Of Childhood Memories, Cars Full of Twix Bars, and an E-Book Sale!

Sometimes, memories and dreams mix and intermingle to the point where it’s difficult to discern one from the other.  There are times when I have to pause, take stock, and think:  “Did I really do that years ago?  Or did I just dream it?”  And, perhaps even more disconcerting:  “Is there truly a distinction?”  Who’s to say our dreams aren’t “real”?  Who’s to say they don’t represent an existence as actual as the one we live when we’re up and around?  This, of course, is a question central to The Eye-Dancers as well as its sequel, The Singularity Wheel, and one I am sure I’ll return to in future writing endeavors.

 

But, for the purposes of this discussion, I can say–right now, I am thinking of something from my past that combines both memories and dreams.  My own memory, but someone else’s dream.  Confusing?  Let’s proceed!

Sean was a childhood friend of mine from the neighborhood I grew up in.  He lived a street over from me and up the hill.  His family moved away after he and I turned thirteen, and I never saw him much after that.  But for a few years, on the threshold of adolescence, he and I hung around together a lot–he’d stop by after school or for an entire day during the summer.  In winter, we’d watch TV, play video games or board games, or just talk about stuff.  In more pleasant weather, we’d play catch, take walks through the neighborhood, or go hiking in the woods and pretend to be explorers blazing the trails of a remote and hitherto unknown jungle.  We’d listen to the bird calls and rustlings in the woodland shrubbery and imagine we were hearing flesh-ripping velociraptors who might emerge at any moment from the shadows and attack.  We needed to be on guard.

 

Our flights of fancy weren’t restricted to our jaunts through the woods, however.  We would also share with each other the highlights of some of our wildest, most reality-busting dreams.  I certainly told him about the nightmare I had as a six-year-old, wherein I jumped into a pool that, in turn, metamorphosed into a sinister ocean populated by child-eating monsters.  And one day–one summer’s day in the middle of a hot July in the 1980s, he told me about a dream he’d had.

 

“So, you know, I had a dream about food,” he said.  We were sitting at the old red picnic table in the backyard.  Some of the paint had peeled off, revealing the weather-beaten grain of the wood underneath.

“Food?” I said.  Didn’t exactly sound riveting.

“Yeah.  Candy.”  Sean loved candy.  “And not just any candy.  But my favorite candy.”

That one was easy.  “Twix bars?”  I said.  Almost every time I saw him, he had a Twix bar or two in his pocket.

 

He smiled.  “A carful of ’em!”  I raised an eyebrow, and he went on.  “I dreamt that I had a wish,” he said, shifting on the firm bench attached to the table.  The clothes my mother hung on the clothesline swayed and danced in the humid summer breeze.  “I could get as much of anything I wanted for just one dollar, and it would all fill the inside of a car.”

“Who granted the wish?” I wanted to know.  “A magician?  A genie?  A warlock?”

 

He shrugged.  “I don’t even know.  It was like, I just knew I had the wish already granted, and I could just ask for anything.  So, I went inside this car, put a buck on the floor–you know, for the payment–sat in the back seat, and . . .”

“And . . . the car filled up with Twix bars?”

He smiled again, this time a prize-winner.  It was so broad, I thought his face might split in two.  “I was swimming in ’em!” he said.  “I was pinned down in the seat, Twix bars covering me all up, almost up to the roof.”

 

“Sounds kinda scary,” I said.  “I mean . . . could you move or get out if you wanted to?”

“Why would I?” he said.  “I was in heaven!  Besides.  I could just eat my way out.”

I let that sink in.  It was a curious visual.  “And all for a dollar,” I said.

“Best buck I ever spent,” he said.  “For real, or in a dream.”

I just nodded.  Who was I to argue?

 

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All this week, the Kindle version of The Singularity Wheel is on sale for just 99 cents–or, one cent less than my friend’s all-you-can-eat Twix dream from decades ago.  The base price of The Singularity Wheel e-book is $2.99, so this is a good-sized discount.  For anyone who may be thinking of downloading a copy onto their Kindle or Kindle App, now would be the ideal time!

Okay, so that was a pretty blatant sales pitch, I admit.  But I hope you’ll consider it and give The Singularity Wheel a look–even if it won’t be accompanied by a thousand magical candy bars.

 

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

The Method (Is There a Method??) Behind the Blog (And, a Free Promotion)

Time flies.

It’s a cliche, I know, but sometimes the tried-and-true aphorisms say it succinctly and well, and this particular one is spot-on.  Take The Eye-Dancers blog, for instance.  I began this blog, clueless as to how to proceed with it, back in the summer of 2012.  It’s hard to believe six years have come and gone.  But this brings to mind the completion of the “time flies” truism:  Time flies when you’re having fun.  And this blog has been a joy because of all of you.

 

Don’t get the wrong idea.  The way that last paragraph reads, it almost sounds like I’m about to announce the termination of The Eye-Dancers blog.  Not at all!  As long as you want to continue perusing these flights of fancy of mine, I will stick around.  The WordPress community is a special place, and I intend to remain a part of it for the long haul.

 

But I’m struck by how little I’ve changed in my approach to blogging over the years.  Granted, I am no longer new at this.  Six years and over two hundred posts, and, most important of all, your enduring support and encouragement, have helped me feel a lot more comfortable than I did at the start.  The fact remains, though–even now, after all this time, I don’t really have a blogging blueprint, a template, or a schedule.  As the time arrives for my next post, I kind of go with whatever feels right at the moment.  Sometimes this approach may work well.  After all, if I feel inspired to write about something, as opposed to scheduling a post weeks or months in advance, then, hopefully, the prose will be alive and imbued with the heat and purity of inspiration.  On the other hand, without a clear, precise sense of order, the blog may at times seem haphazard and too random.  (Not to mention, the risk of being repetitive.  If I post about something one week, and two or three posts later, I post about something similar because it “feels right,” I may not be tuned in enough to the overlap of the two posts.)

