September 24, 2013

 In this post, as part of my continuation of my extended introduction if you will, I'll chat a bit about  my creative nonfiction story telling. Besides novels, I also tell stories that arise more directly out of my life. Of course, all the stories one tells arise from the well of experience of one's life to some extent. For example, the Nerve City High School that Waldo Prospect attends in my novel, Between Us and Spiritland, reflects the Van Nuys High School that I attended in my callow youth, and the apartment that he lives in on Chandler Blvd. reflects the apartment that I lived  in on that same street when I was Waldo's age.  But the veil of fiction disguises these and other facts from my life experience, and I have no hesitation in embellishing them. Memoir, however, makes no bones about such camouflage, and the writer of memoir tries his/her hardest not to embellish too much.  That said, even creative nonfiction, even memoir, for the sake of the story and because one's memory can't help but be faulty, can't help but shade the truth more or less sometimes. It's in that grey-skied "more or less" that determines where the border of fiction or nonfiction lie, and the writers of  stories, the mapmakers of these borders, need to be more or less scrupulous, too.

 I'll say more about the "truth" of fiction versus the "truth" of nonfiction in a later post.  For now, allow me to present you with what is perhaps my best known piece of creative nonfiction, a story called "Winter Count, 1964." It originally appeared in Brevity, a wonderful  zine  of short creative nonfiction. After that, the story was reprinted in the magazine that the great editor Lee Gutkind' publishes, Creative Nonfiction, arguably the most respected and best known of the growing number of magazines that are devoted to the genre. From there, "Winter Count, 1964" was reprinted in the popular reader for college composition courses, Literature: The Human Experience (Reading and Writing). So "Winter Count, 1964" has led a good life in print so far, I'm delighted to say. The title of the story refers to the histories or calendars in which events were recorded by pictures, or pictographs, with one picture for a memorable event that occurred in a given year. Such calendars were kept by citizens of some of the nations that arose on the great plains of North America, such as the Lakota Sioux (If you're interested in finding out more about winter counts, The Smithsonian Institution has created a lovely exhibit about them, which you can find at <http://wintercounts.si.edu/index.html>).  At any rate, here's "Winter Count, 1964" as it originally appeared in Issue 19 of Brevity:  

 

 

Winter Count, 1964

By Stuart Lishan


When Sherri Luna rammed Jerry Kruger’s crew cut head into the handball court wall at Kester Avenue Elementary School on February 15, 1964, I knew she loved him, a swirling, butch, embarrassed sort of love that denied itself even as it was expressed. She loved him the way a 9-year-old, beefy-ankled, white-socked, scuffed-up saddle-shoed, Valley girl chicana loves a drawly, red-necked, red-haired, red-freckled, cracker son of a Pentecostal preacher from Oklahoma who wouldn’t let his kid slow dance in Miss Arlington’s A4 class, not because Miss Arlington was a wafer-thin woman with a 2-foot-high beehive hairdo that made her look like an alien from some planet of white-porcelain doll people with blood-red lips and fingernails long and sharp as steak knives, but because Jerry’s preacher pa didn’t believe 9-year-olds, much less anybody, should be cradling one another’s bodies in their arms and breathing softly on their necks as they swayed to music. Nosiree, Sherri Luna didn’t love Jerry that way, the slow dance, fandango way, where holding someone close is as sweet and natural as lying on your back in the back yard watching the clouds and letting the sunlight kiss your cheek, but she loved him just the same. I knew it when I first saw her rub her body up against Jerry’s blue jeans as she slugged him in the arm by the water fountain the first day he came to class that winter. Plus, she didn’t want to slow dance, not because she didn’t believe in it, but because she was constitutionally against any request that curled out of Miss Arlington’s pouty lips.

“Just do it, honey.”

“No.”

“Please?”

“No, I said!”

So, “Ka-Chunk,” went Jerry’s head, cradled in Sherri’s gentle headlock when Miss Arlington was putting a scratchy waltz on the mono record player that Ricky LaConte had lugged out onto the playground after lunch. Ricky, a fat kid who liked to have us punch his stomach in the boys’ room until his bubbly flesh was filled with blotches like lesions, liked to do such favors, his arm shooting up like a rocket ship out of its socket every time Miss Arlington asked with those pouty lips just who would like to do this or that for her. And that’s a sort of love, too, don’t get me wrong, only it wasn’t Sherri Luna’s sort of love. She needed to touch the someone she loved, even if she didn’t understand what the yearning in her heart was asking her 9-year-old body to do.

