What are you Writing?

[Tiki Tom]

Back to working on the new novel. ...Hopefully, a great adventure.

Sounds intriguing. Right up my alley. Who is the protagonist? And what is he or she in pursuit of?

 

[AmateisGal]

Back to working on the new novel. Covid's been a HUGE distraction. But I'm finally back in the world of 1961. Barcelona, Alexandria, Tel Aviv, Caracas, Buenos Aires, and then down the coast of Chile. Hopefully, a great adventure.

Oooh, this sounds exciting!!!

 

[Harp]

Back to working on the new novel. Covid's been a HUGE distraction. But I'm finally back in the world of 1961. Barcelona, Alexandria, Tel Aviv, Caracas, Buenos Aires, and then down the coast of Chile. Hopefully, a great adventure.

Peripatetic plot, or peripatetic protagonist, or both? And you just gotta work Clarksville, Tennessee in here.

 

[MikeKardec]

Sounds intriguing. Right up my alley. Who is the protagonist? And what is he or she in pursuit of?

An arms dealer in trouble with a number of governments ... not telling what he's in pursuit of but it's related to an ongoing conspiracy theory.

 

[David Conwill]

the new novel

A new implies the existence of previous novels. Anything we can buy in print someplace? I'm an aspiring adventure novelist myself and I like to read in the genre and support authors!

 

[MikeKardec]

A new implies the existence of previous novels. Anything we can buy in print someplace? I'm an aspiring adventure novelist myself and I like to read in the genre and support authors!

No Traveller Returns written by myself and my father, Louis L'Amour. Clearly my part was completed quite a bit more recently. Of interest to people here, his work was done between 1937 and 1942. It is part of what I jokingly call Louis 1.0, the other versions of his career were the pulps (2.0) and writing westerns (3.0). In the same "universe" is the book of short stories "Yondering." If you're interested enough to buy it, get yourself the most recent edition, the Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures Postscript Edition. That book has all the "Yondering" stories collected in one volume. Previously I had not found/identified/published them all in one place. The Postscript explains the background to many of the stories, how they fit together and fit into Dad's career. Again, a look at the world of the mid 1920s through the late 1940s, that is very appropriate in this space!

 

[Harp]

^^^I recall reading an interview your father gave to a magazine I cannot now recall,
circa 1980; perhaps earlier. I do remember that he expressed concern over a lack of youthful
reading.... Is there a published collection of his interviews available?

 

[MikeKardec]

^^^I recall reading an interview your father gave to a magazine I cannot now recall,
circa 1980; perhaps earlier. I do remember that he expressed concern over a lack of youthful
reading.... Is there a published collection of his interviews available?

No there isn't. I've considered doing it but never wanted to deal with all the confusing permissions or interrupt or confuse our (less dated) fiction publishing schedule (we've been able to bring out a lot of new or hard to find stuff since Dad passed away). There's a few of his interviews on line, on you tube, and there might be a couple in The Louis L'Amour Companion by Weinberg. There's a quite extended one on the end of the Son of a Wanted Man audio drama.

 

[David Conwill]

Thanks, @MikeKardec ! I've read most of your father's adventure stories and love them--they inspired what I'm working on now, though I've gone with a bit of a science-fiction/lost-civilization twist. I'll seek out the Lost Treasures Postscript Edition.

 

[Tiki Tom]

I have a book ready to be self-published, a WWII book that I’m four chapters into, and another plot that I like and will eventually pursue. Maybe. Yet I find myself wondering “what is the point?” Publishing seems to be dead. Readership is nano-layer thin. Getting an agent is mostly about “who you know.” Has writing a book simply become a narcissistic exercise in “look at me”?

I ask this as a guy who had a very gratifying experience with my first self-published book (good Amazon reviews, a book store signing, a book club evening... all very local, here in Vienna... sold about 150 books.) Anyway, I think you get my point. I’m a bit more cynical than I used to be about “writing”. Although it still gets my juices going when I’m actually doing it.

 

[Harp]

Publishing seems to be dead. Readership is nano-layer thin.

Stephen King's On Writing; A Memoir of the Craft is the book to read.

