Before and After The Walking Dead's Season 7 Premiere

Photo: from the Walking Dead Season 7's Wikipedia page

You can find more blog entries about Season 7 (and past seasons) of The Walking Dead by clicking on the tab for it at the top of this blog. I post this here just to introduce that separate blog. Thanks!

Just Before the Episode Airs

So, Season 7 is upon us, and I'm back for a blog of The Walking Dead since Season 5. Been busy!!!

Who will Negan be bashing with the baseball bat? Since the premiere starts in half an hour, there isn't a lot of time to get into it, so I'll present options and pick, and we'll see how right I was. (Or, wasn't.)

--Glenn

--Abraham

--Eugene

--Rosita

--Michonne

--Sasha

--Aaron

Okay, so my picks. Glenn gets it in the comics here, and in an interview, Lauren Cohen cried about this episode and said it was very depressing and difficult. In the comics, after he dies, she miscarries and then kills herself, but I'm guessing not all of that will happen.

But I think Glenn goes. The showmakers have veered from the comics quite a bit, but I don't think they will here. Plus, Glenn's arc has crested.

I also think Eugene and/or Abraham will go. I wouldn't be surprised if both do, but if I had to pick one, I'd go with...both. Eugene's character has definitely crested and there's not much more for him to do. Once he found his bravery, there wasn't anything else. And Abraham...well, he's basically been another Daryl lately, and that can't go on. His character has more to still do, but...I can't choose between them.

The same can be said for Michonne, and for Daryl, but I'm not ready to pick them yet. Frankly, the showmakers can't be that dumb to cast Daryl away, and Michonne has maybe crested, but has too much of a fan base, especially among women. I mean, she's basically a female Rick, and I mean that in the kindest of all possible ways. Seriously, that's a compliment. Either one would be a logical choice, but I'm not ready to go there.

I am ready to pick Rosita and / or Sasha, but I feel that there would be something interesting between them once Abraham goes. But I wouldn't be surprised if one of them gets hit.

And Aaron is just sort of there. Those guys don't last too long. He goes.

So now I've boiled it down to:

Aaron, Eugene, Abraham, Glenn, with a few maybes. I mean, if the showmakers really want to be mean, they can make it Maggie herself, but that would be...shocking, though not surprising, if you know what I mean. I've only recently been talked out of saying she was one of the ones tonight.

But I have my doubts. (Before the previews, I've even said that Carl could get it. But Rick would've been more insane in the previews had that been the case.)

But I'll say No for now. So four is too many. I'll pick two.

I'll say: Glenn and Eugene or Abraham. Maybe all three. Aaron gets away because he's so irrelevant.

And I don't expect Negan himself to last too long. Certainly not all season. Maybe a few episodes.

My guess is that they won't show who it is until almost an hour in. (The show is an hour and six minutes tonight.)

If you're reading this, what do you think? Make a guess in the comments if you'd like, and I'll be back to this blog with another entry to wrap it up and see how I did.

After the Episode

Well, I didn't want to be right, but so far I was: Abraham and Glenn.

Both deserved better. Glenn especially didn't deserve to go like that, with one eye bulging out. He got in a promise to Maggie, and showed he loved her, but...at least Abraham got a few choice words and attitude in there.

I was just asked why I felt Abraham would get it. One: as I mentioned before, he was essentially another Daryl, and that wouldn't last long. Second, he was listed as one of the stars at the Rhode Island Comic-Con, which is often an indicator that one's role has diminished--as Father Gabriel's last year--or that it has ended. His role wouldn't lessen, so it had to be that it was ending.

Now I'm watching The Talking Dead, so let's see how that goes...I'll watch that now...

Touching tributes to the departed. Hard to believe it's been six years for Glenn! And for all of us watching the show. Cool that Yeun said it was an honor for the end to come to him, as it's the catalyst for everything else that happens, and apparently there's quite a bit. Great attitude! I'm watching Michael Cudlitz and going to bed. Thanks for reading!

Comfort by Ann Hood

Photo: from Ann Hood's webpage, here.

When a 5-year old child dies...Well, I can't really even finish the sentence, much less write a book about it.  Such loss is inexplicable.  It is impossible to imagine, even by a person like Hood who makes her living from her literary imagination.  The talent to do so must be immense.

You have to do honor to yourself, your own emotions, the child, to the death, to the reality of how it happened.  The details.  The exact details.  Details so exact you have to live your own worst nightmare over and over and over and over just to get the details right.  Because to get them wrong--purposely wrong--is a sort of blasphemy.  Yet you also don't want to sound whiny, or maudlin, like you don't realize other people have lost their kids, too.  You have to write about the cold hard facts, and how do you describe emotions at all, especially as cold hard facts?

And you have to write it well, not like a diary or a journal.  You have to write it over and over, drafts innumerable, to get the tone of everything above, and everything I can't even think of, just right.  It is a high-wire act, a balancing act of art, and therapy, and confessional, and literature, and a sort of diary-journal in memoir form.

I'm a writer--hopefully a pretty good one--and I can't imagine ever being able to do this.  Ann Hood, a former (or current?) Rhode Island College professor [full disclosure: I attended RIC but did not have the good fortune to get Ms. Hood as a professor, though of course I did have some good ones] does the high-wire act and succeeds because her writing is that direct, that honest, that good.  This book will jab you with its simplicity and it's reality.  Not realism, which is a fakeness of literature that makes the unreal real.  This book is all real, all the time.  It is one of the heavier 186-page book you'll ever read, and read it you should.

It doesn't matter if you've never lost a child.  When you reach a certain age, as I guess I have, you've probably lost somebody, and no matter how old they were, I'll bet you thought they weren't old enough.  And you're right.  At least, I think you are, because that's how I've felt about my loved ones who've died.  In fact, I feel that way about everyone I know who've died, even those who were quite old.

More than the death of her child, that's really what Comfort is about: Death.  The death of anyone.  Anyone you've loved.  Anyone you thought died too young.  Weren't they all too young?

Of course, it's harder to explain when they are really that young.  How do you explain the death of a 5-year old girl?  Especially when it's your own daughter, how do you explain that?  Another thing this book tells you is that there is no explanation.  There's no Why.  How can there be?  How can we possibly understand why such a thing happens?  Hood makes it very clear right away, and reminds us throughout, that she doesn't know why it happened.  She doesn't have a belief about it, either.

It happened.  That's the source of the grief, and maybe of the comfort.

It happened.  And there is no why.

A remarkable work that deserves to be read.  When you're done you'll feel something, which is what good books are supposed to make you do.

Contest Winner!

Photo: Cover of Spring 2012's Space and Time Magazine, with my first sold story, "Hide the Weird."

And the winner of the contest, of all the comments on the entry announcing the publication of my last story, is......

Jonathan N.!!!

