VIETNAM, PALESTINE: GIL STEPHENS REFLECTS - IN 'DISPLACED'

Vietnam, Palestine: Gil Stephens reflects, in a draft of a scene in "Displaced" ...

“Alicia, look at what Penelope’s companion wrote on Facebook,” Stephens called as night darkened their cabin. “Don, about Vietnam. His time there. He shared the post of a friend in Tennessee. Says it offers what he’d like to say.”

Lys sat next to Stephens on their couch. He was reading from his digital tablet. He handed it to her. The post, she saw, was written by a carpenter friend and a Vietnam war veteran with PTSD, like Don Richter:

“To be honest folks, none of the people I killed in Vietnam had a damn thing to do with our ‘freedoms.’ In fact very little to none of the killing done since dispatching Hitler have had anything to do with American or anyone else’s freedoms. 

“The killing, the trauma of the troops and victims have overwhelmingly been done in the name of empire and cheap resources and cheaper puppets installed for their useful lives … Saddam, Taliban, Marcos, etc.

“Serving has little to do with national honor, but everything to do with the personal honor of watching one another's back when sent to be pawns for the empire and doing the best you can do in untenable situations. If you want to honor the service of us pawns of the empire, demand Veterans care and rights for screwing up a lifetime for the empire …”

Lys looked at Stephens. “I’m stunned.”

“The unspoken, from Don, spoken in a public forum by his friend,” Stephens said. He moved his finger across the tablet’s screen to the “like” button and depressed it. “Powerful, Don,” he wrote in the comment window. 

All this now, Stephens thought, my story about Tina in Nicaragua, Don's post of a Vietnam vet’s compelling Facebook post about his own killings, the ongoing onslaughts worldwide - I'm so drawn to those times in my past when I was engaged with fervor and strong commitment, either by being present at the scene as a social-justice advocate or as part of the collective voice who helped communicate the injustices. 

But... 

But what? Though other human-rights efforts were more substantial and in-depth, the one that sticks out the most, that hits my soul and heart the most, involves the trips to Palestine about a decade ago. 

Why? I can't say why, it's there. Every inch and moment of it. Never entered Gaza, only the West Bank, not to say that the brutality doesn't play out in the West Bank from what I saw, know to be true, as I continue to follow what's going on. I've got to explore this more, I can't shunt it aside.

He turned in his tablet to a photo he took of school children in Beit Jala, in the Bethlehem District of the West Bank. “God, they’re grown up now.”

                                                             Photo © 2001 Wes Rehberg ...

ALICIA'S 'SIGHTINGS & DISCOVERIES' IN "DISPLACED"

ALICIA'S 'SIGHTINGS & DISCOVERIES' IN "DISPLACED" (novel in progress - draft scene) ...

Alicia Lys looked at her keyboard, listening to Stephens typing across from her at their cabin’s dining bar. Maybe a blog, she thought, mine, my thoughts about the hopes and aspirations and needs of others. Is that too overarching, too presumptuous? I want to go back to doing small-scale social-justice work, local, but remain informed of the broader issues, in touch with the global. And I want to talk about it. A blog. What can I call it?

She looked out the window into the field. A blue jay swooped past. In the distance she could see a grazing doe, nuzzling the ground, the underbrush. In the sky, clearing to a vibrant blue, a contrail formed from a high-flying jet plane. “I wonder how ‘Sightings & Discoveries’ plays?” she asked herself.

“What?” Stephens asked.

“Talking to myself,” Lys said. Stephens nodded.

Oh, I know there’s a glut of blogs, Lys thought. Gil has one he occasionally posts in, so few viewers, so little attention, and that most likely will be true of mine. But is it futile?

Lys typed these thoughts as a note to launch her blog. She continued.

He thinks it’s his age, too, that age limits the reception. I’m now 58, he’s 73. Is there an audience for our concerns? It matters, to me, to him. And since I’ve rediscovered writing, I’m inspired, knowing how almost impossible it is to gain “traction,” as Gil calls it. To find and develop my own voice.

I know, too, that I want to start a small enterprise, maybe with Jack Hoffman and the church he’ll inherit. It’s not far from here. I’d like to bring meals to the homebound again who don’t get enough to eat, whose nutritional needs aren’t met. This is what brought us together, Gil and me, though little did we understand it at the time and through all the confusion that ensued afterward, the mix of relationships, the separations and rearrangements of lifestyles, of sexual identities and preferences, of the work we’ve undertaken, the risks, the threats, the attacks.

That time in Spain, when we found ourselves together in Madrid, when I confronted him with the reality we had both been experiencing, the reality of each other as partners. But I digress.

The meals effort, those who received them, their struggles, their living conditions. I’ll detail a couple we wrote about.

* An aged woman who was left to live in a shed, from Pennsylvania, whose son set up the dwelling before he went into prison, arranged with a rural roughneck who quarried for bluestone shale. This son a twin whose brother also was in prison as a result of a tavern brawl in which the brother killed their father by hitting him on the head with a bar stool. The first brother refused to testify against the second brother, skipped a court hearing, and was imprisoned awhile for contempt of court. I imagine the second brother is still behind bars. I brought the woman food and helped expose her plight. The result: She was granted comfortable lodging in a senior-citizens home.

