Feb 21

Ask Geppetto (or Dr. Frankenstein)

There’s a quote, attributed to the father of the late novelist, Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and Sometimes a Great Notion:  “Good writing ain’t necessarily good reading.”

Good writing is more easily defined than good reading.  But for me the best measure of a ‘good read’ is when the book–its people and the world they inhabit, whenever, wherever and whatever it is–creates such a spell that I forget about my world and certainly the author’s presence.

A cinematic equivalent of this is the point in a movie, starring a well-known actress or actor, when I forget just who it is playing the hero or heroine.

Where does this magic come from?

How does a writer summon the lightning needed to animate his monster?

Make-up, costume design, a polished fake accent help are prosaic details that help in a movie.  Or exhaustive detail and backround for the people in a book.  The author sits back, pleased:  “Now THIS is characterization!”

Nope, that’s not enough.

It isn’t enough to simply know your characters very well.

I recently finished a novel that was a mega-bestseller, with thousands of reviews on Amazon.  The library waiting list was so long I had to wait six months for my turn.  Now, the writing was good, uber-clever; the kind of stylish, witty prose that makes New York editors drool and impresses a lot of readers.  Machiavelli couldn’t have done better plotting this story of a marriage gone VERY bad, a steroidal War of the Roses.  Never mind the dueling first-person narratives, both equally unreliable; or laughable implausibilities, or the “I’ve-run-out-of-gas-ending”.

I was SOOO glad I checked the book out from the library instead of buying it. I began skimming after a hundred pages   Obviously more beaches were filled with people liking this one than not.  But I couldn’t have cared less what happened to the primary characters.  It’s hard to generate much tension or suspense if the reader remains distant from the people in a book. Me, I gotta be close enough to smell their sweat, feel their trembling, hear their whispers.

What happened?   The author didn’t care a whit for her characters.  She obviously spent a lot of time and energy on them but they remained, ultimately, an excercise for showing off.  See how clever I am!  See how I move my carefully detailed marionettes here, then there!  See how dexterously I manipulate their strings!

She forgot that the primary relationship of an author is to her characters.  Love them, hate them (obsession is even better) but don’t treat them as mere chess pieces.  Carving them out of your imagination with painstaking craft is not enough.  You can’t make things easy for them; far from it.  But you have to want something more for them:  the best of fates or the worst.  You have to want to wash their feet or wring their necks.  You may think that’s easier to do if you’re pulling on their strings but it’s the opposite.

To source the magic you have to do more than artfully carve or stitch together your creations.  You have to imagine them without strings, or cue the lightning.

Just ask Geppetto.

Or the other guy–but knock loudly first and don’t stare at his assistant’s hump.

Jan 21

Lincoln’s Last Letter

In the movie Lincoln, the president spent part of the last day of his life–April 14, 1865–on an outing with his wife Mary and then later had some business to attend to with members of his cabinet, before hurriedly keeping an appointment with his wife to go to a play at Ford’s Theater.

What Spielberg’s movie didn’t show was that Lincoln also spent some time that day writing letters.  Here’s what may be the last one he ever wrote.  The original is on display in the Smithsonian’s American History Museum:**

 

Executive Mansion

Washington, April 14, 1865

Mr. Hugh Ridd Morgan

My dear sir:

           Your courageous efforts on behalf of Lt. Levi Friedman have been known for some time by the Shearith Israel congregation, the New York synagogue of which Lt. Friedman was a member.  I have the honor to know of it as well now, the facts of the incident having been related to me by Rabbi Arnold Fischel of the same congregation.

            Dr. Fischel had previously brought to my attention several years ago the matter of a lack of Jewish chaplaincy in the Army.  That inequality has been amended and so has justice been dealt in the individual matter of the naval captain who abandoned Lt. Friedman to certain death.

           After investigation of this unfortunate episode the captain was relieved of his command and otherwise reprimanded.  I wish it were within my power as well to amend the grief of Lt. Friedman’s family over his loss during the assault upon Ft. Fisher in January of this year.  I have been told he fell after wresting enemy colors from a parapet.