Jonathan, you've won the issue of Space and Time Magazine.  I've emailed you via the one you gave me.

Thanks to everyone, from Rhode Island to Australia, who commented and participated.

And thanks for reading!

Please stay tuned for more contests and prizes to come.  Prizes will be different, too.

Speaking of that, on my blog Steve's Baseball Blog--Cards and Commentary, I mentioned in my last blog entry today that I will be having contests over there as well, giving away one free 1909-1911 T206 card. These cards are extras of my collection, and are not professionally graded by SGC, PSA or anyone else. But they're cool cards, worth at least ten bucks or more, even in bad condition.

Do you have any collections of anything?  If so, what's your specific favorite in that collection?

Police Log--Paranoia and Brazen Honesty

There's still two weeks to enter my free contest and win stuff.  To do so, please go to this link, or just scroll down to the previous entry.  Thanks.

Until then, I thought I'd pass this along.  This is a snippet from my local paper's police log, where some very wacky people do some very wacky things.  And in Warwick, R.I., no less.  If this stuff is happening here, ca you imagine the shenangigans happening in L.A., NYC, Chicago, Boston, etc.?

From the Police Log (and from the Warwick Beacon's address):

PARANOIA

Officer [   ] reported he was doing a fixed traffic post around 4:40 p.m. on Feb. 4 when a man approached him and told him it felt like people were following him. [The officer] said he talked with him some more and learned the man thought every car that was driving past was following him and looking at him and told [the officer] that he should know because [the officer] was one of the people investigating him. He said the man claimed he spoke with numerous lawyers and they all confirmed that he was being investigated. [The officer] said he asked him who was investigating him and he said the police, although he did not know where he was or who he was talking to but he knew that Warwick Police were investigating him. He said the man was alternately excited and calm and inquisitive. He said he called for another car and patted the man down. [The officer] said he was nervous about the way the man’s hands would go into his pockets and then into a bowling bag. He said he had no weapons on him but did have what looked like $1,487 worth of gold Teddy Roosevelt $1 coins. [The officer] said he also found a prescription bottle in the bag and the man said, “That is Adderall.” He said the man claimed he had a prescription for the drug but the particular pills [the officer] was holding belonged to his sister. He said he and a sergeant discussed what to do with the man and they decided he needed professional psychiatric help. [The officer] said he confiscated the pills but did not arrest the man because Kent Hospital does not do psyche evaluations on people who have been arrested. He said they took him to Kent, where the staff began to explain how the evaluation would proceed and he became impatient and belligerent and turned and said, “[Expletive] it, you are just going to have to arrest me for the Adderall.” He was taken to headquarters, where he was charged with possession of a controlled substance and held for the bail commissioner. [The officer] said they learned that the man, who earlier said his name was Kenneth [   ], was in fact Giovanni [   ], 25, of [   ] Ave., Pittsburgh, Pa., and that he was staying at a local extended-stay motel. [The officer] said he asked the man why he had so many presidential coins, 54 identical rolls of Roosevelt $1 coins, and [the man] told him he was a collector but there as nothing else in the bag to indicate it was a collection. He said they did run a check on [the man] and discovered numerous arrests and convictions for robbery, burglary, fraud and receiving stolen goods in several states. [The officer] said a Google search turned up an account of $2.4 million worth of presidential coins were stolen from the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia in 2011. [The officer] said there was enough probable cause to believe the coins were stolen and that the Secret Service, who were investigating the heist in Philadelphia, be notified of the arrest.

(Me again.)  Now that's messed up!  How does a heavily-medicated, homeless paranoid schizophrenic man from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, get to Warwick, Rhode Island with 1,487 Teddy Roosevelt $1 coins in a bowling bag?  What?!?  Loved his response, too: He's a collector!  He probably sounded offended while he said it, too.

I couldn't make that up.  Or this:

Det. [   ] reported that a woman who was asked to come into headquarters about some fraudulent checks she’d cashed and quickly learned that it was about a purse that was stolen from a customer at Sullivan’s Publick House on Dec. 13 of last year. [The detective] reported that they had surveillance of the woman taking the purse and leaving by the back door but had more evidence that she used the credit cards in the purse at several places in Warwick and other places, but, under the circumstances, he welcomed her candor in regard to the fraudulent checks. She claimed she was cashing five checks worth $1,270 over the past week for a friend of hers and she only got $20 for one check but got a cup of coffee or a pack of cigarettes for the others. She said her friend was stealing the checks from an 80-year-old Warwick man who trusted her.

[A different detective] reported that he was there when [the first detective] was asking “the suspect in a stolen purse caper from Sullivan’s” and took the opportunity to ask her about charges made on her sister’s credit cards last November and about her sister’s laptop that went missing in December and charges on her debit card in March. He said she admitted using the debit card but denied stealing the computer. By the time the interview was over, [   ], 44, of [   ] Ave., Warwick, was charged with five counts of felony fraudulent checks, three counts of fraudulent computer access and larceny for the stolen purse that reportedly contained $140 in cash along with the credit cards.

(Me, again.)  It's hard to tell with writing from reports, but I do believe there was a little tongue-in-cheek with the underlined sentence above, as it seems a bit too dry and straightforward to me.  "He welcomed her candor," indeed.  Sounds like the first detective waved the second one over not because he feared for his safety, but because, "Hey, Harry, come here, you gotta hear this."

And this is all in one day, in one police blotter.

So let me know what you think, and maybe I'll offer up more of this stuff.

How Bookstores Pay Us Not to Go There

Photo: Barnes and Noble icon, from twimg.com.  (Notice the brick and mortar name and the .com.)

So a few days ago I walk into the only large (chain) bookstore left in all of Rhode Island: Barnes and Noble.  I wanted to go there because a) I'd forgotten if I'd pre-ordered Stephen King's latest, Dr. Sleep, his sequel to The Shining.  (For the record, I'm a little concerned about how I'll like the motorcycle gang, but we'll see.)  I ask the guy behind the help desk to look it up in my account, and it turns out that I hadn't pre-ordered it.  I ask him if I can do so, using this 20% extra coupon I'd been emailed, and hoping I'd be able to use it with the 40% off new hardcovers usually come with, and maybe even the 10% off I sometimes get because I'm a member.  (I realize that hoping to get 70% off a new Stephen King hardcover is extremely unrealistic, but as my previous blog entry mentioned, these are some hard times.)

He says No, that Barnes and Noble doesn't offer discounts on the pre-ordered books through BN.com because new books ordered online are already greatly reduced.

"How much reduced?" My ears perked up, because I like things greatly reduced these days.

He explains that to buy it in the store, I'd have to pay the $28 (or so) price, plus tax.  That's over $30.  I'd get the 30% off, not the 40%, and I'd get an additional 10% for being a member, and that's it.  No other coupons allowed.  No 20% additional from the coupon.  I was about to start a discussion about the meaning of the word "additional," as in, the coupon says "get an additional 20% off," but instead I ask him how much it would be to just pre-order it online.

