Deluge: A Fictional Account of What Would Happen if Extreme Weather Hit California

Deluge is a disaster story. A real potential disaster is bearing down on the East Coast, and people would be wise to take every precaution. Everyone stay safe.

 Here is an snippet from the book that tries to put moving water in perspective.

Evarts examined the sky. He could discern not even a dull glow where the sun would be at this hour. He swiped water from his eyes.  The rain was bad enough, but the wind made the ocean surface bumpy, and the nose of his surfboard kept splashing salt water in his face as he paddled. He wanted to keep a clear eye out to sea, so it presented more than an annoyance. The larger, outside waves could be brutal, and he didn’t want to be caught inside in what surfers called the impact zone. People generally thought of water as benign. It watered gardens, you could drink it, bathe with it, freeze it to chill a drink or a sore back, swim in it, or laze on the surface in a boat or on a floater. Water was an essential element of life, useful and often great fun. But surfers knew water could also be a killer. No one who had been hit by a huge wave disrespected moving water. You couldn’t fight it. You couldn’t beat it. You could only get out of the way or let it throw you around like a rag doll in a Rottweiler’s grip.

Storms,politics, and gangs pillage California but that isn't the scary part.

Is there life east of Pacific Coast Highway?

My wife and I are about to return to Omaha from San Diego. Darn, where did the time go? I’m going to miss friends and family, surfing, walks on the beach, and Mexican food.

When I was a teenager, we rarely ventured away from the beach. In fact, we didn’t believed there was life east of Pacific Coast Highway. We called the inhabitants of that vast wasteland inlanders … or worse. A few of my friends became involved with inland girls, but for the most part, we had plenty on our side of the divide. (I admit my wife came from east of PCH, but she grew up west of Hawthorne Boulevard, the next thoroughfare in our neck of the woods. That’s almost native. Besides, she put up with me for all these years, so I can't hold her paganism against her.)

In my youth, if someone had grabbed me on the beach and told me I would live in Omaha, I would have hushed them in fear that one of my friends might overhear. Omaha is in the exact center of the country. As far you can get from an ocean or large body of water. The surf stinks. And yet … I’m looking forward to going home. We have a nice home and I’m eager to see my daughter’s family and our Midwest friends. And focus more diligently on writing. When I get there I’ll play with the grandkids, eat at our favorite restaurants, bring home great pizza, watch the seasons blossom all over the place, enjoy watching the kids sports games, and shoot untold rounds of golf. Oh, wait, I don’t golf. Never mind, that was someone else. But I do look forward to eating at the clubhouse.

In truth, I discovered there’s abundant life in the heartland. I enjoy Omaha, and besides, if I need a fix, I can just jump on a plane and be back in San Diego in three hours.  Thank goodness for Boeing.

Omaha, Nebraska

Now what?

I've written ten books and contributed to another five. Millions of words, all typed with two fingers. I would have learned to touch type, but I don't think that fast. When I finished the sixth Steve Dancy Tale, I wanted a break, not from writing, but from Steve. Now, I writing a sequel to The Shut Mouth Society. Actually, it's not a sequel, it just uses the same characters. The title is Deluge, and it's a disaster story. I'll vent all my frustrations in relentless waves of destruction and mayhem so I can return to Steve fresh as a huckleberry.

Returning to the Heartland

Winter in Pacific Beach

Winter in Nebraska

We spend the winters in San Diego. When we called Arizona home, San Diego served as our summer retreat. (There are only two seasons in Arizona, winter and hell.) Now our legal residence is Omaha, Nebraska. To escape snow, we switched to using our condo mostly in the winter, except part of our itinerary is traveling to Nevada in search of snow at Heavenly. Life’s confusing.

We discovered we prefer San Diego in the winter. No summer crowds at the beach, breakfast seating at cafés is less than forty-five minutes, and you can go to a movie without standing in line. In truth, the weather’s better as well. In the winter, you don’t need air conditioning, which is convenient because we don’t have air conditioning. We just open a slider and let the sea breeze in.

