SNEAK PEEK: HERE IS AN OPENING PAGE OF A NOVEL I MIGHT WRITE. A NOVEL ABOUT A NOVELIST. I KNOW YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO DO THAT BUT I WANT TO. WHAT YA THINK?





"Do you think you'll ever put me into one of your crazy books?" Jordan asked, tapping the ashes of his cigarette into his empty Dr. Pepper can. We sat in my apartment in the middle of what was for many a work day. Jordan was not my best friend, but when you can't be with the one you love – love the one you're with, as they say. This made me a little sad to consider whether I even had a best friend anymore, or did I just surround myself with a lot of second fiddles?

"What makes you think I haven't?" I said, drinking my Dr. Pepper from a frosty beer mug chock full of ice cubes shaped like little flying saucers. I had sent away for novelty ice trays from the famed Oriental Trading Company a year ago and have not once regretted the purchase. In fact, I wish I had bought a few more. Truth is, I have always loved ice and at a certain age I vowed to never use a drinking straw again, never to let anything come between my ice and me. And that's a vow I plan to keep.

"Have you?" said Jordan.

"Have I what?" I said, because I had gone on that overlong tangent about my love of ice and the Oriental Trading Company.

Jordan was leaning a bit into my personal space now. The smell of tobacco made me a tad nauseous. "Have you ever put me into one of your books and not told me?"

I took a deep, refreshing, ice-filled gulp of Dr. Pepper, pausing for effect. I took my time. Through my picture window, I watched a bird flit past. Then I said: "I'd rather not say."

A perfect read for Memorial Day, a novel which honors the war dead.  So it goes...

SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE. I was moved throughout, but let down a bit by the end. Wondered what others thought of the ending.

I just reread Slaughterhouse Five. When I first read the book as a youth, I remember the humor. But now as a grown man and author, I was deeply moved by the gravitas, absurdity, and surrealism. The writing itself is gorgeous and haunting. The chapters were so compelling, I couldn't stop reading. That rarely happens with me.

So I was surprised when I came to the end that it wasn't more satisfying or affecting. I know Vonnegut drops hints that it's not a regular story with character and plot. But I think I was expecting some full-blown scene between the man who was killed for stealing at teapot (Edgar Derby) instead of the passing reference. Or a scene between Billy Pilgrim and his wife or son. I suppose the closest type of scene like that was between Billy and Rumfoord, as Billy keeps uttering the fact that he was there, he was a prisoner of war. Though it didn't resonate as much since we don't know that character that well.

Or maybe I was expecting more repercussions when people learn Billy is time travelling. That someone might make the connection that it might be a result of the trauma of war and all the deaths. Overall I loved the book. I'd love to hear from other readers to see if they found the ending of the book moving or not.  

I want to welcome the five most recent followers of my blog "Long Day's Journey Into Dwight."


Cats*N*Tats
Perspectively Speaking
Mimi Fogarty
Amelia Wright
DrDm Beads


* Please feel free to browse past posts.  We love comments.  And I will try to do the same.

(Click above to enter the AVEC Pleasure website!)

DWIGHT'S CURRENT WEBSITE CLIENTS FOR MAY 2012

GEORGE NELSON -- Designing his musician's website.

DWIGHT SORA -- Designing his actor's website.  

ANNE MCGRAVIE -- Needs updated homepage.  External blog for upcoming new plays! 

WEBSITES I'VE DESIGNED FOR CLIENTS 

AVEC PLEASURE, an Australian-based venture for international arts tours & services
DANNY POSTEL, international man of mystery/ journalist/ adventurer

IRENE'S HOME, an emerging Chicago nonprofit for single mothers with substance abuse issues

PC DESIGN STUDIO, a dental laboratory devoted to making perfect crowns

ANNE MCGRAVIE, award-winning Scottish American playwright

ALZHEIMER DIARY, for the launch of Michelle Montgomery's memoir of the same name

VIDEOS, BOOK TRAILERS I'VE DESIGNED FOR CLIENTS

OPTIBALANCEPET FORMULAS, three videos for flower essences to enhance pet behavior

RUSSELL WILEY IS OUT TO LUNCH, two videos to launch Richard Hine's debut novel

VARIOUS MEMORIAL VIDEOS:  in memory of Oskar Velazquez's mother & Nobi Morita & Patsy Okita

PROSPECT OF MY ARRIVAL & THE HOPE STORE, book trailers announcing Dwight's new novels

I've been enjoying the new TV show SMASH.  Saw the season closer tonight!

