Fear Of The Blank Canvass ...

What if I run out of ideas?  What if the next novel remains an elusive itch in the back of the mind?

I have 5 published :-), a work-in-progress 70% complete and another shelved for now with 36,000 words invested.  But what's next?

Today I was thinking about Gogol Bordello ...

They rock

... and it came to me; I had Denny and the Di Napolis go up against the Russian mob in Millennial Gangsters, maybe it's time to cross the street;

чисел

(numbers)

Yuri did twenty years in prison for the Russian mob, now it's time to collect his backpay. In prison he earned his CPA certification and he knows they're looking for a new money launderer. He just has to wash the blood off his hands before he goes to see his old boss.

Make your asks ...

The night before the funeral and wake, I left Jaimie and F_ entertaining themselves with a video game, surrounded by popcorn and soda, explosions and squeals, while I set out into the night.  I knew that their focus on the game was a distraction from thoughts of the coming day, and had read once that children navigate grief and loss differently from adults, pendulating between sorrow and play to manage their feelings and not allow themselves to be overwhelmed.

I have no reckoning why I felt so drawn to visit the Grim Sisters that night; it felt like an itch in my brain that had tingled to life when M_ told me about what lay in his cards.  From there it had festered like a dry patch of eczema that had spread after that first conversation with D_ during our deathwatch in the capital and now I needed to scratch it back to extinction.

As I pulled into a visitor’s stall across from our resident mystics’ home and place of dark commerce, I felt a quiver deep inside me that was the beginning of relief from that itch.

All three sisters sat shadowed under the yellow lightbulb on their porch and as I approached, Selena and Amaris arose and withdrew silently into the trailer, leaving Gabriella alone to greet me.

“The B_, at last.” Gabriella smiled as I sat down across from her, the cards stacked neatly before her face down, “Full to the brim with questions, yet afraid to lift the fog that lies between present and future.”

I was unnerved that she knew my mind so clearly.

“I didn’t come for a reading, but I’ll pay for answers to those questions.” I said and laid a hundred dollar bill beside her cards.

“I believe I just said that.  And here I heard you were the clever one.” Gabriella laughed.

“You’ve done readings for M_ and B_.” I said.

“And just tonight for D_.” she revealed.

“D_?” I was surprised, and it threw me off seeing her dark eyes twinkle, I knew Gabriella was enjoying my discomfort.

“Make your asks, B_.”

Bigger Gangsters Playlist ...

For those who have read - or are reading - Bigger Gansgters and wondered about the song title subheadings of each chapter, I've finally compiled the playlist which can be found here.

Most are from 1969 (the year the novel takes place) and are the anthems of that generation, and combined set the mood and provide a deeper soul to the story.  It is an eclectic selection of songs about love, greed, fear, despair, and tragedy.  On a personal note, the song for chapter forty-two still breaks my heart every time I hear it, as it does for Denny.

All the songs included are freely available on YouTube, and all I've done is strip the video so only the music remains.

Enjoy.

Blast From The Past ...

From the Forward of Little Gangsters ...

All of the 7^th Avenue Gang are real people that I grew up with.  Some may recognize themselves, and I hope they find delight in that.  Denny’s nemesis in the novel is an amalgam of assholes I’ve known throughout my life.  I named him Kevin, because every Kevin I’ve ever known has been a pain in my ass.  No offence to the vast majority of Kevins out there or the people who love them, it’s just that the Kevins in my life have never worked out for me.

Carrie Anne Gabler is also an amalgam of a number of girls and young women I’ve known through the years - and yes, one of them fell through a ceiling and broke her arm when she hit the television her brother and I were watching.  They were all gentle and sweet and loveable, yet at the same time vulnerable and tragic.  The world is a hard place for girls like Carrie, who only see the good in people and when evil is done to them, they internalize it as a failing of their own character.  Though Carrie only has a small role in Little Gangsters she plays a larger role in Denny’s life during the sequel, Bigger Gangsters that takes place ten years later.  Denny will carry her memory and his undying love for her through Millennial Gangsters and it haunts the pages of Gangster’s Girl, and will remain with Denny for the rest of his days.

A friend and I did witness the Vancouver Police ambush and kill an escaped convict named Boyd in a hail of gunfire just like it happened in the chapter "Boyd's Dead".  I had to move the location of the massacre so it fit into the right neighbourhood for the story and the friend with me wasn’t Frankie or Donny; his name was Tom and his parents owned the grocery store where Boyd bought the groceries for a last meal that he never got a chance to eat.

A Message From The Doldrums ...

I'm stuck in the doldrums.  (I was going to provide the definition of the word but we live in the Googleverse so if you don't know what the word means, look it up)

I don't believe in 'writer's block' - I think that's a cop-out.  If you develop strong, multidimensional characters who each possess a unique voice, plus have a beginning, middle, and end to your story, you should be good-to-go and won't need to trot out 'writer's block' as an excuse for not writing.

The irony is; I'm known for marathon writing - I think my record was 5,400+ words in one sitting and I can proudly say that it needed very little editing during that three-pass process.  So, why am I stuck in the doldrums?

Pure laziness.

I'm at the point in my current project (at 54,000 words) where I need to lull my reader into a false sense of security before opening the gates of hell with all the accompanying gnashing of teeth and breaking of hearts.  I know as soon as I finish the current chapter, shit is going to get real.  Characters I have made sure you're fond of are going to die (kill your darlings); plans that my main character has laboured hard to sculpt are going to turn to shit before his eyes; children will be in peril and the bad guys are going to have a field day.  They'll lose in the end  – actually almost everyone loses in the end (I am writing a tragedy after-all) – but it's going to look like evil is going to triumph over good.

So here I am in the doldrums, brain simmering with the last 2/3 of the current chapter lurking behind my eyes – a mere 2200 words to go before my little armageddon explodes in my little make-believe desert town.  I think part of my hesitancy is that I'm hungry to write the exciting parts that will end in a climax and don't want to write the quiet prelude.  The other part is that it feels like I'm drawing a deep breath before I scream out the last 45,000 words to complete the tale.  Either way, here I sit only having written two paragraphs in two weeks.  Pathetic huh?

I know that in the next couple days I'm going to do what every writer does in these situations; sit in front of a blank screen and just start writing.

It's what we do.

But sometimes we get lazy and trot out 'writer's block' or 'doldrums' or some other lame excuse so we can perpetuate the bullshit notion that writing is a labourious, soul-draining endeavour.  It isn't; writing is rare fun and if you think otherwise; dust off your resumé and find something else to do with your time.

It probably pays better anyway.

The Cards ...

B_ couldn’t let it lie, and there-in lies the root and stalk of all our tragedies.  While M_ headed off to meet Razor at the Laird, B_ walked to the Grim Sisters’s trailer and waited her turn sitting on the bench in their stoney garden as someone else watched Gabriella turn the cards.

When B_ closed her eyes she could feel the potency of the cards’ mystery wafting off the Grim Sisters’ porch to settle and swirl around her like a silent desert dust-devil, drawing her toward a transcendent pathway to a future ripe with riches and fat with power.  She liked the feeling, how it sent tingles over her thighs and bum, to dance electric up her back to stir the very roots of her hair.  She saw her and M_ sitting twin thrones, drinking the heavy wine of conquest as those around them smiled and bowed.  They would first sow then reap the harvest of their destinies and soon she would know how.  The answer – she knew – lay in the cards.

“You gonna sit there daydreaming all day?” Gabriella’s voice pulled her out of the honeyed stickiness of her imaginings.

That Dog Don't Bark ...

... is now live on Amazon worldwide!

~ a love story with a little arson and murder ~

Pre-sales are now being sent to those who ordered, and it can now be purchased as a paperback or ebook.

Thanks to all of you who purchased my fifth novel, and please drop back to Amazon or Goodreads and leave a rating and review.

Don't have your copy yet?  Order it HERE.

Pre-sales ...

I have no idea why, but this blog and pre-sales of That Dog Don't Bark are taking off in Germany.

Thank you Germany.  I hope you enjoy my little slice of East Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and a love story I'm quite proud of.

Review Writers

Beware of fellow authors (or anyone really) who offers a review on Goodreads if you send them a free copy of your novel.  Check out their past reviews first, reviews of their books, what others in the community who have crossed their path say about them.  Don't do what I did; jump at the chance with a Pollyanna recklessness and wide-eyed innocence.

He gave it three stars and stated that he had to shelve it due to numerous errors in grammar, word choices, and chided me about revealing what the title meant too soon.  Though it didn’t send me into a tailspin, it did cause me concern.

The thing about revealing what That Dog Don’t Bark meant in the context of the story didn’t cause me any distress; he obviously just missed the point as to why I revealed the meaning in the first paragraph of the novel.   In street vernacular, if your ‘dog don’t bark’ it means you aren’t tough, which I wanted to establish right away so as the dangers arose around my main character his peril would be high.  To overcome his challenges his dog would have to learn to bark.

But the mention of ‘errors’ got me going.  So after running the entire manuscript through three top grammar and spelling checkers, I found two minor spelling mistakes that occurred past the point where he said he had to shelve it due to the ‘numerous errors’.

Those two spelling errors are now corrected, so the completed novel that will debut live on Amazon on May 15, 2019 is grammatically perfect.

It was only after satisfying myself that the problem lay in the reviewer, I checked him out.  He’s self-published one novel and it received so many poor reviews and rankings that he withdrew it from publication.  Seems like our boy is a failed writer who is looking to tear down other people’s work to salve his own ego.

Crabs in a bucket, man.  Suck it up and keep working on your own skills.

In his initial contact with me he said he would ‘give an honest review’ and assured me; ‘I’m not an asshole’.

Oh, yes you are.  Yet you taught me a valuable lesson; I’ll never punch below my weight class again.

Plotting the Murder

Voices soft in the darkness, heads comforted by soft frames of pillows.  Bodies naked above unneeded blankets, evaporating sex sweat cooling tanned skin, luminously pale in the dark hours.  The susurration of the desert’s night wind singing its chorus in accompaniment to a conversation most foul.

Thus a murder is planned.  Thus a treachery plotted.

Shelter From The Storm

On the drive back home I told Jaimie about my call to the funeral director and said we’d go with her so she could tell him what she wanted.  I also told her that a lot of people from the Laird who knew her mom would be there and that D_ and his wife wanted to host a wake after the funeral service and that surprised her.  The rest of the drive was quiet, with F_ and Jaimie sharing an earbud each as they listened to the songs on Flea’s iPod.

After we dropped Jaimie off at her trailer and she assured us she’d be okay, F_ insisted we clean out the spare bedroom ‘just in case’.  So we hauled out all our own spare clothes and vacuumed and dusted and remade the bed with fresh sheets and a comforter.  F_ even got out the vinegar and cleaned the windows until they looked like diamonds and the venetian blinds until they gleamed white.

As I sat watching the evening news with F_ tucked in his bed, I heard the light hesitant footsteps climb our porch and the soft tapping on the door.  When I opened it there stood Jaimie, looking small and vulnerable, wrapped in a blanket, her eyes sparkling with tears.

We didn’t speak.  I reached out and drew her inside and closed the door, then guided her down the hallway to the spare bedroom.  I tucked her in like I’d tucked F_ in his whole life and kissed her forehead and said goodnight.

Rod Serling

"Whenever you write, whatever you write, never make the mistake of assuming the audience is any less intelligent than you are. "

~ Rod Serling

Parental Dilemma

Kicking off my boots I padded silently across the thick carpet and stood in the doorway to the adjoining room.  Jaimie and F_ were still wrapped in their robes, lying on top of the covers facing one another, their noses almost touching.  They were both fast asleep.

The television was still on, but tuned to one of the radio stations the hotel streamed with a running slideshow of local attractions and display ads.  They had finished their movie and had turned the music on low as they lay face to face talking quietly until they both drifted off.

I felt the pang of a parental dilemma – an underaged boy and girl in bed together.  To awaken and pack them off to separate beds would send the message that what they were doing was immoral.  Instead I saw the innocence there; a friend in crisis seeking the comfort of someone close to them; someone who cared deeply for them and wanted to be present in a dark time.  I couldn’t rob either of them of that kinship, so I left the door open and headed off to my own bed.

Jaimie was up and in her shower when I got up.  F_ was still asleep, sprawled on his side of the queen bed, his robe pulled open and twisted around him.  I was grateful to see he was wearing his boxers.

Strong Characters

In Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut Jr speaks of a character that he had dropped while editing the first draft of that novel.  The character was a Doberman Pinscher who was the guard dog of the Martimo Brothers Construction Company.  Vonnegut warns other writers to be wary of characters that are as strong as Kazak the guard dog because once exiled in editing they don’t always stay exiled.

In the novel, Vonnegut himself meets his main character – Kilgore Trout – as he is walking past Martimo Brothers Construction yard.  Vonnegut was there to allow Kilgore to meet his creator, yet as they begin their strange discourse, Kazak rematerializes and attacks Vonnegut.

Strong characters will do that to a writer.

Young Love

“F_ told me he loved me last night.” Jaimie said.

“How do you feel about that?” I asked, studying her face.

Jaimie shrugged, “It’s nice.  It feels good that someone cares that much.  And I’m fond of F_.  Like, really fond of him.”

Jaimie looked up into my eyes; “He’s like you, B_.  Calm and caring, supportive and patient.  I feel safe with him.  I know he would never hurt me or use anything I told him against me.”

Jaimie looked down at her hands; “He’d be easy to love that way.”

“But there’s a big gap between ten and fourteen.” I said for her.

“Yeah.” she said, then brightened and looked up at me once more, “But who knows, right?  That gap will get smaller over the years.”

“So no boyfriend material nearby right now.”

“Yuck.” Jaime said, curling her lip, “In that town?  It’s all pickup trucks, booted beer, and grab-ass.”

We both laughed at that as we heard F_ finish his shower.

“I promise I won’t break his heart, B_.” Jaimie said.  I reached out and squeezed her hand.

“Thank you, Jaimie.”