The Winter Solstice 2022

 

The faint afternoon light in the backyard. December 2022. Photo by me.

Today marks the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year and the official beginning of winter in the Northern Hemisphere. The sun set at five-thirty-two.

 

It looked and felt like winter here at Whisper Hall and it has for the past two weeks with days of rain, fog and unseasonably chilly weather. I have enjoyed it. It was not much different today with an east wind and temperatures rising to the upper forties. The rain returns tonight with sleet ahead of the coldest weather we have seen in a few years. Temperatures are forecast to reach the single digits for lows and with highs only in the teens and twenties over the Christmas weekend. It is spectacular weather. 

A snowy, ice rose at Whisper Hall. January 2022. Photo by me.

 

There might be a little snow over the Christmas weekend, but I am not expecting much. We have not had a snowfall since the middle of January when it snowed approximately three inches.

 

Whisper Hall. December 2022. Photo by me.

 

I lit a candle in the den to mark the occasion of the solstice. The fireplace is likely going to get some use over the next few days too.

 

Black Christmas (1974)

Last night, I watched the first Christmas movie that I have seen this year. It was new to me, even though it was released in 1974. I might have seen it as a child, but I do not remember.

 

The movie is considered by some to be a horror movie, but I thought it was more of a suspense/mystery movie compared to what is considered a horror movie by modern standards. It is not a movie with gore, jump scares, quick edits and CGI and that makes it a good movie. I love watching movies from when I was alive and there is an absence of modern technology such as computers and cell phones. It is possible to feel the silence that we enjoyed back then without the constant chiming and buzzing of today. Every year it seems humans invent new ways to make more noise and intrude on our natural environment.

Margot Kidder in Black Christmas 1974.

Black Christmas, filmed in Toronto, is about a series of murders that occur in a sorority house over the Christmas holiday period. The sorority house is one of those older homes built to last with dark wood interiors and a handsome staircase. The snow and the glow of the Christmas tree lights make for an unusual, but nice and cozy change, for a murder mystery. There is good acting in this film, pleasant cinematography, some creepy scenes and Margot Kidder gives an excellent performance. If you are seeking something different from the standard Christmas movies or enjoy 1970s movies, like I do; this might be for you.

Merry Christmas 2022

 

Birds gather in the backyard before a storm. December 2022. Photo by me.

 

The other morning I looked out on the front lawn and much to my surprise was a large buck eating the red winter berries. The deer was taller than me and muscular. I have seen many deer in my life, but this deer was the biggest I had ever seen. Unfortunately, I spooked it as I opened the front door to take a photo and it ran away.

 

I was twenty when I first read Thoreau's Walden. It was appealing to me at that age and where my head was then. A life in solitude among nature seemed the ideal. I lived similarly growing up and into my early twenties. It was impractical in some ways and unhealthy in others, but I was present among society enough with work, school and life that I was not in complete isolation. As it turns out, Thoreau was also not living in isolation either as he did leave Walden to enjoy the company of others and to take trips into town.

 

That life, in isolation, was beneficial too as it made me self-reliant on my own company, disciplined, strengthened my concentration skills and provided plenty of time for my thoughts and whims without distraction. I had my much-valued privacy too.

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations."

-Henry David Thoreau

I lost my copy of Walden almost twenty years ago in a flooded basement. Nature, by way of a tropical storm, came for my copy and most of my book collection that I had amassed through my life at that time. Gone too were the leather bound copies of Great Expectations, Leaves of Grass and other books that I cherished. I spent a fair amount of money on books that dated back to the late 1800s. I would not have called myself a collector, but a semi-serious one.

 

Thursday, I ordered a new hardback copy of Walden as I desired to read it again in my hands. My library smaller than it was, grows again. I want to read Walden again in a comfortable chair, in my backyard, on a rock in the woods or wherever I choose. 

What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives with in us. -Henry David Thoreau

Living outside the city again, on a hill, over a river and through the woods I have my solitude and my head returns to where it was nearly thirty years ago. Gone are the years of thundering nights on the dancefloor under a mirrorball, the parties until nine in the morning and all of the glitz and decadence - I regret none of that as I do not regret the quieter life now.  It was one fabulous experience that had its place, purpose and time.

Raking leaves. December 2022. Photo by me.