Since Christmas, I surfed regularly, got a little snow skiing in, saw a lot of my family, and took many looong walks around my neighborhood. I had to take these walks because Pacific Beach has too many great places to eat, and I don’t want to look like the Michelin Man.

It’s time to go home. We miss the grandkids and we want to enjoy spring in Nebraska. We had some fun, but this has not been one of our better sojourns to San Diego due to some tough personal issues. Despite difficulties and distractions, I still got some writing done.

A lot of stuff is coming. Soon. I promise.

WSJ Editorializes on Hollywood Malaise

Rod Pennington writes that "Sunday's Oscars ceremony takes place during one of the gloomiest times for the film industry in recent memory." With ticket sales trending down, Pennington has some specific advice.

The solution to today's film malaise is simple: better storytelling. Studio executives seem to have forgotten the basic rules preached by the late mythology scholar Joseph Campbell, and his model of "Reluctant Hero." Over four decades this formula has dominated blockbusters: Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter and Katniss Everdeen, among many others, are ordinary people reluctantly thrust into extraordinary situations. Elaborate car chases and stunning special effects are fine, but audiences still want someone they can root for.

Since this advice echoes my previous posts, I have no choice but to declare Pennington a genius.

With home theaters a norm, Hollywood believes that to get people off their couches and into movie theater seats, they must blow things up, speed around corners, kill multitudes in gruesome detail, overly edit action scenes, and lay down an ear-splitting sound track. Nowadays, the story is so secondary that the sound track routinely overpowers characters speaking to each other. Screenwriters who understand dialogue write for cable, where they're allowed to strut their stuff. Today's movies are empty calories loaded to the gills with noise and eye candy. Can Hollywood once again learn to walk and chew gum at the same time? I believe so, but only when the story becomes paramount and all the rest is viewed as the delivery system.

And by the way, you know, when you're telling these little stories? Here's a good idea - have a POINT. It makes it SO much more interesting for the listener!" Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

Happy New Year!

The first eight days of 2017 have already slipped away. I've been distracted by family and fun. It seems the only way to slow down time is to stayed bored. That's not going to happen.

After Christmas, we have made our winter trek to San Diego to avoid the worst of an Omaha winter. Ran right into Southern California cold, rain, and tiny surf. (Yesterday was perfect weather, but it lasted exactly 24-hours.) The small waves didn't bother me because as I grow older, waist-high surf has become my friend.

Today, Crossing The Animas achieved another milestone. My editor broke free of her backlog and starts work this week on my already perfect manuscript. (I always believe that until my book comes back bleeding red ink from every pore.) Prior to sending a manuscript to my editor, I have the book read by a few trusted readers. Thank you all for your sound advise and for saving me untold embarrassment.

Last year I agreed to participate in a short story anthology. I had never written a Steve Dancy short story and I didn't know how I would like the abbreviated format. I loved it. I deviated from my standard form and wrote "Snake in the Grass" from Joseph McAllen's point of view. It put my characters in a different light and gave me a fresh perspective on their motivations. Fun project. Wanted: A Western Story Selection has also been successful, so we have agreed to put together another set of short stories with the creative title of Wanted II. Look for it later this year.

I have again agreed to write essays for Constituting America's annual 90-Day Studies. This year's project will be about important Supreme Court cases. Nothing controversial there, I'm sure. I'll let you know when each of mine is published, but don't wait for me. Cathy Gillespie and Janine Turner do an exceptional job of pulling together bright minds to illuminate the Constitution, especially for the young people in our country.

Anyway, going to be a busy year. Guess I'll have to wait to slow down time.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles—A Travel Memoir

                   

"And by the way, you know, when you're telling these little stories? Here's a good idea -

have a POINT. It makes it SO much more interesting for the listener!"

