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Why Is James Bond Still a Thing? #MeToo – Thinking About Thinking #44

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Here’s my book review of The Long Lavender Look by John D. MacDonald. I believe I’ve read all of his Travis McGee books. Each has a color in the title. Trav lives on a houseboat he won in a poker game in Fort Lauderdale. He’s a salvage expert. He goes after missing boats, money, or wives. He always keeps half of whatever he finds. The baddest guys try to stop him because they covet the same things.

Travis is very much a Sixties hero with parallels to James Bond. Like Bond, McGee is a garbage collector of the vile detritus left behind by the world’s evil geniuses and idiotic criminals. And also like Bond, Trav treats women badly and assumes they like it. And as in the Bond stories, the beautiful women he loves too much end up dead, usually horribly so, at the hands of the elusive monster du jour. Revenge then adds to his justification for giving back as bad as his girlie got – or worse.

As an education in the underside of Florida real estate schemes and political corruption, MacDonald’s books are fascinating, unexpected discoveries. You also get a strong dose of macroeconomic theory anytime McGee engages his neighbor Meyer Meyer to help him understand the intricacies of bribing politicians or laundering money.

But what strikes me as I pick up this book again is the depth of the cruelty MacDonald conjures. It’s really ugly, voyeuristic, more shocking than the scummiest story In today’s news,

But if it thrills you to see powerful bad guys bite the dirt, Travis McGee is your man.

On sale paperback and Kindle March 1, 2022.

Thinking About Thinking #43: Sweet Bird of Not So Young Anymore

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Photo by Georja Umano

What would you say to this surprise visitor?

Some of you who know of my recent adventures might think this candid shot was taken in East Africa. But it’s actually from a bit further back on a trip to the rainforest in Ecuador near the headwaters of the Amazon River.

I really don’t know what species this critter is, nor whether it’s male or female. Its relatively drab color might suggest it’s a mama, but its aggressive, perhaps territorial, move seems characteristically male.

Perhaps I should have asked whether it takes cream or sugar with its coffee.

Or whether “Nevermore!” (in Spanish?) might be the word of the day.

Clicking on the cover will take you to the Amazon Kindle catalog page. It’s also available lots of other places, including EPUB and paperback.

NYC Big Book Awards Harry Harambee Silver in General Fiction

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(October 27, 2021, Santa Monica, CA) The 2021 NYC Big Book Award just recognized Harry Harambee’s Kenyan Sundowner by Gerald Everett Jones in the highly competitive category of General Fiction as a Distinguished Favorite. This is the third award Jones has received for that novel, as well as the third he’s received for this literary fiction and two mystery-thrillers in this and prior NYC Big Book competitions.

Will it be politically disruptive? Kenyans vote next year.

Ten awards overall in the last two years include both Winner (Gold) and Distinguished Favorite (Silver) for his Evan Wycliff mysteries in the 2020 NYC Big Book, which accepts entries from not only indie authors and small presses but also the major publishing houses (the “Big Five”). Of his mysteries, the first in the series, Preacher Finds a Corpse, also won an Independent Press Award (IPA) Distinguished Favorite, Best Literary Fiction in the National Association of Book Entrepreneurs (NABE) Pinnacle Awards, and a Finalist Eric Hoffer Award. Preacher Fakes a Miracle won an NYC Big Book Silver in the same year, winning Jones the top two slots in the Mystery category. Previously, Harry Harambee’s Kenyan Sundowner was awarded Best Literary Fiction from NABE and Bronze in the Florida Association of Authors and Publishers (FAPA) President’s Awards in Adult Fiction.

Awards in 2020 included an Independent Press Association (IPA) Distinguished Favorite for Clifford’s Spiral in Fiction, as well as Eric Hoffer Finalist in Business for Jones’s nonfiction textbook, How to Lie with Charts.

The NYC Big Book competition is judged by experts from different aspects of the book industry, including publishers, writers, editors, book cover designers and professional copywriters. Selected award Winners and Distinguished Favorites are based on overall excellence.

Loosely based on Jones’s experiences living in Kenya for two years, Harry Harambee’s Kenyan Sundowner is the story of Harry Gardner, a lonely widower from Los Angeles, who makes the challenging transition from tourist and passive observer to committed resident. It’s an emotional story of expat intrigue in rapidly developing East Africa, reminiscent of The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene and The Constant Gardener by John le Carré.