           It is a less solemn purpose here to humbly and belatedly offer you recognition for helping this brave Union officer escape from a particular Egypt and across the water, where he might rejoin his fellow patriots in our Cause; including, perhaps, men of color that you evidently and earlier helped to freedom also.

           Given the difficult loyalties of your portion of the Chesapeake you not only risked your life but also those of your family with an action prompted only by conscience and without benefit of drums, bugles or the regiment’s honor.  You have my heartfelt thanks and admiration.

           Your trade as a miller was mentioned.  It strikes me that a nation is, in the larger respect, much like a gristmill, with its diverse and complex machinery and gearing, the clatter and rumbling of the wheel and–you must know this all too well–its constant need for attention and repair.

           What has turned the Wheel of this Union since its inception has been, in a loftier sense, the pursuit of the ideal of democracy, a belief in the rights of humanity, and the willingness to accept and share the responsibilities that necessarily attend our liberties.  That flow, always of varying constancy, as with a millrace, had been greatly diverted; indeed, threatened to cease altogether.

            You, and the man you once sheltered beneath the stones of your gallant enterprise, have done as much as any to restore it.

                       Very truly yours,

                       A. Lincoln

                **Okay, so the letter’s not REALLY at the Smithsonian.  But you CAN find it in Morgan’s Mill.

                 Honest.

 

Dec 21

Christmas List

The call came several days before Christmas that year:  a  prominent and respected  New York-based editor of sf/fantasy, whom I’d met through a writing workshop, wanted to buy my novel.

As Christmas gifts go, selling a first novel is way up there on the all-time list (though the top spot will always be the December 22 birth of my son Brian).

The book was The Shadow of His Wings and  will be reissued, new cover and all, as an e-book sometime in early January of 2013.  Eventually there’ll be a new POD version, but for now it’s the e-corral of Kindle, Nook, Kobo and Smashwords, folks.

Shadow introduced the Six Kingdoms world, and the second book in the series, The Mace of Souls, will also be reissued as an e-book  early next spring.

Over the years there have been some people who read those books and wondered if this Bruce Fergusson was ever going to write another fantasy book set in the world of Shadow and Mace.  What the hell happened to him?

Was he whisked away into the the Federal Witness Protection program?  He does live in Seattle, after all, where that other guy  from Goodfellas wound up, exiled to the bland world of suburbia, his neighbors none the wiser that he once was a wise-guy.

The short version, by way of explanation to  readers I left in the lurch, is that I wanted to see if I could write something besides fantasy.

A little longer version includes the fact that there happen to be priorities more important than, well, making up stories at the pace you (or the publishing world for that matter) would like.

Still, I always intended to return to  the Six Kingdoms and I have—with Pass on the Cup of Dreams, which will be published not only in e-format but also in a POD edition in early summer, 2013.    The novel picks up the story of Falca Breks and others where we left them at the end of The Mace of Souls, and by the end of the book there will be echoes from Shadow as well.

In conjunction with the publication of Pass on the Cup of Dreams, I’ll be offering on my website a free download of an illustrated 50-page Six Kingdoms Codex, which will include a new introductory short story, historical backround of the kingdoms, glossary and maps.  A role-playing game based on the Six Kingdoms world is also in the works, maybe in time for next Christmas.  We’ll see.

Next up:  the 4th book in the series, Kraken’s Claw.  I’m working on it now: Falca has some new business to attend to in the southern kingdom of Keshkevar and by the end of the book he’s going to be very surprised when he runs into some old business he thought he’d finished.

I’d love to finish the novel perhaps two Christmases from now. Of course, there will be no call from a New York editor–a ghost from Christmas past–for this one but that’s okay.  I’m learning to live without traditional publishing’s gate-keeping Scrooges, those few less Christmas cards sent and received.

In the meantime, I’ll be reissuing The Piper’s Sons, a psychological suspense novel, and publishing a brand-new one, Two Graves for Michael Furey, which is set in the Pacific Northwest and also the Erie Canal region of upstate New York.

I mentioned priorities earlier and right now there’s one that can’t wait, so I gotta go.

My wife and I just got a rescue puppy.  Her name’s Olivia and she’s about 4 months old, a Lab mix of some sort.  She’s a sweet-heart, definitely top-ten material for a list of best Christmas presents ever–no question there–and right now I have to interrupt my business with Falca Breks to take her outside for a walk around the block so she can do her own.

