by john | Aug 5, 2009 | Theatre
…and never let go.”
That’s a quote from the play I’m directing, Moonlight and Magnolias. The play is about the five days in 1939 when filming was halted on Gone with the Wind, a new director was hired, and an entire new screeenplay was created. By a writer who’d never read the book. Talk about a gig! The play all takes place in produced David Selznick’s office, with Selznick and director Victor Fleming acting out scenes from the book as screenwriter Ben Hecht turns it into a script. It’s a pretty funny show, especially if you’re really familiar with GWTW.
Which I’m not. I, like the play’s Ben Hecht (not sure if this was the case with the real Ben Hecht or if it’s dramatic license on the part of Playwright Ron Hutchinson), have never read the book. I have seen the movie. Once. On a re-release ten years ago for the 60th anniversary of the film I took Suzy to go see it. It was pretty good, I thought. Like the characters in the play, I kinda thought Scarlett was a slut and Ashley was a bit of a fag, but overall I liked the flick.
So why exactly did I pick this play to come out of theatrical semi-retirement? I’m not sure, except that the president of the community theatre’s board is a friend of mine, the space is small enough not to need much set, which is the kind of show I work well with, and I was a little bored. So I submitted my name as a potential director, and then right before they offered me the gig, I tried to back out. Then I found out they were about to offer me the gig, so I did what any money-grubbing whore would do, I asked “What does it pay?” So since it will pay me slightly more than I’ll spend on gas driving to and from rehearsals 45 minutes away, I took the gig. Then I read the play. And I liked it, which is a good thing, since I’m stuck with it for the next couple of months.
So we had auditions this week, and for my 4-person play we had a marginal turn-out. 7 actors. 5 men, two women. The play requires 3 men and 1 woman. Fortunately there were six castable actors that showed up, so I picked four and away we go. One of the first assignments will be for the cast (and director) to read the book. At some point there will be a movie-watching party at my house, and then I suppose we’ll make a play happen at some point. It’s interesting: I really thought I was done with theatre. Again. But I’m not. Again. I don’t have any intent to do the level of productions I did at Off-Tryon, when I was doing 10-12 shows every year. And I will probably move back into happy semi-retirement after October. But I guess I’m not ever going to be done with it, no matter how much of a pain in the ass theatre people can be.
This looks to be a good ensemble, though. My Selznick and I have worked together a bunch, and the lone chick in the cast and I have known each other for several years, plus my friend that dragged me into the show is my stage manager, so I only have a couple of guys to get to know. And it’ll be fun doing something for a change that’s not in iambic pentameter, which is all I’ve done for the past couple of years. And I have a lighting gig coming up in September, I’m once again designing the season opener for Theatre Charlotte, the local community theatre. After they lost the rights to Annie, Ron, the Executive Director and director for the show, settled on Seussical and called me up to see if I’d do the show. I figured WTF? why not, so I’m calling in favors from all over the lighting industry to make a hellaciously bright and colorful Seuss-world this fall. So that oughta pay for my December trip to Vegas.
In other news, I think my time at PokerNews is likely at an end. There’s been a change in leadership, and that has actually very little to do with my departure. I think Matt Parvis will do an excellent job helming the ship there, but as I’ve been doing that gig for the past two years solid, I’m no longer nearly as into the whole poker scene as I once was. And they need someone who eats, drinks and breathes poker. I’m just not that guy anymore, and with the theatre stuff going this fall, and my own writing stuff happening, I just don’t think I can give them the time and focus they need. I’ll still fill in every once in a while when they run short, but the days of me churning out 20-30 recaps in a month are probably done for the most part. It’s been a fun ride and I’ll miss the money, but I think Matt will do a great job over there and wish them nothing but the best. I had it in my head for a while that I was probably done with that gig after the WSOP, so it’s time. It was a good run, but after a few hundred articles I might be tired of talking about some donkey four-flushing another donkey to crack aces with jacks. I’ll miss the money, though. So I’ll have to sell a few books to make up for the revenue.
by john | Aug 4, 2009 | Theatre, Writing
This was in my inbox when I returned from auditions tonight –
Shipped on Mon, 03 Aug 2009 via FedEx Ground Home Delivery
All items in your order have been shipped.
In This Shipment
===========================
100 of Returning the Favor and other slices of life by John G. Hartness (Printed)
Shipped To:
3512 Winterfield Pl.
Charlotte, NC 28205
So by the end of the week (hopefully) I’ll have a pile of copies of Returning the Favor in hand and ready to ship out to those of you who have (or will) purchase the analog version. So far I have sold more digital copies than analog editions, but I expect that to change shortly.So if you want your autographed copy, click on the button the right of the screen and make it happen!