My wife and I are on an extended vacation that traverses five states and a couple of countries. (Can you vacation in retirement?) We started with meeting high school friends in Carson City and then my wife’s brother in Garnerville, Nevada. Since many of the Steve Dancy novels take place in and around Carson Valley, I always enjoy visiting the area to get ideas and check up on how Jenny is doing. From there we flew to San Diego for a week of surfing and beach-style laziness.

After SoCal, we were supposed to return to Omaha for a week, but schedules got messed up, so we stayed home only overnight before flying to New York. Well, not exactly. Seems SouthWest had a computer glitch that turned every airport in the nation into serpentine lines of anxious travelers trying to figure out a new way to get from point A to point B. Due to family commitments, we had to get through this goo of snarling humanity or miss our opportunity to see all six grandkids together. Unfortunately, when we got to the front of the glacial line they told us the only available flight to New York was two days in the future. Bummer. Our son saved the day by booking us a car to drive us to Chicago for an early morning flight the next day. As we tooled along the highway in splendid exasperation, he even got all six of us flight reservations—my wife and me, my daughter, and her three kids. Since it was seven in the evening, our driver assured us he could get us to Chicago by 3:00 AM.

After a few hours’ sleep at an airport hotel, the six of us boarded a crowded flight to JFK. As a special treat for our 50th wedding anniversary, the kids had rented a house in South Hampton. Unfortunately we arrived too late for the train or jitney, so once again we piled into a mini-van for a sluggish ride out of New York City on a Friday night.

Now things came together beautifully. We arrived in time for a late grilled dinner in the backyard. The grandkids, together again, went bonkers. They laughed and ate and played and swam and generally made us feel old. A drink took the edge off, another put us to bed.

The world looked different after a good night’s sleep. We had four days ahead of us to do nothing but try to keep up with six kids under twelve years old. We even went surfing. Crummy wind-blown waves, but it was fun having three generations in the water. I lost a bet with my grandson that I would catch the better wave, but we had only wagered an ice cream cone, so I had enough money for the rest of the trip. The experience reminded me of Warren Miller’s admonition that “you only ski better than your kids one day in your life.”

All good things must come to an end. On Tuesday evening, we took the jitney back to New York. Our travel hobgoblin had not retreated into the woodwork. After leaving the Jitney, we flagged down a cab to take us to our timeshare. (Hotel costs hampered visits to see our NYC grandkids, so a few years ago we bought into a timeshare-like arrangement.) The cab driver’s mouth dropped open when he saw all the kids and enough luggage for Duchess Kate Middleton. Then he started dancing in place and begged me to allow him to drive over to McDonalds to pee. Having been there myself, I said yes. I didn’t know McDonalds was ten blocks in the wrong direction. It was late, we were tired, and our cabbie took us on a prolonged detour (meter off, of course.) I didn’t complain because we were piled in well beyond the legal limit for a single cab.

Our next travel adventure was beyond inconvenient, it was dangerous. In Times Square we signaled for an Uber, but a pirate pretended to be our car. Dumb us, we didn’t verify the driver’s name before jumping in. Trapped in gridlock, a small gang of teenagers started banging on car hoods and then threw Pepsi on our driver’s car. He immediately jumped out yelling and took after the boys. They jeered and threatened him, so he returned to the car and I saw him pull a cheap steak knife out of the driver’s door. Oh Shit! He brandished the weapon and the boys went on to harass sane drivers. When he finally dropped us off, he delivered the coup de grâce by demanding $30 for a twenty block ride. I had already seen the knife, so I paid him sans tip and we bailed out as fast as we could.

I have a chocoholic granddaughter, but instead of venturing back to Times Square to visit the Hersey store, we decided to take a train to the mother lode of all things chocolate, Hersey, Pennsylvania. By this time you would think we had learned our lesson and stayed put. No way. Except for jostling crowds at Penn Station, comatose Amtrak employees, rude train passengers, WAY-overpriced snacks, and a first-time Uber car that ran around in circles because our driver didn’t have a clue where to find the biggest amusement park in Pennsylvania and felt looking out the window at big signs was a sign of weakness or something. The trip was as pleasant as an emergency trip to the dentist. I exaggerate … a bit. The good news is that once we arrived, everything went like clockwork and we had a great couple of days wolfing down chocolate and getting the bejesus scared out of us on rides engineered by sadists.