 

How about you?  How do you approach your blog posts?  Do you, as I do, lack a blueprint and forego a script, as it were?  Or do you plan ahead, map out a course of literary action, and, as Marc Kuslanski would surely advocate, prepare several posts ahead?  As with any form of writing, from poetry to short stories to novels and everything in between, fiction and nonfiction alike, there is no one “right” approach.  I am always leery of anyone who attempts to prescribe a set guideline of rules and rituals for writers to follow.  When it comes to creativity, we ought, in the words of Thoreau, to “step to the music which [we] hear, however measured or far away.”

 

And I know, for me, few things in the creative life (in life, period) can match the moment of euphoria when an idea strikes.  It could be anytime, too.  It cannot be scheduled or prepared for.  Creative epiphanies are as capricious as the New England weather.  You can meditate all day, turn an idea over, explore every angle, and come up with nothing, gutted, tempted to take your WIP and toss it in the fireplace for kindling.  Or, you can be taking a walk, showering, mowing the lawn, playing softball, preparing for your fantasy football draft, arguing with a friend, driving down the interstate, and–bam!  The idea hits, with the force and impact of a boulder.  When this happens to me, this unplanned-for gift, I try to hold onto the insight, repeating it over and over if need be, until I am in a position where I can jot the idea down on scrap paper.  (I am old school like that.  I prefer pencil and paper.  My desk is littered with scribbles on the next chapter, story, or blog post.)  And then, as soon as possible, while the idea is still hot and fresh, I let it out–and a post is published, a chapter is written, a short story is completed.

 

I suppose this approach, this reliance on a mysterious muse who flutters and floats, often tantalizingly  just beyond reach, a vision over the next rise, is something the intuitive Mitchell Brant would understand.  It’s organic, not pre-planned; spontaneous, not charted out with preordained precision.  And for someone like me, who has a tendency to over-prepare and obsess over the details, this freedom to allow the muse to guide me is both terrifying and rapturous.

 

In this spirit, I am also, extemporaneously, announcing a promotion for the e-book version of The Singularity Wheel.  If you might want to get a Kindle copy of the novel, now would be an ideal time.  Why?  Because it’s free!  Beginning today, through Friday, July 6, the electronic version of The Singularity Wheel is free.

 

Please feel “free” to take a look!  Here is the link.

And thank you again for the support all these years, for following along with the ramblings and the idiosyncrasies of this blog.  What will the next post be about?  I wish I knew!  But I hope you’ll be here to find out.

 

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

The Eternal in the Transitory (Or, The Power of a Moment)

I am a dreamer.  I always have been.  There’s no other way to say it.

Indeed, there have been times in my life when I’ve been accused of being distant, with a faraway look in my eyes exploring the unseen and ephemeral worlds and galaxies that stretch beyond the purview of the here and now.  As someone once told me, “Even when you’re here, you’re not always here.”

 

From the time I could walk and talk, question and imagine, my mind has been prone to wander.  When I was a child, I’d visualize batting cleanup for the New York Mets, in the bottom of the ninth, the World Series on the line.  I’d create an entire scenario, announcing the action from a phantom broadcast booth, crafting a plot full of twists and intrigue, complete with regular-season backstory and statistical analysis.  Or I’d invent new games with my friends, the same friends who provided the inspiration for the protagonists in The Eye-Dancers and The Singularity Wheel.  The games could be anything, and played anywhere, from the dark corners of the basement to the dining room table to the neighborhood street out front.

 

More than anything, though, I’d think of stories.  I wrote my first story in the second grade, and once I started, I was hooked.  Through the years, I have written dozens upon dozens of short stories, a couple of novels, hundreds of blog posts, and pretty much whatever strikes my fancy at any moment.  Writing to me is akin to breathing.  I wouldn’t survive without it.

 

The thing is, when I dust off the cobwebs of my earliest stories (the ones I still have, anyway), there are paragraphs, scenes, large chunks of pages that I can’t even remember writing.  Reading through these works from yesteryear provides a primary-source window into my preteen or teenage self, a glimpse into what I was thinking and how I was interpreting the world.  The stories, penciled on paper that has yellowed and faded with the passage of time, preserve a part of me that, absent the written testimony, might have been irretrievably lost.

 

But then, life itself is like that, isn’t it?  We get up in the morning, still half-asleep, and, on auto control, we stagger through the routines that keep us going and prepare us for the day ahead.  Sure, at some point, we wake up and can function at a higher level.  But even then, how much of what we do is mechanical, prescribed, almost as if we were a software program patterned in a particular way to perform a certain and specific set of duties?

 

What did you have for breakfast on April 6, 2006?  What time did you go to bed on October 25, 2015?  Who did you meet, hang out with, talk to, on March 2, 1997?  Did you watch TV on August 7, 2017?  If so, what did you watch?  What did you do in school on November 10 during your junior year?  These questions, and countless more, are all but unanswerable, the contents lost amid the swirling miasma of our collective memories.  When you consider it, you begin to realize that, unless you are eidetic,  perhaps as much as 99 percent of our life is forgotten, stored away in a file, deep within the crevices and folds of our brain, accessible, perhaps, but only in our dreams or a state of subconsciousness that liberates us from the shackles of our peripatetic and ever-racing world.

 

Perhaps that is as it should be.  Though I have always wished for a way to press a mental button, as it were, and access any tidbit of information, no matter how trivial, from my past (because, yeah, now that we’re asking, what did I have for breakfast on April 6, 2006?!), I realize that having so many conscious memories floating around simultaneously would be akin to circuit overload.  We’d have so much data, so many moving images competing for supremacy, we’d feel as though we were in a perpetual wrestling match with individual and specific recollections from our past.  While not nearly as overwhelming as the predicament in which Monica Tisdale finds herself in The Singularity Wheel, where she has accessed her memories and experiences from a billion billion universes, the effect might nonetheless feel similar.

 

From chapter fifteen of The Singularity Wheel:

“She felt like crying again.  The memories he spoke of were stacked, multi-faceted.  She had shared these things with her dad in a limitless number of worlds.  They mixed together, like particles in a celestial blender.  In gaining access to everywhere, all of her, in all places, she had lost her essence.  While she could now sip from every cup throughout all creation, she could not drink deeply from any single one.  Everything was a fragment, a fleeting glimpse, here and gone in a moment.”