I’ve been really impressed with the service I’ve gotten from Lulu throughout this process. It’s not like they’re doing much for me, I’m laying everything out and making sure it’s ready, but for a straight-up print house, they do good work. And they dealt with the ISBN paperwork for me quickly and easily, so I didn’t have to learn how to do one more thing in the process. I think everybody’s favorite not really ex-stripper (really favorite, not really ex-stripper) is looking at using them for her book as well, so you’ve got that to look forward to.
So yeah, I might have mentioned coming home from auditions. Funny thing, that. So a few months ago, I got a message on Facebook from a director buddy of mine. Seems a local theatre had issues with the rights to their season-opener. Issues like a national tour pulling all the rights nationwide or something silly like that. So they were no longer doing Annie and had switched to Seussical the Musical. Since I’m widely considered somewhat misanthropic and a bad influence on children (all true) my name had been quickly dismissed in discussions of designers for Annie. But when Seussical came about, someone might have thought that I had some experience with bright colors and hallucinogenic substances (also all true). So my buddy asked me if I had really retired from theatre.
My response was a cautious “kinda. Why?” And he mentioned Seussical, and I mentioned that some things might be up in the air with my employment status at PokerNews and I might be interested in the money, and we cut a deal. And along about the same time I had signed on to direct Moonlight and Magnolias for another community theatre in a nearby town. The schedules overlapped a little, but I juggled things around to make them work, and one of the things I juggled was scheduling M&M auditions early. Like tonight early.
Just one problem – nobody showed up. We had four people last night, which almost works out because it’s a four-person show. Except the genders of the auditionees was perfectly balanced, and the genders of the characters are 3:1. So we had one to many vajayjays at auditions last night. And since the characters are real people (the play is about the moment in cinematic history when David Selznick stopped shooting Gone with the Wind, fired the director, shitcanned the screenplay and re-wrote the whole friggin’ thing in five days) I can’t do what I would usually do, which is cast the show gender-blind.
There’s a lot to be said for doing plays where the writer has been dead for a few centuries. Just sayin’.
But basically here’s the deal – I’m directing again, and for the first time in several years I’m directing a show with a living playwright and with language that’s not iambic pentameter. I’m designing again, and was a little bit of a diva and demanded sufficient programming time to make the show look the best that I can. And I’ve got a shitload of books of poetry en route to my domicile, so buy them quick before Suzy kicks my ass for cluttering up the den. Yes, she’s leaning on my shoulder while I’m typing this :). Love you, honey.
by john | Jul 30, 2009 | Fiction
This comes from a true story about a friend who got drunk one night and bought a houseboat on eBay.
Some things, thought John Roy Parnell III, were just inevitable. As a matter of fact, everything in his life since the day he broke his leg trying to roll out for a first down in the high school state quarterfinals had seemed to flow inexorably onwards like ten thousand pounds of molasses going up the side of a hill in January. It never went very fast, but it never quite stopped moving, either. And ever since he lay three yards short of the first down on his own 37-yard line clutching his ankle and crying like a little girl his life had oozed forward to this very point.
That’s what he was thinking on an alarmingly sunny Monday morning when he woke up on the rook of his houseboat surrounded by thirteen empty Pabst Blue Ribbon cans and one bottle of Jagermeister with two inches of brownish liquid and three cigarette butts sloshing around in the bottom. A groan from the lower deck of the houseboat reminded John Roy that he wasn’t alone, and he rolled over on his side to look down, disturbing the delicate balance of the beer cans and sending several of them rolling and clattering to the deck below. one or two landed with a softer thunk as opposed to the clang of their fellows, and John Roy figured those must have landed on Joe Don.
“Gawdammit John Roy, why you always gotta make such a ruckus?” came a screech from below to let him know that yes, indeed, Joe Don Burgess was on the deck below him, and yes, indeed he was awake. “I gotta pee,” mumbled Joe Don in a much quieter voice.
“Piss off the side a the boat, the shitter’s clogged up,” replied John Roy.
“What the hell happened to the shitter?” asked Joe Don.
“I can’t remember, but I think I remember puking in a t-shirt and puttin’ it in the shitter last night. And if I did, you better not piss on it. I might need that shirt later.”
“Alright, alright, I’ll piss off the side.” And Joe Don staggered to the rail of the boat to do just that, without ever quite opening his eyes. When he heard the wet splatter of piss on sun-baked Georgia clay instead of the splash of water on water, he opened his eyes and started to look around. “John Roy…”
“Yeah, Don?”
“Why ain’t your boat in the water?”
“Lake dried up. Drought, remember?”
“Yeah, but didn’t you just get this boat?”
“Yeah.”
“So why’d you buy a boat and put it in a dried-up lake?” Joe Don continued.
“Cause I needed a place to stay after Erlene kicked me out of the trailer park.”
“Oh, ok. But don’t that mean I’m pissing in your front yard?”
