Upon Attempting to Be a Novelist

All praise to any novelist who takes us out onto thin ice, under which large, dark shapes are discernibly swimming. Michael Cunningham

As a rule it is not a good idea to tell someone a story before you write it. Any comments or feedback will distort your vision before you have committed the words to paper or cyber-storage. About eight months ago I told two good friends and trusted critics the first part of my novel. I had what I thought were all 35,000 words written and I was interested in their reaction to the big reveal that finishes part one. Indeed it was at this point all of my large, dark shapes came into view and I did indeed have my readers out on very thin ice without them even noticing they had been led out onto a lake.

Unfortunately, neither of them liked the dark turn my story takes and I was concerned that the tale was way off track. So I turned back to the pages and began to edit, I could have simply changed the big reveal but I was sure I had it right. Must have been the lead-up twas lacking. After several weeks the 35,000 words had burgeoned to 63,000 and I sent the newly fattened part one out to six readers, including those same two I had verbally told the story. Lo and behold none of them were put off by the big reveal, in fact, the two who had been less than luke warm originally were glowing with their praise.


I pondered this for a few moments and realized I had attempted to condense my well structured dark forms into a two minute verbal summary. Clearly, darkness needs some time to build. I needed those thousands of words to lure my readers out onto the dangerously thin ice and then and only then to reveal the sinister shadows beneath them. 


Lesson learned, I ain't tellin' nobody no stories no more; at least not ones that are going to take hundreds of thousands of words to deliver all the darkness and shadows.

Shared Marginalia

A couple of months ago Amazon quietly announced public note sharing for their Kindle eReader. I was surprised they didn't make a bigger deal about this great leap forward. You can now read a book with a friend, friends or classmates and share each other's marginalia. I don't know if you have ever passed a book around with everyone adding to the margin notes but I can attest from several such ventures that it is well worth the time. The only drawback was waiting for your turn to get the book or being first in line with completely virgin pages. The last in the queue, of course, gets the full benefit of sharing everyone's thoughts, dreams, reflections and critique.

Now we can do it live and be updated as the group reads through the book in real time. Sure we all have to buy a Kindle or download the free app. to our laptop and upload the same book but trust me this is worth the effort. I assume all the eReaders will add this feature soon. 

Geographical separation will no longer limit the members of your book club; you can have an eBook Club. Who wants to read Heart of Darkness with me? Or the Foundation Trilogy? Or Catch-22? Or . . .

eReader

Consider this a double sided review, sort of like going to see a good movie at the drive-in. A twofer so to speak. First, the eReader I am reviewing is not the Kindle. I had my first experience with a Nook, the Barnes & Noble eReader. 

I must say I am not tempted to buy an eReader at this time but only because every tech prognosticator says they will be obsolete in a few short years, which in tech talk could mean next month. My personal experience with the Nook was very positive. The weight was more than a typical paperback but less than a hardcover book of any decent length. Holding it was no more or less cumbersome than holding the equivalent book. Being able to adjust the font size is a huge plus, I mean HUGE.

I did use an added clip-on light for late night reading but it's the same one I use to read a book, so no big disadvantage there. The charge lasted a good long time even if I forgot to give it morning nursing time from the electronic nipple. Truly an all around positive experience, if I wasn't sure every laptop, tablet and device to be named later will not have the same capacity by the next holiday cycle, I would buy one.

Now to the books I read on the Nook. I know you know that Arthur C. Clarke wrote 2001; you probably also know he wrote a sequel 2010 made into the Roy Scheider and John Lithgow movie, which Clarke was not associated with. Sir Arthur also wrote 2061 and I have recently learned 3001. I read as far as 2061. However, he along with Stephen Baxter wrote another three novels that "will do for time what 2001 did for space." Well sort of, that's a big boot to fill, but I will concede that the three "time books" are worth the read for SF fans of Clarke. Titles: Time's Eye, Sunstorm, First Born. I do strongly suggest that you not read any reviews; they all want to give away the big turn in the first book, which really needs to be experienced in the context of the story.