 

And so, as a mental safety valve, as a firewall against oversaturation, our brain grasps onto the meaningful things, the memories that matter, the events that shape us and form us and leave their mark, like a calligraphy of the soul.  Sometimes, these events are ordinary on the surface, just little things, a subtle gesture, a kind word, a remark from a teacher we never forget.  Moments.  Fleeting, but essential, so essential, in fact, that our mind, our heart, our core, recognizes them for what they are and sticks a flag in them, a reference point that can always be accessed down through the years.  “Remember this?” the flag will say.  “Remember how you felt when that happened?”

 

Not all the markers are positive, of course.  Sometimes, we wish we could forget, but we hold on.  But many of them are positive, and they beckon to us like stands of nourishment and refreshment scattered along the winding, broken, uneven road of life.  And while I will always find it frustrating that I forget so much, that so many moments are erased into the fog of oblivion, I have learned to appreciate the things I do remember.  Moments with my mother that will endure for the rest of my life, despite her passing this winter.  Moments with family and friends, childhood memories that persist, to this day as fresh and vibrant as when they occurred.

 

I’ve written about some of those memories in this blog.  I will write about others in future posts.  Still others have been “fictionalized” in The Eye-Dancers and The Singularity Wheel.  I suppose I’ll keep writing about them for as long as I’m here.

Because any moment, no matter how brief or “small,” and no matter how long ago it may have happened, can be eternal.

 

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

A Retro Promotion–with a Twist (Or, The Three-Foot Man Who Came to Bat)

Bill Veeck was a showman.  He always had been.  But this time, he was determined to cook up a scheme that would top them all.

 

In the dog days of the late summer of 1951, Veeck’s team, the St. Louis Browns, were mired in yet another forgettable season.  The Browns–who later moved to Baltimore and rechristened themselves the Orioles–were a perennial basement dweller, and the fans in St. Louis took note.  Attendance was spotty year after year.  St. Louis belonged to the crosstown rival Cardinals.  The Browns were an afterthought.

To combat this, Veeck, the Browns owner, came up with an idea.  What if he rostered a man under four feet tall and sent him up to bat?  On the afternoon of August 19, 1951, in the second game of a doubleheader between the Browns and the Detroit Tigers, the sad-sack team from St. Louis did just that.

 

Enter Eddie Gaedel.  Gaedel, twenty-six at the time, stood three feet seven inches tall and weighed in at sixty-five pounds.  But prior to Gaedel’s bizarre plate appearance, both Veeck and Gaedel kept things under wraps.  Between games of the doubleheader at Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis, Gaedel burst through a papier-mache cake.  “Is that all?” the fans wondered.  Veeck had promoted the event as something people would never forget, a “festival of surprises.”  Having a miniature-sized young man emerge from a fake cake between games was not exactly riveting material.

 

But Veeck had the last laugh, and the “festival” was most assuredly on.

In the bottom of the first inning of the second game of the doubleheader, the Browns pinch-hit for their leadoff batter, Frank Saucier.  And the man who they sent up to hit for him?  None other than Eddie Gaedel.

 

The home-plate umpire protested.  What was this?  But Browns manager Zack Taylor provided a copy of Gaedel’s contract–Veeck had been prepared for just such a challenge from the umpire, and had the foresight to arm his manager with the contract, just in case.

Satisfied that the circus materializing before him was in fact on the up-and-up, the umpire allowed the action to proceed.

The Tigers pitcher that day, Bob Cain, laughed at Gaedel from the mound.  But he pitched to him.  Gaedel, wearing the number 1/8 on his uniform, was under strict orders not to swing the bat–just take the pitches thrown his way.  Though tempted to take a cut at the ball, Gaedel followed the plan, and, with such a tiny strike zone, he was awarded a walk on four pitches–all high.

 

On his way to first base, Gaedel twice paused to bow to the crowd, who cheered him on wildly.  He was summarily replaced with a pinch runner, and, on his way back to the dugout, Gaedel received a standing ovation.

 

The Browns, as was their custom, would go on to lose the game, 6-2.  And the very next day, American League president Will Harridge voided Gaedel’s contract, claiming it made a mockery of the game.  Gaedel never appeared in another Major League contest.  But for one day, for one at bat, Eddie Gaedel stood tall and forever forged his place in baseball lore.

 

********************************************

I don’t pretend to have come up with a promotion that compares with old Eddie Gaedel’s single plate appearance sixty-seven summers ago, but I am reenacting a promotion I’ve used a few times before–with a twist.

In years past, I would sometimes run an Amazon gift card promo for The Eye-Dancers.  I now propose to do the same thing for the sequel, The Singularity Wheel.  (But The Eye-Dancers still factors in, if applicable!  Stay tuned.)

 

And so, for anyone who is thinking of purchasing The Singularity Wheel, the next month offers an intriguing opportunity.  Beginning today, April 4, and ending Sunday, May 6, anyone who purchases The Singularity Wheel will be eligible to win an Amazon gift card.  Here is how it works . . .

 

Between April 4 and May 6, if you buy The Singularity Wheel (either as an e-book or a paperback, your choice!), please notify me–either with a comment on this website, or via email at michaelf424@gmail.com.  I will write down the name of  each person who buys the book during this time frame on a small slip of paper, fold the paper, and, in old-school fashion, place the paper in a jar.  Then, on May 7, the day after the promotion ends, I will randomly select one of the names from the jar.  The selected person will be awarded the Amazon gift card.

The amount of the gift card will be based on the number of purchases of The Singularity Wheel during the promotional time period.  For each purchase, $1.50 will be earmarked toward the gift card.  So, for example, if there are thirty purchases during the promotion, the gift card would be $45 (30 purchases x $1.50 per purchase).  The gift card amount, in other words, will be determined by you!  The more purchases, the higher the amount on the gift card.

 

I’ll draw the winner’s name on Monday, May 7, and will email the good news to the winner, and immediately award them the gift card.