When we returned to New York Penn Station, I lost it with a driver who yelled at my daughter on the phone because we couldn’t find him. He kept telling her that he was parked right behind the police. I asked him to look around and tell me where he didn’t see police. He had no answer.  After our sullen journey, I over-tipped because I felt guilty for yelling at him, only to discover that my daughter also tipped him heavily to make up for her rude father.

We celebrated our 50^th anniversary with the kids early because for some odd reason, school now starts in mid-August, and what we really wanted as a gift was to see all of our kids and grandkids together. On our actual anniversary, we decided to do our own private celebration in Paris. What seems like a long time ago, I ran an operation in Paris. My wife joined me on many business trips and it’s a city with a lot of memories for us. Because our schedule got shoved forward, we are now waiting in NYC for our flight to the City of Lights. After our travel experiences so far, I wonder about flying over vast amounts of very cold water.

As I write this, I am sitting quietly in my timeshare. My daughter and her family have returned to Omaha. Our other grandchildren are still on Long Island. We see little of our son in the city because he works day and night.

We are alone. It’s quiet. It’s peaceful. We don’t travel again for another week.

I’m bored.

John Steinbeck Writing Tips

Six tips on writing from Pulitzer Prize winner and Nobel laureate John Steinbeck.

1. Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.
2. Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.
3. Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.
4. If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it—bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn’t belong there.
5. Beware of a scene that becomes too dear to you, dearer than the rest. It will usually be found that it is out of drawing.
6. If you are using dialogue—say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.

Growing Up in a Movie

I grew up in the South Bay. This post was prompted when I watched the above video of my old stomping grounds. The South Bay was the nickname for the beach cities south of Malibu and Santa Monica, which included Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Redondo Beach, Torrance, and the three cities on the Palos Verdes peninsula. My homes were in Redondo Beach, and then Torrance for most of high school. The South Bay in the Sixties: a wonderful place and time to be a teenager.

When I was in junior high, my mother allowed me to tuck a canvas surf raft under my arm and walk to the beach with friends. This was early in the morning because the waves were best before the cooling onshore breezes picked up. After hours of riding waves on our rubbed-raw bellies, we lunched at Taco Bell, and wandered home by way of a variety store on Pacific Coast Highway. No one bothered us and we were only mildly bothersome to others. Everything was cool at home as long as I wasn’t late for supper.

My high school years were great. I exchanged my raft for a surfboard and joined the surfer clique. High school was different back then. They had rules against leaving campus during class hours and most of us brought lunch from home. Getting caught playing hooky got an immediate three-day suspension, which made no sense because our misbehavior rewarded us with three more days of surfing. The dress code was strict, but self-imposed. Surfers wore 401 Levis, a white tee from Penny’s, and a blue nylon windbreaker. Dress up days required a Pendleton. Tennis shoes were the only variable and they had to be the latest trend. I groaned whenever I spotted our style leader sporting a different brand or style of shoe because it meant another argument with my cash-strapped mom.

Early high school was my period of delinquency. We requisitioned little red wagons without permission from our siblings. After hammering together some two-by-fours and nailing on a few carpet remnants, we attached the wagon wheels to make a surfboard hauler to tow behind our bicycles. One wagon provided wheels for two surfboard carriers. Somehow, we thought this dual purpose justified our vandalism. Actually, finding the wagon under a pile of garage junk convinced us that nobody would notice the Radio Flyer somehow sat closer to the ground. (Washers and dryers were in the garage in those days and mothers notice everything.) At this late date, I’d like to apologize to our younger brothers and sisters.