I cherish my peace at my own Walden more than any book in hand or on a shelf. I rake my birch, water oak and maple leaves (there's not a single pine on my property), enjoy the smell of them and the manual labor. It is one way of many to enjoy the season. 

The Christmas tree at my house. Photo by me December 2022.

This winter, I am writing the first draft of my next novel. I am also thinking over my poetry book which contains my poems from the 1990s. I am hesitant about publishing them due to their nature, but I may come spring. If you would like to know when I publish my next book, you may subscribe to my mailing list (I do not spam, sell or share my subscriber information).

Thank you for reading.

Me at my grandparent's Christmas party at their New Hope house in the 1980s.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays.

 

 

Influences For Uncivil X

With any work, whether writing, music, painting or other art forms there are outside cultural influences that inspire or shape it or the person creating it. This is about acknowledging the places, artists and works that inspired me in the period written about during Uncivil X and still do today.

Listed below are some of the artists, works, figures, events and places mentioned in Uncivil X or had an influence on me and it.  The list is very much a mixture of high, pop and underground culture.

This is written in a way that it does not give away any of the plot.

Nirvana

Nirvana

I will begin with the obvious choice.  The rise of Nevermind in the fall of 1991 was so unexpected and overwhelming. It came out of nowhere and changed the rock musical landscape. They were my favorite band at the time. I related to Cobain's lyrics. Lithium and Come As You Are were my two favorite songs. Their music was a life changer for me.

 

Arthur Rimbaud

Arthur Rimbaud

French poet in the mid to late 1800s that died at age 37. His life story and writing were a huge influence on me. I begin the book with a selection from After The Flood. His influence resides throughout this book and I also mention his poem The Stolen Heart and the story behind it.

 

Death In Venice

The book and film were a part of my life from the time I was a little boy. I lived a similar scenario with a person known as English Stan in the 1990s.

Also from that film, is the inspiration of Gustav Mahler's Symphony 5, Adagietto. Leonard Bernstein's conducting is mentioned in the book. He conducted Adagietto at the funeral in New York for Bobby Kennedy in 1968.
Mahler was also an inspiration on me for his life in exile.

 

River Phoenix

River in My Own Private Idaho

Aside from being adorably handsome, River Phoenix was the best young actor of Generation X at the time. I had first noticed him in the 1985 film Explorers. His best roles were in Running On Empty and My Own Private Idaho. His death in 1993 was more shocking to me than Cobain's.

Resonant Frequency

Resonant Frequency is an aspect of the novel for those doing a close reading. The main character vibrates at certain points and that behavior is based on resonant frequency.

A Boy's Own Story

This is my copy of the book from the period of Uncivil X.

It is the classic gay, coming of age story. It was the first gay book of any kind that I read. I read it two or three times. Also mentioned in the book is Edmund White's, The Beautiful Room is Empty. I was not brave enough to buy gay books in person and they were not available in Paulding County, so I ordered through the Barnes & Noble catalog.

 

Doing Time On Maple Drive

Doing Time on Maple Drive cast. Yes, that's Jim Carrey.

Growing up I had seen many gay movies on cable television. My all-time favorite would be Parting Glances from 1986. In 1992 there was a made for television movie on Fox that was much more relatable called Doing Time On Maple Drive. It featured a gay male character that was the same age as I was that grew up in a dysfunctional household. The character was deeply into the closet and attempts suicide. His relationship with the character Kyle was heartbreaking. I taped that movie and watched it many times in the early 90s. 

 

Egon Schiele

Schiele self portrait.

Some of his trees.

The first time I ever saw any of his work, I fell in love with it. I explain why in Uncivil X. He was an Austrian painter that died at the age of twenty-eight.
There are other painters mentioned in Uncivil X: Kandinsky (my favorite), Jackson Pollock and Cy Twombly.

Tacheles

Tacheles. Courtesy Wikipedia

 

Tacheles was a legendary Berlin squat and artist collective in the former East German side of the city. Berlin was known for its long history of squats in abandoned buildings. I have been fascinated by Berlin, the GDR and the Berlin Wall since I was a small child. After German reunification in 1990, Berlin was a popular place for Americans my age looking for an adventure.

The Goat Farm Atlanta. Photo by me.

