I AM HEMINGWAY ... HIS GHOST THAT IS.

{"We are all losers,

defeated in the end by death.

But in the long run, defeat is as revealing

and fundamental as victory."- Ernest Hemingway.}


I am Hemingway. I am a ghost.

Who are you?


Can you answer in one sentence? If not, how then will you write a fictional character well?

What is the basic truth of life? Do you know? You need to in order to write a good novel.

The basic truth of life is to be found in the human soul:

the will to live, the will to persevere, to endure, to defy.

It is the frontier mentality -

the individual is on his own, like a Pilgrim walking into the unknown with neither shelter nor guidance, thrown upon his own resources, his strength and his judgment.

My truth shapes my style which is the style of understatement since my hero is a hero of action, which is the human condition.

And it is that human condition that your characters will take with them no matter where your pen leads them. A weakling will always draw the bullies no matter which town he runs to. He will have to face his flaws himself, refine his own nature, and then face the exterior dangers.

All my life I was obsessed with death. I was seriously wounded at midnight on July 18, 1918 at Fossalta, Italy. I nearly died.

I was the first American to be wounded in Italy during World War I.

I felt my soul go out of my body. In the blackness of midnight, I died and felt my soul go out of me, go off, and then come back.

Perhaps that near-death experience is why I am now a ghost. I do not know.

I do know that I became obsessed with death:

Deep sea fishing, bull-fighting, boxing, big-game hunting, war, -

all are means of ritualizing the death struggle in my mind -

it is very explicit in my books such as A Farewell to Arms and Death in the Afternoon, which were based on my own experiences.

And again, briefly, in In Our Time in the lines on the death of Maera.

It reappears, in another setting and form, in the image of immortality in my African story The Snows of Kilimanjaro,

where the dying Harry knows he is going to the peak called "Ngàje Ngài",

which means, as I explained in the introductory note, "the House of God."

Yet, it takes more than being haunted by your inner demons to write well.

It takes imagination.

Imagination is the one thing besides honesty that a good writer must have.

The more he learns from experience, the more truly he can imagine.

If he gets so he can truly imagine, people will think that the things he relates all really happened -- and that he is just reporting.

If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things.

What is the truth of the heroes in my novels?

They are so much their own agents that they do not hesitate to jeopardize life itself to be true to their own nature, their own code.


If you can't have a near-death experience, the next best training for being a good writer is an unhappy childhood.

And thanks to parents being all too flawed, most people have had that.

But forget your personal tragedy. We are all damned from the start so join the club.

It is a sad fact that you have to be especially hurt like hell before you can write seriously.

It's a law of nature. Human nature. And like most laws, you don't have to like it. You just have to live with it.

Dostoevsky was made by being sent to Siberia. Writers are forged in injustice as a sword is forged in the furnace.

Perhaps that is why I suffer like a bastard when I don't write. And why I feel empty and f____ out afterwards. And why I feel so good while writing.

Writing is something that you can never do as well as it can be done.

It is a perpetual challenge, and it is more difficult than anything else I have ever done -- which is why I do it. And it makes me happy when I do it well.

And after each novel, I feared I would never write as well again.

That is why I loved to cover war as a journalist. Every day and each night, there was a strong possibility that I would get killed and not have to write.

Writing is like a disease. I have to write to be happy whether I get paid for it or not. And that makes it worse.

That changes it from a disease to a vice.

And then I want to do it better than anybody has ever done it which makes it into an obsession. Even though I am dead, I still write. Look at me here in this blog.

How is it for you out there?
****

4 KEYS TO SUCCESS THAT WILL DEFEAT YOU! And beware the ZOMBIE CAT!

 

 

I am weary of reading advice that novice authors might haplessly gobble up, written by snake-oil salesmen like John Locke

(Of the LET ME BUY AS MANY FAKE REVIEWS AS I CAN and tell the world reviews are the secret to success in eBooks.)