Desmond Boi, editorial writer for The Standard newspapers and Citizen TV in Nairobi has gone so far as to suggest that the book could be disruptive – in a positive way – among Kenyans. He writes: “Harry Harambee’s Kenyan Sundowner is a captivating, witty read that explores the sociopolitical climate in Kenya in an honest way that is both entertaining and thought-provoking. This is a clear and compelling outlook that realistically paints Kenya while exploring glaring issues that are a bane to the country. When Harry decides to stop being a bystander who lets other people decide his fate, it’s noteworthy. This can be equated to Kenyans finally deciding to take responsibility rather than just going with the flow, waiting for decisions that affect their lives to be made for them. And it can be done without selling one’s soul in the process and leave a legacy and a better country worthy of its name.” (Kenyan general elections are slated for August of 2022, and campaigning is already underway.)

2021 was a record year for the NYC Big Book Awards due to the high level of quality and diverse books submitted. Again in 2021, the competition received book submissions worldwide, including great submissions from journalists, well-established authors, small and large press as well as first time indie authors who participated in high numbers. Entries were from Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America. Cities such as Bangalore, Edmonton, London, Los Angeles, Melbourne, New York, Seattle, Singapore, and Vancouver were representative among the entries. Winners were recognized globally from Australia, Canada, England, Germany, Lebanon, Queensland, and the United States of America.

Among NYC Big Book entries, some awarded books were published by The American Bar Association, Friesen Press, Gatekeeper Press, Greenleaf Book Group, Joggling Board Press, Story Merchant Books, and WildBlue Press. Quality children’s publishers such as Barefoot Books as well as Mango and Marigold press were awarded. Independent presses such as Brill, Goff Books, Koehler Books, Llewellyn Publications, ORO Editions, Routledge Publishers, Rowman & Littlefield, and She Writes Press took both Winner and Distinguished Favorite awards. AuthorHouse, IngramSpark, KindleDirect, and SDP Publishing were among the self-publishing platforms. Lastly, Hachette Books, MacMillan, Penguin Random House were among the large publishers that entered.

“We are elated to highlight these authors’ books, recognize their excellence, and share their achievements.” said awards sponsor Gabrielle Olczak. “We look forward to showcasing these titles to a larger audience.”

Gerald Everett Jones remarked about his win, “I’m pleased to receive this recognition for ‘Harry’s’ story, especially in competition with the Big Five. My small press LaPuerta Books and Media has published all eleven of my novels, and I’m thrilled by the opportunities for self-expression that new media platforms provide. Storytelling is a unifying force among people and cultures, and I urge both writers and readers to stay focused on that bright, hopeful spot.”

Gerald Everett Jones is a freelance writer who lives in Santa Monica, California. He is a member of the Writers Guild of America, the Dramatists Guild, Women’s National Book Association, and Film Independent (FIND), as well as a board member of the Independent Writers of Southern California (IWOSC). He holds a Bachelor of Arts with Honors from the College of Letters, Wesleyan University, where he studied under novelists Peter Boynton (Stone Island), F.D. Reeve (The Red Machines), and Jerzy Kosinski (The Painted Bird, Being There). His author website is geraldeverettjones.com, and he hosts the GetPublished! Radio podcast.

Harry Harambee’s Kenyan Sundowner is published by LaPuerta Books and Media and available in trade paperback and ebook formats from booksellers worldwide, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Google Books, and Rakuten Kobo.

Third award just announced – NYC Big Book Distinguished Favorite in General Fiction.

Thinking About Thinking #8 – Do forgotten stories affect you more?

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My Voice Will Go with You illustrates vividly the power of a story to transform thinking and behavior – immediately. The accompanying commentary by author Sidney Rosen tells why each story is effective in changing behavior.

Psychiatrist Milton Erickson is regarded as the father of neurolinguistic programming, or NLP. This book is a collection of very short stories he told clients who were in a trance state as a means of reprogramming their thinking about a problem they brought to him. Erickson believed that stories heard and then forgotten have the most power over future actions. That’s because, once the conscious, censoring mind has ceased analyzing the experience, the persistent memory of the story can percolate in the unconscious.

 

My Voice Will Go with You. I sincerely hope it does!

In Clifford’s Spiral a stroke survivor tries to piece together the fragments of his memories. Was he the victim or the perpetrator? 2020 IPA Distinguished Favorite in Literary Fiction.

Thinking About Thinking #6 – Ballad of the Black and Blue Mind – Is EVERYBODY crazy?

