of my books have always outpaced paperback sales—at least so far. I have to say that at this point the paper edition of Septimus is performing with surprising strength vis-à-vis the digital version.
This month also marks four years since the beginning of my first book apology tour. Partly tongue-in-cheek, partly sincere, the tour was my attempt to make amends to anyone who might have found offense in the narrative—notably bad language and extensive incidences of somewhat toxic adolescent masculinity.
Happily, there is not nearly as much toxic masculinity in The Curse of Septimus Bridge, but inevitably, there are things that could rub some people the wrong way. Allow me now to enumerate them and preemptively excuse myself.
• Gender Appropriation: Unlike my first three novels, the main character—and several others—are female. This made writing the book a satisfying experience for me because it was a welcome change of pace writing-wise and an invigorating challenge for my creative abilities. At the same time, I am aware that there are people out there who feel strongly that characters of certain nationalities, ethnicities, and yes, genders should not be appropriated by others. If that is how you feel, I am sorry. For the record, I myself personally prefer to read female characters written by females, but on the other hand, I am also a believer that there should be no limits on artistic creativity. All people should be able to write about or play on the stage or in film any character. In my next book, though, I will be back to my mostly masculine-centric ways.
• Nationality Appropriation: While I am at it, then, I suppose I better apologize once again for attempting to portray Irish characters. The fact that I have lived in Ireland for 17 years and am married to an Irish woman does not give me any right to put words (awkwardly and inauthentically) in the mouths of fictional Irish people. It gets worse. In this particular book I also appropriate some of the most painful episodes in Irish history for the entertainment of my readers. And it gets worse still. I also owe apologies to the English, Canadians, and Russians and, while I’m at it, Anabaptists, Puritans, and demons from hell (who may actually be more sensitive than one might assume).
• Possible Transgender Insensitivity: There are no transgender characters in the book (that we know of anyway), but there is one sort-of reference in the very first chapter in which the main character, Lola Blumquist, expresses a dislike for the Kinks’ song with which she shares a name. “Well, I mean, it’s not really fair,” she says to Maria Murphy as they discuss eponymous record tracks. “You get a song that goes on and on about how totally cool Maria is, and I get the song about a transvestite.” Responds Maria insightfully, “Transvestites can be cool.” You can reasonably argue that modern young women like Lola and Maria would be more likely to refer to the song’s Lola as transgender, whereas transvestite would have been a more common description when the song was first released in 1970. Of course, transgender and transvestite are not the same thing. My Lola seems to assume that the Kinks’ Lola was a cis-gender man who happened to like dressing in women’s clothing rather than a woman who happened to be born in a man’s body. Is she correct? Only Ray Davies knows for sure, and even by his account he had done a fair amount of drinking when he came up with the lyrics. (A man after my own heart.) There is more dicey stuff about gender as the story proceeds, but that would involve spoilers. In any event and in all sincerity, no offense was intended.
• Insensitivity to the locals: I do not imagine that residents of the Ballard neighborhood in Seattle will have taken offense to how it was portrayed in the book. The residents of Riesgado Island, on the other hand, will probably be far less forgiving. Even less clear, though, is how people along the Galway-Mayo border are taking it. My wife, who never reads my books until a proof copy of the paperback arrives by post, was aghast to find a few local place names littered about the text. “The neighbours won’t like it if you draw Satanists on them,” she warned. I’m keeping my fingers crossed and hoping they will keep things in perspective. In the history of film and literature, I think other foreign writers have done much worse to the Irish. I do not think I quite tipped over into Darby O’Gill territory. Probably the biggest chance I took was having the title character be a fawning admirer of Oliver Cromwell.
There are probably other things I should apologize for, but that will suffice for now. If you have not read The Curse of Septimus Bridge, please do so now and let me know which part in particular offended you.
The paperback’s appearance followed by nearly three months the book’s debut in Kindle format. As with my latest book, The Curse of Septimus Bridge, I initially published the electronic version of Max & Carly exclusively for the Kindle. That exclusivity period ended three months later with the appearance of other digital versions in other online stores.
The paperback version of Max & Carly was actually something of an afterthought. I had bought into the idea that paper books were on the way out and the future was digital and so had not bothered with a physical edition. Enough people, however, kept asking for a paperback that I finally gave in—and happily so in the end. Still, Kindle sales of my books have always outpaced paperback sales—at least so far. I have to say that at this point the paper edition of Septimus is performing with surprising strength vis-à-vis the digital version.
This month also marks four years since the beginning of my first book apology tour. Partly tongue-in-cheek, partly sincere, the tour was my attempt to make amends to anyone who might have found offense in the narrative—notably bad language and extensive incidences of somewhat toxic adolescent masculinity.
Happily, there is not nearly as much toxic masculinity in The Curse of Septimus Bridge, but inevitably, there are things that could rub some people the wrong way. Allow me now to enumerate them and preemptively excuse myself.
• Gender Appropriation: Unlike my first three novels, the main character—and several others—are female. This made writing the book a satisfying experience for me because it was a welcome change of pace writing-wise and an invigorating challenge for my creative abilities. At the same time, I am aware that there are people out there who feel strongly that characters of certain nationalities, ethnicities, and yes, genders should not be appropriated by others. If that is how you feel, I am sorry. For the record, I myself personally prefer to read female characters written by females, but on the other hand, I am also a believer that there should be no limits on artistic creativity. All people should be able to write about or play on the stage or in film any character. In my next book, though, I will be back to my mostly masculine-centric ways.
• Nationality Appropriation: While I am at it, then, I suppose I better apologize once again for attempting to portray Irish characters. The fact that I have lived in Ireland for 17 years and am married to an Irish woman does not give me any right to put words (awkwardly and inauthentically) in the mouths of fictional Irish people. It gets worse. In this particular book I also appropriate some of the most painful episodes in Irish history for the entertainment of my readers. And it gets worse still. I also owe apologies to the English, Canadians, and Russians and, while I’m at it, Anabaptists, Puritans, and demons from hell (who may actually be more sensitive than one might assume).
• Possible Transgender Insensitivity: There are no transgender characters in the book (that we know of anyway), but there is one sort-of reference in the very first chapter in which the main character, Lola Blumquist, expresses a dislike for the Kinks’ song with which she shares a name. “Well, I mean, it’s not really fair,” she says to Maria Murphy as they discuss eponymous record tracks. “You get a song that goes on and on about how totally cool Maria is, and I get the song about a transvestite.” Responds Maria insightfully, “Transvestites can be cool.” You can reasonably argue that modern young women like Lola and Maria would be more likely to refer to the song’s Lola as transgender, whereas transvestite would have been a more common description when the song was first released in 1970. Of course, transgender and transvestite are not the same thing. My Lola seems to assume that the Kinks’ Lola was a cis-gender man who happened to like dressing in women’s clothing rather than a woman who happened to be born in a man’s body. Is she correct? Only Ray Davies knows for sure, and even by his account he had done a fair amount of drinking when he came up with the lyrics. (A man after my own heart.) There is more dicey stuff about gender as the story proceeds, but that would involve spoilers. In any event and in all sincerity, no offense was intended.
• Insensitivity to the locals: I do not imagine that residents of the Ballard neighborhood in Seattle will have taken offense to how it was portrayed in the book. The residents of Riesgado Island, on the other hand, will probably be far less forgiving. Even less clear, though, is how people along the Galway-Mayo border are taking it. My wife, who never reads my books until a proof copy of the paperback arrives by post, was aghast to find a few local place names littered about the text. “The neighbours won’t like it if you draw Satanists on them,” she warned. I’m keeping my fingers crossed and hoping they will keep things in perspective. In the history of film and literature, I think other foreign writers have done much worse to the Irish. I do not think I quite tipped over into Darby O’Gill territory. Probably the biggest chance I took was having the title character be a fawning admirer of Oliver Cromwell.
There are probably other things I should apologize for, but that will suffice for now. If you have not read The Curse of Septimus Bridge, please do so now and let me know which part in particular offended you.
Monday, August 26, 2019
From Minnie to Marilyn to Author
Sometimes it seems as though all I do on this blog is talk about my book(s), but I guess that kind of makes sense since this is, after all, my book blog. Once in a while, though, for a change of pace I like to talk about someone else’s book. This is such an occasion.
Back in January, through the magic of social media, I got re-acquainted with someone I had not heard from or about since I was in high school with her. She re-connected with me because she had noticed that I had been writing and publishing books. Like a lot of people, she had been wanting to write her own life story. In fact, she had already written the first chapter—thirty years earlier. But like a lot of people, that was as far as she had gotten. If she was going to finish her book and get it published, she would need some advice and—I think perhaps more importantly—some encouragement. Fortunately for her, I could offer plenty of both.
Now, just seven months later, Marilyn J. Thomas’s labor and efforts have borne fruit. She has just published her memoir, which is called From Minnie to Marilyn. It tells her story from beginning to now, from her earliest memories in California to her current life in Oklahoma. And it is a rather extraordinary life. Born to a mother that could not care for her, she was raised by her grandmother, who passed away when Minniejean (as she was then known) was just a toddler, casting her into the foster care system.
As a writer, Marilyn has a gift for allowing us to experience the memories seared into her brain and to see events from her point of view in the relevant time and place. In spite of the serious disadvantages life threw at her early on, she persevered not only to become the first of her family to graduate from high school but to become one of two student speakers at her graduation ceremony. Her story is of particular interest to me not only because she and I come from the same place but also because it is fascinating to see rural California in the 1950s and 1960s through the eyes of an African-American. As it turns out, she also has a connection to my current home in that one of her great-great-grandfathers was slaveholder descended from Irish immigrants, so she is also Irish-American.
Despite her early educational success, much more lay in store for Marilyn—some of it happy, some of it harrowing. As she herself writes, “I had literally lived three lives in one. Yes, I had survived two marriages, the death of a child, and about three near-death-like experiences. I had lost two sets of parents—my grandparents, Mother Wesley, and my parents who raised me—but I felt that through it all I had been blessed.”
I am so proud of and happy for Marilyn that she undertook and completed this project. I know well from my own experience that writing a book is an extremely daunting task. When it is your own life story that you are telling, there is a major burden of dealing with feelings of vulnerability as you reveal so many details of your life—some of them quite intimate—for all to see.
A memoir like this is not only a lovely legacy to leave to one’s family (you can see four generations of Marilyn’s family on the book cover), but it can also provide an educational and thought-provoking experience for other readers as well.
Way to go, Marilyn!
You can find From Minnie to Marilyn on Amazon.com. You can click on this link for the paperback version , and you can click on this link for the Kindle version.
Back in January, through the magic of social media, I got re-acquainted with someone I had not heard from or about since I was in high school with her. She re-connected with me because she had noticed that I had been writing and publishing books. Like a lot of people, she had been wanting to write her own life story. In fact, she had already written the first chapter—thirty years earlier. But like a lot of people, that was as far as she had gotten. If she was going to finish her book and get it published, she would need some advice and—I think perhaps more importantly—some encouragement. Fortunately for her, I could offer plenty of both.
As a writer, Marilyn has a gift for allowing us to experience the memories seared into her brain and to see events from her point of view in the relevant time and place. In spite of the serious disadvantages life threw at her early on, she persevered not only to become the first of her family to graduate from high school but to become one of two student speakers at her graduation ceremony. Her story is of particular interest to me not only because she and I come from the same place but also because it is fascinating to see rural California in the 1950s and 1960s through the eyes of an African-American. As it turns out, she also has a connection to my current home in that one of her great-great-grandfathers was slaveholder descended from Irish immigrants, so she is also Irish-American.
Despite her early educational success, much more lay in store for Marilyn—some of it happy, some of it harrowing. As she herself writes, “I had literally lived three lives in one. Yes, I had survived two marriages, the death of a child, and about three near-death-like experiences. I had lost two sets of parents—my grandparents, Mother Wesley, and my parents who raised me—but I felt that through it all I had been blessed.”
I am so proud of and happy for Marilyn that she undertook and completed this project. I know well from my own experience that writing a book is an extremely daunting task. When it is your own life story that you are telling, there is a major burden of dealing with feelings of vulnerability as you reveal so many details of your life—some of them quite intimate—for all to see.
A memoir like this is not only a lovely legacy to leave to one’s family (you can see four generations of Marilyn’s family on the book cover), but it can also provide an educational and thought-provoking experience for other readers as well.
Way to go, Marilyn!
You can find From Minnie to Marilyn on Amazon.com. You can click on this link for the paperback version , and you can click on this link for the Kindle version.
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