Now, instead of walking to the beach, we rode bikes in packs, which irritated more than a few drivers hurrying to work. Couldn’t be helped. We had to get to the beach before seven in the morning so we could surf three or so hours before the wind came up and tourists defiled our paradise. We didn’t like tourists, or any non-surfer, for that matter. We did like their bikini-clad daughters, however, so we hung around until late afternoon.

Our life was perfect. They even made movies about us. You might think I mean the Beach Party films, but we thought they were dreadful. Evidently the multitudes that lived east of Pacific Coast Highway didn’t share our opinion. Unbelievable to us, Hollywood took this horrible film and made six sequels, each progressively worse. The popularity of Annette in a bikini incited an invasion of our beaches by Inlanders.

Anette in her thong bekini

Bruce Brown before Endless Summer

They did make movies about us we liked. In fact, we went to see them in droves, filling school auditoriums to watch live narrated surf films by Bruce Brown, John Severson, and Bud Brown. It was raucous. Wild yelling, screaming, and pounding on seat backs. These were real, and we all dreamed of being highlighted in one of these films or in Surfer Magazine. Actually, Hollywood came around to make some pretty good depictions of our life. Big Wednesday, starring Jan-Michael Vincent, William Katt, and Gary Busey came close, while Lifeguard with Sam Elliott got it pitch perfect.

Sam Elliott in first leading man role

Our teenage years had a custom soundtrack, as well. The Beach Boys and Dick Dale made music about our lives, although we normally only listened to the Beach Boys because our girlfriends liked them. Then we called the Beach Boys gremmies, today they’d be posers. Songs were pretty good though … and again, they were about our lives.

Dick Dale, the real deal

The Beach Boys, not so much

So we had movies, music, and magazines dedicated to our lifestyle. And surfing was the rage across the fruited plains. Everyone wanted to be like us. You probably think that made us feel special. Yeah, you betcha! We knew we had it good. It was a magic moment. The roots of the surfing culture came before, and you can find remnants to this day, but for a few years, everything came together to create a perfect coming-of-age experience. 

Related Post: Idle Away! showing I still surf on occassion.

P.S. Someone once asked why I didn't write about a surfing protagonist. Disappointing question because the hero in The Shut Mouth Society and Deluge is a surfer. 

Idle Away!

Okay, this is what I do while waiting for other people to put the finishing touches on Jenny's Revenge. The new Steve Dancy is coming soon, but in the meantime, I hope you enjoy my amateur filmmaking.

Honest Westerns ... filled with dishonest characters.

Ski Slopes and Ghosts Galore

I just returned from a week of skiing at Heavenly overlooking Lake Tahoe. Judging by the price of lift tickets, there’s gold on them thar hills. Warren Miller used to say your knees had only so many bends, so you might as well spend them skiing. I agree, but we needed a day to rest up after racing down slope after slope to get our money’s worth, so we took a day trip to the ghost town of Bodie, California.

Bodie, California

If you really want to feel a ghost town, I suggest you visit one in the dead of winter. We had the fortune of exploring Bodie on a clear day, with no snow on the ground, and temperatures in the mid-sixties. We had the unearthly emptiness all to ourselves. Eerie.

Bodie General Store

Bodie General Store

Waterman S. Body discovered gold at this remote location in 1859, but the real heyday for the  Bodie mining camp occurred in the late 1870s and early 1880s. According to the guidebook, “By 1879 Bodie boasted a population of about 10,000 and was second to none for wickedness, badmen, and ‘the worst climate out of doors.’ One little girl, whose family was taking her to the remote and infamous town, wrote in her diary: ‘Goodbye God, I’m going to Bodie.’”

Restrooms closed for the winter,
so we had to go native

I like ghost towns, especially when allowed to explore on my own. You can learn a lot about how people lived in bygone days. Bodie has fairly intact homes, churches, a general store, school, barber’s shop, fire house, a hotel with restaurant, and saloons aplenty. The gymnasium equipment includes a punching bag, pull-up bar, weights, and other paraphernalia. One of the biggest and most impressive buildings is a miner’s union hall. All this with nary a ranger in sight ... at least not one away from the comfort of his vehicle in the parking lot.

