A few days ago “Positioning,” a short film I wrote, was accepted to the Indianapolis International Film Festival (July 15-July 25). This is the 7th festival for the film, which was directed by Hans Montelius, a Swede followers of this blog are already familiar with. In 2008 we went to the Cannes Film Festival, where Hans had two films in the Short Film Corner. We stayed outside of Cannes, in an apartment secreted away in a gated community. I had my first exposure to GPS machines as we wound through the Cote d’ Azur looking for the apartment. The more dead-ends we ran into, the more I made fun of Hans for relying on this new gadget. We eventually found the apartment, and granted, it would have taken us a lot longer without the GPS. It was during the search that “Positioning” was born. We started brainstorming for a short featuring a GPS machine. I had never written for the screen before, but a few months later I put the story to paper over a long weekend. Soon after, Hans directed it. A month of later, the film premiered in the Short Film Corner at Cannes.
“Positioning” starts with a man and woman driving to an untold destination. The man drives. Even though he’s not that familiar with the neighborhood, he tries to rely on his memory to find the address. After going around in circles a few times his wife suggests they use the GPS machine. The driver scoffs at the idea. I’ve always enjoyed the urban legend that men never like to ask for directions. I always thought it was women who do not like to ask for directions. More than once an impatient female passenger has said to me, “Stop and ask for directions already.” Not once has a female passenger said “Stop and I’ll ask for directions.” Still, I wrote the script because of the often told joke of the guy who equates asking for help with wussiness. The husband in “Positioning” eventually capitulates. Later in the film, the couple are in bed. The husband goes down on his wife only to face the same problems finding his way around…That part of the film is in no way autobiographical. Seriously. In no way. Totally from my imagination.
Some fun facts about the film. Han’s first choice for the male lead was an actor who has appeared in a number of his shorts. Unfortunately, the actor didn’t have a driver’s license. Hans and I talked a bit about getting around this issue, like having the woman drive, but that just wouldn’t have worked. The film was shot on the streets around Han’s apartment building in Stockholm. There’s no indication in the finished film that the story takes place in Sweden, though in the original script I make it clear the couple are in Stockholm and use Han’s mother’s address as their final destination. Hans also changed the ending of the film. In my version, the husband never hits “paydirt.” But Hans, always a sucker for a happy ending, has him reach his intended destination.
Widow’s Walk by Kenneth Weene tells the story of Mary Flanagan and her search for meaning, life, and love. It is also the story of her Irish roots and her immigration to America, her marriage, her husband’s life and death, and the lives of her two children. And it is the story of her relationship with Arnie Berger, a man who is totally different in background, religion, and approach to life. Theirs is a deep and meaningful love that gladdens the heart. If only things could always flow along with such ease. But they do not, and Widow’s Walk becomes a powerful tale of human pain and emotional conflict.
Recently released, Kenneth Weene’s new novel, Memoirs From the Asylum, is a comi-tragic tale of madness and sanity, of desperation and hope, of possibilities and fate. Set in a state hospital, Memoirs From the Asylum focuses on three main characters, a narrator, who has taken refuge from his terror of the world, a catatonic schizophrenic, whose mind lives within a crack in the wall opposite her bed, and a young psychiatrist, who is dealing with his own father’s depression. This is a book that will have you laughing, crying, and discussing.
An Excerpt From Widow’s Walk
People like Danny O’Brien don’t just wash their cars – they bathe them with deliberation. First they get ready, which starts with the right clothes. Danny always changes into his cutoff jeans, the last pair he has left from college. He has to suck in his stomach to snap them shut, and they have long ago stopped feeling comfortable, but they represent his youth so he won’t throw them out. He doesn’t tuck his Grateful Dead T-shirt in. He probably wouldn’t have anyway, but with it hanging out no one can see if the snap on his shorts has opened. His old tennis shoes go on his bare feet, and he feels like he is ready to go back in time and play Frisbee in Hollis Quad.
His equipment, too, is laid out carefully. Sponges, clean rags, a plastic pail, the garden hose, Turtle Wash and Wax, a Dust Buster, and finally cleaners for the glass, the vinyl, the leather upholstery, the chrome, and especially the tires – the car will not be to his liking until the tires gleam – not like new, but shining beyond newness. Even the placement of the car is – to his mind – just right. It is carefully parked in a specific spot so that he can get maximum efficiency from the hose.
His neighbor, Harry Brown, is tending flowerbeds. Not particularly a lover of nature, Danny leaves that task to the gardener. “Hey, Harry, how’s it going?” he calls to the neighbor, who is busily weeding around the azaleas.
“Damn weeds just keep growing.” It is a ritual exchange. The two men aren’t close, but they have as many rituals as any fraternity. That is one of Danny’s special qualities; his every relationship has rituals built in: little sayings or a special piece of body language that makes the other person feel that theirs is a special relationship
Danny is aware of a change in the light. He looks up and sees Kathleen watching him. He smiles. “Hi.”
She half smiles in response. Embarrassed by his notice, she starts slightly as if to move away.
“Do you like cars?” He isn’t sure where, but he knows that he has seen her before. “She’s cute enough,” he thinks. “Might as well chat her up.”
Kathleen, not having really taken a step, feels she has to respond. She smiles shyly – not flirtatious but friendly. “Actually, I don’t know much about them. I’ve never even learned how to drive.”
“Seriously?” Even while he is saying this, Danny is wondering if he shouldn’t perhaps take a more serious tone, one more appropriate to the classy young woman he perceives her to be.
“Why? Is there something wrong?” She can feel herself tensing, pulling back, becoming defensive. “I always wanted to learn, but I never had the chance.”
He takes another look at Kathleen and decides that she might be worth his time. “I tell you what. You help me wash, and I’ll give you a driving lesson.”
“I don’t even know you,” Kathleen responds with hesitancy.
“Harry here will vouch for me. Won’t you Harry?”
“Lady, I’d stay far away from that crazy Irishman. You should never trust a man who doesn’t garden.”
“I don’t really think I should,” her voice conveys doubt and a hidden wish.
“Suit yourself. If you ever change your mind, stop by any weekend. If I’m not home, my mother almost always is. I’ll tell her if a beautiful woman named …” He pauses.
At first Kathleen doesn’t understand why he is waiting. Then she wonders if it’s ok for her to answer. Finally she stammers, “My name is Kathleen, Kathleen Flanagan.”
“Pleased to meet you, Kathleen Flanagan. Danny O’Brien at your service.” Danny winks at her, and Kathleen feels a rush of confusion – her face flushes. “We Irish folks have to stick together especially around a Brit like Harry.” Danny’s sweeping gesture toward his neighbor sprays her with soapy water from the sponge he’s holding.
The cold tingle of the water makes her laugh lightly.
“Good. A sense of humor is the thing to have, but I am sorry.” He offers her a clean rag.
“That’s all right! I’m sure I’ll dry before I get back.”
“Back where?”
“Subtle, boy,” Harry comments.
“I live at the hospice, the one near the Star Market, in the staff housing.”
Danny smiles broadly. “The freckles on his forehead seem to dance when he smiles,” Kathleen observes to herself.
“Would the nuns be upset if I were to drop by some day?”
“That would depend on your intentions.”
“Better than they were when I went to Saint Edward’s.”
He grins again, and Kathleen is struck by the sparkle in his eyes. She waves as she walks away.
“That’s a nice girl, Danny.” Harry remarks as Kathleen leaves. “Not a bad looker either.”
“That’s for sure.” Danny turns back to the car, but his mind is following Kathleen down the street.
Words of Praise for Widow’s Walk
“Here is a story whose breadth of vision is exceeded only by the depth of its characters.” (Jon Tuttle, author, The Trustus Plays)
“This story includes the passions of everyday life that will touch you in a special way.” (Abe F. March, author, To Beirut and Back, They Plotted Revenge Against America, and Journey Into The Past)
“Written in the present tense, Widow’s Walk achieves the difficult balance of urgency and character-driven action possible with this technique. With deft humor and unexpected turns, universal dilemmas and unique perspectives, I believe Widow’s Walk captures all the elements of great fiction.” (Jen Knox, author, Musical Chairs
An excerpt from Memoirs From the Asylum
Arthur and I are pacing up and down the dayroom. That way the aides don’t notice. As long as we look agitated, they don’t care about our conversations. They figure we must be ourselves: the simply crazy. If we were to sit down on the bilious green Naugahyde and chrome chairs and couches that have long since deteriorated to junkyard quality and talk like normal people, then they’d get pissed off. They count on us to be psycho, to appear nuts. It’s like the cops and the criminals. The criminals might not want the cops around, but the cops need the crooks so they have jobs. And, if the cops disappeared then everyone could commit the same criminal acts so there’d be no payoff for being a crook. So, bottom line, the staff needs us to keep getting their paychecks, and we need them to keep getting our rubber-rooms, straightjackets, and butts full of Valium.
But, the numbers are changing. The psycho drugs have reduced the size of all the hospitals. The staffs have shrunk; now they’re resisting every discharge. No normality here! Nobody should get out. That’s the rule.