The closest similar place that existed in Atlanta in the 90s was the Goat Farm. The Goat Farm appeared in the 1989 video for the Indigo Girls' Closer to Fine and has since appeared in movies. That video is a wonderful time capsule of Atlanta's decay in the late 80s and early 90s that I loved. Some of the other spots are the Bankhead Bridge to nowhere (which was still in use at that time), outside what is now the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, the Boulevard tunnel and too many other places to mention. How Atlanta is portrayed in modern pop culture and media, is not what it really is or was, but that is a topic for another day.

The Unanswered Question

 
Music from Charles Ives that made me think about life. Leonard Bernstein explains it.

 

Red Hot + Blue

 

 
Red Hot is an organization that was popular in the early 90s for its fundraising, campaigning and fight against AIDS. It was mostly known for putting out compilation albums composed of popular artists such as George Michael, Lisa Stansfield, Seal and many others. Their campaigns featured the art work of gay artist Keith Haring, who died of AIDS; among others.

Chess

The feud between Karpov and Korchnoi. Their story is a fascinating one.

The Red Balloon

 

The Red Balloon is a 1950s French short film about a boy chasing a red balloon through the streets of Paris. This was shown in school when I was growing up and I likely saw it again on public television. This film has stayed with me throughout my life and I am very fond of it. 

Zines

A 90s gay zine.

Zines were not something you could find in Paulding County and so you either found them in Atlanta or ordered them,as most did, through the mail. Zines were small, independent magazines often run by one person made on a photocopier. They were at their peak in cultural relevance in the 1990s. Zine creators often wrote about everything and anything imaginable. I knew a person in Atlanta that had a zine and I sometimes read other zines.

 

Ford Factory 

Photo courtesy Georgia State University.

This is the former factory where I lived in Atlanta with my loft circled in red. Most of Uncivil X is set in Paulding County, but the last few chapters are more Atlanta oriented and some of it is set in the factory.

I actually had two lofts there, but I simplified it to one for Uncivil X. The above photo is from 1988 before the Murder Kroger was built next door and the abandoned factory was converted into living space. When I lived there parts of the building were abandoned and decaying. We would sneak into those areas and up on the roof.

Today, that is the gentrified Ponce City Market next door in the background. When I lived there it was City Hall East and the neighborhood was FAR from gentrified in the 90s. The Masquerade was behind us on North Avenue and it made for a lively scene between that and the general sleaze that made Ponce so interesting.

Model-T factory from another vantage point. Photo by me.

The building in 2013 from the bridge over Ponce which now carries the Beltline. When I lived there that was a sometimes active rail line. Otherwise those tracks were a shortcut to Piedmont Park and people would engage in sex on the tracks between our building and City Hall East.

I had a large rainbow flag for all of Ponce to see. Taken from a video of mine 1995.

I had a great view of the Clermont. Taken from a video of mine 1995.

I wish I still had those metal candle holders. They were so heavy and well made. Taken from a video of mine 1995.

 

Living there, along with the stone house at Rhodes Hill, was the catalyst for my love of architecture and old buildings. I already loved antiques and unfortunately one of the stories that had to be cut from Uncivil X for word count reasons; was about the time my father and I bought an entire house of Art Deco antiques when we redecorated the house at Aviary Hill in the early 90s.

Totally Fucked Up

This film was my introduction to Gregg Araki films and independent, gay underground cinema. Aside from Totally Fucked Up, I very much enjoyed The Living End. I mention the opening scene and other parts of the movie in Uncivil X.

 

Barnsley Gardens

Barnsley Manor. Image courtesy Wikipedia.

Though Uncivil X is approximately 98% true, sometimes I had to change minor details to make for a better story or to avoid some other type of issue. Barnsley Gardens is the inspiration for Addison Manor in the book. I wanted to change parts of the history of the house to tell my story in a more effective way. It is true that I visited Barnsley with those particular characters on a drizzly, lonely late fall day in the early 90s. The place was also very different from what it is today. There was no resort and it was only the ruins of the manor house.

Visetown & Vise Landing, Tennessee - Decatur County

Video still from a VHS of mine in the mid 1990s looking toward the Tennessee River.

 

 

A newspaper mention of Visetown.

A newspaper mention, among many, of Visetown from 1939.