The next day we returned to Heavenly. Unfortunately, we didn’t have this particular mountain to ourselves. Lots of people, loads of people, all zipping around unaware of the poor ghosts eager for callers just a couple of hours down the road.

My favorite ghost town is Candelaria, Nevada, the opening location for The Shopkeeper. In the book, I called the town Pickhandle Gulch, which was actually a suburb of Caldelaria.

Candelaria, Nevada
(aka Pickhandle Gulch)

Author photo of Candelaria

Escape from Death Valley

Death Valley is the hottest place on earth. The valley has amiable place names like Dead Man’s Pass, Funeral Mountain, Coffin Canyon, Hell’s Gate, Devil’s Hole, Suicide Pass, and my favorite—Dripping Blood Cliffs. This is rugged terrain. Or, as a local newspaper reported in 1907, "it has all the advantages of Hell without the inconveniences."

It’s even true that you can fry an egg on the sidewalk, but the rangers are tired of cleaning up the mess and suggest tourists instead fry their eggs on the hood of their car.

Good thing for us that it’s January. The daytime temperature only reached the mid-seventies and nighttime required a sweatshirt, a large fire, and a beverage suitable for sipping. We had a great time and I learned quite a bit about the region.

Everyone loves the story of Walter Scott, known far and wide as Death Valley Scotty. Scotty was a flimflam man who despite being discover as a fraud, successfully ingratiated himself to his rich mark, a man named Albert Mussey Johnson. Johnson was so enthralled with the con man that he supported Scotty for the remainder of his long life. Scotty told great stories and entertained the Johnsons and their innumerable guests. Most people conclude that if you’re glib enough the world is your oyster. I took away a different lesson. As a cast member of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, Scotty knew the lure of Western mythos. Johnson, on the other hand, was a longtime wannabe cowboy. Scotty didn’t just tell stories, he delivered the Old West right into Johnson’s Death Valley parlor.

The whole episode reminded me of the western frontier's power of renewal. The chance to start a new life is the real reason tens of thousands abandoned their home for the Old West.  Here’s a quote from an Article I wrote a few years ago: Is the Mythology of the Old West Dead?

“The West, outer space, the future, or a make-believe land represents a new beginning in a fresh place away from home-the shrugging off of disappointments and a chance to start all over again. The romance and adventure of frontiers draws people desperate to escape the travails of their current existence. We've seen this in real life with the migrations to the New World and the Old West, but today many people satisfy this longing vicariously with fiction. If you're poor, your family makes you miserable, you've committed an act that offends society, or wanderlust has gripped you, then the adventure and limitless opportunity of a frontier beckons like a siren's call. Emigrating to a frontier means you get a do-over in a land with no rules, no fences, no referees.”

To me, this is the real lesson from Walter Scott and Albert Johnson. Johnson had been diagnosed to die young and had lived his life indoors accumulating wealth as a Chicago businessman. He loved the idea of a Wild West and Scotty delivered it for him. In addition, the dryness of Death Valley gave him a longer life and relief from his incessant pain. Of course, Johnson built his home—Scotty’s Castle—with all the citified luxuries of the early twentieth century. Scotty's Castle was both a mirage and oasis safely tucked away in a barren wilderness.

As John Wayne said, “The fascination that the Old West has will never die."

A New Year Resolution

We celebrated the New Year with our kids and six grandchildren. It was a blast … and tiring.  Great start of a new year, but this morning, when I had an opportunity to catch my breath, I realized I had already burned a month of the new year. Wasn’t it just a little while ago that computers threatened Armageddon at the turn of the century? Time flies, especially when you’re having fun. If slowing down time requires staying bored, I guess I’ll opt for a mad dash to the finish line.