"Nineteen dollars," he said.

Huh?  I quickly figured that 10% of $28 was $2.80, and that twice that was $5.60, and that twice that was $11.20 (that's the 40% off total, for those not so mathematically inclined), and that $30 (with tax) minus $11.20 was $19.80--essentially what it would cost me to sit on my butt at home and order it from there.  Plus, I wouldn't have to pay shipping, because I'm a member and I get that for free. And no money spent on gas, etc.

This gave me pause.  I told the guy I gave him credit for bringing the whole online thing up to begin with, as I had been ready to buy it from the store the week of September 23rd.  I said it was especially good of him to mention it, since everyone who orders a book at bn.com, and not at the store, makes his job more and more obsolete.  It also would make obsolete the jobs of the cashiers and the cafe workers, and it would negate the sales of a great many other books and magazines that are sold to people who come into the store to buy A, and who leave the store buying A, B and C.  From my experience, people who go online to a bookstore website to buy A end up buying A and that's it.  ("From my experience" here means me and a few friends.)

He acknowledged all of this, though it was clear that he hadn't considered all this before, and nobody had had the gumption (or the arrogance) to bring all this up to him before.  Times being what they are, I pre-ordered the book and had it delivered for free to my house, feeling badly as I did so, but at least congratulating myself for not waiting a few weeks or a few months and then buying it for just a couple of bucks on Amazon or Ebay.

To make myself feel a little better, I looked for a baseball card checklist / price guide I needed, but I was told that they didn't carry it in stock, but that their website did.  Sigh.  I bought a couple of coin books I needed instead, feeling that Barnes and Noble was at this point working against me as I tried to buy something in its store.  I had to go through entirely too much hassle and brainpower to do so.

In the long run I'll have to admit defeat.  Before long, the workers behind the registers, in the cafe, behind the help desk, and in the rows of books won't have a job, and the stockholders and CEO of Barnes and Noble will make more money because they won't have any workers to pay.  And there won't be even one large bookstore in my entire state.  Somewhere in there (though Stephen King himself probably doesn't need the money) the writers themselves, and the book publishers, will end up somehow getting screwed, as more and more people buy "books" online and then read them on their electronic devices, never having to actually be verbal with another person as they do so.  For this, book-makers will disappear, as will printers, type-setters, and all the middlemen who are responsible for the sometimes high price of books--but who also keep the economy going by being a necessary worker, and by holding a job.  This in turn makes them money, which they would spend on things that would also necessitate the jobs of other people.  The economy is a house of cards this way, and it's all going to someday blow down.

People will wonder why the economy got so bad.  And there won't be any economics books to teach them.

Or the teachers, for that matter.  But that's another blog.

The Conjuring House

Photo: I took this pic of an open crypt door at a cemetery near The Conjuring House.

After watching The Conjuring (my movie review, here), I decided to take a trip to Burrillville, Rhode Island (about half an hour away) and see the house it's based on.  My intention was to just go for a nice drive with my dog and to get out of the house for awhile.  If I could inobtrusively get a glimpse of the house from the road, fine.  If not, I'll just drive by and see what there was to see.

I want to make it clear that I do not condone anyone going to the house and loitering around.  There's an old couple that lives in there now, and they have a right to their privacy.  Having said that, I won't be a hypocrite, and I'll admit that I took a few pictures from the street of the house's front door (that's all of the house you can really see; it's not at all like the one in the film) and of the nearby barn, which I thought looked creepier than the house.  I was hoping for a glimpse of the lake in the backyard; the house is in a management area, so there's a real possibility of such a thing.  But, alas, no.  Anyway, I do not condone or advise for anyone to do what I just said I did, even from the street, and I'll explain why.  But before I do, ask yourself: Do you want a crowd of people congregating in the street, gawking at you and your home, and taking pictures of your house and barn?  One of the women I met there even told someone she was going to go up to the door and knock on it, or ring the bell.

I advised her not to do so.  Not only is it loitering and trespassing, but, also, according to the true story, that's the same front door that the evil spirits banged on relentlessly.  This latter part worked.

So I started off from my house with my dog and my directions.  Driving up there was very easy.  I got a little lost from poor signage, but I found the house in question, no problem, and even drove past it and soon entered Massachusetts.  I pulled over beside a large local cemetery (of course), and I let the dog out in some nearby grass away from the cemetery.  (People who let their dogs go to the bathroom in a cemetery at all, especially if they don't clean it up, are committing a blasphemy of some sort.)  Unfortunately, the dog did #2, so I double-bagged it and then threw that into a Dunkin' Donuts paper bag, so at least it didn't smell, and later I threw it away in a garbage can at a nearby gas station, much to the cashier's dismay.  I also entered the cemetery on my own and saw four other people also in it, which is rare.  I looked around very quickly for any stones from real-life people mentioned in my research, but I didn't find any.  I did not look very thoroughly, to be honest, and later I realized it was a waste of time, anyway, because I was now in a small town in Massachusetts, which people living in a house in a small RI town would not be buried in.  Didn't quite think that through.  A few pictures of this cemetery follow:

So I turned back around and headed to The Conjuring's house, which is mostly hidden behind some tall, thick trees, not far from a main road (for Burrillville, anyway) without a breakdown lane.  I saw six other people come out of an SUV and just stand, mostly out of view from the house, so I stepped out of my car.  I noticed the barn, quite a bit away from the house, so a few pictures were taken of that.  I did not want to spend time in front of the house, as I felt very strongly that the homeowners would be ready for that, and would be very unamused.   But I stepped out when I saw the others, and we talked about where they were from, and how long it took to get to this house.  Schenectady, and almost three hours, as I'd mentioned.  I took a couple of pictures of the front door through the many trees, had time to realize that the real house looked nothing at all like the movie's house (it's a lot smaller, and not as obviously old), and a woman next to me swore, and that's when I saw the swirling lights of the police car.

I walked slowly back to my car before he even stopped out of his.  The cop was very, very stern-looking, a countenance that he must practice in the mirror every day.  Nobody is that serious and stern, I swear.  But I'll bet that he gets a lot with that look, so that he doesn't have to say anything, or threaten anyone, or anything.  In fact, he didn't say a word to any of us, and we all went back to our cars immediately and drove away.

I doubt it was the first time he was at that house (it was about one pm when I got there) and I doubt it'll be his last.  In fact, I was surprised not to see a sign of any kind at the house.  I'll bet there'll be one there soon.  I drove away feeling very sheepish.  I mean, I wouldn't be happy if lots of people even drove slowly past my house, never mind actually stop, get out, gawk, and take pictures.

