Outtakes from Nowhere

This has happened before. The day AFTER I finished writing my latest Kindle e-book, THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, I woke up that morning and things started popping into my head that SHOULD have been in the book. And I thought I was finished. (Actually, I just wanted the thing out of the house.) Same thing happened with my first e-book, the record-store memoir GUARANTEED GREAT MUSIC!
If any of the following interests or amuses you, you should see what's IN the book....

My wife Cyndi had this theory about the Beatles' ABBEY ROAD album. She thought it was a comedy record -- that all the songs connected together and commented on each other. That Mean Mr. Mustard and Polythene Pam on Side 2 were planning to climb out the Bathroom Window and go live with Ringo in his Octopus's Garden over on Side 1. That Ol' Flat Top and the Walrus in "Come Together" were gonna help Carry That Weight, but they couldn't because She's So Heavy. Or something like that. Oh, Darling....
This infuriated me. Because I didn't want to see an album I loved turned into a comedy farce by a no-nothing non-Beatles fan -- and especially not the perfect, symphonic second side of ABBEY ROAD.
Cyndi always threatened to write-up her bizarre theory, but she never did. Thank Ghod. It probably would have sent me into a screaming fit.
Or it would have been one of the best, funniest pieces of rock criticism ever.
That probably would have been WORSE....

You couldn't avoid country music in Moreland. With only six radio stations in Wyoming's Big Horn Basin and five of them country stations, a certain tolerance for country was required.
Cyndi got me hooked on some country singers, especially the women -- Mary-Chapin Carpenter, Pam Tillis, Trisha Yearwood, Wynonna. I liked Travis Tritt's "T-R-O-U-B-L-E," and the more rockin' stuff by Dwight Yoakam: "A Thousand Miles from Nowhere," "I Ain't That Lonely Yet," "As Fast as You."
But the women were amazing. Mary-Chapin Carpenter's COME ON COME ON was one of the great albums of its year. Trisha Yearwood didn't do much for me at first, 'til I was sucked in by "Wrong Side of Memphis" and Emmylou Harris's mournful "Woman Walk the Line." Then later Trisha got me with "She's in Love With the Boy," "X's and O's" and "Thinkin' About You."
Pam Tillis had a gorgeous voice and a great band. I couldn't understand why "When You Walk in the Room" wasn't a huge hit. Or "Melancholy Child." Or "Homeward Looking Angel."
But Mary-Chapin Carpenter was IT. Whenever I played "Passionate Kisses" I thought of Deb -- it was her theme song. It summed-up what I hoped, dreamed, fantasized. And I played it a LOT.

A molar on the lower right side of my mouth went bad -- started keeping me up all night in pain. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep, I could barely work or function at all. I asked my co-workers at the paper who was the best, cheapest dentist in town. I hated dentists.
When I called him -- in mid-February -- his receptionist said they might be able to fit me in around May. I said I'd be dead by then. I begged. I pleaded.
Finally she said come on in and wait in the lobby, and maybe they could squeeze me in somewhere. I mumbled my thanks.
I went in, and they got me into the doc's in 45 minutes. I begged him to pull my bad tooth, just rip it out of there.
"Oh, we don't want to do that if we can save it," he said.
"Sure," I said, "but how much? I'm not a rich man."
"Oh, I think we can do it fairly cheaply...."
He went to work, did a root canal on the bad tooth, built a new surface for it, got me out of pain, and never caused any further pain.
But the meter was always running. The root canal and repair job ended up costing $2,000. A quick extraction would only have cost me $200.
Another reason why I hate dentists....

There was a low-level bass tone that hung over the town. You could hear it especially well at night -- just a constant low-level hum, hovering behind everything. It never went away. You could hear it best on really cold winter nights. I could never figure out where it came from, and I could never hear it during the day.
Moreland had lots of possibilities for what big industry created the tone. The sugar-beet processing plant? The Pepsi bottling plant? The Crown aluminum-can manufacturing plant? They all ran 24/7. Could have been any of them. I never found out which one, and nobody else ever mentioned hearing the tone. But it was always there at night.
The Pepsi plant was a block down the street from the newspaper office, but you couldn't hear the tone there, not even late at night when I got off work.
But it was always there. I always wondered how many other people around town were laying in bed, listening to the hummmmmm....

Four books in a year! (Sort of....)

