I hope Santa filled your stockings and gave you everything you wanted this holiday season! It is my hope that your New Year is bright and full of promise, as You, Devoted Reader, deserve nothing short this side of perfection. With that being said, I am very pleased to announce that “Ledge: The Father Matthew Chronicles” will be completely finished and off to final edits by the end of this week, right on schedule! I want to thank each of you for your support and Devotion in the year of 2009, and I thank you, and am truly blessed to have you ringing in your New Year with me as we welcome 2010. You’re the best! I couldn’t do this without you!

Be on the lookout for some New Posts coming in the next upcoming weeks. Including my top 10 reads of the year, and My 2009 Year-end Review! Not to mention the December Wrap-Up! and other events that are coming specifically here to my website! Of course, Devoted Reader, I’ll naturally keep you involved with the publication process of “Ledge” right here on my website! You’re as much a part of my writing as I am. Each set of eyes that read these words are the muse of my inspiration, and thankfully, I know that I am in the best hands…Your hands!

With that being said, here is the final preview chapter for “Ledge:The Father Matthew Chronicles” Happy Reading, Devoted Reader, and my most sincerest blessings for a safe and happy New Year!

Best Of Everything,

John Braxton Sparks

Chapter 26

Hollow Glens, 1999

Time winds through the fabric of life as easily as thread in the eye of a needle.  It fits us for a lifetime, and tailors itself by the moments.

Some may think my Father cruel and unjust. These judgments are planted in falsehood and buried deep on blasphemous ground. Make no mistake; my Father has a hand in all things. While not a King of tragedy, he will allow tragedy in his court like the follies of a jester.

You can’t have a rainbow if you won’t walk in the rain.

Edward and Isabella didn’t show Matthew how to walk in the rain. They taught him to dance in it. Their love and support allowed Matthew to flourish into the person he was intended to be. Their faith and their support gave Matthew a great home and a solid childhood. They taught him to love over adversity. They taught him that words can bruise as easily as any fist, and they taught him to love without restraint.

Through their love, Matthew prospered.

Through my Father’s grace, they loved.

Everything serves the will and mind of my Father.

Even those that will never look upon his face.

***

Eight eyes look upon him. Small circles that know hope and fear. Most are in his presence not by choice, but by volition.

Matthew doesn’t care. He’ll take them however he can get them.

He’s taller in his age now. Although his hair is still a tangled auburn forest, his eyes sparkle and dance in the light just like the legacy of his Mother.

At twenty-seven, he shares his Father’s height and his mother’s smile. The teenagers in the small room look up at him. To them, Matthew is like a six foot ladder, tall and slim, completely supportive.

And while their parents may force them to church, once they enter Matthew’s Sunday school class, the seconds fly by and the time is short and ends like the shifting sands in the vase of an hourglass.

A dark haired boy sits alone, opposite the bench of the other students. His eyes are empty circles that see everything but feel nothing. He traces his fingers over the oak of the table. He looks down at the knotted wood. To him, the air smells stale. Like the smell of urine in the stalls of his high-school bathroom.

He doesn’t pay attention.

The boy whose eyes are dark caves smiles in the morning air of Hollow’s Glens Holiness Church. It’s funny the incidental thoughts that dance across the ballrooms of the mind. He feels like Charlie Brown. In a class where the students are bored to the point of tears, hearing, wonk,wonk,wonk.

“Daniel, do have something you would like to say,” Matthew asks in a silken voice.

Wonk, Wonk, Wonk.

“Daniel?”

The boy looks at Matthew with a vacant stare as empty as his eyes. His hair is as dark as the clothing he wears that matches most of his given moods. His skin is as oily as his hair, and although it’s as fair as porcelain, it appears just as stained as tobacco.

“I didn’t say anything.”

Matthew smiles.

“I know, but you’ve been quiet all morning. I thought you might want to add something before we close in prayer.”

“Matthew, I got nothing to say.”

Matthew brushes off the early morning dust from his bible.

“Well then, Daniel, would you lead us in prayer?”

Daniel laughs.

“You want me to lead us in prayer. You’re the youth pastor, why don’t you lead us in prayer?”

Matthew matches his stare.

“Well, I could do that. But I feel like I’ve talked the whole time. I’m starting to feel like the Snoopy teacher up here. Come on, man! Help me out. I feel like I have “wonked” you guys out.”

Matthew is pleased to see a smile start to spread across Daniel’s thin lips.

“What’s the point? I don’t want to pray. Why talk to a God who doesn’t listen? Why talk to something, that if he is out there, has better things to do than listen to any of us? You have spent the last hour telling us how much God loves us. How he is always there for us? Where is there, Matthew? Because there isn’t here. I get so sick of this. Each one of us sitting in here thinks this is crap. Why am I the only one who has enough nerve to say what everyone feels anyway? This is crap.”

Matthew looks at the boy.

“Daniel, I see your fish hook and I’ll bite. I’ll not ask you to pray, if you can tell me why we shouldn’t. Is that fair?”