Rhodes Hill in Decatur County is very much based on a real place and has appeared in all three of my books. It is a place that barely exists today on any map; known as Visetown in the family and by map makers as Vise Landing. The stone house, mercantile, other buildings, barns and farm are very real and built by my ancestors. The stone house at Visetown was one of my favorite places in the world and has inspired me many times over. 

Though I spent a lot of time in Decatur County in the 90s, very little of it is in Uncivil X as I wrote about it so much in Dweller On The Boundary and Terminal Wake.

The area around Visetown has changed some over the decades with a country club and marina now located where we swam as kids in the Tennessee River.

 

Me at Lost Creek in the mid 80s.

 

The Beech River at Lost Creek 2004. Photo by me.

Another location in Decatur County, Lost Creek, is also a very real place and the stories from there are true. The real name is Lost Creek and my family maintained a presence there well into the 2000s. Along with my grandparents and my grandmother's second husband's properties; my father also owned a house there. My father in the 2000s simultaneously owned a house at Lost Creek, in Parsons and a house with a lot of acreage in neighboring Perry County.

Vise Pharmacy, Decaturville, Tn. Photo by me 2004.

Some random Vise presence in Decatur County. Having such an uncommon name where I grew up in Georgia, it was always strange to see my last name on so many businesses in Decatur County. That never got old.

Aviary Hill

Aviary Hill in 1990 when the house became white. Photo by me.

Of course, there is no way to neglect the house and hill that I grew up, as it is the most common location in all of my books to this point. The house is located in New Hope, Georgia. It was the single most important place in my life and shaped me in countless ways.

Blackout Log would be to the right and behind me in that photo, fifty yards away.

The photo above is a foot bridge my father and I built over the creek behind my house. The land influenced me as much as the house and I loved growing up there. I would not have wanted to have grown up anywhere else.

Photo by me mid 1980s. Photo by me.

Newcomers to Paulding County in the last twenty to thirty years can not grasp how rural it once was. Paulding County was well known for moonshine through the 1960s and 1970s. The moonshine still above was one that was on our property. There were probably a dozen behind my house as you went deeper into the woods towards Elsberry Mountain, though none of them were in use.

Elsberry Mountain

Looking toward Atlanta from the top of Elsberry Mountain in the late 1980s. Photo by me.

Elsberry Mountain. Photo by me late 80s.

Though Elsberry Mountain is only casually mentioned in Uncivil X, it was a common location in my other previous books and I thought I would include it. It is located maybe a mile behind Aviary Hill. It was a regular place I walked or rode my ATV growing up, probably once a week or more. I knew every inch of that mountain on every face. 

 

Legendary Georgia Tech football coach, Bobby Dodd, had a compound at the base of the mountain. I never knew who he was until much later in life. I met him once when I was about twelve years old. I was walking the dirt road with my dog and came across this elderly man, it was a strange sight as I never ran into people out there as it was so isolated. He introduced himself and asked who I was. He told me to be careful.

My Next Novel

 

© 2022 Chris M. Vise

I have had little to say about what is written in my next novel. I enjoy surprising readers and will refrain from saying more about it until publication nears. For now, this is the only tease I have to offer along with a mock interview in which I discuss a few more details here.

 

This is the cover of my next novel. The cover features Orion on the ceiling of Grand Central Station in Manhattan.

This novel spans 1991 to 1995 and picks up the story where Dweller On The Boundary left off. This is the second novel of the planned trilogy which will conclude in 2004.

I am not finished with New Hope or Paulding County and there are plenty more secrets to reveal underneath the pines. If you do not know the story, I kindly ask you to read my first two books and if you did, thank you. If you have read them and thought that was the entire story then I ask you to understand that it was not - it gets worse.

 

The tentative release date is November of 2022.

Me in the 1990s.

There are plenty of musical hints in this playlist.

Stranger

The Silver Comet Trail west of Dallas. May 2020. Photo by me.

 
A

s much as we my try and unless we are born somewhere and grow up there we are unlikely to fully understand a place or know it. It is also possible to unlearn or misunderstand a place if we leave it for decades and both the place and us change. I would like to think I know the county where I grew up, Paulding County, Georgia, but I do not know it anymore. It changed dramatically since I left and I cannot claim to know it today. I knew it for what it was. It is an old lover that broke up with me or vice versa and has undergone a significant transformation. I see the scars and few landmarks that I remember like an age faded birthmark on a thigh that my hand rested on a time long ago. It is familiar and foreign. It is a stranger and I am a stranger too. 