This is an amazing finale song which is about the life and death of Marilyn Monroe.  Katherine McPhee has a gorgeous voice as Marilyn. What a perfect ending to the show after Marilyn dies tragically in bed, making one last phone call to a friend...she rises from the dead to sing this one. The legacy of Marilyn being that more than a star she was a human who needed some encouragement, some sheltering. And when she didn't find it, she died. Great lyrics and melody and performance.  Produced by Steven Spielberg, songs by the team behind the musical HAIRSPRAY.

Click below to hear the song.  Leave comments telling if the song floats your boat or no.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkFVOuO2gZ4&feature=related

Don't Forget Me ~ Smash ~ Katharine Mcphee

www.youtube.com

Introducing the cutest new way to promote great books for the beach!

Hi, one of my favorite novel contests is rolling around again:  The Strongest Start.  You simply have to write the most irresistible opening three chapters to a novel.  Nothing else.  Hook the reader and never let them go.

I entered this contest two years ago and made it to the finals in the literary category for THE HOPE STORE.  I'm returning this year with a very much new and improved version.  I'm excited to see how it does in the contest.  The initial version had two first person narrators that alternated.  The new version is in third person omniscient.  And since readers responded to the character of Jada Upshaw who is suicidal and goes to The Hope Store as a last resort for salvation -- she is now the main character.

If you're interested in entering and have any questions, send them to me below.  And if you have more than one entry for the contest, that seems to be okay too.  It's a great way to send up a trial balloon to see reader response to your novel in a low-risk, high-involvement setting.  In order to post your three chapters, you also need to read and review your peers.  And get a members to TheNextBigWriter.com. It's like $49 for the year.  (Meanwhile the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards are in their Semi Final stage, if you want to check those excerpts out.)

Below is a video that the contest creator Sol did a few years ago.  Some details have changed.  It'll give you a flavor for things.  The website is below:

http://www.thenextbigwriter.com/competition/strongest_start.html

REVIEWS OF "FIVE YEAR ENGAGEMENT" MOVIE + GOTYE'S "MAKING MIRRORS" CD

I recently saw "The Five Year Engagement" which was produced by the folks that brought us the terrific movie "Bridesmaids."  It would be easy to see this as a kind of sequel, but that isn't really fair.  Jason Segal and Emily Blunt play the lead couple that has become engaged.  He wants to be a top chef in San Francisco; she wants to get tenure at a college in Michigan.  And in an unusual turn, the guy forgoes his dream for the gal!  Very forward-thinking of him.  Ultimately the film is about how dreams get deferred -- whether career-wise or relationship-wise.  I found the characters sympathetic and flawed, like most humans.

The two actors who play their best friends as a married couple provide strong support as well.  Clocking in at about two hours, it seems that some good editing could have shortened its running time without losing much. Ever since I saw Jason Segal in the recent Muppets Movie, I've been a fan.  He reminds me of Seth Rogen a bit.  An everyman who clearly does not work out at a gym, but who possesses a big enough heart and a guy-ish charm that seems at home in any movie.  Ever since I saw Emily Blunt in "The Devil Wears Prada," I have found the actress a bit aloof.  But she shows more heart and complexity in this movie than in others.  They are an odd couple, to be sure, but an odd couple I could believe in and root for.  
I'd give it a letter grade of a B.

I first became aware of Australian songmaker Gotye just a few months ago.  I was building a website for a colleague in Melbourne and she sent me a video of the song "Somebody That I Used to Know."  I loved it.  It reminded me of Peter Gabriel a bit.  Next thing I knew, Gotye and fellow songmaker Kimbra were being featured on Saturday Night Live.  Then the show "Glee" did a cover of the same song.  And Nightline did a segment.  So is he as good as all this hype makes him out to be?

Gotye is pretty darn good.  I bought his album MAKING MIRRORS after wavering for a few weeks.  Finally I bought it, not because I thought all of the songs were consistently great.  But more as a vote of confidence that eventually he will live up to his potential.

His music is alternative but irresistibly catchy.  And theatrical too.  Though some of the songs on his album are merely interesting and listenable.  The performance of "Somebody" comes across as a volcanic battle of the sexes.  A kind of non-duet duet in which both the man and the woman of the failed relationship both curse the other as just "somebody that I used to know."  The song starts with an ironic xylophone riff that Elvis Costello would be proud of.  The layering of vocals is dense and rich and contrapuntal.  The urgency of Gotye's voice, especially in the higher registers, is compelling and spills out so quickly the lyrics are almost  non-sensical.  It works. There is a DJ mix that I like even better than the album version.  It's called something like the Eavesdrop mix.  The percussion is ferocious.