Daniel scoffs.

“Oh look, from Snoopy teacher to Dr. Phil. Let me tell you why we shouldn’t pray. I spent the past month on bended knee. I prayed while my mother was screaming her lungs out in her bedroom. I listened to those moans. Do you know, Matthew, what a scream really sounds like? How awful that sound is. A sound that bounces off the walls. It sticks in your ears like the claws of a cat in heat. It pulls and tugs, it rips and tears, and although you wish it would stop, it doesn’t stop. You don’t bleed from a wound like that. But you wish you did. Because that would make it real! That could be something you could stop! And God, do you want it to stop!”

Matthew clears his throat.

“That’s what a real scream sounds like. That’s what it feels like. It tears you into from the inside out. Just like an old, dirty, shirt. That’s what my Mom sounded like when she was dying of cancer. I’ll never forget it. No sir, not as long as I live. Screamin’ to the top of her lungs, that’s what she did! Begging for us to kill her because the pain was so intense. You see, the doctors couldn’t help anymore. There was nothing else they could do. But I thought God could. So, I prayed and she screamed. This went on for days. I listened to it. Even on into the night, her yelling would wake me up,” Daniel declared.

“She asked for anyone. My father; me. She begged us to kill her. You see the pain medicine plays out, and soon it doesn’t work. The body tunes it out like your favorite song on repeat. Eventually, you get tired of hearing it. It just goes on and on. I couldn’t take it. So I prayed. I prayed that God would heal her. Take it away, but he didn’t. She suffered and it still didn’t stop. It went on and on, until she finally died. Not one minute of peace was she allowed.”

A tear began to blur Matthew’s vision.

“So, pastor, you’ll excuse me if I don’t feel like prayin’ today.”

The class bowed their heads in silence.

“Tracey, would you pray for us?”

Tracey didn’t say a word only shook the blonde curls on her head like the way a mother who loses patience shakes a crying baby.

After the prayer, the bell rang.

“Alright, kiddos, class is dismissed. Remember I want each of you to pick out Bible verse for next week, and discuss what you think it means. Kim, we’ll start with you. Have a good week,” Daniel instructed.

The silence gave way to squeaks of folding chairs as the students made their way into the main room of the church house.

That’s when the gates of Heaven opened and Matthew heard the whispers.

“Daniel, can you stay for a minute?”

Daniel blew through the curtains of his thin lips.

“What?”

“Daniel, I’m sorry about your Mom. I mean it. It’s different for everyone. I can’t say that I know what you’re going through. But I can say that I’ve been there. I lost my Mom, too. I loved her very much, and I know it hurts. I can’t tell you it’s going to be okay, but I can promise it will get better.”

“Matthew, did your Mom scream?”

A vision of Emily falling down the stairs played like the reel of an old movie in his mind.

“No, Daniel, she didn’t, but I know a little bit about suffering. You can take that to the bank.”

Daniel closed his eyes and Matthew listened.

A tear raced down Daniel’s cheek and the teenage boy looked as innocent as the small child who sought refuge in the darkened corners of his childhood bedroom.

The whispers sang words in Matthew’s ears that only he could hear.

“Daniel, I have to ask you a question. You don’t have to answer it, but I promise whatever you say, I am bound by God never to repeat it. Is there more you want to tell me?”

Daniel looked down at his dirty shoelaces.

“Those screams were awful. I prayed that God would make them stop, but he never would.”

A vision filled Matthew’s mind as Daniel paused in his story.

Matthew saw everything. Just as Daniel began to finish his tale.

“My Dad was working late. Or at least that’s what he said. It’s hard to tell these days if at that time he was searching underneath the hoods of cars or underneath the skirts of any woman that he laid eyes upon. My Mom was alone. I had just come in from school and I knew that she had been crying.”

A vision filled Matthew’s mind. He saw Daniel at the bedside of his mother. Folding her fragile hands and looking into those lost eyes.

“Daniel, what did she say?”

Daniel cleared his throat.

“The room smelled bad that day. I didn’t know how long she had lain there like that. The sheets were stained. I could tell by that awful smell. I knew she had…soiled herself. She couldn’t help it. It was hard to tell if that was what caused that awful odor or if it was…her. She started to have that smell. You know, like the way a dead animal smells on the road in the heat of the sun. It was awful. I started to change the bedclothes when she grabbed my arm.”

Matthew saw this even before he said it.

“There were moments. Sometimes small, but they were there. Like she was getting better. Like she was my mom again. She looked at me and said…”

“Daniel, don’t,” Matthew finished.

Daniel looked in amazement.

“Yes! It was like you were there! That’s exactly what she said. She was pitiful and hurting. She said she couldn’t take it. That this was punishment because she wasn’t right with God. I told her I would pray with her, but she said she was passed the point of rescue.”

Matthew lowered his head.

“Then, she said, she had a favor to ask me. She told me that before she started hurting again that I could save her. She begged me to save her.  She said all I had to do was…”

“Give her the last two pills,” Matthew finished.