“Kinda, but since you’re pissin’ off the back of the boat, I reckon you’re pissin’ in my back yard, not the front yard. Lawn chairs is in the front yard.”
“Oh, ok. I don’t mind pissin’ in the back yard. But pissin’ in the front yard didn’t seem right, somehow. Know what I mean.”
“I reckon.” By this time John Roy had develop a pretty sizable need to piss himself, so he stood up, walked over to the edge of the rook, and started to piss. A golden stream powered by an evening’s worship of Milwaukee’s finest arced high over the side of the boat, and over the head of a very startled Joe Don, and splashed into the dusty red lake bed beside the boat.
“Gawdammit, John Roy, don’t you pee on me!”
“I ain’t gone pee on you, don’t get your panties in a twist,” replied John Roy as he began to write his name in the lake bed. He added his name to a litany of incomplete “John Roy”s in the dust, shook his pecker, and tucked it away in his shorts. Then he kicked the rest of the beer cans off the rook, tossed the Jager bottle in a 55-gallon fuel oil drum he used as a trash can and general place to light shit on fire, and started looking around the edge of the roof. After a few minutes, he laid down on his belly and looked over the edge as Joe Don.
“Don?”
“Yeah?”
“There ain’t no ladder.”
“There ain’t?”
“Nope.”
“How the fuck you get up there?”
“Fuck if I know?”
“How you gone get down?”
“Bring that mattress out there on the deck.”
“That don’t sound like such a good idea.”
“That’s why I didn’t tell you the whole thing. I don’t wanna think about it too much. Now bring me that mattress.”
“Alright.” Joe Don went into the cabin and dragged out a raggedy twin mattress. He laid it on the deck and looked back up at John Roy. “You want the box spring, too?”
“Nope,” said John Roy as he took a couple of running steps and belly-flopped from the roof of the houseboat down the ten feet onto the mattress, blowing up a huge cloud of dust, funky smells and a couple of oddly-shaped insects. He lay there face down for several long minutes without moving before he rolled over, looked up a Joe Don and said “Well, that sucked. Gimme a beer.”
by john | Jul 30, 2009 | Uncategorized
So after posting 45 segments of a novel online and updating my website with multiple buttons to my book of short stories and poetry, now what do I do?
Well, for one thing, I get back to what got me here – I blog a bit more. I had toyed around with keeping this page as a writing samples page and adding a blog elsewhere on the site, but that’s just not gonna work. I’m too lazy to update two sites, so it’ll just all be here.
And I’m going to work on new material. I’ve got some poetry to post in the next few days, some drafts of poems and story ideas that I’m working on, and things like that. Not to mention that I have 100 copies of Returning the Favor en route to my house, so I’m going to get out and do readings at local bars and bookstores and hope to move a few books that way.
Plus I’ll be continuing to polish Choices, work on a cover design and get it ready for print. I should have copies ready by fall for print and electronic format.
In other news, I’m trying to muddle through Amazon’s Digital Text Platform process and Returning the Favor should be available on Amazon for the Kindle within the next couple of days. Until then, you can already buy it for the Kindle at Smashwords.com.
Anyway, I really want to thank everyone for reading Choices. It was an experiment that grew into something bigger, and I hope better, and I appreciate my friends, old and new, who came along on the ride with me. Who knows where we’ll go next time?
by john | Jul 20, 2009 | Fiction, The Chosen
We’re in the home stretch now, both in uploads and edits. If I finish editing before I finish uploading, the whole thing might see print before it sees the web, but that’s pretty unlikely. But I’m feeling pretty solid that the book will be available by Labor Day at the latest in hard copy, and sooner than that for the Kindle and other e-book formats. In the meantime, enjoy the next section and go buy my other book in hard copy here or here. And it’s now available for the Kindle here. And if you have a site and could pimp the current book, it’ll garner my undying love and gratitude (and maybe a drink or two).
“Aren’t you going to pack, son?” I asked Cain on my way into the hall.
“I haven’t unpacked anything, so I don’t need to pack. I’ll meet you downstairs.” He got up, stretched, and headed towards the door in our wake. Myra and I tossed the few things we’d unpacked into our bags, and looked around the room to make sure we hadn’t forgotten any random firearms before we headed down to the car. She looked pensive, so I gave her a quick hug before we left the room.
“It’s almost over, isn’t it?” She asked, her face buried in my chest. That made her a little hard to hear, but it was worth it.
“Almost.”
“What will you do?”
“What do you mean? My Choice? I don’t even know what it is, so I have no idea what I’ll do.”
“No. I mean after. What will you do after it’s done. Are you going to leave me again?” She held me tighter, but I didn’t think her squeezing me caused the tightness in my chest.
“I don’t know, babe. I…”
“Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it. I’ve seen you thinking about it. I can see it whenever you look at me when we’re driving. When you think I don’t notice you looking. I can feel your eyes on me and I know you’re trying to decide if you’re sticking around or if you’re going to run again.”
