Taking a Break, Sorta

I am taking a break from novel writing. It seems I am forever and always writing a novel. That is not a bad thing. However, eventually you become sorta burned out. I have never understood writers who say they have writer's block. I have more plots running through my head than I have time to work on the. True, there are times when the words for a particular project has difficulty flowing from my literary pen, but when that happens I go to another and usually that is the one I was meant to write in the first place. At this time in my "career" I have embarked on a different kind of pause, or retreat when it comes to writing. I have ten books published. Since I finally was beaten down and had enough rejection slips from the New York Publishers to paper a large room with, I opted for the self publishing bit. Lulu was where I went. All of my books are novels with the exception of Misdemeanors & Felonies: A Memoir. Since my financial situation is limited, receiving only a little social security check each month I was not in a position to pay $300-500 for a professional proofreader, the result being that my novels have typos, grammar and other assorted problems. So! I have embarked on a "cleansing" of the novels. I am sure there will still be a few errors here and there, because a person proofreading his own work is a no-no, except in the case of first, maybe second drafts. By the time you have it, in your opinion, as good as you can get it and are ready for publication, that is the time to find a good word doctor. In the meantime I write poems, book reviews, etc., whatever comes to me, but now novels. I honestly think I need to stay away from novels for a longer duration than I have in the past. Working on the published one's will give me something to do so I won't be tempted to start another book. That has been my problem in the past when I felt the need to take a vacation from the novels; boredom. That is because for a long time now, I have not had any other outside activities with which to occupy my mind. When Dottie was still with me it was a full-time job seeing after her and running the necessary errands I needed to take care of her, and of course, me. It has been six months since she has passed, and instead of trying to seek other venues to occupy me when I wasn't writing, or didn't want to write, I hunkered down and went at writing with a vengeance. Partly, I know, to keep my mind occupied with other things except her memory. It didn't work all that great, because a large percentage of that writing was Dottie-related. Even the novel Unholy Pursuit had many references of her in it. Anyway, here I am, plugging away on the corrections of the published novels and hoping I will stay healthy long enough to get the rest of the ideas of novels on paper and published. I guess I am pushing it, but I need another ten years. At least.

Red Light Book Review

Merci Rayborn has a lot to live down. In T. Jefferson Parker's first-rate thriller, Red Light, Marci not only has to deal with the fact that, Tim Hess, her lover and father of her two-year-old child was murdered in the line of duty. Both Merci and Hess worked as detectives for the sheriff's department and Merci blames herself for Hess' death. This blame, like a dark, hovering cloud, has followed her around for two years.

In Red Light, when a nineteen-year-old prostitute is murdered Merci catches the case. As she begins to unravel the young woman's life she is dismayed that a woman so young should be, as she put it, "a real pro." The clues slowly, but surely began to point the finger toward a fellow officer Mike McNally, a member of the vice squad. To make matter worse Merci is having a confusing affair with him. To complicate matters even more, her supervisor drops a cold case on her desk that dates back to the sixties.

At first the cold case is not that much of a priority. That changes as the clues to the recent murder lead her to have serious doubts about Mike and his involvement with the young prostitute. She begins looking at the cold case as a way to clear her mind of her suspicions concerning her boyfriend. But being the detective that she is she wants the truth to come out no matter who it might touch. Balancing the two cases, one recent and one decade's old, Merci is saddled with the guilt feeling of her dead lover and a growing feeling of remorse because of the clues she is finding lead her toward the ever growing suspicion that Mike, her present lover, killed the young woman.

As she is beset with rage and remorse concerning her feelings about Mike and the murder, she finds that the cold case has similar features. In both cases a prostitute with ties to the sheriff's department has been murdered. The cold case becomes a political hot potato as Marci continues to pursue it as she does the recent case. Between the two cases her world is turned upside down and she is drowning in rage for believing Mike is guilty of the murder and shame that she is unable to give him the benefit of the doubt. It's the clues. They keep piling up and so do the ones concerning the cold case. Merci is emotionally vulnerable and that is not a good thing.

Red Light is a good book. T. Jefferson Parker, in this reviewer's opinion has never written anything but good books. I have read a number of books written by Parker and have never came away from any of them without a feeling of complete satisfaction

Unholy Pursuit Book Review

This review of my book,Unholy Pursuit was written by N.L. Snowden, author of In and out of Madness . . .


