ADIOS 2013 -- THE YEAR OF THE MEDICAL MALADY TOUR

Looking forward to 2014 as the year of the medical malady tour comes to an end … some stops along the way --

-- prostate cancer rise and fall, and I interrupt medical treatment in favor of anti-cancer diet and exercise -- treatment side effects too pronounced -- later tests indicated cancer presence undetectable. Monitoring.

-- macular degeneration, both eyes, under treatment, seems arrested

-- cataracts, both eyes, thus surgery to replace clouding lenses

-- lower back injury, physical therapy and ongoing rehab exercises

-- full body bone scan at my request (demand), negative for cancer; lower back X-ray later also indicates no cancer.

-- colonoscopy, everything’s okay

-- borderline hypertension … (no wonder)

Yep … so long 2013 …

DRAFT PASSAGE FROM MY SECOND 'ELROD' SHORT STORY

Draft passage from my second Elrod short story:

The next day, Elrod showered, dressed, and in the cold, clear morning, walked toward a small downtown market about a mile away. En route, he mused about his situation and what seemed to be a new stage of recovery from a severe head injury he suffered in the vehicle accident that killed his parents and left him an orphan.

Mind is clearing more and more, he thought. I no longer talk about myself in the third person, Elrod is doing this, is doing that, and I seem to be putting sequences together in a better way. I'm smart, and from reading and therapy, know I'm a global thinker. I'm not sure how far this will go, but, I've got a new sense of myself.

Elrod reaffirmed to himself that he no longer wanted to be without shelter on the streets again. He learned to be frugal, to bank money unspent from his disability checks, to use his food stamps carefully, and to be persistent in his work to reduce the disabilities he realized he suffered from his childhood head wound. The room at Motel 23 he could afford.

“A new me,” he said softly. “Seven years on the streets. Enough of that!”

Still looking like a homeless person, Elrod walked through the roads bordering a city project and added a shuffle to his stride as he neared the market. A new me putting on the old me, he mused, smiling. Off to his left, he glimpsed a young boy knocking on a door, carrying a lunch bag. The door opened, a hand reached out and took the bag. The boy then ran farther up the street and around a corner.

I heard about that, he thought, kids used as drug couriers for street dealers. Leave it be, but keep what I saw in mind.

(c) 2014 Wes Rehberg

BRIEF HISTORY OF A WRITER STILL FUMBLING WITH WORDS

BRIEF HISTORY OF A WRITER STILL FUMBLING WITH WORDS

The history. Some extremely regrettable actions. They can’t be undone. Some redeeming ones. How to regard those? I think of them as blessings maybe deserved, maybe not. I’ve no way of telling.

Spouse. Almost twenty five years together now. Many adventures and misadventures shared. Her children and mine, melding still. Uncommon indwelling and meaning between us.

More than 20 years of writing and editing for smaller newspapers. I felt linked to what happened locally, my beat, for enterprise, spot news, investigation. Turned down a few fine opportunities: working in London for Reuters; per diem news writing for CBS-TV in New York City. Others. Circumstances and my own perfidy got in the way.

About six years of filmmaking, me, camera, putting together a few documentary efforts, some experimental so-called anarchistic pieces, one particularly embarrassing collaboration. A little bit of recognition. Couldn’t keep it up; started too late; too costly to produce.

Now writing again for a couple of years - some short stories published in “literary magazines.” Self-published a trilogy then removed it, hunting traces of its existence so they could be obliterated. Self-published a Ph.D. dissertation and a small collection of short stories and poems, a few published in other venues. Reworking a novel. Submitted a novelette for young readers and another short story.

To me, my writing seems pedestrian, but I like to weave the stories. I’m not methodical, sometimes not careful, shirk from trying to compose anything longer a couple of paragraphs, hate marketing, rarely read to others in settings available, regard this latter part of my creative life as part of a semi-reclusiveness I prefer.

I won’t say it doesn’t matter if my work isn’t accepted or regarded well. It does. But there’s so much available, so many opportunities to find fine works to embrace; it’s easy to be missed in the crowd.

FINAL DRAFT EDIT OF "UPROOTED" COMPLETED (I HOPE) ...

I completed editing the text of “Uprooted,” the final draft (I hope).

I’m unsure yet whether to try to find an agent or publisher for it, or to self-publish the novel myself. For now, I’ll fix the formatting to set it up as an ePub book to see what it looks like that way. Eileen (my spouse) wants to give it a run-through, and maybe I’ll ask others. Uncertainties …

I wrote and edited most of it on Scrivener editing software, starting on my old refurbished Macbook Pro laptop and completing on my used refurbished Lenovo Thinkpad laptop -- I’ll probably ePub format it on Pages, the Mac word processing software that has that capability -- back and forth.

COMING SOON: "UPROOTED," A NOVEL; THEN "GATEWAY" SHORT STORIES

RETIRED JOURNALIST MENACED, INJURED AS HE PROBES
DEGRADING CONDITIONS MENTALLY ILL AND ELDERLY FACE

A retired and semi-reclusive former journalist who strings for a local weekly newspaper is urged by a woman activist who brings meals to rural homebound elderly to help her expose degrading conditions some live in. Inspired, he also helps spawn a probe into mental patient treatment when a psychiatric center is downsized.
The activist's request involves him and his sculptor wife in investigations that lead to threats, injury, local political corruption, personal conflict, international travel, a reunion with a painful past and a choice about his future.

COMNG SOON ...

In addition to the novel “Uprooted,” I’m going to compile a collection of short stories, four which I’ve had the good fortune to publish in literary magazines, a couple of others in process. A few poems, too, two published in literary magazines. Tentative title: “Gateways” -- Getting some mojo back.