Once again I'm way late posting. So it goes (if that phrase seems familiar, you probably read Slaughterhouse Five).

I'm beginning a new novel, and it occurs to me that folks might get a kick or even something practical out of reading a weekly (ideally) log of a fellow who's completed 14 novels (published 6) as he wades, runs, staggers, soars, and grovels through the obstacle course he hopes will lead to his 14th (7th).

I don't have a title yet. Or a real outline. I believe in outlines. I just rarely use them, being the impatient sort. What I have is a about 500 words of summary, which I wrote as a kind of organized brainstorming and to send to my editor at Poisoned Pen Press. The summary gives the crime that starts the story in motion. An early morning walker finds a black fellow hanging from a tree, apparently lynched, in a park in Los Angeles in 1926 or so. The summary gives the reason the detective, Tom Hickey, gets involved with the case even though he hasn't yet become a detective. It gives some of the clues Tom will follow, some obstacles he'll need to overcome, and the solution to the mystery.

I sent it to my editor. She gave it thumbs up. I gave her a tentative time line, 100 pages by the end of 2008, the whole novel by mid-summer 2009. She gave me a publishing date, Spring 2009.

 

So I'm ready to type page 1, though I wish I had a title. An friend once told me she never started a short story unless she had a title. That's wise, I think, because a good title can offer focus, which may be the primary ingredient of compelling fiction. But I'm impatient. 

I'm feeling the story should open with the fellow hanging from the tree. I wonder if that image would make a good cover. Knowing I'd  feel more confident if I knew what park he was hanging in, I emailed a friend who lives in LA, gave a few details, and asked what would be the most likely park. He kindly replied.

So I'm ready to go, except I need to boost my gumption. It takes gumption to start a new novel, even after you've written a few.

9-30-08

Pam and I like to go to church Friday evenings, in part to recover from the week, and because our church is less crowded, calmer than on Sundays. But lately, since my son Cody attends on Sundays, I’ve been returning to hang out with him.

Occasionally, the pastor tosses in something new on Sunday, but most of the message is the same as Friday’s. Which has led to a solution of a problem of mine. The problem is, when I listen to a sermon or a lecture or a poem or song or whatever, a line or idea grabs me and I follow it, and often get lost and miss the next part of whatever.

What I’ve discovered is, knowing I’ll be listening twice allows my mind to work in two different ways. On Fridays, I’m like a dutiful student, filling in the blanks on the outline, taking in the message for what it is, not what my wandering mind will make of it. On Sundays, I trip out and let lines or ideas in the message take me wherever, which usually leads to my scribbling notes about stories or other projects of mine.

Which in turn leads to a general principle I’ll try applying elsewhere. Do it twice, once studiously, once tripping out. My neighbor Ellen would call this using the left brain once, and the right brain once.

Of course, the sermon, song, lecture or whatever needs to be thoughtful enough to engage us twice. Ed Noble’s sermons (under Archives at www.journeycom.org) have worked well for me.

If I’d discovered this principle while in college, I could’ve been a dutiful student in class while taping the lecture, tripped out at home while listening to the tape, become a Fullbright scholar, and then run for President.

When I was fifteen, at about nine on Christmas night, my mom heard a gargly noise. My dad had gone to work early that day, got off a couple hours to watch us open presents and eat too much, gone back to work, come home and turned in. What my mom heard was him dying.

The next school year, my junior year, had just begun when I came to find my mom on the floor of her bedroom. She acted drunk, but I'd never known her to get the least tipsy. I called our doctor, who felt sure she had taken too many of the sleeping pills he prescribed following my dad's death. I went in and counted the pills in the bottle. Only one was missing. The doctor summoned an ambulance.

She had spinal meningitis. The doctors expected her to die. But she was tough. She got transferred to an isolation ward at County Hospital. She stayed there for months, leaving me alone in a three bedroom house.

My best friend, Eric Curtis, moved in. Eric was also fatherless. His mom (a ringer for Cynthia Moon of The Venus Deal and The Angel Gang, by pure coincidence), was nuts, often acting paranoid, and volitile to the degree that nobody could live in peace in her home, or maybe in her neighborhood.

Yet Eric was saner than anyone I knew. He was handsome, athletic and lightly freckled, with a ready smile and a bouncy step. And he was wise. We spent lots of evenings reading and discussing books such as Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not a Christian, and Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra. We frequented the downtown San Diego library, checking out new books and sampling jazz records in the listening room. We often spent days at the beach and weekends driving hundreds of miles to San Francisco or Las Vegas and back.