UNHOLY PURSUIT
By
Jerry Pat Bolton




Jerry Pat Bolton has written a novel that is both entertaining and thought provoking. Written in first person in a memoir style, he takes you on a fantasy journey that is at first quite believable. The protagonist, Joe John Jefferies, a seventy-year-old man contemplating a memory of a girl with no name. Although his was a happy marriage, this girl's memory floated in and out of his conscious mind through the years. They met on a road in Georgia and spent the day in a sexual marathon. They went their separate ways without exchanging names.

After Joe loses his wife of many years and his grieving is done, he decides to set out and find this girl. His friends laugh at him. His mistress, Rita Beaverman, insists on going with him. He feels no love for this woman, only lust. He doesn't want her interfering with his quest. Against everyone's insistence, he heads for Georgia. The first night he stops to sleep in a motel, and who should show up but Rita. Although Rita possessed power over Joe with her undulating sexuality, he rejects her and sends her packing with what appears to be a broken heart.

Something in his subconscious plants the seeds of an Uncle Jack being connected to this nameless girl. In many surreal coincidences, Joe finds there is an Uncle Jack connected to the family that owns the diner he frequents in Georgia. After going on a treasure hunt of leads, he ends up in a nursing home with a very old relative of the family. She predicts her death and leaves Joe with her dying words and a puzzle to unravel.

Joe finds the spot on the road where he and the unnamed girl met and wishes with all his being that she'll miraculously show up. To his delight, she does, and he finds out that her name is Casondrah, and she has been controlling him all of his life since their encounter. At first, he doesn't care, as the sex is once again glorious.

While in his motel room, a man suddenly appears dressed as a Charles Dickens character and calls himself Carlester. He shares a secret with Joe that Bolton so elegantly allows the reader to believe in the fantasy that takes over Joe's life.

In the end, Joe discovers that Casondrah is his enemy, Carlester is his friend. He ends up in Wyoming with Casondrah and Alexandria, a vampire, saves his and a sad waif by the name of Constance's lives. Bolton knows his geography as he places the reader in many locales as Joe discovers he is the one and only one to destroy a world's evil. It's a game of cat and mouse with the loser going to hell. Joe and his comrades battle Casondrah and even Satan himself. The book twists and turns, and every time the reader thinks things are going to work out, he adds another adversary, another battle, another escape only to find Joe worse off than he was. Bolton sends the reader to the climax of the book taking short breaths and hearing their own hearts beating in their chest.

What makes this book even better is that Bolton throws in some philosophy that the reader will ponder and question the Status Quo.

I highly recommend this page tuner and book for people who love constant action.
This book is available at Amazon on the Kindle version: http://www.amazon.com/UnHoly-Pursuit-na/dp/B002KW4SOU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253555150&sr=1-1

If you would prefer it in book form, go here: http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/unholy-pursuit/7303385 which can be purchases here . . .

Vagabond Poet

After all this time. After all these years. After people almost begging me to publish my poetry, at least some of it, I have finally did it. I will publish the 243-page book on Lulu, because quite frankly, the price is right. It's title is Vagabond Poet. As you probably know if you are into reading or writing books Lulu cost nothing to publish your book. Vagabond Poet is my tenth book I have published there. Am I a success? No. Have any of my books sold well? Not really, although I receive a royalty check from them every six months, some of them in the hundreds, but most of them well below that.

The fact is that when I started writing my novels (all the books except Vagabond Poet and Misdemeanors & Felonies: A Memoir are novels) I actually did envision becoming a success. I beat on every legitimate New York publisher there was for over twenty years as I continued to knock out novel after novel. Finally, when I decided if I was ever going to hold a published book I had written in my hands I would have to go the self-publishing route. And so I have. I write so much, have so many story ideas that I just want them to be in circulation even if it is merely the Print on Demand publishing industry that does it. My dreams of being at the top of the New York Times list of books has long since past, I'm satisfied to just write my stories and poems.

