WHAT ALONE CAN MAKE GOOD WRITING

http://www.amazon.com/GHOST-WRITERS-THE-SKY-ebook/dp/B006Z1MAP6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1380340576&sr=8-1&keywords=ghost+writers+in+the+sky+roland+yeomans

I am William Faulkner. I am dead. Yet I did not die.

I, like so many who did not believe in an afterlife,

live here in the jazz club, Meilori’s.

Meilori’s:

the center, the focus, the hub; sitting looming in the center of the French Quarter’s circumference like a single cloud in its ring of horizon,

laying its vast shadow to the uttermost rim of horizon; musing, brooding, symbolic and imponderable, tall as clouds, solid as rock,

dominating all: protector of the weak, judge and curb of the passions and lusts, repository and guardian of the aspirations and hopes of the helpless.

Here, I find myself standing outside the window of the storefront of humanity, still observing as a writer but unable to reach out and touch with fingers of new prose.

Except through Roland’s kindness.

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained that by now we can almost bear it. Of course there are still problems of the spirit. Yet one question looms above all:

When will I be blown up?

By terrorist plot,

by Nature’s increasingly hostile hand,

or by the cruel strangulation of mishandled economics.

Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing

because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat of wresting something from nothing.

You must learn them again.

You must teach yourself that the basest of all things is to be afraid.

And teaching yourself that,

forget it forever,

leaving no room in your writing for anything but the old truths of the heart,

the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice.

Until you do so, you labor under a curse.

You write not of love but of lust,

of defeats in which no one loses anything of value,

of victories without hope and,

worst of all, without pity or compassion. Your griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars.

You write not of the heart but of the sex glands.

I remember that night in Meilori’s when McCord and I talked.

How words go straight up in a thin line, quick and harmless, and how terribly living goes along the earth, clinging to it, so that after a while the two lines are too far apart for the same person to straddle from one to the other.

That sin and love and fear are just sounds that people who never sinned nor loved nor feared have for what they never had and cannot have until they have forgotten the words.

Forgotten the words by being too busy living them.

So write those words in your prose.

Write them so that others may prove their truth by living them,

And in so doing, forgetting them as they forget they are breathing.

{To read more from Faulkner, Twain, Hemingway, Hitchcock, even Bruce Lee on writing : http://www.amazon.com/GHOST-WRITERS-SKY-ebook/dp/B006Z1MAP6/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1328048229&sr=1-1 }

***

NO GRAVES IN THE SHADOWLANDS_Ghost of Raymond Chandler here

A long time ago in a blogverse far away ...

I wrote a blog serial, GHOST OF A CHANCE,

Its first chapter: http://rolandyeomans.blogspot.com/2010/07/chapter-one-living-in-crosshairs.html

where I found myself on the run in my own prose universe. Each post depicted a page from the seared journal that the ghost of Mark Twain found, the only clue to my ultimate fate.

Here is a post from GHOST OF A CHANCE written by the ghost of Raymond Chandler with a few tips for writers of any age:



{"If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it."
— Ernest Hemingway.}

Chandler here. Raymond Chandler. Or rather his ghost.

I started with that quote from Hemingway because it was too damned appropriate not to.

Some of you are dropping in, expecting to read something from Roland. He’s been on the run in the Shadowlands, falsely accused of the murder of Hemingway’s ghost.

The same ghost who has been laughing up his sleeve here in Roland’s apartment, pontificating on how to write good literature. Apparently, he forgot how to live a good life or be a good friend.

No, he was too jealous of how the ghost of Marlene Dietrich felt about Roland.

He’s been rubbing his hands in pure joy as the ghosts closed in for revenge and others in the darkness bayed at the kid’s heels, seeking to tear the secret of how to kill ghosts from him.

Now, where is Hemingway? On his way to Hell if there's any justice. But there isn't.

Word in the Shadowlands is that he is just walking aimlessly into the darkness, his eyes deep holes into nothingness.

I only have the cold comfort that I knocked him on his arrogant ghost-butt. How did a Hollywood hack like me do that? Easy. I cheated.

I surprised him. I walked into Roland's apartment looking clean, neat, and sober, smiling my best "ain't we chums?" smile. Then, I let him have it with the blackjack in my fist.

He went down hard. Not hard enough.

"Good news, boxer," I grunted. "Word in the Shadowlands is that Roland's dead. Died in the arms of Marlene."

His eyes fought to focus. "Is she --"

"Yeah, hero. She's dead, too. Killed by the one who poisoned you. I hope you're --"

I didn't get the chance to finish. The most godawful yowling came from the head of Roland's bed. Then, I saw her -

Gypsy, his ghost cat, all covered in sand. I could have sworn she hadn't been there when I first came in.

Her head was reared back, her eyes full of tears. Hell, his cat was crying. Crying.

And Gypsy howled like her guts were being cut out of her. I can hear it still. It seemed to go on forever.

I pray to God I never hear such a sound again. She stopped abruptly and looked at me with eyes gone sick and insane.

Then she just slowly faded away into the darkness like an old photograph left out too long in the sun. I shivered. And I knew. I knew.

I would never see his cat again.

I turned to Hemingway as he struggled to his feet, and I managed to get out the words. "Roland trusted you."

My grief and anger were battling so inside my heart, it felt as if I was standing outside myself. "You hid in his apartment, knowing he was being blamed for your murder, knowing he was being hunted by things that would make a pit bull puke."

I realized I was literally shaking with my anger. "You could have stopped this. You should have."

He turned hollow eyes to me. "Right on both counts."

And with that he walked out through Roland's door. And I knew something else. I would never see him again either.

So here I am, sitting in the dark at Roland's laptop. What do I write that would express just what the kid meant to me? It's all too fresh. I - I can't.

There are no graves in the Shadowlands. No place where I can lay one black rose. To die there is to disappear utterly both body and spirit. But I have to do something. Something.

What I will do is reach out to you, his friends. He wrote to you, trying as best he could to help you write better.

So that is what I'll do. Just a short post. I don't have a long one in me.

Besides, I'm not sure how delicate this thing is -- if tears on the keyboard will short something out or not.

All right. I'm a big boy. I can do this.

Where to start?

Rules. Most struggling writers think there are mysterious magic rules out there that if followed will insure success.

There aren't. But I'll give them to you, anyway.

Rule #1 :
The most durable thing in writing is style. I had mine. Hemingway had his. We're both imitated.

Be inspired by your favorite authors but leave them be. Keep the original. Lose the copy. Be yourself. But a self that grows each day.

Rule #2 :
Unlike the age of Jane Austin, this age is not remote. It is as intimate as a lonely heart and as intense as the bill collector over your phone.

Do not cliche your words. Brutality is not strength. Flipness is not wit. Do not mistake cool for character, attitude for competence.

It is not funny that a man is killed. But it is sometimes funny that he should be killed for so little, and that his death should be the coin of what we call civilization.

Rule #3 :
It's the journey, the struggles of the hero that grab the reader and keep him turning the pages. Make the hero sweat. But let him get the girl. Even Roland -- no, I won't go there. I can't.

Rule #4 :
Pull your nose from the computer keyboard and live life -- don't just write about it. Tasting each drink, feeling each breeze, touching the soft skin of the woman who loves you and only you.

God, I hope Roland did that with Marlene ...

if only for a moment.

Sorry, you don't need to read an old ghost's keening.

Rule #5 :
Remember that human nature has learned nothing over the centuries, yet has forgotten nothing either. Men do things for reasons.

Your characters, if they are to be believed, must do so, too. You cannot shove them into actions that your prior words would not imply they would take.

Yet human nature is fickle : a man who is steel in the fires of adversity will melt at the glance of a pair of ice blue eyes. Eyes like Marlene had ....

Sorry ... that ... that is all I have the heart for.

I will sit out on Roland's terrace now and look out as the night fog slips away from the bordering bayou.

The rains are over. The fields are green.

And with my ghost eyes I will look out over the vastness of America to the Hollywood Hills and see snow on the high mountains.

