Two Works Nominated for Local Literary Honor

Happy to report that I'm among 25 authors nominated for a respected local literary honor here in Kansas City, the Thorpe Menn award sponsored by the American Association of University Women-Kansas City. Two works published by Curiosity Quills--the political comedy SPILL, and Heart Chants, no. 2 in the Phillip McGuire mystery/thriller series--were both accepted as nominees.

Maybe You'll Want to Become a Bobbite, too

I started writing Rabbletown: Life in These United Christian States of Holy America before 1984. I had a notion that when 1984 rolled around, there would be a lot of attention given to George Orwell's famous novel by that name and that I might get some attention for mine. I'd call it "2084." Nice idea, but the novel didn't get written. I had envisioned a long, complex novel that would create the characters that showed how the religious right gained political power over the United States and what they did with it.

Never been good at long, complex stories. So I cut to the chase and went right to the year 2084.

Then I created a manageable set of characters and let them live their lives in an environment where pastor governors and the Pastor President rule with a Bible in each fist and the computer in your hovel. But I wrote myself into a corner with Bobby. It took me a while to realize I had to let Bobby perform his miracles.

Best explanation of what Bobby is all about comes from an early review by one of Amazon's top 500 reviews:

I expected a few things when I started reading this book. I expected to be amused by a satirical take on the Fundamentalists that are doing their utmost to take over this country - sadly, it is difficult to make amusing, because the idea of Fundamentalists taking over this country and turning it into an Evangelical theocracy is absolutely terrifying. I expected to be outraged by the excesses of Fundamentalist leaders who grow rich, while the common people live in poverty. What I did not expect was to be profoundly moved. I did not expect goose bumps or a profound feeling of "rightness" to come over me while reading.

12-year-old Bobby Crowley 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 forming a cross. On a Friday like any other Friday - one that would see the stoning to death of a 6 people - 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.

Caught in his wake are a number of people; they go into Rabbletown, the slums of Topeka, where Bobby spreads 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 emulate the practices and beliefs of the disgusting Fred Phelps, those sorts of teachings are threatening. Bobby and all who believe in him and his miracles are declared anathema and the Inquisition is sent after them.

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? 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. 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.

How To Be A Column Writer

For the 16 years I worked in newspaper journalism in addition to reporting, editing, writing editorials, and managing staff, I wrote a column at least once a week. I've been revisiting some of the columns and thought I'd share some of them here.

– Never lie. In print.

– It's okay not to know what you're writing about as long as you don't know about it in an interesting way.

– The longer the column, the greater the number of important sentences it must contain, and not only do column writers not have a great number of important sentences in their heads, readers can't deal with too many of them anyway.

– The hardest thing to attain in a column is your own individual voice: try to force it and it cracks; fail to search for it in every sentence and it disappears.

– Truth, that bastard child of reality and perception, shines brightest unadorned.

– When all else fails, do satire, and then repent.

– Political columnists have it easy, they only have to write with their heads. But when intellect takes over prose, prose loses is poetry.

– Comic columnists are fun to read, but comedy reaches truth only through the door of dark cynicism.

– The sources of inspiration are too fragile to explain; leave them alone.

– Love thy neighbor for his foibles; they give you something to write about.

– Gather criticism and compliments in the same crucible of skepticism.

– A column that disturbs no one has no mark to hit; a column that disturbs everyone has missed the mark.

– Learn the columnist's prayer: "God, grant me the courage to complain about that which I cannot change."

– Learn the columnist's confession: "God, forgive me for complaining so much."

– Learn to write aphorisms; they'll get you through another day.

Update on Reaction to Political Comedy "SPILL"

I wrote SPILL in a state of major creative doubt. My fiction wasn't having any traction with agents or publishers. I thought the stuff was pretty good, but I could be self-delusional. I had always been reluctant to share my fiction with friends because if they said they liked it, could I believe them? If they didn't like it, could they tell me? Seemed unfair to put a friend in that position.

So, I pursued an idea for a comedy, a form I had never tried. A bar friend was working as a small package contract delivery person and he came into the bar and related how that day he had delivered the head of a dog to the vet school for rabies testing. That image stuck in my head and so I started with that scene. Dang thing wrote itself in three months. Nothing had taken such a short time. I thought if I wrote something that made people laugh, then you couldn't deny the writing was successful.

SPILL was released Sept. 11 by the small press Curiosity Quills. Here is a comment that came from a former co-worker, a wonderful writer and excellent editor:

"Hi Randy - "I just finished reading SPILL in one sitting - once I started, I couldn't put it down. The more I read, the funnier it was, until I was laughing so hard my husband could hear me from the other end of the house."

And here is the first review placed on Amazon: "Randy Attwood's done it again with SPILL -- a knife-edge ride on a political snowball thundering downhill at high speed. It's the story of a decent-enough guy scraping his living together who finally reaches the breaking point over the ever-escalating price of fuel. His pockets are so regularly plundered by Big Oil, that in a flash of clarity, he devises a way to get back at them and make some money along the way. His allies are the unlikeliest "think tank" you could imagine. Sarcasm drips from these pages in wide, viscous streams. Like all of Mr. Attwood's other political writing, you're laughing out loud at the moment you begin to understand he's making a point here. Spill is a must-read for anyone who has had it with the lobby-spin that is running out lives and the self-righteous pols who reap its rewards. If we're not laughing, we're crying, so we might as well laugh. And think." -- Richard Sutton

Curiosity Quills helped me do a giveaway of a copy of SPILL through Goodreads. Go there if you want to enter.

Beginnings I Like from Five Novels

Blow Up the Roses

When Michael Keene reached the interstate, a few blocks from his home, he turned left instead of right and headed south, steering his nifty little gray Honda Civic against the direction a group of geese were flying overhead. Thinking he might hear the honkers, he opened the window of the car, but they were too high, or

maybe the wind carried their calls away from his ear. Or maybe they just were traveling silently, as was he.

Later, on that chilly morning in April, when Mrs. Keene received the call from the office asking if her husband was ill, she first thought of an accident, then car trouble, then foul play, then desertion. She should have thought first of desertion because when Mr. Keene didn't show up the next day or the one after that, the police investigator put on a smile deep with practiced kindness as she mentioned the possibility that Mr. Keene had been kidnapped and said, "Ma'am, I'm sorry, I've seen this before. Were you having any marital problems?"

Crazy About You

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

Rabbletown: Life in These United Christian States of Holy America

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 Great Christian State of Kansas Cathedral went on from dawn to dusk, almost a 14-hour, hot, summer day. After Bob had made the long climb back to the ground, he stopped at one of the small booze-holes at the edge of Rabbletown to drink its oily-smelling, stomach-wrenching, blessedly mind-numbing alcohol before going home.

Now, in the doorway to his basement apartment, he burped and smelled the sour acid of his empty stomach. Pulling the burlap sack of tools off his shoulder and dropping it to the floor when he entered, the noise of his own household assaulted him. The twins came, screaming their welcome, and he picked the bag of tools back up, swung, and caught one of them on the side of the head, sending him sprawling sideways and setting up a wail of tears and pain that caused his wife to yell, “Stop beatin’ the kids, will ya?”

“Well keep the little retards away from me.”

The 41st Sermon

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.

"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 Greece he had bound together with cord. He closed the trunk lid, listening to its satisfyingly solid click.

Then and Now: The Harmony of the Instantaneous All

This side of the hill on Betty's land looks to the west. She built her house on the other side that looks to the east. Her windows catch the morning sun and then are shaded from the heat of the afternoon summer sun. The house is tucked real neat into the hill so that north winds in winter hit the rise of the hill, go over, never touch the house.

Would that I were so protected.

But it is late fall, late in the day and I am standing on the balcony of this tea hut I have built on the side of Betty's hill that faces the west. I get to enjoy the sight of sunset over the last of the leaves still on the trees and listen to the sounds they make as the wind rustles through. Listen to the sounds of me.

Oh, Betty, I love you so.

Why has it taken me so long to know it.

So long to say it.

I had to leave the 1960s first.

It wasn't easy.

In the box on the table inside this tea hut you don't even know exists on your own land is my deliverance from those times. God, how I hate to leave them. It was hard work.

You'll just have to read and find out how hard.

Everything is ready now for that....Everything is ready.

I'll Be Interviewed on The Voice of Lawrence, Web Radio 10 a.m. (CDT) March 28!

Sometimes, a good deed does get rewarded.

More than a year ago I started donated $1 of every sale of Crazy About You to Headquarters Counseling Center in Lawrence because those good folks work the suicide prevent hotline for this part of America. That led me to getting to know Marcia Epstein, its long time director. Some months ago, the board of directors summarily dismissed Marcia and I never saw and understandable reason. So I stopped the donations.

Marcia continued her work as a counselor and began doing a program on the new web-based radio station, The Voice of Lawrence. Her program, Talk With Me, discusses many issues involving our life ventures, adventures and misadventures.

She invited me to come to the studio be interviewed regarding my writing life and what led me to self-publish, be accepted to be published and to renew my fiction writing life, that I am now so enjoying in my retirement. It's a tale of rejection, despair and renewal. I'll be talking about why writing is important to me and some of the lessons I've learned along the way. And I'll discuss what the whole ePublishing business has meant for me and for writers.

The station can be found below. I hope you'll put the time and date on your calendar.
10 a.m. (CDT), Friday, March 28

The Voice of Lawrence

Crying, Tears And Their Use In Fiction

A post on a writer-related Facebook page about "She started to cry" versus the more efficient "She cried" made me curious about my "cry" scenes. And made me realize that it isn't the crying that is so important to the reader, it is the reaction to the crying.

From The Notebook

She slipped, fell backwards, and I was there to grab her shoulders and steady her. She twisted her head to look at me. Tears were in her eyes. I think a man who fails to kiss a woman when a woman wants to be kissed–needs to be kissed–is condemned to hell. A man who cannot recognize when a woman wants to be kissed lives in hell.

From Crazy About You

“I never knew it was possible to be that afraid. I know now how being that afraid could make a person snap. It really is possible to have something happen to you that is more than you can endure. I was close. I mean, I was right at the edge.”

She knew enough just to put a hand on my shoulder. She knew enough to just let me cry.

She was a damn good nurse.

...

"Just yesterday morning, they let me know you were gone,

"Suzanne the plans they made put an end to you..."

I had to pull the car over the side of the rode while I bawled like a baby. My date kept asking me what was wrong, but I just turned up the volume on the radio and increased the flow of my tears. When the song ended and my tears finally stopped, I turned off the radio and explained to my date why I was crying. Explained about Suzanne and Gladys and my sister and my mother and Dad and Gwen and Mrs. Bryson and Phil and Alex Krout.

When I finished she looked at me and said, “Why don’t you take me home now and come up for a drink?”

Male tears are an aphrodisiac to some women. At least they were to the woman who became my wife.

We named our daughter Suzanne

http://www.amazon.com/Crazy-About-You-Randy-Attwood-ebook/dp/B005DC623E/ref=sr_1_3_title_0_main?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1392687323&sr=1-3&keywords=Randy+Attwood

From One More Victim

I hadn't thought of Mrs. Schmidt as a person before. She was just an old lady who dumped into the trash things that were highly interesting to me and often still useful.

I remember looking at Kathy and seeing her cry. What I was feeling was a strange anger. Upstairs we could hear the women laughing as they passed around plastic containers designed to hold all sorts of leftovers, while down in the basement we had uncovered a horrible truth about a woman who lived just doors away. I experienced the helplessness that the absurdity of life too often presents us.

"It isn't right," Kathy was saying. "It isn't right to lose all your sons in a war."

All I could do was dumbly nod my head.

...

The night before she was to leave she went to the bathroom before coming to bed with me. When she came back she had cut her hair.

"Leaving this look behind, too," she told me. "Oh, fuck, don't cry."

I couldn't help it. I was losing my life and I didn't know what else to do.

http://www.amazon.com/One-More-Victim-ebook/dp/B006J0C6T8/ref=sr_1_10?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323313928&sr=1-10

"Heart Chants" Building an Audience

Found a copy of S.I. Hayakawa's "Language in Action" at an estate sale and at the beginning of the chapter on Affective Communication, he uses this quote from T.S. Eliot:

What I call the "auditory imagination" is the feeling for syllable and rhythm, penetrating far below the conscious levels of thought and feeling, invigorating every word; sinking to the most primitive and forgotten, returning to the origin and bringing something back, seeking the beginning and the end.

Throughout my writing life I've felt that if I get the right words in the right order it would create in the reader a deep resonance that was almost like music. I think T.S. Eliot's descriptions gets closer to what I had tried to express.

I like to think that the preface to Heart Chants accomplishes this feeling.

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.

Sales of Heart Chants have been building, sufficient that it went as high as #56 in one of its subcategories and past the #100 rank in another category. These are highly transitory, so I have no idea where it may be ranked if you check on its status.

But I'm pleased good reviews continue to arrive:

Heart Chants by Randy Attwood is an enticing novel rich in Native American lore and steeped in mystery. Packed with intrigue from the start, Phil McGuire is back, and with cracked ribs as he threw himself into the hands of three Chinese men to save a beautiful Chinese damsel in distress, Hsu Chi. As he lays recovering in bed two Native American girls go missing and as a favor to a friend and assistance with his recovery another Native American girl Zonnie comes to stay with him. Hsu Chi finds him as well and a love affair sparks between them. While Phil is recovering with the aid of two beautiful women a young half white half Navajo man, self proclaimed Ko-yo-teh, is following the vision of his grandfather to rid the land of the white people. Increasing suspense builds as the reader is plunged into Ko-yo-teh's world and Phil assists in solving the mystery of the missing girls. The elements within the novel merge together as the developing plot becomes progressively more compelling for a riveting, unforgettable, and unsuspected ending.

The amount of research and knowledge of the Navajo poured into this story is incredible. Randy Attwood spared no expense so to speak as he lavishly and with great respect brings forth the mystical Navajo legends and thought. There is also an acceptance as in the first segment of the Phil McGuire series of peoples of varying cultures. In this novel Randy Attwood brilliantly entwines mystery and suspense with a twist of Native American history which is truly the humble beginnings of American history unknown to most.

The written words in Heart Chants flow with ease keeping the reader always turning one more page seeking the treasures and secrets each offers. Randy Attwood has an unflawed ability to create characters that capture the reader's attention; one may find themselves both loving and hating even the most despicable misguided personalities. From beginning to end Heart Chants is an exciting novel that is in my opinion arguably one of the best releases of the New Year.

Heart Chants is an impeccably written novel with a truly unique plot that is truly a must read.

I keep expecting the paperback version of Heart Chants to be available on the Amazon site any day now.

Short Story "Confidence" Published by New Digital Publication "Eleven to Seven"

Thanks to an alphabetical listing, my short story "Confidence" is the first story listed in a new digital publication "Eleven to Seven." I think we're going to see more and more of these sorts of creative outlets open up. I hadn't published "Confidence" myself, so I am glad it has now found a home. The author who gives away his fiction for these sorts of endeavors hopes exposure to the published piece prompts a reader to search for more of his or her work.

I wrote "Confidence" when I was in my twenties. I was exploring the short story environment. I thought the piece of fiction at less than 500 words worked well, but it was never accepted to the literary journals where I submitted it. And so it sat in the file cabinet for, well, decades now.

I think it shows what can be accomplished in the short format. A character is established and something life-changing occurs to him. The challenge is to make it occur for the reader in a convincing and connecting sort of way. Hope you'll check it out.

Re-examining Those All-Important First Sentences for Works of Fiction

I'm fiddling with a new fiction project, The Fat Cat, and I really liked its first sentence:

I hadn't seen that good-lookin' motherfucker for almost a year when he walked in with his partner to ask me about the dead dancer found that morning in our dumpster.

It made me think how important first sentences are.

I've always hated the cute little human relation's phrase: "You only have one chance to make a first impression." But, with fiction, it is so true. It really has to feel right. It's like the opening line of a song, and I think writing is like music. If you get the words right and the rhythm right, you make a kind of music in the reader's brain that resonates.

Made me go back and look at my first sentences and comment on them.

I like the first line for The Fat Cat I think because the phrase: ...the dead dancer found that morning in our dumpster really hits those d sounds and creates great imagery.

Some other first lines, in no particular order:

The Notebook

I had two phone calls from Don before he killed himself.

I like the simplicity. It tells us something important happened and that someone should have know it was going to happen.

Tell Us Everything

Cricket carefully backed her crummy car, which needed a motor mount bolt replaced, down her cousin’s driveway.

I like this simple introduction of this character. I think it sets the tone right away.

It Was Me (I)

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.

How better else to start off this Rod Serling "Twilight Zone" type of story?

Blow Up the Roses

Mr. Brown closed the door on the whimpers and walked up the stairs to take a shower.

How can you not want to know more about Mr. Brown?

Blue Kansas Sky

There really is a Kansas sky, wide as the land is flat.

Lyrical intro for a story based around a snooker game.

Downswing

It wasn't until the 15th green that I realized how alone I was.

Really? You play 15 holes of golf and then realize you are alone on the course? Must be something else going on.

Innocent Passage

The skies were cloudy all day.

Any Kansan knows our state song with the verse "And the skies are not cloudy all day." Yet there are some days that are cloudy all day and that sets up the anomaly for this loss of innocence short story.

One More Victim

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.

Sometimes you just set the opening like you were laying a foundation stone.

Rabbletown: Life in These United Christian States of Holy America

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.

This is a first sentence as a simple, but engaging scene setter.

The Saltness of Time

"I like these kinds of snows. They cancel things out."

I don't open many stories with dialogue, but this I thought would draw a reader in.

SPILL

Fred Underwood was driving his 15-year-old, once-white, now rust-speckled Nissan pickup six miles over the speed limit on his way to deliver the head of a dog to the state’s vet school for rabies testing when several things happened to him.

Another scene-setter opening sentence, and if that head of a dog doesn't get you to read the next sentence, nothing will.

The 41st Sermon

The Volvo in the closed garage purred quietly as it exhaled the gas that Jim Garrison inhaled.

I think this opening line imparts so much information and tone. I really like it. The use of exhale and inhale creates a great rhythm.

The Strange Case of James Kirkland Pilley

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.

This is my homage to the great horror writer H.P Lovecraft. I hope this is the kind of sentence that he would have written and would have loved the phrase "Friends of Pilley Park Garden Society."

A Business, a Hobby or a Calling?

From time to time, seems wise to publicly assess where I am with all this Getting Attwood Published stuff. This musing was prompted by the remark of a good and long-time friend and fellow author:

"I can tell you what is wrong with your book. It is too truthful. People want fantasy disguised as reality."

Early on, someone would point to a nearby writer who was successful writing romance novels and suggest anyone could do that, so why didn't I? I used to turn my nose up at such suggestions. But the more I wrote, the more I realized that it was wrong for me to deprecate such work. You have to create characters. You have to move them from point A to point B. Something has to happen to them. The reader must be engaged. None of this is easy.

But it can fall into a formula and I just could never do that style of writing.

My writing projects had to fully engage me. When I was working as a journalist, writing a news story was as easy as sitting in a chair. It didn't really engage me. You got the facts assembled, found a good first sentence. Maybe gave it little, cute tweak here or there; and it was done -- published and forgotten.

Not so when I wrote fiction. I had many sides of myself I showed to my family, my friends, my work colleagues, my bar acquaintances. I felt only truly integrated when I was working on a piece of fiction.

There is a metaphysical aspect to much of my fiction. And there is realism. I used to be offended when a reader would ask how much of a story was real. Then I came to realize it was the highest sort of praise: the words I had written had created a reality for that person.

And now, after publishing through ebooks (slowly turning them into paperbacks), I'm getting the following truly gratifying type of comment. It's in reference to the paperback version of One More Victim, which also contains the novella The Saltness of Time and three short stories:

"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.

This whole venture with epublishing has not made me much money. I think I'm just about even. But it's not a business for me and it's not a hobby. It's more like a calling. And the rewards for a calling aren't measured in dollars, but in knowing you've communicated deeply with another human being.