So, “Ka-Chunk.”

I was breathing my face into Melinda Coates’ blond ringlets, getting hairs twisted in my glasses’ hinges and imagining myself in heaven and then feeling embarrassed for even thinking such a slack-brained thing as that when I heard it.

“Ka-Chunk,” echoing into the mauve plastic handball court wall that rose out of the blacktop playground surrounded by bungalows, chain-link fence, and honeysuckle rustling in the winter breeze like our breaths on one another’s necks as we danced.

“Ka-Chunk.”

“That was fun,” Jerry laughed. “Do it again,” with again drawled out so long, so slow, that it slobbered and dribbled out of his mouth into a dopey-grinned, three-syllabled, shrieky a-gaaa-in.

“Do it a-gaaa-in.”

Poor Ricky. He was right next to me, swaying sort of sad-like, out of time and out of step with Louise Dolan. He wanted to be in that headlock, too, I guess. Maybe he thought that the bumps on his forehead would go with the blotches on his stomach. I don’t know, but I know this. Sheri would have none of him. Ricky wasn’t Jerry in any way, shape, or form, and Sherri Luna loved Jerry. That was that, end of the story. We were dancing that Strauss waltz you hear in 2001 when the ship docks with the space station, and I swear I saw her gently bend over as pretty as you please and nibble out a tongue-licked hickey on that sun-burnt, freckly red neck of his when she thought no one was looking. We stared and stared. Not even the creamy touch of Melinda Coates could keep me from it. No one in Miss Arlington’s A4 class in 1964 had ever seen such a thing.

And then she counted to three. And then she did it again.

And then she did it again. And I swear she didn’t miss a beat, not a one, not a single one.

 

                                                                ***

I had a vague idea, which I still hold, of writing other winter count stories, for other years of my life. "Winter Count, 1964" is the only one I've finished so far. Novels, poems, and other writing projects have intervened have kept me from returning to this idea, but I still hold hope.  I'll keep you posted if other winter count stories arise. In the meantime, I  hope  you've enjoyed this one. Until next time,

Be well and write well.

 

SL

September 17, 2013

In my last post I talked my first YA novel, The Flowering Hands of the Borealis. In this post I thought I'd chat a bit about my latest one, Between Us and Spiritland, another YA speculative fiction novel (complete at 86,000 words). The title of the book is taken from Sir. Arthur Conan Doyle, from his book on spiritualism, The New Revelation. Here's the full quote, which is also the epigraph for my novel:

          All agree that life beyond is for a limited period, after which they pass on to yet other phases,  
          but apparently there is more communication between these phases than there is between us and
          Spiritland.

I think it's an interesting fact that the creator of the scientific-minded and hyper-logical Sherlock Holmes would have been such a fierce advocate of spiritualism. My novel posits the story of how that interest was initially born and how it grew, through the time-traveling visit of a fifteen-year old boy from the late 20th Century named Waldo Prospect. I've been sending out a few queries to agents recently and here's the part of it that talks about what Between Us and Spiritland is about (and I would be remiss if I didn't say I owe Katie Wright, who manages the "Submissions Mailbox" group on the social media site for YA authors, YALITCHAT, a huge debt of thanks for her help in crafting this part of my query) 

A ghost is talking to fifteen-year old Waldo Prospect. Since their father disappeared a year ago it’s always been his older sister, in what Waldo calls her “psycho-nutso trances,” who talks to spooks, not Waldo. Never Waldo. So he finds it pretty weird when a ghost of a 5^th-Century Chinese explorer pops into his life to tell him that only he can save his father from some dude named Calibane, and, oh yeah, no pressure, the fate of Spiritland depends on it.

