This book is called “Rainy Season” and rain permeates the whole novel, as if the whole story was contained inside the rain – and I loved this. Here’s a picture of Rich, leaning over his balcony as usual:
“He leaned against the rail and smoked and watched the shadowed, glistening city as it slept within the downpour.”
I found the writing lyrical and rhythmic; words repeated making the prose like music. Indeed, I thought at one time, if I had a tune I could sing this book:
“Candlelight shimmered off her black sequin dress like the promise of a million stars.”
Elizabeth Merry, Author of WE ALL DIE IN THE END
Check out the full five-star review at Elizabeth’s website:
For every time I masochistically muster up the courage to venture forth into the realm of philosophy as a studied discipline — time having scarred over and numbed the painful remembrances of the many past futile efforts — I’m buried almost instantly in utter confusion and humiliation.
But since in most regards I’m human, one who looks and stares and ponders regularly with much wonderment and awe, I can’t help but philosophize from time to time…
Usually to no end.
But anyway, my ignorance and inability, philosophically speaking, is not the point of this post… just the handle.
The point for this wandering pondering post is that to me the philosophies (heck, I really have no idea if they are even to be regarded as philosophies in a pure sense (whatever that may be)) of Buddhism (particularly of the Zen flavor), Stoicism, and Nihilism are essentially the same philosophy with different names.
(This is where I get into trouble and why I laid out the disclaimer of my ignorance and inabilities in the beginning of this seemingly pointless post).
I mean, don’t all three at their essence essentially instruct us to let go?
I mean, aren’t they each essentially a similar outlook on the concept of non-attachment?
I mean, don’t the Buddhista have their mu (or as we Japanese say, 無), their not having, their no thing?
And don’t the Stoics have their, well, whatever the Greek word is for their concept of
I present to you a little insight to the historical hometown hood of my youth…
The Hubbard House was an Underground Railroad terminus station which sets on a hill overlooking Lake Erie. It was instrumental in helping countless fellow humans find escape from the incomprehensible wretchedness of slavery.
It also sets right across the street from where my old high school used to be.
Unfortunately, during my time growing up in my hometown hood of Ashtabula, Ohio, I didn’t know much about the house, only that it had some vague association with slavery.
I didn’t know because back in my time the history of slavery was barely taught in school. And that which was taught about it, was glossed conveniently over… like the whitewashing of rotted wood.
My real education of slavery didn’t begin until 1977 when the landmark television miniseries ROOTS aired, a story which of course is based on Alex Haley’s hugely important book about his family’s history.
No, during my time the house was abandoned and run down and assumed haunted.
While my old high school has since been torn down, fortunately the community of Ashtabula came together to save the Hubbard House from a similar fate and worked to restore it so that it is now a beautiful and important national landmark of which I’m very proud.
“Not again. I couldn’t believe it. I felt helpless and I had to do something,” Yves Dharamraj has said. “We’ve all seen the scenes from Minneapolis, from New York, from everywhere. Normally, I would’ve gloved and masked up, and marched down Broadway with my fellow protesters crying out against police brutality and racism.
“But, instead, I took up Anthony McGill’s #TakeTwoKnees call-to-action for musicians to record themselves and post it online.”
So, I was thick into the development of the follow-up novel to THE GOOD KILL (any guesses what follow-up title will be?) when of a sudden it seemed like End Times had finally started to throw down with the Covid-19 pandemic and cult daddy trump’s horrific death-inducing response to it.
With the Killian Lebon storyline as dark and violent as it is, and with all the research into the real-life examples of darkness and violence it takes to bring it out fictionally, I just thought it best for my mental stability to shelve all the pretend mayhem for a while seeing how there was far too much of it going on within our apocalyptic twilight zone of a reality.
But of course I could not not write so I immediately began looking internally for a story that would be able to transport me away to a better place.
Except for THE GOOD KILL, of which I contracted out to Extended Imagery, for better or worse, you decide, I’ve created all my book covers, including the one for my latest novella RAINY SEASON.
It’s a fun process creating book covers, one that allows me to escape the writing process tedium for a while and become creative through other mediums. I like to create the cover early on in the story development process so I can refer to it for inspiration similar to the way I refer to the logline.
The covers I created are mostly designed around photographs I took, except for HOW NOT TO DIE, which you’ll see if you look closely, is designed around a photograph of me in a hospital bed flashing my middle finger in defiance as I’m being treated for heart failure, which was the result of a freak side effect of the chemo drug I was taking at the time (I was speedily switched to a different drug which has yet to cause my heart to fail, fingers crossed), and except for HERCULES GONE MAD, which is designed from a drawing of mine.
Anyway, these kinds of posts are always a bit self indulgent, but if you’re like me (and god help you if you are), you too like to know how the sausage is made when it comes to an author’s creative process.
I’m both old and old school when it comes to writing. First drafts are were always done with pen and paper.
Mostly because I love the physical act of writing, the feel of pen in hand, the feel of ink flowing on the paper.
But also because if I try to write the first draft on the computer I never make it out of the first chapter seeing that I’m one of those edit-as-you-go guys. I have too many folders with forgotten novels with unfinished first drafts that I attempted to write on the computer.
Writing the first draft by hand allows for limited editing — a line through here, a line through there maybe — and because of this, I enjoy a more immersive, free flowing writing experience…
One that actually results in finished novels.
How ’bout that?
But there is a catch.
My handwriting is garbage.
Which means draft two is pure and absolute torture when it comes to typing it up into the computer. Oftentimes it takes longer to type up the second draft than it did writing out the first.
Which brings me to my novel approach to first drafts, an approach that saves me months in novel development…
Using this new technology (new to me; never been an Apple guy) I can still write out my first drafts longhand, but with the Nebo app, it automatically converts it to digital text.
The notebook contains a print copy of the screenplay (which I use as an outline for my novel). The cool sculpture/now paper weight is courtesy of my highly creative daughter. The iPad Pro 12 with Apple Pen attached shows the chapters of my latest WIP in the Nebo app.
A screenshot of the chapters in Nebo. One slight downside is that you can’t arrange the files (at least I haven’t been able to figure it out if you can) so they’re stored as they are created.
If you look at the top of the first paragraph (click on the image to enlarge), you’ll kind of see how it shows a highlight of my writing as converted text. It’s unbelievable in how well the app understanding my crappy handwriting, but if it doesn’t convert a word correctly, you can catch it in the highlight and go back and write it more clearly.
Of course you don’t get the same feel writing on the iPad as you do with pen and paper. The iPad screen is a bit slick so it takes some getting used to. I initially put a screen protector on it but that made it even slicker and it also screwed up the functions in Nebo to add and delete stuff.
The Apple Pen feels good in hand and works like a charm with zero lag between it and the tablet.
There’s another tablet I’m interested in checking out that is designed specifically for writing. It’s called reMarkable and the developers claim it will give you the feel of writing on paper. Sounds awesome. The best selling point to me for it is that it is a heck of a lot cheaper than the iPad Pro 12.
So, yeah… when it comes to drafting novels, that’s how I now roll.
Oh, and if you haven’t guessed by now, I’ll be announcing my latest novel soon…