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It’s understandable that people in lockdown go stir crazy. But some brain specialists believe that mental stability is a delicate balance for everyone, all the time. Here’s another work of literary fiction that will get you thinking about thinking.

I offer for your thoughtful consideration Ballad of the Black and Blue Mind by Anne Roiphe.

If you’re in therapy or considering it, you may find this novel unsettling. But perhaps also strangely comforting. It’s about Manhattan psychiatrist Dr. Estelle Berman, and two of her colleagues – middle-aged men identified only as Dr. H and Dr. Z. Most of the other characters in the book are their students or their patients. And all of these lives intersect and become entangled.

To some of her patients and even her friends, Dr. Berman can seem cold and calculating. She thinks of herself as wise and practical. All of the therapists in this story are trying improve the lives of their patients, who range from troubled to disturbed, many of them needing medication but not hospitalization.

There’s Justine, the gorgeous young movie star, who is anorexic and a kleptomaniac. There’s homely and lonely Anne, who fears she’s unlovable and gets coaxed out of the closet, only to be jilted. And the doctors refer their own children to each other for treatment. Dr. Z’s daughter Ronit is stressed because she can’t get pregnant, then Dr. Z is stressed about the possible complications when he finds out she’s carrying twins.

These are psychiatric case histories flavored with personal drama. We get insight into the mental processes and disorders of the patients, as well as those of their doctors. Because from Roiphe’s vantage point, all human minds are troubled. It’s just that some of us live with our demons better than others.

This is Anne Roiphe’s tenth novel, and she’s been described as a first-generation feminist. She’s also done nonfiction books and articles on family issues and mental health. She has an insider’s grasp of the psychiatric profession, and at times it’s not at all flattering.

Ballad of the Black and Blue Mind is a peek into the tangled psyches of a few intelligent people, most of them well-to-do and white, in today’s New York City. To paraphrase the narrator of the old TV series, “There are eight million stories in the Naked City. This is just a few of them.” And whether outwardly healthy or visibly disturbed, each of us suffers daily from self-doubt, jealousy, rage, guilt, arrogance, fears, phobias, and nightmares.

In Clifford’s Spiral a stroke survivor tries to piece together the fragments of his memories. Was he the victim or the perpetrator? 2020 IPA Distinguished Favorite in Literary Fiction.

Storytelling and the Subconscious

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Author Gerald Everett Jones

I recently finished the manuscript of Preacher Fakes a Miracle. I’m amazed once again at the role of my subconscious in the writing process. I had no idea how the story would play out when I started writing.

And if I don’t know where it’s going from one page to the next, how can you? Oh, you might have a good guess – several guesses, even. But I’m beginning to think this is a good way to write a suspenseful story that keeps curiosity fully engaged – to the last page.

When I used to write business and technical books, it was all laid out in advance, outlined to the last chapter, peppered with bullet points. The publisher’s editor would track my progress diligently, requiring me to submit one or two chapters a week for ten weeks or more of daily, diligent effort. And I either sketched illustrations for the artist or provided photos I’d taken myself. Then they usually made me build the index (no fun).

But after ten novels now, I can honestly say that for most of them I had little notion of where they would end up, almost from the first page. The exceptions were the three books I adapted from unsold screenplays – the rom-com My Inflatable Friend, the huckster madcap misadventure Mr. Ballpoint, and the family melodrama Christmas Karma. Even then, the writing was beset by inventive surprises. I had to learn the lesson, for example, that the novelist must paint what the camera sees. Duh. Writing between the lines of the script, you could call it. (When it’s in dialogue, those clever actors call it subtext.)

But the joy and the agony and the thrill of making it up as you go along in fiction are bound up in trusting where it’s all going. I’d put in a quirk or a character detail and then forget about it. Fifty or a hundred pages later, that info-morsel would figure into some plot twist – proving to be a significant clue or motivation.

And that surprise is my delight, frankly. I boasted to some of the beta readers of Preacher Finds a Corpse that I didn’t really know how the plot would ultimately get resolved until I wrote the last page. And a couple of them concurred with me that they were also guessing until the very end.

And the experience of finishing Preacher Fakes a Miracle has been much the same. I wrote the last sentence of the last chapter and thought, Wow, that’s what I was going for! That ties it up! And then I realized the next day that there remained an unanswered question (what Dan Brown calls a promise to the reader). So, remembering I had a Prologue (one bookend), I realized that neat construction and a stable bookcase, as well as paying off that debt, required an Epilogue.

Another delicious surprise!