A high school English teacher in Maine decides he has some game and writes.
And you know the rest of the story.

As a published author and voracious reader, I am ravenous but selective. Certain genre played out vein,
little interest except historical well researched topic, veteran factual basis but contemporary supposition
based on imaginative plot, no thanks. Too much crap is writ, far too much s..t published.[/QUOTE]

 

[belfastboy]

Stephen King's On Writing; A Memoir of the Craft is the book to read.

A high school English teacher in Maine decides he has some game and writes.
And you know the rest of the story.

As a published author and voracious reader, I am ravenous but selective. Certain genre played out vein,
little interest except historical well researched topic, veteran factual basis but contemporary supposition
based on imaginative plot, no thanks. Too much crap is writ, far too much s..t published.

[/QUOTE]
Yes, that book of King's is a great read.

 

[belfastboy]

Stephen King's On Writing; A Memoir of the Craft is the book to read.

A high school English teacher in Maine decides he has some game and writes.
And you know the rest of the story.

As a published author and voracious reader, I am ravenous but selective. Certain genre played out vein,
little interest except historical well researched topic, veteran factual basis but contemporary supposition
based on imaginative plot, no thanks. Too much crap is writ, far too much s..t published.

[/QUOTE]
I forget the title /....a bestseller bought at a airport bookstore. It had baseball as the backdrop. Many weeks on the NYT best seller list and it was shit. I told me wife how bad I thought it was and remarked I could write crap like this......so I did. It sits complete...almost.....Since its return from the editor it sits untouched on my desk. If I bother to finish it, yes, it will be out of vanity so I too can join the hordes of 'published authors'.

 

[Harp]

I forget the title /....a bestseller bought at a airport bookstore. It had baseball as the backdrop. Many weeks on the NYT best seller list and it was shit...[/QUOTE]

I frequent a buy/trade/new/used bookshop on Chicago's south side which has been closed since Covid
reared its ugly head, and just spending hours wandering all over the place, pulling books down to skim
I am always amazed at what is being published, forgotten tripe abounds midst the classics and other
lesser but still notable gems. Dick Francis, a thoroughbred graded stakes track hound writer got his
start through vanity press publishing. But he caught a break and found his niche. Never know if you
don't throw the dice, carpet shove or spit ball inside curve toss, dice is dice and rice is rice.
Dice gets thrown in the latrine and rice thrown at weddings.

And dice tossed at press are the best dice of stress.

 

[AmateisGal]

I think there's still a voracious reading public out there, especially after last year with the advent of the pandemic. However, I will definitely agree that a lot of what is being published absolutely shouldn't be as it's poorly written and doesn't belong on any bestseller lists. That being said, there are also some amazing authors out there that continue to put out very good work. Since my novel will be published this fall by Simon & Schuster UK I'm incredibly excited to *finally* have a shot in this publishing world, but I'm also terrified my book won't measure up. I think that's the fear of every writer, though, and I won't ever quit writing as that's just who I am and what I do.

 

[Harp]

I think there's still a voracious reading public out there, especially after last year with the advent of the pandemic. I won't ever quit writing as that's just who I am and what I do.

Quite often, inside the subway or during a bring-the-kids to work day, I will see a teenager reading a book.
Not finger flip poking a cell phone but focused on a real book. I've passed out books from brief case,
desk, or Gloverall coat pocket. Riding a bus and reading Pollock's Spinoza, a kid started asking about
Spinoza, said he had read some Mamonides, never Pollock. A kid, probably sixteen or so. Or a girl
reading Jane Austen on the subway, I gifted her Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome out of brief case.
So nice to see kids reading. And I once caught a cab downtown for a short ride to the train station
and the Lebanese cab driver bemoaned Americans who never read. At LaSalle Street I reached inside
my chunky Gloverall coat pocket and pulled out Thomas More's The Four Last Things. Handed More over
after scribbling my email address inside the cover, told him to send me a note, and we'd have dinner
over it and discuss books if he wanted. All subjects. He read philosophy and law in Lebanon.
Did I know any of those? ....He thought I was Irish, not American.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The kids at the theatre, all of them "digital natives," are all also voracious readers. Some of them go in for pop fiction, some of them like weightier stuff, and one of them graduated from college with a degree in poetry. There are always books stowed behind the concession stand, to the point where I once had to post a reminder that reading was allowed only after the daily task sheet had been completed.