So I feel badly about it all, which is why I won't post pics of the house and barn here.  But, like I said, you're not missing much, as there wasn't much to see to begin with.  On the way back I stopped at a lake and waterfall, pictured here:

And after I left there, I went sight-seeing for a little while, and drove by two or three local cemeteries on both sides of the narrow road, so that it seemed like I was surrounded by them, which I was.  When I saw the open crypt door, I knew I had to turn around and take a picture of that for something I'm writing--a novel that mostly takes place in TB-infested Rhode Island of the 1880s and 1890s, and is told from the third-person limited POV following the doctor of Rhode Island's most famous example of vampire folklore, Mercy Brown (blog entry here).

So I took some pics of that open crypt door, and the very cool rusted-iron Victorian fence that surrounds some of the gravestones, pictured here:

And that's it.  That's my story of traveling to The Conjuring's house.  Truth be told, the lake, waterfall, crypt and cemeteries were more interesting, and much easier to take pictures of.  And I regret not opening that metal door on the inside of the crypt, with the diamond shapes.

What's your favorite recent (or not-so-recent) horror movie?  Have you ever visited the real-life place, or researched the real-life subject matter or story, etc. of that horror movie?

And would you have gone inside that crypt's open door?

My Day at the ER

Photo: Not Dr. Redhead.  A redhead from everydayhealth.com

So I'm at the emergency room the other day, never mind when--and, actually, I'd been there two days before that, too, but I needed to go back for more bloodwork--and despite bringing two books with me, I was captivated by the following things:

--Both times I went, two days apart, I got very thin, pretty doctors, a brunette and a redhead.  (The redhead was especially pretty, and I'm not usually one for redheads.)  And they were outstanding doctors, too, very thorough, very good at listening and explaining, very steadfast and in-charge.  I'm not just saying that to sound politically-correct, either.  Almost makes me want to get really sick again soon.  Almost.

--Medical care has undergone some serious transformations since I was last in an emergency room.  The one I went to had the worst reputation, and deservedly so, as someone actually died in the waiting room about six years ago.  I'd been there while younger (and poor) and I'd waited five, six, seven hours to get waited on.  These two times, no wait.  (When I asked how long the wait was, the girl said, "There's no waiting here."  I was so surprised, I couldn't stop from blurting, "No wait?  Since when?")

--I soon learned that "No waiting" was a relative term.  There's no waiting in the waiting room, but you'll wait awhile in the receiving room, behind the curtain thing.  But this is still nothing compared to the beard-growing wait it used to be.  Obviously, the death in this emergency room made them get volunteers (the second time, there were two older ladies smiling and preening at me the whole time; the smiles were so wide it was sorta weird. I mean, don't they see illness, injuries and blood all the time?  What the hell do they have to smile about?  Customer service, I know, I know.) that would separate the life-and-death cases from the not-so-much.  I'll bet the dying lady from years ago would've been escorted right in--and wheeled upstairs rather fast, as I saw last time.

--I kept nodding at the doctor like a damned fool.  She could've asked me if my name was Samantha, and I would've kept nodding.  "Would you like to strip now and say 'Woof, woof?'"  Nod.  Nod.

--The employees are like anyplace else: they whine and complain.  I listened for several minutes as some guy whined about how nobody's come to escort me to the x-ray.  Turns out, it was around the corner from my pod, maybe fifteen feet away.  I finally got there about half an hour later.  I felt like shouting, "If someone just wants to point me in the right direction..."

--When I was told to put on the johnny for the x-ray, I asked if I could put it on in the x-ray room, as we didn't know how long I'd be waiting.  This turned out to be a very wise move on my part, as they had me wait in the PIT (an acronym I also heard them complaining about; it stands for Patients in Transit) for about an hour, and it was FREEZING there.  I couldn't imagine sitting there in a johnny all that time.  And who wants to sit in a johnny in a waiting room, while tons of regularly-dressed people are milling about?  Odd.  The lady who told me to get into it I'd already diagnosed as a bit wacky and frazzled, so I didn't hesitate to pull the Jedi Mind Trick on her about the johnny.

--Also, having spent way too much of my life in hospitals, I knew that they rarely insist on the johnny when in the x-ray room.  I was correct here with that, too.  When I got in the room, the lady just asked me to take off my shirt.  I don't think she even knew I was carrying the johnny amongst my stuff.  When she was done, I put my shirt on and asked if she wanted me to leave the johnny there, and she said, "Oh, yeah.  Ummm...Sure."  And the pretty girl who led me in had a dragon on the back of her thin neck.  And she didn't know how to slide the background up and down.  I moved it for her a couple of times.

--Then, back to The Pit for awhile.

--While in The Pit again, this one guy kept babbling at me as I was clearly reading.  (I thought of Holden Caulfield.)  Turns out, he'd somehow gotten something metallic in his index finger, which had swelled to the size of a sausage.  Ewwwwwwww!!!  He said he'd heard they were getting a hand expert in for him.  Then he laughed hysterically at something I said about the show that was on, and then spoke at the show, in bitter, angry, unfunny tones, until he realized I was ignoring him.  Finally he laughed at himself and shut up.

--Another guy waited with me for awhile, but didn't say much.  But when I waited for my discharge papers at the end (which was quite a wait both times, though the stuff was the same), he talked up a storm.  He babbled about how he was sorry that he was called in front of me for the x-ray, even though I'd been waiting there much longer (the thin-necked dragon girl apologized, too; if she hadn't mentioned it, I wouldn't have noticed, as I was feverish, and reading, and otherwise distracted), and about how he was sorry about how much he mentioned that the cops had busted his fingers (he wore a large, bulky half-arm cast that covered most of his hand, but for two fingers, which jutted out like confused, recently-hatched birds), but that he kept mentioning it because he wanted it in the paperwork, so that when he went to the courtroom, it'd be in the paperwork, and how he respected the older, professional cops, but that the younger cops these days are too violent, and how he tries to stop drinking, but...I really wanted to ask him what he'd gotten arrested for, but I simply didn't want to engage him more than he was engaging himself.  Just didn't want to get involved.  But it's nice to see that even violent, drunken offenders who fight with cops have the decency to apologize for cutting you in the x-ray line.

--When the red-headed doctor called me into her office to explain the diagnosis, I felt special.  I mean, everyone else got talked to in The Pit, or in their curtained cell.  I got brought to her office!  And it was about the size of a shoebox.  When she smiled at me, which was often, I was happy.  Can I get a prescription for that instead?

--$100 co-pay EACH time.  Apparently the drastic transformation in health care isn't cheap.

--And another thing I noticed: lots of "providers," lots of "assistants," and lots of "volunteers."  Is there a doctor in the house?  I mean, besides Dr. Redhead, of course.

--As I was paying, a woman came out, strapped to a huge, tall, thick-metal, yellow rolling bed, which looked like the bed version of the thing Sigourney Weaver strapped herself into at the end of Aliens. The woman in that bed was grunting and groaning like a zombie with appendicitis, and her eyes were rolling back into her head.  The five or six people pushing her in that thing all looked worried and shocked.