Waldo’s never heard of Calibane, and he certainly doesn’t know how to find him. He’s getting nowhere fast, just one more disappointment added to his ever-growing list: missing father, sister who hates his guts, depressed mother, new school in which he’s treated like a total loser, and a gorgeously hot girl, Melinda Chemise, who doesn’t even know he exists. So it’s just another day in paradise when bullies stuff Waldo into a locker. Then the walls fall away and he finds himself falling… into the past, 1893, 1610, and 1270, to be exact. Waldo’s finally getting somewhere, but where exactly he’s not sure. With the help of Arthur Conan Doyle, Madame Curie, and William Shakespeare, Waldo puts together clues that his father has left him and discovers why he was hiding out in the future of 1970, as well as why spirits are so freaked out by his disappearance. But only Waldo can face down the real psycho-nutso case, the renegade sorcerer Calibane, and maybe screw up enough courage to ask out Melinda Chemise.  

 With its smart-kid/smart-aleck humor, patches of dramatic lyricism, and conflicted characters, I think Between Us and Spiritland will appeal to readers of books like Lev Grossman’s The Magicians. To give you a taste, here's the first chapter (Tell me is you agree):

 

 

Chapter 1: Los Angeles, September 23, 1970

My sister Polly is talking to ghosts again.

            I get home from school, grab a glass of juice and an apple, and I’m lugging them with my book bag back to my room to start digging in on my chemistry homework, when I hear her. It’s hard not to in this crummy apartment. The walls are so thin you could hear a flea fart through them.

            “It’s called ‘The Door.’ I hope you like it.” Even though she’s three years older than me, Polly is talking in that breathy little girl’s voice of hers that she has when she wants something. I mean, she’s just turned eighteen, but it’s like she’s reverted back to her stupid ten-year old self again. This can’t be good, I think, as I stand in the hallway shadows in front of her bedroom door. I hear her bedspread rustle; then she begins:

                        There is a door.

                        It is a wooden door,

                        a door made of wood.

                        Am I the door, I wonder,

                        as I walk through the door,

this wooden door,

                        this door made of wood?

On the other side I look up.
There are stars in the sky

in the shape of a door!

            I gag on the piece of apple in my mouth. I swear, Polly writes the dreariest sounding poems in the whole universe of dreary sounding poems. They’re about as moving as a centipede wearing concrete overshoes shoved into a bucket full of glue.

            “Polly? You okay?” I say through the door, the wooden door, the door made of wood that is definitely NOT myself. Then I chuckle. I can’t help it.  

            “Shut up, Waldo, you little shit! I’m busy!”

            “Okay, okay. I was just asking.”

            I hear the bedspread rustle again and the metallic tinkle of wind chimes that sound what I imagine fairy bells would sound like if there were ever fairies and if fairies had bells. I walk into the living room and look out the patio door. The wind chimes are gone. They used to hang over the lime tree that shades the balcony. Mom won’t notice they’re gone for like another month or so, and Dad’s not around anyway, so it’s cool, I guess. They were just a gift I bought for them two Christmases ago at Winter Fair. Who cares, right? I walk back to stand in front of Polly’s door and rip a bite out of my apple.

            “Oh, Hui Shan, you shouldn’t say that,” Polly says. “It’s not that great a poem.”

            Hui Shan is this ghost that Polly’s been talking to the last few days. I mean, she’s been talking to a lot of spooks since our dad disappeared a year ago, but lately it’s all been Hui Shan. Polly says he was like this Buddhist monk explorer in the 5^th Century or something. Maybe it’s true, but how should I know? I can’t hear ghosts like she can, or claims to, when she’s in her psycho-nutso trances or whatever the hell they are. They all sound like a bunch of loopy one-sided conversations to me, until today.

I mean, it certainly doesn’t sound like my whiny old sister in there. Her voice has turned into a raspy whisper that sounds like an old rusty swing or a gate swaying back and forth in the wind. Her voice is kind of lonely like that, and it’s speaking in broken, stilted English, as if Hui Shan has to think about framing each syllable before he utters it. Maybe ghosts don’t talk a lot where he comes from.

            “No,    so    true,    what    you    say,   Polly.    And    you   read    with   such    sweet    voice.    Like    nightingales    I   remember,   in   garden    of    Zu Chong-zhi     long    ago.   And    your    skin    so    soft.    Here,    I   touch,   like   baby   bird.”

            Is Polly touching her privates for a horny old spook? Next thing she’ll be doing lap dances for him and he’ll be stuffing ghost dollar bills into her underwear. I burst open the door.