I have a difficult time promoting my books. I tried. I tried very hard when I published my first two books to promote them as best I could. It wasn't easy. It cost money and my meager social security check couldn't provide much more than daily living expenses. That, plus the fact that my wife (she died last February) was semi-invalid and I couldn't leave her alone for any length of time and there was no one to stay with her. That meant I was reduced to book signing close to home and they were scarce. As the years piled up I began to resign myself to the fact that what part of the dream I retained was almost all gone. I am not bitter about how things turned out. In fact I am very happy to say that I have written some damn good gritty, thriller without the car chases and explosions, but just good psychological thrillers. I am proud of that.

So! Vagabond Poet is my newest, and only book of poetry. I imagine it will go on the market in the middle of October. I'm pretty sure I will charge $12.99 for the 243-page book. Now, hopefully I can get back to writing God? I have been away from it about a week as I assembled my poems for the book.

God? . . . Update

An update on the new novel, God?. I finished Chapter 12 yesterday and posted it on my Myspace site and the effect I was reaching for seems to have worked. After the high sheriff of Cotton Boll County basically ran Truman out of the county, telling him to never return he slept the first night in the woods which ran alongside the road. He did this because he was afraid the sheriff would send someone out there and arrest him on some trumped-up charge. Another charge other than the one he faced for the thrashing of Brother Tuttle.

A lot was going on in Truman's mind as he tried to sleep that night. That he is going on a "fact-finding" quest to find the answer to his God question is a given, but as yet he does not understand just how he is going to go about this quest. For one thing, he is young, sixteen-years-old, and that is going to be held against him. How will he find work, he has no social security number, no work history? But, as he lays on the ground thinking the optimism of youth is apparent and he just knows there will be a way.

The next day he starts his journey. The deputy sheriff who drove him to the county line the day before had pulled out forty dollars and gave it to him, Truman guessed he felt sorry for him. That was a miracle in itself, because he didn't have one cent to his name. He was picked up and driven close to Texarkana, Ark/Tx before his ride gave out. He let him out in front of an old country church and Truman though he would step inside, if it wasn't locked, and think about what to do next.

The church was open and when he stepped inside he saw the girl. After they introduced themselves to each other they began to talk. She was young, about his age, and said she was hitch-hiking to California to join the "revolution." When he asked what revolution she began to ramble about the revelation that the hippies in the sixties of the last century. Cut to the chase, the girl took his cherry inside that church. Well, almost, she did him orally.

Although he wanted to travel with the girl (who wouldn't?) she didn't want to be stuck with anyone, so after she left he caught a ride with a man who wound up offering to put him up for a day or so, he could see Truman was young and wanted to get him off the highway. Truman decided that was a good idea and when the man turned into the driveway of his house Truman saw a sign which said, HOUSE OF GOD. It turned out the man and his wife had a kind of Mother Earth Religion going on and they were going to have "services" that very night. As the people began to gather for the service the man sent Truman to the store to pick up some chips for the dip he had made.

Truman thought about running off with the man's car and the twenty dollars he gave him for the chips, but decided against it. When he got back and walked to the backyard where the service was being held was immediately stunned beyond belief. Of the twelve or so people who were at the service only one was still alive and begging for him momma. The rest were murdered in cold blood. Truman wanted to run, but he was in such a state of shock he could not run and he dropped to his knees awaiting the police whose sirens he could already hear.

My Book Review of "In and out of Madness"

In N. L. Snowden's first book, In and out of Madness, published by Sneakaboard Press is a fictionalized account of a true story, Lee Thames has a problem, a great many problems not the least of which is her desire to kill her husband after many suicide attempts. She is being driven by devils within her. She has been in and out of mental hospitals She loses herself into the strange world of different individuals who crowd each other for space within Lee's thought process. She is also suffering from being bi-polar and develops multiple-personalities. Although In and out of Madness is a novel it is written in the first person in the memoir style.

Lee suffered abuse from her family. She had a mother who was quick with a switch and loved to embarrass her. Like far too many children, then and now, Lee was an afterthought to one or both parents. Growing up with two strikes against her, she developed into a woman who tried to please those within her sphere of life. A woman who, after accepting the proposal of her high school sweetheart, married him even though he came back from Vietnam paralyzed from the neck down.

Into this marriage she gave of herself completely, although it was often frustrating to her as a woman. Married to a husband who put his writing ahead of her was the catalyst which pushed her into taking other men to bed. Since he wasn't able to perform his husbandly duties he talked her into having other men provided she told him exactly what they did. Because of the bi-polar, which she was unaware of at the time, and her husband paying too much attention to a girl in her twenties, she said and did things she later understood was wrong and regretted.