The fur stores will be advertising their annual sales. The call houses that specialize in sixteen year-old virgins will be doing a land-office business. In Beverly Hills the jacaranda trees will be beginning to bloom.

And none of that will matter ... for my friend is dead.

The French have a saying that to say good-bye is to die a little. They are right. I am a ghost, and I thought I was past feeling dead inside. I was wrong.

I think I will always see him driving down lonely roads, sitting in lonely rooms, saddened but never quite defeated.

Down those mean streets he went who was not himself mean, who was neither tarnished nor afraid ... only mortal.

I will miss you, my friend.
****
He liked this prayer, so I will end with it:

MARK TWAIN'S KEYS TO SUCCESSFUL WRITING

{"There are keys to success in writing.

I did not learn them early.

I did not learn them all at once.

They came to me like the passing of a kidney stone --

with time and with pain."}

Roland has been going on about keys to writing success.

But who's the beloved literary genius here? Me, that's who!

So I am going to pass on a few of those keys. Not in any particular order -- just as they occur to me, much like I wrote my autobiography.


THE KEYS :

#1) Write without pay until someone pays you.

In other words, write because you love it, not for thoughts of wealth. Only a very few authors ever are able to leave their day job.

Do this and you will relax and write with confidence. The reader will sense this, and your novel will be more interesting to your reader.

Write only about what interests you. The reader will be infected with your enthusiasm and keep turning the pages.

#2) Don't say the old lady screamed.

Drag her out into the scene and have her caterwaul herself. Telling the reader that a grandmother was stabbed does not near involve him as showing her stabbed.

#3) Never say in writing what you couldn't comfortably say in conversation.

Be natural in your writing. It will add the feel of reality to your novel. Put an acorn of truth in each of your characters.

The lonely weariness of a single father will grab the heart of the reader. In the next chapter when he robs the bank, the reader will be on his side.

#4) Periods are not ugly --

so do not put them so far away from the start of your sentence. Make your sentences and paragraphs short. Do not make your writing blunt instruments of prose.

Rather, write with the ear, not the eye. Make every sentence sound good.

And for that you need a well-trained sense of word-rhythm. Train your ear by reading your pages aloud as you finish them.

#5) The more you explain it, the more I do not understand it.

Be clear. Clear writing comes from clear thinking. Know logic. Know the subjects your characters do. Know the law if your hero is a lawyer.

Make sure each sentence could only mean what you wished to express.

And Lord Almighty, use short, direct words. Do not IMPLEMENT promises. KEEP them.

Remember that readers cannot know your mind. Do not forget to tell them exactly what they need to know to understand you. Speaking English to a Frenchman will not get you very far. I know. I tried.

#6) Write as if you were dying --

Indeed, write as if your readers were dying.

And in a way, both you and they are. You just do not know your exact shelf life.

They don't have time for all those long, dreary paragraphs about Aunt Edna's digestion. What tale could you spin to a dying person that would not enrage by its shallow triviality?

That thought will prune many needless ramblings on your part.

And please no adjectives to tell the reader how to feel. Instead of telling us the thing is "terrible," describe it so that we'll be terrified.

You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers "Please, will you do my job for me."

#7) Do not hoard.

Give each paragraph all the dynamite you possess. Do not save a "good bit" for later. If you do, the reader may become bored and wander off before your novel explodes.

Do not worry. More dynamite will occur to you -- if you give each scene all the wit and heart you have.

Those are seven keys to success in writing. There are more, of course.

But too many keys jangling inside your heads will make such a commotion that you won't be able to think straight, much less see where they apply to you and your novel.
****

H P LOVECRAFT_IMAGO OF HORROR_SECOND CAMPAIGNER CHALLENGE

{Another advanced post ... 200 words exactly.}

Ghost of Lovecraft here.

Did my prose mirror truth?

I dare not say.

My imagination was too stunted to paint what lies beyond.

I believe that this less material life is our truer one,

and that our vain presence on this transitory globe is

the secondary phenomenon.

I was wandering Thalarion, a synchroni city,

where none return,

where walk only daemons that are no longer sane, who stumble from gaps in reality that oscitate eerily.

These ruins project a diseased miasma as if the very stones are cursed.

The ghost of Samuel Clemens

made his cautious way to me.

Wise he was to be careful, for I am no longer ... human.

Bemused, I watched from the shadows.

He, though ghost, was human still, self-centered in opinion, with lacunae of astounding ignorance.

Clemens said, "You can roll around in your horrors like they were catnip. But Roland is ill. He needs your help."

"Of course I will help."

{I have looked upon all that the universe has to hold of horror,

so that the skies of spring must forever be poison to me.

So should you have breath left over from your prayers for Roland --

sing a canticle for me.}
***

WRITE THE VICTOR STANDISH WAY

Victor Standish here. Where's Roland you ask?

Well, he's a bit under the weather.

In fact, he says he's so under the weather that he's got the bends!

As to where Roland is, he's so ill

even he doesn't quite know,

except that it is somewhere in the vicinity of the backend of an 8 ball.

So being his bud, here I am.


But what do I know about writing? Hey, I'm Victor Standish, and I live on the streets of the French Quarter by knowing plenty.

Including how to write.

Quit snickering, Alice.


Think about it :

what you need to write well you already know just from living.

I.) Like Elu, my Apache grouch of a teacher, would say :

A.) To master yourself is the 1st step in mastering story-telling.

B.) In other words : life skills are story skills.

C.) You don't have to take lessons like with tennis to survive on the streets.

D.) But what you do need to know :

1.) Mind your surroundings before they mind you.

2.) Be aware of the pattern of predators before you become prey.

3.) Routes of escape : spot the exit soon as you slip through the front door.

E.) Put those details into your story, and it will seem real.

(But it won't be real ...)

II.) Good story telling seems real but isn't :

A.) It's Compressed

1.) Unlike life, a good story is compressed.
The interesting stuff is linked 1-2-3 ... with all the boring stuff left out.

2.) Unlike life, a good story makes sense.

a.) If your life is like mine (and I feel sorry for you if it is) then most days are filled with things that flat don't make sense.

b.) A good story has to make sense if you want your reader to stay with you ...

those three ghosts promised at the beginning of THE CHRISTMAS CAROL had darn well better show up.

3.) Unlike life, a good story is focused :

Target on those happenings that are important to your hero. Ouch! OK, Alice ... or to your heroine, too.

a.) Focus in a good story leaves out all those irritating things that don't push the story forward.

b.) No hands (or details) pushing sideways on my stalled car, please.

B.) All reality doesn't contain truth -- I mean, listen to those politicians.

1.) But your story has to ring with truth in order
to sell it as real to your reader.

2.) And it must fit the story type you're writing :

You don't try to fit an eagle in a parakeet cage or a pit bull in a terrier's doghouse.

3.) Knowing what size canvas you need is what prose painting is all about.
It'd be hard to write about the air war in WWI through the eyes of a soldier who spends the story in the trenches, coughing up nerve gas.

III.) Good story telling first depends on you having a good story that grabs the reader and won't let him go.

FOR EXAMPLE --

A.) Some woman in Wal-Mart cut in front of me in the 20 item line. And get this : she had 21 items. (Yawn.)

B.) Some crazy lady in Wal-Mart pulled a gun on me and took all my money, then she shot the clerk as she ran away. She turned to me as she flew out of the door, and you'll never guess what she yelled at me.

1.) That's a story that you NEED to tell.

2.) More importantly, that's a story people WANT to hear and to know what happened next.

IV.) A good story is closure.

A.) Closure -- yeah, that funny sounding word you adults use all the time when the pain hurts too bad to get your mind around it.

B.) You want to know Victor Standish's definition of closure (even though, like Huck Finn, I don't do school)? :

Closure is just a kid-glove way of saying "making the equation come out right."

You know, X + 5B = 3Y ("Unsupervised Politician + Lots of Money = Theft.)

C.) Finding a meaningful outcome for rape, murder,

or a mother abandoning her son in mean city after mean city.

You know, like that.

V.) A good story doesn't necessarily have a happy outcome ...

Just a way of living with it

or

Dying because of it.

(I've seen some people who could only find closure in the grave.)

A.) Sometimes tears are the only way to finish the story, the moment, the situation.

B.) Sometimes tears are the only answer to the equation of life.

VI.) But life, like a math test, always has new problems to solve.

A.) And so does the good story.

B.) The closure of it only leads the reader in search of another connection, another good story.

C.) Seeing the road going on for some or all of the main characters leaves the reader feeling as if she had dropped in on the events of real people

with real lives that go on over the horizon.

VII.) Leave them hungry for more ...

Speaking of hungry, I hear growling ...

Ah, Alice, is that your stomach growling?

Alice? Alice!

Don't look at my fingers like that.

Sure, you're a ghoul. But you're my ghoul FRIEND.

What do you mean I wouldn't miss one little finger?

Hey, Roland! Quick! Where's the roughest street around here? Fast!

Damn. I bet Harry Potter never had problems like this!
***

Love theme for Captain Sam and his lost love, Meilori :

VOTE NOW!

Victor Standish here.

So there I was : downing ice teas with the Sensei (that's the Spirit of Bruce Lee to you, guys) and Roland.

We'd worked up a little thirst from practicing Wing Chun for an hour.

{I'd made the mistake of asking Sensei how Wing Chun was different from Jeet Kune Do. I'd forgotten that for him, the best explanation was action.}

And after a small sip of green tea, Sensei told Roland he was being unfair.

You know how big a softie Roland is, so he was all "What? How? When?"

"All these new visitors you have invited to your blog ...."

"The Platform Builder Guys and Gals, right?," I smiled.

Sensei did not smile back. He doesn't like to be interrupted.

"That is right, Victor. They have just arrived to hear about a contest for autographs that is about to end without giving them fair time to read, review, and enter."

Roland said, "I can see your point, but what can I do?"

"Postpone the drawing until say ... the Ides of September."

Roland rubbed his face. "I don't know how my long-time friends will feel about that."

I jumped in (Roland's more forgiving about being interrupted than the Sensei.) "Why not hold a vote Tuesday and Wednesday, letting everyone who visits you decide."

Sensei nodded. "That is a fine idea, Victor."

His eyes sparkled. "For once."

So there you have it, guys. It's up to you. Postpone the drawing (Yes) or Hold it at the regular time (No)

It's up to you. C'mon. Don't let me down in front of the Sensei!

YES or NO?
***

GHOST OF A CHANCE_CHAPTER TWO : HOW DO YOU SPELL SCREWED?

{He who learns must suffer.

And even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget

falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.
- Aeschylus}

Tonight there was a new way to spell screwed : R-O-L-A-N-D.

The dead ghost of Ernest Hemingway was lying on the floor next to my bed. The ghost of Marlene Dietrich, his unrequited love, was in my bed. All the creatures of the Shadowland were on their way here to tear the secret of how to kill a ghost from me.

And me? I was in deep shit. I didn't have the secret. Someone had set me up. But who?

"Who did this to me, Marlene?"

Her china-blue eyes grew sad. "Who is not important, Liebling. 'Where' is. Where do we run that they will not already be there waiting?"

A Texas drawl like summer thunder rumbled beside me. "That would be Meilori's, partner."

"Sam?"

I looked up. Impossible though it was, there he stood. Tall, all in black : from his wide-brim Stetson to his long broadcloth jacket, jeans, and boots.

Ramrod straight, wolf eyes, and grim lean face. Captain Samuel McCord, hero of three of my novels stood in the undead flesh beside my bed.

I tapped my head. "But you exist only in here."

Marlene gently stroked my cheek with icy fingertips. "No, Liebling. The world is more than you know ... more than your mind is capable of knowing."

Sam grinned like a wolf. "The world wide web, son. You wrote of me, Meilori's, my world, my friends. It hit a chord deep within thousands of minds. That and ...."

Marlene turned my head to look at her. "Your Lakota blood, Schatz. It holds a strange power that only a handful of shamans had before you. What you write ... becomes flesh."

"What? But I've written of all sorts of creatures that haven't popped up."

Sam said, "I'm real only at Meilori's ... and here."

"Why here?"

Marlene stoked my neck. "Because here your ... your Geist, your spirit fills this place."

Sam sighed, "And that's another reason those polecats rushing up the stairs out there will think you have the secret of how to kill ghosts."

"Rushing up my stairs?"

And sure enough, there was a hollow moaning and keening headed straight towards the outside of my door. Closer. Closer. Shit. They were almost here.

"Time to think sideways, partner."

He pulled me from the bed. "Buddha on a pogo stick, son. You always sleep in your blue jeans?"

I nodded. "Ever since the fire. I can't relax unless I'm dressed to face the world."

There was a sudden pounding on the only door to my apartment. "Well, not that world."

"C'mon, Roland. Let's head to the bathroom."

"Not that I don't feel like throwing up, Sam, but what's in the bathroom?"

"A mirror."

I got even sicker. "You mean GO INTO the mirror like you do?"

"The only way, son."

"Yes, Liebchen. But do not worry. I am going with you."

I turned towards where she now stood. "Dressed in ...."

Her tall, lithe body was fair to bursting out of a snug old-style Prussian Calvary Officer uniform. I almost swallowed my tongue.

"How?"

Marlene smiled in a way that made me uncomfortable. "Clothes are easy. Naked is even easier."

Sam cleared his throat.

I frowned. "Why that uniform?"

Marlene pulled herself up proudly. "Father was a Prussian Calvary Officer. He taught me the art of the saber hims--"

The pounding at the door got more crazed. Marlene placed a light hand on the sleeve of my black T-shirt. "Ghosts have to be invited in."

"Well, call me a poor host, but I'm not inviting anybody in."

Sam tugged at me. "Not every creature in the Shadowlands need an invitation to kill, son."

Feeling ten kinds of creeped-out, I plucked my hiking boots out from under the unmoving, insubstantial body of Ernest Hemingway. I shoved my feet hurriedly into them. I bent to tie them.

Sam snapped, "Run now. Lace later."

I hurried to the cat carrier and snatched up a startled Gypsy, shoving her hissing and angry into it. Sam shook his head.

"She'll be safe under the bed, Roland."

"I took her with me for Katrina and Rita. I'm taking her now."

He shrugged and literally dragged me into my tiny bathroom. "Hell, son, there's not enough room in here to cuss a cat."

"Ask Gypsy how wrong that is," I said.

The sink mirror became milky, singing a strange deathsong of noise.

Sam gestured, "In you go, Roland."

I turned to Marlene as she was pulling a very sharp-looking saber from its sheath. "Ladies first, Marlene."

She leaned in close, kissing my cheek lightly. "And that is why gentlemen are a dying breed, Liebchen. You first. Here, give me Gypsy. She'll be safe with me."

I didn't like it. The ceiling tiles above me started to bulge. I remembered what Sam said about some Shadowlanders not needing invitations. I took in a deep breath and scrambled awkwardly onto the sink top.

Feeling three kinds of stupid, I eased to touch the mirror with one hand. Sam shoved me hard from the back. And INTO the mirror I went. The world was white, filled with frigid fog smelling of lightning strikes and pine trees.

I hit something soft yet hard. The fog disappeared suddenly as two strong arms wrapped around me. I saw the face I never wanted to see.

"Death," I squeaked.
********************

MARK TWAIN, ghost_HOW I FIRST MET MARLENE DIETRICH

{“I have heard it said that truth is mighty and will prevail.

There is nothing wrong with this … except that it ain’t so.”
Mark Twain.}

Samuel Clemens here. His ghost really. I can’t rightly call myself the ghost of Mark Twain.

Mark Twain was my pen-name. And isn’t a pen-name a ghost of sorts? Whoever heard of a ghost of a ghost?