* Another aged woman who lived in a decrepit camper, who couldn’t see well, thoughts mixed up at times, heating the camper with her propane stove, stuffed toilet that Gil unplugged so she wouldn’t have to walk into woods behind her place to relieve herself, the stepmother of a man who was on the Village of Roosevelt planning board, almost completely disenfranchised. We exposed her conditions and those of others like hers in a series of articles in the weekly Roosevelt Courier when it was operated by Todd Redding, reluctant journalist, now retired. “The Hidden Elderly.” Not so hidden, but there are more.

Maybe I can persuade Prudence to be part of this. She’s been so quiet and subdued since Willard’s accident and death. Still manages the goat dairy and chickens’ egg production as well as keeps her commitment to counseling at the juvenile detention center.

My sociology and social practices background plays into all this. I feel I need to make some money, too, several of us are jobless in a way, Cecilia and Marcia both out of work and heading to New Jersey to help in the superstorm relief, Gil on Social Security and his small pensions from journalism and church work. Prudence, too, though she has some money from Willard’s life insurance.. Penelope’s husband is a carpenter, has a steady income even though he freelances, he’s an exception. Helen Rice works at SUNY-Oquaga, as will Sandra, with Gasson as an adjunct, while Helen’s partner Anna pots. Exceptions, then, too. This odd extended family, maybe I can call it that. But I need to find some work. Maybe in a community college setting.

“Now can I post this?” Lys asked aloud.

“You want me to proof it,” Stephens smiled.

“Thanks, Gil. But I think I’ll post it raw.”

CATCHING UP ON MOBILE APPS

Digging deeper into mobile app development, learning how to compile app source codes into apps via Xcode (Apple) and Eclipse (Android) -- but not how to write the source codes themselves (yet). 
Backing in, in other words ... Via Buzztouch U tutorials ... this will take a few days for sure ...

THE REALITY IS OTHERWISE STILL … BUT WHY STOP?

THE REALITY IS OTHERWISE STILL … BUT WHY STOP?

 I understand the difficulties, the obstacles, there's such a deluge now with the opportunity for self-publishing. On the other hand, I know the writings have an impact enough to be published in literary magazines. And those who have read what I've written have expressed that they like what they've experienced. Very favorable responses have also come from those who've heard me read publicly. 

 Still I grieve. Blog entries. Social media entries. Public readings. Video readings. Synopses. Advertisements. It's so hard to find traction.

 My protagonists, the characters I shape and fashion with respect for what they represent and undergo - they are older but have so many dimensions, so many perspectives, undergo the struggles and experiences that are unique to them, incidents drawn from the broad range of experience I've had, from social justice activism, to betrayals, to my own failings, joys, humor, clowning, frowning, agonies, injuries, afflictions, spiritual soarings, insights, befuddlement, ignorance, challenges, fears, tears, accidents, illnesses, leaps of hope and ecstasy, and it goes on.

 So I write and publish and post here. I don't know what you think, nor do I know what to think about how it all works, how something catches on and reaches an appreciative audience, how it suddenly clicks.

 Funny, though, as I write this, the words come, seem to represent what I'm feeling at the moment. I'm not sure I want to publish this, to put this up in this blog -- "blog," what it's called, an odd term to my ears.

 But it can't be otherwise, even in the face of the possibility that it all remains in obscurity. I love to read and I love to write. And my sensibility sees a value in what's written. So why stop, I ask? It's an adventure of the mind, even if grief comes along with it.

READING 'THE FOG' FROM "OPENING THE GATE" - VIDEO

In this video I read the short story "The Fog," from "Opening the Gate," a collection of five short stories and five poems, some which include fictionalized biographical elements and as well draw from my experience as a print journalist and social justice activist. Titles of the short stories are "The Enduring," "The Fog," "Scooter," "Tina's Nicaragua Story," and "Jail Birds." Two poems and a short story have appeared in literary magazines. -- 16 minutes --

READING FROM MY NOVEL 'TURNED LOOSE' - VIDEO

Reading an excerpt from "TURNED LOOSE"--

PYSCH CENTER'S DOWNSIZING, INTIMATE ENCOUNTERS, VIOLENT THREATS TRANSFORM LIVES OF ACTIVISTS ..

TURNED LOOSE is a stand-alone sequel to "Stringer" in which the aged characters are appalled by the impact of a psychiatric center's downsizing that leaves mental patients on the streets without care. In their news investigation they face eruptions from the past, violent threats, and peel layers away of their own relationships, illusions, sexuality, and their understandings of reality.
These understandings are deepened as characters travel to Morocco, Spain, the Netherlands and hostile Chiapas in southern Mexico, trips that transform directions of their lives.

READING FROM MY NOVEL "TILT" - VIDEO

I read a passage from my novel TILT - six minutes -- In TILT, in one major plot theme, the characters fend of their unwanted roles in a macabre reality play directed by a felon seeking hateful revenge while behind bars. In the midst of his drama, the characters encounter deadly violence, transform and deepen relationships, and develop their own creative relationship. The story brings the characters through upstate New York and Tennessee in the USA; to Amsterdam,The Netherlands; to Madrid and Granada in Spain; and to Tangier, Morocco -- 
Web page for TILT is http://www.wildclearing.com/tilt.html -- available in paperback and ebook editions.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkpI5Nf-hv4&feature=youtu.be

"HALLOWEEN EVE 1945" NOW PUBLISHED - SHORT, SHORT STORY

"Halloween Eve 1945," my short, short story, is now published online in The Faircloth Review ...