 

On Saturday I was on my way to Alabama and I stopped to use my phone for a few minutes in Paulding County. I was at a shopping center on the old U.S. 278 at Georgia Highway 120. It was the second shopping center I remember as a child and was called Paulding Place. It was built after the Paulding Plaza further up the road that had the only theater in the county, the Ace Hardware, Fotomat, Ben Franklin's and Jack's. 

 

Paulding Place was smaller and newer. It originally had a Winn-Dixie grocery store and a Revco drugstore as the main anchors. The shopping center is a setting for a few scenes in my books, Dweller On The Boundary and Terminal Wake. My mother bought groceries there for several years, I would have film developed at Revco and I would ride there with my grandfather to pick up an Atlanta newspaper from the machine on the sidewalk. My mother and I bought a Christmas tree one year in the parking lot. It was a place of commerce and not a lovable place with its asphalt parking lot devoid of trees and at times impossible to get into or out when the road out front was the main road in the county. In the 1980s, how much time had my mother lost waiting to turn right out of the parking lot and then turn left on 120 years ago when the roads were different?

I remembered standing in the checkout line on a Friday evening with my mother as a boy of twelve. I watched a boy I knew from school getting something from one of the gumball machines near the door. He was the real life boy behind the character of David The Bishop. I remember hoping that he would not see me, but he did and came over. He was eager to talk with my mother and tried to convince her that I should spend the weekend at his house. I was not in the mood for it and wiggled my way out of it with an excuse. He and I were so intellectually similar that it scared me sometimes. We were not physical mirrors of each other, he with his blonde hair and me with my dark brown or his brown eyes to my blue ones. It was our thoughts, thought processes and desires that ran on the same tracks. He understood better than I did that we were not strangers.

Today, the shopping center is rundown like most modern disposable buildings become and a discount furniture store is in the old Winn-Dixie building. A common reaction might be to say that it is sad to see it that way, but it was not the place that I missed. I cannot shed a tear or become sentimental over a declining shopping center. It was the people from decades ago that meant something to me doing the simple, everyday routines of life that I missed. 

Paulding County was so rural then that it was difficult to avoid classmates away from school in the few places we had to shop for food, basic supplies or clothes. That was not always a problem, but it was not always welcome either.

 

The population of Paulding County in my lifetime:
1970 population 17,520
1980 population 26,110
1990 population 41,611
2020 population 168,661

 

I was born in 1973 and graduated high school in 1991. During that span there was small, incremental growth, but it remained a rural place. By 1990 it began to feel less so as more fast food restaurants sprouted and shopping centers spread over the pastures and woodlands. It was discomforting to watch the slow motion disintegration of what I knew. The boosters of progress and growth would disagree, but I loved the county as it was. I did not want it to change and that was an impossibility. I am thankful to have missed the explosive growth that forever changed the place in the last twenty years.

 

I think about the people that I knew then that never left the county. How do they feel about it? Are they the frogs in the pot of water that has the temperature slowly raised over time until it boils? Do they not notice or mind it?

 

I have lived too many places and too many cities to become too attached like I was to Paulding County as a child. Where I live now was once a plantation that was later divided into smaller farms and then finally became a subdivision in the 1990s. The barn for the old farm sat on some of my property. It is unlikely that I will come to know this place or understand it like I once did my old home. As my first year here closes out, I know few of the names of the roads in this area and I am not too concerned about it. I realize that there are few places or people that we can ever truly know as life is only so long and the world is so big despite what the internet would have you believe as it warps your sense of time and scale. Perhaps today people are too busy promoting themselves and navel gazing for the superficial likes and comments of social currency to look at the world around them. They see the reflection of their own eyes staring back at them in the shiny glass and nothing more. Our cell phone cameras are often pointed in the wrong direction and we miss what we were supposed to see - the chance encounter in a checkout line or the similarities that hide behind the obvious differences. David The Bishop, like Paulding County, might now be a stranger too.

I did not stop for long in Paulding County or I would have felt as though I might not escape it again, if I ever have. 

