The JONES FILES! Feedback thread...

We'll start it here...if you have something good, bad, indifferent...let it all hang out here.

I'm trying to not have the continuity ruined - so the thread doesn't end up a mess like it kinda did with the original one. This might get kind of long, anyway, before I move it off to Substack or wherever.

So...hit me here.

Casey Jones said:

Prologue II is at this link - https://www.pmbug.com/threads/fiction-maybe-somewhere-west-of-laramie.4810/post-72351

I was going to cut, paste and edit it out over there, but I guess old threads can't be edited.

Next chapter: The Dream.

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If you are still interested in doing this tell me what you want done and I'll try to help.

This thread is a good idea for the feedback. There was a guy on 2 who wrote survival fiction stories and included a link to a feedback thread for them. He passed away a while ago, but I do remember reading his stories. Some were really good. His name was Jerry D Young

No problemo here!

searcher said:

If you are still interested in doing this tell me what you want done and I'll try to help.

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PM sent.

To anyone who's following: Sorry for the delay. Been a rough week - housebound.

The new chapter is in - The Dream. We go further in introducing Allen. Where he is, how he's living. What he's up against.

No earth-shaking wit, or action. It's background. Setting the table.

New Chapter - The Ride. More introduction.

We get into the grit, next. "Dear Diary..." Drama a-plenty...Peyton-Place drama. And a road map for what is to follow.

Two weeks, and I'm writer's-blocked on the serial.

But...a bit of something had me busy today.

The Last Ride.

It may well have been my last motorcycle ride, ever. I've got a bum hip, now - three Lowes Hardware Department lag screws in my femur (that's what they look like on x-rays; I've seen them). I couldn't find ANYONE to move the bike for me, so against medical advice, I did it myself this morning.

It was successful in that I didn't get hurt. But it got me thinking...when I was 19, my boss at the village DPW, a 50-year-old guy, actually quite a go-getter...after losing weight and crediting it to proper diet, he found he had the Big C. And he went fast. That July he had to go into the VA hospital for treatment - he knew, and his family knew, he wasn't coming back. He wanted to ride his Harley in, the 75 miles to the hospital. His daughter and son-in-law followed. He went in, they did what they did, and he was gone in a week.

It was touching that he opted to make that ride, through both dairy-farm country and congested city streets, to the hospital.

But for the gods, I think. In 1977, it was Eldon. In 2024, it is me.

I tried to write a short story on it. It is Eldon's story. It is my story. It is fiction and it is universal Truth.

A late update.

I intended an update to my old Christmas saga...Laramie...but I ran dry. Why? Because I write what I know. I KNOW, the experiences of my four or more short stories. I have lived through them - the train accidents, the anomie of the opening of my not-yet abandoned novel.

I intended a story of what happens to an older Valerie, as she, and her man - mirroring what Ernie/Me experienced - come across in street chaos. Going home to her mother's new nest, Ernie's father's Terre Haute holding.

I couldn't make it work. Man, there was good stuff there - imagine me, pulling a sawed-off on a meth-driven burglar, only to find the perp was daughter Valerie's man, using her defective key to try to open the door. He throws hands up, breaks the railing, goes over the edge...while redheaded Valerie, sizes it up instantly with withering sarcasm. Me, with the shotgun, pulls hands apart. The shotgun goes clattering into the snow..

Merry Christmas, kids.

Only problem is, unlike train wrecks, or even medical issues (The Last Ride) it hasn't happened to me. I'm showing a massive blind-spot or inability to improvise.

Casey Jones said:

... I'm showing a massive blind-spot or inability to improvise.

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I guess this is the issue that causes many writers/artists to use drugs to spark the creative fountain.

Frank Herbert - Dune said:

Without change, something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.

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pmbug said:

I guess this is the issue that causes many writers/artists to use drugs to spark the creative fountain.

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I think of Stephen King. When we were both younger, I admired his wordsmithing. A true talent - that he lost with time.

"Carrie" was not his high-water mark. That came later...but "Carrie" opened the door for him.

It almost wound up as paper waste. His wife - who I'd read it suggested, actually wrote his later works, I believe it...style is a giveaway...but, he sat drunk in his studio, having discarded 40 typewritten sheets that were the opening. Miz Tabitha read them, while King was passed out, and said, this isn't garbage. It's a good start to a good first draft.

It is not abandoned.

I have had some tough personal times. Recently, I've been able to stick my head in the zippered pillowcase that seems to be my muse.

Moar coming.

Given my lack of productivity, who knows - I may have to move this to another venue. No, nobody has been bothering me...thanks, Mr Bug and staff...

Maybe we are just being patient and polite ……….

I have not been very communicative in recent weeks. Lots of people I probably should have contacted before during and after Christmas but for some unknown reason, I chose not to. And kinda hibernating rather than doing things that need doing .

Think something changed at the last new moon though and I am being more proactive. Trail motorcycle just sorted and back on the road, electric assist mountain bike getting used a couple of times a week, car annual test now done , small excavator and 3 tonne dumper both working and on the button, chainsaw finally working after special tool to adjust hi / low running turned up and tree work for next winter now under way .

Others I have chatted to have had similar experiences these last few weeks n months .
Maybe it’s the DJT show that has created this strange situation between election and releasing the DOGE ?

Okay. As promised, some updates.

I have been doing some sporadic work, last couple of weeks. I started "working" (mentally plotting) while hiking the Grand Canyon.

I have some starts. In no order. I'm developing the character of my Texas car-thief hero as he tries to fit into a backwoods Peyton Place.

As to when it will be coherent...I'm still gonna try Substack. But why don't you just figure out how? Time constraints. Right after I posted on that other thread, I had a call...I'm trying to sell my truck, and a prospect wanted to see it. Like, right now. Because, she said, that was the time she had.

It was a fine time for me, too, except that I had other fooling-around planned. No matter...maybe she'll buy; maybe not. We found an error on my title (mileage at issuance was not stamped on the title) and the prospect is understandably suspicious.

But that's another story. I have two chunks - the ride into my protagonist's future, as he is in a welcome-aboard meeting for the summer hires; and...what I call, War and Peace and Crime and Punishment.

Put them up here because, who knows, maybe they'll never be published anywhere else.

Well, I can’t find you on substack so perhaps you’ve hidden your words here ………