CHARACTERS CLAIM MY CONSCIOUSNESS

Characters claim my consciousness -

"We await our lives, the way you dream us, the words you speak for us. We ask you to be sensitive," they say, "to understand our subtlety, no matter how we are cast. Fashion us with care and authenticity."

So I struggle with that.

PUBLISHED IN LITERARY MAGAZINES 2012

Published in literary magazines since I began writing fiction and poetry this year, 2012:

In the Rusty Nail:
... "Alien Bones," "Tick Tock" - two poems
In Efiction Magazine:
... "Scooter" - short story, fiction
In The New Writer Vol 3.1
... "Fidel's Gift" - short nonfiction
... "Orbits" - poem
In The Faircloth Review:
... "Halloween Eve 1945" - short story, fiction (upcoming)

Awaiting response for a submitted nonfiction piece: "Tina's Nicaragua Story."

Now working on "Elrod and Raphool," a short story about two homeless friends affected by a predator bent on killing the homeless. 
Also on a novel, "Displaced."

RECKONING WITH THE INTANGIBLES ...

Reckoning with the intangibles -

Like · 

• 

  Wes Rehberg They whisper, do not ignore us ...

  33 minutes ago · Like
• 

  Wes Rehberg They are the unpredictables that unnerve those who demand predictability and measurability ...

  30 minutes ago · Like
• 

  Wes Rehberg They are not quantifiable ... but still influence ...

  28 minutes ago · Edited · Like
• 

  Wes Rehberg Try to harness them, and they vanish or remain out of reach ... but return when least expected ...

  26 minutes ago · Edited · Like

DEEP ECOLOGY - A DEVELOPING THEME IN 'DISPLACED'

   I wasn't fully aware of this when I started writing and wrestling with the novel "Displaced," but it's become so apparent now. The question for me is how to make Deep Ecology a prevailing theme without using the characters and their stories as a soapbox for this understanding and its movement.
 
   Still, there's the awareness that the  Earth Garden for humans and other life is not flourishing because of the poisons and injustices afflicted or allowed by people in power. The interrelatedness of life seems so obvious. So odd how this fundamental is absent in the foreground of human discourse.
 
    A quote from the Foundation for Deep Ecology:
   "The conversion of Nature to commodity form, the emphasis upon economic growth as a panacea, the industrialization of all activity, from forestry to farming to fishing, even to education and culture; the rush to economic globalization, cultural homogenization, commodity accumulation, urbanization, and human alienation. All of these are fundamentally incompatible with ecological sustainability on a finite Earth..."

TWO QUESTIONS FOR PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE WATCHERS

Two questions for presidential debate watchers:

1) Did you demystify your gaze before and while tuning in?
2) Which candidate is a "weak-sense critical thinker" and which is a "strong-sense critical thinker"?

* Weak-sense critical thinkers are skilled but put themselves and their agendas ahead of ethical considerations and consequences.
* Strong-sense critical thinkers tend to look into the logic of a problem aware of the perils of their egocentric or socio-centric bias as they consider ethical implications.

NONFICTION GUIDING FICTION

I'm reading nonfiction work by Joan Didion and Hannah Arendt while writing fiction - first draft of my novel "Displaced." The directness of nonfiction feels like a ballast that helps guide me to write the characters and story as if they are real, as if it all really happened.

OPENING PARAGRAPHS TO 'HALLOWEEN EVE 1945' - SHORT STORY

Opening paragraphs to my short story "Halloween Eve 1945" ...

I grew up in New York City, spent a lot of time on the streets. This was during the war, World War II - me a small kid really, 9 years old at the end of the war. Yeah, there was a park nearby, Corporal O’Conner, and we’d go there, but mostly it was the streets where we hung out.

At night sometimes we’d hear the sirens, turn out the lights or pull down the dark shades. an air raid warning test. The air raid wardens would go out on the streets to make sure nobody had house lights on, things like that.

We played stickball, roller hockey, punchball, hopscotch, hide-and-seek, stoop ball, and knock rummy on the streets and sidewalks, girls and boys. And when things like Halloween came around we had a pretty good idea of what we could get away with. Halloween eve was goosey night, when we threw eggs and other stuff, after ringing door bells. Stones at street lights. Running like hell. Everybody knew who did it. This was in Bayside West, the rougher and poorer part, working class, pretty close to the other neighborhoods though of what would you would call the middle class. Most of the narrow homes had no driveways. I lived in the upstairs of a two family house, three rooms - my grandfather and grandmother slept in one, the place’s real bedroom; my brother, mother and I slept in the other, the living room. Then we shared a small kitchen and bathroom. Next door lived Joe the garbageman, tall, lanky, funny. He always had a good word for me.

Hard to have things, keep things though, our place was so small. Downstairs the landlord didn’t like noise either. So it was the streets I hung out in.