“Yes. Boy, for a youth pastor, you’re good! She told me that would make it all stop! That that would set her free. She said that the pain was killing her and she couldn’t take it any more. She wanted out, and then she started that awful screaming again.”

Another vision entered Matthew’s mind. The boy in front of him, holding his ears as he walked softly to the old bedside dresser by his mother’s bed.

“Daniel, what did you do? Did you ask your mother if she wanted to pray?”

Daniel looked into the eyes of his youth pastor.

“No. I made the screaming stop.”

Then, Daniel made a mask of his hands and fell into Matthew’s embrace.

***

After the boy regained his composure, Matthew sent him out into the church house to hear the rest of the Sunday sermon.

On bended knee, Matthew prayed for Daniel and his mother.

Then he made his way into the church house.

The pews were full that Sunday morning. Every person from all walks of life fit together in long wooden seats like pieces of a giant puzzle.

Matthew took his usual spot among the church members in the first two pews.

I stood beside the wooden cross in the pulpit.

I had a birds-eye view of every person in the congregation.

Daniel took his seat in the very last pew by the heavy oak doors.

Sitting beside him was my fallen brother. His dark wings wrapped around him like soft satin in the gloss of the morning sun.

With his thumb and forefinger, Lucifer made the universal symbol for a gun.

I caught his stare as he pointed his fingers in my direction.

He smiled at me and blew through his lips as he made a sound.

Pooof.

(C)2009 by Lamplight Publications in care of John Braxton Sparks

Words / as slippery as smooth grapes, / words exploding in the light / like dormant seeds waiting / in the vaults of vocabulary, / alive again, and giving life: / once again the heart distills them. – Pablo Neruda, poet and diplomat (1904-1973)

“Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature.” – George Bernard Shaw, writer, Nobel laureate (1856-1950)

In Australia, the day after Christmas is called Boxing Day. Contrary to popular belief (and behavior), the origin of the Boxing Day name does NOT refer to the first shopping day after Christmas, when frenzied mothers engage other frenzed mothers in fist fights and “boxing” matches in local shopping malls over post-Christmas bargains. That is called mud wrestling.

Boxing Day (I learned from my good friend Chris Attwood) is actually an English tradition that migrated to Australia with the convicts (and stuck around, like the convicts). It is a public holiday not only in Australia, but New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Greenland, Hong Kong, Macau, and countries in the Commonwealth of Nations.  The origins of the holiday date back to Victorian England, when the aristocracy handed out boxed food parcels and gifts on the day after Christmas to servants and tradesmen in return for services rendered throughout the year — the original “boxed lunch,” I guess you could say.  Modern exclusions include said frenzied mothers who, contrary to popular belief (and behavior), do NOT get much of a holiday since they single-handedly make Christmas happen for everyone else.

This year, I “opened” my Christmas present on Boxing Day. In our family here in Adelaide, the adults draw names out of a hat for the gift exchange. There is a dollar limit on the gift and we get to make special requests. I requested a Westfield Gift Card. I also added that I had never received a present baked inside a cake. Don’t ask me why I said that, because I have no idea. It simply popped out. It seemed zany and crazy at the time and I said it for a laugh, adding that I did not want any green icing. Don’t ask me why I said that, either. Green icing tastes just like every other color. And I never expected to be taken

seriously. After all, one of the boys, Craig, had my name and Craig worked long hours and had never baked a cake in his life.

But I forgot who Craig was married to.

Craig’s wife, Kari, is a master prankster and decided I would get my gift as requested. Thus, my Westfield Gift Card arrived deep inside a sponge cake with wonderfully gooey chocolate icing.

Being that we were at a family barbecue and had already eaten dessert (don’t forget, Christmas comes in summer here in Australia), I decided to “open” my gift on Boxing Day morning, where I could sneak a taste of Kari’s delicious cake for breakfast.  As you can see in the accompanying photo, it was a beautiful cake. But it also contained valuable treasure, so I had to cut it very carefully. As you can see in the next accompanying photo, I was able to do that successfully, which allowed me to then extract my treasure. The final photo shows me getting caught  with the evidence. There was no way I could plead innocent to the family misdemeanor of having unwrapped my present early (we always open presents together). I thought I was sneaky, but Wendy and her camera were sneakier.

I learned a lesson this past Boxing Day: crime does not pay. I always get caught. However, being a Cool Dude Writer, I continue to write about it as if I were a seasoned pro.

Originally from Kansas, James Houston Turner writes thrillers from his home in Adelaide, South Australia, where he tries unsuccessfully to out-sneak his wife. You may visit him at www.jameshoustonturner.com

http://www.flickr.com/photos/coeburn_community_library/4098605763/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/coeburn_community_library/4098605325/in/photostream/

The Coeburn Community Library celebrated We the People with a reading of a tall tale by me.

This free event was open to children in grades 4 through 6, as well as their families. Library staff led a tall tale writing and craft workshop after the reading.

The event took place November 10.