Nov 21

Hoarding

 

           It’s time for it all to go, all the writerly detritus from a time when King Paper still ruled.  Oh, there will be more, from books as yet unwritten, but there has to be room for it, and presently there isn’t.

           There are far too many apple boxes filled with: drafts of the seven novels written so far, and two that I abandoned early on—Titannis and The Alexandria Connection; files and more files of ideas and material I gathered for research; lists of literary agents, 99 per cent of whom I stalked to no avail; letters to editors and other writers, (including Stephen King who graciously agreed to blurb The Piper’s Sons, but tragically had a near-fatal accident before he could do so); stories and essays that didn’t make the cut, and too many extra copies of those that did.

             And let’s not forget that big cloth bag so  plumply stuffed with rejections I could use it as a pillow if I wasn’t worried about nightmares and useless, sleep-depriving speculation on what-might-have-been—the reminder that (cue John Cleese’s lament from the movie Clockwise) “I can handle the despair; it’s the hope that crushes me.”

             On second thought, maybe I’ll save the bag of rejections.

             Shocked are you?  Shouldn’t those be the first to get trashed or better yet, burned?

             Naah.  It’d be like returning to the infamous and now defunct island prison where you had been held captive for many years before you miraculously escaped, and erasing all the scratches you made on a wall of your cell to mark each passing month—the evidence that you somehow managed to survive.

             I suppose that’s the essence of hoarding:  to keep the proof that you once existed, even though it’s highly likely your name won’t be listed among the credits of The Movie whose end none of us ever gets to see.

             Still, I’m resolved to get rid of most of the evidence, anyway.  Who wants to see it?  My kids, grand-kids to come?

            I think not. Call it an act of love to save them the inevitable chore of deciding which crap to save and which to trash. Or is it more to keep the illusion that I actually knew what I was doing all along?  That’s the downside of hoarding, you see:  there’s no wiggle-room if you want others to remember you not as you were, but as you wanted or pretended to be.  Too late for that now.

            A biographer? Hmmm…well, now that you mention it…

           Okay, if there’s one of them out there somewhere with, uh, nothing better to do, I suppose I could save some letters—those quaint things people used to write to each other and think nothing of waiting a week or two for a reply—but forget about the racy stories I penned to my wife when we were courting.  Good luck trying to convince her to let anyone read them.

            Oh, there’s one item I’ll definitely keep:  the ancient Royal Standard typewriter I used for my first two books, or was it three?  It sits on a desk adjacent to the big one, a scarred, derelict satellite to its electronic primary.  Occasionally I tap one of the keys that’s still functional, just so I can remember the sound of writing, the way the room was filled with a clackety-clack when things were going good.

           Sure, Dell PC or Royal Standard, writing is writing.  And a home is a home.  But it will always somehow seem more of one when hearth smoke can be seen purling from the chimney.

Oct 24

Kleroterias

Ancient Greece has often been called the cradle of democracy. Sure, most of the people living in its city-states were not allowed to be citizens, and women couldn’t vote or own property (at least Sparta got the latter right). Still, they had a pretty good thing going, considering the alternatives elsewhere at the time. According to the historian James Davidson, “Athens was not only a model democracy, in many ways it was also a paradigm of the minimalist state vaunted by today’s extreme libertarians.”

But there’s one aspect of the Greek model—we’ll specify the Athenians—that’s been generally overlooked: the use of a lottery in much of their political processes. They had an Assembly, in which all citizens were eligible to participate, but they used a lottery to select citizens to participate in a smaller Council of 500, which ran day-to-day business. And they used lottery selection for jury-panels and other committees and magistrates. The Athenians were obsessed about keeping money and influence out of the system as much as possible. They even constructed lottery machines (kleroterias) to ensure fairness of selection. Davidson again: “The lottery-machines were a kind of bulwark against the constant threat of anti-democratic forces…”

So with our election only weeks away and its cost expected to rise, before it’s over, to a billion dollars, here’s a modest ‘back to the future’ idea.