Here are

4 KEYS TO SUCCESS THAT WILL DEFEAT YOU:

1.) TARGET YOUR GENRE BEFORE YOU START:

a.) If you force yourself to write what is hot at the moment, by the time you finish your novel your genre may well have cooled to an Ice Age.

b.) You might Google “Google Keyword Tool.”

This tool will show you how many Google Searches your idea or genre is getting monthly, before you write your book.  But that number will change come the completion of your book.

c.) Write what amuses you.  You will have fun.  It will show.  And the reader will have fun, too.

2.) TITLE YOUR BOOK WITH SEARCH ENGINES IN MIND:

a.) Sounds good, but do you know how many eBooks with ZOMBIE as part of the title there are out there?  You want to stand out as original not as a copy cat.

b.) Do you really want 50 SHADES OF LUST in your resume?  Perhaps in your memories ....

c.) Search Engines are good to keep in mind when you list your categories and key words in your book description on Amazon.

  (This is where the Google Keyword Tool should be used.)

d.) Remember THE KEY WORD that is hot today in titles may well be HO-HUM in only 6 months.

e.) MYSTERY, DANGER, HUMOR, ORIGINALITY

Those are the things that are eternal in good book titles.  Wouldn't you pick up books with titles like

RIGHT TURN ON DEAD or THE MORTICIAN'S BRIDE.

f.) SHORT AND SNAPPY are guidelines for you to follow on titles, too.

3.) OTHERS HAVE BECOME MILLIONAIRES, YOU CAN, TOO!  BUY MY HOW TO BOOK!

a.) Take that brown paper bag you brought home from the market and breathe into it slowly until you come back into touch with reality.

b.) Understand that anyone who has found the secret to making millions would be too busy making MORE millions to write an ebook telling you her secrets.

4.) YOU NEED A BLOG OR A WEB PAGE

a.) As an unpublished author, you need a blog/web page like a fish needs a bicycle.

b.) Having a internet presence is nice;

using your time to write three books before publishing the first one is Essential.

c.) Say lightning strikes, and readers love your book. What is the next sentence they speak after saying, "That was a great book"?

d.) "Man, I hope she/he has another book for me to buy!"

e.) In the year it takes you to write another book, their interest in you has faded. 

Have an inventory of books for readers to gobble up after discovering you.

f.) AFTER you've published your first book, then put up a web presence that is humorous, helpful, and down-to-earth.

Yes, it used to be conventional wisdom to build an audience for your book by blogging first.  But that wisdom has retreated into the convent of the past.

Now, when everyone is jumping up and down on Twitter, Facebook, and blogs, screaming: "Look at my book!"

You must look Beyond What Once Worked.

g.) Readers go to Amazon or Google looking for a book and type in the Search Box the kind of book they want to read.

THAT IS THE TIME YOU WANT TO DIRECT ATTENTION TO YOUR BOOK!

i.) The person is in the mood to BUY.

ii.) The person wants to read the genre you write.

iii.) If you put the correct KEYWORDS in your category and Key Word sections in the book description of your Kindle book,
 
iv.) AMAZON or GOOGLE ( not your blog) will direct the reader with money in her hands and the desire to read to your book page.

HOW COOL IS THAT?
***
Gypsy, my ghost cat, pointed out Brad Pitt faces the very worst enemy possible in WORLD WAR Z: a zombie cat!

***
For those interested in Google Keyword Search, here is a great tutorial.

You will have to adapt it to your use of selecting keywords for describing your book on Amazon.

TIL DEATH DO US START ... Friday's Romantic Challenge_June Wedding

http://laussieswritingblog.blogspot.com/

TIL DEATH DO US START

The mummy wrappings were alive, writhing around my body caressing me tighter and tighter.  I struggled in the moving golden throne, but it did no good. 

 

Closer and closer it flowed like mist towards the waiting arms of Princess Shert Nebti.  She was almost dressed in an ancient Egyptian outfit that she must have thrown into the washer on the Hot cycle.

Her moon-white face creased in fine lines from the mummy wrappings that had smothered her for centuries, she smiled a thing of nightmares as I flowed nearer those outstretched fingers.

The horizon around me was impossible.  I mean, I knew Carnies got around, but to the Nile?