Reading In and out of Madness brings into focus the lengths that humans will go to please their spouses and in the meantime lose part of their soul. After her first marriage dissolved and she found herself married to one of her lovers. During this marriage she was subjected to, willingly, because it seemed to be the only way to hold onto her husband, swinging with different couples. She was subjected to sexual debauchery, treachery and mind-bending control from her husband, a slick talker, especially when it came to Lee, who knew exactly what buttons to push, when to push them, and when to retreat. Through it all she held onto one thing which kept her going against all odds and that was her love for her daughter Jolly by her second husband.

The pressure of the constant turmoil and deceit from both husbands was too much for Lee and allowed her multiple personalities to assert themselves. That is when things really got interesting then. Plus she had her bi-polar problem which complicated everything. She was sent to a hospital which deals with such problems. Although, in her heart Lee tried her best to make both marriages work, she also comes to understand that her illness has made her do things which took her a long time to understand and come to grips with. Instead of portraying herself as a victim she is honest enough to admit her part of the problem.

Life often gives us double meanings and in the process we are subjected to the boomerang effect. In Lee Thames's life she realizes that what goes around does indeed come around. I highly recommend In and out of Madness to anyone who desires to read of a life almost ruined by mental illness, alcohol, drugs and sexual addiction of a spouse.

This book can be purchased at Amazon here . . .

http://www.amazon.com/Out-Madness-Ms-N-Snowden/dp/0977476774/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252936602&sr=1-1

Or Kindle here . . .

http://www.amazon.com/Out-Madness-ebook/dp/B001QCYHYG/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252936602&sr=1-2

God? . . . Next Novel Under Way

I have been malingering for the last few days insofar as posting my thoughts here. I haven't been malingering on what I do best, however, and that is writing novels. Since my last posting I have written ten chapters of the novel I was talking about last time, God?. So, the book is beginning to take shape. Sixteen-year-old Truman Butler is my protagonist, and after backing his vintage '57 Chevy Classic over the head of his baby brother a lot has happened to him, and none of it has been good.

The main reason for most of his problems lies within himself. That black day of the horrible accident Truman ran screaming into the Panther Swamp which surrounds the Butler place. He wandered out there for two whole days replaying in his head over and over the accident and blaming himself for it. But as the rain began to come down so did his mind start to drop a different form of blame for the tragic incident into his thoughts. He began to blame God. In his delirium he began to contrast his baby brother's death to all of the children of the world who lose their lives horribly, some with great and lingering pain. So he begins to question God at every turn, especially when it comes to the suffering of little innocent children. The key word here is "innocent."

To add to his grief he finally puts two and two together and comes up with a thought so repulsive he almost cannot stand it. Dewey, his baby brother has the exact same facial features that Brother Tuttle, the pastor of the church the Butler family worships at. It is something Truman has thought about before, but the insanity of what has happened has sharpened his thinking and he begins to harbor revulsion and much anger toward both Brother Tuttle and Emma Butler, his mother. What makes it so much worse than merely an adultery which resulted in a pregnancy was that his father was laying on his deathbed while they were carrying on their affair. As the story progresses he beats Brother Tuttle senseless and in the process causes him to lose an eye. Later on in succeeding chapters he is in jail and they are going to try him as an adult and send him to the penitentiary. He tells the lawyers for the church that he will be happy to testify for them and let the whole world know what kind of a pastor Brother Tuttle was. They, of course do not want this, so they drop all charges.

In the meantime Truman has so much guilt associated with the tragedy he is looking for someway to atone for it. He allows another inmate to beat him in his quest for this atonement. He was beaten bad enough to be hospitalized. His mother comes to see him and she tries to make Truman understand why she lay with the preacher. That is not a good thing as far as Truman is concerned, and when the county sheriff comes to him and tells him he is going to give him a ride to the city limits and for him to never come back, Truman is ready. Although he is a juvenile and the sheriff is broking the law in doing what he did, Truman is ecstatic about it. Because he has decided to go on a fact-finding quest to find someone, anyone, who can explain to him why God allows little innocent children to suffer.