Death Valley 20 Mule Teams

Our home for the next week ... minus the ocean

Speaking of staying busy, we head out Friday for a week of camping in Death Valley, although it seems a stretch to call it camping when we'll be living in a friend’s 40+ foot diesel pusher motorhome. Our transit and sojourn will be considerably more comfortable than the twenty-mule teams that used to haul borax across the valley to a rail spur. Those hardy teamsters thought a fringed whorehouse pillow positioned between their buttocks and the wood bench was the lap of luxury. I have to admit that I enjoy investigating frontier lifestyles with modern conveniences close at hand … especially flush toilets.

It’s been years since I visited Death Valley National Park and I’m looking forward to it. But planning the trip brought a thought to mind. Cattle drives, 20 mule teams, and the Pony Express are iconic imageries of the Wild West, but none actually lasted long. Although ranching and cowboys exist today, the great cattle drives had a relatively short lifespan of about twenty years. 20 Mule teams lasted only six years. The Pony Express operated for only eighteen months. All three of these frontier enterprises related to transportation, and all were obsoleted by the American penchant for speed. Our hell-bent for leather culture demands that we get stuff faster and faster. Nothing lasts unless it figures out how to deliver goods or services quicker tomorrow than it did yesterday.

For the most part, speed serves us well … except for passing through life. In that particular case, I think scrubbing off a bit of speed would be beneficial. Come to think of it, I’ll make one more New Year’s resolution: stop on occasion to smell the roses. 

e-books, delivered at the speed of light ... well, sort of

Merry Christmas and have a Great 2015

We're off to San Diego to escape winter in Nebraska. If the body is willing, I also hope to get in a little surfing. Actually, we don't have much planned. Just kick back and relax and finish revising Jenny's Revenge. Well, on second thought, we are going to Newport Beach with the families, camping in Death Valley for a week, having lots of company, flying to New York for a visit, and plan at least one ski trip to the Lake Tahoe resorts. Perhaps it won't be as kicked-back as I imagine. Oh well, it'll be fun.

Oh, and one more thing ... remember where to spend those Amazon Gift cards.

Vacation over—Darn

I’ve returned home after an extended vacation in Pacific Beach, California. I made good progress on Jenny’s Revenge, but I keep forgetting how much work it is to bring a novel to the bookshelves. Lots more work to do. While I was gone, Steve did pretty well on his own.  After a couple day promotion for The Shopkeeper, August is turning out to be one of the best months ever for the Steve Dancy Tales. At one point, The Shopkeeper reached the 80^th best selling e-book in the paid Amazon store. Pretty good for a 7 year old novel. Maybe I should go on vacation more often.

Now I have two big projects. Finish Jenny’s Revenge and do my 2013 income taxes. I was in the middle of a move last April with my records stored deep in a cave known only to the moving company. Taxes! I hate paperwork. I hate little pieces of paper. I think my phobia comes from my early years in management. I never went home until the In Box was empty. Paper, paper, paper. I thought man’s worst invention was the copier machine. It destroyed productivity. When carbon paper dictated the number of people to received memos, distribution was highly selective. Copiers were bad enough, but with email, at the tap of a key anyone can send copies to as many people as they want—at nearly the speed of light! I think I’m beginning to like texting.

Is there a point to this posting? Nope. Just grousing as I return from vacation to contemplate an disagreeable task. Soon, I’ll be wading through boxes of little pieces of paper so I can catch up with the rest of the world in almsgiving to the 16^th Amendment. I’d rather be writing. 

Working Vacation?

Yours Truly on an overhead wave.(Who're ya gonna believe, me or yer lyin' eyes.)

Writing and surfing and sun and good food and better friends. How could I have a better vacation? (Is it a vacation if you're already retired?) Jenny's Revenge is going well, the surfing so so. All the rest of it is perfect. The peacefulness of our getaway is about to expire. My daughter and her grandkids arrive tonight. Then it will be kinetic, noisy, and loads more fun. The energy level in our condo will leap 200%. Okay, that's a gross understatement. Anyway, I better get to writing, because starting tomorrow I'll only have snatches of time for the following week. Then we'll return home to Omaha, where I have vowed to focus on the next Steve Dancy Tale.

