WHY I WRITE

Back in 1997 in an article on Renoir in the New York Times, Roberta Smith quoted the French pedagogue and painter Andre Lohte as having said "Great painters paint in order to learn to paint."
I wouldn't classify myself as a great writer, but a serious one. I would paraphrase Lohte by saying that serious writers learn to write by writing. And, I have never stopped learning.
Every so often, I ask myself why I write? I set out as a teenager to be a writer, starting with poetry, moving to short stories and finally in my early 20s to the novel. I am now 75 and my passion for writing has not diminished.
Early in my career, I became a journalist to support my writing habit and family and did a lot of free-lancing—mostly true detective stories—to supplement my income.
Try as I might I couldn’t get my novels published. Twice I wrote nonfiction books both to make some money and with the hope that a publisher would be so entranced that one of my unpublished novels would be transformed into a bookstore commodity. That didn’t happen.
Obviously my failure to sell a novel to a traditional publisher proves I don’t write just for money. Three of my novels are available through Kindle, Amazon, and Smashwords.
So why do I write. Any art, any pursuit of creativity is a god-like role. I found support for that hypothesis in Alexandra Sokoloff’s Screenwriting Tricks for Authors blog of Jan. 18, 2010, a perceptive critique of the Wizard of Oz, which ends with: “You are the writer. Ultimately, it’s you and the page. You are God, baby. Make your own rules.”

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

POMPEII by Robert Harris

I read this book at the end of 2003. What follows are my notes to myself.
X Jan. 1, 2004: I finished reading “Pompeii” Robert Harris’ latest novel last night. The characters, the story, and the physical and historic setting carried me along. There were two glaring false notes in the writing. The first in a scene in which the reader hears a conversation between the antagonist, Ampliatus, and a character whose identity is hidden as a device to build suspicion and suspense. That might be appropriate in a film, but not in a novel with an omniscient narrator. The second and worst false note because it is a copout comes in the conclusion of the book. The eruption of Vesuvius is set up as inescapably murderous—with the protagonist, Attilius, the acquarius, and Corelia, a girl he has risked his life to rescue, plunging themselves into the Roman water system to escape the lava, fire, and smothering ash of the volcano. Not good enough. They wouldn’t have escaped. So the author tries to present their ending as part of a myth of a man and woman who seemed to rise from the earth in escaping death from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Once again, Harris stepped away from the omniscient narrator to a hapless device to deal with an insoluble problem if he is to have a happy ending. So once again, I have read a book that was impressive in the process, but failed in the end.
I must say that Harris’“Fatherland” was a marvel of writing, setting and story telling. It is one of my favorite books.
“Pompeii” tells the story of Attilius, a Roman acquarius, sent to the Naples region to replace another acquarius, which is a waterworks engineer, who has disappeared. The book provides interesting detail about the Roman aqueducts and the men who maintain them. The story is set against the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the disappearance of Pompeii under the volcano’s hot ash. There are some very shaky transitions in the book. During the course of the story, Attilius discovers a corrupt entrepreneur has murdered the missing acquarius; Attilius falls in love with the entrepreneur’s daughter; the daughter has come to hate her greedy father; and Attilius is displayed as somewhat of a superman of intellect and morality with boundless luck fostering him, saving him from death and destruction.

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

SHINGLES AFTER A YEAR AND A HALF

Based on my experience what to expect after 18 months with shingles:
The shingles attack on my left eye began on Sept. 15, 2008. In the aftermath, I still have itching, aching (sometimes feeling like some one punched me in the eye, swelling, soreness, an unpleasant pressure, and numbness on my eyelid, above the eye, along the left side of my nose, on the left side of my forehead, and in the scalp. In addition, I get fatigued rather easily.
Oh, by the way, the little miseries of the aftermath are a 24-hour-a-day constant.
How have I improved? Within the past two weeks, I found I could read in bed again. I have been reading in bed for a half hour to an hour since my earliest boyhood. So I lost that pleasure for about 17 months. I have returned to limited reading, watching films again on cable, using the computer, a more restricted writing schedule, and exercise—although not as heavy as before shingles.
When this process began, my doctor told me not to expect a quick cure; that was followed a few months later with the doctor telling me to expect the aftermath to last from six months to a year. This past December, the doctor told me the aftermath probably would continue for another two to three years. That last diagnosis could be on the mark because I am 75 and people my age have been known to die in two or three years.
My great hope is to wake up one morning symptom-free. As an alternative, I would settle for diminished itching, aching, etc.

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

Free e-books

Considering the issue of free e-books called to my mind a scene from a 1954 invitation to dinner at the home of Dot and El in Queens Village. Dot had been a high school classmate in upstate Binghamton of my girlfriend Ginger, now my wife.
The occasion was memorable for two reasons: for the first time in my life, I was 20, I ate spaghetti and meatballs in a tomato-based sauce. Even though I consumed pizza with gusto, I had steadfastly refused the classic spaghetti and meatballs made by my mother at home or on family outings to Italian restaurants. Crossing that culinary line plunged me into a love affair with pasta that has continued through the years.
And, the second reason: As we entered the little house in Queens Village those 55 years or so ago, the television was playing a commercial pitch that caught El’s attention. He waited until the TV offer was finished before he turned off the set and said with a smirk, “Nothing down, nothing to pay, just come in and take it away.”
El’s words bubbled to the surface of my mind a couple of years ago when I put my novel, THE DREAM DANCER, online as a free e-book. I was in search of an audience since I couldn’t get an agent willing to peddle the book to a traditional publisher. In the interim, I’ve learned that writers often offer their books free online as a stratagem to lure readers to buy their other works. So the free e-book is a good device for a writer in search of an audience and possibly paying readers.
Curious about the source of El’s immortal phrase “nothing down, nothing to pay, just come in and take it away” I Googled it. No hits with full expression, but 1,011 hits on shorter version of “nothing down nothing to pay.”
So, I now credit El as the originator of his wry remark: “Nothing down, nothing to pay, just come in and take it away.”

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

WILLIE into OOOEELIE

My latest novel, OOOEELIE, is now available as a Kindle and soon as a paperback on Amazon as well as e-books on Smashwords and obooko.
To sum up the novel: The Oooeelie Myth: A dog, the reincarnation of a canine being whose space ship crash-landed on earth tens of thousands of years ago and taught humans to speak, is still trying to find his way home to Sirius in the Twentieth Century.
The seed for the book was my admiration for courage and intelligence of my wife Ginger’s Airedale, Willie.
The role of walking Willie night and day fell to me. One of our frequent walks was to the mail box about three blocks away.
In his puppyhood, I would let Willie off the leash as I ran laps around our local park. Unfortunately, he decided to play a game of you-can’t-catch me with me. He began running off with me in pursuit and unable to catch him as would stay just beyond my reach. This would go on until he tired of the tease.
In reaction, I began leaving the leash attached to Willie while I did my running. One day, the game began as usual, but he took it to another level: he not only stayed beyond my reach, he ran off disappearing into the distance. I searched the neighborhood for him on foot and in car, then just accepted the fact that Willie was gone.
A couple of hours went by. A neighbor knocked on my door to ask: “Is that your Airedale down by the mail box”
He said he had tried to pick up the leash, but the dog bared his teeth. I trotted to the mailbox and lo and behold: Willie was sitting there patiently awaiting my arrival. It was a happy reunion.
As a result, I tied Willie to a goal post whenever I ran around the park. I usually walked a mile and half before I began running so he got plenty of exercise before being attached to the post.
I was at the other end of the park when I saw a father and son team who walked a huge Australian dog of some sort. I had heard about the dog terrorizing other dogs in the park—much to the amusement of the father and son. As I drew closer, they let their monster of an aggressive dog loose and he charged Willie.
What a mistake. Anyone who is familiar with the Airedale nature could predict what happened next. Willie tore into his attacker. The father and son had to pull him away from their dog. As I approached, the father said, “Dogs usually sit and submit when(Brutus or whatever his name was) goes after them.”
I never saw them again.
In case you wonder how I arrived at the name Oooeelie, I did so by taking the W in Willie and extending it to ooo, and the i to ee. Put together with the rest of his name, it becomes Oooeelie.
Willie died at age 14 on May 20, 2001. I buried him by the big rock in our back yard facing north (he preferred the cold and the snow) with his favorite stuffed animal, which was a soft white doll shaped like a gingerbread man, a bowl and some food; he was wrapped in the cover he usually slept on in the living room.
In death, he looked as though he were running. He looked alive, but his soul was gone. Ginger asked where I thought the spirits of animals went after they died. I have to believe they go to heaven or are reincarnated.
Everything is a piece of God so perhaps Willie returned to God.

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

FOOLS CROW

FOOLS CROW by James Welch (1986)is a novel about the Blackfeet just after the Civil War when the whites were expanding into the tribe’s homeland.
Welch is a writer who creates another world; the novel is a journey from one end of the Blackfeet experience when the hero, Fools Crow, is becoming a full fledged warrior to the point when he realizes that the way of life that his people revered and enjoyed is going to expire with the whites overwhelming them and destroying their culture.
This is a book that should be taught in high schools to give students insights into Native America culture. Besides it would introduce them to James Welch, a great American writer.

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

My 99-cent novels

I recently cut the price of my three novels, OOOEELIE, THE DREAM DANCER, and THE JYNX to 99 cents on Kindle. After trying to sell them at $3.99 and $4.99, I came to accept Joe Konrath’s sage advice on A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing that “Cheap sells. Free sells even more.”
Of course, I knew all about free. The three novels are offered as free e-books on Smashwords and obooko, while they are up for sale at bargain prices on Kindle and as paperbacks on Amazon.
In reality, Joe Konrath might have saved me $500. Seeing that my three novels weren’t moving, I decided to set out to push OOOEELIE with an advertising budget of $500. Research showed me that I could place classified ads in two literary publications for three months for a total of a little more than $300.
Further research led me to Konrath and others, but he was the best leaving me convinced that paid advertising might very well be a waste of money for an author as insignificant me.
On Monday, Feb. 1, 2010, Kindle listed the books at 99 cents for the first time—and I sold a copy of THE DREAM DANCER that day. As any author knows, there is no more a joyous feeling than selling a book or I should say books. For an Indie-author like me one book excites that feeling. Maybe it takes a 100,000-book-day to stir James Patterson.

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.