We the People is a National Endowment for the Humanities program designed to encourage and enhance the teaching, study, and understanding of American history, culture, and democratic principles. The Coeburn Community Library received funding to participate in We the People.

The Coeburn Community Library is part of the Lonesome Pine Regional Library system.

UT Austin alumnus Colum McCann has won the 2009 National Book Award for his novel Let the Great World Spin. It’s a mesmerizing read, and I’ve been giving it to everybody on my Christmas list. I am honored that Colum used one of my recent portraits as his author photo on this book.

Murder She Wrote (288 MB download)
Play the hidden object game based on the beloved TV series, Murder, She Wrote! Join crime novelist Jessica Fletcher and solve 5 mysteries in sleepy (but lethal) Cabot Cove. Remember, the culprit is never who you think it is.

Murder She Wrote (288 MB download)
Play the hidden object game based on the beloved TV series, Murder, She Wrote! Join crime novelist Jessica Fletcher and solve 5 mysteries in sleepy (but lethal) Cabot Cove. Remember, the culprit is never who you think it is.

Blood and Loam is on its last draft. Well, at least until (hopefully) some agent picks it up and demands some rewrites. For the first time since I started to toy with the idea more than 20 years ago, I am proud to say that I am close to finishing. I could call this post “How Not to Write a Novel,” but I believe, looking back on the process, that a unique perfection exists with every book. Some take a few months to write–I wrote When a Grandchild Dies in a few months, then spent another year or so revising. Patchwork & Ornament, which I edited, went from idea to printed book in about nine months.

Then there’s Blood and Loam, the book that wouldn’t leave, that wouldn’t end, that I have thrown in the trash more often than I care to think about. Here’s the story:

Somewhere in the late 1980s, I began a story about a confused, traumatized young woman who takes a profound inner journey in order to defeat a force of evil that threatens the survival of her Midwestern small town. I didn’t know anything about writing a novel, but I started anyway. Since my villain has supernatural powers, I researched dark arts, squirming all the while. When I had about 75 pages done, I signed up for a creative writing class to get some help and feedback. Sounds good, right? Well, not so much.

Mistake #1 – Showing a draft too soon, or to people you don’t yet know you can trust. We were assigned to share the first 25 pages for critique. Most of the feedback was helpful and positive, but apparently my manuscript hit some nerves with the teacher. She went into a long lecture about my protagonist’s lack of believability, and my protagonist was the one character somewhat based on me. Oops. I translated that into I am not believable. I came home and threw everything away.

Mistake #2 – Further with that, basing a character or story on oneself. Beginning novelists often do this. When, several years later, the idea for the novel kept buzzing around my head like a fly, I made sure my protagonist had her own appearance and totally different backstory. The Stella of my novel is her own person now.

Mistake #3 – Fighting the Genre. Blood and Loam is a dark, violent, creepy novel. I wanted to write a nicer book, and there is nothing nice about Blood and Loam. For many years, I worried about whether this novel would contribute to or detract from a society that already has so much violence in it. Over time, I’ve learned through personal experience that sometimes our greatest growth occurs in traumatic situations, and that sometimes life is messy, dark, and even violent as we forge our way through them. Stella is on a classic Hero’s Journey, and she has some big obstacles to overcome–the fact that she does helps me justify, in my mind at least, that B&L ultimately contributes something positive. (You might notice that I’m still touchy about this!) I believe we should write our ideas, no matter how much they bother us. Otherwise we do not honor the spirit of creativity that lies within us.

Mistake #4 – Not writing regularly. Any novelist will tell you that the best thing to do is to put the story on paper as quickly as possible. Stops and starts are painful. ‘Nuff said.

Mistake #5 – See Mistake #1. Yep, I did it again. I rewrote, took a novel writing class, and got scared yet again. I didn’t have a bad critique, but I wasn’t as far along as some of the other students, and I felt intimidated by their skills.

Mistake #6 – Not getting work critiqued when it’s ready. Conversely, there comes a point when we’re drafting when we might start to chase our tails. In my case, I found myself tweaking single words while ignoring some major plot problems. Given my history with critiquing, that’s understandable, but there came a point when I knew I needed outside feedback. I found it through a Gotham Writers Workshop class, and then by hiring a published author to provide a manuscript critique.

Mistake #7 – Not knowing how to let go. These characters have been with me for a long time now, and they feel a bit like one big, happy, dysfunctional family. We hang out together, and while terrible things happen when we do, we keep coming back. I’ve always related to Stella, even though she is not me. Stella represents some of the mistakes of my younger years about which I have continued to feel shame and guilt. Yet I have grown more into the character of Hannah, who, in the Hero’s Journey, represents the Mentor. I’m not nearly as calm and peaceful as Hannah, but I have come to know a thing or two over the years.

So here I am, letting go of Stella as part of my identity. Letting go, finally, of the person I once was, and haven’t been for many years. Embracing the inner wise woman, the Hannah who came out of nowhere, who is totally made up. Perhaps I gave myself the gift of Hannah as a character because I needed her; now I am her.