Another strong song is "Eyes Wide Open."  Some of the songs have a retro feeling that may remind some of George Michaels.  Overall I give the album a letter grade of B.  Gotye's last album came out about seven years ago.  But now with this arrival internationally, he will surely want to be more prolific!


DWIGHT NOTE:  Please let me know what you guys thing about me adding in movie and music reviews to my blog which mostly follows my adventures as an indie author.  Thanks!

It is 1971.  A movie ticket costs $1.50.  Apollo 14 lands on the Moon.  Jim Morrison of The Doors is found dead in a bathtub in Paris.  But none of that matters much to the Shimizu brothers.

Marty Shimizu is six and his brother Tom Shimizu is nine.  They are at an age where they look very much alike.  They both are Japanese American boys with short hair, though Tom's is curly and Marty's is straight.  Both of them have glasses with gray plastic frames.  They are almost the same height too.  Their Asian eyes are smaller than their classmates, but that doesn't keep them from seeing more than most.

They are in the basement where it's cool.  The windows are shut because Mr. Rosenstein is mowing the lawn next door.  Marty and Tom are watching a cowboy movie on the black and white Zenith.  There has been a stagecoach robbery but the robbers have been put behind bars.  The cowboys tie up their horses to a wooden post as their thirsty horses drink from a wooden trough filled with water.

"Which one is the good guy and which is the bad guy?" Marty asks, watching the horse drink the cool water.
Tom says nothing.  Like he’s talking to the air.  Tom doesn't have to answer questions right away because Marty is his little brother.
"Tom, which one is the good guy?" he repeats.
"The one in the white hat is always the good guy.  What planet are you from?" he says, his eyes still on the screen.

Marty looks at the guy in the white hat.  He is drinking his beer so fast, the beer is spilling onto his shirt.
"But he stole that bottle of beer from the saloon."
"No one cares about that."
"I do. That's against the law."
"He saved the stagecoach, dum-dum.  Stagecoaches are more important than bottles of beer."

Marty looks back at the screen. "I like the guy in the black hat better," says Marty.  No reply from know-it-all Tom who rolls his eyes.  Little brother is getting on his nerves.  "Don't you think the guy in the black hat is better because at least he didn't steal any beer from the saloon and he has a cool mustache?"
"You're weird.  Don’t bother me or I'll have to hit you," Tom says.
"If you hit me, then you're a bad guy too.  You might as well wear a black hat."

Tom stops talking to him.  He goes deeper into the television screen with its black and white dots and free bottles of beer and hats that tell you how to feel about people even before you know who they are inside.

*

The next time Tom sees his little brother Marty, he is walking around the house wearing a black hat their father has bought him from Walgreen's.  Marty has a black crayon mustache drawn on his upper lip.  He has already joined the long line of outlaws that have come before him.  When Tom and he trade glances, Tom looks at Marty as if he is wearing no disguise at all, and keeps a perfectly straight face.  He could win an Oscar for such a face.  But then a smile slowly spreads across Tom's face and he can’t help it.  He just has to laugh out loud.

This is one of the few happy sibling memories that Marty can recall.

Hi folks, this is my first blog hop. The participating bloggers are listed below. It's a way to create a blogger village out of likeminded folks. Feel free to explore the blogs below and comment on them. Or add your blog. Feel free to subscribe by email to my blog "Long Day's Journey Into Dwight" which mainly traces my journey as an indie author. But also aspects of my personal life in the millennium.

Feature & Follow is a blog hop hosted by Parajunkee and Alison Can Read.  (Though I'm not sure all the fine points of how to connect this blog hop.  Apologies in advance.) So here's today's question:


Have you had a character that disappointed you? One that you fell in love with and then "broke up" with later on in either the series or a stand-alone book? Tell us about him or her.

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My own answer to this question?  I think the characters that I most embrace and fall for -- I remain drawn to.  Even if they change as characters or my feeling about them change.  In the book CROSSING by Andrew Fukuda, the main character is a bit unreliable.  I did have a big shift in my sympathy for him, but it only deepened my interest in him as a character.  The book involves a series of murders in a small town as local high school kids are trying out for the school musical.  Think of GLEE meets CSI.  Suspicions start to grow over the Asian American kid because he is the most different in town and doesn't quite fit in with the others.  And he's a gifted singer.  It's a fascinating exploration of ethnic perception in a small town setting.

BLOG HOP PARTICIPANTS