I looked out across the cryptic yellow Nile that is the mother of aeons and dynasties.

Beyond it lurked the menacing sands of the Libyan Desert, ridged and iridescent and evil, murmuring ancient mysteries. The red sun sank low, bringing the relentless chill of Egyptian dusk.

And as it stood poised on the world’s rim like that ancient god of Heliopolis—Re-Harakhte, the Horizon-Sun— hey, I read in those libraries I hid in - I saw silhouetted against the velvet holocaust of night the black outlines of the Pyramids of Gizeh—those all-but-forgotten tombs that were heavy with a thousand years when Tut-Ankh-Amen mounted his golden throne in distant Thebes.

Then I knew that I was done with civilized sanity, and that I was about to taste the deeper mysteries of primal Egypt—the black Khem of Re and Amen, Isis and Osiris.

Sin-black mists swallowed me, and then their lips parted to reveal the Sphinx.   I struggled silently beneath the spell of those terrible unseeing eyes. On the vast stone breast I could faintly make out the emblem of Re-Harakhte, for whose image the Sphinx was mistaken in a late dynasty.

And though sand covered the tablet between the great paws, I recalled what Thutmosis IV inscribed on it, and the dream he had when a prince. It was then that the smile of the Sphinx unsettled the hell out of me, and made me wonder about the legends of subterranean passages beneath the monstrous creature, leading down, down, to depths none might dare hint at—

depths connected with mysteries older than the dynastic Egypt modern Man excavates, and having a sinister relation to the persistence of abnormal, animal-headed gods in the ancient Nilotic pantheon.

And with the thought of those depths, I found myself there – with Princess Shert Nebti not a foot away from me in the swirling dark mists.

An ocean of glistening wet scarabs surrounded her, scuttled up over her, and tittered back down.  I swallowed hard as I saw she was chewing a few who had scurried too close to those thin lips.

A dank breeze moaned around us in barely understandable words:

“The subterranean nymph that dwells
’Mid sunless gems and glories hid—
The lady of the Pyramid!”

I forced a smirk, “Lousy poetry, Princess.”

She smiled with very sharp teeth.  “Just wait until you see our wedding night, Victor -- and my true face.”

7 Absurd Kanye West Quotes That Will Actually Help Your Writing

 

 

1. "When I think of competition it's like I try to create against the past. I think about Michelangelo and Picasso, you know, the pyramids."

Follow me here, but Kanye is right. In our case, though, it's much smarter to compete against ourselves.

Can you top the work you've already done? That's the mark of a writer hungry to improve every day.

2. "My greatest pain in life is that I will never be able to see myself perform live."

Pretentious? You bet. But view this quote another way.

Have you ever listened to your prose read by you? Read by another?

(THIS LAST IS IMPORTANT since the other will not know what you MEANT TO WRITE or IN WHAT TONE UNLESS IT IS IN THE PROSE.)

Spend a few minutes doing both kinds of listening.  Your writing will improve.

3. "Before, when I wanted to rap, my raps sounded like a bit like Cam'ron. And it wasn't until I hung out with Dead Prez and understood how to make raps with a message sound cool that I was able to just write 'All Falls Down' in 15 minutes."

If you're willing to admit you have a lot to learn -- and then seek out people to teach you -- that's when the growth truly happens.

4. "I hate when I'm on a flight and I wake up with a water bottle next to me like 'Oh great, now I gotta be responsible for this water bottle.'"

No one is responsible for your prose but you.  Take care of the sentences, and the paragraphs will take care of themselves.

5. "If you don't make Christmas presents, meaning making something that's so emotionally connected to people, don't talk to me."

What's memorable today in fiction? Creative ideas that breathe originality, compelling, riveting stories and vivid detail. A lead character you root for against all the odds.

Everything else is DOA.

6. "Nothing in life is promised except death. Know your worth!"

Ultimately, the only person who is going to fight for you... is you. You must believe in your dream before anyone else will. 

The dreams that flourish in the desert are the ones watered with wise efforts and expanding skills.