Maybe this is the result of self-selection on my part, but reading, and the love of books is still alive and well among young people. It's people my age I often wonder about -- they seem to be just as addicted to mind-sapping pocket devices as any millennial, but I never -- but NEVER -- see them browsing at the local bookstore. Plenty of kids in there, but when I'm there, I'm usually the only one over 50.

Meanwhile, what am I writing? Started in yesterday on the April script for our radio show, the "Light At The End Of The Tunnel Edition." Among other bits, I'll be singing a vocal trio number doing all three voices, so it's going to take some finesse.

 

[GHT]

It's people my age I often wonder about -- they seem to be just as addicted to mind-sapping pocket devices as any millennial, but I never -- but NEVER -- see them browsing at the local bookstore. Plenty of kids in there, but when I'm there, I'm usually the only one over 50.

How I do so agree with you Lizzie, you only have to trawl through a few postings on forums that cater for baby boomers to see what occupies them. Soap operas, they seem to believe the scripts even though the script writers, dramatise well beyond realism, no matter. All's well in soap addiction land.

Meanwhile, what am I writing? Started in yesterday on the April script for our radio show, the "Light At The End Of The Tunnel Edition." Among other bits, I'll be singing a vocal trio number doing all three voices, so it's going to take some finesse.

That sounds interesting. I have been writing to a pen friend for the last year. A former neighbour, she was married for just short of seventy years. Her husband had a stroke and died about six months before the pandemic broke out. Her only daughter died from M/S years ago, the only relative that I know of is her adult grand daughter. She looks in on her Granny and buys her the provisions that she needs, other than that, my pen friend is coming up to 93 and trapped all alone at home.

The idea of writing, I do most of that, she does respond occasionally saying how much she enjoys a real letter, not an email, not a text message but a real hard copy letter, landing on her doormat every couple of weeks. As I was saying, the idea of writing came from my wife. She was always complimentary about the postings I wrote in the: "How do folks react to your hat wearing," thread. In fact, I used to ask her to proof read the post, not just for grammar and spelling errors but reminders in case I had left something out.

So now my pen friend gets a dozen or so A4 pages to read through. It's an honour when she admits that it gives her such a lift when a letter arrives. She explained that she will make herself a hot drink, then sit at the table and read my latest letter through. Then, later that evening, she likes to re-read it again. She might be 93 but she's as sharp as a tack, I have kept a copy of every letter, often I re-read them myself, knowing that I could repeat myself from a previous missive. I'm enjoying this and so is my pen friend.

 

[Harp]

The kids at the theatre, all of them "digital natives," are all also voracious readers. Some of them go in for pop fiction, some of them like weightier stuff, and one of them graduated from college with a degree in poetry.

Maybe this is the result of self-selection on my part, but reading, and the love of books is still alive and well among young people. It's people my age I often wonder about -- they seem to be just as addicted to mind-sapping pocket devices as any millennial, but I never -- but NEVER -- see them browsing at the local bookstore. Plenty of kids in there, but when I'm there, I'm usually the only one over 50..

Please ask the poet if she prefers Emily Dickinson over Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The former is so elusive
and coquettish; while Mrs Browning is so openly flirtatious yet equally enigmatic in her own way.
My favorite ladies of Poetry.

Bookies is my local bookshop: buy, sell, used, new-and I cannot recall when I last visited.
Covid closed the shop down, sign posted, and the economics of it all make me wonder if it will ever reopen.
I too see more kids inside, or saw past tense, whenever there, than older folk. Even so, sparse patronage.
Always seemed. Great post, greater news.

 

[LizzieMaine]

She's definitely a Dickinson fan, but I also got her interested in Amy Lowell and Genevieve Taggard. (She already knew about Marianne Moore.) She also indulges me in my frequent use of comedy doggerel.