“You’re right. I have thought about it. A lot. And I still don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ve been putting off making that decision until this whole thing was behind us. And who knows? The kid might decide to blow up the planet and we won’t have to worry about it. We are going to DC after all. If there’s any place a slightly crazy right-wing preacher can get his hands on nuclear weapons, it’s Washington.”
“Or Tehran.”
“Yeah, there’s always Tehran. But the jet lag is such a bitch. DC is a better choice.”
“Fair enough. Let’s go finish saving the world. But we’re not done with this, buster. As soon as the world is safe, we’re going to have a long conversation about our future.” She stood on her tiptoes, kissed me lightly on the lips, and headed for the elevator. I watched her walk, both because the view was nice and because I was thinking about that conversation. And how I was gonna get out of that one without actually blowing up the world. Because that option was looking better all the time.
We gathered downstairs, and Michael met us in the hotel lobby. “I will not be accompanying you on this leg of your journey. I must go ahead and prepare the meeting place. Lucypher and I will meet you at the Washington Monument at midnight tomorrow night. Packing was a good idea, you should be able to make it there easily if you leave now.”
“Hey! It’s not that far to DC. If we don’t need to be there until midnight tomorrow night, why are we leaving now?” I was getting a little grumpy about not having the chance to spend a little happy fun time with Myra before the end of the world.
“I’ve seen how long it takes you people to get anywhere, and I assume that Eve will have to start at least one barroom brawl before you can get through Tennessee and Virginia.” Michael responded dryly.
“Nah. I think I’m good for a few days. Thanks for thinking of me, though.” Eve said dryly.
“Besides, I said I would be leaving immediately. I never mentioned you coming with me. That was your own erroneous assumption. If I were you, I would try to salvage some sleep out of this wretched evening and leave in the morning. I will see you there.” With that, he vanished. Not walked out and flew away, just vanished. Sometimes I wondered who was more irritating, my smartass kids, or smartass angels. I stood there looking stupid for a minute with my bag in my hand before I noticed that Cain was sitting on one of the lobby couches, no bag anywhere in sight.
“You knew?” I asked very slowly.
“I noticed that he didn’t mention us going, so I figured there was no reason to rush.”
“And you didn’t think you should share that with the rest of us?”
“You guys were so happy running around like chickens with your heads cut off, I didn’t want to screw that up.” He sat there and chuckled at us as the rest of us dragged our bags back to the elevators and up to the rooms. That’s when I realized we had a little monkey wrench in the works. One with tattoos and a pierced lip.
“Uh, Junior?”
“Yes, Adam?”
“Uh, we don’t really have a room for you, I don’t think. I mean, we had a spot for Michael, but he doesn’t really sleep, so I’m not sure we have two beds in Cain’s room, so I don’t really know what we’re going to do about that. It’s really late and the desk clerk is already a little grumpy with me, you know the whole breaking into the pool, flying Seraphim and shotgun blasts in the middle of the night thing…” I trailed off lamely.
“Don’t worry, Pop. We’ve got it covered.” Cain chimed in.
“How?”
“Don’t ask silly questions, Adam. Now why don’t you and Myra toddle off to bed while Cain and I deal with sleeping arrangements for the children, I mean for Sidney.” I never trusted Eve when she was being solicitous, but Myra had a certain look in her eye at Eve’s offer that I didn’t want to ignore, especially if we were blowing the world up in 21 hours or so. So I did as Eve suggested, ignored the winks that were exchanged between Eve, Myra and Emily, and took my girlfriend to bed.
by john | Jul 20, 2009 | Writing
You might be wondering why, after publishing 39 installments of a novel on this little website, I would decide to start off my self-publishing life by publishing a collection of short stories and poetry, and not hold off until the novel happens. Well, some days so am I, but here’s how my thinking ran. Having never published anything on lulu.com before, or on any other self-publishing format (and the word publishing is extremely hard to type this morning for some reason) I decided to publish the collection of randomness first to see how it all looks. I wanted to see how easy the ISBN process is, to see what it was going to look like in a final product, and to see what the turnaround time on orders is.
And I’m not finished editing the novel yet. Plus, there are a couple of events coming up in Charlotte that I wanted to participate in, and it would be handy to have published examples of my work for those events. I’ll tell you more about them as they develop. So I went ahead and dusted off the small collection and went to press. I’m not done with Choices, but hopefully I will be in the next few weeks, and then I can have it printed and ready to go early fall. And if enough of you buy the current book, I won’t even have to go too deep into hock to pay for it :). Actually, the lulu.com stuff is really affordable, and the royalty setup is much better than traditional publishing (although you obviously expect to sell fewer copies). So it’s an experiment, let’s see if we can make anything blow up!