I’ve been reading a biography of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and I learned that it took him more than 20 years to write 100 Years of Solitude. He says, quite simply, that he wasn’t ready for the book when he was younger. It was too big for him at the time. This statement, from a great master, reminds me that books come in their own time. We as authors sometimes have to have our own journeys in order to understand how to complete them. B&L has, for me, been a journey that is long, powerful, and deep. Which leads me to:

Mistake #8 – Forgetting why we write. I had forgotten that, for me, inner growth is the goal. In finishing, in letting go of these characters, I am opening myself up to new stories, new possibilities, new adventures, new challenges to ponder and work through. As 2009 comes to a close, so too do my adventures in a fictional small town in Iowa that I have grown to love. I shed this skin and emerge anew.

I have this friend of mine, my bff. Her name is Meredith. I usually call her ‘Miss Meredith’ because of how often she’s in trouble with me though (kind of like your 3rd grade teacher calling out your entire name when you’ve done something wrong). So, Miss Meredith stayed the night… ok, backup. We drank Kahlua and milk together while watching The United States of Tara on Showtime. We stayed out of trouble. The potential was there, but we were good. For those of you who are reading this blog for the first time and are not aware, Meredith and I get up to no good in a hot second. We were roommates for awhile and would usually run into each other around 1am in the kitchen on any given day and crack open the vodka to drink with whatever might be around (animal crackers blended with milk and ice cream, pomegran. juice, you name it we’ve tried it). When she’d moved in, the ellipse of the vodka bottle was about an inch from the top, and it receded almost as fast as your average white man’s hairline.
Needless to say, it was not much fun waking up early and having to be at work by 8am. I know, cry me a river. So, I’m at work all day dealing with the Christmas crowd, ringing up old lady underwear for the masses (folks are just in deniable about their actual bra size, kay?!). At lunch I call Miss Meredith, assuming she had left my apartment shortly after me (like she said… she didn’t have to, but she did say), and ol’ girl’s been kicking it at my pad all day with that bottle of kahlua, a scramp of milk, and my dog Bella. This didn’t actually surprise me too much, but she did visit me at work and bought old lady undies for a friend of hers, so it was nice to see her again. She is my bff afterall. At 5pm, I finally got off work and what do I find when I come home? A locked door! She never left the key! I had to scramble a spare from my family, and when I finally got into my apartment… the Kahlua was gone!!! I seem to recall another time when this happened, and I wrote a blog about it so I have the exact date… August 28th, 2007.
Picture this. Me. Lavender one piece. Beach blanket. Unshaved legs. Unkempt hair. No makeup. I’d been laying out for about 3 hours and then she leaves our apartment and locks the back door. I was locked out for 3 more hours… dehydrated, sunburnt, and pissed off, buddy, I was pissed off…”just don’t talk to me right now.” I know this seems like it was a long time ago, but really if you consider the few times I’ve actually left it up to her to lock the door then you would see straight away that our friend, Miss Meredith, has a serious issue with key theft. I promise to keep you posted on this nasty habit. I have to go and buy 3 damned Hideakeys… damnit!

The one and only 'Miss Meredith'

My first novel, Fluids, is set in 2000 and begins on 1st January.

2000 and the years leading up to it were an odd time – everyone seemed to think that something  bigger than them was about to jump in and ruin everything.  Unless you were preoccupied with your bank account defaulting to zero or the incineration of a thousand tins of beans, you were likely to expect an apocalyptic catastrophe any time soon, if not actually to wake up dead on New Year’s Day. So in the novel, someone wakes up dead on New Year’s Day, and the survivors spend their time trying not to be run over by forces outside their control.

Some other things that happened in and just before 2000 – the beginning of Friends Reunited and Big Brother, the first solar eclipse seen on the UK mainland in over 70 years, Sonique’s re-released single ‘It Feels So Good’  was number 1 in the UK chart for three weeks, most music was depressingly awful, the KLF planned to build ‘The People’s Pyramid’ out of recycled bricks, but more official and equally arbitrary millennial installations were built instead.

It will be strange waking up on 1st January 2010 and thinking it’s 10 years since the first page of my novel… (In terms of the events of the novel that is - it was actually written much more recently).

‘The Elastica Principle’ is now just over 36,000 words long and a first draft is in sight, maybe early next year. It’s a kind of ghost story and involves a dialect coach.

Bookmunch has listed what reviewers, including me, liked best in 2009.

Have a look at the tabs for an extract, more info on me and to see what people did on NYE 1999.