The Beatles - I, Me, Mine

 

100 Years

 

Warning New Hope Next Left. Seen recently in a cotton mill turned antique store in Monroe, Georgia.

Once a year I type a name into a database and check the status of a person. It is not Facebook or another social media website, it is a database of criminal records. I have to know the status of the person that the character of Rowe from Dweller On The Boundary and Terminal Wake is based. For my own peace of mind I want to know if he is incarcerated or not. Last week was my most recent search.

 

I have not encountered this person in many years, but there is no safety valve to prevent that from changing. Fate has seen before that we collided and it is possible it could happen again. Consider me dramatic or paranoid if you wish, but you really do not understand how dangerous this person remains.

 

Curiosity got the better of me when I was writing Dweller On The Boundary and I found a recent photo of him. He looked as dangerous and deadly as he always had. His eyes were very much alive in the photo and all that fear in me of him resurfaced. I hoped his eyes would be dead and that the life in them had been beaten out, but no. He could kill me as easily today and he tried long ago.

 

I have my suspicions on what made this person into Rowe based on second hand knowledge and rumor. He was not born a criminal or evil, I believe few people are. I know for certain through my own observations of him as a child that he had it difficult in his home life and that likely contributed to what he became. It generates no sympathy in me for him or those other two boys and it does not move me to forgiveness. Some acts are too heinous to be forgiven and I doubt he cares one way or another.

 

Rowe is currently out of prison and has been for five years. Is he a changed person? No, I would think that he is not and it will be a matter of time before he is convicted again for another crime. He is the repeat offender of repeat offenders. Of the fifteen convictions that are listed in his criminal record, fourteen were for crimes in Paulding County. His most recent conviction was in another county in northwest Georgia.

 

From those fifteen convictions he has tallied a total number of years sentenced to a perfect one hundred years. One hundred years and fifteen convictions and he walks free in society. One hundred years on worthless paper and in the hollow words of judges. His convictions are for crimes that include violence, theft, burglary, drugs and DUI dating back to 1996. How many other crimes has he committed that he never was arrested and prosecuted? What crimes did he commit as a minor that are sealed away and all he earned was time spent in a youth detention center? I could answer some of that.

 

In the records it lists his last physical description as six feet five inches high and weighing two hundred pounds. I stand six feet one and weigh one hundred and fifty pounds by contrast. I am no match for him the same as then.

 

Rowe lives in north Georgia and the other people live in Paulding County. I have been asked many times who Rowe is and who were the other two boys. I am not going to say as it changes nothing. You can read my books and think what you wish, but you did not walk in my white Reeboks or go to Blackout Log. 

 

I would ask, which of us is the free man?

 

A Mock Interview

Me in the early 1990s at home in New Hope.

 This is a mock interview in which I interview myself. I borrowed the idea from a much, much more famous writer. It was a fun exercise.

 

So you have your second novel coming out this November and I'd like to thank you for taking the time to speak with us.

It's my pleasure.

What can we expect from the character based on your life, Chris Rhodes, in your next novel?

A less sexually mixed up character, but maybe more confused in other areas of life. The character enters his late teens and early twenties and as with many people that period is about figuring a way forward from the past.

Are you implying that the character accepts his sexual orientation and becomes comfortable as a young gay man?

Not exactly that. Acceptance is far different from embracing something. There is plenty of daylight between those two positions. The character does evolve through the course of the novel.

The character of Robin was a significant character in your two earlier books, Dweller On The Boundary and Terminal Wake, will he be in the next novel?

I feel like I would spoil something if I said yes or no.

Since these books are based on your life, did you feel like you were invading your own privacy?

It's not like I am telling everything or writing about some subjects in graphic detail. Sex is a good example of this, I consider writing about sex in graphic detail as boring and unoriginal. People may disagree and they can write their own books. There are some parts of my childhood that I never would write about and am hesitant to discuss in person. It does make it different meeting people that knew me before the books and meeting them after. It can be awkward and in some instances the dynamics have changed.

Did you lose any of your friends as a result of the book?

At least one for certain, maybe more. I'm not keeping score.

You've said this next book is not a love story, but a falling out of love story. Can you explain?

People can love other people, pets, places, flavors of ice cream or whatever. Sometimes it is more difficult to get out of something than it is to get into something; love can be like that. My character, Chris Rhodes, is going to learn that lesson the hard way as I did in real life.