So buy my book. You can use your debit card on PayPal if you like.
by john | Jul 20, 2009 | Fiction, The Chosen
If you’re reading this via the RSS feed, don’t forget to click through to the main site and pick up your signed copy of my collection of short stories and poems, Returning the Favor and other Slices of Life.
I opened my eyes a second later and Lucky was still sitting there, calm as could be, with a little grin twitching the corner of his mouth. He stood, turned slowly around, and reached out to Eve, snatching the shotgun from her hands like you’d take a lollipop from a toddler. Then he wrapped both arms around her and picked her up, twirling her around and laughing like they’d just been reintroduced at a party.
“Oh, Eve, I have missed you! No one since the Garden has had such a fire! I am sorry I haven’t called on you since then, but I’ve been dreadfully busy. You know, wars to starts, pestilence to spread, famine to sow, death to deal, and all that awful pale-horse Revelation garbage. But it’s good to see you, and I promise to come chat with you and little Cain in a few moments, once I’m done talking to the boys here.” With that, he spun a shocked Eve around, patted her on the butt, and shoved her over to where Cain and the other women were standing staring at us.
“Yeah. About that, Lucky. We might want to move this conversation inside. After all, you did just have a giant frigging glowing angel fly off over the pool, and Eve just shot you. Those things tend to attract attention these days. So why don’t we all adjourn to my room, and you can tell everybody what you’ve got to say to me and Junior?” I picked up the bag of beer, grabbed Junior by an arm, and started making my way into the hotel.
“Probably a good idea, Adam. The local constabulary may be making an appearance soon, and it’s probably better if I’m not seen. Something about a bar fire earlier this evening…” He followed us into the hotel, and I stood waiting for the elevator with the Prince of Darkness and a twenty-something tattooed redneck street preacher who was supposed to save the world. If he could keep his eyes off my daughter’s tits long enough to do it.
When we got to the room, Lucky led Junior inside, grabbed the bag of beer, and shoved me backwards out into the hall, shutting the door firmly in my face. I hammered on the door for a minute, but Lucky just called out a few profanities and I finally gave up. I walked down the hall to the room Eve was sharing with Emily, and knocked on the door. They let me in after a second, and I joined Eve, Emily, Myra and Cain in the small room. It was more than a little cramped in there with just a couple of beds and one chair, but we all managed to find someplace more or less comfortable.
After a long moment Emily piped up. “What do you think he’ll do to Sidney?”
“Nothing.” I replied. “If he wanted to hurt the kid there are a lot better ways, sneakier ways that won’t get him in deep shit with Father. My guess is he’s telling the truth, that he just wants to talk to the kid. He’s probably got a lot riding on whatever Choice the kid makes, and he’s looking for an edge.”
“You actually think he’s telling the truth? He’s the Father of Lies? His name is synonymous with deception and misdirection? What makes you think that he’s telling the truth?” Myra asked incredulously.
“Because it’s what we don’t expect. I’ve seen him use this trick before. He tells you the truth when you expect him to lie, and then he can lie with more impunity when it suits his purposes.” I said. “He’ll probably keep the kid in there for a while, make friends with him, fill his head full of just enough truth to confuse him, and send him back to us thinking that Lucky’s just a guy who’s gotten a bad rap in history.”
“Yeah, he’s a fuckin’ prince.” Eve muttered.
“Yeah. Look, babe, I’m not exactly a fan, either, but I can’t kick his ass and you can’t shoot him, so we’re kinda stuck right now.” I was getting a little frustrated, and Lucky had all the beer, so I headed for the door.
“Where are you going?” Myra sounded frightened as I reached for the handle. “You’re not going after him, are you?”
“Nah, I know better. I’m gonna go get some ice and a soda from the vending machine. Anybody else want anything?”
“I’ll go with.” Emily hopped up and stood beside me. We got out into the hallway and she looked up at me. “Now tell me straight, what do you think Luke, er, Lucky is doing with Sidney?”
Crap. She had it bad. “I really don’t think he’s going to hurt him. If he’s supposed to make a Choice I don’t think Lucky can hurt him, or everything goes all screwy. I mean, he’s capable, but I don’t think he’s allowed. And there are some rules that even Lucky won’t break. Don’t sweat it, honey, Junior’s gonna be fine.”
“If you say so.” But she still sounded a little dubious.
“Don’t sweat it. You don’t get to be this old without being a decent judge of character.” I tried to sound cavalier, but I don’t know if I pulled it off.
“You got to be that old because you’re immortal, not because you’re a good judge of character.” She pointed out. Smartass kids.
“Yeah, if I was, I probably wouldn’t have ended up hanging with all those Mongolians back when Genghis Khan was running roughshod over most of Asia. I just thought he wanted to ride around and party. Who was I to know he wanted world domination? My Mongolian was never that good anyway.” That at least got a giggle out of her, and we took our ice bucket and armful of soda cans back to the room. We were there for another hour or so before there was a knock on the door and Sid came in, looking awfully pale beneath his tattoos.