So, I’ve been watching all of these old timey traditional Christmas movies and the such. And, I thought to myself… ‘Damn! I need a housewife!’ The actresses did a splendid job portraying the 50’s housewife, so well, in fact that I actually took up baking for one afternoon. (Does Kahlua Brownies count?). About halfway through passing them out to ungrateful people, I realized that I would need meds to do this full-time, much less handle a toddler at the same time. My hat goes off to you work at home mothers. I saw a dateline special once where they did a study to gauge how much you would actually have to pay someone to replace a housewife/mother. They said it would take the pay of two, not one my brother, but two full-time jobs. What is that, twice what you make? So you would work at least 80 hours a week, and a full-time job is never just 40 hours a week. You get the picture. People, please appreciate your bakers and makers and decorators and kind neighbors this holiday season. You wouldn’t believe how long it took me to make those beautiful brownies… the grocery list and going to the store and liquor store, the mixing time, the baking time, the worrying and peaking into the oven… oh, uhhh, but damn they were good.
As for NanoWrimo, I did not write a total of 50,000 words in a month, I wrote 40,000 words, but am still writing the book, should be finished by Christmas. I would have made it too if I had not gotten a second job. But, if I had a housewife, I bet I could do 60,000 words in a month! I want homemade breakfast, and ironed clothes… you know, the basics. If you want to be my housewife, please comment. Please. I need a housewife. Please. I beg of you. Please.

26 year old zombie author has died durning the week of 7 December the cause is unknown. Novelist Z. A. Recht, is the author of Morningstar Strain: Plague of the Dead and Morningstar Strain: Thunder and Ashes.

I never met him in person but the few correspondences I had with him left me with that he was a fiery and smart kid.

His parents have set up a memorial scholarship fund in his name.

My thoughts are with his family.

http://permutedpress.com/smf/index.php?topic=7125.0

http://www.flamesrising.com/interview-with-zombie-novelist-z-a-recht/

http://gotld.blogspot.com/2009/12/z-recht.html

How can you respect white bread? I mean, c’mon. Soft, airy-fairy, doughy, wimpy stuff that you can wad up into a tiny ball. Bugs won’t hardly eat it. People love it. Mix it with water and it melts into a gooey, sticky mess. When the Bible says, “Cast your bread on the water and it will come back to you,” I think it was referring to white bread. People on the other side of the lake don’t want it. They send it back. Keep trying to send it to them and they’ll come and burn down your village. Especially the bakery. No white bread.

I once had an upperclassman in my college fraternity who made me clean his room when I was a freshman pledge. He then took a slice of white bread and wiped the room down. Door tops. Tops of door casings. Chair rails. Places I didn’t think to clean. He then made me eat the bread to teach me a lesson. Soon after, I switched to wholewheat.

Cool Dude Writers, of course, are kitchen magicians, and these days in our house we bake our own bread. I used to knead it by hand, but now we have a bread maker that makes the job real easy. We put in some water, olive oil, wholewheat baker’s flour, dense wholemeal flour, whole grains, and a bunch of other stuff that magically turns into this fantastic elastic dough. You can then let it stay in the bread maker, where it bakes to golden perfection, or yank it out and divide into baguettes or little rolls, or pound out flat, throw high in the air in a circular motion, let flop on the counter, smear with tomato sauce and other goodies and bake as pizza on a stone in the oven. Over the years, Wendy and I have fine-tuned this recipe to our liking.  It was perfect. Life was good. I was happy. No more white bread. Ever.

However, Wendy sometimes gets on health kicks and wants to start messing with perfection. You can see it in her eyes. They get this glassy, determined look, like a tiger about to strike. And she had that exact look in her eyes the day she came home from the Central Market and announced: “I’m adding millet to our bread.”

If you don’t know what millet is — it’s, well, bird seed, simple and plain. I once had a parakeet that loved millet. Parakeets are called “budgies” here in Australia — short for budgerigar — with the tight little Speedo swimming shorts that men wear called “budgie smugglers,” for reasons I won’t go into here.

Anyway, some countries consider millet a staple food. It’s a grain that is extremely high in protein as well as being alkaline.  Too many acid foods and beverages — like coffee, soft drinks, meat, white bread — can create conditions favorable to disease. Alkaline foods help fight disease. That’s why we need to eat fruits and veggies every day. Besides being full of nutrients, they are alkaline. So is millet. Which is why Wendy wanted to add it to our bread mix. Our perfect bread mix.

“I already eat enough alkaline foods,” I explained. “Besides, our bread is perfect.”
“This will make it better.”
“You can’t improve perfection.”
“We won’t know unless we try.”
“Millet’s bird seed! It’ll ruin the bread!”
“No, it won’t.”
Foot down. Executive decision:  ”Yes, it will!  Not going to happen!”
With glassy, determined look in her eye, like tiger about to strike: “Wanna bet?”

Wendy started to pour the millet into the bread maker.
I tried to stop her.
She dropped the cup.

If it had been flour, it would have made a messy pile on the counter and I would have had wipe it up. But it was millet. And each of the thousand or so little grains was perfectly spherical, like micro-BBs.  The stuff scattered everywhere. And then rolled even farther. Under furniture. In tiny cracks in our wooden floor. All across the living room rug. In fact — all over the house. I knew I was in trouble by the dagger looks I was getting from the tiger.