My newest e-book for Kindle, THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, is now available at Amazon.com's Kindle Store. This one is gonna cost you a dollar more -- $3.99 -- because it's ... Good Ghod! ... 256 pages long, about 50 pages longer than my first 3 e-books.
This one is "a newspaper novel." Anyone out there who managed to get through my newspaper memoir THE CONFESSOR will probably recognize the setting -- a small town in Wyoming that was home to the smallest daily newspaper in the country, where I worked for six years.
What this book does is pull together some of the funniest, most outrageous stories about working on newspapers ... that weren't already included in THE CONFESSOR. I was surprised how much good stuff I had left....
Though folks who've read CONFESSOR may recognize some of the events, they've all been re-written, extended, elaborated, messed with ... 90 percent of this book is all-new stuff nobody's read before.
The names have been changed, but the stories are all true. This is also fiction, so some of it's just plain made up....
And of course if you haven't read CONFESSOR, it's gonna be all new to you....
Unlike CONFESSOR -- in which it's now obvious to me that I was trying a little too hard to grind an axe -- this book has an upbeat, happy ending. I think you'll like it. I like parts of it very much, and it's an accurate portrayal of what living in an isolated, tiny town for six years felt like.
Most of the book was written in the month between the 4th of July and early August -- though I was adding new stuff all the way up to the end. Proofreading the book took a lot longer than I expected. I wanted to have it done by my birthday, Aug. 21.
Not sure what else to say except I never would have written this if I hadn't read half of Garrison Keillor's A RADIO ROMANCE ... which I couldn't finish, but which helped me think of a way that I could get this material out.
I think this is what writers do -- cannibalize their lives and make stories out of what they've seen and done. Anyway, once I got going I couldn't stop -- which is usually a good sign for me.
Hope you like, and even if you don't, let me know what you think. I'm not getting rich doing this, but the feedback has been nice....
More soon.

A few things about Al Green

Been playing Al Green's imported best-of CD THE SUPREME AL GREEN at work a lot lately, and here's some of the things that have impressed me as I've hummed along with Reverend Al:
* That sneaky descending guitar figure that comes in at the end of "Call Me," his vocal throughout, and the modest lyrics: "Just remember the time we had/And how right I tried to be...."
* The horns and organ on "Let's Get Married," and the fact that Al isn't really that thrilled about getting married -- the depth of his commitment is "Might as well...."
* The really great simple-as-a-nursery-rhyme choruses on "L-O-V-E, Love."
* The way he sings these lines in "Take Me to the River": "I wanna know/Can you tell me?/Our love will stayyyyyyy...."
* The lyrics on "Love Ritual" -- the ones I can make out -- are pretty great ... if "lyrics" is the right word to describe the words on a piece that seems so improvised. I hated it at first, thought it was a comedy throwaway, but it works, the groove's pretty great -- and Al's feeling about how sacred love is really comes across. Not sure about some of what he's ... chanting(?) though.... (I hear "wanna" and "loser" -- can that possibly be right?)
* On "Full of Fire," the way he sings: "There's some things that I know/But I want the horns to blow...."
* There's a hilarious one-liner near the end of his remake of the Temptations' "I Can't Get Next to You," ... which I will leave for you to discover....
* After all of this, "Full of Fire" (his last big hit?) almost sounds like a return to the basics, fairly simple dance music. Its sound doesn't seem that far from his first hit "Tired of Being Alone."
* True confessions: I HATED most of these songs when I was growing up. They weren't loud enough or obvious enough for me then. I thought "Let's Stay Together" was great, but the rest just left me cold and I was turning the radio dial trying to find something else. As a result, these songs really hit me now -- just like with Aretha and Otis Redding and....
* So, I love about a dozen out of 18 tracks on the best-of.
* But so far, I can't take ANY of the SLOW stuff. It's EXCRUCIATING!

...Got 40 more pages of THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE proofread on Thursday, only 40 pages to go. It might be done before Christmas. I like parts of it very much. And it's still 90-percent all-new stuff....
...The silly horror story I sent to Tor.com back in April got REJECTED, I found out in an e-mail yesterday. That's OK -- I didn't really expect them to take it. It was just a joke I couldn't resist writing. It was either TOO silly or not silly ENOUGH. So I may look at it at some point and send it out again....
More soon....

Book update, etc.

Work proceeds on my "good-parts version" newspaper novel/e-book THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE. Wrote 3,000 words of NEW stuff today before coming to work -- wrote 8,000 words of NEW stuff on Tuesday. The thing has its own momentum now, it's over 64,000 words long, and I MIGHT have it done by my birthday on the 21st, though I think that's pushing it. I think it's good -- and it's way happier than the newspaper memoir was. Even the stuff I was not thrilled about writing has come out OK, and I'm surprised I had this much NEW material left.

Would like to get the thing done by the 21st so I can have bragging rights -- 4 books written in a year! But we'll see how it goes.

I'm still not rich from doing this yet, but I'm hoping....