We also knew a lot about the war, we kids. You’d go to school even in third grade and the teacher would open the Daily News, NY’s picture newspaper, during current events part of class -- yeah, we had current events in third grade under the progressive education system that was in place at the time. The newspaper’s main stories usually focused on the war -- atrocities, campaigns, photos of soldiers and sailors and marines and airmen in combat, explosions, air battles, all the stuff -- this was our TV.

Then, you could walk down a street sometimes and there, in some house’s window, would be another little war flag. If it had a purple heart, that would mean someone in that house had been wounded in the war. If it had a gold star, that would mean someone in that house had been killed in combat - sailor, soldier, marine, airman. We’d see that now and then, even across the street, or two doors down ...

"YOUR BOOKS ARE A JOY TO READ! ..."

WRITE LIGHTNING IS BREWED HERE

CHARACTERS RANT ABOUT VIOLENCE THEY FACED IN MEXICO, HONDURAS

Alicia and Marcia rant about violent encounters they faced in Mexico and Honduras - in draft of "Displaced":

ANALOGY

Its seriousness can only be expressed by analogy ...

POLITICAL GRACE: THE GIFT OF RESISTANCE - EBOOK FORMATS

POLITICAL GRACE: THE GIFT OF RESISTANCE is now downloadable for Apple, Kindle, Nook and Epub devices at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/243322

Brief synopsis: 
Philosophy and theology have increasingly turned to the problem of the rising numbers of people who live in severe conditions of oppression, people who are surplus to global economic and political orders which the oppressed define as "neoliberal" and "neocolonial." This work, Political Grace: The Gift of Resistance, is part of that turning.

THE WRITE STUFF ... THE LOVE OF WORDCRAFT

THE WRITE STUFF: The switch to writing from recent video work to me is a way of returning to the wordcraft I’ve been working with all my adult professional life -- 24 years as a print journalist; -- 4.5 years for the Ph.D. in philosophy; -- 10 years preaching from sketchy notes spontaneously. What’s new is experimentation in fiction. I’ve always been prolific and continue to be. I love books and stories and now I love writing them. 

Then I become uncertain ... is this just a delusion? 

Delusions, illusions, I need a transfusion to dispel the confusion, an infusion of ... oh, pardon me, is this the rocking chair I'm supposed to use ...?

THE BOOKS ... IMAGE AND OPPORTUNITIES

... (so far)

V I E W  THE BOOKS: in paperback Kindle, Nook, iBooks & Epub devices:

VISITING VIOLENT WARD IN "TURNED LOOSE"

Scene involves Alicia Stewart (later Alicia Lys) and Gil Stephens -- both working on news stories about a psychiatric center's downsizing -- and William "Bill" Barnes, head of the psych center board of visitors, a downsizing opponent.

They exited the elevator and walked down a hall, dimly lit, to a door labeled “9.” Barnes opened it, led them inside, and spoke with two male attendants who appeared to cast clinical looks at his two guests. They introduced themselves.

“This way, please,” the shorter attendant said. “We’re in art therapy right now. They do have visitors occasionally during this period, but I ask that you be reserved and polite. Respectful.”

 Inside a bright spacious room, Stewart and Stephens stood in the background as several men looked at them initially. Three began to chatter and walk slowly in different directions, others stood stationary, and another ambled over to Stewart and gestured to her to follow him to a large pastel that displayed a swirl of orange, yellow and red, with a black profiled figure in the center that glanced sidelong at the viewer. An attendant nodded it was okay.

“This is my mind and my emotions,” the man said, pointing to the swirl of colors. “And this in the center is the Devil. He wants to turn all these colors black. He wants to do that in all of us. Did you know that?”

“It’s a powerful drawing,” Stewart said.

“You’re evading the question,” the man said. He shook his head, looked at the taller attendant, and walked to a corner of the room, sat down and smiled.

“You know that it’s true,” he called to her. “He’s insidious and full of disguises. Look around. What disguise is he wearing now?”

EPUB READERS FOR ANDROID, iPAD & iPHONE

ALDIKO is a good Epub reader for Android, and iBOOKS can import Epub digital books on iPad and iPhone -- FYI -- photo below is Aldiko's bookshelf.

Plenty of other Android choices. For MACs, I like CALIBRE ... also good for Windows

OFFERING EBOOKS DIRECTLY AT DISCOUNTS

Setting up so I can offer Epub versions of my books directly at discounted prices - viewable in iBooks and other Ebook readers such as Calibre, shown in photo ... skirting the popular middlemen ...

The setup is complete -- you may visit Wild Clearing's books home page to visit a title to find the discounted price ...

REDUCING MYSELF TO A QR CODE

SCAN THIS ...

Did you sample anything -- ? Even a glimpse ...?

'DISPLACED' DRAFT - 'COURAGE OR MADNESS'

From DISPLACED ... novel in progress.

What was that again?, Stephens thought. The creative impulse is unique to each of us?

Yes, and expressing that uniqueness authentically takes courage. And for me often, it is a lonely pursuit.

Still …

Still, what?

I rise. I put on the coffee. It is morning, the day after the tragedy of Willard Comstock. There’s a police car down at the Comstocks goat dairy. Or should I say, down at Prudence’s. Alicia is with her. Cecilia has returned to her apartment.