Polly is sitting on her bedspread in candlelight, fully clothed, touching that little stretch of peach fuzz on her upper lip with one hand and holding the wind chimes with the other, gently tinkling them. But her upper body is rigid, like she’s had a seizure or something. This is new. Usually I just see Polly as her stupid old Polly self, staring into space, talking in her stupid old Polly voice into thin air. I’ve never seen this seizure thing before. Still, her arm is loose, and she winds up and wings the wind chimes at me. Most of Polly’s head might be lost in Hui Shan, but the reptile reflexes in the part of her brain that controls her body are all hers. I duck and the chimes sail into the hall and knock our dad’s photo off the wall. Orange juice sloshes onto my hand. I throw my apple at Polly.    
            “Hey!” I cry.

“Waldo       Little    Shrit    I    meet   you    finally.”

“No, Waldo,” I say, “just Waldo.” My half-eaten apple lies in Polly’s lap, as she blinks at me through almond-shaped eyes. It’s like my sister has been possessed and turned into a 5^th Century Chinese ghost before my eyes.

            “Ah,    Little    Shrit    No    Just   Waldo. I    look    so    long. We   talk,   yes?”

            I have to read about the law of conservation of mass for Mr. Drum’s class, but it’s like not every day you get to talk to a ghost. “Sure, man,” I say, licking orange juice off my knuckles. “What do you want to know?”

“Little    Shrit    No    Just    Waldo,   please    come.    Here.    1.   2.   7.   0.  Queen.    Califia.    Court.   Aril   need   you.    Your    father...”  Hui Shan pauses. His voice is getting fainter now, like it’s being squeezed out of Polly like toothpaste from a tube. “Help    her,” he continues, “Calibane    bad.” When he says that name the last part sounds like “bonnie,” “Calibane,    he    very    bad.    Aril...”

I see tears beading up on Polly’s cheeks. You wouldn’t notice them except for a slight glistening. Polly is sitting ramrod straight, cross-legged on her green denim bedspread, words plunking out of her mouth in a wheezy whisper. “You   only   one,   Little    Shrit.    Little.    Shrit.    You    only    one…”

Then Polly gets up, walks over to me, and stands so close that I can almost feel her breath. It’s like the closeness-I-dream-about-with-Melinda-Chemise-in-the-moment-just-before-I kiss-her close, but it’s my own sister! “Yuck!” I think, but it’s like a squared-to-the-thirtieth-power kind of yuck, and I’m about to turn away and retreat to my room, when Polly stops me. She takes my hand and uses my forefinger to rub off the glistening that is coursing down her face and then gently rubs it onto my cheek. This is definitely not the reptile part of Polly’s brain that hates me. This must be Hui Shan, who proceeds to lean down and kiss me where his ghostly tears dissolve into my skin. My yucky feelings dissolve like bathtub water swirling down a drain.

The kiss is gentle, but it tingles, too, sort of like when you put a SweetTart mixed with 7 Up on your tongue. I step back in surprise. More juice sloshes out of my glass, and I drop my book bag as I bump into Polly’s dresser. I can feel the tears branching out, all moist and sweet and clingy. And for a moment there seems a veil, like a piece of lace laid over my eyes. I see a crowd of shadow people beyond it, all crammed into Polly’s room. These must be ghosts, I think.

I mean, they look like people, but they’re so faint, a huddled mass of faces, each one covered in what looks like a hoodie or a boxer’s robe, but it’s only for a few seconds, and then they’re gone, the ghostly shadow people, the veil, Hui Shan – all gone. I can tell because Polly straightens up and looks at me, her face twisted in disgust, like she’s just realized that she’s licked a pile of dog poop. But I can still see a trace of a tear coursing down her face, though her eyes are in their normal roundness now.

Still, I know that tear isn’t hers, but Hui Shan’s. I think about what he said. He mentioned Aril before he mentioned my dad, and then he didn’t mention him again. “Help her,” he said, not “help them.” Would helping the one help me find the other? I don’t know, and Hui Shan is gone. All that’s left of him is this one last tear.

“Hui Shan,” I say to myself. “Hui Shan!”

 

I hope you've liked what you've read so far of Between Us and Spiritland.   

 

Until next time,

 

be well and write well,

 

 

S.D. Lishan

 

September 13, 2013

Since my last post emphasized the poetry side of my writing life, I thought I'd take this opportunity to extend my introduction and say a bit about myself as a writer of fiction. This post will be about my first novel.

The Flowering Hands of the Borealis, a YA novel complete at 75,000 words, is about auras, aura pirates, and the race of witches called lightseeders who can channel the light of the borealis that surrounds their planet, both to kill aura pirates and to heal those whose auras they have ripped away. Its protagonist is a sixteen-year old girl named Mia. With her mother, the lightseeder Stara, far away fighting aura pirates on behalf of the federation of planets of which Earth is a part, Mia is the last of the line on the planet Lemulas. And when the most fierce and famous of the aura pirates, Austere, is smuggled into the capital, where he and his men begin to feast on the auras of the underclass population on Lemulas, called strugglers, it's up to Mia to stop them. Only thing, she's not ready yet, not by a long shot.

To give you a taste of the novel, here's the first subchapter from Chapter 1, which is entitled "Mia and Non":

So Many of Them, So Little of Me 

They were almost beautiful.

Non could almost admire the three shadowy figures coming toward him, how they leapt into the air as if catapulted over the slums of Purge. Once in flight they stretched their wings, not so much to fly, but rather, like hawks riding thermals of air, to glide. When they settled down at last, their pellucid wings extending like parasails before they folded them into their backs, the figures looked like pieces of cinder fluttering to the ground. One leap, two leaps, three, and they were fluttering down upon Non.

The one with a scar that stretched from his left ear to his chin landed closest to him. Non watched him take in the scene, first the car with its motor still running, its doors flung open, then the three figures lying in the alley – a struggler girl of around five, shorn of her aura; a woman wearing a white senatorial robe, a kif blade sticking in her throat; and one of the winged, shadowy creatures, like the ones who had just landed, lying beside her – and then his eyes passed over Non, who stood in the middle of them all, alone, trying to keep his knees from knocking together as he stood ungainly in a fighting stance.

The other two aura pirates quickly circled behind Non, but the one with the scar took his time. Calmly, as if he was on holiday strolling along a beach, he walked over to his dead comrade. He paid particular attention to the burn marks about his wounds. Then he made his way to the little girl. He nudged her with his foot, knelt down, and pulled off a bit of her aura still stuck to her hair. He licked it off his finger as if it was a piece of cotton candy. Then he looked at the woman, Aria Crinklelit. Non imagined him thinking, yes, this is the one who killed my comrade, not this boy shivering like a leaf in front of me. Non watched him kneel down and pull the kif from Aria’s throat, then wipe the blood from the blade onto her robe. Only then did he turn and face Non.

Non had never seen such pitiless eyes before. Even citizens who hated strugglers looked at him with at least some recognition that he was someone akin to themselves. But these eyes were different, cold, black stones whose only depths were of hunger.

“You show little respect to an invited guest. Gutted was one of my best men.”

His voice sounded like someone walking over gravel, but Non understood exactly what he had said.

“Is this how you repay us for the honor of imbibing your light?” He pointed to the little girl. “See how peaceful she looks?” He took a step closer to Non.

Non felt transfixed by those eyes, but he forced himself to jumpstart his mind. Two aura pirates stood behind him; the one with the scar stood in front of him, within an arm’s length now. A concrete wall stood to his right. To his left there ran another wall, this one composed of corrugated metal and wood, remnants of work-yard fences and the windowless backs of low-slung shacks. The aura pirates would drag him down from behind before he could even reach them. And where were the people, Non wondered. This was Purge. Crowded, dusty, dirty, grimy Purge. But he could see no one, hear no one. It was as if the fear of the shadows had scoured away the people. I will die here, Non thought. I will die here in this alley in Purge alongside Aria Crinklelit.
            It was then that he screamed. He screamed for his murdered father. He screamed for his mother. He screamed for his hopelessness. He screamed because he didn’t know what else to do. His screams echoed up the alley, and ricocheted back, bouncing back to him like a rusty can that somebody had kicked. Then his voice rattled shut and there was silence. Non lowered his hands to his sides, giving in to the inevitable death that awaited him. It had all started with Mia, he thought. It had all started with her.

                                                            ***

I hope you've liked what you read so far! If so, feel free to let me know.

Next time, I'll tell you about my second novel, Between Us & Spiritland.


All best,

S.D. Lishan

September 12, 2013

Hello.

My name is S.D. Lishan, and I'm a writer. I write novels and poems, as well as short stories, both fictional and non-fictional. I've been writing for years, but this is my very first post. So, ta-dah!

I expect very few readers for the time being. That's okay, for now, as I get my feet wet in this bloggy world. I'm reminded of a character from Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Collins, a character whom I've inhabited in a series of poems. In my version of version of his story, Mr. Collins divorces his wife, Charlotte, or, rather, she divorces him, and he eventually decides to leave the book in which he has been dwelling for so long. Most of the poems in this series are sonnets, but the last one, the one in which he steps beyond the pages of Jane Austen's novel, is written in free verse. It's called "Sometimes Later: Mr. Collins Sleeping in the Woods." Here it is:

Sometime Later: Mr. Collins Sleeping in the Woods

 

something

            like singing

            calling out

 

something like dawn

                        spooling down

                        from the trees

                                                *         

           

            I know so little

 

            notes of rain mystify

 

 

                        if it is a calling 

                        I spurned their whispers

 

                                                *

                                    scent of remorse

                        like a violet

 

                                                *

                                                I tell you now I am joyful

 

                                                *

                                                night stirs the roots about me

 

                                    some nights I wish the stirring wasn't

                                               

                                                *

                                    dreams seem

                                    real for such

                                    a short time

 

            I can't paint the whispers

            that follow me

 

                                                *

                        I am here

                                                shouting

 

                                    love to you

 

                                    nonetheless

                                                *

 

            fire weeps for these urges.

 

            it is sorrow to me

                                    they ever end

 

 

The poem was published a few years back in a very nice online literary magazine called Ginosko, and it's currently in my poetry manuscript, The Archaeology of Light, which I've been sending out to poetry competitions lately, and which, while it hasn't been taken yet, has recieved some very nice comments. My favorite is a comment from Jeffrey Levine, the publisher of Tupelo Press, one of my favorite publishers of poetry. Writing about The Archaeology of Startled Light, which my poetry manuscript was called up until a couple of weeks ago, and which was a finalist in Tupelo Press' First/Second Book Award, he wrote these kind words:

 

I know that you must feel quite let down that "The Archeology of Startled Light" wasn't selected, but I hope you choose instead to take heart. We received a thousand manuscripts, and it's important for you to know that in my opinion and that of my top and most trusted reader, your book is smart as it is beautiful -- and entirely worthy of publication, or it would not have found its way to the top 15 or so.

I hope that if it's not taken before our Dorset Prize opens, you'll let us see your work again. You're a lavishly gifted poet, and this book will rise to the top again and again. We've hardly published anything that hasn't been submitted to us again and again. It's the way of the world. The manuscripts become friends.

Thanks so much for sharing your talent with us. Keep the faith.

My best,
Jeffrey Levine

 

So, I didn't win the prize; I failed in that. But I remember an interview a couple of weeks back on the August 24 edition of Fareed Zakaria's GPS show in which Fareed interviewed Sara Blakely, the entrepreneur who founded Spanx, which is now a five hundredi-million dollar undergarment company. When Fareed asked Sara how she kept on in the early going when she received so much rejection, she told a story of how when she was a girl and her father asked her each day if she had failed at something. He did this, Sara said, because, if you weren't failing, you weren't trying, and you'd be less likely to achieve your goals. I'm paraphrasing, of course, and you can see the whole interview here: http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2013/08/24/sara-blakely-spanx-and-the-american-dream/. So, I failed. And yet I didn't. I'm that much farther along to getting The Archeology of Light published! Dear writers, take heart in this tale!

 

Getting back to my poem about Mr. Collins, you'll notice that there's a lot of space in this poem, not just to let the lines "breathe," as it were, but to underscore the new world that Mr. Collins is experiencing beyond the pages of Pride and Prejudice.  So, like Mr. Collins, I, writer of many years, S.D. Lishan, am embarking on travelling through this new world of the blog. Like him, "I am here/ shouting/ love to you." And that seems a fitting way to end my first blog posting. Until next time then!

 

All best,

 

S.D. Lishan