I must add one caveat: if you are a reader who is disappointed when a well written book fails to deliver an ending that gives you complete story closure then this series may not be your cup of tea. But for sheer SF entertainment, I would put them on my Nook or Kindle or beach blanket.

The Girl Who Played with the Dragon's Nest

Have you read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo? If yes, then have you read the sequel - The Girl Who Played with Fire? and, of course, having read two you must have gotten to the final book - The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. All three remain in the top 30 on Amazon nearly three years after Dragon Tattoo (english version) was released. 


So I have a question - why? 


The writing is not brilliant nor is the mystery unique. A New Yorker article attempted to answer the question: Why Do People Love Stieg Larsson novels? An interesting article that poses even more question than I have and informs us that Larsson may have planned a series of 10 novels with these characters but he died having completely only these three.


I think the answer has to come from the lead female character - Lisbeth Salander. With a Nazi monster for a father, victim of all sorts of abuse; childhood and contemporary, tough, smart, silent and a feminist of a very unique pedigree. The attraction to the books must be a strong affinity to the girl with the dragon tattoo.


For me the books were interesting beach reads, though I consumed them during this northern california winter. The setting in Sweden meant readers are exposed to a different corrupt government than Russia, China, U.S. or Vatican City; that was refreshing. You never get a really good dose of neo-Nazism at work in American novels.


But after the change of setting, the novels are not particularly well written politico-mysteries. No, it has to be the girl in the titles. Don't get me wrong, the stories are good, at times very good; but the delivery is weak. The New Yorker article summarizes all the controversy about who may have helped with the editing of Larsson's original drafts. There is much agreement that he had more than substantive editing revisions to get the books to their current condition.


But even with a gang of editors the books really are nothing unique. Not a single orc to be found, nor actual dragon to be slain or ridden.


Can someone explain this to me?

Literature on the Road

One perk of my semi-nomadic wanderings is that I get to sample the daily lifestyles of the friends and family I visit, including their choice in literature and periodicals. Right now, here in Lake Shastina, California the magazine selection includes two of my favorites: National Geographic and Discover. And while I will go home with a box of older editions, I thought I would share with you the January/February lead story in Discover - The Year in Science: 100 Top Stories of 2010.

To pick my favorite story I had to skip a couple of NASA tales, which I am very fond of, particularly those with photographs from the Hubble. There were also several fossil finds, which made us several tens of millions of years older and set the dinosaurs back nine digits in human years. There were solar planes and green cities; avian optical illusions and rocks in Death Valley that move.

But being the anthropocentric fool that I am, I had to go with a finding from neuroscience about another capacity of the human brain. We know we can measure the neural response in the human brain to nearly any stimuli. So a test was done to first notice the neural activity via fMRI when someone told a vivid memory from their life. Next a group of volunteers were scanned as they listened to a tape of that same memory. 

Two results were discovered. First, the more closely a listener paid attention to the story the more their own brain activity mirrored that of the original story teller. Attention was measured by a follow-up questionnaire. Even more interesting was the discovery that among the most attentive listeners, "key brain regions lit up before the words even came out." Listeners were able to anticipate the coming direction of the story just as the original speaker would foretell their own tale. The short conclusion:

"The more you anticipate someone, the more you're able to enter their space."

For those interested this article is #78 in the top 100, titled: Good Listeners Get Inside Your Head.

30,000 Words or thereabouts

Last month while I was taking a break from blogging I was working on a novel. I had thought that by middle to late December I would have the first 30,000 words ready to send to my small cadre of readers for evaluation and critique. The way I have this novel structured there is a big reveal, a climax, a turning point at about a quarter of the way through the story. At least that is how I thought it was going to go.

Last night I reached that all important reveal at something over 60,000 words. A tad beyond the first one-third of the book and double the number of words I had expected to expel getting to that pivotal point in the story. Rather than make some arbitrary adjustment I decided to let the readers have at it. But I couldn't possibly throw sixty thousand words at readers who have done nothing wrong other than be my friend and let me have their email eddress.