“Oops,” I said, smiling sheepishly. “I’ll help you clean it  up.”
“No, you won’t be helping me. Nor will I be helping you as you clean it up. The vacuum’s in the garage.”

I vacuumed millet for the next half hour, and to my surprise, I occasionally still find it hiding under bookcases and in other tight spots. And I’m a pretty good house cleaner.

But by far the greatest surprise was the bread. The millet added this kind of wild prairie taste that absolutely took our “perfect” bread to a whole new level. It was fantastic! And I cannot tell you how hard it is not to overdose on the stuff, especially when it comes fresh out of the oven. This stuff is perfection!

I feel obligated to take some of the credit here, because had I not protested the way I did, Wendy might have wimped out at the last minute and not added the millet. Think of what we would have missed out on had it not been for me.  I know, I know — I don’t swallow it, either.  But I had to try.

So this Cool Dude Writer had to eat his words that day.  But by far my greatest surprise — and pleasure — was eating that bread. That perfect bread. So the next time you come over for dinner…

James Houston Turner still takes partial credit for making perfect bread in his home in Adelaide, South Australia, where he writes thrillers and does his best to keep Wendy away from buckwheat, another alkaline grain.  He loves flying Qantas, and is astounded the company hasn’t asked him to be their chief bread consultant.  You may visit him at www.jameshoustonturner.com.

I like books and films where I’m transported to another place and time. I want to be swept up in the adventure or majesty of the moment… to suspend disbelief and soar, run, or cry with the characters as they struggle against the odds.

James Cameron’s wonderful 3D epic, Avatar, is just such a film and it wowed critics at its London premiere, with some early reviewers calling it “mind-blowing” and a game-changer in Hollywood for its digital effects.  Twitter also lit up with comments such as, “Cameron’s a freakin’ genius!”

Avatar takes place in 2154 on the mythical planet of Pandora. Earth has been stripped of its resources, so the greedy Resources Developmental Administration, backed by a ruthless military contractor, casts its covetous eyes on Pandora, a sensual, wild, and often dangerous planet filled with gargantuan trees, floating mountains, and wondrous creatures in a lush, luminescent jungle. It is truly spectacular world created by Cameron’s CGI wizardry.

The film’s main character is Jake Sully (an excellent performance by Australian actor, Sam Worthington), a former Marine who lost the use of his legs in battle. His scientist twin brother has just died and Sully, whose DNA matches that of his brother, has taken his place on a mission to Pandora, where a group of scientists led by Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) have spliced the DNA of certain humans (Sully is one) to that of the indigenous population, the feline-like, gracile, ten-foot-high Na’vi, to create avatars of the creatures, which are then brought to life while their human counterparts lie in a sort of computerized coffin in the lab, channeling thoughts and life to the avatars. The purpose is to become part of the Na’vi society to learn more about them.

But the Resources Development Administration wants Sully to secretly furnish intel on the Na’vi in order to defeat them. Being the good soldier that he is, Sully agrees. It is when Sully falls for princess Neytiri (voiced to perfection by Zoe Saldana) and begins to appreciate Na’vi ways, that he regrets his agreement and instead decides to help them defend their planet against the coming invasion.

There have been a few negative comments from critics. Not a lot, mind you, but a few. While appreciative of the film’s 3D special effects, they nevertheless see a hackneyed storyline: an invading government’s willingness to do anything to anyone in order to gain access to what is coveted, in this case a priceless mineral lode buried beneath the home of the Na’vi. Sound familiar? Of course. But hackneyed? Not at all. It’s a theme reminiscent of how Native Americans have been treated in America, and I applaud Cameron for it. It’s a reminder of all we can be — the depths and the heights.

Through the years, many people have been kind enough to rave about my books, so allow me to do the same here. This film deserves it.  After all, I’m a romantic and I like satisfying endings. I like being swept away with majesty, heroism and a great love story in the face of danger — where I fall in love again with the trials and wonder of falling in love.  Avatar has all this and more.  Five stars out of five from me.

I have a feeling one viewing just won’t be enough!

James Houston Turner writes thrillers from his home in Adelaide, South Australia. You may visit him at www.jameshoustonturner.com

This morning I read in the U.S.A. Today about the movies Invictus and Up in the Air, both new releases with interesting timing. Invictus details Mandela’s ascension to the presidency in South Africa, providing interesting parallels to the Obama presidency. Up in the Air tells the story of a corporate downsizer–but took six years to make, so its release during economic difficulties suggests a certain serendipity. Julie Powell’s new book Cleaving shares details of her marital infidelity as she achieved a certain celebrity status. With mixed reviews, Cleaving could get a boost from the Tiger Woods saga.

For years now, I have struggled with writing a novel. Other projects have come and gone. My hair is grayer, my middle thicker. I’ve gone to workshops in hopes of being laughed out of the room, only to get encouragement for my work. I hired someone to critique my novel, and she said it was one of her most enjoyable projects ever. Yet all would agree, including me, that the novel needs more work. I’ve written before about my elusive villain and how his motives slither toward and then away from me. The relationship between me and my novel has been a dysfunctional, love-hate roller coaster. I don’t quit because yoga has taught me the importance of exploring difficult, seemingly impossible poses. It took me two years to stay balanced in half moon, so why not take longer with a 400-page tome, if that’s what needs to happen? I keep making up reasons I should quit, but none of them are good. So I keep going.