Emily leapt to her feet and rushed over to the kid, ushering him to a seat on the bed. I got up and out of the way, as did her mom. Cain tossed him a soda while Eve looked down the hall to see if she could catch any glimpse on Lucky’s location. I kept an eye on her, hoping she wasn’t going to try and put another slug into the fallen angel. Eve’s never been known for restraint, and sometimes it seems like her motto is “if at first you don’t succeed, shoot it again.” I didn’t need the attention, or the redecorating bill on my credit card. You’d be amazed how hard it is to keep a good credit rating when you don’t officially exist.
“What happened? Are you okay?” Emily asked.
“I’m fine. We just talked. Well, he talked. I listened.” Sid replied.
“What did he have to say?” I asked. “Remember, junior, deception is kinda his whole gig.”
“He talked about a lot of things. A lot about my Choice, and what was going to happen depending on what I Choose.”
“Did he happen to mention where you’re supposed to make this Choice, because we’re kinda flying blind right now.” Cain asked from the chair.
“Washington.” Michael pushed his way past Eve and into the room. “The Choice shall be made in Washington, DC. I will be leaving immediately.” The angel looked pissed, so I didn’t even bother with my standard snarky comments.
I just nodded to Myra, grabbed my room key from Junior and we headed to our room to pack. Emily and Eve started tossing things into a bag, and I glanced over at Cain, who was still sitting in the chair watching all the action.
by john | Jul 18, 2009 | Writing
So if you’re paying waaaayyyyy too much attention to the layout of this here blog, you’ve noticed a new button over on the sidebar, which says that my collection of poetry and short stories is now available for purchase!
I know, I’ve been working on Choices so much that I almost forgot I had poems and short stories, too. But I do, and the first collection is now available from Lulu.com (or it will be in a couple of weeks – I’m dealing with ISBN numbers and stuff like that right now). But you can order it in hard copy right now for $12 plus shipping, or for download for $5.
Or, if you’d like to have a signed and numbered limited edition, you can order that here. I’m going to do a limited run of 100 copies that I’ll sign and number, and the $15 will cover shipping to you via US Mail as well. So please tell all your friends, and don’t forget – books make great gifts, too! Given that shipping off Lulu is kinda spendy if you’re only buying one book, and that I gt a publisher’s discount plus a quantity discount for buying a big box of books, it’ll actually be cheaper for you to go with the pre-order and help me defray the costs of publishing.
I know, I’m a dirty pirate whore. Get over it.
by john | Jul 17, 2009 | Fiction, The Chosen
“Hello, Lucky.”
“Hello Adam. Hello, Sidney.” He looked for all the world like something out of a Hemingway novel, all white linen suit and Panama hat. The sunglasses were there, of course, the sunglasses were always there.
“What are you doing here, Lucky? And isn’t Michael going to have some objection to your being here?” I asked, looking around to see if the archangel had clued in that his eternal adversary had joined our little pool party.
“I’m here to meet young Sidney, of course. And I could care less what that self-important ass objects to. Hello, Sidney. Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m…” I was probably going to fall into the pool and drown myself laughing if he said anything about wealth and taste, but that was the moment that Michael took note of our new addition.
“LUCYPHER!!!!” He bellowed, rising straight out of the pool like a missile from a submarine. His benign human guise vanished in a thought, and what we got was a whole lot of pissed off archangel, charging across the top of the water at Lucky swinging a six-foot long flaming sword. I shoved Junior into the pool and dove in after him, swimming as fast as we could to get away from the coming scuffle.
If you’re never seen an angel in their natural form, then it’s a little hard to explain. But since I’m pretty sure you haven’t seen one, I’ll give it my best shot. Think a glowing blue-white Shaq, only bigger. A lot bigger. Like seven and a half or eight feet tall. Bald, a little like the blue guy from the Watchmen movie, only bigger, and without genitalia. Leave me alone, it’s the kinda thing you’re gonna
notice. There are wings, and they are huge. Humans can stretch out their arms and the distance from fingertip to fingertip equals their height, within an inch or so. When angels stretch out their wings, the distance from wingtip to wingtip is more like ten or twelve feet. So now picture a glowing eight foot tall Shaq with a 12’ wingspan running across the surface of a swimming pool swinging a sword that would give Braveheart a little twinge in his kilt, if you get my drift. I think you can see why we dove for cover, literally.
To his credit, if Lucky had veins, there was ice water in them, because he didn’t flinch in the face of the Angelic Express about to run him down. He just stood there patiently, and when Michael got close, he did some kind of judo/ninja thing and suddenly Michael was flying across the parking lot. The wings helped him control his descent, and he made the turn before he crashed through anything important, like our car, the front of the hotel, a random fence or two, anything like that. As Michael wheeled around and flew back at Lucky for another shot, Lucky unfurled wings of his own and took to the sky.
“Is this the place, then?” He asked, stopping Michael cold in midair with one sentence.
“Why are you here?” replied a very pissed off angel.
“I wish to speak with the Chosen. Do you then change the terms of our meeting?” Lucky persisted.
“You must leave.” Said Michael.
“We agreed that I could speak with the Chosen as often as I desire until the Choice is made. Do you break the terms of our agreement? Shall we finish this now?” I wasn’t sure what Lucky was talking about, but the formality in his tone led me to believe that this was a pretty big deal.
“I do not. Our agreement stands.” Michael said through clenched teeth.
“Then leave me to talk with the Chosen. As is my right.” With that, Lucky proved that he was either incredibly brave or had a lot of faith in Michael’s word, because he turned his back on the sword-wielding giant glowing guy and glided down to where Junior and I were pulling ourselves out of the pool. Michael let out a low growl of frustration and flew straight up until he vanished from sight. I was pretty sure there were going to be some cell phone calls to the National Enquirer around Nashville that evening. I stepped between Lucky and the kid, who was trying to look brave but only managing to look like a very wet, very scared skinny kid with a face full of hardware and expensive ink on his arms.
“Lucky, what do you want with the kid? I’m not gonna let you hurt him.” I wasn’t feeling too secure in my own ability to stop him, but I figured it was worth a shot. It worked about as well as expected. Lucky laughed as he landed on the edge of the pool and came over to us. He reached into the bag of beer, popped the top on a PBR, and tossed one to me as he sat down on one of the pool loungers.
“Sit down, Adam. We both know you can’t hurt me, and if I wanted to hurt you, I’d find much more interesting ways of doing it than just kicking your ass all over the parking lot. I want to talk to Sidney here, and you might as well hear this as well.” I sat. He was right, and I knew it. And he knew I knew it, so there wasn’t a whole lot of point in trying to act all tough against the First of the Fallen.
“What was all that about?” I asked, waving my hand in the general direction of the pool.
“That? Oh. Well, Michael and I have had a disagreement for a long time, and before too long, we’re going to find out which one of us was right. And he gets to be the one to set the place for our final duel. I just asked him if he wanted it to be here. He decided against it.” Just as I was about to demand more details, I saw a shadow move across the water, and I looked up.
“Eve, No!” I got the words out, but not in time as Eve came up behind Lucky with a sawed-off shotgun and shot him square in the back. The sound was enormous, and I shut my eyes against the muzzle flash and any Lucky-bits that happened to spray on my face.
by john | Jul 15, 2009 | Fiction, The Chosen
“Penny for ‘em, kid.” I said as I sat down. He took a long minute to gather his thoughts, and then it all started to flow.
“What if I screw it up? I mean, I’ve spent so much of my life as a punk kid, getting all pierced and tatted up to try and be different. And now you guys come along and say that I am different, but that it doesn’t have anything to do with how I look, or with the fact that I like punk music and still believe the Bible, or any of that. That I matter just because I’m me. That kinda makes me think my whole life is a waste, you know. I’ve spent all this time inventing myself, and now you guys tell me that fate of the world is in my hands, and it’s got nothing to do with any of the stuff I’ve tried to become.” He looked almost anguished, and I guess I could understand. It couldn’t have been easy being different in the South growing up.
“I dunno, kid. All that stuff you did probably has more to do with you being Chosen than we’ll ever know. Well, any of us except for Michael, who kinda has the hotline to the Father. But he ain’t talkin’. So you gotta think that everything you went through went into making you who you are. All the decisions you made and all the ones that people around you made, those are all part of what make you unique. So without any of that stuff, you’d just be another funny-looking street preacher getting your ass kicked in bars. If that helps at all.”
“It does. Thanks. But how will I know when it’s time to Choose? And how will I make the right decision?”
“I don’t have a single idea. But if you come up with the answers, will you let me know?”
“Why?”
“Seems you’re not the only one with a Choice coming up, Junior. I’m not just chaperoning this ride because I’m older than everybody else. Apparently my time as the observer is about over, and I’m gonna have to make a Choice of my own. And I don’t know a damn thing more about it than you do.”
“But what about the last time?”
“What last time?”
“When you chose to take the fruit from Eve. When you were thrown out of the Garden of Eden.”
“That was Eve’s choice, not mine. Me taking a piece of fruit from my wife was a little-C choice. She’d already been confronted with the big one, and made it.”
“Do you regret it?”
“What, getting tossed out of the Garden?”
“Yeah. Do you?”
“Every single day, kid. Every. Single. Day.”
“What was it like?”