Where does the first book, The Eye-Dancers, come in to play?  Well, for everyone who has already purchased The Eye-Dancers (and thank you to all!), it doesn’t.  But if you have not purchased The Eye-Dancers, it makes sense for you to read that first since The Singularity Wheel is a sequel.  With that in mind, if you do not already have a copy of The Eye-Dancers on hand and you take part in this promotion, as soon as you inform me that you’ve purchased a copy of The Singularity Wheel, I will promptly email you a file of The Eye-Dancers for free.  And the file can be in whatever format you prefer (PDF, epub, or mobi).

 

I hope you will take part in this promo!  While, admittedly, it’s not in the same league as Bill Veeck’s 1951 “festival of surprises,” it does offer an opportunity to win a (hopefully) substantial gift card!  And again, as a reminder, if you do buy The Singularity Wheel during the designated promotional period, please make sure to contact me so I can enter your name into the gift-card contest.

 

To buy a Kindle copy of The Singularity Wheel, please click here.

To buy a paperback copy, please click here.

And, unlike Eddie Gaedel nearly three-quarters of a century ago, there’s no need to leave the bat on your shoulders.  Feel free to swing for the fences.

 

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

“The Singularity Wheel” Is Now Available as an E-book! (Or, “This Is Next Year!”)

When the 1955 baseball season opened, fans of the Brooklyn Dodgers wanted to believe–but couldn’t quite get there.  It’s not that the Dodgers weren’t talented.  Every year, they fielded a winning team, a championship-caliber team replete with All-Stars such as Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Pee Wee Reese, Roy Campanella, and Gil Hodges.  The thing was, the Dodgers were the ultimate tease.  Since 1941, Brooklyn’s beloved baseball team had made the World Series five times, and each time they lost to the cross-town rival New York Yankees.

 

 

Heading in to 1955, nothing seemed to be different.  The Dodgers were still great, but so were the Yankees.  What was worse, the Dodgers were getting older.  The window was closing.  Players like Robinson and Campanella were on the back end of their careers.  They couldn’t last forever.  No doubt, the Flatbush Faithful must have questioned that spring if their Dodgers would ever win the Series and dethrone the Yankees.

 

Heartbreak was a by-product of rooting for the Dodgers.  At the end of every season, when their team came up just short, the fans would proclaim, “Wait till next year!”  It was a rallying cry that had endured for decades.  To be a Dodgers fan in the mid-twentieth century, you had to be patient, willing to stick with your team despite coming so close season after season.

 

And so even after the Dodgers powered their way to the National League pennant that summer of ’55, winning by a comfortable thirteen-and-a-half games, their fans remained skeptical.  Sure, they were going back to the World Series.  So what?  That was old news.  And so was their opponent–the Yankees.  Another Dodgers-Yankees Subway Series was in the offing.

 

The Series did not start well for Brooklyn.  They lost the first two games in Yankee Stadium.  “Here we go again,” the Dodger faithful must have thought.  “Wait till next year.”  But then a funny thing happened.  As the Series shifted to Ebbets Field, the Dodgers took all three home games, forcing the action back to Yankee Stadium.

 

The Yankees won Game 6, but in Game 7, the Dodgers shut out their arch-rivals, 2-0.  Finally–after decades of coming up short, the Brooklyn Dodgers had won the World Series.  This was, at along last, “next year.”

 

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And now, after four-plus years of writing, editing, and revising, The Singularity Wheel is available on Amazon.  By no means am I equating the sequel to The Eye-Dancers with the legendary Brooklyn Dodgers!  And four years is but a fraction of the decades-long dry spell the Dodgers experienced–but it is good, and rewarding–after so many delays along the way–to release the book.

 

The Singularity Wheel is currently available only as e-book.  You can find it here . . .

The paperback version will be released in February.

Honestly, it’s an odd feeling to be done with the book.  It’s been a part of me for so long.  For the past half-decade, not a day has gone by where I haven’t stressed over some character’s motivation or some sticking point in the plot.  But there is also relief, and a deep gratitude to all of you, who have encouraged me and supported me along the way.  I can’t thank you enough.  And I look forward to blogging with you throughout 2018 and beyond.

 

For right now, this is, indeed, “next year” for The Singularity Wheel.

 

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

The Value of Ten “Bucks” (Or, The Belated Announcement of a Book Release)

When I was nine years old, back on a summer day in the now all-too-vintage 1980s, I made a bet with my older brother John.

We were in the swimming pool, in our neighbors’ backyard across the street.  Lucky for us, growing up, our neighbors had an open-door (or, perhaps in this case I should say, open-water) policy with their pool.  I used to swim in their pool almost every day that summer.  But this day, something different happened.

 

“I’ll bet you ten bucks you can’t swim six laps underwater without coming up for air,” my brother crowed.  He was nine years my senior, and had just graduated from high school.  He was riding high that summer.

 

“You’re on,” I said.  I doubted I could do it.  The most number of laps I had ever swum underwater was four–six would push my lungs to the breaking point.  But ten dollars was a lot of money to a nine-year-old, especially back then.  I was all-in.

 

“This’ll be fun to watch,” John said, and waded over to the side of the pool.

“Ten bucks?” I called over to him, just to be sure.

“There’s no way you can do six laps, Mike,” he said.  “But yeah, if you shock me, the offer stands.  Ten bucks.”

That was good enough for me.  I didn’t hesitate.  I dove under and completed the first lap.

The next couple of laps were easy–I was feeling strong and still had plenty of air in reserve.  But by the time I completed the fourth lap–my old limit–I was starting to suffer.  My lungs were growing hotter, my arms and legs were getting tired.  But I pushed on, kicking harder.

 

I completed the fifth lap.  One more to go.  I nearly gave up then and there.  My chest was on fire.  I worried I might black out.  It was agony to attempt that final lap.

But I did, and when I tapped the opposite side of the pool to finish the sixth lap, I rose to the surface, gasping for air.  Oxygen had never tasted so sweet.

 

“Wow,” I heard my brother say.  I was vaguely aware of him approaching me, swimming toward me from the other side.  “I can’t believe you did it.”