So as a compromise I sent out three chapters, around 8,500 words. If anyone likes those I will supply the remainder. After all, if I can't hook you in three chapters why would you want to read more? I was reminded of that last night when I was looking around my friend's library for something new to read. I started four books and each time I tossed it aside when the author failed to grab my attention with the first chapter. One was so confusing I didn't get past the first page.

Why do some authors think they don't owe their audience some semblance of value. I paid for your talent, okay in this case my friend paid for it, but the point is - have some respect for the reading audience and give them something to hold on to.

Hopefully, my readers will find something to: sink their teeth into, wrap their arms around, dip their toes in, tickle their fancy, capture their spirit, let their heart take wing, or simply enjoy.

I'll let you know.

Away

Enjoy as many of the holidays as the waning of the calendar may bring your way.

We shall return in the new year.

Books, and more books

I don't usually do memes - but I can't resist this one. It seems such a strange collection of books.
I got the list  from Ampersand Duck

"Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.

Instructions:

Bold those books you’ve read in their entirety.

Italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish or read only an excerpt."

1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen

2. Lord of the Rings – JR Tolkien

3. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte

4. Harry Potter series – JK Rowling (have read the first 4. will read the rest... some day)

5. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

6. The Bible

7. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte

8. Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell

9. His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman

10. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

11. Little Women – Louisa M Alcott

12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy

13. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller

14. Complete Works of Shakespeare

15. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier

16. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien

17. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks

18. Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger

19. The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger

20. Middlemarch – George Eliot

21. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell

22. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald

23. Bleak House – Charles Dickens

24. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy

25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams

26. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh (maybe 12 - 14 times..)

27. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28. Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck

29. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll

30. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame

31. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy

32. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens

33. Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis

34. Emma – Jane Austen

35. Persuasion – Jane Austen

36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis

37. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini

38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres

39. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden

40. Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne

41. Animal Farm – George Orwell

42. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown (To my great shame!)

43. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving

45. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins

46. Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery

47. Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy

48. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

49. Lord of the Flies – William Golding

50. Atonement – Ian McEwan

51. Life of Pi – Yann Martel

52. Dune – Frank Herbert

53. Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons

54. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen

55. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth

56. The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57. A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

58. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon

60. Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

62. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov

63. The Secret History – Donna Tartt

64. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold

65. Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas

66. On The Road – Jack Kerouac

67. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy

68. Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding (blushes....)

69. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie

70. Moby Dick – Herman Melville

71. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens

72. Dracula – Bram Stoker

73. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett

74. Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson

75. Ulysses – James Joyce

76. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath

77. Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome

78. Germinal – Emile Zola (yes, really - but only 'cos I had to, at University)

79. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray

80. Possession – AS Byatt

81. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens

82. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell

83. The Color Purple – Alice Walker

84. The Remains of the Day – Kazu Ishiguro

85. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert

86. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry

87. Charlotte’s Web – EB White

88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom

89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90. The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton

91. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad

92. The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks

94. Watership Down – Richard Adams

95. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole

96. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute

97. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas

98. Hamlet – William Shakespeare

99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl

100. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

So... I've read rather more than 6. My mother used to read me Dickens as bedtime stories, so I guess I was programmed to read them again with great enjoyment as a teenager.  And I obviously went through a Jane Austen phase.
Of the ones I haven't read, I would have to say that none of them really appeals.

Leading Causes of "The End"

Well it is nearly All Hallows Eve and I have been working on a fairly dark section of my current book project, so I thought today I might ponder a bit about death. Specifically, what are the leading causes of death worldwide and then some specifics about death in the United States.