  

Three novels for $9.99

Westward Ho!

My granddaughter catching her first wave

Tonight, I head west. At least until I hit the Pacific Ocean. My plan is two weeks of surf, sun, and debauchery. Okay, the debauchery part was hyperbole. At my age, an hour in the water exhausts me. I’ve come to associate an afternoon sea breeze with naps. Surfline says the waves are tiny, but the weather is warm, the winds calm, and the surf glassy. I can’t wait to get my TSA/airplane ordeal completed and slide my key into the door lock of my condo. Tomorrow morning I'll take a walk to the bakery for twice-baked almond croissants and check out the waves from my balcony as I eat breakfast and sip coffee.

Since I’ll also be working on Jenny’s Revenge, I may get into some debauchery after all. Jenny’s shenanigans have surprised me, and I don’t think she is up to any good. I can’t wait to see what she’s up to next. Whatever it is, it won’t be good for Steve or Virginia.

Too few cooks in the kitchen

As a Western writer, I keep an eye on Hollywood Westerns. Last night I saw A Million Ways to Die in the West. I wish I could say the movie exceeded my low expectations, but it was worse than anticipated. A couple laughs, but far too much mind-numbing nonsense in between. Seth MacFarlane sought his laughs by using modern-day allusions, genitalia references, and potty jokes, all punctuated with f- bombs aplenty. These devices have been used so much, they're now cheap groans. The problem with being edgy is that you constantly need to go further out. MacFarlane took gross-out over the edge, especially for diarrhea absurdities.

I suppose the movie is meant to be a parody of traditional Westerns, but the film uses so many anti-Western clichés that it ends up being a parody of itself. A Million Ways to Die in the West comes across as dull and repetitive.

Movie making is a collaborative art form. The tagline for this movie is "From the guy who brought you Ted." The singular noun is purposeful. Seth MacFarlane produced, wrote, directed, and starred in this farce. I believe a major theme of the movie was how everyone needs a helping hand on occasion. MacFarlane would be wise to seek help on his next film. When he works collaboratively, he's done some good stuff.

The big question was why this movie was ever made. In McFarlane's script, the character played by McFarlane constantly says that he hates the West. It sounded like serious damnation, not witty self- deprecation. Did McFarlane see the Western rearing its ugly head and feel compelled to knock it back down again. When Mel Brooks made Blazing Saddles, he was having fun with a tired genre. A Million Ways to Die in the West comes across as ridicule, not comedy.

Bob Boze Bell: Wyatt Earp - Hero or Villain?

The Santa Clarita Cowboy Festival is in April. For those of you without a calendar, that's coming up. In the 2011 Festival, Bob Boze Bell gave a talk titled Wyatt Earp—Hero or Villain. He presented some interesting facts and trivia about the old West and Tombstone, along with some perspectives on Wyatt Earp.

Watch a video of the talk 

Surfers, Cowboys, and Manifest Destiny

The March issue of Vanity Fair has a great article on the iconic movie poster for Bruce Brown’s Endless Summer, titled “One Summer, Forever” By Lili Anolik. I often blog about surfing and my Westerns, but I always thought the only connection was my interest in both. Anolik set me straight. In the article, she wrote,

“And the image’s hero, the surfer, was a new kind of hero. Well, he was old and new. If he’d been born a hundred years earlier, he’d have been a cowboy. He had the cowboy’s instinctive loathing of fences, love of the great wide-open. And what was standing at the farthest edge of America, surveying the Pacific, but the next logical phase of Manifest Destiny and lighting out for the territory and Westward ho.”

Why I never saw that before is beyond me. At least Anolik has given me an excuse to intersperse an occasional reference to surfing on this blog.  By the way, this is a fun article if you have any interest in surfing, film, design, nostalgia, sports, world travel, or tan lines.