While writing, I continue to read. Right now I’m into Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A Life by Gerald Martin. I like Garcia Marquez’s work. I love magical realism, and my novel is filled with it. Turns out that his masterwork, 100 Years of Solitude, took years to write and originally existed as a manuscript called The House. Mind you, I am not comparing myself to Garcia Marquez–but as I read his biography, I am reminded that all books come in their right time, and sometimes decades.

We as artists cannot control this timing. Sometimes, as in the case of Invictus and Up in the Air, the timing brings additional interest in and commercial success to a project. Sometimes, the timing causes troubles and heartache, as in movies that were pulled after 9/11 because their content hit too close to home. Sometimes the timing requires the writer to gain maturity and perspective in order to give the project what it needs.

Yesterday I gained some glimpses into solving some of the problems with Blood and Loam. I cut two chapters and one character, with ideas on how to convey the information through my villain…which will allow the reader (and me) to understand him better. I don’t know if this will be the last draft of the work, but I do know that I am getting close to resolving the issues that have kept me from submitting it. I don’t understand the mysterious ways of timing, though I do understand that in many ways I created my own suffering through all the stops and starts over the years. I don’t know if this book will be a commercial success or failure, or if it was just meant for me to heal some inner wound. I know that finishing this novel is just the beginning, because then I need to think about agents, editors, query letters, and, if someone takes on my work, more revisions. But after all these years, I am starting to understand the story that wants to be told. And that, after all these years, is deeply satisfying.

My first novel, Fluids, is set in 2000 and begins on 1st January.

2000 and the years leading up to it were a funny time – everyone seemed to think that something  bigger than them was about to jump in and ruin everything.  Unless you were preoccupied with your bank account defaulting to zero or the incineration of a thousand tins of beans, you were likely to expect an apocalyptic catastrophe any time soon, if not actually to wake up dead on New Year’s Day. So in the novel, someone wakes up dead on New Year’s Day, and the survivors spend their time trying not to be run over by forces outside their control. They’re neurotic like that.

Some other things that happened in and just before 2000 – the beginning of Friends Reunited and Big Brother, the first solar eclipse seen on the UK mainland in over 70 years, Sonique’s re-released single ‘It Feels So Good’  was number 1 in the UK chart for three weeks, most music was depressingly awful, the KLF planned to build ‘The People’s Pyramid’ out of recycled bricks, but more official and equally arbitrary millennial installations were built instead.

It will be strange waking up on 1st January 2010 and thinking it’s 10 years since the first page of my novel… (In terms of the events of the novel that is - it was actually written much more recently).

‘The Elastica Principle’ is now just under 35,000 words long and a first draft is in sight, maybe early next year. It’s a kind of ghost story and involves a dialect coach.

Have a look at the tabs for an extract and more info on me.

Literature & Fiction

Sag Harbor	Spooner	Cutting for Stone
The City &The City	Dead and Gone	American Gods
The Alchemist	The Kite Runner	Atlas Shrugged
Watership Down	Under the Dome	Danse Macabre

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I’m a Pulitzer Prize winning former Washington correspondent for the Boston Globe, Wall Street Journal and New York Times. Also served as a former top official of the Defense Department and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. I am currently an adjunct professor at the Journalism school of the University of Maryland. I also do a bit of strategic communications work on the side. I have published three novels.

In the rush of traffic round Etoile, the radiating spokes of the grand avenues revolved slowly around him, the sense of Paris like a great wheel, poised, rotating on the spindle of the Tower. Never mind London’s postal districts – packed like squares of wheat - a librarian’s vision: a grid, a timetable, a schedule of deliveries. Paris rotates in a map of the universe, in a vast orrery, a mechanism from Antikythera, its purpose inexplicable, its intricate movements jewelled by Cartier and Hermès.

The cab broke out of orbit round the Arc de Triomphe in a slingshot down Avenue de Wagram. Morgan leaned forward against the push of the acceleration to speak to the driver.

“En effet, Brasserie du Nord s’il vous plait; c’est juste en face de la gare.”

“J’connais. On mange bien là-bas.”

“Tout à fait.”

Away to the north-east, high over their heads, airliners were beating their way ponderously across the sky, flight-paths intersecting over the sullen streets of the suburbs and the cités, over the ice-cold compound of Drancy where the loudspeakers had boomed and screeched for three and a half terrible years, calling out lists of names for the transports to the East, convoy after convoy.

The cab-driver lowered his window, letting in a rush of sweet April air.

I’ve got a short story on The Pygmy Giant site.

I’ve reviewed Bad Marriage by John Tagholm for Bookmunch.

Have a look at the tabs for more info on me.