The best numbers on death worldwide come from the World Health Organization. They divide their data into low, medium and high income countries because the standard of living equates to better or worse access to health care. For that reason malaria appears in the low-income data but not middle or high-income nations. On the other side of the dark coin, Alzheimer's related deaths appear only in the high-income countries. A comprehensive global comparison would run far beyond the scope of a single blog post. So I focused on the U.S. numbers.

Divide the population into 10 segments by age:
<1,
1-4,
5-9,
10-14,
15-24,
25-34,
35-44,
45-54,
55-64,
65+.

First a couple of questions and then a big hint if you need one.

Question 1: Five age groups (1-4, 5-9, 10-14, 15-24, 25-34) share the same most common cause of death, what is it?
Question 2: What is the most common causes of death overall, it appears in the top ten of every category except infants under one year of age?

Here is your hint, which will answer question #2 and help you on question #1.

Top Ten Most Common Causes of Death in the U.S.
1. Heart Disease 616K
2. Malignant Neoplasms 562K
3. Cerebro-vascular 135K
4. Chronic Low Respiratory Disease 127K
5. Unintentional Injury 123K
6. Alzheimer's Disease 74K
7. Diabetes Melitus 71K
8. Influenza & Pneumonia 52K
9. Nepritis 46K
10. Septicemia 34K

Heart Disease remains the number #1 killer in the U.S. and from that list you probably also figured out that Unintentional Accident tops the list for those over 1 and under 45. And yes a big portion of that number is automobile accidents. Two more questions.

3. What cause of death not in the top ten ranks 2nd for 15-24 year olds, 3rd for 1-4, 10-14 & 25-34, 4th in the 5-9 age group and 6th among 35-44 year olds?
4. What cause of death also not in the top ten ranks 2nd for 25-34 years old, 3rd for 15-24, 4th for 10-14 & 35-44 and 5th for 45-54 and even 8th among 55-64 year olds?

Just a couple of other facts before I answer those two questions. Clearly the 65+ group has the highest numbers in all categories of the top ten. Deaths of those 65 and older account for nearly 70% of the total nationwide. This 70% of deaths number would be 80%+ if the answers to questions 3 & 4 did not exist.

Answer to question #3: Homicide
Answer to question #4: Suicide

If you would like to see this data as a graph.

Atlas Shrugged

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs. 

Please excuse the lame, stale joke set-up but you gotta love the punch line. If you remember I wrote a post about six weeks ago on the subject of the 100 Best Novels; I was shocked and a touch dismayed to find the reader's poll portion of that survey topped by Atlas Shrugged. In fact the top ten reader's choice novels included four Ayn Rand books, three L. Ron Hubbard pieces of gibberish plus To Kill a Mockingbird, 1984 and, of course, The Lord of the Rings.


I stumbled on the quote/joke the same day I heard that several independent film makers have actually banned together and have filmed what they intent to become the Atlas Shrugged trilogy, well at least part I. Paul Johansson is directing and playing the lead as John Galt, which conjures images of Dancing With Wolves. Part I of AS is scheduled for release in 2011.


For years Hollywood has looked for a way to bring Atlas Shrugged to the big screen, thankfully if it was going to happen at least it is being done my independent filmmakers rather than a big studio. I really don't expect much from the attempt, remember the several attempts to make Dune into a motion picture. There is a theme to both Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead but will it really take two hours or six to delivered the singular idea that it's everyone for themselves?


Hmm, maybe I am wrong here, big Hollywood studios are really good at taking two hours to make one obvious statement. But enough pummeling on individualism, truth, justice and the Amerikan way as depicted by Hollywood.


I am looking out on a stunning orange sky over the SF Bay and the Pacific beyond. I would like to remind my bay area friends that anyone with a good camera and a decent lens or two is welcome to come by over the next month or so, the sunset is slowly creeping towards the Golden Gate and I would really like to have some decent pictures to share here. I will buy dinner, you like Thai?