How many of the characters from your two earlier books will be in the new novel?

I don't have an exact number, but fewer than I expected when I began writing this book in Fort Lauderdale. I knew some interesting people in the early 90s and I had to make room for them, as a result some other characters were cut. One character was cut for reasons that I won't go into. A few characters do return, Uncle Ridley is one, but he appears in a very diminished role. My life changed a lot during the time period of this book.

So you wrote this book on the road?

Not really, no. I consider Fort Lauderdale a second home to Georgia. Some of the first drafts were written in Fort Lauderdale, parts of one chapter were written in New Orleans and the rest were written in Georgia. The bulk of the work has taken place at home in Georgia.

Dweller On The Boundary had a number of shocking moments, will this next novel have those too?

Unfortunately, yes. It's strange, at the time I didn't necessarily think of these incidents as that shocking as I was so accustomed to crazy events coming out of nowhere. Now, I look back and think what in the hell? This is so wrong and shouldn't have happened. I never would accept any of that today, but I did then.

What have you learned from writing two books and a third on the way?
Too many unexpected things. One being that people that you never expected to remember you, do remember you and will read you. That has mostly been a good experience. I also learned that I had to be better prepared to protect my privacy in my current life. I love getting email and answering reader questions, but I have to keep a distinct line as to how people can have access to me. I cannot work if people can send me an instant message any second of the day and disrupt my train of thought.

Since this book is set in the 90s, what is your favorite film, book and song of that period?

Film would be Slacker because it captures the feeling of the early 90s that I remembered. The early 90s were the best part of that decade and it became something culturally different by about '97.

I can't pick a favorite song, that's impossible for me. Music means too much to me to be able to narrow it down a single favorite. One of my favorites is Roads, by Portishead. The period that song entered my life in '99 isn't in this book, but it was at a time when I felt powerful and was living completely on my own terms. It might have been the first time I ever felt that way. I was twenty-six dating an industrial designer, hanging out in lofts in Castleberry Hill, having all these adult and arty experiences and dating a guy that wanted me more than I wanted him.

Book would be The Farewell Symphony by Edmund White. He is my favorite gay writer and one of my literary idols.

Who is your favorite character in the next book?

The characters in this book are a bit more challenging than in my first two books because I met and knew them as a young adult versus as a child. I enjoyed writing a couple of characters more than the others perhaps. One is a female character named Sidney. She meant a lot to me in real life and I loved the opportunity to share her.

Are you in contact with Sidney today?

As with many of the characters from Dweller On The Boundary and Terminal Wake, I am not. Many of my characters from all of the books have died. I would love to find Sidney and catch up with her if she is still alive. I have a framed photo from the 90s of us together in my office. It would mean the world to find her.

The 90s or The 70s

I have been writing so much for the next novel and in emails that I have neglected my blog for almost a month.

 

After not using my Facebook account in the past couple of months I decided to deactivate it until I need it again. It will remain in that state until my next novel comes out some time this fall. Work on the novel set in the 1990s continues and progress has been excellent especially without the distraction of Facebook. 

 

The 90s are a complicated time to write about because there were so many highs and lows I experienced like many twenty-somethings do. It can be the make or break period for dreams and so much change occurs in a person's life in those years. You hope to come out of it by the time you reach thirty having found yourself and figured out your way through life. The consequences of actions and responsibilities only grow with age and the sooner you accept that the better off you will be.

 

The other day I was flipping through records in an antique store in Roswell, Georgia when I came across an album by the group Bread. They were a band in the 1970s that to my ears are the sound of that decade. They were a hugely successful group with multiple hits on the Billboard charts and today you never hear them on the radio. Most people under the age of forty likely never have heard of them, unless maybe one of their songs has appeared in some comic book action movie in an ironic fashion. Everything from the past is either to be ridiculed or smeared today. Oh how we have forgotten about hindsight and perspective it seems.

Life has taught me many lessons and one is that it always changes. Some aspects of the past were worse and some were better. If you live long enough you will understand that.

 

I was going to snatch up that Bread album, it was priced at three dollars, until I removed it from the sleeve. It was scratched on both sides and that was disappointing. YouTube will have to continue to supply me my fix of Bread.

 

In the first half of the 90s I spent much of that time alone and that is not necessarily a complaint. I remember sitting alone in that big empty house on the hill with the windows open on a rainy spring night. My father was out after he and I had spent the day cleaning house from top to bottom. There were a number of stereos in the house and we had some that played eight tracks. We had a fair amount of eight tracks to go with our massive record collection. I inserted one by Bread. It was intensely peaceful to sit there alone for hours with the lights off, the sound of the steady falling rain and Bread.

 

I thought about the seventies and how I missed being a young boy. I am not a sentimental person or prone to nostalgic fits, but that one night I did miss that time – the golden period from my perspective. Music made me remember a family, a friend and feelings.

 

It is funny to me that in 2022 I had to listen to music from the 1970s to remember a night in the 90s. Pesky time warps via the ears!

If you read one or both of my earlier books you may believe you know my family, but there is more. 

Thank you for reading.

 

 

Summer Solstice 2022

 Today marks the longest day of the year in terms of sunlight in the northern hemisphere. Accompanying the summer solstice we are also experiencing an early summer heatwave and dry spell in my neck of the woods. Last week, temperatures were near one hundred degrees with high humidity, making it miserable. A cool down over the weekend was a nice reprieve, but now the heat has returned as temperatures climb again to the century mark this week.

Photo by me, June 2022.

My New Dawn rose in the rear garden has bloomed for the first time in its life. I planted the bush in April after ordering it from a nursery in Michigan. These are the same roses my family grew when I was a child that I have written about in my books. I never expected this rose to be so difficult to find as local growers and nurseries do not stock this rose. I am uncertain of the origin of the rose bush we had at my childhood home, but I know that it was planted in the 1970s. I suspect my mother purchased it at her favorite nursery in Paulding County that was near our house. I had to have one at my new house to go along with the other varieties of roses that we are growing. Of course, the New Dawn is my favorite among the seven bushes that we have.

Photo by me, June 2022.

Last night I heard the cicadas for the first time this summer. I found the first cicada shell and then another this morning while gardening before the heat became too much. Next it will be the June bugs that I am looking for, but despite their name it will not be until July before they arrive.

I do hope that we are fortunate to have some rain by this weekend. It has been an extra chore to establish a completely new garden from scratch at the new house during a dry spring and early summer with high heat. Should this weather pattern last through July then any further planting will need to be scaled back for the year. The rear garden is a multi-year plan anyway, but I am trying to put in place the foundation this year.

 

We have not had a sustained heatwave similar to this one in Georgia in a few years and it has caught me somewhat unprepared. I grew up in Georgia without the benefit of air conditioning so I was accustomed to the heat and humidity at that age. I lived in the country, surrounded by trees and my family used fans and opened the windows for circulation. The daytime could get uncomfortable during some of the hot and dry years of the 1980s, but by evening it was tolerable. It was not until I was nearing the end of high school that we finally had air conditioning. I would not want to live that way again, not at my present age.

 

And after today the hours of daylight will grow shorter by a few seconds and I may not mind it all that much.

He Grabbed Me By The Heart

Flying my kite on the beach at Navarre, Florida. Sept. 2019. Photo by me.

It is on my calendar, the birthday of the real person behind the character of Oliver, but I rarely check my calendar and I do not have it set for reminders. At four this morning as I sat down to the first cup of coffee he crossed my mind like a falling star. I have a few photos of him at the age I knew him as a boy saved on my phone. I looked through them. His memory grabbed me by the arm to whisper something in my ear and  I remembered that his birthday is near. For the sake of privacy I cannot disclose what day it actually occurs.

I remember few birthdays and his one of them even without a whisper to my ear. 

 

He would have turned fifty-years old this year, had he lived past his thirties. His story and the short time I knew and loved him always will break my heart. That broken promise in our youth is something I never let myself forget.

 

Happy birthday.

 

In honor of his memory, my novel Dweller On The Boundary is free on Amazon Kindle on Sunday, June 12, 2022 and my short story collection Terminal Wake: Stories of a Boy 1979-1991 is also free the same day on Amazon Kindle. Both of these books contain stories with him and Two Kites In The Wind is one of the hardest stories I ever had to write.

 

Though I first heard this song performed by Whitney Houston, I prefer the George Benson version. The Greatest Love Of All in memory of "Oliver."