--Upon seeing this, I said to the woman behind the counter, "She must've just gotten her co-pay bill, too."  I received no response to this at all, not even a GFY smile or an eye-roll.  But I thought it was pretty funny.  The timing was perfect, too, I assure you.  But her job is hard, and I'm sure she sees a lot of scary things.

--I made it a point to notice: every male employee (and quite a few of the male patients) went out of their way to talk to Dr. Redhead.  The pretty girl with the thin neck and dragon tattoo just gave these guys a little smile as she walked by, never once stopping to talk to any of them, though they were clearly trying to engage her in conversation.  You could tell that she very much enjoyed doing this.  She sort of sashayed when she walked.  One guy in green scrubs practically invited himself into Dr. Redhead's kitchen.  He was the fifth one to ask her where she'd been lately, hadn't seen her around.  (She'd been to a Boston hospital and two other Rhode Island ones.)  When she took me into her office, I felt like asking her where she'd been, hadn't seen her around lately.

--A special shout-out to one of my doctors, who undoubtedly has better things to do than read this, but I'll post it anyway.  This kind man, whom I've known literally all my life, gave me a follow-up call tonight.  From his office.  Just past 7 p.m.  Now that's good health care.

--Total time at the emergency room ER on the second day: Three hours.  That's really good.  I got received; I spoke to two doctors (the follow-up guy was a mystery this time and last time); I got listened to; I got treated with respect and intelligence (though I got the impression once that Dr. Redhead was lightly mocking me, but this was, of course, perfectly fine, as she smiled a few times, and laughed, and I don't even want to imagine what stupid expression I had on my face); I got lots of bloodwork done; I talked to a weirdo and a criminal, and I saw a woman have a psychotic break; I saw two very pretty women; I got apologized to by a cop-beating guy with multi-colored hair; I got off a couple of good one-liners, of which only one was laughed at, by the annoying guy with the sausage-swollen finger; I got lots of blog material; I got a cheap scrip that's working fine, without the nasty after-effects of the previous one (Don't go there.); and I essentially got my groove back.  What else can you ask for?

--Woof, woof.  Nod.  Nod.

My Interview, Part 1

Following is the beginning of my interview at a cool website for newbie and professional writers, The Writer's Block, at Raychelle-Writes.blogspot.com.  Specifically, you can find my interview here.  But it's an interesting site, so look around!

Welcome to The Writer’s Block! 

1)      Tell us a bit about yourself and where you live and work.

Thanks for having me here at The Writer’s Block, Raychelle.  I have a job I love that pays The Man, and I'm a novelist, short story writer—and so-so poet.  I live in the Northeast, in a quiet area of a loud suburb.  It’s sort of rural where I am, but I’m half a mile from suburban and seven miles from urban.  Also just half an hour to the good beaches, forty minutes to an hour to good walking/biking/hiking trails, an hour and a half from Fenway Park, two hours to the peaks and streams, and five hours from Manhattan—all of which I love and go to as often as possible.

2)      Describe your journey to becoming a writer/author.

Oh, boy.  How much time have ya got?  Well, the short of it is that, when I was about six or so, I wrote a short story in a birthday card for my mother, whose name was Carole.  The story was called something like, “A Christmas Carole, by Charles Dickens, but re-written by Steve Belanger.”  (The misspelling of her name was intentional.  I still have the card somewhere, since she’s passed.)  It made her smile, and I was hooked.  Throw in some slacking, finishing a novel, getting ripped off by an “agent” who scammed me for about a year (she’s still under indictment in NY State after many other victims came forward), and not writing a single creative word for nine years, and then being rescued (creatively and perhaps literally) by a great woman who convinced me to write again.  “Hide the Weird” was the first thing I finished and sent out, and it’s in Space and Time Magazine right now.  I feel I have those nine years to make up for, so I’m full speed ahead with many projects.

3)      Do you gravitate toward specific genres in your writing?

Well, I don’t know.  “Hide the Weird” is speculative fiction, I guess, though I’m not happy with that label.  I just sold a very short nonfiction piece about how adopting a greyhound changed my life.  I also finished a much longer nonfiction piece about managing anxiety in ten easy steps, with examples, anecdotes and short summaries.  I’ll be sending that out soon.  I’ve written (and am now re-writing) a zombie story that has quite a bit of the feel of Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night.”  And a tiny bit of the Sox collapsing last year.  Cuz they just rolled over and died, get it?  (Sorry.)  My edited and re-edited, finished and re-finished (knock on wood) novel is a mystery titled Cursing the Darkness.  A draft of a sequel (or maybe a prequel, we’ll see) titled Remembering James is about half done.  My novel The Gravediggers is a historical fiction horror novel, which I guess is what Dan Simmons’ The Terror was.  It’s about the TB epidemic in 1880s and 1890s New England (specifically RI and NH) and how a creature really could have hidden in the shadows of the hysteria and walked in the footsteps of the disease—suspected, but never seen.  Or was it?  The Mercy Brown folklore of Rhode Island plays a part, as does the unbelievable sacrifice of the village of Eyam, England during the Plague (look both of those up).  Modern-day, hysteria-inducing diseases, like 1980s AIDS, does, too, at least in the draft so far.  I’m writing a memoir as well, and even my poems are of differing subjects and themes.  Oh, yeah, and a book of my existentialist philosophy, titled Faith & Reality: Jumping Realities.  And I’m about 100 pages into a semi-autobiographical novel, The Observer.  And a collection of essays and articles about my experience in education, titled When No Child Gets Ahead, No Child Gets Left Behind: Adventures and Lessons in Education.  And a concentration camp novel, about a camp the Nazis used as a sort of positive advertising to the world’s cameras (the prisoners were shown performing whatever talent they had, like singing; they ate only for the cameras, and were told to smile or be shot after the cameras were shut off).  A small group of courageous adults try to save the life of a young boy who has no obvious talent whatsoever, at first by hiding him in a chorus.  And a novel about a different sort of Armageddon, titled Apocalypse.  So, no, actually I’d have to say I’m all over the place!  I guess there are two different theories for not-yet-firmly established writers: write what’s selling (Do we really need another teenage paranormal romance?) or write what you want and work your butt off trying to sell it.  I do the latter.

(Me again.)  There are 10 total questions, so there'll be more to come.  Thanks for reading.  Try out her site!

One-Sentence Summaries

To further become focused on my writing, it made sense to me this morning (after reading an article in Writer's Digest's "Write Your Novel in Thirty Days issue) to type up one-sentence summaries of the novel I'm currently working on.  Then, while I was at it, I wrote one-sentence summaries for a few other novels currently gestating in the ole noggin as well.  This is more challenging than you might think, but ultimately it's necessary.  Think of it as a thesis statement for an essay or paper: If you don't know what you're writing toward--or even what you're writing about--how can you expect yourself to write it?  You have to know what you're doing; to an extent, you have to also know where you're going.