“It was a lot like you’d expect from the stories. It was peaceful, mostly. We had plenty to do, we were raising crops and learning about the world. We were exploring our surroundings, and exploring each other. You know, doing what young people do. There were lots of animals around, and we got to play with some fairly exotic pets, but it wasn’t all sweetness and light. It’s not like we had pet lions babysitting antelopes and everybody was vegetarian. The animals still had to eat, and so did we. I killed my fair share of beasties, and it’s a lot easier now to go to the grocery store than it was to butcher a water buffalo. And when there are only a few people in the world, there’s not a lot of help to get a water buffalo onto dry land so you can butcher it in the first place. So it was nice, but the best thing was just being around the Father.”
“So you really were in direct contact with God?”
“Yeah, pretty much. I mean, he didn’t come down and walk around in a long white robe or anything, but his Presence was always there. And if I had a question, I asked. And he answered. Now sometimes his answer was ‘you’re a bright boy, Adam, figure it out,’ but it was an answer. That’s what I miss the most, just that connection.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah.” We sat there in silence for a few minutes before he piped up again.
“Adam?”
“Yeah, kid?”
“Cain.”
“Yeah, what about him?” I was afraid we might be heading into dangerous territory here, but I figured I owed it to the kid to let him know about the folks he was supposed to save the world with.
“Did he really murder his brother?”
“Abel? Yeah, he did. As far as we can tell, Cain actually invented murder. Not many people can claim to have their own Commandment, but my boy was always an overachiever.”
“Do you take anything seriously? I mean, he killed your son, and now you’re traveling with him. I don’t think I get that.”
“I probably don’t either to be real honest with you. But you gotta remember, in addition to having killed my son, he is my son. And I love him. That’s what being a father means, you love the little shit no matter what. I managed to forget that fact for a long time, but I’ve been reminded here recently.”
“So is he a good guy or a bad guy?”
“Yes.”
“To which?”
“Both. Look, there’s no question that Cain killed Abel. And there’s no question that it wasn’t the best thing that’s ever happened in any of our lives, but it just might be that it had to happen for a bigger reason. And I’m not gonna pretend to be smart enough to understand that reason, but after all these years, I’m not gonna ask too many questions, either.”
“Do you trust him?”
“With my life.”
“Okay. I guess that’ll have to do.”
“Good deal. So what’s your story, kid? What is it about you that makes you the Chosen? Are you the offspring of a Seraph and a mortal woman? Are you the Dahli Lama of Tennessee? What is it?”
“I’ve been asking myself that question ever since you picked me up off the sidewalk. I mean, I hate to question the wisdom of an angel, but do you think it’s possible that Michael may have picked the wrong guy?”
“Nah. He’s been too smug about the whole thing for him to harbor any doubts. And his intel is usually pretty good on these things.”
“Okay, then. Well I have no idea. I try to live a righteous, Christian life. Maybe that has something to do with it?”
“Can’t imagine it hurts, but it probably isn’t a big part of the process. After all, I’m not the least bit Christian, and apparently I’ve got to make a Choice soon myself.”
“You’re not a Christian? How can that be? I mean, you’re Adam, you’re right out of the Old Testament yourself. How can you not…” I cut him off there.
“Junior. Take a deep breath. Now let’s remember, I am the Old Testament. I predate Christianity by about 50 millennia, give or take a couple thousand years. I met the Carpenter. The Nazarene was a good kid, but he wasn’t the first or the last to speak that speech, so I’m not inclined to follow some hippie kid just because he says the Father loves us all. I know the true face of my Father’s love, and I know I don’t need an intermediary to get me there. All I need to do to talk to God it to talk to him. I don’t need to do it just on Sundays, or just in rooms with a lotta stained glass, or just through a mouthpiece. Now I liked the Carpenter. He did some good things, and he had a fantastic speaking voice. And I was a big fan of that water-into-wine trick. But I’m a little more old school in my religion. A little more direct, if you get my drift.”
“I never thought about that.”
“You probably never thought you’d be sitting around a swimming pool drinking beer with the main characters from Genesis, a dog-paddling archangel and a couple of waitresses from Texas, either.”
“Good point. Hey, thanks for talking to me. I was kinda freaking out a little.”
“No sweat. I’ve gotten kinda used to people freaking out lately. Including me.”
“You?”
“Yeah, me. Look, kid. I don’t really know what we’re coming up on right now, if it’s the end times, or what. But there’s a lot of new and different stuff happening, and when you’ve been around as long as I have, you some to understand that there really isn’t that much new stuff to happen. So when new things come in clumps, it’s a little disconcerting.”
“Makes sense. Now, um…I guess I’ve just got one more big question?”
“Shoot.”
“Where do we go from here?”
“You know, I have no idea.”
“Maybe I can help with that.” Shit. That was not the voice I wanted to hear.