Then my mom came home. Eric went back to Sylvia, his mother. Soon Christmas season arrived, and Eric and I hung out at our friend Sunday's house. Her parents had a record of Handel's Messiah. Eric listened spellbound. At school, he might fly down a hallway, arms out like wings, crooning "For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth, hallelujah . . ."

On a night that might've been New Year's Eve (and would be if this were fiction), Eric and I were on a seacliff outside the gate of the Fort Rosecrans military cemetary where his dad lay. He looked and sounded solemn and heavy. He said, "Ken, I see a big change coming for me. I don't know what, but it'll be huge."

In January, our friend Kenny's parents got divorced. Kenny decided we (Kenny, Eric, our friend Billy, and I) should celebrate with champagne. We decided to go to a basketball game at a neighboring high school and watch a girl I adored performing her songleader routine. But the game was sold out. Kenny got mad (at his parents, I guess), and socked the gym door window, shattered it.

Security people came running. Kenny bolted. They all chased him.

Eric, Billy and I could've gotten away. But Eric said to me, "Get Billy out of here."

I said, "Sure, and you're coming too."

He shook his head and planted his feet. "I need to take my punishment. You're Billy's big brother now. Get going."

So Billy and I ran.

Kenny and Eric got charged with being under the influence on a school ground. The school board expelled them. The whole school, including our vice-principal Mrs. Bole, knew Billy and I were with them. She could've expelled us, but she believed in people, not policy.

Eric thought his expulsion was the big change. He was called to grow up. And he applied himself to the calling. He took a fulltime job as a flunky at a car dealership. He enrolled in night school. And he started giving stuff away, mostly to friends. He gave me some of his prize jazz records, his favorite sweater, and his beach blanket. Later Sylvia would tell me he even gave away his treasured popcorn pan.

On the evening of Friday, February 15, Eric and I were again on the seacliffs near Fort Rosecrans when he said, "Ken, getting expelled wasn't the big change. It was nothing compared to what's coming."

We made plans for Sunday. Eric, Kenny, Billy and I would drive to Laguna Beach where a sidewalk art show was happening.

I didn't see Eric on Saturday. That night, Billy stayed at my house. Sunday morning, I phoned Kenny, who was going to drive to Laguna Beach in his mom's VW. Kenny said two other guys, Mike and Eddie, wanted to go on a trip, but were lobbying to go to the Indio Date Festival, in the desert not far from Palm Springs.

I enjoy the desert in winter, but riding in a VW carrying six of us didn't appeal to me, especially since Mike was a giant. After consulting Billy, I asked Kenny to phone when they were ready to leave. By then, Billy and I would decide.

But Kenny didn't call. Later, he told me Eric said, "Don't call them. I don't want them on this trip."

If I'd ever known Eric to act mean to anyone, or talk behind anyone's back, I wouldn't suspect he was worried for us. But Eric never acted mean.

On the way home, with Mike driving, as they descended the two lane Viejas grade in the vicinity of today's casino, a car veered into their lane. Kenny's mom's VW careened off the road and down a bank onto a plateau.

Neither Kenny, Mike, nor Eddie got injured. Only Eric. He was riding shotgun. In those days we didn't use seat belts. He flew from the car. His head smashed into the only boulder on the plateau.

Ever since, I've been on a quest to discover why Eric knew what was to come. About a year after Eric's death, the quest led to Christ. And I turned onto the road I've been on ever since.

I've lived with and hung out with dozens of people who attempted to piece together beliefs from myriad sources, different religions and philosophies and scientific theories. I too, have tried to create some conglomerate faith of my own. But along the way, I've become convinced that only a deluded or arrogant human would imagine his small mind capable of rummaging through the stacks of sources and objectively fashioning out of his favorites anything that approaches cosmic truth.

Accepting that Biblical faith has tenets I misunderstand and others I find baffling, mysterious, or troubling, makes me at least feel a bit more humble than I would otherwise be. And I'd bet humility is the beginning of wisdom. At least it assures me that what my senses can perceive isn't all that's going on in the world. And that assurance gives me plenty to write about.

In Midheaven, Jodi, a high school senior chooses God over the drugs and parties but soon learns that faith doesn't keep her from making tragic choices.

The Venus Deal revolves around the crimes and punishment of a of spiritualist cult leader.

In The Loud Adios, Tom Hickey discovers Nazis attempting to empower their imperialist desires with black magic.

Wendy Rose, in The Angel Gang, wouldn't survive if not for her guardian angels.

The Bible helps Tom and Clifford Hickey squeeze a pastor for the truth about a murder, in The Do-Re-Mi.

In The Vagabond Virgins, Alvaro Hickey's romantic and mystical nature sends him on a search for the Virgin Mary or a convincing fake who appears in Baja California lobbying for the overthrow of the Mexican government.