7. "Someone will always be prettier. Someone will always be smarter. Someone will always be younger. But they will never be you."

What makes your prose special, different and valuable?

Focus all attention on that answer, and you won't have time to notice everyone else's fiction.

ARE COMIC STRIPS DYING?

George Herriman’s “Krazy Kat” comic strip debuted on this day in 1910.

Simple-minded, curious, mindlessly happy and perpetually innocent, the strip's title character drifts through life in Coconino County without a care.

Krazy's dialogue is a highly stylized argot ("A fowl konspirissy – is it pussible?")

phonetically evoking a mixture of English, French, Spanish, Yiddish and other dialects, often identified as George Herriman's own native New Orleans dialect, Yat

It’s never been easy to make a successful comic strip, but it’s even harder these days. Shrinking newspaper space, shrinking interest in newspapers — heck a decline in newspapers in general.

Have you lost any favorite comic strips lately?

The print industry is dying. Newspapers were the first to sink with magazines following close behind. Now books are dying as well.

One problem with the dying newspaper industry is that comic strips are disappearing as well.

In the old days, every newspaper had a comics page so every newspaper was a potential market for a new comic strip.

Even Berkeley Breathed, whose “Bloom County” strip was once read by 80 to 100 million people daily during its heyday in the 1980s, said that he got out of newspapers

because they were collapsing. “I’ve always been behind new tech, instead of dismissing it outright.”

The last strip of LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE left the orphan, still nine-years-old, stranded in Guatemala with all hope of recovery lost.

The comic's last words were, "And this is where we leave our Annie. For now — "

Not exactly a pick-me-up.
Words Crafter:
http://thewordscrafter.blogspot.com/

introduced me to SIMON'S CAT, the feline relative of Wiley E. Coyote.

Let's hope for a long future for SIMON'S CAT!

DO ZOMBIES FEED ON THE SOUL AS WELL?

 

Jeremy Hawkins, Michael Offutt, and other of my friends like zombie tales.

Many of them have inquired about the traumatic Detroit experiences alluded to in some of Victor Standish's off-handed remarks.

In honor of WORLD WAR Z,

I will spin a formerly unheard tale of Victor's crucible in Detroit.

When seven years old, Victor was abandoned in a zombie infested Detroit.  Thrust in the company of three other youngsters, he attempts to survive the Shamblers (as he calls the zombies.)

Uninfected adults are sometimes even more dangerous than the zombies as the quartet found out with a predatory Marine:

We ducked grunting hordes of Shamblers, heading to the Marine barbeque.  It was close a couple of times, but we survived.  It just wasn’t much fun.

We had to get off the street.  Staying out in the open was nuts, sure to get us killed.  With Leroy muttering up a storm, we headed into a block of small businesses.

We approached a bar with its wide front window shattered.  Leroy’s eyes brightened.  He smiled from ear to ear.

“I get to taste me some whisky.”

Becky frowned, “You pass out, and you’re on your own. We’ll leave your butt.”

He leered at her.  “My butt’s too pretty to leave.”

Glasses looked frightened at Becky.  I knew it wasn’t Leroy passing out that bothered them.  He was dangerous enough for them sober without being drunk.  I got sick inside.  He looked at me like a tiger would a lame lamb.  One day it would come down to a showdown between me and Leroy.  I had a pretty good idea who would win.  And I wasn’t standing in the winner’s shoes.

I nodded to the deserted bar.  “Go ahead.  Sneak inside and see if the whisky is worth getting gnawed on.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” glowered Leroy.

“Yeah, I would.  You jumping that Marine back there almost got us killed.”

He sneered, “Yeah, but you the hero.  You won the day for us.”

“We can’t Conan our way through this mess, Leroy.  We have to think our way out of Detroit.”

He laughed softly, “Out of the city?  How we gonna do that?”

“That fire station the Marine talked about.”

“Yeah,” snorted Leroy.  “What about it?”

“It may still have a gassed-up fire truck.”

He looked skeptical.  “And?”

“Your legs are longer than mine.”

He sneered at my crotch.  “My everything is longer than yours, punk.”