--
opening quote found on kfmonkey.blogs

Kliban

Bernard "Hap" Kliban (1935-1990) is best known for his cat cartoons. But many of my generation first encountered him in Playboy in the early 70s, which was about the time most of us stopped reading Playboy, except for the interviews of course. In fact, it was a Playboy editor who spotted some of Kliban's cat cartoons and set him on his infamous feline career. Personally I knew he was "the other" cartoonist at Playboy because Shel Silverstein and Gahan Wilson were the more famous architects of illustration for Hefner.

I still remember being introduced to Kliban's work in 1978 when I was handed Tiny Footprints, Whack Your Porcupine, and Never Eat Anything Bigger Than Your Head. Those to me remain the quintessential Kliban.

I thought we might reminisce with some of his drawings and commentary on life as we don't know it.

Attentive readers may have noticed I have varied a bit from my every-other-day blog production. Today was simply a visual thing. I use my blog as my home page and quite frankly having that cobra head pop up all day yesterday got a bit distracting, so I moved up my ode to Kliban due to reptilian hebbie-jebbies.

Who hasn't felt the need for such relief, I find the political talking heads drive me quickly to the mint flavored floss. I prefer the the Glide polymer variety and I like the flat tape over the string version, it gets into all those folds and ruffles of the cortex.

He just gets it. Anyone care to take a shot at defining "it"?

Of course I can't end without another cat cartoon, here his nod to Botticelli's Primavera (Spring).

Methinks I shall need a 2011 Kliban Kalendar. Search Amazon.com for kliban

100 Best Novels

I got a call from an old friend the other day. I mean an old, old friend; someone I had not spoken to in over 20 years. Strange what parts of that conversation became bloggable. She mentioned during a long rambling conversation that her daughter, about to be a senior in high school, was on her third summer of reading the 100 best novels of all time. Having read thru freshman, sophomore and junior summers, she now expected to reach her goal (all 100) by her first summer in grad school. A total of 100 books in ten summers, a laudable feat in my estimation.

Later that night I wondered how one finds the 100 Best Novels? I tried the internet and then sent off an email: "What list is your daughter using?"

The next day I got this response: "She is using the Modern Library list of best novels."

I give you the Modern Library's own bio.

The Modern Library has played a significant role in American cultural life for the better part of a century. For decades, young Americans cut their intellectual teeth on Modern Library books. The series shaped their tastes, educated them, provided them with a window on the world. Many of the country's celebrated writers are quick to attest that they "grew up with the Modern Library."

Damn, it was the ML list that scared me when I googled the 100 Best Novels. Shortly and happily, I got a follow-up email: "She is reading from the ML Board's list, not the readers list." 

I leave you without comment the top ten from those two lists. If you want to see the full 100 of each, here is the link.

1. ULYSSES by James Joyce
2. THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce
4. LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
5. BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
6. THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner
7. CATCH-22 by Joseph Heller
8. DARKNESS AT NOON by Arthur Koestler 
9. SONS AND LOVERS by D.H. Lawrence
10. THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck

1. ATLAS SHRUGGED by Ayn Rand
2. THE FOUNTAINHEAD by Ayn Rand
3. BATTLEFIELD EARTH by L. Ron Hubbard
4. THE LORD OF THE RINGS by J.R.R. Tolkien
5. TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee
6. 1984 by George Orwell
7. ANTHEM by Ayn Rand
8. WE THE LIVING by Ayn Rand
9. MISSION EARTH by L. Ron Hubbard
10. FEAR by L. Ron Hubbard

OK, one comment. Who the hell are these readers?

Matterhorn

There are days we will never forget where we were. Everyone in my generation knows exactly where they were when they heard: "... as the presidential motorcade moved through downtown Dallas." Lots of folks my age also know where they were when they heard Elvis had died, I don't. But I do know exactly where I was when Nixon resigned the presidency and I know where I was on April 30th 1975 -- the day the Vietnam War ended for us.

About ten years later, I picked up a tattered paperback in a used book store in West Hollywood and began a three year period where I read everything I could find on Vietnam. I finished that immersion with A Bright Shining Lie by Neil Sheehan published in 1988. I still believe that to be the best book ever written about the American involvement in Vietnam. 

