Thursday, August 27, 2015

Then It Happened. I Finished The Book

August 26, 2015 Two years. Nine months. Twelve days. That's how long it took to write. Then edit. My new book Scrambled Eggs. Amazing things happen to your imagination when a writing instrument is allowed to live and breathe in the palm of your hand. What I held on November 14, 2012 was the Mont Blanc John Lennon. I used to think stories and books came from the imagination. Only to learn every element that went into making the writing instrument collectively created the energy to inspire a Poet to put down his Radio dreams and dance on a page. That writing instrument had a story to share and it needed someone willing to bend sentences. It hand picked what I've always called the Blizzard White Canvas. I can't wait to get back on a book tour. Not to promote the book. But to look into the eyes of other writers. Especially those that hide. Somewhere out there is the next great novel. I will find that person and help them out of the corner. November 14, 2012 I laugh at the image in the mirror. I taunt the shadows assuming to be hidden in the corner. Don't ask me about the number of times I verbally attack the irony of being a "Creative Expressionist." It is my addiction and without it I would have nothing. I can paint into place the exact details of what unfolded inside a Montana cold street salt dirty yellow school bus gliding through bails of crunched up snow toward an extended center for education. "I'm going to write a book!" I decided with confidence. Not my first. That falling of the finger prints onto the innocence of tree vines and memories of limbs belonged to a second grader at Ponderosa school. Without question, hesitation or attempting to run interference with normal kids play...I took a #2 pencil and pasted it to the tips of a very colorful imagination. Mrs. Keefe caught onto the scent of my road kill. How in God's name could a 2nd grader from extremely dirt poor south Billings fall into a hole so incredibly deep? Rather than push my printing habits toward Mathematics and through the ongoing series of Dick, Jane, Spot and Sally...she elected to enhance the arrival of what had been set free. Never judging. She'd sit anxiously nervous in an uncomfortable front of the room chair decorated with grading papers and notes from the principal and let me read what had been allowed to move through me. Junior high was a lonely experience. I was consumed, overtaken and or completely off track. Lost in theory, the process of being "Creative" had taken me toward music more than writing. I mean! It had to be what I truly wanted to become! Right? John Lennon wrote lyrics! The desire to write plus a passion to listen equals musician. How could I have been so wrong? I had spent so much time in elementary school chasing books never realizing the biggest destination was to be the combination! So...everything I touched, smelled, devoured before and after school and held onto tightly even while dreaming was this horrible aching that comes with being associated with the building of someone's favorite song. Yeah ok... In a major attempt to keep me from dropping out of school three teachers dressed up in 1977 adult clothes at Billings Senior High agreed to let me write the very book given to me while riding without seatbelts over railroad tracks that should've been igniting other things teenage boys are supposed to lose control of. Not me! It had to be a book and it's title would be Halloween 78. The picture associated with this Blog is a snap shot of the rewrite in 1994 written while on the air at Sunny 107.9 in Charlotte. NC. Was there silence in the writing between 1969 and 1977? I wrote poetry. Gobs of it! As sick as it sounds...I still have it and each time I hold it my aging frame bursts out in laughter. My handing writing hasn't changed. Nor have the word formations and oddly shaped sentence structures that I've vowed to never let go of. It's my accent! Halloween 78 was finally published in 2011. It wasn't my first. That honor belongs to Another Man's 1,021 Thoughts which was supposed to be a book of poetry. That all went to hell while doing research and I discovered the depth of what I had written didn't unveil a face to which I was influenced to follow. I found peace in sharp, jagged and completely out of tune quotes jotted down before sunrise inside my daily writing. My first published approach wasn't supposed to be this kind of book! I still hate myself for selling out! Especially since the publisher listed it under the category of New Age Religion. I knew something was horribly wrong when the first round of books hitting stores came complete with unedited cussing on those pages. Although I had edited, then edited then edited six more times...the publisher still printed the wrong material. That big mistake cost them control. Plus if you get your hands on one...collectors of first editions dig that sort of s***! Another 1,021 Thoughts was put into play because I can tell you exactly what was going through my creative process during September 11th and after. The frickin book isn't about me. It was released to open your possibilities to documenting where the hell you've been on this long ass journey that time will soon erase from your memory. Vividly like it was six seconds ago I can still count the tears exploding from my eyes the moment the voice said, "You're going to write a book. It's going to be called Conversation with the Devil." My first success as a writer. I've heard from readers in Korea, Russia, France and from extremely religious pissed off people in Charlotte that still scream, "You are so wrong!" I laugh... What else does a crazy person do but laugh? Book ideas fly into me every second of every day. I don't sleep at night because passerby's from distances undocumented feel they need to visit at all times. And then it happens. My eyes swell. My heart explodes. I look up at God and say, "Are you sure?" The tears get bigger. The mind rips away from fear while the soul opens a floodgate of energy that I could waste the next 30 years trying to explain but I'll lose you the moment I hit 140 Twitter characters. I have heard from the horizon. It has sketched out the echo and it's my job to give it a face. I'm leaving the daily, outrageously hilarious, engaging yet somehow spiritual path of Blogging to fine tune the lyrics of what will become my next book. I cannot cloud nor allow things to stand in the way therefore to release Blogging from my every day is to become the space required to put pen to paper, thought to process, imagination into destination. It will be well documented... Call this writing of a book the making of my next series of Blogs. Look sometime, when you have the time and I'm not saying spend a dime because Art feels better when the right person finds it and from their experience they begin to write. And that's why I was born. Somewhere out there is a wanderer...it's my job to locate the sentence that influences the tree to speak. At that moment words will begin to dance like fallen leaves racing for Miami away from winters unpredictable but tasteful bite. See you soon... I dedicate this writing journey to Steven Furtick whose book Greater teaches everyone to never stop believing in the one thing that means more to you than the next sunrise... You! November 15, 2012 You have arrived at the most perfect time. The keeper of this Blah Blah Blog only seems away. Written thoughts of chapters past decorate the halls for now. Please take the time to enjoy, empower and help deliver my reasons for locating a constant positive locked as well as lost somewhere in the center of a world completely addicted to negative vibrations. The author has been called away to paint into place collected sentences. Each paragraph is said to be the elements required to make a book but we all know I'm not into such music. Therefore, let's play it a different way. I've heard an incredible story and within the days, months, maybe a year upon my undivided return...it will be put on display. That is my guarantee. Thank you for your patience during this time of creative flow.