I decided to spell poor Roland from going into that dang-blamed oven of an apartment. Now, let's see if I remember how to use this blamed contraption called a laptop, of all things!

In this terrible heat, I look at these teeny tiny keys then, like some misty rose, I see the face of my brother, Henry,

whose seared hand I held as he died from those terrible burns from that steamboat explosion.

The damnable explosion that I had dreamt in detail a whole month earlier.

It was then I realized that life was more than I had supposed.

No, I realized that the night when I first met Roland and Marlene Dietrich in my nightmare at the age of twelve …

in the Shadowlands. For you see, time is fluid and strange in that dark place.

Shadowlands you ask. You’ve seen them, too. Yes, you have.

That flicker of movement out of the corner of your eye. You turn cat-quick to catch it clear, saying it couldn’t possibly be what you thought.

And it wasn’t. It was worse. Worse than you could possibly imagine.

The Shadowlands are not Dreamtime, though they are connected, usually by the bridge of nightmare.

Roland’s mother could walk them, as could her Lakota grandmother. But only Roland is called a Name in them :

DreamSinger.

He who sings to life dreams … and nightmares.

It was in a nightmare that I first met Roland. I was alive then, for the dead do not dream. I was twelve years old and caught up in the hunt. I was not hunting. I was being hunted … by the spirits of my vengeful and dead sister and brother.

What to write of those times? They burn in me, and they keep me up at night. But now they can never be said. Besides, they would require a library and a pen warmed up in Hell.

As with most dreams, I will start this one in the middle :


It was night. It was Missouri. But not Hannibal.

It was the almost invisible village of Florida. It was a scrawny pup of a place. Only two streets, each but a hundred yards long. The rest of the pathways would be paved with tough black mud in winter, rain or thick dust in summer. I had been born there.

The skies were blood. The clouds rolling billows of fire.

Those sermons my mother had dragged me to were surely making an impression on my nightmare. I almost expected the chariot with the struggling figure of Elijah to come streaking across such a night’s sky.

The rumble of summer thunder echoed overhead. A wolf’s howl pierced the shadows with its mournful wail.

I tried to bolster my wavering courage. “N-Now, Sammy, that there’s just an hungry old wolf. That ain’t no omen of death. No, it surely --”

An unseen owl hooted. “Oh, Lord! I didn’t mean no harm to Bennie. I surely didn’t.”

And then behind me, I heard a deep voice like a happy stream. “These woods sure are a little scary, huh?”

I whipped about. And that was the first time I saw Roland. Lord, his eyes. The memory of them haunts me still.

They seemed to have seen all the pain in the world and felt most of it personal and close-up. Dressed in a strange black shirt I later learned was called “T,” jeans, and boots, he winked at me.

I winked back. “Little? Why these woods are humongous scary.”

And I relaxed just like that. He was a friend. I could just tell. And with the foolish trust of a twelve year old, I stuck out my hand. “Name’s Sammy. What’s yours?”

“Why, it's Roland. Good to meet you, Sammy. Are those spooks over there friends of yours?”

“S-Spooks?”

I whipped around so fast I left my smile in the air behind my head. And there they were : my dead sister and brother.

Their wispy figures of black mist flowed to my right. I felt my face go tight. They were apparitions from the spirit world.

No, not the spirit world you might be thinking of, but the spirit world each of us carries deep within the dark of our souls, the prison for our mistakes and those regrets they give birth to.

They were giggling, a hungry, soulless sound, and I made my throat work,

“Benjamin. Margaret. You leave me be.”

“What he said,” laughed Roland.

I turned to him. Why in tarnation was he laughing? Couldn’t he see they was about to make a meal of me?

He pulled out a battered pad of paper from his jeans pocket and looked over to me.
“There is power in words, Sammy.” (And that sentence of his changed my whole life. Although at the time, I did not realize their impact.)

Margaret and Benjamin both bent in unnatural ways as they turned and glided towards Roland, but only my sister spoke, revealing tiny, needled teeth. “Lakota, you have no hold on us.”

Roland just chuckled, bending towards me so that I could see what he was writing :

“And Margaret and Benjamin were caught up in the winds of forgiveness never to bother Sammy ever again.”

A keening moan hollowed from my right. I looked to where my sister and brother had been. They were gone. I turned to Roland like I had been whalloped in the head by a mule’s hooves.

“H-How did you do that?”

“I think it has something to do with my Lakota blood.”

“What blood?”

“Lakota Sioux Indian.”

“You’re an Injun medicine man?”

“Sort of. What I write sometimes comes to pass in dreams.”

“Only sometimes? Then, why was you laughing just now?”

“I always laugh when I’m scared spitless.”

“Now, you tell me!”

I edged closer to him. “You mean you could write anything down there and it might happen right now?”

He nodded. “Oh, sure. I could write : the most beautiful woman in the world flows out of the night mist and falls in love with Roland. But I won’t.”

“Why in tarnation not?”

“Being selfish with your gifts always turns out bad somehow.”

“Really?,” husked a woman from out of the fog that flowed in billows to our left.

We both jumped a foot up in the air, and the most beautiful apparition of beauty I had ever seen glided up to us. A long gown of gleaming satin, as alabaster as the moon’s face, clung to her so that even the twelve year old boy I was started to come to attention in certain places.

“I – I didn’t write anything down,” stammered Roland.

“What a strange dream this is,” she smiled, sending tingles all through me.

She looked down at the shaking page in Roland’s hand and lightly tapped them. “Does this mean you see me as the most beautiful woman in the world? I, who you have never before seen?”

And Roland said, “All men have seen you in the lonely corner of their hearts. Only a very few are lucky enough to ever meet you – even in dreams.”

Years later, when we were both ghosts, Marlene Dietrich confided in me that was the very moment she fell in love with Roland. But right then, her eyes just got deeper. Then, she faded away with the night mist.

I looked up at him. “Does this sort of stuff happen to you a lot?”

He smiled a sad, crooked grin . “All the time.”

And that is the face which comes to me whenever I think of Roland. It comes to me now that in my heart, he is my brother, Henry, given back to me.
***

JOHN LOCKE … thru the eyes of Victor Standish

I walked up to Captain Sam’s table where Alice, my ghoul friend, was lost in a book. “What’re you reading?”

Alice looked up absently, “This system by John Locke to sell millions of Kindle books. I want to discern if there is any merit to it so as to help Roland.”

{http://www.amazon.com/How-Sold-Million-eBooks-Months/dp/1935670913/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1309895373&sr=1-1 }

Her British accent sent tingles through me, but I was Victor Standish, and I don’t let girls know they’re getting to me. But her Mona Lisa smile said I was only fooling myself.

And talking about fooling, I said, “Oh, I read that last night for the same reason. Boy, Old John must have pretty broad shoulders.”

Alice frowned, “Why do you say that?”

“From the way the guy kept patting himself on the back all the time. ‘I have made 3 separate fortunes. My posts are timeless, forever relevant. I write 7,000 words a day when I write a novel. I have the system guaranteed to make you a success. My snake oil will make you live forever.”

Alice frowned like an angry librarian. “He wrote no such thing.”

“Yeah, but he probably will next week.”

Alice sighed as if at a dim-wit (and no snide comments from you guys out there!) “I have read where this Amanda Hocking, herself a Kindle wonder, said that it is more likely a Kindle author will only sell less than a 100 copies of their eBooks – not anywhere close to a 100,000.”

I sat down beside Alice. “Yeah, but she’s not hawking a “How To” book for $10 a pop either. I mean, look – he’s made $20 just from the two of us.”

Alice puckered her pretty lips. “But he’s sold so many books.”

“Yeah, but have you looked at the covers? Sex sells. Even if they’re only sexy legs.”

Alice glared at me. “And just how do you know what the covers look like, Mr. Standish?”

“Hey, he’s got them plastered at the top of his blog. { http://lethalbooks.com/ }

That guy sure knows how to manipulate :

soft-soaping poor people on Twitter to be his shills;

writing only what he thinks will sell, not what’s in his heart;

singing the praises of sport and sick Hollywood greats, then twittering those legends’ fans with a link to his blog.”

Alice looked troubled. “Mr. Locke may be sincere.”

“Yeah, maybe. But I’ve lived on the streets all my life and had to fend off panhandlers that whole time. When a deal sounds too good to be true, it ain’t.”

“Isn’t,” chuckled Captain Sam as he sat down beside me.

“I’ve read his book for the same reason you two did. So that makes $30 he’s made. Still, he did have a sound idea or three. Maybe lightning just struck as it sometimes does. Or his system does works. Time reveals the truth eventually.”

Alice cocked her head, blonde waves becoming a waterfall. “But what of all the people who will follow Mr. Locke’s system in the mean time?”

Captain Sam smiled sad. “Sometimes faith will heal you even if the pill you swallow is sugar.”
***

D is for DRAWING says THE TURQUOISE WOMAN

Greetings, Humans :

I am the Turquoise Woman.

For some of you the challenge of the day is D.

I chose the word DRAWING :

From your heart you may DRAW love.

So few of you do that.

I understand.

To love at all is to be vulnerable.

Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken.

If you want to make sure of keeping it intact,

you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal.

Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries;

avoid all entanglements;

lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.

But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--

it will change.

It will not be broken;

it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.


There is another meaning for DRAWING, of course.

As with Roland's DRAWING :

From now to May 21st

(the day some addled two-leggeds believe Judgement Day will come --

as if each day were not Judgement Day for each of you in so many ways)

From now to then,

if you write on Amazon a review of his book, THE BEAR WITH TWO SHADOWS,

you will receive 5 entries for a drawing for three autographed books (one of them to be left a mystery)

{those who have already written a review now have five entries in this new drawing}



Another sense of DRAWING is ,of course a representation in ink,

an etching if you would.

But each of you etch your soul by the choices you make

and by the life journey born of those choices.

I am Day.

I am Night.

I am the World.

I am the Turquoise Woman.

And a traveler like all of you.

You walk miles.

I spin through the vastness of space,

listening to the ghost songs of the solar winds.

I awakened already spinning through space,

hugged to the sun's warmth by his invisible arms of gravity.

But the sun is a distant lover,

following his own path through the stars, drawn by bonds of his own.

He is caught like a glistening bead of dew in the web of the solar system.

Together, he and my sisters journey in a cluster

which is itself part of a moving community of stars you call the Milky Way.

Travelers all,

we can neither turn to the left nor to the right of our own volition.

We are children of gravity and explosion,

cast into the darkness by forces we little understand or know.

I used to envy you your freedom of movement, of choice.

But the longer I watched your scurrying over my surface,

the more a dark truth spoke to me :

You, too, are children of the gravity of your species

and the explosion of the times around you -

which you little understand or know.

You bristle with denial?

If you cannot understand your own heart,

how can you understand another's?

Which choices are yours totally?

As gravity and momentum send me on my path,

so do your DNA, location, and experience

spread the pattern of the paths before you.

You are no more free than I am or the goldfish wandering the narrow confines of its bowl.

From within its bowl, the world seems so large to the goldfish.

Yet, it is trapped within invisible walls.

As are you.

Freedom is an illusion to the goldfish, to me, and to you.

Do we choose or do the choices choose us? ***

<>
>

HIBBS: BUT I DON'T HAVE FAERIE WINGS!_ OFF TO SUMMER ROSS' WE GO.

Hibbs, the cub with no clue, here again.

Wy-Wyoming?

Summer Ross lives in WYOMING?!

That's over 800 miles as Little Brother flies!

Sigh. Mr. Roland, do I get any of the royalties?

Mr. Roland!

Oh, well, come follow me to Wy-Wyoming :

http://summersvoice.blogspot.com/
***
Congratulations to Hart and Elena for making it to ABNA's semi-finals!!

CHANDLER HERE_{GHOST OF A CHANCE Overture to the last chapters}_NO GRAVES IN THE SHADOWLANDS

{"If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it."
— Ernest Hemingway.}

Chandler here. Raymond Chandler. Or rather his ghost.

I started with that quote from Hemingway because it was too damned appropriate not to.

Samuel Clemens and I are tying up the last chapters to the end of Roland's tale.

If you're wondering where Roland is the next few chapters will tell you.

As you've already read he'd been on the run in the Shadowlands, falsely accused of the murder of Hemingway’s ghost.

The same ghost who had been laughing up his sleeve in Roland’s apartment for a week, pontificating on how to write good literature.

Apparently, he forgot how to live a good life or be a good friend.

No, the truth was worse. He was too jealous of how the ghost of Marlene Dietrich felt about Roland. Today, ironically, is Marlene's birthday.

Hemingway had been rubbing his hands in pure joy as the ghosts closed in for revenge and others in the darkness bayed at the kid’s heels,

seeking to tear the secret of how to kill ghosts from him.

Now, where is Hemingway? On his way to Hell if there's any justice. But there isn't.

Word in the Shadowlands is that he is just walking aimlessly into the darkness, his eyes deep holes into nothingness.

I only have the cold comfort that I knocked him on his arrogant ghost-butt. How did a Hollywood hack like me do that? Easy. I cheated.

I surprised him. I walked into Roland's apartment looking clean, neat, and sober, smiling my best "ain't we chums?" smile. Then, I let him have it with the blackjack in my fist.

He went down hard. Not hard enough.

"Good news, boxer," I grunted. "Word in the Shadowlands is that Roland's dead. Died in the arms of Marlene."

His eyes fought to focus. "Is she --"

"Yeah, hero. She's dead, too. Killed by the one who poisoned you. I hope you're --"

I didn't get the chance to finish. The most godawful yowling came from the head of Roland's bed. Then, I saw her -

Gypsy, his cat, all covered in sand. I could have sworn she hadn't been there when I first came in.

Her head was reared back, her eyes full of tears. Hell, his cat was crying. Crying.

And Gypsy howled like her guts were being cut out of her. I can hear it still. It seemed to go on forever.

I pray to God I never hear such a sound again. She stopped abruptly and looked at me with eyes gone sick and insane.

Then she just slowly faded away into the darkness like an old photograph left out too long in the sun. I shivered. And I knew. I knew.

I would never see his cat again.

I turned to Hemingway as he struggled to his feet, and I managed to get out the words. "Roland trusted you."

My grief and anger were battling so inside my heart, it felt as if I was standing outside myself. "You hid in his apartment, knowing he was being blamed for your murder, knowing he was being hunted by things that would make a pit bull puke."

I realized I was literally shaking with my anger. "You could have stopped this. You should have."

He turned hollow eyes to me. "Right on both counts."

And with that he walked out through Roland's door. And I knew something else. I would never see him again either.

So here I am, sitting in the dark at Roland's laptop. What do I write that would express just what the kid meant to me? It's all too fresh. I - I can't.

There are no graves in the Shadowlands. No place where I can lay one black rose. To die there is to disappear utterly both body and spirit. But I have to do something. Something.

I will sit out on Roland's terrace and look out as the night fog slips away from the bordering bayou.

The rains are over. The fields this far south are still green.

And with my ghost eyes I will look out over the vastness of America to the Hollywood Hills and see snow on the high mountains.

The fur stores will be advertising their annual sales. The call houses that specialize in sixteen year-old virgins will be doing a land-office business. In Beverly Hills the jacaranda trees will be slumbering waiting for spring to bloom.

And none of that will matter ... for my friend is dead.

The French have a saying that to say good-bye is to die a little. They are right. I am a ghost, and I thought I was past feeling dead inside. I was wrong.

I think I will always see him driving down lonely roads, sitting in lonely rooms, saddened but never quite defeated.

Down those mean streets he went who was not himself mean, who was neither tarnished nor afraid ... only mortal.
****

GHOST OF MARK TWAIN HERE_OF LAST RITES AND FIRST MEETINGS {GHOST OF A CHANCE prelude}

{“I have heard it said that truth is mighty and will prevail.

There is nothing wrong with this … except that it ain’t so.”

Mark Twain.}

Samuel Clemens here. His ghost really.

I can’t rightly call myself the ghost of Mark Twain.

Mark Twain was my pen-name. And isn’t a pen-name a ghost of sorts? Whoever heard of a ghost of a ghost?

Well, it is near the end of this old bruised year, so I expect it's time to bring you the last few chapters of GHOST OF A CHANCE.

You folks out there think you've been hearing from Roland ...

and you have.

Except it's just ain't houses that sometimes become haunted. It's anything that has become close to the departed like ...

this here contraption ... this laptop.

You've been hearing from Roland right enough ...

I can't seem to put it into words ... like writing it would be make it doubly so.

I can still see Roland’s face … so horribly burned.

And then over his poor face, like some mist, I see the face of my brother, Henry, whose seared hand I held as he died from those terrible burns from that steamboat explosion.

The damnable explosion that I had dreamt in detail a whole month earlier.

It was then I realized that life was more than I had supposed.

No, I realized that the night when I first met Roland and Marlene Dietrich in my nightmare at the age of twelve … in the Shadowlands.

For you see, time is fluid and strange in that dark place.

Shadowlands you ask. You’ve seen them, too. Yes, you have.

That flicker of movement out of the corner of your eye. You turn cat-quick to catch it clear, saying it couldn’t possibly be what you thought.

And it wasn’t. It was worse. Worse than you could possibly imagine.

The Shadowlands are not Dreamtime, though they are connected, usually by the bridge of nightmare.

Roland’s mother could walk them, as could her Lakota grandmother. But only Roland is called a Name in them :

DreamSinger.

He who sings to life dreams … and nightmares.


It was in a nightmare that I first met Roland. I was alive then, for the dead do not dream. I was twelve years old and caught up in the hunt.

I was not hunting. I was being hunted … by the spirits of my vengeful and dead sister and brother.

What to write of those times? They burn in me, and they keep me restless at night.

But now they can never be said. Besides, they would require a library and a pen warmed up in Hell.

As with most dreams, I will start this one in the middle :

It was night. It was Missouri. But not Hannibal.

It was the almost invisible village of Florida.

It was a scrawny pup of a place. Only two streets, each but a hundred yards long. The rest of the pathways would be paved with tough black mud in winter, rain or thick dust in summer. I had been born there.

The skies were blood. The clouds rolling billows of fire.

Those sermons my mother had dragged me to were surely making an impression on my nightmare. I almost expected the chariot with the struggling figure of Elijah to come streaking across such a night’s sky.

The rumble of summer thunder echoed overhead. A wolf’s howl pierced the shadows with its mournful wail.

I tried to bolster my wavering courage. “N-Now, Sammy, that there’s just an hungry old wolf. That ain’t no omen of death. No, it surely --”

An unseen owl hooted. “Oh, Lord! I didn’t mean no harm to Bennie. I surely didn’t.”

And then behind me, I heard a deep voice like a happy, flowing river. “These woods sure are a little scary, huh?”

I whipped about. And that was the first time I saw Roland. Lord, his eyes. The memory of them haunts me still.

They seemed to have seen all the pain in the world and felt most of it personal and close-up. Dressed in a strange black shirt I later learned was called “T,” jeans, and boots, he winked at me.

I winked back. “Little? Why these woods are humongous scary.”

And I relaxed just like that. He was a friend. I could just tell. And with the foolish trust of a twelve year old, I stuck out my hand. “Name’s Sammy. What’s yours?”

“Roland. Good to meet you, Sammy. Are those spooks over there friends of yours?”

“S-Spooks?”

I whipped around so fast I left my smile in the air behind my head. And there they were : my dead sister and brother.

Their wispy figures of black mist flowed to my right. I felt my face go tight. They were apparitions from the spirit world.

No, not the spirit world you might be thinking of, but the spirit world each of us carries deep within the dark of our souls, the prison for our mistakes and those regrets they give birth to.

They were giggling, a hungry, soulless sound, and I made my throat work,

“Benjamin. Margaret. You leave me be.”

“What he said,” laughed Roland.

I turned to him. Why in tarnation was he laughing? Couldn’t he see they was about to make a meal of me?

He pulled out a battered pad of paper from his jeans pocket and looked over to me.

“There is power in words, Sammy.” (And that sentence of his changed my whole life. Although at the time, I did not realize their impact.)

Margaret and Benjamin both bent in unnatural ways as they turned and glided towards Roland, but only my sister spoke, revealing tiny, needled teeth.

“Lakota, you have no hold on us.”

Roland just chuckled, bending towards me so that I could see what he was writing :

“And Margaret and Benjamin were caught up in the winds of forgiveness never to bother Sammy ever again.”

A keening moan hollowed from my right. I looked to where my sister and brother had been. They were gone. I turned to Roland like I had been whalloped in the head by a mule’s hooves.

“H-How did you do that?”

“I think it has something to do with my Lakota blood.”

“What blood?”

“Lakota Sioux Indian.”

“You’re an Injun medicine man?”

“Sort of. What I write sometimes comes to pass in dreams.”

“Only sometimes? Then, why was you laughing just now?”

“I always laugh when I’m scared spitless.”

“Now, you tell me!”

I edged closer to him. “You mean you could write anything down there and it might happen right now?”

He nodded. “Oh, sure. I could write : the most beautiful woman in the world flows out of the night mist and falls in love with Roland. But I won’t.”

“Why in tarnation not?”

“Being selfish with your gifts always turns out bad somehow.”

“Really?,” husked a woman from out of the fog that flowed in billows to our left.

We both jumped a foot up in the air, and the most beautiful apparition of beauty I had ever seen glided up to us.

A long gown of gleaming satin, as alabaster as the moon’s face, clung to her so that even the twelve year old boy I was started to come to attention in certain places.

“I – I didn’t write anything down,” stammered Roland.

“What a strange dream this is,” she smiled, sending tingles all through me.

She looked down at the shaking page in Roland’s hand and lightly tapped them.

“Does this mean you see me as the most beautiful woman in the world? I, whom you have never before seen?”

And Roland said, “All men have seen you before -- in the lonely corner of their hearts. Only a very few are lucky enough to ever meet you – even in dreams.”

Years later, when we were both ghosts, Marlene Dietrich confided in me that was the very moment she fell in love with Roland. But right then, her eyes just got deeper. Then, she faded away with the night mist.

I looked up at him. “Does this sort of stuff happen to you a lot?”

He smiled a sad, crooked grin . “All the time.”

And that is the face I will try to remember. It comes to me now that in my heart, he was my brother, Henry, given back to me.

Roland, I miss you.
***

WRITE THE VICTOR STANDISH WAY BY GUESS WHO?

Victor Standish here. Where's Roland you ask?

Well, he's having such a bad weekend at work,

even he doesn't quite know,

except that it is somewhere in the vicinity of the backend of an 8 ball.

So being his bud, here I am. But what do I know about writing? Plenty.

Quit snickering, Alice.

Think about it :
what you need to write well you already know just from living.

I.) Like Elu, my Apache grouch of a teacher, would say :

A.) To master yourself is the 1st step in mastering story-telling.

B.) In other words : life skills are story skills.

C.) You don't have to take lessons like with tennis to survive on the streets.

D.) But what you do need to know :

1.) Mind your surroundings before they mind you.

2.) Be aware of the pattern of predators before you become prey.

3.) Routes of escape : spot the exit soon as you slip through the front door.

E.) Put those details into your story, and it will seem real.

(But it won't be real ...)

II.) Good story telling seems real but isn't :

A.) Compressed

1.) Unlike life, a good story is compressed.
The interesting stuff is linked 1-2-3 ... with all the boring stuff left out.

2.) Unlike life, a good story makes sense.
a.) If your life is like mine (and I feel sorry for you if it is) then most days are filled with things that flat don't make sense.

b.) A good story has to make sense if you want your reader to stay with you ...

those three ghosts promised at the beginning of THE CHRISTMAS CAROL had darn well better show up.

3.) Unlike life, a good story is focused :

Target on those happenings that are important to your hero. Ouch! OK, Alice ... or to your heroine, too.

a.) Focus in a good story leaves out all those irritating things that don't push the story forward.

b.) No hands (or details) pushing sideways on my stalled car, please.

B.) All reality doesn't contain truth -- I mean, listen to those politicians.

1.) But your story has to ring with truth in order
to sell it as real to your reader.

2.) And it must fit the story type you're writing :
You don't try to fit an eagle in a parakeet cage or a pit bull in a terrier's doghouse.

3.) Knowing what size canvas you need is what prose painting is all about.
It'd be hard to write about the air war in WWI through the eyes of a soldier who spends the story in the trenches, coughing up nerve gas.

III.) Good story telling first depends on you having a good story that grabs the reader and won't let him go.

A.) Some woman in Wal-Mart cut in front of me in the 20 item line. And get this : she had 21 items. (Yawn.)

B.) Some crazy lady in Wal-Mart pulled a gun on me and took all my money, then she shot the clerk as she ran away. She turned to me as she flew out of the door, and you'll never guess what she yelled at me.

1.) That's a story that you NEED to tell.

2.) More importantly, that's a story people WANT to hear and to know what happened next.

IV.) A good story is closure.

A.) Closure -- yeah, that funny sounding word you adults use all the time when the pain hurts too bad to get your mind around it.

B.) Victor's definition of closure (even though, like Huck Finn, I don't do school) :

closure is just a kid-glove way of saying "making the equation come out right."

You know, X + 5B = 3Y ("Unsupervised Politician + Lots of Money = Theft.)

C.) Finding a meaningful outcome for rape, murder,

or a mother abandoning her son in mean city after mean city.

You know, like that.

V.) A good story doesn't necessarily have a happy outcome ...

Just a way of living with it
or
Dying because of it.

(I've seen some people who could only find closure in the grave.)

A.) Sometimes tears are the only way to finish the story, the moment, the situation

B.) Sometimes tears are the only answer to the equation of life.

VI.) But life, like a math test, always has new problems to solve.

A.) And so does the good story.

B.) The closure of it only leads the reader in search of another connection, another good story.

C.) Seeing the road going on for some or all of the main characters leaves the reader feeling as if she had dropped in on the events of real people

with real lives that go on over the horizon.

VII.) Leave them hungry for more ...

Ah, Alice, is that your stomach growling? Alice? Don't look at my fingers like that.

Sure, you're a ghoul. But you're my ghoul FRIEND. What do you mean I wouldn't miss one little finger?

Hey, Roland! Quick! Where's the roughest street around here? Fast!

Damn. Harry Potter never had problems like this.
***

***
Love theme for Samuel McCord and his lost Meilori :

THE KEY TO WRITING SUCCESS

Ghost of Samuel Clemens here.

No, not Mark Twain.

Only heathen call me by that name.

It's my confounded pen name after all. And a pen name is a sort of ghost, ain't it?

Well, it would give me incorporeal indigestion to call myself a ghost of a ghost, don't you know?

I strolled over here to swap a lie or two with Roland, only to find him dozing in his chair.

On his electronic gizmo, the boy had written : the key to success in writing.

And then, promptly fell asleep.

He must have had one of those 300 miles day ferrying rare blood all over God's creation.

I took pity on the boy, pulled up my ghost chair and commenced to writing.

I purely have no idea what he was going to say, but ...

There are keys to success in writing.

I did not learn them early.

I did not learn them all at once.

They came to me like the passing of a kidney stone --

with time and with pain.


For Roland's sake, I am going to pass on a few of those keys. Not in any particular order -- just as they occur to me, much like I wrote my autobiography.


THE KEYS :

#1) Write without pay until someone pays you.

In other words, write because you love it, not for thoughts of wealth. Only a very few authors ever are able to leave their day job.

Do this and you will relax and write with confidence. The reader will sense this, and your novel will be more interesting to your reader.

Write only about what interests you. The reader will be infected with your enthusiasm and keep turning the pages.

#2) Don't say the old lady screamed.

Drag her out into the scene and have her caterwaul herself. Telling the reader that a grandmother was stabbed does not near involve him as showing her stabbed.

#3) Never say in writing what you couldn't comfortably say in conversation.

Be natural in your writing. It will add the feel of reality to your novel. Put an acorn of truth in each of your characters.

The lonely weariness of a single father will grab the heart of the reader. In the next chapter when he robs the bank, the reader will be on his side.

#4) Periods are not ugly --

so do not put them so far away from the start of your sentence. Make your sentences and paragraphs short. Do not make your writing blunt instruments of prose.

Rather, write with the ear, not the eye. Make every sentence sound good.

And for that you need a well-trained sense of word-rhythm. Train your ear by reading your pages aloud as you finish them.

#5) The more you explain it, the more I do not understand it.

Be clear. Clear writing comes from clear thinking. Know logic. Know the subjects your characters do. Know the law if your hero is a lawyer.

Make sure each sentence could only mean what you wished to express.

And Lord Almighty, use short, direct words. Do not IMPLEMENT promises. KEEP them.

Remember that readers cannot know your mind. Do not forget to tell them exactly what they need to know to understand you. Speaking English to a Frenchman will not get you very far. I know. I tried.

#6) Write as if you were dying --

Indeed, write as if your readers were dying.

And in a way, both you and they are. You just do not know your exact shelf life.

They don't have time for all those long, dreary paragraphs about Aunt Edna's digestion. What tale could you spin to a dying person that would not enrage by its shallow triviality?

That thought will prune many needless ramblings on your part.

And please no adjectives to tell the reader how to feel. Instead of telling us the thing is "terrible," describe it so that we'll be terrified.

You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers "Please, will you do my job for me."

#7) Do not hoard.

Give each paragraph all the dynamite you possess. Do not save a "good bit" for later. If you do, the reader may become bored and wander off before your novel explodes.

Do not worry. More dynamite will occur to you -- if you give each scene all the wit and heart you have.

Those are seven keys to success in writing. There are more, of course.

But too many keys jangling inside your heads will make such a commotion that you won't be able to think straight, much less see where they apply to you and your novel.
****

GHOST OF A CHANCE_CHAPTER 18_RIGHT TURN ON DEAD

{“We are all serving a life sentence in the prison of the mind.”

- Mark Twain.}


{Samuel Clemens, ghost, here.

Some of you out there wonder why I speak of Roland as if he were dead.

He is.

Died in the Shadowlands. All that remains of him is his slightly burnt journal.

I gave him my word I would take care of Gypsy and man his blog until his rent came due.

I’ve been posting entries from his smoke-stained journal, detailing what led to his dying in Marlene’s arms … and then, her being murdered by ….

Dang tears. Excuse me a minute.

Anyway, when we last left him …

Roland, the ghost of Marlene Dietrich, and I have finally shed Death. When she wasn’t frightening me near to senselessness, she was confusing the tarnation out of me.

Death has opened the dreaded Door of Nasah, (which I have since learned is ancient Hebrew for TESTING),

opening the way back to Meilori’s, that supernatural jazz club and possible sanctuary for us. Roland enters first. And I will let Roland carry on from there.} :


I heard both Marlene and Mark yelp in surprise as the darkness swallowed us. I went cold inside. I couldn't feel them inside my mind anymore.

I was alone.

And the blackness became alive.

What I saw taught me a terrible lesson :

We are all of us deceived.

Science tells us that the world is in constant motion.

It is but illusion. Reality is but static moments in time, placed one after another. All still as your last breath, they are frozen in the fabric of eternity, waiting for you to enter them.

As the darkness smothered me, my Lakota blood showed me one glimpse into life after another :

Along the trees of Piccadilly Circus, little girls in sprigged muslin giggled as they rolled their wooden hoops, the long navy ribbons of their straw hats fluttering in the spring breeze.

Along the Thames, half-lidded young women twirled their parasols and looked coyly at their young men rowing them across the calm waters.

In New York’s Central Park, a young poet sat beneath an acacia tree believing that life would be beautiful forever.

In one dark boardroom after another, fat power brokers sipped their brandy, smoked their expensive cigars, and dreamed of the world grasped firmly in their hands.

And alone, the ghost of Ernest Hemingway was sprawled motionless by my bed, his dropped cigar still smoldering.

And that last image was all that meant a damn to me.

He had been my friend. And no one killed my friends without paying the price. And if that meant me breaking my promise to myself never to kill again, so be it.

And with that grim resolution, the world came to life around me. I was in Meilori's again. In the very part of it where Toya had ambushed me. I looked about.

Neither Sam, Toya, or Bast was there. But there was someone I recognized. He was talking to a group of fascinated, admiring beings, some human, some anything but.

I went all cold inside.

There was a reason I recognized that person.

He was me.
********************

MARK TWAIN_IF YOU ASK A HUNGRY MAN_GHOST OF A CHANCE Interlude

{"If you ask a hungry man how much two plus two is, he will reply four loaves."
-Mark Twain.}

Nikola Tesla told me, ghost to ghost, not to use Roland's prose as a blunt instrument.

To leaven the flour, so to speak, with a little lesson on writing, or what not, every now and again.

Nikola's a smart one, even for a ghost, so I thought I'd listen to him.

Listening.

I've been thinking some on that subject.

Like that hungry man I started out with -- how what we hear depends upon what we're listening for.

I remember walking down a busy downtown street in 'Frisco a century or two ago with an Injun of my acquaintance.

I was in the midst of the most sage pontificating you ever heard when he suddenly pulled up short and bent down.

Lord Almighty, if he didn't pick up a chirping grasshopper, of all things, from the corner of a store door.

He walked carefully over to a nearby planter and dropped it in.

"You mean to tell me," I said, "that you heard that little fella over all this hustle and bustle?"

"Do you have a silver dollar, Clemens?"

"Why I sure do."

"Let me see it."

So I dug it out of the warmth and security of my vest pocket and handed it to him.

Wouldn't you know that danged Injun flipped it high in the air where it clattered to the floorboards of the sidewalk.

I swear there was a such a mad scrabble of folks clawing for my dollar, it took all I had to snatch it from the hands of an ample matron.

Being a gentleman and all, I only left a bruise or two on her doing it.

Well, it was my dollar, dang it.

She told me where I could go for my next vacation. I informed her that I would join her there come the next cold front in that place.

That Injun shook his head at me. "I heard a living creature in the path of blind feet. They heard the hungry cry of free money. You hear what you listen for, Clemens."

And just what has that got to with writing?

Well, listening is what killed Hemingway the first time around. Yes, that's right. Listening.

You see, a long time ago, Hemingway stopped listening - except to the answers to his own questions.

Maybe that's what dried him up -- not listening outside the Greek chorus inside his own mind : "Ernest. Ernest. Papa. Papa."

No insult meant to him. It happens to all of us. We see well enough. We just stop listening.

It dried the wellspring inside his soul. He was dead long before he pulled the trigger.

You say : that's fine to say of him, of yourself. The world's has changed.

But not human nature.

Lord Almighty, I've seen it all go, and I'll watch it go again.

If you would be good writers, children, thing to do is to last, to get your work done -- see and hear and learn and understand.

Write when you've done all that and not before.

Then, your readers will actually experience your tale.

But to do that you have to use the right word for the right thing. The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.

As you would filet a fish, filet your prose. Strip every sentence to its cleanest state.

Every word that serves no function,

every long word that could be a short word,

every adverb that carries the same meaning that’s already in the verb,

every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what to whom -- carve it out as you would the bones from a bass.

After every sentence, ask yourself what the reader wants to know next.

Good writers write in such a way that one can read them aloud and know what they mean.

Bad writers have to be studied and re-read and pondered like that bejiggered James Joyce.

His ghost still holds a grudge against me for putting out a cigar in his ULYSSES. I thought I was downright subtle in my critique of his book.

It's not like my books haven't had their share of insults.

I've been tarred and feathered for HUCK FINN.

But you can't make your world come alive for the readers without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful.

Because if it is all beauty and victory and rose sunsets, the readers won't believe in it. Life isn't like that.

Roland's certainly wasn't.

Now, I've gone and done it. Dang tears. I can't see the letters on this bejiggered contraption anymore. I have to stop now.

If you want me to, I'll post another entry from his journal Monday.
***
Nikola tells me I'm old-fashioned, even for a ghost. He wants me to add this song. Have I told you that old Nikola's a strange bird? Well, he is.

By the way, unknown to that band, Nikola is one of them -- the fella with the strange eyes behind that gal in the first photograph.

Like Wagner, this music is better than it sounds. The start and end of this song gave me a nosebleed, and the middle gave me a stomach ache :

MARK TWAIN_KEYS TO SUCCESS_GHOST OF A CHANCE Interlude

{"There are keys to success in writing.

I did not learn them early.

I did not learn them all at once.

They came to me like the passing of a kidney stone --

with time and with pain."}

For Roland's sake, I am going to pass on a few of those keys. Not in any particular order -- just as they occur to me, much like I wrote my autobiography.


THE KEYS :

#1) Write without pay until someone pays you.

In other words, write because you love it, not for thoughts of wealth. Only a very few authors ever are able to leave their day job.

Do this and you will relax and write with confidence. The reader will sense this, and your novel will be more interesting to your reader.

Write only about what interests you. The reader will be infected with your enthusiasm and keep turning the pages.

#2) Don't say the old lady screamed.

Drag her out into the scene and have her caterwaul herself. Telling the reader that a grandmother was stabbed does not near involve him as showing her stabbed.

#3) Never say in writing what you couldn't comfortably say in conversation.

Be natural in your writing. It will add the feel of reality to your novel. Put an acorn of truth in each of your characters.

The lonely weariness of a single father will grab the heart of the reader. In the next chapter when he robs the bank, the reader will be on his side.

#4) Periods are not ugly --

so do not put them so far away from the start of your sentence. Make your sentences and paragraphs short. Do not make your writing blunt instruments of prose.

Rather, write with the ear, not the eye. Make every sentence sound good.

And for that you need a well-trained sense of word-rhythm. Train your ear by reading your pages aloud as you finish them.

#5) The more you explain it, the more I do not understand it.

Be clear. Clear writing comes from clear thinking. Know logic. Know the subjects your characters do. Know the law if your hero is a lawyer.

Make sure each sentence could only mean what you wished to express.

And Lord Almighty, use short, direct words. Do not IMPLEMENT promises. KEEP them.

Remember that readers cannot know your mind. Do not forget to tell them exactly what they need to know to understand you. Speaking English to a Frenchman will not get you very far. I know. I tried.

#6) Write as if you were dying --

Indeed, write as if your readers were dying.

And in a way, both you and they are. You just do not know your exact shelf life.

They don't have time for all those long, dreary paragraphs about Aunt Edna's digestion. What tale could you spin to a dying person that would not enrage by its shallow triviality?

That thought will prune many needless ramblings on your part.

And please no adjectives to tell the reader how to feel. Instead of telling us the thing is "terrible," describe it so that we'll be terrified.

You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers "Please, will you do my job for me."

#7) Do not hoard.

Give each paragraph all the dynamite you possess. Do not save a "good bit" for later. If you do, the reader may become bored and wander off before your novel explodes.

Do not worry. More dynamite will occur to you -- if you give each scene all the wit and heart you have.

Those are seven keys to success in writing. There are more, of course.

But too many keys jangling inside your heads will make such a commotion that you won't be able to think straight, much less see where they apply to you and your novel.

Stroll by here tomorrow for the entry I made for Roland in the Weather blogfest (damnedest name I ever heard of.)

http://littlesliceofnothing.blogspot.com/2010/06/hey-look-its-one-of-them-things.html
****