Turn it around. 

The destructive impulse is unique to each of us. T.S. Eliot spoke of removing the inhibition that lets the creative flow. Willard removed an inhibition. Snapped, Prudence said. Had enough. Let the self-destructive flow.

Courage or madness? Or maybe he felt remorse after he left the tavern and tried to return home, but lost control of his truck. Deliberate? An accident?

Is negating the inhibition for self-destructiveness a double negative that does not become a positive?

The mystery.

Why did he snap? Alicia may find out.

ANNA WRITES IN 'DISPLACED' - NOVEL-IN-PROGRESS

Anna Pietersen writes in DISPLACED - from chapter 3 draft just written of my novel-in-progress:

This is Anna writing. Heed me. I traipse and stretch across an ocean.

I of Amsterdam, once married to Jan Hoekstra, wildly comic sculptor of assemblages, scattered across a yard on the flattened outskirts of my city, afflicted by multiple sclerosis, grappled with a walker, vast sexual appetite in his prime, shorter than I, so strong, wanderer through canals, tipsy cyclist, crashing often, once off a bridge into water, the bicycle recovered amid his bold laughter, later struggles with his walker to attempt once more to sculpt a weightless form, defying his own incapacity. Falls.

Helen Rice and I hoist him up to a futon, we a dalliance then, sexy crones to creative crones, sweet Jan dead hours later, grieving him still.

And I of upstate New York, they call it here, grief that spans an ocean, spouse now of Helen, in a triple wedding among Jan’s sculptures, imagining him in his do-rag and beard laughing as we six or eight or then ten, it was, of us, dance like Bojangles, jump so high, then lightly touch down. The electric stand=up bass and classical guitar of Eindeloze Tijd, Endless Time, we Moroccans, Dutch, Americans, lightly touch down, yes, and in one grand leap, jeté, I cross an ocean to a land of mountains and winding rivers and slate outcroppings and hardpan, fierce winters now disturbingly warm. An alien. Displaced.

Though less perturbed, breaking outward, like the dancer, the potter, the roamer of Amsterdam streets, picking up men, women in my youth, then transformed to sedate, a pose I matched for awhile with behavior, usually, often, then Helen and I meet. We make love. She tarries, we marry. Breaking outward in a new land. How it must be.

OPENING LINES FOR SHORT STORY 'HOMELESS'

Opening lines for short story "Homeless" which I'm writing along with the novel "Displaced."

August and the winter months. Elrod Mathews hated them.

He shambled about with his gear under the bridge, unrolled his sleeping bag, rolled up a sweater for a pillow, and stretched the sleeping bag out on the ledge just below the city highway. The vehicles passing above thumped an irregular beat that echoed under the overpass. No vehicles traveled on the road at the bottom of the broad cement slant connected to the ledge.

“That’s what I am,” he said to another man, already asleep. “Private detective Elrod Mathews, at your service.”

Where’s my magnifying glass, he thought. He reached into his old army jacket’s inside pocket and pulled out a reading glass he sometimes used to direct the sun’s beam on paper to light a fire. Or a cigarette. If the sun was out.

He edged over to the sleeping man, whose boots were sticking out from under his blanket. Check the soles, he thought, scanning through the glass, the boots illuminated with his tiny flashlight.

“Hah!” he said. “Hairs. Gray ones. Long ones. A lot of them, clumped in red clay.”

Mathews backed away. Never expected that, he thought. He stood, looked at the man, skinny, reeking of alcohol, breathing heavily. He covered his mouth as if to take back what he said. 

I hope he didn’t hear. Private eye Mathews has to figure this out...

FROM A TRILOGY TO A SERIES ...

SERIES -- When I started STRINGER I intended to develop a trilogy that would focus on the changing lifestyles of the key group of characters and their encounters with each other, with crime and violence and intrigue, with efforts at reportage and social justice, and to challenge stereotypes. Now, after the following novels - TILT, TURNED LOOSE and STRINGER - I find I want to keep working with the characters. So I'm planning a fourth novel using the theme DISPLACED. I also need a series theme name, too, so I'm pondering that.

DISPLACED may start something like this:

Helen Rice awoke startled and sat up. "Oh!" she cried.

"What is the matter?" Anna Pietersen asked, alarmed, roused from her sleep.

"I just felt how deeply I'm grieving," Rice said."The intensity of it. Not only me, you are, we all are."

eBOOK FORMATS & DIGITAL RIGHTS TANGLE

Finally zeroing in on the best formatting for digital book editions (like Kindle, Nook, iBooks) - quite a learning curve, partly because suggestions are piecemeal across internet ebook sites ...

Another intriguing tangle is Digital Rights Management (DRM) -- or, for an ebook buyer, the ability to convert an ebook file into another format and pass it on to a friend -- Kindle & Nook gives an author or publisher the option to DRM or not -- Smashwords will only distribute without DRM ... the argument for not DRM-ing is that allowing a reader to convert or pass on is like "word-of-mouth" - One will see the passed-on version and will say "Oooh. I want to view this on my Kindle or Nook or whatever ebook reader one employs, and then buy the book ...