So, though they may not be perfectly formed yet, here are my one-sentence summaries for a few novels.  Brief notes or explanations may follow each one.  Please feel free to post a comment or send me an email about any thoughts you may have about any of these.  I look forward to your ideas!  And while you're at it, why not do the same for your own writing?  (This would work for any type of writing, and for any length.)

One sentence summary:

The Gravediggers

Fears and bias surrounding an outbreak of TB in 1890s Exeter, Rhode Island, hide the scourge of a true vampire in the town and surrounding area.  [May be combined with the Plague in 1665-6 Eyam, England and AIDS in early 1980s America, and a small RI town today.]  This could be a series, as each of those ideas could be separate novels.

One sentence summary:

Untitled Concentration Camp Novel

A young boy with no artistic talent must either learn one or successfully fake it in order to survive his internment in a Nazi concentration camp whose purpose is to show the world how “well” Germany treats its Jews.

One sentence summary:

Apocalypse

Small groups of people in Kansas City, MO, Warwick, RI, and other major cities throughout the world must survive wars and natural disasters as they attempt to completely revamp what they thought was their “society.”  This includes attitudes about patriotism, religion, and the Bible itself.  This could be a series as well, as each of the last three things could constitute its own novel.

One sentence summary:

The Observer

After a breakdown nobody knew he had, one man must suppress the beliefs of his existence that held him together in order to re-establish himself in the mundane process of everyday American living.

Lizzie Borden: Misunderstood? Part 2

Photo: Lizzie Borden's jury, from her Wikipedia page

--Lizzie was later seen to burn the dress she wore when they were killed.  This is unusual in of itself, and very suspicious, but especially considering that the family was so frugal, they often ripped up unused clothing to use as rags.  (It was also said they all got sick because the father insisted they keep a mutton stew that the maid said had gone bad.  The father was notoriously frugal.)

--There were no signs of struggle in the rooms, the bodies, or the clothes of the victims.  This most likely means that no one unknown to the victims accosted them.

--The stepmother was killed first.  The wound patterns show that her killer had to straddle her, thereby attacking angrily from the front, showing power by essentially sitting on her, and then exhibiting enraged overkill by killing her with a hatchet (not an ax) and inflicting 19 hatchet cuts in her face--and only in her face.  This shows that the murderer knew the victim and was exhibiting rage towards the victim.  The first cut was enough to kill, but 18 more followed to the face anyway, thereby obliterating the face, and, in a psychological way, the victim herself.  It was proven that Lizzie very much disliked her stepmother, telling tons of people that, and by constantly pointing out that she was her stepmother, not her mother.  That immense dislike--either because this woman had "replaced" her mother, or because she was going to receive the barns, properties and about $500,000 if the father died first--was manifest in the method of the crime.

--The father, killed second, was also a victim of overkill, in which the first wound was enough to kill, but was followed by 10 more anyway.  He was also attacked only in the face, which profilers say is indicative of a personal crime, for the reasons mentioned above.  But the difference here is that he was killed in his sleep, which profilers say is indicative of a killer who feels powerless in front of this person normally.  This victim, killed like this, is usually someone who so dominates the killer that the killer must kill him while the victim is asleep.  Think Claudius and King Hamlet here.

--Though not indicative of anything by itself, Lizzie was a known kleptomaniac around town.  Local merchants would quietly invoice the father and he would quietly pay them.

--Though never proven, the psychological aspects of the people involved hint at sexual abuse.  The father fits the profiling prototype of someone who would do so, and Lizzie fits the psychological prototype of someone who would be a victim of it.  This would explain the stealing, the anger towards the stepmother, the anger towards the father, and the anger that she would not benefit from her years of victimization when the stepmother inherited everything.  This is all circumstantial, but the authors I'm reviewing say that they have seen such prototypes and actions tons of times.

--The order of crimes is important.  Had the father died first, the properties and most of the monies would go to his wife.  If she died after him, all of that stuff would go to her family--not Lizzie and her sister.  But since she died first, all of that remains his, of course, but she and her family cannot inherit anything legally.  Then when he dies second, a will that was rumored to give his wife almost everything is null and void; all things therefore go to his daughters.

--Lizzie supposedly said she'd found her father's body, and asked the maid and a neighbor to go get the doctor and police.  Wouldn't she have left the house if she'd thought a crazed killer was still in the house?  Similarly, she asked the maid to then go upstairs and see if the stepmother had returned to the house, as Lizzie had said that she'd recently seen her return home.  Would the maid go up there if there was still a killer around?  Profilers say that the killer doesn't want to be the one to "find" the body, so Lizzie sending the maid upstairs to "find" the stepmother's body makes sense.

--Lizzie sent photos of her trial to the prosecutor after the trial, writing that he may like them "as souvenirs of an interesting occasion."  That's taunting, typical of this type of offender, especially when they feel they're getting away with their crimes.  It's a dare.  Or, in this case, a finger.

Misunderstood?  I don't think so, especially by the authorities of the time.  They knew they had the right one.  The jury didn't, of course.  Speaking of which, a few similarities between this and the O.J. trial:

--Both trial juries were over-influenced by bias, Lizzie's sexism and O.J.'s racism.  As an example of the sexism, a bucket of rags and blood were found in the house.  Lizzie said it was all from her periods.  Though this was doubted, several men stated in writing that they were not about to test it to make sure.  There are many other examples of this.

--Both were acquitted by a jury but convicted by the public before, during and after their trials.

--Both were referred to as "The Trial of the Century" by the media.

--Both people on trial offered huge rewards for the location of the real killer.

--Both rewards have never been taken.

--Both committed burglary after these trials.  Simpson is in jail for his; Lizzie stole a couple of inexpensive paintings from Providence, RI and had to pay a fine.

Lizzie Borden: Misunderstood? Part 1

Image: Lizzie Borden, from her Wikipedia page

A new book by the curators of the bed and breakfast in Lizzie Borden's former house purports that she was "misunderstood" and that she was "probably not guilty."  The curators say that her private letters and the opinions of those close to her both point to the probability that she did not kill her father and stepmother in that house in the Victorian 1890s.  Also, they point out, the evidence was circumstantial, and the axe that she supposedly used had no blood on it, and the hair on it wasn't that of anyone in the family, including hers, her older sister's, or her father or stepmother.  And, after all, she was found not guilty.

I've read a bit on this case, and the work that stands out to me is Douglas's and Ohlshaker's The Cases that Haunt Us, which presents the facts, evidence, suspects and atmosphere of famous crimes, including those of Lizzie Borden, JonBenet Ramsay, Jack the Ripper, and others.  (I recommend this book immensely, and you can click on my Goodreads link above to read my review of it.)  Anyway, John Douglas, a popular profiler, is convinced that she did do it, and presents these reasons:

--If she didn't, who did?  Not a stranger breaking in: the stepmother had been killed 90 minutes before the father came home and got killed.  A stranger would not have been able to kill her, hide for 90 minutes with Lizzie, her sister Emma, and the live-in maid, all in the house, not seeing the murder or the stranger, and then kill the father with no one seeing or hearing it, and then leaving with nobody seeing him.

--Lizzie had the best motive of anyone: If the father died first and left everything to the stepmother, both daughters were worried that they wouldn't get anything from her.  This was a real possibility, as he was 70, very rich, and the probability that the stepmother would get everything was rather high.

--She'd said that during the murders, she'd been in the top loft of the barn, finding lead weights to make sinkers for an upcoming fishing trip.  But an officer soon went up there and found a heavy, undisturbed bed of dust on the floor.  No footprints at all to indicate that anyone had been up there.

--Lizzie changed from a blue dress to a pink and white dress while policemen were around.  What innocent person would be so unshocked that she would think to change up?  (And what kind of law enforcement would allow her to do so?)

--Bloodspots were found on her shoes and underskirts.  When asked to explain, she'd said it was due to her period, but later tests concluded that the underskirt was soaked from the outside in, not from the inside out.  (She'd called her period a "flea bite," a euphemism at the time.)

--Shortly before the murders, she'd tried to buy small amounts of poison from two pharmacies, neither of which would give them to her.  She'd denied being at these places, but a customer and pharmacist in one of them testified that she had been there.

--The morning of the murders, Lizzie, her sister, the maid, the stepmother and the father had all complained of bad stomach pains and other illness.  The father had to stop his morning business at his properties because, as he told a few people, he felt very ill.  They testified that it was very unusual for him to stop business due to any illness.

--Not evidence, just weirdness: The coroner wanted to do another autopsy, so after the funeral, he took the bodies, cut off the heads, unfleshed them and did his tests.  Then the heads were reburied with them, but at their feet!

To be continued in another post...

Coming Down

Photo: Mountains and Lakes of East Wakefield, NH


A few folks I know in this red room have mentioned how hard it is to step out of the busy-ness of our lives and to sit down and write.  I communicated with one about Coming Down (she calls it the "switch"), which basically is the dividing line between getting to a mental space where you can write, and not getting there.  She opined--correctly, I think--that writer's block could be nothing more than the inability to get to a mental space to write your ideas down.  It's not a failure to have those ideas, but rather an inability to Come Down so that you can put them on paper (or screen).

Today I have had a tough time Coming Down, mostly because I woke up (very) late and because of my anxiety about going back to work tomorrow.  (I've been on vacation, and due to some personal and family issues, have done little to catch up at my job.  And, no, I'm looking for no sympathy--"At least you had a vacation!" I know many are saying.)  But then I did something that allowed me to Come Down, and it did not involve wine--although I've had a few sips of that, too.

The WIP now is a very visual piece, and so it occurred to me that I should look at it that way.  I've finished the roughest drafts of the first two chapters, and today was time to flesh one of them out.  Stall, stall, stall.  Accomplish personal and family responsibilities; eat dinner; stall.  Then it hit me: I've taken tons of pictures of the mountains, lakes and gravestones around East Wakefield, NH, and Exeter, West Greenwich and Warwick, RI.  I've put them on the computer and on CDs.  Why not look at all of them at once?  (There are about 100.)  I did so, mostly to get the feel for the locals, smells, and minutae of the settings.  And--boom!--I had Come Down and I was (and still am) ready to go.

Try it.  Take pictures of what you're to write about and create a slideshow of them on your computer (after backing them up to a CD, of course.)  I put many of mine on Flickr, too.  But you can also put them on Google, MSN, Yahoo, etc.  Then look at the photos that are representative of your work, and see what happens.  I'll bet you'll Come Down.

Exeter, 1888

Okay, so this is a (very) rough draft of Chapter One (maybe) of The Gravediggers, the title of which comes from a famous Nietzsche quote, about God being dead, which I'll cite for you when I feel like it.  Well, okay, here it is:

“…Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God?  Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition?  Gods, too, decompose…”
      --Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science



You can look up the rest, if you're so inclined.  Just put in keywords NIETZSCHE, GRAVEDIGGERS, THE MADMAN  and GOD IS DEAD and you'll see the entire passage.  And he didn't mean literally that God was dead, but more or less meant that all man-made foundations were inherently nothingness, just a creation to protect us from the horror of the void.  Such umbrella terms include Society, Propriety, Family Values (he didn't mention that one, but he would today; love that one); such thought patterns include "Because I was raised that way," "Because that's what ---- do(es)," and, yes, organized religion.  Anything that ignores the fact that every single thought and action is the sole responsibility of the individual.  In other words, it is Bad Faith to say, "I believe so because that's what it says in the Bible," but it is good faith to say, "I believe so because I have chosen to believe that that's what it says in the Bible."  And I imagine that Good Faith and Bad Faith would be Nietzschean umbrella terms (traditional morality) as well.  But what're you gonna do?

I knew my philosophy degree would come in handy someday.  So, anyway, here's the fragment/draft/chapter.  I won't be including too many (if any more at all) of these, because why would an agent want to represent me if my stuff is free on the internet?  So here you are, and sorry for the above sidetrack---

Exeter, Rhode Island.  April 21st, 1888

Snuffy Stukeley would not have dug up his children had it not been for his neighbors.  Adam Wilcox, Mark Reynolds, John Whitford, the Mooneys, the Gardners, all of them wanted him to dig up his daughters.  They men of each family were with him now, in the burial plot behind his backyard, about twenty feet into the woods.  Their breath a mist in front of their mouths, they all dug at the softening earth of Anna’s, his youngest daughter’s, grave.  The rest of the men did not show that they heard his whimpers as they dug.  Shovel and spade sifted through the now-black soil.  The men grunted.

Edwin Mooney stood and stretched his back, his hands to both hips.  The oldest of them all, at forty-three, he looked at the darkening sky, the slow moving clouds, and wonders at the blasphemy of this.  Melissa Mooney, his eldest daughter—now nineteen herself, the same age as Snuffy’s daughter, Sarah, had been when she’d died—had wanted him to help dig, to help burn the bodies, if necessary.

“Sarah will come for me next!” she often wailed.  “Do you want me to die, too?”

Mary, his wife, had also asked him to help with the bodies.  “At least,” she said to him in bed one night, under flickering candlelight, “it will quiet Missy down.”  Mary had always been logical, he knew.  Very strong.  When he was uncertain, which was often, she was not.

He dug.