I wasn’t able to respond for several seconds.  I continued to take deep breaths, savoring the air.  Finally, when my lungs had sufficiently recovered, I said, “What about those ten bucks?”  As I had propelled myself through the water on that final lap, it was the promise of the ten dollars that made it seem worthwhile.  That and seeing my brother admit defeat.

 

“Oh, sure,” John said.  “That was the deal, right?  Ten bucks.” And he proceeded to punch me, lightly, on my arm–ten times.  “There you go,” he said.  “There’s your ten bucks!”

With that, he got out of the pool, dried himself off with a towel, and bent over laughing.

 

I never did see that ten dollars.

****************

Looking back, benefited by the cooling perspective of time, I remember the incident fondly.  It’s a memory of childhood I’ll always carry with me–and to this day, I remind my brother of his antics on that long-ago afternoon.  All in good fun, of course.

But as the editing process for The Singularity Wheel–the sequel to The Eye-Dancers–has dragged on through various and sundry delays these past few months, I have thought often of that phantom ten dollars.   I’ve pushed the release date of The Singularity Wheel back half a dozen times, to the point where it almost began to seem like it would never be released, that it was a ghost-book, a figment, as immaterial as pollen on the wind or the light, feathery strands of gossamer in the dark heart of a primeval forest.  How many times would I say the release was imminent, only to see it pushed back?  Was my word no better than my brother’s that day, decades ago, in the neighbors’ pool?

 

Now, however, I can at last report that the manuscript is finished, the edits done.  After a seemingly endless catalogue of revisions, of much gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair and debates with characters, the story is truly over and done.  Even now, I have a hard time admitting that.  After all, no story is without flaw.  Even Anna Karenina and The Grapes of Wrath have warts.  Nothing created, nothing put to the page is without blemish.  There is always something, some word, some turn of phrase, some snippet of dialogue that can be made better.  Saying, “I’m done,” is one of the most difficult aspects of the creative process.  But here, today, I can finally say it.

 

The Singularity Wheel is far from perfect.  No doubt it is chock-full of issues and shortcomings.  But it’s the best I can do.  After four and a half years of working on it, there are no stones left to be turned, no closets remaining to open.  For better or worse, this represents my full and utmost effort.

 

So it is with great relief that I say, The Singularity Wheel will be released, on Amazon, within the next fortnight.  The files are being readied for publication, the last steps in the process are being completed.  My birthday is January 26.  The goal is to release the book prior to that date.

 

And this time, once and for all, that represents ten bucks you can most assuredly take to the bank.

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

Putting the Face to the Name, or the Cover to the Book

When I first got out of college, I found a part-time job as a legislative aide for the City of Rochester, New York.  It wasn’t exactly the field of my choice, but it did involve some writing, and it served as worthwhile experience.  I was thankful to have the job.

 

I didn’t stay there long–only seven months.  But while my tenure as a legislative aide was brief, it was not without a healthy helping of intrigue, office politics, and political pugilism, as I served as the buffer (i.e., punching bag!) between the councilwoman (who was rarely in her office) and her constituents.  Indeed, one of my job responsibilities was to man the councilwoman’s phone, talking one-on-one with the residents of her district.  Some of the calls were low-key; but many were heated, with angry residents giving me an earful about perceived slights and local policies they disagreed with.  Each new day was an adventure.

 

There was one person who stood out from the pack, though.  His name was Terry, and he called several times per week, sometimes several times per day.  He had a laundry list of complaints, and he wasn’t shy about expressing them to me, usually with a raised voice.  One issue in particular that irked him was a pothole on his street.  “It’s huge!” he’d yell at me.  “You gotta fix it!  It’s gonna wreck my struts.  I ain’t rich, you know.  Tell ‘er that!”  (He always referred to the councilwoman as “she” or “her,” or some variant thereof–never by name.)

 

I listened to him as long as I could, letting Terry vent his frustrations.  Sometimes, though, he would start attacking me, personally.  “Do something about it!” he’d say.  “Don’t just sit there in that cushy office of yours.  Lift a finger for the people in your district for a change!”  I reminded him that I wasn’t on the city council.  I was only an office worker.  I couldn’t make or change policy, couldn’t direct the road crews to alter their service schedules.

 

One day, it was too much.  Terry berated me with four-letter words and insults directed at family members of mine he didn’t know and had never met.  “Sorry,” I told him.  “This isn’t going anywhere.”  I wanted to say so much more, but had no choice but to bite my tongue.  One thing I could do, however, was hang up the phone–which I did.

 

He called back immediately, yelled at me some more.  I hung up again.  He called back.  Yelled.  I hung up.  Finally, the phone stopped ringing. I tossed a crumpled piece of paper into the wastebasket, counted to ten.  Terry had a way of pushing my buttons.

 

I had long since created a mental picture of him.  I’d never seen Terry, but, based on his voice and his very direct and colorful vocabulary, I imagined him to be stocky, burly, with short, sandy hair, a thick, retro’80s-style mustache, and a perpetual scowl on his face.  If I wanted to, I would have been able to sketch a picture of him–he was that clearly defined in my mind’s eye.

 

Consider my surprise, then, when, later that same day, a tall, rail-thin bald guy showed up at the councilwoman’s office.  Of course, the councilwoman wasn’t there.  I was.

“Can I help you?” I said.

And the guy introduced himself as Terry.  I did a double-take.  He couldn’t have looked more unlike the Terry I had imagined.  Stocky?  The man standing before me now was easily six foot four if he was an inch.  Burly?  He had the girth and width of a rail spike.  Sandy hair?  Try no hair.  Mustache?  His face was clean-shaven, not a whisker in sight.  And a scowl?  He was actually smiling!

 

He extended a hand.  Discombobulated, I took it.

“I just wanted to apologize,” he said, looking at his shoes.  “Was in the area just now, and wanted to stop.  I know I got a little carried away on the phone today.  I know you can’t do nothin’ about nothin’.  It’s not your job.  So I just . . .”