Since 1988 I had not read another book about that war. Then a few months ago came the word of another great Vietnam book -- Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes. I put my name on the waiting list at the Berkeley library and waited, I was 36th in the queue. In the meantime, I decided to reread A Bright Shining Lie. After several attempts I gave up. It wasn't the same book, I wasn't the same person, it wasn't 1988 or 1975.

Last week, my name rolled to the top of the wait list and I picked up Matterhorn. Six hundred pages read as fast as had the nine hundred of A Bright Shining Lie, which remains the best book ever written about that dirty little war.

As for Matterhorn -- well one of the jacket blurbs got it right for me:

"Never have we seen the particular horrors and challenges of Vietnam so richly explored, and never have we felt the tactile experience of the war depicted with such mesmerizing force. We see the big picture, but as with all great novels, it's the tiny details--the mud, the leeches, the adrenaline-drenched dread of combat, and the tender joy of comradeship--that lingers with the reader long after the story is over."

If you want to know why I and others rage against the United States' involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, read these two books. Only the names have been changed to protect the guilty.

Lost Vegas

Yes this post will be about Las Vegas and poker, also strippers, drugs, alcohol and lime tossing.  A friend and fellow writer has just published a book about all of those things and so much more. Paul McGuire -- Dr. Pauly to those involved in the world of professional poker -- has been writing about poker for over five years but Lost Vegas is more about the underbelly of Las Vegas than it is about playing poker. I have seen most of what Pauly describes in his book but I saw it from a safe distance. Where I protected myself with kevlar, Pauly barely had time for the latex. This book is very up close and personal with the dark side of Sin City. He has felt the breath of a coke-up stripper and had the drunken conversations with hookers as the sun came up on another heat-stoked Vegas day.

Think Leaving Las Vegas without the cinematic touchups. Yes folks, Vegas really is this nasty and dirty. No matter how many Cirque de Soleil shows you see, the raw truth is just behind that row of Wheel of Fortune slots.

I will warn you only that there may be too much poker action for my non-poker audience but if you ever wanted to see, touch, feel and smell what real Las Vegas can be like -- this book will give you a taste you will remember. Yes, I do make a few cameos but as I said, I never go as dark as Pauly. And lest you think you have heard this all before -- I offer you my favorite excerpt from Lost Vegas:

"You having a good time tonight?" she asked.


"The possible ranks higher than the actual."


"You didn't just make that shit up?" she screamed into my ear over the blaring music. "You don't think I'm that fuckin' stupid where you can pass off a second-rate quote from an out-dated philosopher like Heidegger? He's a Nazi, you know."

My bluff had been called. There's something very sexy, yet surreal, when a naked woman debates Heidegger with you while you attempt to drown out the Britney Spears song blasting in the background.


If you want to check out the unique style of the good doctor, he pens a number of blogs: Tao of Poker, Tao of Pauly, Coventry Music and Tao of Bacon. As Bill Edler would say -- well done, my friend.

Lay of the Last Minstrel

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd,
As home his footsteps he hath turn'd,
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no Minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonour'd, and unsung.
                   -Sir Walter Scott

Twenty Years Ago

Twenty years ago today I lost my best friend.

Regret is not something I deal with all that often. I don't wonder where all those years have gone. I don't joke about all that grey hair in college reunion pictures. For me, time passes and we leave signposts along the way. But this one, twenty years ... this one got me.

I don't miss him every day, I never have. But when I think about Tom and the South Bay years, I know those times changed my life. At his memorial service I read one of my favorite pieces of writing from John Steinbeck because those words described so clearly why time spent with Tom was so memorable. I offer you those words on this day.

"Time interval is a strange and contradictory matter in the mind. It would be reasonable to suppose that a routine time or an eventless time would seem interminable. It should be so, but it is not. It is the dull eventless times that have no duration whatever. A time splashed with interest, wounded with tragedy, crevassed with joy--that's the time that seems long in memory. And this is right when you think about it. Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all."