First of all, what say we require a mandatory $5 contribution from each tax-payer, toward a pool of money used to finance Congressional races for the Senate and House of Representatives? Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country? Well, the cost of a grande mocha or a jumbo bag of potato chips doesn’t seem too much to ask to help take money out of politics. One party’s stupendous sums of money is, of course, touted as the other’s means for corruption, and that’s the problem: it’s a political arms race.

Next, we pick the president by lottery. If the Greeks could devise a machine for this, I’m sure we can do the same.

Here’s how it might work.

Congressional leaders of both parties (in addition to a lottery-selection of others) would select five presidential candidates each, for a total of ten possible winners, from the Senate and House—so five from each party–the only stipulation being that each had served at least one term. Also, state governors could be selected as choices for the ten, again with the same proviso that they had served as least one full term as governor. Needless to say, the philosophies and beliefs of those selected would reflect those of each political party in general. Someone who’d gone on record espousing annexation of Mexico or war with China wouldn’t make the cut. The danger of one party ‘stacking the deck’ with their five choices is minimized by the lottery selection of the committee itself. See?

All ten potential winners would be vetted by the lottery committee, followed by a national ‘getting-to-know-you’ period of perhaps three months. Appearances on “Dancing With the Stars” would be strictly optional but ’60 Minutes’ might be helpful.

Then the Presidential Lottery, the super Power-ball of lotteries—without the money.

The winner would serve a single term of, say, seven years. He or she would be allowed to pick the vice-president but again the same stipulations would be required.

With this method we could hardly do worse than we have in the past. Yes, we got Lincoln and Roosevelt; we also got Coolidge, Hoover and Hayes, McKinley and Taft–and the guy who got us into this mess of the last four years (his last name begins with a “B”, not his first). And I’d be willing to take my chances of having a lottery choose a secretive and smarmy vulture capitalist who put his dog in a cage and strapped it on the roof of his car enroute to the family vacation.

That billion dollars will certainly keep rising for the next election. Oh, you say, the crucible of a presidential campaign vets the candidate, giving us the best qualified? That’s debatable but even it did to a degree, is it worth a billion dollars?

No direct participation by the people with their vote? Well, half of us don’t vote anyway. And a presidential lottery might force us to pay a LOT closer attention to the senators, representatives and governors for whom we DO vote.

Getting the money out of it is the crucial thing. Our elections are increasingly being bought by those with the bigger bucks, our candidates essentially being picked for us by the very wealthy. The Greeks gave us a word for that, too: oligarchy.

In the meantime, the choice this November seems clear enough to me, and it’s NOT Mr. 47% who represents a political party which has perfected the use of the Big Lie, where up is down, black is white, falsehood is truth and strength is weakness; which believes only they have a fundamental right to power, and is attempting to suppress the voting rights of as many American citizens as they can in order to get it before the demographic pendulum swings forever away from them.

Sep 20

Do-Over

 

I just watched the latest post-apocalypse offering, the first episode of the television series Revolution. They’re giving us a future with lots of swords, crossbows, horses, bad-guy militias, and no electricity (though someone’s secretly holding out on that, so stay tuned).

It got me thinking about some of the others in this ‘shit’s hit the fan’ genre: Alas, Babylon, On the Beach, Malevil, A Canticle for Leibowitz, Damnation Alley, John Christopher’s The Ragged Edge and No Blade of Grass; J.G. Ballard’s The Crystal World, The Wind from Nowhere, and The Drowned World; and Road Warrior, The Postman, The Road, World Made by Hand, The Handmaid’s Tale; S.M. Stirling’s novels of The Change. Believe it or not I actually liked Waterworld more than The Hunger Games, so I won’t hold it against you if you stop reading this now. The list goes on and on and could be expanded to include invasions from outer space, but we have enough to worry about with nuclear war, socio-economic collapse, super-plagues and climatic upheaval.

It almost seems as if writers, no matter where they are on the literary spectrum, feel compelled to try their hand at post-apocalypse. I did at one time. A friend and I began a novel called The Aftermath Letters, but he moved away and the novel died.

Some might say that of all the factors that contribute to becoming a writer, an early dissatisfaction or unhappiness with the world is near the top of the list. Why else retreat, escape into the realm of, well, do-over?

