Returning to Work on Red Room Auditions Pt. 2

 2-20-20

          Robert sent me a few more links dealing with the American Air Force presence in Taiwan in the early 60’s. I wrote back to him:

It is so appreciated your sending background for my characters in Red Room Auditions. I am saving it all for the day I go back to finish the novel. I am still in the "who gives a damn" mode in my writing career. I have not aspirations to be a professional writer as I did until recently but I am coming back around to the space I was at in late 2018 when I discovered KDP free publishing and put out two books within months, the second became my downfall as it was rush-edited so I'd have copies available to pick up on my visit to Pittsburgh in late October. Slowly I have been editing that disaster for second edition. Meanwhile the first edition mess remains available for purchase on Amazon. I have no fear of it ruining a writer reputation I never had. My first two self-published books require a yearly action to keep the author's page up but it ain't worth the $35 a year; the ISBN are mine and I'll add the titles to my KDP profile one day, as your son has done for your works; I wish I had a son who'd do it for lazy old me, and for free no less. My sharing on Facebook has come to an end. The bastards that inflated my viewership before Oct. 2018 to lure me into purchasing updates have now limited the number of groups I can share my work with; they called it spam and punished me a few times by docking me a few days. Recently they deleted a ten minute live video I made at the riverside reciting a cluster of poems. Unlike that Chinese writer who made a best seller sharing serialized chapters on Facebook, that flash in the pan won't be happening to mine. Robert, continue to motivate me and you won't be sorry. As for writing for my own pleasure, there are still occasional blog pieces and a poem or two a month in addition to my regular private daily journal. All the background in the world about Taiwan air force police won't bring my novel back to life until I find a new audience to share it with, at least believe I have an audience. You, on the other, with a domestic audience of fluent English readers, can be going to that book club and visiting bookstores to present your novels at, your topics not incendiary as mine; mine would have no market in an English speaking country, either. Yours can and will sell if you promote them. Thanks again for thinking of me; I'm so fortunate to have such a good friend as you.

          I don’t give a damn anymore who reads my writings, thanks in part to the Facebook wake-up call. Persistence, however, succeeds, and I shouldn’t give up, but not publishing and promoting myself; I need a publisher that will accept my work and promote it. If I publish it myself, no matter how good it is, it will never sell. That being said, I have plenty of time to edit and finish all the manuscripts I have amassed the past seven years and send them out.

Summer 2020?

          I wrote my first text for Red Room Auditions in months yesterday. A new character, Richard Holmes, a Vietnam vet that returns to Taiwan and followed in Nate Fisher's footsteps back to the states by the time Nate returns to investigate the serial murders. They were buddies when AFARTS morphed into ICRT and the troops left Taiwan in 1979. Nate and Richard timelines correspond. Holmes will be a good way to inject the Taiwan experience for GI's in the 60's, before Nate arrived on the cusp of U.S. official troop withdrawal. I even have a character named Julian, a friend of Nate, who was a gigolo for a Taiwanese general to inject into the book Taiwan/U.S. military madness back to Quemoy in the mid 50's. The book may be a detective story but I want an indictment of U.S. interference in Taiwan's destiny to be the undercurrent stand out

Preface to George with the Man in the Hat

 

Preface

The original series of Curious George was written by the team of Hans Augusto Rey and Margret Rey. The Jewish couple fled Paris in June 1940, on self-made bicycles, carrying the Curious George manuscript with them. At first, only H. A. Rey was credited for the work in order to distinguish the Reys' books from the large number of children's books written by female authors.

George was brought from his home in Africa by "The Man with The Yellow Hat". They are best friends and they live together in "the city" and "the country". The names of these areas have not been declared yet. Curious George appeared in 1941. This book begins with George living in Africa and tells the story of his capture by the Man with the Yellow Hat, who takes him on a ship to "the big city" where he will live in a zoo. The second book, Curious George Takes a Job (1947), begins with George living in the zoo, from which he escapes and has several adventures before the Man with the Yellow Hat finds him and takes George to live at his house.

Aside from George himself, the only recurring character in the original adventures is the unnamed Man with the Yellow Hat who is George’s best friend. The Man often facilitates George's adventures by taking him somewhere, and even more often resolves the tension by intervening just in time to get George out of a tight spot.

In The Further Adventures of George, the Man has a deeper role with George that takes him beyond what the Zookeeper has in mind and joins George in his adventures, not only to intervene. These adventures would be frowned upon by the Zookeeper and could cost the Man his main job: training George and learning George’s language. 

In the plot of my allegorical tale, or "magic realism", the Man in the Hat has time on his hands because his long-time relationship with Phoenix had taken a hit after her illness; lack of motivation to experience the world. The Man has gotten bored of exchanges with Vincent Snail and jumps at the chance to become George's language enrichment partner at the Great Zookeeper's request. He would like to become her trainer, too, but there is somebody assigned to her first that she can’t break away from.