I shrugged.  It was hard to find the words.  Finally, I told him not to worry about it.

“I ain’t sayin’ I won’t call again,” he said.  “You’ll hear from me until she does something.”

He smiled again, and this time I returned it.  “It’s good to put a face to the name of my highest-volume caller,” I said.  And it was.

 

Terry called the next day, complaining about the pothole.

***********************************

Books can share certain characteristics with constituents.  They don’t scream at you, the way Terry sometimes laid into me, but they might make you want to scream.  They have value, share opinions and knowledge, and express a point of view.  What’s more, they are incomplete without a face, or a cover.

The Singularity Wheel–the sequel to The Eye-Dancers–is nearing its release date.  It’s still on target for publication at the very end of the year or within the first few days of 2018.  And now, as the day of publication approaches, the cover is complete.

My longtime friend Matt Gaston, who also created the cover for The Eye-Dancers, has worked his magic again on the cover for The Singularity Wheel.  And here it is.

 

Thanks, Matt, for all your help–with both novels.

I think even Terry would approve.

And thanks so much to everyone for reading!

–Mike

“You Can’t Get There from Here” (But You Can . . . with Some Delay)

It was one of those lazy, hazy midsummer days in the Northeast, when the humidity hangs thick and wet over the land.  I was driving through the back roads of central Vermont, looking for a particular house–an address tucked away on a dirt lane far from the beaten path.  These were the years before I had settled in this area and called it home.  I didn’t know my way around.

 

Sure enough, as I came to an unmarked intersection, I took a wrong turn.  I didn’t know it at first.  It took a couple of minutes.  But when I drove several more miles and didn’t have a clue where I was, I decided to stop in the gravel parking lot of a country store.  It was the only place I saw, aside from isolated farmhouses and old, weathered barns, that might offer the hope of someone providing directions to steer me back along the right route.

 

I parked in front of the store, a clapboarded single-story structure with white peeling paint and two ancient gas pumps out back.  They looked like something out of the 1950s.  I had no idea if they were operational, and had no intention of finding out.

 

The door was open, without a screen, and I walked in.  The interior was small and cramped, complete with wooden shelves, a pot-bellied stove in the corner, and thick bark-covered beams overhead.  Beside the unlit stove, four men sat at a round table.  Each eyed me suspiciously.

 

I approached the table.  The men, three of whom were seniors, and the fourth perhaps in his thirties, continued to eye me.  There were poker chips gathered in the middle of the table, and the men were holding playing cards in their hands.  Already uncomfortable at the intrusion, now I felt worse.  I was interrupting their game.

 

“Excuse me,” I said.  My voice sounded too loud in the close, warm space.  “Sorry to bother you, but I was wondering if you might be able to help me find an address.  I thought I had everything mapped out, but I guess I was wrong.”

The men just sat there, motionless, looking me over as if I were a specimen to be driven over to the town taxidermist.  One of them cleared his throat.  A second placed his cards, facedown, onto the table.  The other two just stared.

 

I gave it a few seconds, and when no one said a word, I took a step back and turned toward the door.  I guessed I’d go knock on a farmhouse door and hope for a more cordial response.

 

That was when someone finally spoke up.

“Where ya headin’?” the younger guy said.

I turned back around, told them the address.  This brought on another round of silence.

Then, the oldest-looking guy seated at the table, a gaunt fellow with wire-rimmed glasses, said, “Thing is–if you was a bird, it’d be easy to get where you’re wantin’ to go.  But if you have to take the roads–it’s a field.  Fact is, you can’t get there from here.”

 

One of the other men smirked.  Another one coughed.

I wasn’t sure what to say.  I realized I was the amusement for the day.  There was no reason to hang around.  I’d just have to go back the way I had come and re-map the journey.

 

But then the younger guy held up his hand, and proceeded to give me the directions I needed.  He used short, staccato phrases, offering only the barest of minimums.  But I thought I had it when he was through.

I thanked him for his help.

“Would be easier if you was a bird,” the older man said again.

When I walked back through the doorway, I was sure I could hear them laughing.

As I got behind the wheel of my car and pulled away, I wondered if they had given me the wrong directions–just to further the joke.  But they hadn’t.  Twenty minutes later, I found the place I was looking for.  The directions were accurate.

 

“Though roundabout,” I was told later by someone in the know.  “He led you out of your way.”

But at least I’d made it–delay or no delay.

************************************

And that also accurately sums up the writing and editing process I have undertaken on The Singularity Wheel–the sequel to The Eye-Dancers.  It was a surprise project from the get-go.  I hadn’t even envisioned there would be a sequel–but then, out of the ether, an idea struck that wouldn’t let up and wouldn’t let go, and I had to write it.

 

When I began the book, over four years ago (!), I had no way of knowing how winding, circuitous, and bumpy the road would be.  I first announced the sequel’s existence in a blog post in the spring of 2014.  “It’ll take another year to write, no sweat,” I thought at the time.  But then 2014 bled into 2015, which morphed into 2016–and still, the book wasn’t finished!  There were character crises, plot points that needed wholesale makeovers, and twists and turns in the story line that needed alterations.  It was, and has been, the most challenging writing project I have ever undertaken.

 

Even so, as 2017 dawned, I was almost finished!  And in April, the first draft was finally complete.  I was at last able to key in the words, “The End.”  I even posted about it at the time.  So okay–I would release The Singularity Wheel at the end of summer!  Piece of cake!

 

During the editing process, however, I found that more changes still needed to be made than I’d realized.  Time slipped past, summer came and went.  Then again, The Eye-Dancers was originally published in November 2012.  I liked the symmetry.  Why not release The Singularity Wheel in November 2017?  It would be perfect.  Five years of real time had passed–and, in the story itself, five years of fictional time had also passed from the conclusion of the first book to the start of the second.  Everything was coming full circle.