As this phenomenon is really all about displacement from what we currently experience, it’s prime territory for science-fiction and fantasy: that fresh start among the stars or a return to non-technological surroundings here, complete with those bows and arrows, swords, and horsies to ride. There’s often the suggestion that a lack of refrigeration somehow makes things better. There will be few of us left to loot the ruins, naturally. Post-apocalypse, by definition, can’t really work if there’s a LOT of us still around—which could be a contributing factor in its popularity given traffic jams and long lines at Costco.

Whence the fascination with our collective mortality? It certainly is nothing new. Our ancestors were ALL survivalists, ALL the time. And they were obsessed with predictions of the end of the world. Who wouldn’t be after plagues, the worst of which wiped out what?–a third of Europe’s population? Or the fall of Rome, or the cultural memory of that pre-Biblical flood.

Ever since we took a breather from clubbing the rival clan to death in the next cave over by adorning our own with paintings, we’ve been running neck and neck with our own worst instincts. The scorecard is impressive on both sides of human capabilities. We remain the ultimate predator species (count the ways) and with that status, of course, comes the awareness—call it fear—that we may yet meet our match. And like Pogo once said, it could well be us.

So we’re living on borrowed time and we know it. Always have, even when there wasn’t too many of us. Will there be enough food or water to sustain us all? Can we develop sufficient alternative sources of energy before the oil runs out? Can we adapt to climate change? The more inter-dependent and complex the technology, the easier it is to break down. Can we keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists and rogue states? Never mind the rogue asteroid. The odds are still with us there for a while, so that one’s off the list. Whew!

I live in Edmonds, Washington, within a mile or so of the ferry landing where the submarine sailor in On the Beach jumped ship, deciding that was as good a place as any to live out the remaining radioactive hours of his life, a fictional fact that the local Chamber of Commerce boosters of this lovely town neglect to mention. I imagine in a few hundred years my house, set on a forested ridge, will be prime waterfront property when the polar caps have shrunk to the size of Rhode Island.

In the meantime, I plan to enjoy every weekly episode of Revolution, to get used to things as they may well be, get a few pointers, you know? My wife and I already heat our house exclusively with a very efficient wood-burning stove. We got a rebate from the gas company so I’ll take their word for it that we’re a wee part of the solution. So we have something to cook our food on and keep us warm for the…do-over. Got lots of trees for firewood—too many, really. Water? Check. We’re in the Pacific Northwest, though I wouldn’t complain about a little less rain. And we can always expand our garden. I could give my wife a stockpile of seeds for Christmas. A thoughtful gift, considering, but hardly commensurate with the K-Bar knife she gave me last year. (I haven’t used it yet, but it sure is nice to look at).

So I’m thinking his-and-hers bows and arrows. We can practice in the backyard, near where we’ll dock the boat if things, uh, move ahead more quickly than expected.

Aug 22

The Wall

 

Let’s face it: being a writer is like having homework every day for the rest of your life, someone once said.  Homework has gone from pencils and pens to typewriters to laptops, but a few things haven’t changed.  One is the tyranny of the rectilinear blankness staring you in the face, whether it’s a sheet of paper or a computer screen.

Another is Procrastination, one the literary Four Horsemen, the others being Writer’s Block, Perfectionism and Fear of Rejection.  Close cousins all.

The late E.B White, the New Yorker  essayist and author of Charlotte’s Web and co-author of The Elements of Style, had a wonderful excuse for procrastination when he was living on a farm in Vermont.  The story goes that a  reporter came for an interview, found him out building a stone wall, and asked  why he was doing that instead of writing.  The response:  “Because building a stone wall is easier than writing.”

Now, there’s a couple of things about the property my wife and I bought several years ago.  The house lacked a cellar or garage, so no workshop in which to make stuff–a golden-oldie that enabled my procrastination for years elsewhere.  And the back yard sloped down way too much, making it useless for, say, croquet, badminton and bocce.  Of course, my wife and I could not care less about those particular activities.  But still, what seemed needed was more…level.  Sure, we had a deck extending from the back of the house, but it’s nice to be able to look out onto something, right?

We also had a redundant circular driveway in the front.

The solution was obvious, to me at least.

A wall.

Make that a wall for a terrace four feet high along the 50 foot length, with tapering 25 foot sides.

The base came from big flat chunks of the asphalt driveway I ripped up and hauled back.  I helped a neighbor break up a concrete patio and he was more than willing to donate the remains to the cause.  I busted up an unwanted concrete walkway and part of the concrete pad where a garage once was.  Halfway through this, our next door neighbor, a contractor of some sort, was aghast that I was using a sledgehammer, pickaxe and shovel to do the job, and offered the use of his jackhammer.  I tried it but his cure wasn’t so much better than my disease of preferring manual labor.  “You must like to sweat,” he said.

I suppose I do.  It’s easier than writing.

The enclosure of the terrace wall had to be filled in, of course–about forty yards of dirt, it turned out. Enter a succession of  dump trucks–construction guys only too eager to get rid of fill dirt they’d have to pay to dump elsewhere.   I sifted each freebie load, shovel-full by shovel-full, to get rid of stones large and small and took countless wheel-barrow loads  out back.  Another neighbor further afield wanted ten yards of front-yard dirt out of his life, so that helped.  A pleasant fellow he was, even loaned me his pickup truck for the hauling.  He had the radio dial tuned to Rush Limbaugh, and a copy of Tom Paine’s Common Sense on the front seat, so I figured I was doing my part for bipartisanship by transferring this Tea-bagger’s huge mound of dirt  to my back yard.  (After all, Rush,  it doesn’t matter where the soil comes from; grass will grow but you gotta water it.)

And the grass is doing fine.  My wife has planted a lovely border of colorful flowers on the inside perimeter, fill-up stations for hummingbirds.  True, during the months of work I often found myself going in later for my afternoon writing sessions and surfacing a little earlier to make the most of the daylight, depending on the season, for The Wall took the better part of three to finish.  The book (that would be Pass on the Cup of Dreams) got done, but yes, it might have gotten done a little quicker without The Wall.  Still, there’s always a price to pay if you’re going to do it right—procrastination that is.

So, what’s next? I’m a little concerned because I’ve begun a new novel.  More homework.

Whatever it is, no more dirt.  I’m done with moving dirt.

Jul 30

Thefts

Morgan’s Mill is finally out as an e-book.  A lot of research went into this one and almost as many revisions as the years it rode the bench.   The seed of the original idea came from some family history — maternal ancestors who once owned a small gristmill across the road from their farm in Eastern Shore Maryland.  At one point I thought about trying to persuade the then owner of the property to let me salvage the  millstones from the ruins.  But I was living in Seattle and nothing came of it except one of the ideas that later coalesced into the plot of a suspense novel.

Writing about what you know or personally experience is a terrific idea—if you are fortunate (or not) to be living or insist on living an eventful, dramatic life.  You can fill in the blanks as to what kind of life that might be, who’s done it and lived to tell the tale.  We all have our favorites.

Some writers, by choice or fate, live and then write about experiences others wish they’d had.  Some manage to put a book together in the midst of squalls and battles, whether internal or external, defying a prevalent belief that in order to write novels you have to lead a fairly placid life—hence all the novel-writing college professors.

Well, I’m neither a college professor nor have I had the sort of life that would make for a juicy memoir, so I have to make do with research, a pretty active imagination and…theft.

I don’t mean stealing the published words of others or, if you’re a memoir-monger, fabricating events that never happened in order to make your  life book-worthy.  (Actually, we’re all a little guilty.  We may not wind up apologizing for lies on prominent talk shows but we all tweak the past, to one degree or another — fake notches to the belt, the touchdown or home run that never happened, or reversing the score in the game of who dumped whom).

No, I mean the theft of, say, family history, conversations overheard in the office or at Starbuck’s; stories of things that happened to others that are just too delicious not to scribble down and stuff in a book somewhere; thefts of landscapes and what happened on a city corner as you walked to work; the mole on your third-grade teacher’s face; the laugh of your first or last love; the way a particularly disliked and useless boss sniffed his fingers when he didn’t think anyone was watching.

Writers are thieves, with boundless opportunities for theft.

Much like Jimmy Davis in Morgan’s Mill, I used to keep a wooden box I made myself, to carry around wherever I went, just in case I saw or heard or thought of something that needed to live on after the moment.  The box — hinged cover and all — was a handy place to stash the loot. When it became filled with notes and observations I’d hastily recorded, I’d type them up for later use.  My sons still kid me now about the habit, though at the time I undoubtedly embarrassed the hell out of them.

For a writer everything goes ‘into the hopper’ which is, of course, what millers used to do with the grist—the grain—that would come out the other end as flour for bread.

There’s a lot in Morgan’s Mill that was researched, or came out of the box I used to carry until it was retired for a newer model.  But there’s one theft that has to come with a confession.  You can read more about it in the essay I’ve posted about a friend of mine I named  “C.”.

Now, it’s been a while and I’m pretty sure C.  never did finish the book he was working on.  But the title he gave it was too good to remain dormant forever.  So I stole it, three words is all, to live on as a small part of Morgan’s Mill.

If you’re still out there, C., and you wonder whatever happened to your comrade-in-literary-arms, and happen to read Morgan’s Mill, just remember that you still owe me 750 bucks.

We’ll call it even.

Jul 06

Muselair?

It’s one of those names fantasy writers like to use (often too much; I’m guilty of that) instead of a contemporary word—like study, office or library—that might break the spell, setting a reunion of old questing elves in Poughkeepsie, for instance, to mangle Ursula LeGuin’s well-known aphorism.

It’s a place where you go to reflect or write, or work alone in this world or an imagined one; a place where the Muse knows where to find you, or where you go to find her—I never know which.

It’s a quiet room.

Wherever I’ve lived I’ve always had one and I suppose at one time it was the place where I went to build models. All the pieces were there, scattered on a desk or in the box, ready to be assembled and  painted, the sum of all those parts later displayed.

Many years ago I wrote an Op-Ed essay for the New York Times—you can find it archived on this website [here]—about the last model I made when I was well past boyhood: the space shuttle Columbia.

I thought Ray Bradbury might enjoy reading it.  I loved his short stories and The Martian Chronicles and Something Wicked This Way Comes, and had this affinity for a man who—this was my impression, anyway—had never lost a youthful sense of wonder.  It also appealed to me that evidently he’d  never had the desire to learn how to drive a car, which is about as close to a rite of passage as there is in our culture.  Whatever his reasons—mundane no doubt—I always liked to think that maybe he’d just been too busy imagining places that couldn’t be reached on four wheels and a tank of gas.

I didn’t expect him to write back, but he did.  The out-sized letterhead depicted a cross-section of a huge Victorian-like home, the floors linked by winding stairs, the many rooms crammed with ornate columns, statues, hieroglyphics, relics, paintings, faces, maps, a man on a high-stepping horse—what you might find in an attic of the imagination.

Dear Bruce Fergusson:

 Thanks for your kind warm note and your lovely article.  I wish you could see the huge Shuttle model that Rockwell International gave me recently, after I lectured  to all their Aerospace employees!

I stopped buying model kits years ago, not because I was embarrassed, but because my hands are all thumbs, and I never could finish the damn models!  I wound up putting them on the floor and—jumping on them in a frustrated rage.

Again thanks.  I am glad I have been a part of your life.  Now you are a part of mine.

Best,

 Ray Bradbury

The world is poorer for Mr. Bradbury’s recent passing.  The space shuttle has been put on the shelf (and for a while I thought my writing career had been as well).  But one era of possibility leads to another.  What prompted the emergence of the shuttle and its antecedents was also part of what helped create the Kepler probe, which may eventually discover that home away from home.  Whatever the scientists name it, the search, in all its guises, has inspired enough books to fill libraries, and that begins with the one we lost in Alexandria.  Someone once said that if we hadn’t, we’d already be there—the home away from home, that is.

Well, there will be many choices for the name of the ship that will eventually take the first of us there, but certainly one of the choices on the list should be the Ray Bradbury.

What will hopefully follow in the months and years to come—in this lair of mine that shouldn’t be too hard for the Muse to find, small as it is—won’t be done with paints and plastic cement, but it’s another beginning, and I’m looking forward to sharing it with you.