“That was needless,” I muttered.

Leroy growled, “What you say?”

“The keys for that fire truck will be in that station, and you can drive us out of Detroit – right over any Shamblers who get in our way.”

Becky and Glasses hugged each of my arms.  Glasses looked hopeful for the first time in days.  Becky whispered in my ear.

“You’re always thinking.”

Leroy glowered at me.  “Yeah, you Mr. Hero.”

“No, Leroy.  You’ll be the hero when you drive us out of this damn city.”

Leroy looked doubtful at me.  “I ain’t never drove no truck before.”

I had a feeling he had never driven anything before, but he was too proud to admit it.  “You’ll love it, Leroy.”

“Really, Mr. Hero?”

“Sure.  You turn on the key, stomp the gas pedal, steer, and forget about the brakes.  Roll over anything that gets in our way.”

He slowly smiled.  “Now, that do sound like fun.”

He frowned, “Yeah, but you heard Mr. Man.  The Army gonna blow us the hell away if we try to get out of this town.”

I sighed, “At least it will be fast not slowly torn to bloody pieces.”

Leroy grunted, “You got a point there.”

I said, “But we got to get off this street before we’re spotted.”

Glasses clutched my arm tighter and pointed three stores down.  “Oh, look, Victor!  A pet store.”

Leroy snorted, “What’s got you so worked up, girl?”

Glasses face grew long.  “Aunt Ethel bought me a pet hamster when I first came to live with her.”

“So?” snorted Leroy.

“So,” whispered Glasses, hiking her shoulder up as if afraid Leroy would hit her.  “Hamsters can go a long time without water.  Some hamsters and other animals might still be alive in there.”

Leroy growled, “So?”

Even though she was really smart, Glasses was the weakest inside of the bunch of us.  Maybe being smart opened up the world for you in scary ways others couldn’t see.  But I could tell she was at the breaking point.  She needed something to smile about again.  I squeezed her arm gently.

I winked at her.  “So we creep inside and free any of the animals who are still left alive.”

Behind Glasses, Becky silently mouthed the words, “Thank you, Victor.”

Leroy spat on the sidewalk.  “What good will that do?  They still be starving in a week anyhow.”

I said, “But they’ll have a fighting chance.”

He grimaced.  “It won’t make no difference.”

I smiled at Glasses.  “It will make a difference to them.”

As Glasses beamed, I walked quietly to the pet store.  I was all coiled inside.  At any moment, I expected a Shambler to lurch around the corner or from behind a deserted car.  Leroy scoffed at me as he walked in easy strides beside me.

“I be wrong about you.  You’re not Mr. Hero.  You Mr. Saint.”

I shook my head.  “The only saints are dead.”

His white smile flashed like a knife strike from the darkness.  “That be what I mean.”

Mother taught me that were three kinds of darkness: the dying of the light at the end of day; the dying of a life at the end of days; and the constant darkness in a mind hugging hate and bitterness for so long that it dyed the soul.  I saw all three kinds of darkness in Leroy’s glittering eyes. 

Becky and Glasses stepped to my left as Leroy eyed me warily from my right.  “So Mr. Saint you gonna break the front win ---- Holy Shit!”

I followed the direction of his eyes and jumped back both from the idea of shattering the window and the window itself.  My mouth suddenly was a desert and my tongue a stone.  Six wet-looking snakes slithered all up and down the front of their enclosure whose fourth side was the store’s window.

“Ah, well, the snakes are alive at least.”

“Whoop-dee-doo.  I hate snakes!”

Glasses and Becky nodded in agreement with Leroy.  I wasn’t planning on asking any snakes to the prom myself.  But that the snakes were still alive was a good sign.  I headed to the front door and reluctantly pulled the Marine’s knife from the small of my back.

Leroy pulled a twin of that knife from his worn boot.  “Mr. Marine had hisself two knifes, one in the top of each boot.”

“Whoop-dee-doo,” I forced a smile back at Leroy.  “You let a Shambler get close enough to use that knife, you’re as good as dead anyway.”

Leroy’s smile was colder than any Shambler’s.  “Wasn’t thinking about those meat puppets, Mr. Saint.”

Becky and Glasses exchanged worried glances.  I just shrugged.  If Leroy kept eyeing my back to plant that knife the more likely a Shambler would stumble upon him unawares.  Hate was a lot like a snake.  If you weren’t careful, it would flip around and bite you.

I forced the knife blade between the bolt and the door jam.  I pushed with all my might.  The blade snapped at the same time the door pushed inwards.  Leroy hooted with glee.

He started to lunge for me. “Now, I the only one with a knif --  Mother Fuc….”

He didn’t get the rest of the word out.  A furry ball of snarling incisors leapt for his throat.  A Shambler bunny.  Damn!

Leroy wildly tried to evade the rabid rabbit.  He knocked me through the front window.  The snakes hissed loudly and slithered the hell all over me.  I admit it.  I shrieked like a little girl.  But so did Leroy as a half-dozen Shambler Bunnies hopped in rapid jumps for him as he lay squirming on the street.

Glasses ran into the pet store, and I heard the shattering of more glass.  I scrambled out of the snake case and promptly fell beside Leroy.  A hissing rabbit went for my throat.  I managed to catch its throat.  It wiggled so furiously I knew I was going to lose hold of the thing at any second. 

A tidal wave of snakes suddenly swarmed wiggling over me and up my arms to sink their fangs into the screaming bunny.  I screamed right along with it.  Damn.  Damn!

Glasses wrenched on my arm, heaving me to my feet.  “Get up, Victor!  Get up!  Cold-blooded creatures must not get the disease, only warm-blooded.”

Leroy jumped to his feet, slapping at his shirt front.  “Shambler bunnies.  What the fu….”

The biggest snake I had ever seen slithered over his feet to swallow a Shambler rabbit in one enormous gulp.  For the first time ever, Leroy and I agreed on something.  We ran the hell away from there.

We all ran for hours it seemed until pins of fire stabbed at our arms, chests, and legs.  Not trusting to another building, we hid in the crook of three collided cars in the middle of a dark street.

Slowly, the hot needles stopped jabbing my arms and legs.  Leroy glared at Glasses wordlessly.  It was plain he blamed her for the shame of almost being eaten by a Shambler Bunny.  I snickered despite my weariness.  He told me I was number one with the wrong finger.  I winked at Glasses.

“Fast thinking,” I whispered to her as she blushed under the moonlight.

Becky murmured, “Souls.”

“Huh?” I intelligently said.

“Souls,” Becky said, her eyes haunted hollows.  “I think it had to do with souls.  Snakes don’t have them.  The little bunnies did.”

Leroy groaned and balled up to go to sleep.  “I gonna pretend I didn’t hear that.”

But I couldn’t get Becky’s words out of my head.  I still can’t.
 

BEWARE THE NIGHT

Malice (Maxine's dollie) wanted me to remind you:

On this day in 1816, the Shelleys, Lord Byron and entourage gathered at the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva

to tell the ghost stories that would trigger Frankenstein.

This most legendary of storm-tossed evenings was a literary lightning bolt.

When word circulated that the infamous Byron had taken up residence at the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva,

one enterprising hotelier installed a telescope in order that his guests might get a close-up of the

"League of Incest" --Byron, Shelley, Mary Shelley, Claire Clairmont (half-sister to Mary, pregnant with Byron's child), John Polidori (Byron's physician) -- in action.

One gossipy note sent back to England from a nearby villa testified to Byron cavorting with "another family of very suspicious appearance,"

though the communicant admitted, "How many he has at his disposal out of the whole set I know not. . . ."

Meow!
 

 

Blaise Pascal was born on this day in 1623.

Many of his arguments reflect a paradoxical view of life, and recommend a tempered, via media approach to living. The above, from Section II of the Pensées, leads on to this:

This is our true state; this is what makes us incapable of certain knowledge and of absolute ignorance. We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end.

Nothing stays for us. This is our natural condition and yet most contrary to our inclination.

A novel biography of Mary Shelley: