tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19519834570808354232024-03-08T03:33:59.792-08:00Attwood Collected WorksAuthor seeks to build his audience one precious reader at a time.Attwood Collected Workshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12939221864173785283noreply@blogger.comBlogger284125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1951983457080835423.post-54884618463534825042022-02-27T09:23:00.000-08:002022-02-27T09:23:01.670-08:00Atheist Fred Doesn't Last Long Teaching at a Christian School<p>Excerpt from <i><a href="https://amzn.to/3tgydim" target="_blank">SPILL</a></i></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi5IabZZi-OeImxfrlwkrwNgXPsfDdv_yV5tCxn9OTlq0qG7EP_AYAb7gtwTJGrfT2j0YaJp7rUuy4-0qJHZSa8-C3RjHF-3LZMGLg_Ee8A1M0u4Ck8aaZxAOnhEzyb5kOL1YFKFgmHaF4qppz5xvxkCIV2utvm4JJS8HHWfW9CjUlrCp9p3UantLDi=s1002" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1002" data-original-width="768" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi5IabZZi-OeImxfrlwkrwNgXPsfDdv_yV5tCxn9OTlq0qG7EP_AYAb7gtwTJGrfT2j0YaJp7rUuy4-0qJHZSa8-C3RjHF-3LZMGLg_Ee8A1M0u4Ck8aaZxAOnhEzyb5kOL1YFKFgmHaF4qppz5xvxkCIV2utvm4JJS8HHWfW9CjUlrCp9p3UantLDi=s320" width="245" /></a></div><br />Fred entered the world of high school teaching. His first choice of school was an unfortunate one, but, again this school needed a last-minute addition of a teacher, this time an English lit one, and he needed a job. It was a Christian academy in the suburbs where large religious right wing churches were flourishing. He was up front with the principal that he was a “non-denominational, anti-papist,” which, for an atheist, was a true statement. School was going to start the next day and the English lit teacher had eloped with a student who recently had turned 18. Fred was hired on the spot. The first thing he was given was a list of proscribed books, but he was free to choose from a list of acceptable books. The proscribed list included some of the great literature of the times and ages. He could understand why Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer” or William Burrough’s “Naked Lunch” would be on the list. But why in the world Conrad’s great “Heart of Darkness,” or Jack London’s “The Call of the Wild"? The books on the acceptable list were by a number of Christian writers he did not recognize. At least there was Crane’s “The Red Badge of Courage.” He could start with that.<p></p><p>The students were polite, well dressed and uniformly white. His first day at his first class he introduced himself and asked that they spend the hour writing him a biography about their lives that would not be graded. This way he wouldn’t have to do anything for the hour and, when done, he would have essays that he could read without having to grade, just comment on. Plus, it would give him an idea of the level of their grammar and writing skills. When they looked at him with confusion on their faces instead of bringing out paper and pen, he didn’t understand. One girl finally said, “Mr. Underwood. The prayer.”</p><p>“What prayer?”</p><p>“To start class. The teacher starts class with a prayer.”</p><p>Fred didn’t remember that being in his contract.</p><p>“Well, um, I believe in student participation. You say the prayer.”</p><p>This request turned her face vermilion, but she proceeded. She bowed her head and the class did likewise. “Dear Jesus, may this class lead us on the path to your love.”</p><p>So, for the rest of the classes that day he asked different students to start the class with a prayer. Most were benign. But when he asked a large boy to say the class-starting prayer, the goliath bowed his head and said: “Lord, give our team the strength Friday to crush Carver Academy,” and raised his head with a smile on his face at a few restrained laughs from his fellow students.</p><p>By the end of his first day he had 78 essays and when he took them out to read that night every one of them began: “I was reborn on…,” with a different date then given.</p><p>All of them had Christian parents, Christian siblings, and Christian ambitions. Many of the boys wanted to become preachers. All of the girls wanted to become good Christian housewives.</p><p>As he corrected mistakes on the papers, he couldn’t help but add a few comments. The football player, for example, received a note on his paper that asked, “What if a Carver player prays for victory? God can’t grant both prayer requests.” One essay by one of the girls was free of grammar, spelling or punctuation mistakes. He complimented her, adding, “Surely you must have ambitions other than becoming someone’s wife.”</p><p>The next day he handed back the essays and passed out copies of “The Red Badge of Courage” and asked them to start reading it during class. That way he didn’t have to do anything on his second day of class. At the end of the class containing the football player, the boy, who towered over Fred, waited until the other students had filed out of the room and approached him. “Sir, God will have granted the prayer request to the team that wins.”</p><p>“Well, that is logical isn’t it? What position do you play?”</p><p>“Center, Sir.” He said and listened to Fred respond in the most baffling way:</p><p>“Well young man. I shall pray that Carver wins the game because it seems God always does the opposite of what I want.”</p><p>Discussion about the first chapter of “The Red Badge of Courage” centered on whether or not Henry, the protagonist, was a good Christian.</p><p>“He went against his mother’s wishes by joining the Army so he wasn’t a good Christian,” argued one girl.</p><p>“But he went to serve his country,” countered a boy.</p><p>Fred had introduced “dilemma” into their vocabularies and thought processes.</p><p>He took to having students read the book aloud, but at one point a girl stopped in mid-sentence and told him. “I can’t say this word, sir.”</p><p>“You can’t pronounce it? What is it?”</p><p>“I can’t say it.”</p><p>“Well, spell it out.”</p><p>“I can’t do that either.”</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“It would be taking the Lord’s name in vain.”</p><p>This got him up from his chair. He walked over and had the girl point to the word: “dern.”</p><p>“Dern? It’s just the way they said ‘damn.’”</p><p>The quiet room got quieter.</p><p>“Ah, I see. Well, when you hit one of those words, just say, oh, ‘the d-word’”</p><p>“That would be the same thing.”</p><p>“Okay. When you reach the word just say ‘blank.’”</p><p>“I’ll have to ask my pastor.”</p><p>On Friday, the school lost to Carver. On Sunday, the girl asked her pastor. On Monday, Fred was called into the principal’s office.</p><p>“’The Red Badge of Courage?’ That was on the approved list?” The principal asked.</p><p>“Yes, it is.”</p><p>“Let’s use the past tense. It WAS on the approved list. It isn’t anymore. Pick something else.”</p><p>Fred was not a person who often took extreme action. And he kept his temper intact. Crane’s novel, with its opening line: “The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting,” was, well, sacred to him. When classes began he informed the students that “The Red Badge of Courage” was now on the proscribed list of books. They had a choice of keeping the book as their own possession, since the school had no more use for it, or they could put them in the trash can beside his desk and he would burn them in the schoolyard at end of day.</p><p>“The football player held up his hand.”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“What does proscribed mean?”</p><p>“Banned. Not to be read. It has now joined a long list of books you are not supposed to read, most of them, I might add, have been—and are—recognized as enduring literary classics.” Fred stopped and pondered the phrase. “Enduring literary classics,” he repeated. “How to express what that means?” he realized he was asking to himself as much as to the class. “It means that without these books Western culture and America would not be what it is today. But you can not even enter that debate because if you are good Christians, you will not read them because you are forbidden to read them!”</p><p>This caused a few extremely pious students to boldly walk to the trash can and dump therein their copies of “The Red Badge of Courage” and return to their seats glaring at those students who did not follow suit.</p><p>At end of day, the trash can was full of books. But many students had kept theirs. When the last student of the last class had left the room, Fred went to the blackboard and wrote in huge letters, “God Damn It, I Quit!” He picked up the trash can, carried it outside and lit the books on fire. At the edge of the field was a group of students he recognized as having kept, and who thus now possessed, their own red badges of courage. The football player came over to him.</p><p>“Thanks for teaching us, Mr. Underwood.” He knew Fred was through.</p><p>“Sorry you didn’t win your game.”</p><p>“God’s will be done. We weren’t very good anyway.”</p><p>Fred saw at the school’s front door the principal pointing him out to a campus security officer.</p><p>Thus endeth Fred’s short teaching career in Christian schools.</p><div><br /></div>Attwood Collected Workshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12939221864173785283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1951983457080835423.post-48850989930911644412021-12-11T08:28:00.001-08:002021-12-11T08:30:41.353-08:00Fiction Works Priced at 99 Cents<p>I've got nine (18 really, see below) shorter fiction titles available on Amazon and priced each at 99 cents. They fall into two categories: literary and science fiction.</p><p><b>LITERARY</b></p><p><i><a href="http://amzn.to/2mkk9AT" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: large;">The Saltness of Time</span></a></i></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi95xIZ4ZXXCMjzlJCrjQAE2FV3TGsm3Rf9bd0vDXXgiXRUyxCKK-5OnAy_XPq7S6PKoOBbNaSxFOyukUyrB8X_chr6F_XlHmalHPoP-c0x_oY1UlH-ucEOm83eL4b_X6SPZJMi8RnpTT0/s800/saltness+cover+3.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="500" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi95xIZ4ZXXCMjzlJCrjQAE2FV3TGsm3Rf9bd0vDXXgiXRUyxCKK-5OnAy_XPq7S6PKoOBbNaSxFOyukUyrB8X_chr6F_XlHmalHPoP-c0x_oY1UlH-ucEOm83eL4b_X6SPZJMi8RnpTT0/s320/saltness+cover+3.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><br />Reviewer: "We have a modern day slice of Chaucer here, with four traveling friends marooned in a small hotel because of a blinding blizzard in the plains of Kansas. In the main room by a comforting fire, they meet an elderly gentleman who offers to tell them a story from his youth, when he, too, was becalmed in the home of an elderly woman, also due to a raging snow storm. From his geriatric host, he learns the story and secrets of her life. The whole thing is like a matryoska doll … a story within a tale within a narrative."<p></p><p>Excerpt: "Emotional truths? Emotional truths are the deepest levels of reality inside of us. They're not rational. That doesn't mean they are irrational, it just means they don't comply to rational thinking. For example, you can't argue yourself in love or out of love. Feelings just are or they are not, whether you should have them or not. And people who were important to you who die, but you dream about them for the rest of your life. These people aren't dead to you at all; they are part of your emotional truth. I wonder what kind of dreams Gabrielle had."</p><p><i><a href="http://amzn.to/2r4sihL" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: large;">Hospital Days</span></a></i></p><p>(Ten stories)</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeOfNuhPWFtNU9dIBtefsQtOUN8KwGBqZtzetS4vL3dsnz3Ncp_Ojlg1LGHSsWEgqEqNHUPML2Y4vdXcqB2gsnZh6XwCfi4Kz0vtgL2eB2z_H3cWM9FnNQTyBCuTXSSfi4LvVLkRa8IZ0/s1328/hospital+days+cover.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1328" data-original-width="992" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeOfNuhPWFtNU9dIBtefsQtOUN8KwGBqZtzetS4vL3dsnz3Ncp_Ojlg1LGHSsWEgqEqNHUPML2Y4vdXcqB2gsnZh6XwCfi4Kz0vtgL2eB2z_H3cWM9FnNQTyBCuTXSSfi4LvVLkRa8IZ0/w149-h200/hospital+days+cover.jpg" width="149" /></a></div><br />These are some of the first stories I ever wrote. No plot really. Flash fiction slice of life things. I recently learned there is a Japanese literary term for these things: kishōtenketsu<p></p><p>Reviewer: "This is a different type of read. It takes the reader into the life behind the scenes of a hospital. It is not like a TV show with heroics and handsome doctors getting all the attention. This is the grittier side of life with a true feel to the happenings as the reader is shown the life of a candy striper at first would like to be a doctor, but after what he sees in the real raw world a change of occupation might be in order."</p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><i><a href="http://amzn.to/2qz69Ex" target="_blank">Innocent Passage</a></i></span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ABywkN-eGkk/V9caml555eI/AAAAAAAAGcI/7uvdRHFR8h8p4iA79Hnj89YOgEK47VX1gCPcBGAYYCw/s1162/Innocent%2BPassage%2Bfor%2Bkindle.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1162" data-original-width="967" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ABywkN-eGkk/V9caml555eI/AAAAAAAAGcI/7uvdRHFR8h8p4iA79Hnj89YOgEK47VX1gCPcBGAYYCw/w166-h200/Innocent%2BPassage%2Bfor%2Bkindle.jpg" width="166" /></a></div><br />Reviewer: "When two young men (boys) try their luck at digging through old houses looking for ghosts they find a lot more including the loss of innocence and maybe a little guilt they will have to live with for the rest of their lives. I wish the story was longer but the writing and the idea was really interesting."<p></p><p>Excerpt: Haunted house hunting we called it. The legal term was breaking and entering. The county sheriff had warned us that he knew we were responsible for the summer rash, but couldn’t prove it. If he caught us, he’d “throw your asses in jail,” as he so quaintly put it. We hunted anyway.</p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><i><a href="http://amzn.to/2nULS0m" target="_blank"></a></i></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lEO96nQZb_U/YbTMC4pUXjI/AAAAAAAAKxs/a_mcFZuvLkMBsvFYWTBPcDEnxtzioz3jgCNcBGAsYHQ/s1091/blessmefatherhandsonly.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1091" data-original-width="977" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lEO96nQZb_U/YbTMC4pUXjI/AAAAAAAAKxs/a_mcFZuvLkMBsvFYWTBPcDEnxtzioz3jgCNcBGAsYHQ/w179-h200/blessmefatherhandsonly.jpg" width="179" /></a></i></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><i><br /><a href="http://amzn.to/2nULS0m" target="_blank">Bless Me Father for I am Sinning</a></i></span><a href="http://amzn.to/2nULS0m" target="_blank"> </a><p></p><p>What if you could hack the confessional? Two teens take on the Catholic church.</p><p>Reviewer: This is a great story that gives you something to think about and has a nice twist to the end. I enjoyed it.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Drive-Chip-Putt-Kill-golfer-ebook/dp/B07G7H8JPP/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Randy+Attwood+Drive%2C+Chip%2C+Putt+and+Kill&qid=1639236878&s=books&sr=1-1" target="_blank">Drive, Chip, Putt, and Kill</a></i></span></p><p>Ned's a mediocre professional golfer, but an excellent serial killer. Nora's a mediocre golfer, but an excellent detective. It's takes a golfer to catch a golfer.</p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><i><a href=" http://amzn.to/2omSi4i" target="_blank">Downswing</a></i></span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaIkcRSkGMPWtlzdHMeQ8UslYhs5ATCiJIxbHXFTgtAASAclDTZ4T7kP0nXKpbnjhtX8AismIcG7YgSnNawWUV_auyYAuBTkP0il93KUolZ3tiZKIurE2hEJH7paoG9cCJWyE5eyIhqZc/s1650/Downswing+cover.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1650" data-original-width="1275" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaIkcRSkGMPWtlzdHMeQ8UslYhs5ATCiJIxbHXFTgtAASAclDTZ4T7kP0nXKpbnjhtX8AismIcG7YgSnNawWUV_auyYAuBTkP0il93KUolZ3tiZKIurE2hEJH7paoG9cCJWyE5eyIhqZc/s320/Downswing+cover.jpg" width="247" /></a></div><br />Reviewer: This is the latest short story from Randy Attwood and will bring me up to date again with his works. I like to stay abreast of Randy's writings, because he has such a terrific and interesting style, each book unique, but containing a familiar voice. Now, I had to wonder exactly how he would make golf interesting, especially in just eight pages, but I shouldn't have worried. Listen to this description of placing a ball on a tee:<p></p><p>And eighteen times this easy gesture, this stooping over with the tee between the fingers, the ball hidden, protected in the perspiring palm, the insertion into ground the wooden link to earth the ball would soon be contacting - all this, for me, had given the gesture a quality of sacredness.</p><p>Isn't that gorgeous? The story is full of beautiful prose like that. Who thought that a short story about golf could be so intense, so vivid and so engaging - I literally walked out to the mailbox with my Kindle in my hand, reading. You don't want to miss this latest from Randy Attwood - go get it, and his other works while you're at it. You really won't regret it.</p><p><b>SCIENCE FICTION</b></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><i><a href="http://amzn.to/2sAbOyw" target="_blank">A Match Made in Heaven</a></i></span></p><p>(Mormonism explored in a sci-fi sort of way)</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf6QqH8_IoGj0bethDDOo5-Bh29TBnFTzKzgcg1Iha5rpezKLnYE36Y0nt4OvHam3ZOq0jgA8SARcMhMYSwS5WB0sPPJSMoXhXvNn3QrzxJ8TzvHEap7uCcgvptE-KA0D5W0uxg55D-kc/s1494/Match+cover+jpeg.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1494" data-original-width="1010" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf6QqH8_IoGj0bethDDOo5-Bh29TBnFTzKzgcg1Iha5rpezKLnYE36Y0nt4OvHam3ZOq0jgA8SARcMhMYSwS5WB0sPPJSMoXhXvNn3QrzxJ8TzvHEap7uCcgvptE-KA0D5W0uxg55D-kc/s320/Match+cover+jpeg.jpg" width="216" /></a></div><br />Reviewer: "I have never met a Randy Attwood book that I haven't loved; he has a real talent for bringing his characters to life and creating an environment that is realistic and detailed without going overboard. This is the first science-fiction story he has published, so I was quite interested to see how he did in this story environment. And it was... brilliant!<p></p><p>"This is a short story, maybe it could be considered a novella - it took me about an hour to read it through. I am not sure where, exactly, Randy came up with some of the ideas he used in this story (I'll have to ask), but I found the ideas presented evocative and thought-provoking. There are questions of consciousness, how to truly access God (in whatever form that power takes for you), the humane treatment of others, etc. Like all of his books, I highly recommend this terrific story."</p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><i><a href="http://amzn.to/2tEylbR" target="_blank">By Pain Possessed</a></i></span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aoYn846krkM/UciTOq7LGNI/AAAAAAAABRo/ppBRXA4ZMTkzEK01YPshZqbZY-9TUl0EQCPcBGAYYCw/s1650/By%2BPain%2BPossessed%2Bcover%2Blarge.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1650" data-original-width="1275" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aoYn846krkM/UciTOq7LGNI/AAAAAAAABRo/ppBRXA4ZMTkzEK01YPshZqbZY-9TUl0EQCPcBGAYYCw/w154-h200/By%2BPain%2BPossessed%2Bcover%2Blarge.jpg" width="154" /></a></div><br />Reviewer: "I enjoyed this dark little story very much. Nowadays, we don't see much traditional science fiction as used to be the case, and Attwood takes to the genre like a natural with a beautifully drawn portrayal of aliens. Aliens are hard to write - it's not easy to make them really alien. Attwood has done a great job; his aliens are believable and consistent without being in the least human, and he avoids the trap of trying to put in too much background. A very successful venture into traditional SF by a seasoned and professional writer."<p></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><i><a href="http://amzn.to/2t54Tyr" target="_blank">The Richard Dary Weight Loss Institute</a></i></span></p><p>Reviewer: "This book freaked me the hell out. There, I said it. I can't tell you much about it without giving you spoilers, but the ideas that Randy expressed in this book scared the living daylights out of me. The sort of things that were done to the narrator of this story, Peggy, were inhuman. All in her attempts to fit in with modern societal standards of being thin. This made me think a little bit of the book I read earlier today, Saga of a Middle-Aged Vampire. What is it about modern society? Why are all the women expected to be anorexic-thin? It infuriates me. Healthy is one thing, but the modern goal is outright emaciation, and often extremely unhealthy methods are employed in the search for this. It actually frightens me that little girls are starving themselves to try to look like supermodels, who are (in my opinion), mostly freaks of nature."</p><div><br /></div>Attwood Collected Workshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12939221864173785283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1951983457080835423.post-54165045821799576532021-01-29T10:16:00.002-08:002021-01-29T10:56:17.798-08:00Re-introducing Crazy About You<p><i><a href="http://amzn.to/2lKpDr9" target="_blank"></a></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE-TFLR6xEdjSo98kkoC8iEP3i2zvHGc6YdI5-lSoeVdg-2QtW_KR7XEOgVmR7w9z4TYraZX4ZUd0kWGy_5wXJIQWpKJWWujlkH8OyXEUuX_tIkRcOwYgTdCeKS39ttOpKXfLLfL8mRKg/s698/Crazy+About+You+Cover+front+only.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="698" data-original-width="491" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE-TFLR6xEdjSo98kkoC8iEP3i2zvHGc6YdI5-lSoeVdg-2QtW_KR7XEOgVmR7w9z4TYraZX4ZUd0kWGy_5wXJIQWpKJWWujlkH8OyXEUuX_tIkRcOwYgTdCeKS39ttOpKXfLLfL8mRKg/s320/Crazy+About+You+Cover+front+only.jpg" /></a></i></div><i><br /><a href="http://amzn.to/2lKpDr9" target="_blank">Crazy About You</a></i> was the second novel I completed and is
still at No. 1 among my downloaded works of fiction. My father had been the
dentist at <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Larned</st1:placename> (KS) <st1:placetype w:st="on">State</st1:placetype> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Hospital</st1:placetype></st1:place>
and its 1,500 mental patients. My first job was working in the cafeteria that I
could reach by walking because the State provided us housing on the grounds, which
were located three miles west of Larned. Write about what you know, they say.
So I did. An excerpt:<p></p>
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><i>The hospital was located three miles outside of a small town
that was in the middle of a state in the middle of the nation. It was the
dumping ground for the retarded, the senile, the schizos and the paranoids, the
brain-damaged, adolescent dopers, the suicidal-depressed, the manics, maniacs,
and the perpetually confused.</i></p></blockquote>
<p class="MsoNormal">I like the structure of the book. First person. Tells about
one week in the life of a high school boy that will grow him into a man far
faster than he could have wanted. After it was published many readers wanted to
know how much of it was real. At first, I was offended. Didn’t they think I had
a creative imagination? Then I realized the question was a high compliment. If
they thought it was real, the writing did its job: create a reality for the
reader.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Here’s what some reviewers had to say, grouped by compliment
category:</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p>VERSIMILITUDE</p>
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><i>I happen to work at the state hospital depicted in this
story and it is incredible fact or fiction; the detail that was written I could
see everything he wrote so I was able to follow it with such ease and enjoyed
it very much. A very believable story that seemed so familiar.</i></p></blockquote>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p>*** </p>
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><i>Having spent my formative years in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Larned</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">Kansas</st1:state></st1:place>,
and also having worked briefly at the state mental hospital there, I can tell
you that his descriptions of life at the state hospital are totally spot-on! The
story line is also good--but I won't spoil it for anyone. Funny, sad, poignant.
And suspenseful!</i></p></blockquote>
<p class="MsoNormal">STYLE</p>
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><i>What I loved best about this book was, truly, the writer’s
style. He has a laid-back, very easy-to-read way with words that bring his
characters alive quickly.</i></p></blockquote>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p>***</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><i>I cannot think of an author that I can compare Randy with.
He is just unique. Randy has the skill to shake your nerve and give a direction
to forethought process like no other.</i></p></blockquote>
<p class="MsoNormal">READER CAPTURE QUOTIENT</p>
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><i>I sat up till 3:30 a.m. reading <a href="http://amzn.to/2lKpDr9" target="_blank">Crazy About You</a>. Couldn't
put it down. Have a few more pages to complete but I must tell you, I am now a
fan of Randy Attwood's writing. Can't wait to begin a second book and read
through his entire works. Easy read, humorous, good story line and left me wanting
more.</i></p></blockquote>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p>***</p>
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><i>I'm so glad this book was recommended to me. I have been
reading indie books for years with so much disappointment, but this but was
amazing. The pace was great, the plot was awesome, and the characters were so
very believable. I loved that Attwood really dug into the mind of Brad, and let
me know everything he was thinking. It was everything I imagined the mind of a
teenage boy to be at times, and some thoughts so profound it made me feel like
he was in my head.</i></p></blockquote>
<p class="MsoNormal">DEEP IMPACT</p>
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><i><a href="http://amzn.to/2lKpDr9" target="_blank">Crazy About You</a> is the second book by Randy Attwood I have
read, and my admiration for his writing skills grows with each page as I read.
This story takes the reader for a trip into the strange space between the sane
and insane--a mist-blurred world full of angst, mystery, surprises, plus
bizarre and unpredictable behavior . . . with an array of characters that are
so well developed your heart reaches out to them. Well, most of them...but
there is much more. An evil presence drives the story into even darker places that
you expect, at a pace that turns the pages as fast as you can read. This is an
engaging and compelling coming-of-age tale that will haunt the reader for days
and leave you wishing for more. Yet, it is also satisfying and fully resolved
in a way that touches your heart.</i></p></blockquote>
<p class="MsoNormal">PLOT SUMMARY</p>
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><i>The story involves brutal staff, many of whom are more
twisted than those they are supposed to care for, a sad young woman who was
victimized by her father and than by the system, unfortunate souls who need
professional help that is seldom available to them, the local juvenile
delinquent, and a couple of teenage girls whose hormones are as out of control
as only teenage hormones can be. The author brings them and others together to
weave a story that will keep you turning the pages and that you won't soon
forget.</i></p></blockquote>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p>***</p>
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><i><a href="http://amzn.to/2lKpDr9" target="_blank">Crazy About You</a> defies categorization, but suffice it to say
that those looking for pure excitement and good story telling will not be
disappointed. Nor will those who thrive on the deeper layers of psychological
tension. Although the novel often deals with forces out of the protagonist's
control, it also tackles tough moral choices that indelibly shape our lives,
all within the context of a fantastical drama that will leave the reader musing
for days. But ultimately, this is a story about absolution. If you have not
laughed out loud often and shed a few tears by the end, you'd better see a
shrink.</i></p></blockquote>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>Attwood Collected Workshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12939221864173785283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1951983457080835423.post-8097819573399909322020-09-19T17:50:00.001-07:002020-09-19T17:53:06.810-07:00A history of the treatment of the insane from my most download novel: Crazy About You<p style="text-align: left;"> <span style="text-align: center;">Excerpt from <a href="http://amzn.to/2mpHT64" target="_blank">CRAZY ABOUT YOU</a></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0.3in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">By Randy Attwood</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0.3in; text-indent: 0.3in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">If
you judged a civilization by how it treated its insane, it would modify your
opinion of how advanced we were. And are.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0.3in; text-indent: 0.3in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Consider.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0.3in; text-indent: 0.3in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">At
first the insane were allowed to roam at will and whipped out of villages when
they became a nuisance.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0.3in; text-indent: 0.3in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">When
Dante was writing The Divine Comedy, the insane were believed to be possessed
and were burned at the stake. In The Divine Comedy the word “bizarre” first
appeared to describe a madman.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0.3in; text-indent: 0.3in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">When
Galileo was proving that the Earth went around the Sun, the insane were given
holy water to drink from a church bell. If that didn’t work, they were burned
at the stake. Want to guess how many times it worked?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0.3in; text-indent: 0.3in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">About
the time that Heidelberg and Cologne Universities were founded, Bethlehem
Hospital in London became an institution for the insane. It was so poorly
funded that its inmates were given licenses to go begging for food. The
hospital was such an ungoverned mess that the way Bethlehem was pronounced,
Bedlam, became a word for uncontrolled madness.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0.3in; text-indent: 0.3in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">In
the years Shakespeare was writing his plays, you could take your family on an
outing for six-pence and view the madhouse chamber of horrors where the
restrained violent, often egged on by visitors, would snap and snarl at you, or
you could be entertained by inmates who believed they were Oliver Cromwell,
Julius Caesar, and even the Virgin Mary. Great laughs.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0.3in; text-indent: 0.3in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">In
France, while Lavoisier was proving that air was a mixture of mostly oxygen and
nitrogen, the inspector general of French hospitals reported that thousands of
lunatics were locked up in prisons without anyone even thinking of
administering the slightest remedy. The half-mad mingled with the totally
deranged. Some were in chains. Some were free to roam. He called them the
step-children of life.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0.3in; text-indent: 0.3in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Life
for normal people in France wasn’t all that healthy, either. Out of 1,000 live
births only 475 reached age 20. Only 130 reached age 60.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0.3in; text-indent: 0.3in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">It
was kind of an irony that our own Pinel Building for the Criminally Insane was
named in honor of the French doctor during the French Revolution who freed the
insane from their shackles. But ironies abound in the history of insanity.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0.3in; text-indent: 0.3in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">While
Harvey was developing his proof of circulation, the inmates at Bedlam were
treated en mass. At the end of each May they were all bled, then made to vomit
weekly, then purged. The attendants must have dreaded that time of the year.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0.3in; text-indent: 0.3in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Into
the beginning of the 1800s, when John Dalton introduced the atomic theory into
chemistry, the insane were treated with such loony cures as plasters of mashed
up Spanish fly, or had the veins in the forehead cut so the head could be bled.
Later, on an opposite theory, inmates were strapped in a chair called the
gyrator that spun the inmate around so more blood would circulate to his head.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0.3in; text-indent: 0.3in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">In
the late 1800s when society was really getting civilized, Dr. David Yellowless
of Glascow developed a surgical attack on what was then called masturbatory
insanity, which alienists believed was at epidemic proportions. Dr. Yellowless
inserted a silver wire in the foreskin, making erections so painful it would
eliminate the crazy-causing things. Other methods called for safety pins to be
used on uncircumcised men so that their foreskins were pierced by the
silver-coated (to reduce infection) pins through the glans of the penis, also
causing pain during erections, another method for eliminating the damnable
things.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0.3in; text-indent: 0.3in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The
Rush Building, where Suzanne was housed, was named after Benjamin Rush, honored
as the father of American psychiatry, who firmly held to the belief that
masturbation caused insanity. Oh, and he was the fellow who invented that
gyrator. And he also believed that blacks were black not because God created
them that way but because they suffered from a congenital form of leprosy,
mild, to be sure, but enough so it resulted in excess pigmentation.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0.3in; text-indent: 0.3in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Rush
wrote in his Medical Inquiries upon Diseases of the Mind that masturbation
produced seminal weakness, impotence, painful urination, emaciation, pulmonary
consumption, indigestion, dimness of sight, vertigo, epilepsy, hypochondriasis,
loss of memory, idiocy, and death. A French physician, Pouillet, concurred.
Masturbation posed a grave threat. Pouillet wrote: “Of all the vices and of all
the misdeeds which may properly be called crimes against nature, which devour
humanity, menace its physical vitality and tend to destroy its intellectual and
moral faculties, one of the greatest and most widespread -- no one denies it --
is masturbation.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0.3in; text-indent: 0.3in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Freud,
too, regarded adult masturbation as a pathologic practice and part of the cause
of neuroses.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0.3in; text-indent: 0.3in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">But,
in one of the great turnabouts in the history of psychiatry, therapists later
would prescribe masturbation as healthy to the mind and body.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0.3in; text-indent: 0.3in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">For
women, it was once believed that mental disorders were caused by pelvic excitations
and clitoridectomies were tried, especially in cases of epilepsy.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0.3in; text-indent: 0.3in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Later,
sex therapists would recommend masturbation for women, too, as a way to healthy
sex.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0.3in; text-indent: 0.3in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">In
the Soviet Union they tried prolonged sleep therapy on the insane. America used
hydrotherapy, placing agitated patients in hot water for days so that blood
flow increased to the body’s largest organ, its skin, thus lowering respiration
and blood pressure and creating a state of relaxation.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0.3in; text-indent: 0.3in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">In
the 1930s the increase of admissions of patients diagnosed as schizophrenic was
so high it was theorized there must be a schizococcus germ that could pass on
schizophrenia to an offspring. In 1936 a committee of the American Neurological
Association hoped that American physicians could someday emulate the clinical
efficiency of the Germans in their treatment of eugenics. Germany had over 200
courts to determine which psychiatric and neurological patients should be
sterilized. During Hitler’s Reich more than 400,000 sterilizations were
counted.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0.3in; text-indent: 0.3in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The
most effective sterilization is death and the Nazis tested methods of mass
murder first on mental patients before they applied them to other undesirable
populations. At the start of the Third Reich there were 200,000 patients in
mental hospitals. At the end of the Third Reich there were 20,000. An
interesting twist in early Nazi civilization is that it was deemed humanitarian
to euthanize incurable mental patients, but not Jews. Jews were considered
subhuman and so not worthy of euthanization.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0.3in; text-indent: 0.3in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">From
1909 to 1934 in the civilization called America, California sterilized 15,000
psychiatric patients. Twenty-seven states adopted sterilization laws. They were
used often against the retarded.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0.3in; text-indent: 0.3in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">One
attempted treatment for schizophrenia, as well as depression and psychosis, was
-- what many people regarded as a kind of euthanasia -- the lobotomy. Its main
American proponent, Dr. Walter Freeman, would make driving trips across America
to stop at state hospitals and perform the procedure he had simplified to the
point he felt that a sterile field wasn’t even necessary. First you
anesthetized the patient with electro-shock, rolled back his eyelid, place the
tip of instrument, a leucotome, which was a modified ice pick, against his tear
duct (which is 98 percent sterile) and drove it through his eye socket with a
hammer whack, shoved it into the brain and wiggled it around. Forty-thousand
people were lobotomized between 1945 and 1955 in America. In 1949, the
Portuguese doctor who first did lobotomies was the co-winner of the Nobel prize
for medicine and was cited for discovering the value of freeing the brain from
the disturbing effects of its pre-frontal lobes.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0.3in; text-indent: 0.3in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Larned
State Hospital came from a time when a concern grew that the rate of insanity
in America was way too high: one out of 262 persons compared to a rate of one
out of 1,000 in Europe. Blamed then was the rapid acquisition of wealth in
America, that with luxury, insanity kept pace. It was the price of
civilization, some reasoned. The quicker you go rich, the more likely you were
to get nutty, too.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0.3in; text-indent: 0.3in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">So
what those patients needed was order and discipline restored to their lives.
Asylum superintendents spent much of their time planning, and writing detailed
papers on, how a hospital and its buildings and grounds should be laid out. How
high the ceilings should be, how boring its wards. How a patient’s day should
be structured. Then they rivaled each other by announcing cure rates. A person
was cured if he was released back into society. Sometimes a person would be
cured five times because they would have to be re-admitted, cured, released and
have to be re-admitted. But it upped the cure rate.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0.3in; text-indent: 0.3in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Shortly
after World War II, when we had learned of the horrors the Nazi’s afflicted on
the Jews in the concentration camps, “The Baltimore Sun,” in 1949, printed a
series of articles called Maryland’s Shame, which detailed how that state
treated its mentally ill. More than 9,000 inmates were crammed in fire-trap
institutions designed for 6,000 patients. Few received any treatment. Thousands
lived like animals. Many rolled in their own excrement. Others slept nude in
the winter because there were no blankets. Attendants, paid less than prison
guards, stole patients’ money, got drunk on duty and raped female patients. Sex
offenders and small children were housed together.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0.3in; text-indent: 0.3in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Oh,
and while man was making his great scientific and engineering achievement of
walking on the moon in 1969, lobotomies were still being performed.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0.3in; text-indent: 0.3in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">In
1976, “The Philadelphia Inquirer” would win a Pulitzer prize for a series of
articles it ran about the conditions of <st1:placename w:st="on">Farview</st1:placename>
<st1:placetype w:st="on">State</st1:placetype> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Hospital</st1:placetype>,
the institution of last resort for the criminally insane in <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Pennsylvania</st1:place></st1:state>. Here, too, hundreds of
patients who had no work to do did nothing but sit in ward chairs all day long.
Only three percent received any real psychiatric care. Men died after beatings
by guards or by other patients, egged on by guards. Such deaths were certified
as being caused by heart attacks. There was an unwritten code among guards that
all guards present had to hit a patient if one guard hit him. Commitments to
Farview were so easy that cases were recorded of a 30-day disorderly conduct
sentence turning into a 30-year sentence.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0.3in; text-indent: 0.3in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The
history of commitment procedures makes for interesting reading, too. For
example, in France, in 1737, a father had his son committed because the son was
heavily in debt and had been dismissed from the army and so had disgraced
himself and his family. In 1697, a French woman was committed because she was
the mistress of a nobleman who had practically abandoned his wife, family, and
duty because he was so nuts over the skirt. In other words, people were
committed as insane who disturbed the social order. When society didn’t have
the basis to bring criminal legal proceedings against those who offended it,
they found ways to get rid of them by using nut houses to throw them in, nut
houses that were such hell holes that, as the old saying goes, if you weren’t
crazy when you got there, you would be after you stayed.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0.3in; text-indent: 0.3in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Back
in the Farview case, all it took was the signature of two physicians, and they
didn’t need to be psychiatrists, to certify to a court that the subject was
mentally ill and in need of treatment to get him committed. That didn’t secure
treatment, but it did secure incarceration, sometimes until the patient died of
old age. Finally, a court case was successful that freed the patients based on
the cruel and unusual punishment clause in the Constitution. Patients were
transferred to civil hospitals or back into the community. A follow-up study
showed only a fourteen percent recidivism rate among these 500 patients
previously designated by Farview as criminally dangerous.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0.3in; text-indent: 0.3in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">In
1964, the year I was a junior in Larned High School and living on the grounds
of Larned State Hospital, we were living in what one author called the
“enlightened fourth phase” of dealing with the insane. Society had moved from
1) being afraid of the mentally ill because they were possessed of evil spirits
to 2) simply protecting itself from the insane by chaining them or locking them
up to 3) treating them in a humanitarian way by placing them in asylums where
they were harbored but not really treated and so suffered chronic anonymity to
4) now seeing mental illness as an illness to be treated and cured.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0.3in; text-indent: 0.3in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">It’s
just we still didn’t really have a clue how the hell to do it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0.3in; text-indent: 0.3in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Later,
we’d just give up and send them back into the streets to roam at will, beg for
food, be beaten by police, and again be housed with criminals. Some
evangelicals would return to the possession theory and try to drive the demons
out. This time in front of television cameras.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: 0.3in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">And
some theorists would suggest that it wasn’t the insane who were insane, rather
it was the sane who used such people to mark the boundaries of their own
sanity. The so-called insane were the people we used to sort of pee on so we
could mark the territory of our own smug, mentally secure property.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: 0.3in;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-w_wxA8sNHIo/X2an6MJ5TJI/AAAAAAAAKbY/XWMaYAMqiasTz6z90Kg53x2FpFmbv4IrQCLcBGAsYHQ/s852/Crazy%2BAbout%2BYou%2BCover%2BC.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="641" data-original-width="852" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-w_wxA8sNHIo/X2an6MJ5TJI/AAAAAAAAKbY/XWMaYAMqiasTz6z90Kg53x2FpFmbv4IrQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Crazy%2BAbout%2BYou%2BCover%2BC.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span><p></p>Attwood Collected Workshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12939221864173785283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1951983457080835423.post-3359830255710488892019-12-03T17:48:00.000-08:002019-12-03T17:48:02.218-08:00Depopulating My Library, Part VI: Miscellaneous Stuff<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUWlFxSmb7hw8xTveEBWiUXSM1iKe9_IKdcZuQ3EgwIXaV0csyVv1jbAPikZSyHTqss_c6S6h21bJ-yn9YM4NhBFpYuCW_D4jI9DeCAcEFAdAzNwvIJwq2oJaY1J4dYNyyU3HoBOwCY9k/s1600/depopVimage.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="839" height="292" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUWlFxSmb7hw8xTveEBWiUXSM1iKe9_IKdcZuQ3EgwIXaV0csyVv1jbAPikZSyHTqss_c6S6h21bJ-yn9YM4NhBFpYuCW_D4jI9DeCAcEFAdAzNwvIJwq2oJaY1J4dYNyyU3HoBOwCY9k/s320/depopVimage.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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I think I’ve reached the end of selling off all books by a
single author. I’ve been letting my eyes roll through my shelves and my hands
pluck items I won’t read again, important and interesting as so many of them
where.</div>
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<br /></div>
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It’s a mix of fiction and non-fiction form Joseph Campbell
to H.P. Lovecraft, a 1918 Zane Grey, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
First Man</i>, the final work by Albert Camus that I tried to read and couldn’t
get into. If you’re in KC and interested in any of these works, they’ll be at
Wise Blood (if they buy them) at <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">300
Westport Road</st1:address></st1:street> and now open for business.</div>
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<br /></div>
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I’ll keep at the random picking from my shelves and then
write a post about which authors I’ve kept and why (as far as I can figure
out).</div>
<br />Attwood Collected Workshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12939221864173785283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1951983457080835423.post-70381111516159071702019-11-27T13:53:00.000-08:002019-11-27T13:53:08.737-08:00Depopulating My Library, Part V: Some Books by Me!<br />
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Today, I stopped by Blood Wise, the soon-to-open used
bookstore here in KC at <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">300
Westport Road</st1:address></st1:street>, to find Dylan on a ladder hanging
an outside sign in preparation for the store's Dec. 13 grand opening.</div>
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<br /></div>
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A co-worker was helping him level the sign and I went inside
with my box of books to sell, and a hope.</div>
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<br /></div>
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The offering from me was a mix of Updikes, Saul Bellows,
Rushdie, Stephen King, a mix of horror anthology paperbacks, and not-so-famous
authors I’ve either read and won’t re-read or started and couldn’t get into.</div>
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<br /></div>
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And….</div>
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<br /></div>
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“Be willing to look at my stuff?”</div>
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<br /></div>
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He was. I came back later and found out what he was offering
for the works of others and that he would buy outright to carry in the store three
books by me! A small victory, but a victory none-the-less. I’ll be probing him
later to see what attracted him to these particular works among my smorgasbord
of genres. I didn’t really expect him to buy more. It’s an investment on the
store’s part. They don’t know if these will sell. Hope springs eternal: if they
do sell, Blood Wise may stock more, and buy other titles. Hope--which has been
dashed often in my life--is hard to kill. Live on, Hope. Who knows.</div>
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<br /></div>
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They are creating a really nice environment for the store. Opening
date Dec. 13 is a Friday and, who knows, maybe I’ll be there. If so, I’ll let
you know what time.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Here are the three works you’ll find on the shelves at Blood
Wise, placed, I hope, above a shelf of Margaret Atwood books and sporting a sign:
“Read Our Attwood Books!” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://amzn.to/2lpmeLu" target="_blank">Rabbletown: Life inThese United Christian States of Holy America</a><o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://amzn.to/2zsvAze" target="_blank">SPILL</a><o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://amzn.to/2HrjECX" target="_blank">Kansas</a></i></st1:place></st1:state><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://amzn.to/2HrjECX" target="_blank"> Stories</a><o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<br />Attwood Collected Workshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12939221864173785283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1951983457080835423.post-63787793146569102262019-11-26T14:59:00.001-08:002019-11-26T15:01:03.046-08:00Depopulating My Library, Part IV: Thank You and Goodbye Walker Percy<br />
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I thought I had more Walker Percy books than I found on the
shelves. I had four and three of them have gone to Wise Blood, a soon-to-open
used bookstore in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Westport</st1:place></st1:city>
here in KC in December: <i>The Message in
the Bottle, The Last Generation, </i>and<i>
Thanatos Syndrome</i>.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m keeping <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Moviegoer</i>, the novel that put Percy on the literary map by winning the
National Book Award for Fiction in 1962. Joseph Heller’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Catch 22</i> and J.D. Salinger’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Franny
and Zoey</i> were also nominees. Percy was a Roman Catholic and many of his
books have spiritual themes, but not overtly so. One critic called <b>The Moviegoer</b>
“A Catcher in the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Rye</st1:city></st1:place>
for adults only.”</div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTOhnwBEEtWW29ETWS9MBDJFMx0jUikmK9T0qTIL-YsBteeCg9hN5vybx7Wze84ifnXIGd5yz0woM2j73BDBqUnCrZMqjDTeVAdvzRWBtZcImaT06ahLv75w0sW0ZqkuQfhsbaLUmVFRw/s1600/percy0001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1326" data-original-width="1600" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTOhnwBEEtWW29ETWS9MBDJFMx0jUikmK9T0qTIL-YsBteeCg9hN5vybx7Wze84ifnXIGd5yz0woM2j73BDBqUnCrZMqjDTeVAdvzRWBtZcImaT06ahLv75w0sW0ZqkuQfhsbaLUmVFRw/s320/percy0001.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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By all accounts Percy was also a nice person. The mother of
John Kennedy Toole called Percy up when he was teaching at Loyola and persuaded
him to read her dead son’s novel, who had committed suicide because of his
inability to get published <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Confederacy
of Dunces. </i>Percy<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">, </i>should read it because, she said “It’s a great novel.”</div>
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<br /></div>
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Percy read it, concurred, and opened the avenue for her son's wonderful book to be published.</div>
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<br /></div>
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During my try-to-get published saga, I reached out to Percy.
A friend had interviewed him for literary journal he was editing and had
Percy’s home address in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Covington</st1:city>,
<st1:state w:st="on">LA.</st1:state></st1:place> The book I was trying to get
published or find an agent for was The 41<sup>st</sup> Sermon. I thought it
would be up his alley: a middle-aged Episcopal priest finds himself in a
mid-life crisis and mid-faith crisis. Every year he goes alone to a fishing
resort to fish, drink, and write the outlines of the next year’s sermons.
There, he unexpectedly encounters a blonde parishioner who, unbeknownst to him,
is there as part of a phony kidnapping plot to extort money from her husband.
The priest gets entrapped, too.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So I sent Percy the first few chapters. He sent the cover
letter back to me with this written on it: “It reads well – I’d be glad to look
at rest, but must tell you I had to give up finding agents or publishers for
unpublished writers.—.I’d be doing nothing else. Everybody in the South is
writing a novel – Best, W.P.”</div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RPCZuhZWxnQ/ToHmESHQTlI/AAAAAAAAAEI/fm9OBsqxzCMTNguuWKHAA2Nq3qDpqneDQCPcBGAYYCw/s1600/The%2B41st%2BSermon%2Bcover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="501" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RPCZuhZWxnQ/ToHmESHQTlI/AAAAAAAAAEI/fm9OBsqxzCMTNguuWKHAA2Nq3qDpqneDQCPcBGAYYCw/s320/The%2B41st%2BSermon%2Bcover.jpg" width="200" /></a>It is hard for me to express my joy. Walter <b>Fucking</b> Percy
said “It reads well”! Maybe I did have some talent. And so I waited. And I
waited. And I….read six months later his obituary in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Kansas City</st1:place></st1:city>
Star. </i>The manuscript never was returned to me. I learned later that soon
after he responded to me he was diagnosed with Pancreatic cancer.</div>
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<br /></div>
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When I published The 41<sup>st</sup> Sermon I included a
photo of my cover letter to him and his response. If you want to read the
novel, it’s <a href="http://amzn.to/2mwZ7zY" target="_blank">here</a>.</div>
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<br /></div>
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The other books I sold were a mix of fiction and
non-fiction. Among them: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Memoirs of
Richard Nixon</i> Vol 1 and Vol 2, Evan Connell’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mr. Bridge</i>, Larry McMurtry’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dead
Man’s Walk</i> and an interesting, but depressing, book by Daniel DeFoe, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Journal of the Plague Year</i>.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When I used the $15 so earned and spent it on a 12-pack of
Warsteiner Octoberfest beer, I was reminded of Robert Heinlein’s price advice.
A paperback novel should cost the same as a six-pack of beer.</div>
<br />Attwood Collected Workshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12939221864173785283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1951983457080835423.post-34372094073126503152019-11-21T09:12:00.002-08:002019-11-26T15:07:30.719-08:00Depopulating My Library, Part III: Len Deighton, Robert Heinlein, and maybe Adam Hall<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I guess I started reading spy novels in high school when I
grabbed any James Bond book that showed up in the row of paperback books sold
at Knupp’s Drug Store in Larned, KS (yes, complete with cherry cokes at the fountain). The
only Ian Fleming work I still have is his best Bond book and the best movie
<i>From Russia with Love</i>. I might as well keep it.</div>
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<br /></div>
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</div>
<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VVQny4_mYlQ/Xda_xhN8neI/AAAAAAAAKSo/JAWPhmbBjLALhgQnwWprQz8K8aSeuJJCACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/lecarre0001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="718" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VVQny4_mYlQ/Xda_xhN8neI/AAAAAAAAKSo/JAWPhmbBjLALhgQnwWprQz8K8aSeuJJCACLcBGAsYHQ/s200/lecarre0001.jpg" width="140" /></a></div>
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My favorite spy author is John LeCarre and I have all but
his most recent work. The writing is superb, the tales captivating and what
wonderful movies were and are being made from them. I have 13 hardback copies
(including a First Edition American one of <i>The Spy Who Came in from the Cold</i>
complete with book jacket in nice condition that I got for $3) and 9 paperback
copies, some of which replicate the hardback edition. Rereading them is like
putting on a comfortable sweater. Not that his prose is easy, but it’s so fluid
and it ages well, like wine. No doubt I’ll go back and take sips.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SUip-EePhlo/Xda_xEJ3bKI/AAAAAAAAKS8/YAL6ZPer6no23OnSTjSiErDBXOG-AkCtACEwYBhgL/s1600/Deighton.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="440" data-original-width="1024" height="137" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SUip-EePhlo/Xda_xEJ3bKI/AAAAAAAAKS8/YAL6ZPer6no23OnSTjSiErDBXOG-AkCtACEwYBhgL/s320/Deighton.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I also liked Len Deighton and have all his works. I’ve
reread them a couple of times and very much admire his plotting and character
developments. His tryptich of trilogies about the English spy Bernard Samson in <st1:state w:st="on">Berlin</st1:state> were captivating.
Ian Holm played that spy in a 1988 Granada Television excellent adaptation of
the first trilogy, entitled <i>Game, Set and Match</i>, transmitted as twelve 60
minute episodes. I don’t know if they can be found these days because Deighton
got into something of snit about them. Anyway, I’m not going to revisit his
works. They are now in the hands of Wise Blood, a soon to open used bookstore
here in KC's <st1:city w:st="on">Westport</st1:city>.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Adam Hall’s Quiller series and John D. MacDonald’s Travis
McGee series present something of mystery to me. There were several times in
my life when I was just down. I won’t call it a depression, but certainly a
blue period complete with anxiety about my life, what I was doing, and what
would happen to me.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nHOxdXchCYs/Xda_zHn_E1I/AAAAAAAAKTE/5YSpPsXz1zASvpQWn8u6sIO9S5bZyAfPwCEwYBhgL/s1600/quiller0001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="695" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nHOxdXchCYs/Xda_zHn_E1I/AAAAAAAAKTE/5YSpPsXz1zASvpQWn8u6sIO9S5bZyAfPwCEwYBhgL/s200/quiller0001.jpg" width="135" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I often turned to reread the Quiller or the MacDonald books,
loving to do so in the order they were published. Why? Well, they’re
good action reads and that takes you out of yourself. With Travis McGee it
wasn’t so much the story as the character. You just wanted to be around Travis
again. Adam Hall, the pen name Elleston Trevor adopted for the Quiller books,
really knew how to do action. He knew when to stop a scene at its most dramatic
and keep you on the seat of your chair. They are page turners, but I don’t need
to turn those pages anymore. So Deighton is now gone and Hall may follow. I’m
still undecided. I’ll keep my Travis McGee books. I might want to have a drink
with him again (he turned me on to Boodles gin). These are books I’d more wish
to give to a friend.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Which is what I did with my Robert Heinlein paperback
collection. (Heinlein fans, if you haven’t read is <i>The Door into Summer</i>, I
highly recommend it. Great use of time travel and looking at the book cover
reminded me that in this 1957 book he uses a piece of equipment that won’t be
invented for decades, the Cad Cam.) A new bartender at<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Chez Charlie’s, my Midtown watering hole in
KC that I’ve been patronizing for more than 30 years, has become a reader of my
fiction and likes sci-fi, so I plopped my Heinlein collection on the bar top,
said they were hers, and ordered a Bombay Sapphire and tonic (they don’t carry
Boodles).</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In any of these musings of mine make your curious about my own smorgasbord of fiction genres, visit the buffet <a href="https://amzn.to/2J7hwSA" target="_blank">here</a>.</div>
<br />Attwood Collected Workshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12939221864173785283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1951983457080835423.post-33938657464017182332019-11-20T13:39:00.000-08:002019-11-26T15:07:59.200-08:00Depopulating My Library, Part II: A Farewell to Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I started college early by going to summer school at the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename w:st="on">Kansas</st1:placename></st1:place> instead of waiting for the fall
semester. I don’t remember I took any books with me, other than maybe the Webster’s
dictionary given us as some sort of high school graduation honor. But across
the hall from my dorm room I encountered a character who not only had books,
but had racks of steel shelves to hold those books.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I became enraptured of him and his books. In the room next
to mine was an older man who had finished his Navy tour and was taking courses
to go to medical school. He had books. Art books, too that featured
reproductions of fine art by Michelangelo, Di Vinci, and other famous artists.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtJtStjHWw7Z7qRBrJkbpldtxcEpxvHiXIpXUbzo_nbv2upgV0s9BIkcdhj8b29DQ_ggJBPL1UANw7m08DNJ6tOcqjMXHGERj5InE2a6ZZDgEsiVHElKUU6FXW3RSVWdpziYTcG_Hspn8/s1600/kiely0001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="663" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtJtStjHWw7Z7qRBrJkbpldtxcEpxvHiXIpXUbzo_nbv2upgV0s9BIkcdhj8b29DQ_ggJBPL1UANw7m08DNJ6tOcqjMXHGERj5InE2a6ZZDgEsiVHElKUU6FXW3RSVWdpziYTcG_Hspn8/s200/kiely0001.jpg" width="129" /></a>All this was wonderful and new to me.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Through that first person, John Kiely (who would be come a
friend, future roommate, mentor pictured right and now, sadly, long dead), I encountered Ernest Hemingway.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hemingway wrote in a simple, straightforward way that
communicated directly with one’s perception by creating through words a sense
of the reality of life. How is that possible using words? It amazed me. He
created scenes, but also emotions. A couple of examples:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
From the Nick Adams stories:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“In the fall the war was still there, but we did not go
there anymore.” Wonderful use of the self-reflective “we” instead of the
technically accurate “I.” And the repletion of “there” when most advice says
don’t repeat the same word. Through his prose he distilled and found the
essence of things.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The first sentence from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A
Farewell to Arms</i>: “In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a
village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains.” That
cascade of prepositions carries you along and again “in a house in a village”
repeats a preposition that works perfectly.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
His style entices young writers to imitate him. And, of
course, brings the danger of being a copy cat. I took a fiction writing class
at KU. The Southern writer Reynolds Price came to visit and would read what we
presented to him. I had only a few paragraphs. Here’s one of them: </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">
March Snows<br /><div style="text-align: left;">
The snows came in March and it was unfair because that same
morning there had been the smell of spring in the air. But during the night the
snows came, and I awoke when I heard the wind. I got up and parted the curtains
and looked out at the street lamp and saw the snow blowing as it collected in
drifts around the trees and her car in the driveway. A happiness I did not
understand filled me when I looked down at the bed where she slept. I slid down
under the covers again and she stirred, her lips slightly parted and her yellow
hair everywhere. I pulled her close to me and slowly inhaled our warmth—man
warm and woman warm together—as the wind continued to howl</div>
</h4>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Price called the paragraphs “quite lovely.” But then he was
a lovely man. The Hemingway imitation is obvious. But I still like those
paragraphs and I hope I learned that finding rhythms and sentences is a virtue,
not an imitation.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hemingway himself became a caricature of his macho self. And
the prose ran its course in the same manner. Much wonderful stuff and should be
read, of course. But I don’t need them anymore.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivJQULqDu2e9X2AYpVfDYZM5_JXPVZ_mr6hErQ_Y2KtQfYX1YJ9Q6RlonwwmKtWFXOcd6j_rylnm3gSCfZDG-BElpFgNLn7x_sh5OIlL0HEHwuP-eLPTK9ZHFR1OtCT_OLxOLEc1RCAs8/s1600/trees0001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1251" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivJQULqDu2e9X2AYpVfDYZM5_JXPVZ_mr6hErQ_Y2KtQfYX1YJ9Q6RlonwwmKtWFXOcd6j_rylnm3gSCfZDG-BElpFgNLn7x_sh5OIlL0HEHwuP-eLPTK9ZHFR1OtCT_OLxOLEc1RCAs8/s200/trees0001.jpg" width="156" /></a>There is one Hemingway novel I will, however, keep. Oddly
enough, it is one of his most panned works: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Across
the River and into the Trees</i>. I still don’t understand why, but the evening
of the day I received the phone call from my aunt telling me my father had
died, I pulled that novel from the shelf and reread it with pen in hand. I
underlined passages that were important to me at the unique time in my life.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I will keep that now battered, mutilated book. The other
Hemingway books are now gone. Not gone is my desire to complete a simple
sentence with the right rhythm to cast the right spell upon a reader.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Faulkner, with his denser prose, could cast spells, too. I
enjoyed my swimming, wading, and sometimes slogging through his stories and
sentences. But I have no desire to reenter his waters, lush though they were. Hemingway's popularity continues. The son of a couple we are good friends with opened a bar in Westport called "<a href="https://www.yelp.com/biz/the-pressed-penny-tavern-kansas-city" target="_blank">The Pressed Penny Tavern</a>," which many Hemingway fans may recognize. He has an alcove of Hemingway books and memorabilia. I had given him many early editions of Hemingway's work and books about Hemingway. Encourage my KC Facebook fans to stop in and at find out why Gordon Roberts gave his bar that odd name.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So the Hemingway and Faulkner portions of my library have
been purchased by owners of Wise Blood, a soon-to-open used bookstore at 300
West Westport Road here in Kansas City.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Selling those collections gave me enough cash for a couple
of drinks over which I contemplated my few successes and my many failings. And
realizing I am thankful for both and the so many people I have met along the way.</div>
<br />Attwood Collected Workshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12939221864173785283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1951983457080835423.post-48093446549626131182019-11-12T14:05:00.002-08:002019-11-26T15:10:22.776-08:00Depopulating My Library, Part I: But Dr. Fu Manchu and PKD Stay On My Shelves<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
In anticipation of a move from our current house in 2020 I
have been depopulating my library. I had already done an initial culling a
couple of years ago by simply giving away books from a table on my driveway for
any one who waked by. Those were mostly books I was sure I wouldn’t read again
or consult. For example, my philosophy books from when I studied that subject
at KU and many of which I foisted on a young man who told me he would soon
begin his studies at Rockhurst and major in philosophy. “Well, here, you must
have <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">St. Augustine</st1:place></st1:city>’s
“The City of God.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And there was a whole
mix of novels I saw no reason to keep.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This time I’ve become more mercenary. I learned of a place
that was buying items to open a used book store and thought portions of my
collection might appeal. And bring me a bit of money, though I knew it would
not be much. This time I went to the heart of my collection. Let me explain.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Harold Bloom died the other day, a much admired but also
often reviled literary critic. I thought his “The Western Canon” was not just a
list of what he thought were the great works of literature like Dante and
Shakespeare, but rather he established a criterion that was something like
this: These are the works that made Western Man what and the way he is. (Bloom
was not favored by feminists using the male pronoun in this context.) Anyway, it
struck me that I should consider what works of literature I had read that made
me who I am.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOhfCQfbjACc3iHtfEtEvRmoeuT7kCqZDBTMJw8wuDRSRcHoYXLft6UyFwe3dhQIDdIRKjtVX47LeKt1dKD2-iPd8Ypmr1PgYxYWbWXRWD4wF-xUOMVCm6dJdzEX35ckBVyFxMGybHL0o/s1600/Fu+Manchu0001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1394" data-original-width="832" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOhfCQfbjACc3iHtfEtEvRmoeuT7kCqZDBTMJw8wuDRSRcHoYXLft6UyFwe3dhQIDdIRKjtVX47LeKt1dKD2-iPd8Ypmr1PgYxYWbWXRWD4wF-xUOMVCm6dJdzEX35ckBVyFxMGybHL0o/s200/Fu+Manchu0001.jpg" width="118" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It struck me that as I free up shelf space I should put
together the books in my library that formed who I am. I was an early science
fiction fan. In high school there was a drug store that was the only purveyor
of paperback fiction. I knew on what day the salesman came in to bring in new
volume. I snatched up any Philip K. Dick, Robert Heinlein, James Bond and Fu
Manchu novel. Fu Manchu captivated me. The yellow peril. The exploits. The
exotic oriental women. Knowledge of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">China</st1:place></st1:country-region> by me was a black hole then.
It was this mysterious place and our World History textbook didn’t give it much
space.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I think that was part of the formula that I was smitten when
I saw this oriental woman with long shining black hair walk into my Italian
language course when I went to <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Italy</st1:place></st1:country-region>
to study that tongue. We’ve been married almost 50 years now.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_qzfZm0GjiI/XcspoK9RoFI/AAAAAAAAKQ8/jHb0ONl6q0MeqygjwBPd-wALHW5lf9nlwCEwYBhgL/s1600/High%2BCastle0001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1178" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_qzfZm0GjiI/XcspoK9RoFI/AAAAAAAAKQ8/jHb0ONl6q0MeqygjwBPd-wALHW5lf9nlwCEwYBhgL/s200/High%2BCastle0001.jpg" width="146" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Don’t think it followed that I excised my Fu Manchu collection. I
won’t do that. And since I turned my son onto Philip K. Dick and he has added to the five-foot shelf we have of his works, they will go to him.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When I got to college, my reading expanding greatly. I also
realized that I was a reader that when encountering a new author wanted to
consume everything. I remember the summer in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lawrence</st1:place></st1:city> when at the local library I came
across their collection of Conrad in a set of volumes. In the volume Conrad
wrote an introduction for each title, introductions that to me where the
epitome of good writing, as was his fiction.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In one he wrote that his task was “by the power of the
written word to make you hear, to make you feel—it is, above all, to make you <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">see</i>.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WbxerIuwIVM/Xcspp6LHTqI/AAAAAAAAKRA/4ArGwkUiJHEvILrHhSBxUNnIsDtkfSA6QCEwYBhgL/s1600/Conrad0001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1118" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WbxerIuwIVM/Xcspp6LHTqI/AAAAAAAAKRA/4ArGwkUiJHEvILrHhSBxUNnIsDtkfSA6QCEwYBhgL/s200/Conrad0001.jpg" width="139" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That became a
kind of mantra to me when I started to attempt writing fiction that has remained my goal for the novels and stories I’ve
created.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I collected my Conrad books (except for the 1942 714-page Book of the
Month Club selection I’ve displayed above) and took them for
sale. It earned me a whole $10, which paid for my bar bill that Saturday. Gave
me something to reflect upon as I sipped my Negroni.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I don't know if any of Conrad can be detected in my fiction. I do know that</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p>my novella <i><a href="http://amzn.to/2mgf52G" target="_blank">One </a></i></o:p><i><a href="http://amzn.to/2mgf52G" target="_blank">More Victim</a> </i>I consider my <i>Heart of Darkness, </i>that for a long time I reread every year. One of the things I admired about Philip K. Dick was his ability to start a story and immediately grab a reader. I hope I learned that lesson in <i><a href="http://amzn.to/2qtnhfP" target="_blank">3 Very Quirky Tales</a></i>. From Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu story I hope I learned pacing and I hope it shows in <i><a href="http://amzn.to/2mbkrtR" target="_blank">Tortured Truths</a></i> and <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1393362915" target="_blank">Heart Chants</a></i>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p>Hemingway, you’re going next.<i><br /></i></o:p></div>
<br />Attwood Collected Workshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12939221864173785283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1951983457080835423.post-47019973632495433922019-08-16T08:46:00.000-07:002019-08-16T08:46:17.559-07:00Beginnings of Stories and Novels<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Beginnings.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They’re important for a writer. You hope they’ll be
interesting enough to hook the reader. Give them reason to read more.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Here are some of my beginnings I particularly liked:</div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL1RqWQQHjEL5W_JA6hpHgRGYc0sfiHvAJTbkYMvshaT1x2UGr1mO2ch0t4aeFhwG02Mmle9_IYgbHS09O185wf33fueOVpFLgLRJAEneIhxxCYxqJp659FinMMeB7tmZhr_SW-k3jUsU/s1600/3+Very+Quirky+Tales+cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="501" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL1RqWQQHjEL5W_JA6hpHgRGYc0sfiHvAJTbkYMvshaT1x2UGr1mO2ch0t4aeFhwG02Mmle9_IYgbHS09O185wf33fueOVpFLgLRJAEneIhxxCYxqJp659FinMMeB7tmZhr_SW-k3jUsU/s320/3+Very+Quirky+Tales+cover.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><a href="https://amzn.to/2InvFrj" target="_blank">It Was Me (I)</a></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On my drive home from work Friday evening I stopped at a
traffic light, glanced left over at the driver in the other lane and saw
myself. No, not the me now, but the me I was some 30 years ago.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><a href="https://amzn.to/2InvFrj" target="_blank">Tell Us Everything</a></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Cricket carefully backed her crummy car, which needed a
motor mount bolt replaced, down her cousin’s driveway. She was driving extra
cautiously these days because her license was suspended and she had two weeks
to go on her probation before she could pay the bastards another $90 to get
reinstated, which was beyond bullshit because that last DUI was totally fucking
unfair. She hit the breaks when she heard Samantha’s voice on the car radio.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLakJAdTWq2rZ4DZe5hf1MytF-WgosqW82ebxJK73PhYFS8eZFJhtDcYb6QgoSZ3izH6J_6AfvYt8VDZ2CxG6rtTT5UhzIpE1SsmyN83WWDqTryrBdKFX1Fo22iAm914_w3KxkmMmfOQE/s1600/The+Notebook+cover+final+compressed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="941" data-original-width="768" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLakJAdTWq2rZ4DZe5hf1MytF-WgosqW82ebxJK73PhYFS8eZFJhtDcYb6QgoSZ3izH6J_6AfvYt8VDZ2CxG6rtTT5UhzIpE1SsmyN83WWDqTryrBdKFX1Fo22iAm914_w3KxkmMmfOQE/s200/The+Notebook+cover+final+compressed.jpg" width="163" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><a href="http://amzn.to/2mJgCMN" target="_blank">The Notebook</a></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Jeremy)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I had two phone calls from Don before he killed himself.
Each call should have tipped me off. Maybe not the first one, but certainly the
second. I couldn't have gone to him anyway, he lived in another state far away.
Still, I could have done something, called somebody. I wonder if Don knew at
the time of the first call–the first contact I had had with him in three
years–that he was going to commit suicide. When do suicides know for sure, just
before they pull the trigger?</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijojeAhFadCJg7MhcrQzsvmUnGPLsJmMoCUzhLFE3z_2LLFi-7NY8TmMm80j_QNW_JSQyNMyZDoJ3qk1V9gshnrRuN7KOTD0ib3aj8kR1HDraGzDak-sUeagAsKux6hwOigtKjuvu7gRc/s1600/Blow+up+cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1051" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijojeAhFadCJg7MhcrQzsvmUnGPLsJmMoCUzhLFE3z_2LLFi-7NY8TmMm80j_QNW_JSQyNMyZDoJ3qk1V9gshnrRuN7KOTD0ib3aj8kR1HDraGzDak-sUeagAsKux6hwOigtKjuvu7gRc/s200/Blow+up+cover.jpg" width="131" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><a href="https://books2read.com/u/4DZD2D" target="_blank">Blow Up the Roses</a></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mr. Brown closed the door on the whimpers and walked up the
stairs to take a shower. He stood under the stream of water and leaned his head
against the wall of the shower stall. "Mommy loves me. Mommy loveth me.
Mommy loveth me," he whispered to himself as his heart slowed.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><br /></i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8zK5WJCbw0vI4lbOxr48_74G6qPWewpL5UHNzR5QKZz4OfNlDZxg0l1FXcwGiI44-oE_e0lPJtPCMcaGtvxfsV5jIh-uve6sy-IUDU6EkeBS6WUjBkOTMyKGrpi54MX6x3wuo-fyUk6s/s1600/blue+kansas+sky+cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1302" data-original-width="958" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8zK5WJCbw0vI4lbOxr48_74G6qPWewpL5UHNzR5QKZz4OfNlDZxg0l1FXcwGiI44-oE_e0lPJtPCMcaGtvxfsV5jIh-uve6sy-IUDU6EkeBS6WUjBkOTMyKGrpi54MX6x3wuo-fyUk6s/s200/blue+kansas+sky+cover.jpg" width="146" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><a href="http://amzn.to/2r4sihL" target="_blank">Blue KansasSky</a></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There really is a <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:state w:st="on">Kansas</st1:state></st1:place>
sky, wide as the land is flat. On fall mornings it seems as if the stratosphere
drops down just before dawn to touch the trees, make crisp the leaves of brown
and red and yellow, rise again to paint the sky a deep blue, and leave the air
as clean and as fresh as a newly-cut lemon.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEkplNcm92BmsaT_gHk9JZKHWXOhyphenhyphenkVO41rVWhMggkM_eSjoFYLRE1BE8_n_uvZ182wq5XQnAfHKweIDZV_vC75gEEK4km5NA_zQOpCKb-4lRAiorEilnP5T-MNjKvPML4WQ5kGI-6oN0/s1600/Crazy+About+You+Cover+front+only.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="698" data-original-width="491" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEkplNcm92BmsaT_gHk9JZKHWXOhyphenhyphenkVO41rVWhMggkM_eSjoFYLRE1BE8_n_uvZ182wq5XQnAfHKweIDZV_vC75gEEK4km5NA_zQOpCKb-4lRAiorEilnP5T-MNjKvPML4WQ5kGI-6oN0/s200/Crazy+About+You+Cover+front+only.jpg" width="140" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><a href="http://amzn.to/2mpHT64" target="_blank">Crazy About You</a></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Children who grew up on military bases are called Army
brats. Asylum brats were those few of us who grew up on the grounds of state
insane asylums where our parents, who worked there, had housing provided by the
state. We weren't shoved from base to base, state to state, country to country,
so we couldn't claim we didn't put down roots. Instead, we were buffeted
between the bizarre personalities among whom we lived, if we chose to know the
lives of those mostly benign inmates–excuse me, patients–from whose lunacy our
parents earned their livings.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6xufhhDoxK35lm95wo1rEHJuz6ywNHd00kMqNo3FL8o-ySH345yUnz5m89vXU_C7ioaZVsKGWZva9k8sX5iowx9Tg25Vx8tM06xpcaOrLjuXXD3aEWGjOJTsdgwlRuiq7pYLCFEfQ3oc/s1600/Dark+Side+of+the+Museum+compressed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="640" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6xufhhDoxK35lm95wo1rEHJuz6ywNHd00kMqNo3FL8o-ySH345yUnz5m89vXU_C7ioaZVsKGWZva9k8sX5iowx9Tg25Vx8tM06xpcaOrLjuXXD3aEWGjOJTsdgwlRuiq7pYLCFEfQ3oc/s200/Dark+Side+of+the+Museum+compressed.jpg" width="125" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><a href="http://amzn.to/2xvkpqh" target="_blank">Dark Side of the Museum</a></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was on my way to report the extraordinary X-ray finding to
the chief conservator when I encountered her in the hallway waddling like a
penguin toward me in her daily dress of black pants, white blouse, black vest.
Stella said, "Ah, Edgar, we need to talk."</div>
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<i><a href="http://amzn.to/2qz69Ex" target="_blank">Innocent Passage</a></i></div>
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The skies were cloudy all day.</div>
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Since morning, Fred and I had been peering out of the tiny
windshield of his car as the overhanging sky loomed above us and met the
horizon: flat and far ahead. The black metal skull of his even-then ancient
1935 Ford, with its sets of human eyes, prowled the sand roads across the
prairie. It was late afternoon. I was driving. We were both irritable.</div>
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<i><a href="http://amzn.to/2mgf52G" target="_blank">One More Victim</a></i></div>
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The most important summer of my life began with a
house-shaking thunder-boomer that woke me up on a Thursday night in 1958 near
the end of my fifth-grade school year.</div>
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I walked out of my bedroom to the living room and saw Dad,
in his brown pajamas, standing at the window looking out and up at the fury in
the sky. On a nearby table, the transistor radio was playing softly so he could
hear the news of any tornado sightings. He held the flashlight in case the
power went off and we had to go to the basement. His hand was tight around the
aluminum cylinder, holding it as if it were a club he could use against the
weather. Dad had good reason to be cautious.</div>
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<i><a href="http://amzn.to/2lpmeLu" target="_blank">Rabbletown: Life in These United ChristianStates of Holy America</a></i></div>
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Bob Crowley, drunk and very tired, almost tripped over the
broken toy truck before kicking it out of his way then trudging around the side
of the house to the back of a former duplex that now housed six families of
50-some Christian souls. Work on the <st1:placename w:st="on">Great</st1:placename>
<st1:placename w:st="on">Christian</st1:placename> <st1:placename w:st="on">State</st1:placename>
of <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Kansas</st1:place></st1:state>
Cathedral went on from dawn to dusk, almost a 14-hour, hot, summer day.</div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--qNc-FXQi0Y/Ukb1VnL1fUI/AAAAAAAACSs/OThDxVV3cwg4_7odonOvbdp56dDpPM8-wCPcBGAYYCw/s1600/saltness%2Bcover%2Bfinal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="500" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--qNc-FXQi0Y/Ukb1VnL1fUI/AAAAAAAACSs/OThDxVV3cwg4_7odonOvbdp56dDpPM8-wCPcBGAYYCw/s200/saltness%2Bcover%2Bfinal.jpg" width="125" /></a></div>
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<i><a href="http://amzn.to/2mkk9AT" target="_blank">The Saltness of Time</a></i></div>
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"I like these kinds of snows. They cancel things
out."</div>
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The voice that broke the silence in the cold room had the
gravel-grumble tone that smokers get and keep – even after they stop smoking.
The nervous plucking of his hands at his worn, brown sweater said he still
missed his cigarettes. His lined, but healthy, blood-perfused face meant he had
smoked heavily most of his life before something had made him stop. Bypass
surgery, I diagnosed.</div>
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<i><a href="https://amzn.to/2zsvAze" target="_blank">SPILL</a></i></div>
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Fred Underwood was driving his 15-year-old, once-white, now
rust-speckled Nissan pickup six miles oven
several things happened to him.</div>
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He saw a sign announcing—as though proud of the fact—that
gasoline at the upcoming station was selling for $4.15 a gallon. He looked into
the rear view mirror when he heard a siren and confirmed that, indeed, a police
car was chasing him. He uttered, “Shit,” but then felt his body swept with
euphoria: an idea smacked him that would make him rich.</div>
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<i><a href="http://amzn.to/2mcffWp" target="_blank">StopTime</a></i></div>
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David Lopez sat at a table on the patio of the most popular
outside cafe at the Kansas City Plaza Enclave on a warm, early spring day and
was depressed at the thought of how happy everybody around him seemed. How
satisfied they all are with their own lives, enjoying this day, their meals and
the music of Mozart from the string quartet. His model, Gloria Barnes was
snarfling alfalfa-soy sprouts and babbling about her studies in Buddhist logic:
"The thing that people don't realize is that Buddhism has a much better
grip on what is real than any other philosophy," she said, pausing to curl
her tongue to the side of her mouth to catch a wayward sprout. "For Plato,
reality is truth. What is cognized as true is real. For the Buddhist, reality
is efficiency. Isn't that beautiful? Isn't that TOMORROW?"</div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qH-EgQcDoTs/V9cbpraeFZI/AAAAAAAAGcI/b2CtgT9mnOomNyMUZahsM7WU-n01nH10gCPcBGAYYCw/s1600/sauer%2Bcover%2Bfor%2Bstrange.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1342" data-original-width="748" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qH-EgQcDoTs/V9cbpraeFZI/AAAAAAAAGcI/b2CtgT9mnOomNyMUZahsM7WU-n01nH10gCPcBGAYYCw/s200/sauer%2Bcover%2Bfor%2Bstrange.jpg" width="111" /></a></div>
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<i><a href="http://amzn.to/2feWZYi" target="_blank">The Strange Case of James Kirkland Pilley</a></i></div>
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Edward Hawthorne had no premonition of the first disturbing
and later horrifying consequences that would result from his joining the
Friends of Pilley Park Garden Society.</div>
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<i><a href="http://amzn.to/2mwZ7zY" target="_blank">The 41st Sermon</a></i></div>
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At seven-thirty on a fresh, cool Monday morning in the
forty-fifth spring of his life, under a sky the blue of which General Motors
used for its 1957 Chevrolet, the Rev. Christopher Talley looked into the trunk
of his BMW, aimed his thick, index finger at the objects stored neatly away,
and stuck up his thumb.</div>
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"Bang," he said, as he pointed his finger at the
portable typewriter, depressed his thumb, and heard the knuckle crack. He
shifted to take aim at a stack of reference books, and then in rapid order went
"bang, bang, bang, bang," at the dictionary, the thesaurus, the
Bible, and the Book of Common Prayer. Father Talley aimed the finger next at
the large, expandable file and, with the loudest mental bang of them all,
blasted that well-worn cardboard structure and all of the pieces of paper the
damn thing contained. He thought about pointing the finger at his own head, but
reached down instead to caress the fly rod case, pat the tackle box, and run
his hand across the stack of journals on studies into ancient <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Greece</st1:place></st1:country-region> he had
bound together with cord. He closed the trunk lid, listening to its
satisfyingly solid click.</div>
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<i><a href="http://amzn.to/2lnbXyv" target="_blank">The Fat Cat</a></i></div>
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I hadn’t seen that good-lookin' motherfucker for almost a
year when he walked into The Fat Cat with his partner to ask me about the dead
dancer found that morning in our dumpster.</div>
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<i><a href="http://amzn.to/2mdAneX" target="_blank">The and Now: The Harmony of the Instantaneous All</a></i></div>
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I think back to the 1960s too much now. Not sane. A fixation
on then is no way to deal with now. My fascination with those times is not the
kind of healthy diversion with the past, the way an interest in history can
become a worthwhile hobby. Maybe it's worse than a fascination or a fixation;
maybe it's an obsession. Can obsessions ever be worthwhile? Probably not. I
know I long too much for the psychology of those times, the psychology of
others then, of the me then that is so different from the selfish, cynical,
jaded, boring psychology of the times, other people and – I fear – the me now.</div>
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Why write this? To expunge the obsession? Can't hurt; might
help. Maybe in the writing I'll find the worth.</div>
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<br />Attwood Collected Workshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12939221864173785283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1951983457080835423.post-75007516313189177302019-08-06T10:03:00.002-07:002019-08-06T10:04:53.215-07:00A Short History of the Treatment of the Insane<h3>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE-TFLR6xEdjSo98kkoC8iEP3i2zvHGc6YdI5-lSoeVdg-2QtW_KR7XEOgVmR7w9z4TYraZX4ZUd0kWGy_5wXJIQWpKJWWujlkH8OyXEUuX_tIkRcOwYgTdCeKS39ttOpKXfLLfL8mRKg/s1600/Crazy+About+You+Cover+front+only.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="698" data-original-width="491" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE-TFLR6xEdjSo98kkoC8iEP3i2zvHGc6YdI5-lSoeVdg-2QtW_KR7XEOgVmR7w9z4TYraZX4ZUd0kWGy_5wXJIQWpKJWWujlkH8OyXEUuX_tIkRcOwYgTdCeKS39ttOpKXfLLfL8mRKg/s320/Crazy+About+You+Cover+front+only.jpg" width="225" /></a>The current talk about the need for mental health hospitals in light of mass shootings reminded me of a section in my novel <i><a href="http://amzn.to/2mpHT64" target="_blank">Crazy About You</a></i>, set at a insane asylum in the 1960s.</h3>
If you judged a civilization by how it treated its insane, it would modify your opinion of how advanced we were. And are.<br />
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Consider.<br />
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At first the insane were allowed to roam at will and whipped out of villages when they became a nuisance.When Dante was writing The Divine Comedy, the insane were believed to be possessed and were burned at the stake. In The Divine Comedy the word “bizarre” first appeared to describe a madman.<br />
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When Galileo was proving that the Earth went around the Sun, the insane were given holy water to drink from a church bell. If that didn’t work, they were burned at the stake. Want to guess how many times it worked?</div>
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About the time that Heidelberg and Cologne Universities were founded, Bethlehem Hospital in London became an institution for the insane. It was so poorly funded that its inmates were given licenses to go begging for food. The hospital was such an ungoverned mess that the way Bethlehem was pronounced, Bedlam, became a word for uncontrolled madness.</div>
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In the years Shakespeare was writing his plays, you could take your family on an outing for six-pence and view the madhouse chamber of horrors where the restrained violent, often egged on by visitors, would snap and snarl at you, or you could be entertained by inmates who believed they were Oliver Cromwell, Julius Caesar, and even the Virgin Mary. Great laughs.</div>
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In France, while Lavoisier was proving that air was a mixture of mostly oxygen and nitrogen, the inspector general of French hospitals reported that thousands of lunatics were locked up in prisons without anyone even thinking of administering the slightest remedy. The half-mad mingled with the totally deranged. Some were in chains. Some were free to roam. He called them the step-children of life.</div>
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Life for normal people in France wasn’t all that healthy, either. Out of 1,000 live births only 475 reached age 20. Only 130 reached age 60.</div>
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It was kind of an irony that our own Pinel Building for the Criminally Insane was named in honor of the French doctor during the French Revolution who freed the insane from their shackles. But ironies abound in the history of insanity.</div>
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While Harvey was developing his proof of circulation, the inmates at Bedlam were treated en mass. At the end of each May they were all bled, then made to vomit weekly, then purged. The attendants must have dreaded that time of the year.</div>
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Into the beginning of the 1800s, when John Dalton introduced the atomic theory into chemistry, the insane were treated with such loony cures as plasters of mashed up Spanish fly, or had the veins in the forehead cut so the head could be bled. Later, on an opposite theory, inmates were strapped in a chair called the gyrator that spun the inmate around so more blood would circulate to his head.</div>
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In the late 1800s when society was really getting civilized, Dr. David Yellowless of Glascow developed a surgical attack on what was then called masturbatory insanity, which alienists believed was at epidemic proportions. Dr. Yellowless inserted a silver wire in the foreskin, making erections so painful it would eliminate the crazy-causing things. Other methods called for safety pins to be used on uncircumcised men so that their foreskins were pierced by the silver-coated (to reduce infection) pins through the glans of the penis, also causing pain during erections, another method for eliminating the damnable things.</div>
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The Rush Building, where Suzanne was housed, was named after Benjamin Rush, honored as the father of American psychiatry, who firmly held to the belief that masturbation caused insanity. Oh, and he was the fellow who invented that gyrator. And he also believed that blacks were black not because God created them that way but because they suffered from a congenital form of leprosy, mild, to be sure, but enough so it resulted in excess pigmentation.</div>
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Rush wrote in his Medical Inquiries upon Diseases of the Mind that masturbation produced seminal weakness, impotence, painful urination, emaciation, pulmonary consumption, indigestion, dimness of sight, vertigo, epilepsy, hypochondriasis, loss of memory, idiocy, and death. A French physician, Pouillet, concurred. Masturbation posed a grave threat. Pouillet wrote: “Of all the vices and of all the misdeeds which may properly be called crimes against nature, which devour humanity, menace its physical vitality and tend to destroy its intellectual and moral faculties, one of the greatest and most widespread -- no one denies it -- is masturbation.”</div>
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Freud, too, regarded adult masturbation as a pathologic practice and part of the cause of neuroses.</div>
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But, in one of the great turnabouts in the history of psychiatry, therapists later would prescribe masturbation as healthy to the mind and body.</div>
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For women, it was once believed that mental disorders were caused by pelvic excitations and clitoridectomies were tried, especially in cases of epilepsy.</div>
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Later, sex therapists would recommend masturbation for women, too, as a way to healthy sex.</div>
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In the Soviet Union they tried prolonged sleep therapy on the insane. America used hydrotherapy, placing agitated patients in hot water for days so that blood flow increased to the body’s largest organ, its skin, thus lowering respiration and blood pressure and creating a state of relaxation.</div>
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In the 1930s the increase of admissions of patients diagnosed as schizophrenic was so high it was theorized there must be a schizococcus germ that could pass on schizophrenia to an offspring. In 1936 a committee of the American Neurological Association hoped that American physicians could someday emulate the clinical efficiency of the Germans in their treatment of eugenics. Germany had over 200 courts to determine which psychiatric and neurological patients should be sterilized. During Hitler’s Reich more than 400,000 sterilizations were counted.</div>
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The most effective sterilization is death and the Nazis tested methods of mass murder first on mental patients before they applied them to other undesirable populations. At the start of the Third Reich there were 200,000 patients in mental hospitals. At the end of the Third Reich there were 20,000. An interesting twist in early Nazi civilization is that it was deemed humanitarian to euthanize incurable mental patients, but not Jews. Jews were considered subhuman and so not worthy of euthanization.</div>
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From 1909 to 1934 in the civilization called America, California sterilized 15,000 psychiatric patients. Twenty-seven states adopted sterilization laws. They were used often against the retarded.</div>
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One attempted treatment for schizophrenia, as well as depression and psychosis, was -- what many people regarded as a kind of euthanasia -- the lobotomy. Its main American proponent, Dr. Walter Freeman, would make driving trips across America to stop at state hospitals and perform the procedure he had simplified to the point he felt that a sterile field wasn’t even necessary. First you anesthetized the patient with electro-shock, rolled back his eyelid, place the tip of instrument, a leucotome, which was a modified ice pick, against his tear duct (which is 98 percent sterile) and drove it through his eye socket with a hammer whack, shoved it into the brain and wiggled it around. Forty-thousand people were lobotomized between 1945 and 1955 in America. In 1949, the Portuguese doctor who first did lobotomies was the co-winner of the Nobel prize for medicine and was cited for discovering the value of freeing the brain from the disturbing effects of its pre-frontal lobes.</div>
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Larned State Hospital came from a time when a concern grew that the rate of insanity in America was way too high: one out of 262 persons compared to a rate of one out of 1,000 in Europe. Blamed then was the rapid acquisition of wealth in America, that with luxury, insanity kept pace. It was the price of civilization, some reasoned. The quicker you go rich, the more likely you were to get nutty, too.</div>
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So what those patients needed was order and discipline restored to their lives. Asylum superintendents spent much of their time planning, and writing detailed papers on, how a hospital and its buildings and grounds should be laid out. How high the ceilings should be, how boring its wards. How a patient’s day should be structured. Then they rivaled each other by announcing cure rates. A person was cured if he was released back into society. Sometimes a person would be cured five times because they would have to be re-admitted, cured, released and have to be re-admitted. But it upped the cure rate.</div>
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Shortly after World War II, when we had learned of the horrors the Nazi’s afflicted on the Jews in the concentration camps, “The Baltimore Sun,” in 1949, printed a series of articles called Maryland’s Shame, which detailed how that state treated its mentally ill. More than 9,000 inmates were crammed in fire-trap institutions designed for 6,000 patients. Few received any treatment. Thousands lived like animals. Many rolled in their own excrement. Others slept nude in the winter because there were no blankets. Attendants, paid less than prison guards, stole patients’ money, got drunk on duty and raped female patients. Sex offenders and small children were housed together.</div>
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Oh, and while man was making his great scientific and engineering achievement of walking on the moon in 1969, lobotomies were still being performed.</div>
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In 1976, “The Philadelphia Inquirer” would win a Pulitzer prize for a series of articles it ran about the conditions of Farview State Hospital, the institution of last resort for the criminally insane in Pennsylvania. Here, too, hundreds of patients who had no work to do did nothing but sit in ward chairs all day long. Only three percent received any real psychiatric care. Men died after beatings by guards or by other patients, egged on by guards. Such deaths were certified as being caused by heart attacks. There was an unwritten code among guards that all guards present had to hit a patient if one guard hit him. Commitments to Farview were so easy that cases were recorded of a 30-day disorderly conduct sentence turning into a 30-year sentence.</div>
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The history of commitment procedures makes for interesting reading, too. For example, in France, in 1737, a father had his son committed because the son was heavily in debt and had been dismissed from the army and so had disgraced himself and his family. In 1697, a French woman was committed because she was the mistress of a nobleman who had practically abandoned his wife, family, and duty because he was so nuts over the skirt. In other words, people were committed as insane who disturbed the social order. When society didn’t have the basis to bring criminal legal proceedings against those who offended it, they found ways to get rid of them by using nut houses to throw them in, nut houses that were such hell holes that, as the old saying goes, if you weren’t crazy when you got there, you would be after you stayed.</div>
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Back in the Farview case, all it took was the signature of two physicians, and they didn’t need to be psychiatrists, to certify to a court that the subject was mentally ill and in need of treatment to get him committed. That didn’t secure treatment, but it did secure incarceration, sometimes until the patient died of old age. Finally, a court case was successful that freed the patients based on the cruel and unusual punishment clause in the Constitution. Patients were transferred to civil hospitals or back into the community. A follow-up study showed only a fourteen percent recidivism rate among these 500 patients previously designated by Farview as criminally dangerous.</div>
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In 1964, the year I was a junior in Larned High School and living on the grounds of<a href="http://amzn.to/2mpHT64" target="_blank"> Larned State Hospital</a>, we were living in what one author called the “enlightened fourth phase” of dealing with the insane. Society had moved from 1) being afraid of the mentally ill because they were possessed of evil spirits to 2) simply protecting itself from the insane by chaining them or locking them up to 3) treating them in a humanitarian way by placing them in asylums where they were harbored but not really treated and so suffered chronic anonymity to 4) now seeing mental illness as an illness to be treated and cured.</div>
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It’s just we still didn’t really have a clue how the hell to do it.</div>
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Later, we’d just give up and send them back into the streets to roam at will, beg for food, be beaten by police, and again be housed with criminals.</div>
Attwood Collected Workshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12939221864173785283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1951983457080835423.post-74675386397124441252019-08-03T17:47:00.000-07:002019-08-03T17:47:23.071-07:00Rabbletown: Life in These United Christian States of Holy AmericaThis work continues to be popular:<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wX-NCdMEUcs/TsVZ-W5zS0I/AAAAAAAAAFc/XUoNtrjrbdYAXBA47yM25-QSJdgh6HbCACPcBGAYYCw/s1600/Cover%2BAa%2BFinal_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="518" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wX-NCdMEUcs/TsVZ-W5zS0I/AAAAAAAAAFc/XUoNtrjrbdYAXBA47yM25-QSJdgh6HbCACPcBGAYYCw/s320/Cover%2BAa%2BFinal_1.jpg" width="207" /></a></div>
Reviewer: "Not since George Orwell's 1984 have we had such a chilling look at what the future could be." <i><a href="http://amzn.to/2lpmeLu" target="_blank">Rabbletown: Life in These United Christian States of Holy America.</a></i><br />
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Way back in 1988 Pat Robertson ran for president and it scared the bejesus out of me. The whole religious right still terrifies me. I've always said that if fascism comes to America it will be through the pulpit. The year 1984 had passed with all its references to George Orwell's book and it got me wondering if in the future the religious right won the day what would America look like in 2084? Abortion would not only be a capital offense, pregnancy would be mandatory for married women of child-bearing age. I started the story from the viewpoint of a mason working on the cathedral project for the Pastor Governor of the Great Christian State of Kansas. The book came into shape creating a boy with a remarkable memory for Bible verses.<br />
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<br />Attwood Collected Workshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12939221864173785283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1951983457080835423.post-88983858566035121212019-06-30T21:59:00.000-07:002019-07-01T19:10:28.059-07:00Summer Sales Special<h3>
Summer Sales<br />Use Promo Code PP725</h3>
Smashwords was an early entry into the ebook business and early on I used their platform to get into publishing my fiction before using Amazon's service. Smashword's month-long Summer Sales Special starts July 1 and runs to the end of the month. I've put eight of my works at 50 percent off, which means one of them, Downswing, is free! Details of the fiction available for this discount below. <b>Remember, promo code PP725</b>.<br />
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<i><a href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/74354" target="_blank">Rabbletown: Life in These United Christian States of Holy America</a></i></h3>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1nkAMlpIMlsgedQ-uZa9P1h4PyQ58HYwggD5frczk86LI5PYSIhbUko6vePgIqVaVB_cEr970q5MgPZd_WKkb65eQLeqp_qljm_X57imkjLxJpb31Y3pPF8HWJ8Xt1VOjC4Ka5eX-Fno/s1600/Cover+Aa+OL+Hi+Res+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1052" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1nkAMlpIMlsgedQ-uZa9P1h4PyQ58HYwggD5frczk86LI5PYSIhbUko6vePgIqVaVB_cEr970q5MgPZd_WKkb65eQLeqp_qljm_X57imkjLxJpb31Y3pPF8HWJ8Xt1VOjC4Ka5eX-Fno/s320/Cover+Aa+OL+Hi+Res+%25281%2529.jpg" width="210" /></a></div>
Reviewer<br />
I expected a few things when I started reading this book. I expected to maybe be amused by a satirical take on the Fundamentalists that are doing their utmost to take over this country - sadly, the concept is difficult to make amusing, because the idea of Fundamentalists taking over this country and turning it into an Evangelical theocracy is absolutely terrifying to anyone who wants to live in love and Light. I expected to be outraged by the excesses of Fundamentalist leaders who grow fat and rich off the tithing of their flock, while the common people live in poverty and squalor. I expected to be terrified by the idea of an Evangelical theocracy in general. What I did not expect was to be profoundly moved. I did not expect the overwhelming desire to make this book required reading for everyone. I did not expect goose bumps or a profound feeling of "rightness" to come over me while I read this book.<br />
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<i><a href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/88203" target="_blank">SPILL</a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Here are some fun lines:<br />
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“Bartending has given me a wonderful perspective on the needs of the common man.” (The poor saps, she thought to herself.)<br />
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The fact that he had passed security checks to become a bonded delivery agent—given the many on-record facts of his own unreliability matched only by the disreputability of his truck—still amazed Fred. No wonder terrorists could fly planes into buildings.<br />
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Zoe was neither ugly nor fat, but at 38 she was feeling old and a little bloated.<br />
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Something always took whatever savings she was able to amass, which really was a euphemism for quarters in an empty two-gallon goldfish bowl.<br />
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But he wasn’t bad looking for a morose, failed-English-teacher, older guy.<br />
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“Why, yes, my dear. It is.” Reginald knew she hated to be called “my dear.” “Honey” was an eye-gouging offense.<br />
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<i><a href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/85871" target="_blank">Blue Kansas Sky</a></i></h3>
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Synopsis: A tale of snooker on the Kansas Prairie, set in Larned, KS. Circa 1965. Larned State Hospital is but a few miles outside Larned,Kansas. Jim, who lives on the grounds where he father, the dentist of the mental hospital, has housing. He rides the bus with the few patients who are granted permission to visit Larned on Saturday mornings. Jim goes to meet a friend to play snooker and learns some valuable lessons about race and also about himself.<br />
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<i><a href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/109467" target="_blank">The Saltness of Time</a></i></h3>
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Reviewer: When four young college students get snowed in with a stranger in a small Kansas town, they hear from him a story about an event in his youth that has forever altered his life and his perceptions of the world. Like all of Attwood's stories, The Saltness of Time provides just enough information to give the idea behind the story structure, and to allow the reader to fill in the rest. Beautifully evocative, this is a story that you'll want to savor and re-read. Check it out!<br />
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<i><a href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/206374" target="_blank">By Pain Possessed</a></i></h3>
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<i><a href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/206374" target="_blank">Can the weakest human save us all?</a></i></h3>
Reviewer: Like all of Randy's stuff, this is a great piece. Fans of his work won't want to miss it. Those who enjoy thought-provoking ideas and don't mind working a bit to find all the layers should enjoy this also. Definitely check it out - like all of his stuff, I recommend it.<br />
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<i><a href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/152019" target="_blank">Downswing</a></i></h2>
Reviewer<br />
Voluptuous, gorgeous - who thought a golf game could be so beautiful?<br />
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<b>USE PROMO CODE PP725 AND GET IT FREE!</b><br />
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<i><a href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/91739" target="_blank">The 41st Sermon</a></i></h3>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #111111;">This was a strange story - Randy asked if I could assign a genre to it, but honestly, I can't think of any genre it fits into neatly. There is a bit of mild erotica, there are definitely lots of different themes - finding yourself, redemption, finding faith, learning what life is all about - but none that relates itself to a specific genre other than general fiction. I really liked the book, though - it had a lot of good things to say, and I thought the story was one in which many people could find enjoyment, once they get past feeling shocked about some of the issues that come up. I warn that you need to be open-minded about the story, but if you are willing to do so, you should find something in here to love. Check it out!</span><br />
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<br />Attwood Collected Workshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12939221864173785283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1951983457080835423.post-30547509970815542492019-06-18T16:59:00.002-07:002019-06-18T17:01:31.144-07:00Remembering Reviewer Katy Sozaeva<br />
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<b><i>Randy's style is intense, his plotting
brilliant...terrific writing style. Each of his stories a gem - and
each was very different</i>.</b> -- Katy Sozaeva</div>
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It’s hard (and sad) to realize that three years have passed since
I was among the recipients of a group email that Katy Sazaeva sent informing us
that her prognosis was for weeks or months left in her fight with cancer.</div>
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Katy was an ardent supporter of my fiction and also edited
several pieces.</div>
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She reviewed almost all of my works and I thought I’d
reprint those reviews here.</div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><i><a href="http://amzn.to/2lpmeLu" target="_blank">Rabbletown: Life in These United Christian States of Holy America</a></i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wX-NCdMEUcs/TsVZ-W5zS0I/AAAAAAAAAFc/XUoNtrjrbdYAXBA47yM25-QSJdgh6HbCACPcBGAYYCw/s1600/Cover%2BAa%2BFinal_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="518" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wX-NCdMEUcs/TsVZ-W5zS0I/AAAAAAAAAFc/XUoNtrjrbdYAXBA47yM25-QSJdgh6HbCACPcBGAYYCw/s320/Cover%2BAa%2BFinal_1.jpg" width="206" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R3KP7DT3R3PTPY/ref=cm_cr_getr_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1478308591"><span style="color: #111111; text-decoration: none;">Life-changing,
profound, MUST READ, highly recommended</span></a></div>
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<span class="a-size-basea-color-secondaryreview-date">September
2, 2011</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="a-size-basereview-textreview-text-content">I
expected a few things when I started reading this book. I expected to maybe be
amused by a satirical take on the Fundamentalists that are doing their utmost
to take over this country - sadly, the concept is difficult to make amusing,
because the idea of Fundamentalists taking over this country and turning it
into an Evangelical theocracy is absolutely terrifying to anyone who wants to
live in love and Light. I expected to be outraged by the excesses of
Fundamentalist leaders who grow fat and rich off the tithing of their flock,
while the common people live in poverty and squalor. I expected to be terrified
by the idea of an Evangelical theocracy in general. What I did not expect was
to be profoundly moved. I did not expect the overwhelming desire to make this
book required reading for everyone. I did not expect goose bumps or a profound
feeling of "rightness" to come over me while I read this book. I did
not expect to want to take to the streets to preach the word of Bobby - to
propose that the world would be a better place if we all became ... Bobbites.</span></div>
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<span class="a-size-basereview-textreview-text-content">You
see, 12-year-old Bobby Crowley - the son of stone-mason Bob Crowley, who is
working to build a cathedral in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Topeka</st1:city>,
<st1:state w:st="on">KS</st1:state></st1:place> that will be larger and more
glorious than any other cathedral in the world - is special. He has an amazing
memory for Bible verses, and a strangely wise way of saying just the right
thing at just the right time. And he has been carefully watching the formation
of a significant alignment of stars in the sky, including a new star that just
appeared three months ago, which are coming into a cross-like shape. And on a
Friday like any other Friday - a Stoning Friday that would see the stoning to
death of a "heathen, a whore, a pair of adulterers and a pair of
faggots" - Bobby takes his place among the great religious leaders of the
world when he steps forward and speaks the words "Let he who is without
sin cast the first stone" and in the process saves the life of a beatific
young woman: he gains a following and begins performing miracles, and providing
proverbs of hope, peace and love. Many people believe he is the second coming
of Christ.</span></div>
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<span class="a-size-basereview-textreview-text-content">Caught
in his wake are a prostitute, his teacher (himself gay and who has been forcing
himself up the weaker boys in his classes), the young woman who had been
accused of being a whore and set to be stoned, a seller of banned books, a
Catholic friar and many more; they go into Rabbletown, the slums of Topeka,
where Bobby spreads the true way - the way of peace, love, acceptance and
kindness, rather than the hate and manipulations used by those in power. And in
a world where the leaders all revere and emulate the practices and beliefs of
that disgusting scumbag Fred Phelps, those sorts of teachings are threatening
to the power structure. Bobby and all who believe in him and his miracles are
declared anathema and the Inquisition is sent after them.</span></div>
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<span class="a-size-basereview-textreview-text-content">This
book does two things: it exposes the horror of a theocratic, fascist
Evangelical Fundamentalist power structure, and it provides hope for redemption
for anyone who chooses to live a truly good life, and follow the basic
teachings that so many modern-day dogmatics seem to forget are the only two
rules laid down by Christ - you know, the one Christians are supposed to
emulate? Yeshua Christos told his followers to follow two simple rules: 1) love
each other and treat others like you would like them to treat you; 2) love the
Higher Power of Creation, in whatever form you choose to comprehend It. It doesn't
matter what religion, creed, belief structure or lack thereof you choose to
affiliate yourself with, these simple rules are common across almost every
single one, and are the only rules that are really necessary to create a world
in which everyone would like to live. This book - reading this book - will
cause a profound shift in perception and I believe, honestly, that the world
would be a better place if everyone followed the example set by Bobby. We all
need to become Bobbites. Read this book and see if you don't find these truths
to be as profound as I did.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><i><a href="http://amzn.to/2mdAneX" target="_blank">Then and Now: The Harmony of the Instantaneous All</a></i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWt7pP-Q0PxIVzurrhTRlOkqJ6MbkSD9QjuRDBuWeLF2AOCPswlqMNaRotUOCw7Pe3UMLfY95r3pzxpMfTtFGhw7boqkNU1uw3JfWcwhsOh0Gjn0MKwv14V8e5ZuzsbSmv5BwibyUHIcA/s1600/Then+and+Now+promo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="962" data-original-width="963" height="319" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWt7pP-Q0PxIVzurrhTRlOkqJ6MbkSD9QjuRDBuWeLF2AOCPswlqMNaRotUOCw7Pe3UMLfY95r3pzxpMfTtFGhw7boqkNU1uw3JfWcwhsOh0Gjn0MKwv14V8e5ZuzsbSmv5BwibyUHIcA/s320/Then+and+Now+promo.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #111111;">Randy asked me
to read "Then & Now" and give him some ideas of the genre. Like
all of Randy's wonderful stories, this one is hard to quantify. It tells the
story of Stan Nelson and his time at KU in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Lawrence</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">KS</st1:state></st1:place>
during the events of winter and spring 1969 - 1970, including the riots sparked
off when a police officer shot a young, black man. Stan was a sort of hub -
center of a group of people who were all involved in the scene in different
ways. While there are a number of romance elements in the story, I think it is
even more a coming-of-age story - showing how the events and repercussions of
the events changed Stan's life and how he dealt with those changes.</span><span style="color: #111111;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #111111;">Anyone
interested in aspects of the 60s' culture and events, and/or interested in how
people relate to each other and learn about themselves should find something to
love in this story. I was engrossed in it throughout and read it straight through,
stopping only when absolutely necessary, and then for as short a time as
possible. Like all of Randy's works, I can highly recommend this book to just
about anyone.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #111111;"><i><a href="https://amzn.to/2zsvAze" target="_blank">SPILL</a></i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJu-Zowa_k6xMOKb2796Q-mYeoubhIvHcKFSRxhR5UH5QyuaH_F-dSRT0Sh0w4wKoYabHVMgQf7iSRRQCxaMQx6TMZtqd-xQ33AW8XkGcO27iMhJOEuBA4NtMubn6fUdsQti8CgA1CZYY/s1600/SPILL+skateboard+cover+compressed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1002" data-original-width="768" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJu-Zowa_k6xMOKb2796Q-mYeoubhIvHcKFSRxhR5UH5QyuaH_F-dSRT0Sh0w4wKoYabHVMgQf7iSRRQCxaMQx6TMZtqd-xQ33AW8XkGcO27iMhJOEuBA4NtMubn6fUdsQti8CgA1CZYY/s320/SPILL+skateboard+cover+compressed.jpg" width="245" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #111111;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R2PA3XC8MER4AY/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B005MRA588"><span style="color: #111111; text-decoration: none;">Comic tour de
farce, HIGHLY recommended!</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="a-size-basea-color-secondaryreview-date"><span style="background: white;">October 7, 2011</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #111111;">Fred
Underwood, a former English teacher and current delivery carrier, is fed up
with the high price of gas. He believes the oil companies are price gouging and
decides to take a stand. Together with his friend Zoe X. Quinn (that X is
important - read the book and you'll understand), he hatches a plot to not only
get some attention to the problem with the oil companies, but to make a bit of
money in the process. What he doesn't expect is for the Big Oil companies to
sit up and take notice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #111111;">Filled
with intriguing characters, and an amusing subplot involving skateboarding
gamers, "Spill" is a comic tour de farce that I highly recommend to
anyone who enjoys political satire, generally humorous story-lines, and great
writing. Randy has outdone himself on this one - give it a read as soon as
possible!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><i><a href="http://amzn.to/2feWZYi" target="_blank">The Strange Case of JamesKirkland Pilley</a></i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qH-EgQcDoTs/V9cbpraeFZI/AAAAAAAAGcI/b2CtgT9mnOomNyMUZahsM7WU-n01nH10gCPcBGAYYCw/s1600/sauer%2Bcover%2Bfor%2Bstrange.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1342" data-original-width="748" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qH-EgQcDoTs/V9cbpraeFZI/AAAAAAAAGcI/b2CtgT9mnOomNyMUZahsM7WU-n01nH10gCPcBGAYYCw/s320/sauer%2Bcover%2Bfor%2Bstrange.jpg" width="178" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #111111;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R10M7Z6QL2QH2O/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B005BVZK0I"><span style="color: #111111; text-decoration: none;">Chilling and
beautifully written - highly recommended</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="a-size-basea-color-secondaryreview-date"><span style="background: white;">September 3, 2011</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #111111;">Randy
Attwood said that he used the Cthulu Mythos as an inspiration for this chilling
story; I can definitely see the influence. As the story progresses, and people
grow mad and/or kill themselves and others, we learn more about the reason, and
the sense of dread grows, as does the sense of unreality. It all starts when a
man who has a home at the edge of a park decides that the old, swampy pond
needs to be cleaned out and a new, more pristine lily pond made in its place.
But as the water is removed from the area, strange happens commence. What is
the source of the strangeness, the sense of unease, and the odd behavior of
those who live in the area?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #111111;">While
this is short - a novella at most - a lot of story is crammed into it. I highly
recommend it for those who are fans of the eerie and strange.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><i><a href="http://amzn.to/2mkk9AT" target="_blank">The Saltness of Time</a></i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3Ez2jmvgtgnAc8JOo7c84kIIITLwoY1xhl9aR0eWR44cQyICm7Oz4DFQrwFS6PlTTNgNyoIcl9HZRMI-_vKso-r7SI4vkEHLNDfK3brzqLvm-YZKH8kTKfJ4tp-Vv6KzdbbLW_ugZmxg/s1600/saltness+cover+final.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="500" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3Ez2jmvgtgnAc8JOo7c84kIIITLwoY1xhl9aR0eWR44cQyICm7Oz4DFQrwFS6PlTTNgNyoIcl9HZRMI-_vKso-r7SI4vkEHLNDfK3brzqLvm-YZKH8kTKfJ4tp-Vv6KzdbbLW_ugZmxg/s200/saltness+cover+final.jpg" width="125" /></a></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #111111;">When four young
college students get snowed in with a stranger in a small <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Kansas</st1:place></st1:state> town, they hear from him a story
about an event in his youth that has forever altered his life and his
perceptions of the world.</span><span style="color: #111111;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #111111;">Randy Attwood
says this is a story he first started working on in his 20s. Like all of his
stories, "The Saltness of Time" provides just enough information to
give the idea behind the story structure, and to allow the reader to fill in
the rest. Beautifully evocative, this is a story that you'll want to savor and
re-read. Check it out!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #111111; font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #111111; font-size: 14.0pt;"><i><a href="http://amzn.to/2mpHT64" target="_blank">Crazy About You</a></i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IduJVJ-B-lk/U9ghcieVljI/AAAAAAAADk8/0Yw8bY6SkyEPfEH3kVBVGil6jFwebPo7gCPcBGAYYCw/s1600/Crazy%2Bcover%2Bpod.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="698" data-original-width="491" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IduJVJ-B-lk/U9ghcieVljI/AAAAAAAADk8/0Yw8bY6SkyEPfEH3kVBVGil6jFwebPo7gCPcBGAYYCw/s320/Crazy%2Bcover%2Bpod.jpg" width="225" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #111111;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R15LRPSOM4TIXD/ref=cm_cr_getr_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=146631222X"><span style="color: #111111; text-decoration: none;">Crazy about this
book! Crazy about this writer! You should be, too!</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="a-size-basea-color-secondaryreview-date"><span style="background: white;">September 2, 2012<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span class="a-size-basereview-textreview-text-content"><span style="color: #111111;">Brad's
father is a dentist at <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Larned</st1:placename>
<st1:placetype w:st="on">State</st1:placetype> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Hospital</st1:placetype></st1:place>
- the hospital for the insane - and they live on the grounds of the hospital.
Brad also works in the hospital cafeteria, and feels a deep compassion for many
of the inpatients. "Crazy About You" details a week in Brad's life -
a crazy week that teaches Brad more about life than he really wanted to know.
He learns the mysteries of love, learns the true meaning of fear, and is
involved in several murder investigations. Just a typical week in the life of a
teenage boy? Hardly. But Attwood's involving style and wealth of information
make this a highly engaging and interesting read, especially for those who,
like me, have always had a fascination with insanity.</span></span><span style="color: #111111;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span class="a-size-basereview-textreview-text-content"><span style="color: #111111;">One
of the many things that I found fascinating about this story was how the early
1960s are portrayed - and how very much like the mid 1980s it was; I think
being a teenager, exploring life and learning these things, tends to make every
generation think they are unique - but what they don't realize is, that they're
really very much the same.</span></span><span style="color: #111111;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="a-size-basereview-textreview-text-content"><span style="color: #111111;">A
coming-of-age novel in the hands of a master storyteller, "Crazy About
You" is a book in which anyone should be able to find something to enjoy.</span></span><span style="color: #111111;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><i><a href="http://amzn.to/2mgf52G" target="_blank">One More Victim</a></i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1I42rVoDSDM/VYGYs1UnJPI/AAAAAAAAGOQ/7xGcJr1Ie0QWiH5BKDG9cJDZrPBiyJ0LQCPcBGAYYCw/s1600/Victim%2Bnew%2Bcover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1348" data-original-width="994" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1I42rVoDSDM/VYGYs1UnJPI/AAAAAAAAGOQ/7xGcJr1Ie0QWiH5BKDG9cJDZrPBiyJ0LQCPcBGAYYCw/s320/Victim%2Bnew%2Bcover.jpg" width="235" /></a></div>
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<span class="a-size-basereview-textreview-text-content"><span style="color: #111111;">One
More Victim" is an amazing, heartbreaking, beautiful story (says so right
on the cover) - but then, those are my words, the words I said right after I
finished editing it - I cried while I was editing it, and I'm not the sort to
easily become overly sentimental about a story. It is a coming-of-age story, a
story of realizations, a story about beginnings and endings - it is a story I
highly recommend to anyone who enjoys a well-spun tale.</span></span><span style="color: #111111;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span class="a-size-basereview-textreview-text-content"><span style="color: #111111;">Randy
Attwood's short stories are also always a treat. Highly evocative, helping the
reader connect in even the strangest ways - you can find my individual reviews
on most of these stories. As I've said, Mr. Attwood even makes snooker and golf
interesting!</span></span><span style="color: #111111;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="a-size-basereview-textreview-text-content"><span style="color: #111111;">I'm
so excited to see these two stories paired into a single book, and I think most
readers will find something to love here. Check it out - you'll love them!</span></span><span style="color: #111111;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><i><a href="http://amzn.to/2mwZ7zY" target="_blank">The 41<sup>st</sup> Sermon</a></i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwW-c4AIMKHlAwkiBcHUiR_dKINagWlNV1FxcA-07ReEMdZegT5xucKrRNGFoyqYy2BxVGqcmlpNJ1xMqbAuGmGpnwvAYnzeUmTBd3aszj1WljrSrXd54IS4NuUQxVmvmnp9e6fbVUaKU/s1600/sermon+promo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1007" data-original-width="946" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwW-c4AIMKHlAwkiBcHUiR_dKINagWlNV1FxcA-07ReEMdZegT5xucKrRNGFoyqYy2BxVGqcmlpNJ1xMqbAuGmGpnwvAYnzeUmTBd3aszj1WljrSrXd54IS4NuUQxVmvmnp9e6fbVUaKU/s320/sermon+promo.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #111111;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R37FPDW3A553FY/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B005QC4XBO"><span style="color: #111111; text-decoration: none;">For the
open-minded, this story of sin and redemption should be as enjoyable as it was
for me</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="a-size-basea-color-secondaryreview-date"><span style="background: white;">October 7, 2011</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #111111;">Father
Christopher Talley, an Episcopalian priest, spends a week each year at a resort
in the Ozarks. This gives him a chance to escape the constraints of his life as
a minister - to fish, to drink, and to spend some time with a woman other than
his wife. He also writes his sermons for the coming year. This year, while at
the resort, he runs across one of his parishioners, the lovely Molly, who says
she is thinking of divorcing her husband and has come to the resort to think
about things. That isn't why she is there, of course - but she's bored and
decides to seduce her handsome pastor.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #111111;">This
was a strange story - Randy asked if I could assign a genre to it, but
honestly, I can't think of any genre it fits into neatly. There is a bit of
mild erotica, there are definitely lots of different themes - finding yourself,
redemption, finding faith, learning what life is all about - but none that
relates itself to a specific genre other than general fiction. I really liked
the book, though - it had a lot of good things to say, and I thought the story
was one in which many people could find enjoyment, once they get past feeling
shocked about some of the issues that come up. I warn that you need to be
open-minded about the story, but if you are willing to do so, you should find
something in here to love. Check it out!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><i><a href="http://amzn.to/2mjfdi8" target="_blank">Heart Chants</a></i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FwZrUHnzJrI/XGXNX71BbTI/AAAAAAAAJr4/rIWm0SuLPz4aE3ai83aax_0YlEmDv8StwCPcBGAYYCw/s1600/Heart-Chants-m1%2Bcompressed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="717" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FwZrUHnzJrI/XGXNX71BbTI/AAAAAAAAJr4/rIWm0SuLPz4aE3ai83aax_0YlEmDv8StwCPcBGAYYCw/s320/Heart-Chants-m1%2Bcompressed.jpg" width="224" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #111111;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RE7PS2YEILHSG/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00HMQAJQK"><span style="color: #111111; text-decoration: none;">Really excellent
story</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="a-size-basea-color-secondaryreview-date"><span style="background: white;">January 1, 2014</span></span></div>
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<span class="a-size-basereview-textreview-text-content"><span style="color: #111111;">This
book provides a peek into the legends and lore of the Diné, or as they are
commonly known, the Navajo. Their creation story is beautiful.</span></span><span style="color: #111111;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span class="a-size-basereview-textreview-text-content"><span style="color: #111111;">“In
the beginning was the wind. And when the earth came, the wind cared for it. And
when the darkness came, the wind breezed across it beautifully. And when the
dawn came and laid its lightness over the darkness, We, the People, were
created. And the wind kissed our faces.”</span></span><span style="color: #111111;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="a-size-basereview-textreview-text-content"><span style="color: #111111;">Phil
McGuire's portion of the story focuses on two young women—Hsu Chi and
Zonnie—whom he takes in to try to protect, Hsu Chi from anti-democratic Chinese
gangs, and Zonnie from whoever or whatever has taken away two of her friends,
also Navajo, from their college. Attwood has obviously done a great deal of
research into the Diné culture, legends and lore and shows the reader exactly how
beautiful that culture was, and how much the European settlers destroyed in
their hubris. I do not know if there are any reparations to be made for the
damage we did to the native cultures here, but I find it been heartbreaking how
much knowledge has been lost. It would behoove us to find those who have kept
this knowledge and preserve it before it is gone forever.</span></span><span style="color: #111111;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span class="a-size-basereview-textreview-text-content"><span style="color: #111111;">I
found the talk Ko-yo-teh had with the old man at the filling station very
funny, especially when the old man repeated the message he had sent to the moon
in Navajo: “Watch out for these guys; they come to take your land.” Sad, of
course, but also very funny. It fits in with the overall theme of the book,
which is well represented by this quote: “I'm convinced the deepest passion
mankind has is the need to inflict belief on another person. Belief in God,
belief in these words as God's words, belief in this interpretation of these
words, belief in these acts in the name of God. If it's not religion, it's
politics.”</span></span><span style="color: #111111;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="a-size-basereview-textreview-text-content"><span style="color: #111111;">Overall
this is a fairly clean book, but I did note some editing errors, mostly extra,
missing, or repeated words, awkward commas, and misused words, such as
“rationale” for “rational” and “statute” for “statue”. Not enough to lower my
rating or lessen my enjoyment, obviously.</span></span><span style="color: #111111;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="a-size-basereview-textreview-text-content"><span style="color: #111111;">Like
all of Randy Attwood's stories, this one is absolutely amazing. I kept having
goose bumps from reading it. Highly recommended for those who enjoy a good
story, especially if you are interested in Native American stories and culture.</span></span><span style="color: #111111;"><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><i><a href="http://amzn.to/2omSi4i" target="_blank">Downswing</a></i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mNHCoJGs8xM/VHqQqfnSsSI/AAAAAAAADoI/9qH2VFY1Hi08tnQNczc_Inmzs1IfOpWggCPcBGAYYCw/s1600/Downswing%2Bcover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1301" data-original-width="955" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mNHCoJGs8xM/VHqQqfnSsSI/AAAAAAAADoI/9qH2VFY1Hi08tnQNczc_Inmzs1IfOpWggCPcBGAYYCw/s320/Downswing%2Bcover.jpg" width="234" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #111111;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R2XMONYRND395W/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B007UTKDUG"><span style="color: #111111; text-decoration: none;">Voluptuous,
gorgeous - who thought a golf game could be so beautiful?</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="a-size-basea-color-secondaryreview-date"><span style="background: white;">May 3, 2012</span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #111111;">Disclosure:
I received a free copy of this short story from the author in exchange for an
honest review.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #111111;">Synopsis:
A lone golfer discovers the fusion between the mechanical physics of golf and
the feeling of the soul.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #111111;">My
Thoughts: This is the latest short story from Randy Attwood and will bring me
up-to-date again with his works. I like to stay abreast of Randy's writings,
because he has such a terrific and interesting style, each book unique but
containing a familiar voice. Now, I had to wonder exactly how he would make
golf interesting, especially in just eight pages, but I shouldn't have worried.
Listen to this description of placing a ball on a tee: And eighteen times this
easy gesture, this stooping over with the tee between the fingers, the ball
hidden, protected in the perspiring palm, the insertion into ground the wooden
link to earth the ball would soon be contacting - all this, for me, had given
the gesture a quality of sacredness. Isn't that gorgeous? The story is full of
beautiful prose like that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><i><a href="http://amzn.to/2qsvhld" target="_blank">Blue <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Kansas</st1:place></st1:state> Sky</a></i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aD1CK4ndzwU/Ukb1eHWl0QI/AAAAAAAACS0/rApltHICIYcW9XBvpCFE7hpLNLo4DFOhQCPcBGAYYCw/s1600/blue%2Bkansas%2Bsky%2Bcover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1302" data-original-width="958" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aD1CK4ndzwU/Ukb1eHWl0QI/AAAAAAAACS0/rApltHICIYcW9XBvpCFE7hpLNLo4DFOhQCPcBGAYYCw/s320/blue%2Bkansas%2Bsky%2Bcover.jpg" width="235" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #111111;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R2WA4OH779GNBP/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B006JS1LLE"><span style="color: #111111; text-decoration: none;">Excellent,
multi-faceted</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="a-size-basea-color-secondaryreview-date"><span style="background: white;">May 2, 2012</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #111111;">Synopsis:
A tale of snooker on the Kansas Prairie, set in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Larned</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">KS</st1:state></st1:place>.
Circa 1965. <st1:placename w:st="on">Larned</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">State</st1:placetype> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Hospital</st1:placetype>
is but a few miles outside <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Larned</st1:city>,
<st1:state w:st="on">Kansas</st1:state></st1:place>. Jim, who lives on the
grounds where he father, the dentist of the mental hospital, has housing. He
rides the bus with the few patients who are granted permission to visit Larned
on Saturday mornings. Jim goes to meet a friend to play snooker and learns some
valuable lessons about race and also about himself.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #111111;">My
Thoughts: Told from the point of view of a person who lives the same life as
Brad in Crazy About You, but has a very different attitude toward the inmates
of the Larned Asylum, the main gist of the story is about playing snooker. But,
like all of Randy's works, that is not all there is to it. I'll say this much -
I don't know squat about snooker, but he made the game - which is, I think, a
metaphor for other things - very exciting. I won't tell you what I think it is
a metaphor for; I'll let you draw your own conclusions. Check it out.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><i><a href="http://amzn.to/2sAbOyw" target="_blank">A Match Made in Heaven</a></i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ep4YnVf2vYs/UciSmra6shI/AAAAAAAABRI/dwjigwO4bfQwJ8bw0EvjdH9Cfv6YiUdwQCPcBGAYYCw/s1600/Match%2Bcover%2Bjpeg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1494" data-original-width="1010" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ep4YnVf2vYs/UciSmra6shI/AAAAAAAABRI/dwjigwO4bfQwJ8bw0EvjdH9Cfv6YiUdwQCPcBGAYYCw/s320/Match%2Bcover%2Bjpeg.jpg" width="216" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #111111;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R3OLC2G49LUQU8/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B007KCBDTS"><span style="color: #111111; text-decoration: none;">Perfect!</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="a-size-basea-color-secondaryreview-date"><span style="background: white;">April 12, 2012</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #111111;">Synopsis:
The Mormons have left the Earth to populate the planet <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Moroni</st1:place></st1:city>, finding their destiny among the stars
and themselves.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #111111;">My
Thoughts: I have never met a Randy Attwood book that I haven't loved; he has a
real talent for bringing his characters to life and creating an environment
that is realistic and detailed without going overboard. This is the first
science-fiction story he has published, so I was quite interested to see how he
did in this story environment. And it was... brilliant!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #111111;">This is
a short story, maybe it could be considered a novella - it took me about an
hour to read it through. I am not sure where, exactly, Randy came up with some
of the ideas he used in this story (I'll have to ask), but I found the ideas
presented evocative and thought-provoking. There are questions of
consciousness, how to truly access God (in whatever form that power takes for
you), the humane treatment of others, etc. Like all of his books, I highly
recommend this terrific story from Randy Attwood.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><i><a href="http://amzn.to/2tEylbR" target="_blank">By Pain Possessed</a></i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwxdxFO4rZXHf1ocgM6JsNnQEy5J3sUz1EAo5a7FsxSiV8xujv_enB6O3QBJj7yZCVDZkhynRASt09Hc0BdQUuuzWPTSNPtDRBhwxOj-2PaiapVzWZW8PtXd8yml0eEhDMFAtRzG11scE/s1600/By+Pain+Possessed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="655" data-original-width="605" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwxdxFO4rZXHf1ocgM6JsNnQEy5J3sUz1EAo5a7FsxSiV8xujv_enB6O3QBJj7yZCVDZkhynRASt09Hc0BdQUuuzWPTSNPtDRBhwxOj-2PaiapVzWZW8PtXd8yml0eEhDMFAtRzG11scE/s320/By+Pain+Possessed.jpg" width="295" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #111111;">Synopsis: Can
the weakest human save us all?</span><span style="color: #111111;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #111111;">My Thoughts: I
was actually on my way to go to sleep (I have a lot of manuscripts to get
through this week, so it's going to be a busy one), I learned that not only did
Randy Attwood have a couple new short stories up, but that this one, By Pain
Possessed, was currently free! Well, I figured I could fit in a short story;
after all, I did have to wait to fall asleep until after 8 a.m. so I could take
my medication, right? So, I grabbed the story and opened up in my Amazon Cloud
reader and started to reading!</span><span style="color: #111111;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #111111;">Because this is
a short story, it is hard to provide a synopsis that describes the idea behind
the story without spoilers - that is, I think, why Randy Attwood went with such
a short and succinct synopsis (provided above). This story is about pain -
those who enjoy dealing it, those who enjoy feeling it, those who would rather
avoid the whole thing... Deeper, there is an undercurrent of facing up to your
fears and becoming a stronger person for it, but also a warning about becoming
that which you hate and therefore losing sight of yourself. So, there are a lot
of ideas put into this short story.</span><span style="color: #111111;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #111111;">Like all of
Randy's stuff, this is a great piece. Fans of his work won't want to miss it.
Those who enjoy thought-provoking ideas and don't mind working a bit to find
all the layers should enjoy this also. Definitely check it out - like all of
his stuff, I recommend it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="a-size-basea-color-secondaryreview-date"><span style="background: white; font-size: 14.0pt;"><i><a href="http://amzn.to/2qtnhfP" target="_blank">3 Quirky Tales</a></i><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PzmWh-Lt8YA/T94IQ1UiIkI/AAAAAAAAANc/K4oeNIHZkcAvlwPh-CYnYOlwzdDjTxItwCPcBGAYYCw/s1600/3%2BVery%2BQuirky%2BTales%2Bcover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="501" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PzmWh-Lt8YA/T94IQ1UiIkI/AAAAAAAAANc/K4oeNIHZkcAvlwPh-CYnYOlwzdDjTxItwCPcBGAYYCw/s320/3%2BVery%2BQuirky%2BTales%2Bcover.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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<span class="a-size-basea-color-secondaryreview-date"><span style="background: white;">Quirky, and highly readable<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="a-size-basea-color-secondaryreview-date"><span style="background: white;">September 3, 2011</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #111111;">"Tell
Us Everything" - a girl's piercings create a connection that allows her to
see truths and broadcast them over the air in a limited area. That doesn't do
the story justice - it's a wonderful piece<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #111111;">"It
Was Me" - while driving home one night, the narrator looks in the next car
... and sees himself from 30 years ago. Is it really him, or just a crazy
coincidence? Then other coincidences start to show.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #111111;">"The
Notebook" - Two people connect over their losses, brought together by an
unbelievable confession and a mysterious notebook hidden in an attic.
Impossible to describe this story without spoiling it, but it is very powerful.
The ending has a twist you'll never see coming.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br />Attwood Collected Workshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12939221864173785283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1951983457080835423.post-31566981385477791422019-06-06T15:58:00.000-07:002019-06-06T15:58:18.913-07:00New Cover Image for Very Quirky Tales<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2VNYC9dsq7HY4QkAPjo60tMnR6ptakl5Zd9HGzmRSrenKSK_haqhz6jYETk9rmV0rXePYdLUpRPGWM4Evv0uDW1QqDzfdaWDWo7HX8mdYgdi_FN-NeoYIh_5NpHdu_A2zLG1fKpEkGEk/s1600/quirkytales.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1206" data-original-width="968" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2VNYC9dsq7HY4QkAPjo60tMnR6ptakl5Zd9HGzmRSrenKSK_haqhz6jYETk9rmV0rXePYdLUpRPGWM4Evv0uDW1QqDzfdaWDWo7HX8mdYgdi_FN-NeoYIh_5NpHdu_A2zLG1fKpEkGEk/s320/quirkytales.jpg" width="256" /></a></div>
Kansas City photographer <a href="https://www.royinmanphotos.com/" target="_blank">Roy Inman</a> let me use another of his images. I was impressed with the photo he took of our local, and still rather new, street car that connects Union Station with our Downtown. That jarring of the background seemed appropriate for <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2InvFrj" target="_blank">Very Quirky Tales</a></i>, each which has a bit of jarring sensation in store for the reader.<br />
<br />
Here are the six stories as described by reviewers that make up the collection (some are available separately and will be shown as a link):<br />
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<i>Tell Us Everything</i> – A girl’s piercings create a connection that allows her to see truths and broadcast them over the air in a limited area.... a wonderful piece.<br />
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<i>It Was Me (I)</i> – While driving home one night, the narrator looks in the next car … and sees himself from 30 years ago. Is it really him, or just a crazy coincidence? Then other coincidences start to show.<br />
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<i><a href="http://amzn.to/2mJgCMN" target="_blank">The Notebook</a></i> – Two people connect over their losses, brought together by an unbelievable confession and a mysterious notebook hidden in an attic. The ending has a twist you’ll never see coming.<br />
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<i><a href="http://amzn.to/2feWZYi" target="_blank">The Strange Case of James Kirkland Pilley</a></i> – ... a man who has a home at the edge of a park decides that the old, swampy pond needs to be cleaned out and a new, more pristine lily pond made in its place. But as the water is removed from the area, strange happens commence. What is the source of the strangeness, the sense of unease, and the odd behavior of those who live in the area?<br />
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<i><a href="http://amzn.to/2sAbOyw" target="_blank">A Match Made in Heaven</a></i> – I found the ideas presented evocative and thought-provoking. There are questions of consciousness, how to truly access God (in whatever form that power takes for you). Like all of his books, I highly recommend this terrific story from Randy Attwood.<br />
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<i><a href="http://amzn.to/2tEylbR" target="_blank">By Pain Possessed</a></i> – This story is about pain - those who enjoy dealing it, who enjoy feeling it, those who would rather avoid the whole thing... Deeper, there is an undercurrent of facing up to your fears and becoming a stronger person for it, but also a warning about becoming that which you hate.Attwood Collected Workshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12939221864173785283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1951983457080835423.post-61488558450732633222019-04-11T14:20:00.001-07:002019-04-11T14:22:15.335-07:00Bit of Back Story for "One More Victim"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLkmcg3Ipxvu9BF1Dwq6Wxv_I-6vPt0EvoEGn6vIycf3fbclHOrsPUboAVOAdy5VR_KNGEsTwGpFBxcZjZZGitgQvvC-SevwsWHl-1lvq9qpc44sbpoxISfynh_7oUql12-c8hXUSM_Ug/s1600/Victim+new+cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1348" data-original-width="994" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLkmcg3Ipxvu9BF1Dwq6Wxv_I-6vPt0EvoEGn6vIycf3fbclHOrsPUboAVOAdy5VR_KNGEsTwGpFBxcZjZZGitgQvvC-SevwsWHl-1lvq9qpc44sbpoxISfynh_7oUql12-c8hXUSM_Ug/s320/Victim+new+cover.jpg" width="235" /></a></div>
In many ways, <i><a href="http://amzn.to/2mgf52G" target="_blank">One More Victim</a> </i>is one of the oddest works I've done.<br />
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I'm not sure it's wise to write about the genesis of a story. Joseph Conrad did so in a series of fascinating introductions for a collection of his stories. And I think of One More Victim as my own sort of Heart of Darkness, not that I would ever try to compare myself to the great master of fiction.<br />
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I remember circa 1975 looking out the back door of our house in Hutchinson, KS, in February, and seeing a group of crows pecking holes in our black garbage sacks. It started a poem in my head. The poem stated the essence of a story that took me almost 30 years to finish as I found the tale that expressed the poem and then finally wrote the last stanza of the poem that ends the story.<br />
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The Holocaust is critical to the plot and the atmosphere. Deep love -- not betrayed, but deep love not fully realized -- is an emotion most people don't want to explore. This writer did.<br />
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What genre is this novella? I have no idea.You tell me.<br />
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Katy Soezeva was an indefatigable reader, prolific reviewer, and an excellent editor. She deserved much thanks from me for her careful and sensitive editing and suggestions about this story. She was an ambassador of my works. She passed away several years ago but I, and her friends, still mourn her passing. At one time, she was a top 500 Amazon reviewer. Here is what she had to say about One More Victim:<br />
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"<i><a href="http://amzn.to/2mgf52G" target="_blank">One More Victim</a></i> is an amazing, heartbreaking, beautiful story (it says so on the cover) - but then, those are my words, the words I said right after I finished editing it - I cried while I was editing it, and I'm not the sort to easily become overly sentimental about a story. It is a coming-of-age story, a story of realizations, a story about beginnings and endings - it is a story I highly recommend to anyone who enjoys a well-spun tale."Attwood Collected Workshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12939221864173785283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1951983457080835423.post-17577928788423379802019-02-14T12:35:00.002-08:002021-01-02T08:23:23.188-08:00Too Much Fascination with Serial Killers?<br />
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Watching <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on"><i>Hannibal</i></st1:place></st1:city>, the TV series, made me realize I have rather a fascination with serial killers.
And that made me do an inventory of my own fiction. Oh. Gosh. Perhaps rather
too much of one. Here they are in order they were published.</div>
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First is <i><a href="http://amzn.to/2ntDSyV" target="_blank">Blow Up the Roses</a></i>. Mr. Brown rents one side of
the duplex that Mrs. Keene owns. Mr. Brown likes to take pictures and has
created a sound-proof room in his basement where despicable things are being
done to increasingly younger girls. But now he has an idea for a master
project that surpasses any other.</div>
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Next was <i><a href="http://amzn.to/2mJgCMN" target="_blank">The Notebook</a></i>. A professor who returns to his old
college town for a seminar wonders if the notebook he left in the attic of the
house where he rented a room might still be there. It is and what it reveals
results in a story for which no reader yet has foretold the ending.</div>
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FwZrUHnzJrI/XGXNX71BbTI/AAAAAAAAJr0/JnDBO2GdPGcBui2aCG1eEp3WtcLYnctXgCLcBGAs/s1600/Heart-Chants-m1%2Bcompressed.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="717" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FwZrUHnzJrI/XGXNX71BbTI/AAAAAAAAJr0/JnDBO2GdPGcBui2aCG1eEp3WtcLYnctXgCLcBGAs/s200/Heart-Chants-m1%2Bcompressed.jpg" width="140" /></a></div>
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After that, <i><a href="http://amzn.to/2mjfdi8" target="_blank">Heart Chants</a></i>, tells about a half-Navajo,
half-White young man who needs to kill special Navajo women students so that he
do the chant to open the gates once again to the Holy People in this second
novel in the Phillip McGuire series.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-6UIYBQxDlzo7S-whv_LQqmCxAv2SJ1BZLK1nD4QhB7iNFyfF0l6LHEpwhI5F95ITfT0KqsVdY1KSx5ZiA4dgDxAvoicNEXVTNB3WX29Nr8jNF1O8IaV9BBvLVTACse_J25fpkLv1ci0/s1600/The+Fat+Cat-RGB+cover+compressed.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="640" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-6UIYBQxDlzo7S-whv_LQqmCxAv2SJ1BZLK1nD4QhB7iNFyfF0l6LHEpwhI5F95ITfT0KqsVdY1KSx5ZiA4dgDxAvoicNEXVTNB3WX29Nr8jNF1O8IaV9BBvLVTACse_J25fpkLv1ci0/s200/The+Fat+Cat-RGB+cover+compressed.jpg" width="125" /></a></div>
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Then <i><a href="http://amzn.to/2lnbXyv" target="_blank">The Fat Cat</a></i>, which features Ellie who five years ago
ran from her job as a TV newscaster in another city because two things. Now,
managing a strip club, one of those things is happening again. Dancers are
being found dead in dumpsters with their thumbs and little fingers cut off.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZI9LlE2N6PCyzz_YOGbY0Ii5NvrOsrtXJrYlIjzHQZqcjWFqcRErrGaehgd-GPrqMGrw21d9224C5yeJQH8pHTzZFzDCBd1MYLaeHysu5OzvgN9USqExWys7B8JdB5VLwIpNOfkSFwbk/s1600/drivechipkillcover.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1272" data-original-width="973" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZI9LlE2N6PCyzz_YOGbY0Ii5NvrOsrtXJrYlIjzHQZqcjWFqcRErrGaehgd-GPrqMGrw21d9224C5yeJQH8pHTzZFzDCBd1MYLaeHysu5OzvgN9USqExWys7B8JdB5VLwIpNOfkSFwbk/s200/drivechipkillcover.jpg" width="152" /></a></div>
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My most recent short story <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2KzhRcv" target="_blank">Drive, Chip, Putt, and Kill</a></i> features a professional golfer who gets in some extra work while he's out on the tour. It will take a golfer to catch a golfer.</div>
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And last, <i>Indigenous Clay</i>, the third in that Phillip McGuire
series--my current work in progress in which I am bafflingly stalled--has a
character who has started killing the daughters of board members who run or ran
the boy’s home where he was castrated.</div>
<br />Attwood Collected Workshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12939221864173785283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1951983457080835423.post-1761057412876695162018-12-24T19:53:00.001-08:002018-12-24T19:57:18.261-08:00An Experiment My Newspaper Columns<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjii1ETITPoplXTXOqlT9gMsVQ2LgLLZD5YMlANa_VYd9YIDDVaGlgBLyycE2ehU5p0Eb59xRWAmGehzG9IDiBC8b_JCw-wigE9G5TnLDue9BZFCc-ZUBrI6SAOzix85BDlEL0uVoaOc50/s1600/column0001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1230" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjii1ETITPoplXTXOqlT9gMsVQ2LgLLZD5YMlANa_VYd9YIDDVaGlgBLyycE2ehU5p0Eb59xRWAmGehzG9IDiBC8b_JCw-wigE9G5TnLDue9BZFCc-ZUBrI6SAOzix85BDlEL0uVoaOc50/s640/column0001.jpg" width="491" /></a></div>
In 16 years working for two newspapers I wrote a lot of columns. I had thought to publish selected ones in a book, but never did so. But I did assemble and retype the ones I wanted to use and had them edited. And they have languished all this time. Thought I'd see what scans of those sheets would look like online. What think ye?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTFFISx5QRGe23sauC0uUgud5GSpTYfV_RuiGdR9Ixr1e-eqkvGwA6ptt6sS35H08dZ7kpc8UzEeR8dz0zON2r50ANFyic9y0Hl389sVzzHOIp0xMouD21cIUc9TYvCZIs49E-ZPw5UBg/s1600/column20001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1366" data-original-width="1418" height="385" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTFFISx5QRGe23sauC0uUgud5GSpTYfV_RuiGdR9Ixr1e-eqkvGwA6ptt6sS35H08dZ7kpc8UzEeR8dz0zON2r50ANFyic9y0Hl389sVzzHOIp0xMouD21cIUc9TYvCZIs49E-ZPw5UBg/s400/column20001.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />Attwood Collected Workshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12939221864173785283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1951983457080835423.post-30767126001210530842018-11-19T11:10:00.000-08:002019-03-18T09:56:07.180-07:00How I Came to Write the Lovecraftian Tale: "The Strange Case of James Kirkland Pilley"<br />
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Edward Hawthorne had
no premonition of the at first disturbing and later horrifying consequences
that would result from his joining the Friends of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Pilley</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Park</st1:placetype>
<st1:placetype w:st="on">Garden</st1:placetype></st1:place> Society.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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Thus begins <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://amzn.to/2feWZYi" target="_blank">The Strange Case of James Kirkland Pilley</a></i>,
which one reviewer said out-Lovecrafted Lovecraft. Thought I'd tell the back story of how I
came to write it.<br />
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Shortly after we moved into our house south of The Plaza
here in <st1:city w:st="on">Kansas City</st1:city>, they started draining the
pond at <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Loose</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Park</st1:placetype></st1:place>, one of KC's most beloved walking
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In one of the stately mansions that faced <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Loose</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Park</st1:placetype></st1:place>
occurred an horrific murder. A brother and sister lived in the house and one
night the brother beat the sister to the proverbial pulp. I followed the story
in the newspaper. At first appearance the brother sat in his bench banging his
head against it. The next day the newspaper reported the man had died in his
cell. A few days later the autopsy report said the man had died of "total
system collapse," a cause of death I had never seen before nor since.</div>
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Loose Park was also the site of a major Civil War battle in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Kansas City</st1:place></st1:city>.</div>
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Something clicked. I had been a fan of H.P. Lovecraft since
high school. I had just finished a writing project and I wanted to do something
in a completely different style. <a href="http://amzn.to/2feWZYi" target="_blank"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Strange Case of James Kirkland Pilley</i>.</a></div>
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Here's what an early reviewer thought of it:</div>
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"Back in college when everyone seemed to be reading
Tolkien, I was entranced by the stories of H.P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft was one of
the writers from an earlier era who depended more on a creeping feeling of
unease instead of over-the-top gross-out effects that seems to be favored by
modern writers. </div>
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"Now Lovecraft has been reborn for a new generation in
Randy Attwood's <i><a href="http://amzn.to/2feWZYi" target="_blank">The Strange Case of James Kirkland Pilley</a></i>. The story has no
vampires or werewolves that seem to proliferate in modern thrillers. Instead,
it follows the path laid out by Lovecraft. There's the modern every-man who
slowly descends into increasingly weird situations. There's the "bad
guy" who may not be really bad, just a bit toys-in-the-attic crazy. Then
there's the setting ... in this case, as in some many of Lovecraft's stories, a
passage that goes further and further into the earth toward ... well, to say
more would spoil the story. (I always wonder what Freud would say of Lovecraft's
frequent use of damp, dark underground settings, but I digress.) </div>
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"Amping up the creepiness factor are a Civil War
backstory, hordes of workers who seem kin to zombies and the dry rattle of
bones coming from cells along the passages of this underworld. Together is
makes for top-notch story telling. This isn't the type of horror that makes you
gag on grossness. Instead, it's the kind of story that's the literary
equivalent of a shudder caused be a cold hand brushing against you in the
dark."<br />
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Later, I felt so proud of this note that the Lovecraftian scholar William E. Hart sent me:<br />
"Randy,<br />
"I received your excellent story today, <i><a href="http://amzn.to/2feWZYi" target="_blank">The Strange Case of James Kirkland Pilley</a></i>, read it, and having found it to be a marvelous tale that touches upon Lovecraftian mood, and events somewhat similar to those in <i>The Case of Charles Dexter Ward</i>, with your own original spin on the past haunting the present; I now also recommend it as a bargain to download in a Kindle format from Amazon."</div>
Attwood Collected Workshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12939221864173785283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1951983457080835423.post-50392270737188869272018-10-16T08:48:00.000-07:002018-10-16T08:48:32.403-07:00Collection of Stories Set in Kansas<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZDRfUWueK6jjx6R1LRQezEqqbnhwIUVumCBbYcZkX39Yfmdkk8lyqOffoHmdn2EG1FgYbprdlDSq69g9vzz3MmcCnatBDknYVDZYystNklGBy-UPfsQNS3wSNZfFg-HDyG0IB7ctBxaM/s1600/kansasstories.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1273" data-original-width="960" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZDRfUWueK6jjx6R1LRQezEqqbnhwIUVumCBbYcZkX39Yfmdkk8lyqOffoHmdn2EG1FgYbprdlDSq69g9vzz3MmcCnatBDknYVDZYystNklGBy-UPfsQNS3wSNZfFg-HDyG0IB7ctBxaM/s320/kansasstories.jpg" width="241" /></a></div>
I decided to collect all of my shorter works set in <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Kansas</st1:place></st1:state> and publish them.