This, then, is the plot of the book, Truman's quest for biblical knowledge.

My New Project

Another question mark, but this post calls for it also. I have been in kind of a funk lately. After my wife died February 9th of this year I jumped headfirst into writing to help me cope with the change in my life. I wrote a vampire novel, my very first, but maybe not my last. I had wanted to write one last year called Anne Rice's Vampire, and contacted her about it, because I heard that she would actually answer your email. I got an answer all right, but it was from her legal team telling me that I was not to use her name for a book or they would begin legal proceedings. I wrote them back that since Anne Rice did not speak one word in the book I believed I had the legal right to use her name, but if they were so narrow-minded about it I'd just pass. I'm still going to write the book, and rename it The Movie Star's Vampire.

So! I kinda got off track there I guess. I got into a funk and was unable to write much except a few poems here and there. I blame the fact that I turned seventy this last April for the reason I am having trouble with writing. I blamed that, but in my heart I knew that wasn't it. What had me wired up and unproductive was the fact that there was something on my mind that I wanted to write, something that I needed to write before I died. I feel okay. As of this writing I have nothing bothering me except for the normal things which I shan't bother you about. Still, I am seventy. I could go out before I finish this sentence.

It finally hit me yesterday in the late afternoon. The novel which I started not too long ago called God? is what I need to write. I didn't get much done when I started it, but have some notes taken and enough to get me started on this project. The plot is a simple one. A man who, because of a horrible accident where he killed his year-and-a-half-old brother. It destroyed him and he began to wonder why God would allow such a thing to happen and why would He allow innocent your children to suffer with terrible diseases when, as I said, they are innocent. That question, plus another religious situation involving his local pastor is enough to send him on a journey to find an answer to his question, and it will take him into strange situation.

I plan to attempt to get interviews from local pastors from each denomination in the Thibodaux area and put the question to them. I imagine I know what most of their answers will be, but I want to see how different denominations respond to the question. Anyway, God? is my next project and I am going to take my time and try to make it a good book, and I also hope very much that I will be able to come away from this quest of Truman's with a better understanding of his dilemma. So this will be a momentous and instructive catharsis if handled correctly.

My Dilemma

I find myself at a dilemma. I turned seventy this last April 2, and I did not want that to happen. I mean I had rather have turned seventy rather than the alternative, but I have a problem with that number. Throughout my life I have, not one, been concerned with whatever birthday was coming up. The dreaded forty didn't faze me one damn bit. Neither did fifty or sixty. But seventy, ah, that is a different story. Even the sound of that word is different that all the others. Start counting in tens, you know, ten, twenty, thirty, etc. As you do call out the numbers count the syllables in each one. All of the numbers have two syllables except for the number seventy, which has three. That alone is cause for considerable concern. It is an odd number in a sequence of numbers from ten to a hundred. Nine numbers with two syllables, one with three. What do you suppose Dan Brown would do with that scenario? Why he'd make a blockbuster mega novel out of it, although the movie wouldn't do it justice. Do they ever?

Back to my dilemma. I have dreaded this number for some time. Why? Just another number, right? Wrong. I've already proven that it is not just another number. Seventy is different. I imagine between the numbers seventy and eighty I shall die. I hope painlessly, but I have that feeling. What should I do, just go with the flow and accept that I have lived much longer than I ever thought I would? In other words give up. Should I accept that my life is nearing its run and not worry myself all that much about it?

I don't believe I can just sit back and wait on death. There is something growing inside me that is telling me to go out with a bang, not a whimper. What can I do to facilitate that yearning? I can't climb Mt. Everest, or any physical things which would get me noticed and hailed as I spit in the face of death. No, I am physically not capable of such heroic feats

But I can write. And saying that brings me back to my dilemma. I've stopped writing novels within the last two weeks. That is saying something, because I am always writing novels. I have quite a few novels started and not finished. I don't want to finish them. Not now. I have the need for an explosive new novel. I want that because I still, at this late date, haven't completely given up on writing that novel that will take over the best seller spot in The New York Times, not that it is such a wonderful newspaper anymore, but because in the literary sense it is still considered at the top of the heap.

So! I sit here trying to think about that elusive novel I need to write. Why not take the number seventy and just go with it? I don't know. I will give it some thought