Oh, started my "side job" on Monday, the hottest day of the year here, so far. Dusted-off a ceiling fan, cleaned paint off a heating vent, sanded down a hunk of wood, talked some, got a tour of the guy's house that he's remodeling room-by-room. ... After 3 hours he tossed me $50 and told me to get lost 'til next week! Hey, I'll take $50 for doing Nothing Much anytime!

I officially cashed-out my vacation week today so I can stay ahead of the bills -- so no trip home to Idaho 'til next year! Am also piling up stuff for my next trip to Half-Price Books in Tacoma ... but don't send money yet, I'm actually in pretty good shape right now....

Hey, it sucks about Robin Williams. He was really great. Depression is the worst. This country has got to wake up about mental health issues. This stuff really messes people up.

Too bad about Lauren Bacall, too. She was one classy dame....

More soon....

Notes from the bookstore, etc.

Thank Ghod for the folks at Half-Price Books in Tacoma. I took five huge boxes of music and books to them on Tuesday, figuring I might get $50 from them, maybe $75 if they were generous.
They gave me $160 -- enough for me to pay my roommate the rent money he expected, grab a couple cheap books to bring home (two travel books by Paul Theroux), and crawl through the rest of this week until payday arrives again.
I told the Half Price folks they were wonderful -- they probably wondered what kind of meds I was on.
It's possible I might miss some of what I took in -- but most of it was music I couldn't get into, vinyl I had duplicated on CD, books I couldn't get into, or that I'd read once and liked but probably would never have time to re-read -- life's too short now and I've got my own stuff to do.
I might miss some of the music -- Gong, Soft Machine, Hatfield and the North, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Strawbs, Dixie Dregs, Return to Forever, etc. But hey -- if it don't work for you, there's no point forcing it, right? So.
I'm already thinking there's more stuff in the house I might be able to sell.
And my painting/cleanup job starts on Monday. If I survive, it should be good for an extra $60 a week for four hours of work.
I might not starve yet.

93 crazy people grabbed copies of my record-store-memoir e-book GUARANTEED GREAT MUSIC! while it was available free last week. Ghod bless you all. I didn't get rich doing this, but I hope y'all might take a chance on the NEXT one....
Work continues on my newspaper novel, THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE. Am still writing a couple of new scenes each day. Am now to the point where I am streamlining the plot and reading through my "framework" for novelization purposes. Anybody Out There who survived reading my newspaper memoir THE CONFESSOR will probably recognize some of the situations -- but this version is funnier. And a lot of it's brand new.
I'll keep you posted -- I'd like to have the new book done by Aug. 21 so I can say I wrote four e-books in a year, but that might be rushing it. Should at least have something fun to read by the fall.
More soon....

"Sales" update 2

Good Lord -- So far, 73 crazy people have picked up FREE copies of my record-store memoir/e-book GUARANTEED GREAT MUSIC! from Amazon.com's Kindle Store. If you haven't already read this shocking expose that blows the lid off of what REALLY happened at record stores across the country back in the early 1980's ... well, you've got a couple more days to grab it for free. Just visit Amazon's Kindle Store and punch in the title. And while you're there, you can download the first 20 pages of any of my e-books for FREE to try them out.
Of course, I don't get rich when you do this. But maybe you should just send your troublesome spare cash to me at this blog. Ghod knows I could use it. Maybe I'll put out a tip jar....
Oh, and my newspaper memoir THE CONFESSOR will be available free the week of Aug. 21....

Meanwhile, work continues on my small-town newspaper novel, THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE. I'm still writing a couple of new scenes each day -- as happened with the record-store book, the more I remember, the more I CAN remember. For those of you who survived reading THE CONFESSOR, this novel will be "the good parts version," with more NEW lighter and funnier stories. I'm surprised by how much material I still have. Still hoping to have something completed by the fall.

Meanwhile, due to the cutbacks at work, I'm looking toward working through my planned vacation to try and pile up a little extra cash and stay ahead of the bills. I'm also looking at taking a part-time job helping a guy re-paint his house. He says he'll pay cash! My problem is I have too much overhead from old bills, and being cut back 10 hours each month is fairly serious money ... which is starting to have its impact felt by yours truly. I'm thinking I may not have another day off for awhile....

If you're wondering, there's a reason why I'm writing here more often. The girlfriend and I haven't broken up, but we're seeing a LOT less of each other, due to a clash I had with her 31-year-old son a month or so ago. We'd Had Words a few times before, but this last clash was IT. I'm tired of being messed with by drunks, and I'm tired of his attitude. So I'm staying away. Life's too short -- who needs the headaches?

By the way, this blog passed 40,000 page-views awhile back. Thank you all.

Hoping you and yours are well....
More eventually....