The title is pretty trite: <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2HrjECX" target="_blank">Kansas Stories</a></i>
and the cover is a sunflower, but it’s a nice big sunflower picture taken by <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Kansas City</st1:place></st1:city> photographer
Roy Inman.<br />
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There are eight stories in the collection, although one of
them, Hospital Days is made up of 10 short-short works. The longest is around
30,000 words.</div>
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I guess I would classify the genre of each story as
“literary.” Hope that doesn’t scare you off. The <a href="https://amzn.to/2HrjECX" target="_blank">ebook version is here</a>.
The <a href="https://amzn.to/2xfksUW" target="_blank">paperback version is here</a>:</div>
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(A thank you to my friend Rob McKnight for suggesting this
collection.)</div>
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Below are the titles and a link to the individual story if
you’d rather just read just that one:</div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://amzn.to/2mkk9AT" target="_blank">The Saltness of Time</a><o:p></o:p></i></div>
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A Kansas snowstorm forces a car of college students
returning home for the holidays to take refuge in the hotel of a small town
where they encounter a fellow traveler who also seeks shelter and has a story
to tell about the consequences of another snow storm decades before when a
hideous truth is revealed about an old woman, stuck in her own time slot.</div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://amzn.to/2mgf52G" target="_blank">One More Victim</a><o:p></o:p></i></div>
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Reviewer: “It’s no small feat to write such a richly-layered
story that spans several decades in a scant 62 pages, but Randy Atwood has
managed to pull it off. One More Victim is a coming-of-age story, a love story
and a story about extraordinary secrets hidden by outwardly ordinary people.
Most of all, it’s a story about how war can leave victims in its wake long
after it has officially ended.”</div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://amzn.to/2qsvhld" target="_blank">Blue <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Kansas</st1:place></st1:state> Sky</a><o:p></o:p></i></div>
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Opening: There really is a <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Kansas</st1:place></st1:state> sky, wide as the land is flat. On
fall mornings it seems as if the stratosphere drops down just before dawn to
touch the trees, make crisp the leaves of brown and red and yellow, rise again
to paint the sky a deep blue, and leave the air as clean and as fresh as a
newly-cut lemon.</div>
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This Saturday the crystals of the first light frost melt on
the buffalo grass and wet my shoes as I go to catch a ride to town on the bus
for the insane.</div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://amzn.to/2mJgCMN" target="_blank">The Notebook</a><o:p></o:p></i></div>
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No reader yet has foretold the ending to this story.</div>
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Reviewer: “Loved it! The ending came too soon, being so
captivated by their story. This is a story I would recommend to my reader
friends. This is also an author I will be following and waiting for more
amazing stories. So much was told in a short time...it leaves you wanting for
more…”</div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://amzn.to/2omSi4i" target="_blank">Downswing</a><o:p></o:p></i></div>
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Reviewer: “An absolutely gorgeous story, voluptuous
descriptions that just beg for someone to paint the scenes in oils. Who thought
that a short story about golf could be so intense, so vivid and so engaging - I
literally walked out to the mailbox with my Kindle in my hand, reading. You
don't want to miss this latest from Randy Attwood - go get it, and his other
works while you're at it. You really won't regret it.”</div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://amzn.to/2r4sihL" target="_blank">Hospital Days</a><o:p></o:p></i></div>
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(ten shorts)</div>
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Reviewer: “This is a different type of read. It takes the
reader into the life behind the scenes of a hospital. It is not like a TV show
with heroics and handsome doctors getting all the attention. This is the
grittier side of life with a true feel to the happenings as the reader is shown
the life of a candy striper at first would like to be a doctor, but after what
he sees in the real raw world a change of occupation might be in order.”</div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://amzn.to/2qz69Ex" target="_blank">Innocent Passage</a></i> </div>
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A tale of innocence lost, as two adventurous boys discover
tragic hidden secrets and their own true nature.</div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://amzn.to/2nULS0m" target="_blank">Bless Me, Father, forI am Sinning</a><o:p></o:p></i></div>
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Two teen boys take on the Roman Catholic Church.</div>
<br />Attwood Collected Workshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12939221864173785283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1951983457080835423.post-36544757567800143762018-09-25T09:23:00.000-07:002018-09-25T09:23:04.865-07:00Read the Original Version of SPILL<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU4SddtBQWkCVdtuD2jv1D0MEDiA4xl0rZ53r8gjz6lzUcaosaYZE-UZor-TFs5TsAEUT5GfbVbq4njDAxN1dYcc3Uo84yZTzW1zA9eT2ZhZJE1IVKF6D47OIVwk_zkGJwflzwjzpL9gY/s1600/SPILL+skateboard+cover+compressed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1002" data-original-width="768" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU4SddtBQWkCVdtuD2jv1D0MEDiA4xl0rZ53r8gjz6lzUcaosaYZE-UZor-TFs5TsAEUT5GfbVbq4njDAxN1dYcc3Uo84yZTzW1zA9eT2ZhZJE1IVKF6D47OIVwk_zkGJwflzwjzpL9gY/s320/SPILL+skateboard+cover+compressed.jpg" width="245" /></a></div>
The original version of <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2zsvAze" target="_blank">SPILL</a></i> is now available as an ebook. One day before my publisher was scheduled to publish the book they got cold feet because I used Bob Dole and Dan Aykyroyd in cameo appearances, which was really hilarious. I would have had to pay a significant amount of money to buy the book back from them so I knuckled under and made changes and the scene still works pretty well. But not as well as the original. The rights have now reverted to me so I've published my version. Fred Underwood (Yes, I used the Underwood name well before House of Cards) is a failed and fired English teacher who makes his living as a small package contract delivery guy. One day he gets an idea how he can scam the political system and it works: he gets the girl, the money and a really cool skateboard video game. <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2zsvAze" target="_blank">SPILL</a></i> is a damn fun read. Take that, Big Oil! $3.99Attwood Collected Workshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12939221864173785283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1951983457080835423.post-8820878991526074922018-08-24T12:14:00.003-07:002018-08-24T12:14:48.081-07:00Two New Special Readers for Crazy About You<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE-TFLR6xEdjSo98kkoC8iEP3i2zvHGc6YdI5-lSoeVdg-2QtW_KR7XEOgVmR7w9z4TYraZX4ZUd0kWGy_5wXJIQWpKJWWujlkH8OyXEUuX_tIkRcOwYgTdCeKS39ttOpKXfLLfL8mRKg/s1600/Crazy+About+You+Cover+front+only.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="698" data-original-width="491" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE-TFLR6xEdjSo98kkoC8iEP3i2zvHGc6YdI5-lSoeVdg-2QtW_KR7XEOgVmR7w9z4TYraZX4ZUd0kWGy_5wXJIQWpKJWWujlkH8OyXEUuX_tIkRcOwYgTdCeKS39ttOpKXfLLfL8mRKg/s320/Crazy+About+You+Cover+front+only.jpg" width="225" /></a><i><a href="http://amzn.to/2mpHT64" target="_blank">Crazy About You</a></i> continues to find new readers and I learn about it in the most unusual and delightful ways. One reader, Sandi Roper, asked to be my Facebook friend, and when I visited her page I found this:<br />
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"Just began reading <i><a href="http://amzn.to/2mpHT64" target="_blank">Crazy About You</a></i> by Randy Atwood. The more I read, the story became eerily familiar. I took another look at the book's setting, synopsis and author and then I knew why. Mr. Atwood was telling MY story as well as his own. I also lived in Larned KS, and graduated four years after him. My dad was a minister, and part of the revolving clergy sent into the asylum to try and comfort its miserable inmates. I often accompanied him and came to know many of the higher functioning patients. They were my friends, but to my shame, I told as many sensational horror stories as anybody else about the big brick compound which swallowed up our little town. My first job was at the drugstore Atwood described the druggist's wife, it was surreal, because he described her spot-on! I later went to work for the old "Tiller & Toiler" he mentioned. Ironically, I later bought that old drugstore building and opened a gift shop there. After this remarkable trip through my memories, I will buy and read every book Atwood puts out. He is a remarkable writer and every Larned-native is sure to enjoy this book. I will now be "following " him on FB, and am anxious to read the rest of his books. Hope to become a friend on FB.<br />
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"And all you (Larned) natives, pick up this book . It's good a great read!"<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmptsqoWR05gV4_yfzt-MEK6Kx6uHNpmExaqnXwA5Xrm6tQ51rUluALTCr98OODu74EMdNuKYMJ5Cg6RkvuTpGQYq01qMrT6bo6xZFbyPk9U2vA9j93vxZKGWoakpqU37aWECreQPWV4Q/s1600/cover2500.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1207" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmptsqoWR05gV4_yfzt-MEK6Kx6uHNpmExaqnXwA5Xrm6tQ51rUluALTCr98OODu74EMdNuKYMJ5Cg6RkvuTpGQYq01qMrT6bo6xZFbyPk9U2vA9j93vxZKGWoakpqU37aWECreQPWV4Q/s200/cover2500.jpg" width="150" /></a>And then the other day came this pleasure jolt.<br />
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We get a yearly termite exam and the guy who came today I recognized from the past. He greeted me and said "I really enjoyed your book" and I remembered from last year he had seen my books in a box in the basement and asked if I was a writer. Ended up selling him a novel. So I asked him what book he had read "<i><a href="http://amzn.to/2mpHT64" target="_blank">Crazy About You</a></i>. I couldn't put it down." How neat is that? This time around he bought <i><a href="http://amzn.to/2m03iFO" target="_blank">SPILL</a></i>.Attwood Collected Workshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12939221864173785283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1951983457080835423.post-46066283527676152042018-08-03T09:20:00.000-07:002018-08-03T09:20:37.442-07:00Like Novels That Creep You Out?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QdmIicybAuo/W2R_dSZFJsI/AAAAAAAAJP4/wau3Rm44aTUj0WiiJ4jktacuokaSwjtyQCLcBGAs/s1600/Roses%2Band%2BManhattan%2Bcompressed.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="940" height="261" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QdmIicybAuo/W2R_dSZFJsI/AAAAAAAAJP4/wau3Rm44aTUj0WiiJ4jktacuokaSwjtyQCLcBGAs/s320/Roses%2Band%2BManhattan%2Bcompressed.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
From time to time I pick one of my novels to promote. Decided I'd spend some time on <i><a href="http://amzn.to/2ntDSyV" target="_blank">Blow Up the Roses</a></i>. I have to admit I was surprised when the small press Curiosity Quills accepted it for publication. I believe it was one of their first choices. It's a very dark work, but the CQ founder thought it also the kind of gem a small press could discover.<br />
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Here's what one reviewer had to say:<br />
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<i><a href="http://amzn.to/2ntDSyV" target="_blank">Blow Up the Roses</a> is a very dark story about murder, kidnapping, rape, pedophilias, and a variety of other human conditions of the most debase, debauch, perverted and deplorable nature. While this story is very, very disturbing . . . it is no more so than many movies that touch on the same themes. So, a reader should be aware of what you are getting into before you take up this book. Yet, Mr. Attwood is a master storyteller and his characters are genuine and authentic, even when they are monstrous. But, within this hellish, perhaps even demonic cast of characters, love literally blooms, and a story of hope, comfort, renewal and healing emerges in the midst of a nightmare. The story takes the reader to places you cannot begin to imagine and leads to an outcome that is terrifying, yet satisfying, too.</i><br />
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I have never known the end of a book when I start it. I
always felt knowing the end was a fraud upon the reader. The characters should
discover their own ends. In <i><a href="http://amzn.to/2ntDSyV" target="_blank">Blow Up the Roses</a></i>, I didn't know why Mr. Keene deserted Mrs. Keene.
I didn't know the horrible truth about Mr. Brown, who rented the other side of
the duplex from the Keenes. I didn't know why Mr. Califano had this recurring
nightmare of a rose garden blowing up around him. I didn't know why I didn't
trust Mr. Griswald and his Amway sales program.</div>
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When I found out, I almost stopped writing the book. But
sometimes characters demand their lives be put on paper. And sometimes it is
far easier to create characters than destroy them -- until they destroy
themselves.</div>
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<br />Attwood Collected Workshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12939221864173785283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1951983457080835423.post-77026846650280640932018-07-17T10:24:00.001-07:002018-07-17T10:24:54.260-07:00Four Novels Discounting to 99 Cents<br />
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Over the next four days a different title will be discounted
to 99 cents for a week. The commonality of the novels is that they were all
published by the small press Curiosity Quills.</div>
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tItA8LZEziI/UmcbaOUF7LI/AAAAAAAACTk/GQ6deoxnLU8hGFHllCwqTAUvYi6rTTG1ACPcBGAYYCw/s1600/Tortured%2BTruths%2Bcover%2Bfinal%2Bcompressed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="717" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tItA8LZEziI/UmcbaOUF7LI/AAAAAAAACTk/GQ6deoxnLU8hGFHllCwqTAUvYi6rTTG1ACPcBGAYYCw/s200/Tortured%2BTruths%2Bcover%2Bfinal%2Bcompressed.jpg" width="140" /></a></div>
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First up July 18 will be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://amzn.to/2mbkrtR" target="_blank">Tortured Truths</a></i>, the first in the Phillip McGuire series that I was inspired to
write because of my admiration of John D. MacDonald and his Travis McGee
series. You read that mystery/thriller series not so much for the story but
because you wanted to hang out with Travis again. I was hoping to create that
kind of character. Mine is a burnt out foreign correspondent who returns to his
college town to buy and run a bar. Adventures come his way. In this first
series we learn how his hand got mangled and how he coping with a mangled
psyche. It’s not often you get to meet the person who tortured you, but Phil
gets that opportunity.</div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bh61GhHEa70/Uq3x1eFGf5I/AAAAAAAAGdc/168XGZYpgTURLs_yA5Gd0IgRVmm70RUogCPcBGAYYCw/s1600/Heart%2BChants%2Bcover2500.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1121" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bh61GhHEa70/Uq3x1eFGf5I/AAAAAAAAGdc/168XGZYpgTURLs_yA5Gd0IgRVmm70RUogCPcBGAYYCw/s200/Heart%2BChants%2Bcover2500.jpg" width="140" /></a></div>
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On July 19 the second in the series, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://amzn.to/2mjfdi8" target="_blank">Heart Chants</a></i>, goes to 99 cents. Two Navajo girls have gone missing
from the local Indian college and Phil is asked to harbor a Navajo girl. He’s
also met an interesting woman from <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">China</st1:place></st1:country-region> and the plot interweaves the
two. <i><a href="http://amzn.to/2mjfdi8" target="_blank">Heart Chants</a></i> contains, I believe, the best, most complete retelling of the
Navajo creation story available in a work of fiction. Several Tony Hillerman
fans have said they like my book better than Hillerman’s works, and that high
praise.</div>
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(I’m at work on the third in the series and it’s off to a
good start. I hope to complete it this fall.)</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmptsqoWR05gV4_yfzt-MEK6Kx6uHNpmExaqnXwA5Xrm6tQ51rUluALTCr98OODu74EMdNuKYMJ5Cg6RkvuTpGQYq01qMrT6bo6xZFbyPk9U2vA9j93vxZKGWoakpqU37aWECreQPWV4Q/s1600/cover2500.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1207" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmptsqoWR05gV4_yfzt-MEK6Kx6uHNpmExaqnXwA5Xrm6tQ51rUluALTCr98OODu74EMdNuKYMJ5Cg6RkvuTpGQYq01qMrT6bo6xZFbyPk9U2vA9j93vxZKGWoakpqU37aWECreQPWV4Q/s200/cover2500.jpg" width="150" /></a></div>
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Next up will be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://amzn.to/2m03iFO" target="_blank">SPILL</a></i>
on July 20. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://amzn.to/2m03iFO" target="_blank">SPILL</a></i> is a riot to read.
Fired English teacher who has failed at about everything comes up with a scheme
to run for his state legislature in his rock solid red city as a Democrat. He
gets his enticing bartender to also run so there will be a primary. He runs as
an atheist, anti-gun guy also calling for the nationalization of Big Oil. He
theorizes that Big Oil and the NRA will donate to his opponent and they can
split the money. Works better than he could have imagined. This was great fun
to write and many readers have found it great fun to read.</div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://amzn.to/2ntDSyV" target="_blank">Blow Up the Roses</a></i>
is the first book of mine Curiosity Quills published. It’s a very dark read and
between <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">SPILL</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Roses</i> you get a feel of the range of my
fiction. Mrs. Keene lives on a cul d’sac where many terrible things are
happening, including the disappearance of her own husband. But what her renter
is doing in the basement of his side of the duplex is chilling. Several readers
said they almost stopped reading, but felt compelled to continue. Goes to 99 cents on July 21 for seven days.</div>
<br />Attwood Collected Workshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12939221864173785283noreply@blogger.com0