OFF TOPIC AGAIN!

RS is a good friend.  We went to High School together.  We’ve stayed in touch over the years.  Recently he had some medical issues; heart problems, artery blockage, and just recently a stroke.  He’d paid premiums to an insurance company for disability insurance and they denied his claim .  The poor guy can’t TALK.  That’s right; the operations have turned him mute.  Plus RS needs a cane to be biped.  I’ve posted this on my Blogs and hope others will do the same.  RS needs some justice!

Dear, Bob

I got a letter from the insurance company denying my disability claim. They swept the fact that I couldn't talk under the table. They had three pages of what I could do and one line about not being able to talk as if that were not important. They told me that I would have to complain to Wells Fargo if I didn't like their decision. I'm going to complain to Wells Fargo to try to get this corrected. Looks like it is going to be a battle. I paid for the coverage, however, so I plan on getting the benefit. I've been told that you have to fight for the benefits and I plan to do just that.

As I think you know, I lost my voice after returning to work for a week. One vocal cord was paralyzed after the cleaning out of the vein in my neck. They had put in some gel foam to make the vocal cord be able to stand up so I could talk but it didn't last long. Odds are good that the nerve which operates the vocal cord will come back after about 10 months. We are now six months into that program but now I've had a stroke too.

In the meantime I've had a stroke and can't remember worth a darn and can't walk without a cane. The insurance company said they are starting a new claim starting with the time of the stroke and thereafter. The state or county is supposed to be sending someone over to help me with the claims process but I haven't seen anyone yet. The insurance company is saying that they are looking into it which I don't believe at this point in time. It seems like they are playing the old good guy/bad guy game. The good guy calls and tells you he is going to help. He then turns around and gives the information you gave him to the bad guy to use against you.

The doctor is not optimistic about me being able to do home loans in the future as I am having trouble remembering stuff including his name from one day to the next. My heart is out of sync and they are afraid that I'll die if they stop it and try to restart it to get it beating right. In the meantime I'm at risk of throwing another clot because it is out of beat and irregular. It's not good. Because of the heart being out of rhythm, I don't have any energy either. They are thinning my blood to try to help. I see another cardiologist next week. Hope he has an answer.

I think the heart got out of rhythm when they did the angiogram prior to the cleaning out of the aorta in my neck. They wanted to put in a stent to give me better circulation and I died on the table. They got my heart beating again but it was out of rhythm and has been ever since which puts me in a high risk of having strokes.

The good news is that I have gotten my hands working so I can type again.

They make movies about shit like this.  Copy this blog post and send it to the State of Oregon Insurance Commissioner.  Better yet, find the direct number and call them!

LET’S TALK TENSES

Just writing about this subject makes me tense!  Oops, bad joke.

All of my novels are written in the third person, as the omniscient observer.  One of my old drinking buddies, Edward Abbey, told me that a first person novel was almost impossible to get published. I’ll go so far to say he was right.  We were friends but usually on the opposite poles of philosophy.  I was a cattle rancher when we met and he was the guru of Earth First. Somehow we let those differences slide and he coached me on my first novel, OIL SPILL.

Since those early days I’ve been fortunate to hang with some authors and screenwriters of note; Werner Egli, Dutch Salmon, Ed Peterson, John Nichols, and Michael Blake.  I lifted ideas from all of them.  I’ve experimented with first and third person – ALASKA BE DAMNED & BOOMER. I have a character on stage; speaking in the first person in REVOLUTION OF FOOLS.  Should I choose to rewrite Crystal Cowboy, I would structure it like BOOMER; key characters being on stage in first person prior to a new chapter.  Those few people that read BOOMER have all given it five stars.

Screenplays are written in the present tense; like you’re writing an instruction manual for a smart phone.

EXAMPLE; Curtis lays his hat on the table and balls his fist.

That same sentence in 3^rd person would read; Curtis laid his hat on the table and balled his fist.

I’m converting all six of my screenplays into novels; it’s double difficult.  Even though the story is already outlined; conversion is a tough job.  I take my hat off to Larry McMurtry.  He wrote LONESOME DOVE originally as a screenplay.  It didn’t sell for a number of years so he rewrote it into a novel and won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

I’m twenty-five thousand words into a novel that represents page sixty of a one hundred-twenty page screenplay.  One would assume I’ll have a fifty thousand word novel when I finish, right?  Nope, to make this novel proper, I’m taking two screenplays and laying them together.  They’re both prequels to PARTNERS, the book I took on tour with Michael Blake.  My intentions are to write the four Curtis & RC screenplays into a trilogy of decent sized novels.  In between I’m writing the third in the Jimmy Hart series.  MURDER IN PANAMA has been published, REVOLUTION OF FOOLS is at the editor and HART RULES is fully outlined.  I’m currently in the research stage.  BURN SCARS, the fourth in the series is just a broad brush outline.

Sliding between all these projects are the postings to my two blogs and the promotion of all my work. 

The other day a friend of mine asked me what I’ve been up to.  I told her via Google chat that I’d written five thousand words of my new novel in the last three days.  Her response was – SO WHAT?

That renders down to big deal or ho-hum.  Her response was like a kick in the head; I realized not everyone sees achievement in writing.  Since this blog is about writing and publishing, I assume I have an audience that appreciates the efforts involved to create a novel that sells for 99 cents to $2.99.

If not -- SO WHAT?