My wish for all of you is that your times be splashed, wounded and crevassed.
----
photo credit: flower x-rays

A Few of My Favorite Things

It would seem that "A Few of My Favorite Things" is a common blog thread. I had not encountered this blogging phenomenon until I went looking for an appropriate photo for this post. Googling AFoMFT produced thousands of exact blog matches. Switching to images, I felt Julie Andrew's on a hilltop did not strike the tone I was seeking. And I couldn't find a really good chocolate manatee. But enough of this overture, in the last three days I have experienced a trifecta of my favorite things.

Upon returning from Las Vegas I indulged myself in two nights of solitary sleep. I was editing a section of my latest book the other day and I see no reason to reinvent the perfect description, so I quote myself:

I was going to sleep until I woke and then slowly turn over and drift off again. Nowhere to go, nowhere to be, no one to bother with and no one to bother me. If there is a heaven, it has cold, crisp mornings and pile of goose down comforters.


The third morning I was already three pages into editing when I glanced at the chronometer to find it was not yet 8 AM. If you linger in bed every morning, it might just be considered sloth. Besides you can't really enjoy the exquisite pleasure of rolling over if you do it every single day. Surely tis the contrast between Carpe Diem and Carpe Supine that makes it so sublime.


Favorite Thing #2 involves books. I can walk from my place to both the Berkeley Public Library and three UC Berkeley collections. Despite the easy access of the internet, there are times when sitting down in front of several shelves of books on a particular topic is the best form of research. Titles and abstracts don't always cover all the tidbits that books contain. Yesterday, I had a particular topic in mind and spend a glorious three hours pawing through forty or so books and literally hundreds of spine titles to get clarity on just one tiny topic. Out of that session I will have a couple of articles by the end of the week leading perhaps to another writing gig. But job or no, the pleasure of the search and research is always there.


Favorite Thing #1 is sleep. Second FT is fodder for the cerebrum, well then number three has got to be.

Yes, of course, food!

Here are the ingredients of a near perfect graze.

A loaf a Acme Bakery olive bread. They use these green olives that somehow remain moist in the loaf without making the bread soggy. Plus there is a high ratio of firm outer crust to tender interior.

For toppings, well first a wedge of Cambozola cheese, if you don't know this variety, it is a blend of gorgonzola and camembert. I recommend removing the rind (which you can save to cut into soup) and then letting the cheese warm to room temperature. Very rich, almost to be used as a spread. Since there are times you want a slice of cheese, something with substance; I recommend supplementing with a second selection. I opted for a firm, strong, white cheddar.

Now in my younger days, I might have gone for a hard Genoa salami here but these days I shy away from nitrated meats and instead add the following:

Avocado, at precisely that moment of ripeness when the texture and flavor reminds one of liquid velvet. I do so remember how as kids we referred to these gems ripening on the kitchen window ledge as green slime. I am sure my mother was heart-broken when she didn't have to share with her horde of carnivores.

I have found a brand of sun-dried tomatoes that are stored not in olive oil but in a lighter combination of oil and balsamic vinegar. Same distributor has roasted red and yellow peppers in a brine. Accompanying beverage of your choice and enjoy.

By the way, on day two the same combinations minus the Cambozola (too soft) and the bread on the side, go perfectly tossed in some spring salad greens, add a few capers use the sun-dried tomato balsamic oil as dressing and you have more bliss for the palate.

I thought of titling this post: "Simple Pleasures" but I realized that Godiva cat probably cost ten bucks.

The Tome Exodus Begins

Tomorrow, at last, the first truck arrives in front of the Berkeley apartment. Two trucks in fact, one for donated books (41 boxes) and one for personal papers off to the museum (16 cartons). Then on Tuesday, two more trucks; one for furniture (14 large items) and one for the antiquarian books (20 more boxes), which means --- I can schedule the carpet cleaner and potentially, if the river don't rise, I will be sleeping in Berkeley come next weekend.