“I want it to be recorded somewhere that I want no part of this,” Dr. Harold Metcalf intoned, standing on the backyard doorstep of Snuffy’s home.  “This is a violence against God and good decency.”

“As you’ve been sayin’, Doctor Metcalf,” gasped Mark Reynolds between swings of the spade into the earth.  “As you’ve been sayin’.”

“Jus’ wait, Doctor Metcalf,” Adam Wilcox grunted, heaving shovelfuls of dirt to his left, into the woods behind Snuffy’s plot.  “Wait.  We’ll show you.  One of them’s to blame.  We’ll find ’er for ya, sure enough.”

“It’s just the Consumption, I tell you.”  Metcalf was angry and horrified.  The small town of Exeter, Rhode Island, was turned on its ear, and being led by the likes of Wilcox and Whitford.  Though not as base as Stukeley, they were worse because they were ignorant.  Stukeley, barely more than an idiot—though a great farmer, Metcalf had to admit—wasn’t expected to know any better.  But these men could.  And Reynolds and Gardner, too.  Otherwise good men led by their wives and daughters.  And superstition.

“Tell that to my Hannah,” whimpered Snuffy.  “Tell that to ’er after she’s done tellin’ you how Sarah’s been sittin’ on ’er, and drainin’ ’er.  Tell that to my wife, who says the same.”

Metcalf went to him and placed a hand on one of Snuffy’s shoulders.  Snuffy had stopped digging and stood there, sobbing.

“It’s the fever, Snuffy.  The starvation.  They’re just repeating what they’ve heard.  They’re seeing what’s been told to them.”

Snuffy turned then, and looked at him.  Bloodshot eyes leaked tears that ran his stubbled, cratered cheeks.  “Anna said the same!  Anna said the same and I didn’t listen to ’er!”

Doctor Metcalf removed his hand and stood back.  The others stopped their work.

“I didn’t listen to ’er and look what happened!  Six of ’em gone!  Six!  And now my son’s struck, and my wife!  And Hannah!”  Snuffy slid a soiled and shriven coatsleeve over his flowing eyes, then the back of a gloved hand over his running nose.

“I got six more, countin’ Hannah and my son.  I’m gonna lose my only son,” he wailed.  “He’s due to be married in a month.  I lose him, I lose my name.  Haven’t I lost enough?”

Metcalf calmed himself and offered a hand as he stepped forward.  “Snuffy, I’m sorry.  We’re all sorry that you—”

Stukeley batted away his hand.  “Haven’t I lost enough, now?”

The men stood around them, silent.  After a moment, Mary, his family’s young servant from Wakefield, appeared in the back doorway, clutching a shawl around her neck, sobbing.

Edwin Mooney, still rubbing his lower back, said: “What is it, child?”

She sniffled and hiccupped but finally got it out.  “It’s Hannah.  She’s—she’s gone!”

Snuffy gave Metcalf a last hard, yet weary, stare, then turned, walked slowly past the small headstones in the plot behind his yard, and entered his home.

“Jus’ leave yer good doctor’s hands in yer pockets,” drawled Wilcox.  “Let us work at it.  We’ll find the Devil yet.”

Metcalf, who thought of Wilcox as a common criminal, ignored him.

An hour later, Reynolds’ spade struck the coffin, damaging it.  He swore.  Carefully they slid strong ropes beneath the wood; then, four to a side, with Snuffy at the head and Dr. Metcalf—against his own judgment—at the foot, they hoisted it out and placed it carefully on the rocky ground.  The men offered the crowbar to Snuffy, but he couldn’t do it, so finally Adam Wilcox pried the top of the thin, wooden coffin.  Soon the nails gave, and they lifted it up.  Reynolds, Mooney and Gardner shown their lights.

Anna Stukeley lay in a state of advanced decomposition.  Strands of light brown hair lay scattered upon the red and pink pillow, upon her skull and on both shoulders.  Flecks of browning skin were attached still to the right jawbone and cheekbone, both otherwise the skeleton was bare.  The white and pink dress and black shoes they had buried her in had faded somewhat, and her skeletal hands lay, crossed, upon her chest.  She’d been dead for two years, and she’d obviously never risen.

Reynolds swore again.  The other men murmured as Snuffy covered his face and sobbed.  The doctor walked him into his house while the others replaced the coffin and began to fill in the hole.

When finished, they agreed, they would return home and meet again at eleven to work on the next grave.

Just Do It

I told a friend of the new novella/novel idea expressed in the last blog, and he said, "Another one?"  Then I told my better half about the idea, and she said the exact same thing.  And so it's occurred to me that I've got too many things going on at the same time, and not too much time to write any of them.  Doubly frustrating!!!

Right now I'm working on:

1.  Novel idea expressed last time.
2.  The Gravediggers--one of the Novels in Progress that may form a trilogy with...
3.  Apocalypse--one of the Novels in Progress that takes place right at the end of a major world calamity and the end of WW3.  Most of it takes place in Kansas City, NYC, Rhode Island, and occasionally at a few other points throughout the world.  A couple of excerpts of this NIP are in blog entries below.  This is the NIP I'm probably furthest into, and will probably form a trilogy with The Gravediggers, and with...
4.  The novel about the plague(s) throughout history, one of which will happen in the timeline of Apocalypse and The Gravediggers, but that also took place in places like Eyam, England, a similar locale of which forms the backbone of this NIP.  See excerpts and research in blogs below.
5.  The Observer--a NIP that I really like, on which I've written many chapters, fragments, etc. over the years, but which I'm maybe still not ready to fully get into.  You can just feel that, you know?

So that's, what, 5 novels (or NIP)?  That's a lot.  But also there are...

6.  A long article on Pedro Martinez's peak brilliance, as compared to the peaks of others, in our time and before, using some stats (and common sense) that I have not found on baseball-reference.com, or in anything by Bill James, or in Baseball Digest, etc.  Maybe excerpts of #6 and #7 on my sports blog?
7.  A long series of articles on the Hall of Fame voting for MLB.  This series is unique because it focuses not on the fact that HOF players got into the Hall, but on the number of voters who felt that they didn't belong.  Large numbers of voters felt that Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, etc. did not belong in the Hall.  There has never been a 100% unanimous selection to the HOF.
8.  Research for short story and novel submissions--and the actual submissions themselves.
9.  Critiques for the pieces submitted by members of the three writers groups I belong to.
10.  My house, my better half, and the fact that I have an actual life, which also includes my career.

I need to set some sort of schedule.  I just finished my grad. class, thank God.  Now I have to pick one of the novels above, just go for it and finish a draft, while spending time with the submissions as well.

And the energy to do it all.  I heard that J.K. Rowling woke up at about 4 a.m. and wrote until 6 a.m. to get her kids to school, and then wrote until she had to pick them up, and then wrote after she put them to bed.  And then over and over again.  Good Lord, give me the strength!  How?!?  I guess...just do it.