DRAFT COVER FOR 'TILT' - MY THIRD NOVEL

Draft cover for  TILT ... my third novel .

NEXT NOVEL MAY ADDRESS THEME "DISPLACED"

* Thinking of expatriates, immigrants and displaced persons as a theme for my next novel. Especially the internally displaced.

* Intriguing to note that skilled professionals working in another country are described as *expatriates,* while others not-so-skilled may be called *immigrants.*

 * Some how makes me think of the introduction I had to Asian Subaltern Studies via the work of Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak - much of which I've forgotten - thoughts not so deep anymore.

* Subalterns can be seen as non-elites striving for social and political change - not necessarily through uprisings or demonstrations.

* Must not turn the novel, if I pursue it, into an academic discourse --

* Then comes the question -- is living in a social network a form of displacement? Or colonization?

SPECIAL 7-DAY SALE FOR NOVEL 'STRINGER'

SPECIAL 7-DAY SALE FOR NOVEL 'STRINGER'

Starting Sept.8 and for the next 7 days, Wes Rehberg's novel STRINGER will be on sale at reduced prices on Amazon.com - 
   
Kindle edition at $2.99 and paperback at $9.95 -- (down from $17.95 paperback and $9.99 Kindle).
   
Visit the link below for a preview, a synopsis and to purchase:
http://www.amazon.com/Wes-Rehberg-Ph.D./e/B007KIY2HW/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

OPENING OF 2ND DRAFT OF 'TILT'

Opening of the second draft of "TILT" -- (Scrivener software capture) ...

FIRST DRAFT OF 'TILT' WRITTEN ... NOW THE REVISIONS

"The solitude of fiction writing, a yoga that stretches the sinews of that reach into an unfathomable source … no way to know why the need to do this … the outputs and outcomes are so uncertain." -- 
-- Alicia Lys in "TILT" ...

 Completed the first draft of "TILT" - third novel in a series that began with "STRINGER," followed by "TURNED LOOSE." 

Now the revisions, an exhausting process. In most ways, I followed John Steinbeck's suggestion, write through and go back and fix later. Occasionally, I re-edited a scene when I realized that it synchronized poorly with subsequent episodes or characterizations.

  I'll find more of these as I work the second draft. I'll also find things I wrote that will make me wonder what I was thinking about.

Usually, I write every day, surprised at the discipline. The plot line is general when I start out but the characters’ features are basically clear in my mind. They help guide the story's direction and lead to the introduction of other characters and plot details and shifts.

I'm not shy about writing complicated plots or characters, or leaving some things unresolved, or developing multiple themes, or giving a character space to reflect. I'm not shy either about writing uninhibitedly.

The core episodes in all three novels have been written in an imaginary area in upstate New York, some others in imagined spaces of real places, and others in actual sites. The characters and events are fiction.
  So far the manuscript has about 46,000 words which translate into a little more than 200 paperback pages.

NEARING THE END OF THE FIRST DRAFT OF "TILT"

From Scrivener software ...

FOUR BOOKS AVAILABLE VIA WILD CLEARING ...

"TURNED LOOSE," "STRINGER," "OPENING THE GATE," AND "POLITICAL GRACE: THE GIFT OF RESISTANCE" are available via links at Wild Clearing's home page ...

HELEN AND ANNA CONSTRUCT JAN'S MEMORIAL SCULPTURE

From my the first draft of my novel-in-progress "TILT" -- Helen Rice and Anna Pietersen construct Jan Hoekstra's memorial sculpture -- image with text from Scrivener software:

ANNA REFLECTS ON HELEN AND HER IN "TILT"

Excerpt from Part 2 of "TILT" -- Chapter 14, first scene ... (Draft)

(The beginning and deepening of Helen Rice and Anna Pietersen's relationship)

Anna Pietersen wandered over her plot of lowland, weaving slowly through the scattered sculpted assemblages Jan Hoekstra had placed on the property over their years together on the outskirts of Amsterdam.

Something that will work within another assemblage that Helen and I are collaborating on, she thought, yet represent him and what he meant to me. He never promoted his work, always the recluse. So difficult that way. Another forgotten yet very fine artist. I, too, similar, hating the marketplace. Helen is different. I am sure it has been frustrating for her, too. And now we two intertwine, as creative beings and aging partners. Companions, maybe, until one of us dies. Life ends. There is no more. And then the earth is gone and all our works vanish. What does it matter? I will not let go of this thought. Yet I will defy it, even if the work is only temporal.

Defiance, that is what I am looking for, she thought. A piece that defies both celestial gravity and the gravity of inevitable destruction. ...

PROGRESS IN 1ST DRAFT OF "TILT"

Where I am in the first draft of my novel "TILT" -- writing in Scrivener software ... 21,000 words, roughly 86 paperback pages, probably halfway through ... — at Wild Clearing.

"TILT" NEW WORKING TITLE OF NOVEL-IN-PROGRESS

'TILT' is the new working title of my novel-in-progress, formerly called 'Clarity." It is the third in the series that includes 'Turned Loose' and 'Stringer.'
I'm thinking of using the key characters in future works too, much the same way as noir and mystery novels do. Some excerpts highlighting the characters are in posts below.