There is still the matter of all of the art to be evaluated and sent off to the appropriate collector, dealer or museum, but I can share space with art and come mid-week there will be enough space in the apartment for at least one large humanoid and twelve million dust mites.

Once I am in residence I will share some of the truly interesting facets of my latest domicile, but as of today I am officially closing the final calendar month of the longer-than-expected non-domiciled period I so casually entered early last year.

The next big life decision: will I be in one place long enough to once again co-habitat with a feline. It has been three and a half years since last I shared space with a furr-ball and I surely do miss the purrs.

A Job for a Divestor

Regular readers are by now familiar with my non-domiciled nature over the past year or so. Associated with that I have also been in phase two of my divestment period. When I left San Francisco in 2000, I basically gave away my stuff; keeping only a bed, a desk, a wok, clothes, a computer and two cats. I did have some other "stuff" stored or carted in never opened boxes and those have been the things I have been divesting in this latest wave of non-accumulation. I now officially declare myself to be a semi-professional divestor.

This makes my current project all the more interesting. In order to occupy the apartment in Berkeley (my next semi-permanent place) first there is the matter of 3000 books and several hundred pieces of museum quality art. Not to mention the papers, oh my the papers! The prior occupant, my good friend's father, was more than a collector. He and his wife were the driving force behind the Magnes Museum in Berkeley. Which means that the apartment is not simply full of books and art; but is filled to the brim with treasured items of historical significance, which he collected from around the world.

So to clear out my new space, the divestor has taken on a role in placing thousands of items in the hands of those would give them the places of respect and access they deserve. So with care and respect we still have to deal with the task of literally packing and moving thousands of items.

Yesterday was a significant day in that process. Twelve boxes of personal papers detailing years of work with the Magnes Museum and the collection were removed from the apartment and delivered into the hands of the archivist of the museum. Also yesterday, a book dealer, personal friend of the family and now friend of mine, went through the entire collection; we boxed up 20 cartons of literature for his collection and we have those ready for immediate cartage pick-up. Plus the remaining books are now ordered and cataloged and ready to box and donate. I begin that task tomorrow.

On the mundane side of the apartment prep list, we got 50% of the required plumbing work done, the cable company installed phone, internet and cable plus the car donation was completed. So I can now park in the garage at my new place and access the internet. Actually sleeping there will take another week or so but progress has been made and acknowledged by even the most pessimistic among us.

ScreenWritin'

There is a huge difference between writing a book and writing a screenplay. I am not sure if the difficulties are decreased or increased if one is attempting to create the script from a book they have already written. What I can say for sure is that the "play" in screenplay is a lot more fun than the book was at any point.

Spending a week plus here in Austin with Amy and Eric has meant that Aimlessly and I have had a lot of time to think through and talk through the status of our joint effort to turn Check Raising the Devil into a movie. I am strongly of the opinion that we have a solid 120 page draft. Amy firmly believes the first 40 pages she was edited are indeed worthy and the rest is "shrink drafty." She may have a point.

As to the process, if you have read the book, you know it is completely in the first person of Mike "The Mouth". That format was both defining and limiting. I admit to being opposed to it but every other person involved in the decision making process was for it, soest. In the screenplay, on the other hand, being able to add a character/observer/commentator at any juncture is remarkably freeing. I particularly enjoyed adding "The Shady Character" as our meth dealer on the rail at Binion's. Plus we have the freedom of having any random player at any poker table say what you and I and every 2+2 forum weenie wants to say to Mike. Very freeing.

In the end, this may or may not make it to the big silver screen. All I can promise is that if we get this film made, poker players will walk out of the theatre saying: "Finally a poker movie that got the game right!"

Oh and about that academy award. We have exactly a 0.003% better chance of being nominated than you do; unless you have an unfinished screenplay in bottom desk drawer, in that case it's a dead heat.