So we are pacing and discussing the alleged newest member of our very nonselective club. Of course, it is all rumor and conjecture. The rolling TV never plays the news; it’s considered too upsetting.
Newspapers and magazines only make an appearance when an infrequent visitor happens to bring them, which is always well after they’re better suited for wrapping fish. Visitors are few and far between. We who have survived the medication boom and still live on the wards have few family members interested in us. The aides and nurses do bring gossipy magazines that they share with each other and then leave around for us. We always know the latest tittle-tattle from three weeks ago. We can always tell that our bleached out castaway clothing isn’t the latest from Paris.
“Maybe. But, then what’s to stop them from frying every nut case,” I pause for effect, “including us?”
“Would you do something like that?”
“No.”
“Well, neither would I.”
“Of course not, but you did attack those people.”
He giggles nervously. “God told me to.”
“I know, but maybe God told him.”
He raises his voice, always a foolish thing to do, but theology is always a hot button in the day room. “God would never tell him that – not something like that!”
One of the aides looks up at us. I catch her out of the corner of my eye, the one that I always keep directed at the nurses’ station.
“Sshhh,” I hiss at him. But he is way too far-gone. God’s prophet is on the pulpit, and nothing else matters. It only takes a minute before they drug him, wrap him, and carry him off to restraints.
They might decide I should get it, too, that I have been provoking him, that I might get others started – that I might be the “King of the Crazies” – and they talk about our paranoia. I walk away as fast as I can.
Too late! They have grabbed me and wrestled my ass to the floor. I’m not resisting. There would be no point. They still rough me up. One aide, this big hulk of an idiot, a sadist too afraid to take on anyone who can fight back, smacks me in the face – no reason, just his pleasure. My nose starts to bleed. They hold me down so that I’m coughing and choking on my own damn blood. One of the nurses brings the syringe. The big V to the rescue.
I wake up the next day on the medical ward. There is a hole in my throat where they inserted a tracheotomy tube. The bastard has nearly killed me. God, is my throat sore. I get to suck on ice chips and suffer. The bastard got to go home for his dinner.
A day later I am back on the ward. One of the women patients sidles over to me. “We heard they had to give you shock treatments,” she hisses.
“No,” I croak back pointing at my throat.
“I thought your brains were up here,” she says pointing to her head.
I try to laugh and then think better of it. I pat my ass. “No, down here,” I tell her.
She is still cackling as one of the nurses came out from behind their counter with the medication tray. My pills are different. I look at them and then at her. “Take your meds,” she commands firmly.
“They aren’t right.”
“The doctor changed them.”
“Why?”
“Ask him.”
“Come on, at least tell me why,” I plead, afraid of the side effects.
“We want to make sure that you behave yourself. No more incidents like yesterday.
I want to cry, but I just nod. I try to hold some of the pills in my cheek to spit them out once she has gone, but she checks my mouth and makes me take a second cup of the horrible juice they use. It tastes like a combination of the bug-juice they serve at summer camp and some powdered fruit drink straight from the army, and filled with saltpeter.
“Be a good boy,” she says as she walks away. I feel like I’m a dog being patted absentmindedly on the head by a totally indifferent and unfeeling clerk in a department store. “You really shouldn’t have your dog in here, mister; but keep him under control and we won’t shoot you full of meds.”
“Yes, ma’am; yes, ma’am, three bags full.”
No matter how fucked your head, you’ve got to hate the drooling and the shuffling. I try to control the tics and that damned unending pill rolling. I try, but I fail – failure is in the chemistry.
To learn more about Widow’s Walk visit the video at:
Many of the characters and situations in Halibut Rodeo are inspired by my stay in Homer. Like most fiction writers, I often speculate on the lives of people I see on the street, inventing identities, imagining conflicts, etc. Such ponderings often lead to fully developed characters in my short stories. Many of the main characters in Halibut Rodeo have their origins in this process. Other characters live on the fringe of the book as an aspect of setting, adding shades of detail to the main action. The Eagle Lady is one such “detail.” She worked at Seward Fisheries, and even though I saw her nearly every day, I never said more than a few words to her. It was hard to tell how old she was. Nearly 70 was my guess, though she still wore heavy make up and a mass of curly red hair that might have been a wig. She was about six feet tall and walked with a severe limp. Someone told me the limp was from a career as a rodeo rider. After retirement she moved to Homer. And why the Eagle Lady? Bald eagles are nothing unusual in Homer. You see one every day in the summer. For years the Eagle Lady had been feeding the eagles in her backyard with scrapes of fish. Up until a few years ago, at least, the second largest concentration of Bald Eagles in Alaska was in the ex-rodeo rider’s backyard.
Within a couple days of our arrival in Homer, Hans and I took a walk down a residential street. It was fairly late, after 10 pm at least, but in May it never gets that dark. Night just seems to cover the hills and streets like gray gauze. We walked and talked, the houses getting further and further apart, and soon the paved street merged into a dirt road. Only after we noticed that the road was quickly become nothing more than a dirt path did we stop and take serious note of our surroundings. We realized then that we had wandered into a herd of moose, at least 20 of them, both mothers and children, quietly cropping stubby grass and vibrant wildflowers. They paid us no heed at all. Hans and I became silent then, and backed our way out of the herd.
This was my first sighting of moose, but certainly not my last that summer. It wasn’t unusual to be driving down the main street of Homer only to be stopped by a moose, strolling casually along the yellow lines in the middle of the street like a burnt out tight-rope walker. The blasting of a car horn had no effect.
My favorite moose story came from a Japanese immigrant at Seward Fisheries, the place I worked. Over lunch break, she told me that one morning she walked to the end of the street to check her mail. (All the mail boxes were clustered at the corner). She had left her front door open. When she came back, a fully-grown moose stood in her living room munching on a house plant. The woman didn’t try to shoo it out; it’s not like it was a stray cat. She just waited outside until the moose had eaten every plant in the house. Once the moose finished, she wandered back outside and lumbered into the woods. Over a bite of pasta, the Japanese immigrant finished her tale with, “Luckily, she didn’t poo on my rug.”
Halibut Rodeo is a collection of interconnected stories which take place in the small Alaskan town of Homer. The stories are inspired by my stay there in the summer of 1988, the summer between my undergraduate and graduate studies, the summer before the Exxon Valdez split open and dumped its cargo into Prince William Sound. I hadn’t yet seen much of the world so when Hans Montelius, a Swede I had met in creative writing classes at the University of Kansas, suggested we work at a cannery in Alaska in order to fund a trip to Europe, I jumped at the chance. Hans was dating a woman whose father was mayor of Homer. Legend has it that the mayor was once a graduate student in chemistry at KU, but was busted making LSD for the mob. Although he turned informer, the authorities did not grant him adequate protection from his former employers. He left Lawrence, and like many of the characters in my book, went as far as he could go without a passport: Homer. He remained in hiding for some years, but when the threat dissipated with time, he reentered society, soon becoming a prominent citizen in this small town of 3,000 on Kachemak Bay. He and his fourth (I believe) wife offered us three digs, along with another son, a guy I had known from a composition class at a community college I once attended. We arrived in mid-May when the wildflowers blanketed the foothills behind Homer. Hans and I planned on working for six weeks at one of the fish processing plants in the area, then using our earnings to travel to Europe in the second half of the summer. It didn’t work out as planned.
A Hitch in Twilight is a compilation of stories of The Twilight Zone-Alfred Hitchcock variety. Most involve ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. Lucifer appears in two. Most are set in New York, particularly Brooklyn. They are designed to make entertain and to foster thought. They are 20 tales of Warped Imagination.
Excerpt
Beneath the Boardwalk, somewhere along the Brighton Beach side, leeward of a dune formed by the bitter winter winds, lay a long, narrow cardboard box around which rats were scurrying. There was a restless, troubled murmuring within it. Suddenly the flaps flew aside and a man inside sprang to a sitting position like a jack-in-the-box, casting pages of a newspaper, his blankets, aside in his wake. He fought to regain his breath, muttering angrily, fearfully.
His attention was snared by a click. His paroxysm had been vanquished. His senses had never seemed so alive. He peered beyond the dune, past the small gap between its peak and the underside of the Boardwalk. A cigarette lighter flickered briefly, illuminating a hard though handsome face that featured a thick, neatly-trimmed black beard.
Review
Vic Fortezza writes about the trials and tribulations of life. Be it fiction or reality he captivates his audience with hard-boiled characterizations that catapult readers through drama and intrigue, at times with a touch of humor. Vic’s words flow with strength – he tells it like it is – through the eyes of a powerful, seasoned writer. By the time you’ve read the last page of A Hitch in Twilight, you’ll feel like you’ve lived each story.
Is there a less welcome question for writers? That’s the general perception. When asked about the origins of his ideas at a science fiction convention, Barry Longyear said “Schenectady.” You send two dollars and a self-addressed stamped envelope to a post office box and an idea is sent to you. It’s very possible his answer originated with noted cynic Harlan Ellison. Roger Zelazny supposedly once told an interviewer that he leaves milk and a dish of cookies on the back porch. In the morning the milk and cookies are gone and on the dish is a slip of paper containing an idea.
Even writers like me, with minimal publications, are occasionally asked this question. It’s not an easy one to answer, which is probably why many famous writers that get bombarded with the question respond with snarkiness. I haven’t gotten to that point. I don’t mind the question. Maybe because I know, like the writer who shows up for his reading only to see the host and his mother in the audience, that it’s sometimes better to be asked a question about his work, any question, than to be asked no questions at all.
So in the coming weeks I’m going to pose this question to myself, starting with my short story collection, Halibut Rodeo. I’ll write about the book itself, as well as each individual stories. I hope you’ll tag along.
Timothy Stelly’s HUMAN TRIAL (2009, All Things That Matter Press)and HUMAN TRIAL II: ADAM’S WAR (2010, All Things That Matter Press), present the tale of a ragtag group of survivors of an alien-launched thermal war that has destroyed nearly all human amd animal life on the planet. HUMAN TRIAL raised the question, What happens when all that remains of the world is fear, distrust and desperation? HT IIfollows the group on a cross-country trek that results in a final, frenzied battle against the extra-terrestrial invaders.
Reviews for part one of Timothy Stelly’s sci-fi noir thriller, Human Trial, have been positive. Readers and critics from the U.S. and Canada have praised the book for its grittiness and frightening tenor.
“…Superb. It’s as if I’m one of the 10 going through the same trials they are. I can hardly wait to read the next installment.”—T.C. Matthews, author oif What A Web We Weave
“The book scares me because of the possibility of this happening in our future and how we will handle it. Scary. Deeply thought out…Timothy definitely has his own voice and it is powerful.” —Minnie Miller, author of The Seduction of Mr. Bradley
“Human Trial was a well written, well thought out book with plenty of biting, satirical social, religious and racial commentary interspersed within the dialogue. The drama, and the pathos, were nonstop, and I never knew what to expect next.” –Brooklyn Darkchild, author of This Ain’t No Hearts and Flowers Love Story, Pt. I & II
“[This] story has been haunting me-reminds me of Octavia Butler’s ‘Parable of the Sower’…Stelly’s work haunts me two years after I read it.”
–Evelyn Palfrey, author ofDangerous DilemmaandThe Price Of Passion
“4 out of 5 stars. I felt the echoes of other notable science fiction novels, including “Parable of the Sower” by Octavia Butler, “Lucifer’s Hammer” by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, and “Manhattan Transfer” by John E. Stith. Timothy Stelly creates a believable milieu of small-town America being turned upside down by forces beyond comprehension, and puts the reader right in the middle of the action.—Claxton Graham, Amazon.com review
“Human Trial is at once a sci-fi story, a look at the psychology of survival, and a timely cautionary tale regarding current environmental woes; our individual and collective responsibility to one another and to the planet…It is an entertaining and intricate story that can be read and enjoyed along with the likes of Mitchener, King, or Peter Straub. Stelly intuitively knows what everyday people will do to survive and how their interactions with each other will sound.”—Brian Barbeito, Columnist Useless-Knowledge.com and author of Fluoride And The Electric Light Queen
“Gritty and intense, Human Trial will leave you stupefied and terrified, neither of which will protect your gut from wrenching. The message finally revealed is not only horrifying, but real, as is the omen foretold. Turning tables and unbalanced scales foster confusion and terror in an epic far greater than its words.” – Brian L. Doe, Author, The Grace Note, Barley & Gold; Co-Author, Waking God Trilogy
“Oh the suspense, the drama, the intensity, the love I’m having for this story…trust indeed that my adrenaline cannot go any higher. This will be a series finale you don’t want to miss.” – Walee, author of Confession Is Good For The Soul and What’s On The Menu? All Of Mw!
BIOGRAPHY
Timothy N. Stelly is a poet, essayist, novelist and screenwriter from northern California. He describes his writing as “socially conscious,” and his novel, HUMAN TRIAL, is the first part of a sci-fi trilogy and is available from Amazon.com, allthingsthatmatterpress.com and in e-book format at mobipocket.com. Reviews of HUMAN TRIAL can be read at amazon.com
HUMAN TRIAL II: ADAM’S WAR (All Things That Matter Press) is scheduled for release in MAY, 2010. Stelly also has a short story included in the AIDS-themed anthology, THE SHATTERED GLASS EFFECT (2009) . His story SNAKES IN THE GRASS, Is a tale of love, betrayal and its sometimes deadly consequences.
In 2003, Stelly won First Prize in the Pout-erotica poetry contest for his erotic piece, C’mon Condi.
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