 

But now–here we are, in November, and just like my journey through the back roads of Vermont that summer day years ago, I have discovered that “as the bird flies” isn’t always the way a story will proceed.  I am right now in the final edit/proofreading/copy editing stage.  The endgame.  But even here, I have found a few last wrinkles that need to be ironed out, a few tweaks that need to be inserted, a last assortment of fixes that need to be made.  Grudgingly, I have come to realize that the November release is too ambitious.  The project has been “a field” as the old-timer at the country store said to me once.  A field, indeed.

 

That said, the eleventh-hour adjustments are minor in nature.  Ninety-nine percent of the work has been put in.  It’s just a matter of trying to finish strong and present the best possible product I can upon publication.  As much as I wanted to meet my own self-imposed November deadline, I didn’t want to rush it now, at the end, after such a long journey getting here.

The delay will be one month.  And this time, there won’t be any further postponements!  The Singularity Wheel will be released prior to January 1, 2018.  I don’t have a single, specific date in mind–but it will be in December.  This time, I promise.

 

In this season of Thanksgiving, I want to thank all of you who have read and still read this blog and who have supported The Eye-Dancers these past five years.

 

Writing a sequel has been a long, long process, often beset with speed bumps and deep, tire-puncturing potholes, but, to paraphrase my old country-store friend, I have, at long last, “gotten here from there.”

 

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

Haunted Houses, Coming Full Circle, and the Echoes of Ghost Wolves

Up the road from where I live, there is an old, abandoned house.  It sits back from the road, with overgrown shrubs obscuring the windows, a sagging front porch, a rusty metal roof, and an unlocked bulkhead that leads to what surely is an unfinished basement with a dirt floor and perhaps a tight crawlspace.  I know the bulkhead is unlocked because I tried it once.  It squeaked open without resistance, revealing a descent into darkness.  It was a descent I did not take.

 

The house, you see, is haunted.

Or, at least, some of the locals say it is.  And I don’t doubt them. It’s flanked by mature woodlands that encroach closer and closer with each passing year.  There are no nearby neighbors.  Rarely have I heard the birds sing when I visit the property, as if even they, on an instinctual level, detect a sense of malice and ill will about the place.  Yet, for all that, I feel drawn to the house.  I never go more than a month or two without stopping and looking and wondering.

 

And remembering . . .

********************************

“Hey, let’s go inside!”

My friend Matt uttered these words, but I doubted he wanted to act out on them.  He and I had taken a stroll through the neighborhood.  We didn’t really have a destination or a plan–we were eleven years old.  Who needed plans?  But as if guided by an invisible magnet that zeroed in on preteen boys, we found ourselves in front of the Ivy House.

 

The Ivy House was so named because rows of leafy, green ivy climbed up its clapboard siding like a pack of pythons seeking an unseen but sought-after prey.  It sat at the end of the street, with several tall maples providing shade and making the yard perpetually dark and cool.  It was also empty.  It had been unoccupied as long as I had been alive, and years before, to boot.

 

More riveting still, it was rumored to be cursed.  Stories varied depending on who you talked to.  My brother had told me a murder had occurred at the Ivy House in the 1920s, and the victim’s ghost wandered the rooms and halls, seeking vengeance on anyone she came across.  Matt’s brother had told him an old man once lived there, friendless and ornery.  He ate raw squirrels and racoon hearts, and fed the leftovers to a pet wolf.  This seemed far-fetched, even to my eleven-year-old, imagination-always-on-overdrive brain.  But Matt vouched for its veracity.  “It’s the truth,” he said, solemn as a tax return.  “A wolf.  People used to hear it howl at night.”

 

I nodded.  I still wasn’t sure I believed him.  But I wanted to.

As we stood there, the wind picked up, and I pulled my jacket in tighter.  It was early November, barely above freezing, winter’s approach unmistakable in the air.  Dried, fallen leaves swirled along the street, crackling.

 

“So, you really want to go inside?” I said then.  A woman walking her dog strolled past, giving us a sideways glance, surely wondering what we were doing loitering in front of the Ivy House.

 

Matt hesitated.  Shrugged.

“Chicken,” I said.  The house brooded in front of us, hidden behind the ivy.

“You’re the chicken,” he shot back.  I bet you wouldn’t go in there.”

He had a point.  I couldn’t really refute his logic.  But if we both went, together . . .

We didn’t.  We never did.

The Ivy House was torn down a decade later.  A new, cookie-cutter ranch home now sits in its place, the maple trees in the front yard gone, the ivy a memory, a ghost from childhood, an echo whispering across the years.

 

**************************

It’s late October 2017.  On my way to work, early, the sun still a rumor, the sky dark and speckled with stars, I pull over in front of the abandoned house and get out of the car.  I am ahead of schedule on this day.  I have the time.

 

I walk through the front yard, up to the door.  Haunted, is it?  And I remember the Ivy House, the way it seemed animate to me in my boyhood, a living, sentient thing with a heartbeat and a soul.  This house is no different.  Perhaps all houses are alive.  Especially the old ones.

 

As I stand there, a hoot owl calls out, and I hear a rustling in the woods off to the right.  A fisher cat on the prowl?  A rodent rummaging for food?  Pennywise the Dancing Clown, come to Vermont from Derry, Maine?  But nothing emerges, and everything goes silent once again.

 

And I ponder–about life, about time, about the way things often come full circle.  Take Mitchell Brant, for instance.  Nine years ago, I began writing The Eye-Dancers, and the book began with Mitchell.  Now, on the verge of finishing the final edits, of dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s for The Singularity Wheel, the sequel to The Eye-Dancers, I am ending where I began–with Mitchell Brant.  The story ends with him.  He was there at the start.  He is there at the end.  He’s been with me, in spirit, on the written page, vying for my attention and understanding, for nearly a decade.

 

I tip an invisible cap to Mitchell.  To childhood.  To legends and ghosts.  To haunted houses.  To the unlimited vistas of the imagination.  To explorations of the mind and the universe.

 

To the creative life.

And somewhere, in the distance, despite the geographical impossibility of it, I am sure I can hear the howling of a wolf.

 

Thanks so much for reading!

