will tinkham: July 2013

Monday, July 15, 2013

On Bastille Day

So I'm sitting at my desk yesterday, nearly evening, having had a very productive day. I look out occasionally at the gathering crowd outside my window but the live music fails to raise me from my chair. Suddenly a shrill, obnoxious voice announces the next band: THE SUICIDE COMMANDOS!!! They start in on “Sixteen Tons” and in no time—so fast I leave a KitKat melting on my dictionary—this recluse is not only across the street but 30-35 years back in time. The Longhorn Bar, a Speed Wiener show at the Keystone in Palo Alto, X-Boys shows at the Uptown. Something about a Chris Osgood guitar solo—standing on a milk crate to be seen—can get even me out of the apartment. Happy Bastille Day!

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IF I LIE IN A COMBAT ZONE

Ordered to inspect a suspected Viet Cong tunnel in November of 1968, Private Walt Whitman von Funck crawls inside and falls in love. And rips a hole in his foot. IF I LIE IN A COMBAT ZONE finds Zow spending eight months nursing him back to health, while her brother and grandfather conduct midnight raids and accumulate prisoners, including a general. ¶ During his convalescence, Walt and Zow wed; theirs is a love story that defies race, religion and military red tape. Upon his return to Chu Lai Air Base with his pregnant wife and six prisoners, Stars and Stripes declares Walt a hero. Awards follow. And plans for a Medal of Honor ceremony with President Nixon. ¶ Till a U.S. Army doctor declares the foot wound to be self-inflicted. ¶ Hailed, then jailed—repeatedly—Walt becomes a favorite of the anti-war crowd and a thorn in Nixon's side. Walt accepts offers to speak on college campuses. Protests involving gunfire and bombings become routine. It's almost as if they are targeting him.

FALLING DOWN UMBRELLA MAN

What do Merle Haggard, Lee Harvey Oswald and Ken Kesey have in common? More than just some jail time, each had a hand in leading a young man astray. That young fellow—stupid, vain, irresponsible, yet somehow still arrogant as hell—left behind a string of women and failed jobs before planning that one big score that would immortalize the name of Danny Coover. Well, D.B. Cooper—the airline, then each arm of the media, all misfired on his name. After trusting only the man he thought to be his father, then a drill sergeant who turned out to be a bigger—and more successful—crook than Danny, the disgraced Army paratrooper takes his failures and frustrations to the sky—only to have misfortune continue in FALLING DOWN UMBRELLA MAN.

The Miracles

Brinda Miracle (not her real name) steals out of Redding, Connecticut in the spring of 1911 in charge of an orphan train. Though an accredited nurse and teacher, Brinda is fleeing trumped-up allegations stemming from the crib death of a baby in her care as a nanny.

An orphan herself, Brinda arrives at an orphaned orphanage in St. Paul, Minnesota with three children still in her care: Nicholas, twelve, with special needs and special talents—most notably those of a pickpocket; Maxine, eight, with seemingly no need for anyone and no discernible talent; and Zane, six, whose amber eyes instill fear in those who fail to look deeper.

The Miracles (Americana #7) is an historical crime satire set in a gangster haven which welcomed criminals into St. Paul as long as they didn't commit crimes in St. Paul. The novel follows the four orphans as they are welcomed into a neighborhood which features Nina Clifford's fashionable whorehouse on one side and the Bucket of Blood Saloon down the block. Brinda and the children grow into their own niches to survive amid Prohibition Era corruption while dabbling in a little bootlegging of their own through the early years of the Great Depression.

The Cary Grant Sanatorium and Playhouse - A disgraced Hollywood starlet, Donna Darling, and two-time German Army deserter, Séamus von Funck, meet in 1942 at an idyllic Ohio home for unwed mothers—or a Nazi abortion slaughterhouse, depending on whom you talk to. Their love endures despite the efforts of a power-hungry congressman, an overzealous religious tabloid, and Donna's Hollywood past. (Psst, it includes Cary Grant.) They prevail despite Séamus being a suspected Nazi spy and America's first prisoner of the second World War—and also the first to escape.

THE GREAT AMERICAN SCRAPBOOK

Set in motion during George W. Bush's “Mission Accomplished” speech of May 1, 2003 and culminating on Election Night '04, THE GREAT AMERICAN SCRAPBOOK (Americana #5) follows more important issues like Brock McCoy falling in love, the perils of three fictional Minneapolis rock 'n' roll bands, and two long-lost relatives' efforts to maintain the historical significance of a newspaper woman murdered in the 1920s.

Brock, 31, lives in his mother's basement. Newly returned from Toronto, he stumbles into a gig as bass player in an all-female rock band—and must dress the part. He falls in love with Jenna on lead guitar. Back home, he does what he can to ease the burden on his sister Nancy and her Gulf War I-related PTSD, as well as comfort his mother and her back that just won't heal. On a table in the basement is an old scrapbook that Brock helps Peaches--Nancy's caregiver--try to turn into something publishable.

While Grace, the murdered scribe, wrote unflinchingly about war, racism and religion, Brock flinches often as he comes to grips with the fact that nothing's really changed.

For Hank, Sam never became Mark Twain. As a riverboat pilot, Sam saved young Hank from the crushing paddle wheels as the boy stowed away on the City of Memphis. Sam returned Hank to Minnesota when news reached downriver that Hank's mother was on trial for killing the father Hank had run away from. Years later, in a barber's chair prior to his mother's funeral, Hank reads a frog story that's awful close to a tall tale Sam once told. The magazine claims it's written by a fellow named Mark Twain.

The Adventures of Hank Fenn sends Hank searching the West—and then the East—for Mr. Twain. All along he and Sam exchange letters and make plans that never seem to get them together—Twain always on the road or abroad. Hank does find hatred and brutality while railroading and mining throughout this new frontier. He finds Calamity Jane in a Wyoming mining camp and Custer breaking treaties. He finds the Emperor of these United States. Ultimately Hank finds love, boys to raise and gold to unearth on a Black Hills mountaintop.

Three reviews.

Bonus Man

BONUS MAN is an offbeat literary novel, a picaresque—CANDIDE climbs the lighter side of COLD MOUNTAIN, perhaps—that explores the life of Adam “Bonus Man” Bonifacius, former Great War medic and participant in the Bonus Army March of 1932: a gathering of veterans in Washington D.C. protesting bonuses promised but not paid; a march turned back by the U.S. Government with tanks and tear gas. Bonus Man hits the road determined to find a way into medical school—the bonus would've done the trick—and maybe a little revenge along the way.

The thing about revenge is, well, he's just not very good at it. He is good at removing bullets, a skill acquired under fire during the war and put into practice when a moonshining raid leaves a federal agent with a slug in his gut and later when Bonus Man runs smack into a John Dillinger prison break—leading to a gunpoint invitation to stay on as sawbones to the gang. It may not be medical school but it's certainly an education.

And Bonus Man falls in love. Twice. If that doesn't complicate things enough, the FBI has an agent on his trail who is convinced not only of Bonus Man's complicity in the Dillinger escape but also in the Lindbergh kidnapping.

A review. And another. Excerpts in 2016 & 2015 Saint Paul Almanac.

THE FIRST TWO:

My second novel, NO HAPPIER STATE, is now available in paperback & Kindle here. Amazon review. And one more. NHS is available on Radio Talking Book. It goes like this:

While the menfolk carve Mount Rushmore above, Pêche Appleton sells her own tiny sculptures to the Depression-era onlookers below. Some find them offensive, particularly Taft-Stuck-in-a-Bathtub, the Cancan-Dancing-Presidents, and the whole Jefferson-and-the-Slave-Girl series. Pêche is married to Ernie, star shortstop for the town team, and NO HAPPIER STATE is their story of love, small town scandal and national political outrage.

Their love is at first sight when they're twelve. The scandal revolves around the baby. The outrage involves their friends: Steinke, a German-born Jew, sent to an internment camp because the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor and Bad Glove Hand, a Lakota Sioux, heads for Hollywood only to be blacklisted as a Communist—but not before implicating actor Ronald Reagan in the same plot.

Despite their own personal burdens—and the Depression and a World War—love and friendship prevail in NO HAPPIER STATE (Americana #2).

(Excerpts of NHS have appeared in About Place Journal, Fieldstone Review and D-Day 68th Anniversary Anthology.)

ALICE & HER GRAND BELL (Americana #1) Kindle & paperback available at Amazon.

It tells concurrent stories of two families—unwittingly related—and several eras. It goes like this: At the brink of the first Gulf War, 18-year-old Brock dreads his sister's deployment in the Gulf while he seeks answers for twin brothers lost to Vietnam. Instead, he discovers his father's secret about dodging World War II and a legendary family Civil War hero is exposed as no more than a deserter. The parallel story deals with Grace—born of the rape of her mother by that same Yankee deserter—and her family's journey through the South's Reconstruction. Grace grows from teenage baseball writer to venerable whistle-blower—fighting for Woman's Suffrage and the Cincinnati Reds, and against the Indiana KKK and most everything else.

Even an Amazon review. And another. And still another.

Short stories:

"Continuous Track"

Skive Magazine (Oct 2018)

"Why Ain't You a Doc?" (novel excerpt)
2016 Saint Paul Almanac: A Ten-Year Retrospective

"Why Ain't You a Doc?" (novel excerpt)
2015 Saint Paul Almanac

"The Difference"
Skive Magazine: Farewell

"The War Effort" (novel excerpt)
mgv2_71: Golf

"Sculps" (novel excerpt)
About Place Journal

"The Only Good Indian" (novel excerpt)
The Fieldstone Review

"Beginning of the End" (novel excerpt)
D-Day 68th Anniversary Anthology

"Visitor, 1969" (novel excerpt)
mgv2_69: Fifty Stars & a Maple Leaf

"We're Not in Love"
a small, good magazine

"Roses"
Wilderness House Literary Review

"Christmas in Prison"
shaking like a mountain.com

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Monday, July 15, 2013

On Bastille Day

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