'CLARITY' EXCERPT WITH HELEN RICE & ANNA PIETERSEN

Excerpt from a draft scene  in "Clarity" between sculptor Helen Rice, 67, and potter Anna Pietersen, 63, their growing relationship a parallel theme in the novel:

Helen Rice guided Anna Pietersen into the Benwood Art Museum in Oquaga City, under the logo “BAM!” on a blue banner hung above the windowed entranceway.  

“We’ll see where they positioned my scarecrow sculpture and later look at ‘Still Life’,” she said. “‘Still Life’ is really a joke; I was surprised they added it to their regional collection. You’ll see why. It refers to a practice by people in the U.S. who made a home brew known as ‘moonshine’ and ‘white lightning’.”

“I know a little about that. Our jajem has a similar tradition, but it is made from malt rather than corn.”

Rice waved a greeting at the desk attendant and entered the main hall, architecturally lighted from broad slanted and vertical windows that faced the Susquehanna River, light that reflected off brushed steel and aluminum walls interspersed with light oak irregular panels. Her sculpture, titled “Scarecrow Threat,” was set so it greeted visitors to the museum’s interior sculpture gallery.

“That’s satisfying,” Rice said, smiling, hers and Pietersen’s arms interlocked as they strolled.

“It must be,” Pietersen grinned.

“Sandra has a work here, too, a small Claes Oldenburg styled work called ‘Collapse,’ stuffed white vinyl arranged in a way that makes a viewer feel as if might fall.”

“Very funny. Tell me more about ‘Scarecrow'."

ORGANIZATIONAL POWER OF SCRIVENER IMPRESSIVE

Really like the organizational power of Scrivener software for novel writing - also applicable for other genres ... Below, where I was up to in "Clarity" when screen shot was 'captured.'

DRAFT EXCERPT FROM 'CLARITY,' SEQUEL TO 'STRINGER' & 'TURNED LOOSE'

Draft excerpt from a scene in my novel tentatively titled "Clarity," sequel to "Stringer" and "Turned Loose."

Matty Dimmock grumbled to himself inside the Nanticoke Crossing gas station and convenience store. Damned part-timers, he thought. Bliss is late again. I put in the long hours for PetrolCo. They come and go as they please.

He continued to slide packs of cigarettes into an overhead tray when he noticed the prison guard pull up in his Chevy pickup. What’s it this time?, Dimmock thought to himself. Cigarettes to smuggle inside? A message? I don’t know how they can employ someone so heavy and out of shape.

The guard, Phil Knowland, pushed open the store’s door and almost knocked over a stand of newspapers. One stack fell to the floor. He ignored it and walked to the counter.

“Two cartons, slime,” he said. “And here’s a little love note for you.”

“Be nice to know who my suitor is,” Dimmock replied.

“Don’t get your nose in this. It’s liable to get cut off.”

“What you make on the smokes?”

“None of your damned business what I do with these, sleaze.”

Knowland paid and left, stepping on the papers on the floor. Dimmock read the tiny folded scrap of paper: “Cabin = Ashes.”

“Somebody’s going to get burned out,” he said to himself. He tapped a text message into his cell phone to a number he was supposed to send these messages to and sent it. Then bent over to pick up the newspapers, The weekly Courier, special edition. He looked at the headline. Okay, they’re on Jesse again, he thought. I’ll read this later. He stuck the scrap of paper in his pocket. Keepsakes, he mused. Bliss McConkey pulled up in an old Honda and parked.

“About time,” Dimmock said when she entered, thin, heavily made up, in jeans and a red blouse, hair dyed black, 60 years old, always late.

“Car’s screwed up,” she said. “I had to get somebody in the trailer park to give me a jump.”

“Log in. I’m going out back to eat my lunch.”

Dimmock unwrapped his sandwich, took a bottle of cola from a case, and sat at a small metal desk. He looked at the inset photos on the front page of the weekly. Earle, Alicia Lys, Gil Stephens, with a patch on his eye, Helen Rice, the namelines read. Two stories about Earle, one on suspicions he’s operating schemes from inside Seneca Lake prison, the other about attacks on the other three, with the idea that Earle might be behind them.

“Old Jesse’s gonna be pissed off about this,” he uttered.

Wait a minute, he thought. That’s Alicia, the lady who used to bring meals to that guy in the wheelchair who lives in the single-wide up the hill. She’d stop in here for coffee. Nice looking. He read on.

“There’s been attacks on the old guy’s cabin,” he said. “Holy shit.”

He looked at the scrap of paper again. “Cabin = Ashes.”

Dimmock stood up. Crap. I’m in the middle of this, he thought. And I just got the letter with the 25 bucks in cash to relay the messages. That fat guard’s mixed up in it, too. And he knows it. And they’re aiming to burn down the guy’s cabin. What the hell do I do now?

NEXT NOVEL IN SERIES STARTED - 'CLARITY'

Ten-thousand words into the next novel in the series, started with "STRINGER," and followed by "TURNED LOOSE," both now available -- working title is "CLARITY" ...

Using Scrivener software for this one, and used it for part of the last - a lot easier to organize chapters and scenes than Pages or Word in the writing phase.

WEB PAGE FOR NOVEL 'TURNED LOOSE'

Web page for TURNED LOOSE is:
http://www.wildclearing.com/loose.html

REVISED COVER FOR 'TURNED LOOSE'

Revised cover design for TURNED LOOSE -- (online proof)

Proofing the novel's text - amazing the errors I missed in previous reads. Style has noir touches --

'CLARITY' TO FOLLOW 'TURNED LOOSE,' 'STRINGER'

Beginning third novel of the series started with "Stringer" and next with "Turned Loose" -- working title is "Clarity" ...

WEB PAGE FOR 'TURNED LOOSE'

TURNED LOOSE now has its own web page at:
http://www.wildclearing.com/loose.html

CHARACTERS REFLECT IN "TURNED LOOSE"

Brief characters' reflections from "Turned Loose" - The first paragraph is Todd Redding's; he's a weekly's owner - Next paragraph is a brief narrative referring to Mike Hancock, a mental patient - The last are from Helen Rice, a bisexual sculptor married to Gil Stephens ...

Things are falling apart all around me, Redding thought. Why did I let myself get pulled into this? He walked to the window and looked out. Two young men in long dark coats, black hair, faces streaked in black, walked by, looked into the window, waved with an abbreviated gesture, and continued on. Omens of evil, Redding thought. What else. He began to pace.

Stephens suggested they bring Hancock to his apartment for his medications. Rice said she’d stay with Redding, obviously distressed with his choices.

All these imaginations seeing it differently, she mused. We coalesce into a temporary consensus. Believe we proceed from there as if it were a potentially fixed proposition. Often without examining the fiber of the consensus. I don’t think Todd has it in him to see the transformation of his newspaper through. He’s going to bail out. Down from the Hill will be aborted. Then what for Gil, for Alicia. I’m only tangentially involved. My career is on track, and at my age, that’s a wonder. I’m still someone the university wants to keep around. Now, enterprises are playing with the notion of “strategic dynamism.” Long-term goals disappear as quick fixes take over. I could live 30 more years, it’s part of my heritage, the genetic mystery that codes the timing. Like Gil, his take a little different, I think the imagination rules. In ways people don’t fathom. I’m really glad I don’t have children. I’d be so fearful of what they’d face on this planet; what my imagination conjures will lie ahead.

She thought of the Moody Blues line from “Nights in White Satin”: “We decide which is right and which is an illusion.” Maybe in some cases. If we can figure out where we’re coming from.

DIOTIMA SEQUENCE FROM "TURNED LOOSE"

FROM "TURNED LOOSE" Writer’s note: Alicia Lys and Gil Stephens, more intimate than just good friends now, settle down in a hotel room in Madrid - One of the mental patients had spoken of the Diotima sequence in Plato’s “Symposium” - Alicia asks Gil to talk about it a little --

“This part of you is vague to me,” she said. “I want to know more. Let’s sit on the couch.”
Stephens let her take his hand and guide him, watched her sit with her feet under her facing him, an arm on the couch, the light of the floor lamp behind her.
“Okay,” he sighed.
“I forget how Plato brings this dialogue to Socrates, but a key idea Diotima expresses is that Eros, born of Resource and Need, is a mediator, even a trickster, who connects the human with what lies beyond representation. First it is Beauty, then the Good and the True, supposed mysteries of the divine, Plato’s forms. Yes. That sounds right.”
Lys sipped her wine. “I remember the forms from a philosophy course I aced.”
“You did. Interesting.”
“Go on, Dr. Stephens.” She pretended to lower a pair of eyeglasses over her nose.
“Eros is unruly, this is attributed to Need, his mother, who lived in poverty. He comes in disguises, too, a master of artifice. He’s barefoot, homeless, sleeps out in the open or in doorways. On the other hand, born of Resource on the day of Aphrodite’s birth, he brings to his mediation, as a form of love, the aspect of beauty. Or better maybe, the expression of beauty as a loveliness of the body, and beauty also in other forms of knowledge, like law, institutions, if you can imagine these being open to that, especially with what we’ve encountered.”
“It’s not easy, that’s for sure.”
This is sounding like a Socratic dialogue, Stephens thought.
“Anyway, this mediation becomes a founding event in the human soul, Diotima says. Only Eros can connect the human with wisdom beyond representation, tough to conceive but I imagine intuited. He mediates, in the way humans generally think, between subject and object, subject and predicate, and lover and the beloved. The other forms of love are filios, kinship or friendship love, and agape, transcendental love beyond reckoning. But another key point Diotima makes is the idea that Beauty itself is a loveliness that is everlasting.”
“Not like as us.”
“So far as we appear.”
“But like something in us.”
“Hopefully.”
“Gil, I love this. I don’t want to lose it. Today. The last few months.”
She walked to the window, looked out into the night, and turned around.
“Who’s the trickster here?” Stephens asked, smiling.
Lys laughed, walked to the couch and clasped his hand.

WORKNG COVER DESIGN FOR 'TURNED LOOSE'

This is a working cover design for my novel TURNED LOOSE ...

CHANGING THE TITLE OF "HILL" TO - "TURNED LOOSE" ...

New title for my novel-in-progress. It is TURNED LOOSE. Working title was Down from the Hill.
Any previous reference to Down from the Hill will refer to Turned Loose ...