Mike

An Enduring World Series Blooper (Or, The Ability to Move On)

In October 1912, six months after the sinking of the RMS Titanic and two years before the start of the First World War, the Boston Red Sox and the old New York Giants squared off in what would prove to be an exciting, competitive, and nail-biting World Series.  The series would go to a deciding seventh game (technically, an eighth game, as a game earlier in the series had been called off on account of darkness) as the two best teams in baseball went toe-to-toe.

 

The deciding game took place on Wednesday, October 16, in Boston’s Fenway Park, which had just opened for business that spring.  Trees were starting to turn, the air had a tang to it, and, one way or another, the 1912 baseball season was about to reach its conclusion.

 

The Spalding’s Official Baseball Guide that hit the newsstands the following spring wrote of the 1912 Series: “No individual, whether player, manager, owner, critic, or spectator, who went through the world’s series of 1912 ever will forget it.  There never was another like it.  Years may elapse before there shall be a similar series.”

 

For one player, though, the memories of that deciding final game would be far from pleasant.

Fred Snodgrass was a 24-year-old center fielder for the Giants, just three days shy of his 25th birthday.  He was a solid player–not a superstar by any stretch, but a consistent, steady contributor.  He had played in 146 games that year, batted a respectable .269, and stole 43 bases.  “Snow,” as he was called, would have been as likely as anyone in the Giants lineup to play the hero.

 

He did just the opposite.

The big game went to extra innings, the tension swirling around Fenway Park, thick as sea fog.  And when the Giants plated the go-ahead run in the top of the 10th inning, to take a 2-1 lead, it appeared that they would break the Fenway faithfuls’ hearts.  But in the bottom of the 10th, the first batter up for the Red Sox lofted a lazy fly ball to center field.

 

Snodgrass camped under the ball, reached up with his mitt, and . . . dropped the ball.  The baserunner slid into second base, safe on the error.  Later, Snodgrass tried to explain what went wrong, how he could have muffed such an easy ball.

“I didn’t seem to be able to hold the ball,” he said, unable to offer an excuse.  “It just dropped out of the glove, and that was all there was to it.”

Snodgrass made a brilliant play on the next batter, robbing him of an extra-base hit.  But the damage had already been done.  Ultimately, the Red Sox scored two runs that inning, aided by “Snow’s” miscue, and won the game, 3-2, and the Series, four games to three.  Snodgrass’s error would become known as “the $30,000 muff,” alluding to the difference between the winning and losing shares for World Series participants that year.

 

Sadly, this was what many fans and sportswriters remembered from the 1912 Series–up until that time, perhaps the best and most compelling World Series ever played.  The matchup between the Red Sox and the Giants that year included four future Hall of Famers and was the first World Series to be decided in the final inning of the final game.

 

But for Fred Snodgrass, he would be reminded of his untimely error for the rest of his life.

“For over half a century I’ve had to live with the fact that I dropped a ball in a World Series,” Snodgrass recounted in Lawrence S. Ritter’s delightful The Glory of Their Times, decades after his 1912 error in the Fall Classic. “‘Oh yes, you’re the guy that dropped that fly ball, aren’t you?’–and for years and years, whenever I’d be introduced to somebody, they’d start to say something and then stop, you know, afraid of hurting my feelings.”

 

The question was–would Snodgrass be able to move on and live his life fully, or would he remain stuck reliving an unforgiving and an unchangeable past?

***************

In The Singularity Wheel, the sequel to The Eye-Dancers, set to be released in November, Mitchell Brant has a different, but at the same time, similar dilemma.  Five years have passed since the events in The Eye-Dancers, but Mitchell cannot seem to forget Heather, the girl he met in another world, as far away from our earth as can possibly be imagined.  As the years have gone by, Mitchell misses Heather more and more, holding imaginary conversations with her, saving the gold locket she had given him as a keepsake, wishing there was some way he might be reunited with her.  He’s dated other girls since, but no one can hold a candle to Heather.  Being with other girls only serves to remind him of what he’s lacking, the one person he longs to be with but can’t.

 

From chapter 1 of The Singularity Wheel:

“He knelt down in front of his dresser, opened the bottom drawer.  This was where he stored his most valuable comic books.  It was off-limits to everyone else, even Mom, and a perfect place to stash his secret.

“He pulled out stacks of Fantastic Fours, Spider-Mans, Avengers, and X-Men, and set them aside, revealing the necklace with the gold-shaped locket tucked back in the far corner of the drawer.  This was the gift Heather had given him.  Something to remember her by, she had said.  It was cumbersome having to perform this ritual every night.  There were a hundred other places he might store the locket.  But he wouldn’t risk it.  The locket was too precious, too sacred.  No one else could see it.

“He picked it up, sniffed it, wondering if some faint, long-ago fragrance from her might still linger there.  It didn’t.  He wrapped his fingers around it, tight, held it against his cheek.  It was silly, really, what she had said—as if he would ever need anything to help him remember her.  He just wished the way she had believed in him, had confidence in him, might be able to rub off on his own opinion of himself.  Maybe it would have been different if he’d been able to stay with her in Colbyville, be near her, every day.  As it was, it was hard, even impossible sometimes, for Mitchell Brant to believe in Mitchell Brant.”

Will Mitchell get the opportunity, against all odds, to span the void and see Heather again?  And if he does, how will their meeting go?  Will she still feel the same way he does, after all this time?  Or will she no longer care?

 

Moving on is hard to do.  Coming to terms with the regrets of our past, with things we cannot change, with hopes and dreams that may seem out of reach, is one of life’s great challenges.

 

But it’s not impossible.

******************

Fred Snodgrass was never allowed to forget the error he’d made on baseball’s grandest stage.  But he didn’t let it ruin his life, or eat him up.  Perhaps Mitchell can take solace from Snodgrass’s perspective.

Perhaps we all can.

“Well, life has been good to me since I left baseball,” Snodgrass said in The Glory of Their Times.  “My lovely wife, Josephine, and I have enjoyed success and things have gone well, very well, through these many years.  In contrast, my years in baseball had their ups and downs, their strife and their torment.  But the years I look back at most fondly, and those I’d like most to live over, are the years when I was playing center field for the New York Giants.”

 

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike