I recently came across a picture of Michael "Black Mike" Winage and John Diefenbaker. Mike was a Serbian-Canadian miner who settled in the Yukon at the end of the Klondike Gold Rush. He lived to be 107 years old.
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After about 18 months I finally got the novel Victoria and Kevin Copperhead Beals sent off to about 25 publishers so far. The publishing companies ask for different things. Some want the MS emailed others want 1 or 3 chapters by snail mail etc. It is a lot of work nevertheless. The editor at ECW Press responded immediately and wanted the complete MS. The 3 chapters I sent left him hanging in the middle of a fight and he wanted to see who won. Throughout the novel I used the image of the Lone Ranger to show goodness and justice. Kevin Beals swears on a stack of comic books, after seeing a Lone Ranger movie to fight for justice all his life. It turns out in a small town like Dawson City that sometimes means punching people. The novel is about 50,000 words and draws in new characters and teams them up with the Halloos, from my first book Talking at the Woodpile. Kevin and Victoria are placer gold miners who live on their claim part of the year.The luncheon meat Spam brings friends together to roast it over a camp fire for sandwiches. Recipes are swapped, pots of coffee are drank and stories told while all happily eat their fill. There are serious times. A Down syndrome child is born out of wedlock and Kevin and Victoria raise him. A soldier is lost in the bush. Anger causes a fight and knife stabbing. Weddings take place that should have happened years ago and in the chapter Mad Dogs and English Men a pet is put down. There is also a dysfunctional car club called The Phantoms that causes no end of trouble for themselves and others. Throughout it all the Lone Ranger rides again reminding Kevin to do good and not punch people unless it is absolutely necessary. Best regards, David I have always admired Edward Bulwer-Lytton's opening line, "It was a dark and stormy night," to his 1830 novel Paul Clifford.
Lord Lytton also coined the phrases "the great unwashed",and "pursuit of the almighty dollar". He was an immensely popular writer. In the movie 'Throw Momma From the Train' Billy Crystal struggles with an opening line for a story. The best he can come up with is "the night was humid". I would have written, "the night was moist". Billy is instructing a creative writing class and finds out Danny DeVito used the same line. I used the line to describe a stormy night and violent fight in Dawson City. "The English novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton's description of a "dark and stormy night", fit the weather perfectly in Dawson City that evening. The rain fell in buckets; the wind rattled the metal roofing and cats wanted to come inside." The book Paul Clifford was successful and the opening line has become famous. Danny and Bulwer-Lytton both wrote great opening lines but they look nothing alike. Regards David I'm surprised where stories come from. I'm twelve chapters into a novel called, 'Victoria and Copperhead Beals, a Yukon Love Story'.
I don't know how much of a love story its going to be because I'm not a romantic. Part of the story is about a car club in Dawson called the Phantoms. That idea came from a guy who owned a yellow convertible Chev impala and drove around Dawson in the early 70's. A friend told me a story about seeing a bear and a wolf traveling with each other in the Bonnet Plume area. I asked, "What did you do?" "I shot the bear," he said. It made me sick. They were friends traveling together! You don't shoot friends! I wrote that into the story. A friend told me a bear chased him up a tree. Once there he found the bear's cubs already ahead of him. The bear came up after him. He took black moss lit it on fire and dropped it on the bear. The bear moved off and he got down. I've written that into the story. If you have read my first book 'Talking at the Woodpile' you will see a story about turpentine and a thief getting his butt painted with it. That happened in Ross River and all I had to do was change the names to avoid causing further embarrassment to the guilty. A friend of mine lost a finger and a half in an accident. The insurance company paid him out. He had never seen so much money. He bought a new AMC Gremlin, packed up his family, drove clear across Canada and back. He arrived in Whitehorse flat broke but he had the greatest trip of his life. I've written that into the story. Sometimes it doesn't take much to find an idea for a story. One incident or person will do it. It's easier if the characters are someone you know. I think of all kinds, movie stars, friends, the guy at the post office, the cop who gave me a ticket. I matched up John Goodman and Mary Walsh from 'This Hour Has Twenty-two Minutes' in a novella about Viet Nam called 'I was a Reporter for Rolling Stone Magazine'. I thought it worked. So there you have it, the secrete of writing. Take whatever you have heard and seen and write thousands of words about it. And remember don't shoot friends, Regards, David Spam the food has been immensely popular since it's introduction in 1937 by the Hormel Foods Corporation. When I think of spam I think of everything that is wrong in the world. Nevertheless growing up I ate my fair share of the luncheon meat. I have some fond memories of toasting it on a stick over a camp fire then smothering it in ketchup on a slice of Wonder Bread. If you dropped spam in the fire it kept it's shape. You could fish it out and brush it off with a twig. I'm working on a story called Victoria and Copperhead Beals ( A Yukon Love Story). Kevin, aka, Copperhead is placer mining on Blanc Raven Creek when two friends, Billy and Chief Daniel, drop in for a visit. "Looks like you got a real good operation going here," Chief Daniel said, "any gold?" "Yes a bit, but not enough to buy a Cadillac." I invited them to fry spam over the fire. We ate two cans, a loaf of bread, and half a bottle of ketchup and drank two pots of coffee. "Nothing like camp food," Chief Daniel said whittling a toothpick. "Better than home cooking," Billy said picking grounds out of his coffee. When Billy went down to the boat to get his tobacco and papers, I confided in Chief Daniel about Victoria. "You know that young lady, Victoria, the one Mr. Cooper hired in his store? I can't get her out of my mind." "Sounds like love to me Kevin. There is nothing worse than a lonely young miner stuck on a creek heart sick about a gal back in town. I think Robert Service wrote poems about that kind of stuff. And I'm sure Hank Williams sang about it. I saw that young lady working at Cooper's. She's a real looker alright." We spent the next hour polishing off the last pot of coffee and exchanging spam recipes. "You know when you open a can of spam and there is about one inch sticking up," Billy asked? "Yes," I said. "Well you dice that up in half inch cubes then put a fork in and pull out another inch, dice that until the can is empty." Chief Daniel finished the recipe. "Then you fry those little cubes in margarine and mix them in a can of vegetable soup. It makes two servings." "Three if you add more water," Billy said. "I've got one for you," I said, "you cook Kraft dinner, slice the spam razor thin and make a layer of macaroni then spam then macaroni and so on. Bake for ten minutes in a hot oven and enjoy." We agreed that spam stuffing was the best for the Christmas turkey. Hormel Foods celebrated seven billion cans of spam sold in 2007. That is about one can for every person on this earth. I bought a can of spam the other day. It was awful. All I could think about was the poor pig that died. I chopped it up in cubes, fried them in butter and added a can of bake beans. It was still awful. I then washed the can, which is a work of art, and set it on my desk to hold staples, paper clips and other things. I would not recommend eating spam. The fox that visits our back yard will get the leftovers. I haven't written on this blog for a while. I thought I'd let people know what I'm up too.
I've written eight chapters of 'Blanc Raven Creek' the life story of Kevin 'Copper Head' Beals and his wife Victoria. It take place in Dawson City. Chapter seven is about SAS trainees parachuting into the Yukon's wilderness for an endurance exercise. Darren lands in the Hart River and becomes separated from the others. He now has to survive on his own. At the same time Kevin Beals and two friends are prospecting in the area and their paths cross with Darren's a couple of times. Darren eventually stumbles into their camp and is rescued. A year later Darren leaves the SAS and England to live in Dawson. He found something in his lost travels and wants to explore it more. The Antigonish Review Annual Poetry/Fiction Contest closed May 29, 2015. I rewrote 'The Beer Bottle Man' and submitted that. The three finalists will be announced in September. I sent out about 80 packages of the novels 'The Only Prison' and 'People of the Yukon' last January. I received three inquiries and requests for the full MS. Thisteldown Press wrote, "Thanks for letting Thistledown have a read of your short stories. They have a texture and emotional quality that prompt us to ask to read the entire manuscript. If not being considered by another publisher please send a copy at your earliest convenience." I'm also working on another short story called 'Mother Russia'. I actually took it from a longer story in 'The Only Prison' and shortened it. Maxim Blok is given ten years in the gulag for stealing. In prison he is befriended by Vlad Gorev who is the boss of the prisoners. The conditions are brutal until a fair minded new warden arrives. The guards do not like his enlightened views of how a prison should be run and plot to have him discredited and sent back to Moscow. The warden, Abram Ozerov is fair and enlightened but he knows how to fight fire with fire and plots to remove the head guard Anatoly Yemelin. He employes Vlad and Vlad employes Maxim. I have a new program that checks my writing. Apparently I write in the passive voice because it comes up all the time. Then there is the squinting modifier which I refuse to learn about or understand. Best wishes and stay out of the Gulag, David I've been a stuck on the novel,'The Book of the Sasquatch' for some time so I started another novel called 'Wilhelmina and Copperhead Beals," (A Yukon Love Story). Here is a bit from it. The opening paragraph starts, "My name is Kevin Ogilvie Beals. I was born and raised in Dawson City. I was the second child of hardworking. loving parents Edward and Maggie Beals and the brother of a terrible older sister named Gaylene. I'm certain if I had been an only child my life would have been better." Kevin doesn't like his sister's boyfriends. "Gaylene had a greaser boyfriend. Her bad temper kept him on edge and under her thumb. I don't know what Jeb saw in her maybe he liked the way she snapped her gum. I felt sorry for him he was a nice guy, but Gaylene turned him mean. He called me tubby and for two cents I'd have punched him in the face." Kevin wants to operate heavy equipment. "As long as I can remember I wanted to be a heavy equipment operator. When I was a kid, I spent hours climbing over bulldozers, front-end loaders and graders that were parked for the weekend in the Territorial Government's compound. I sat on the black leather seats of a massive D-8 pulling levers and vibrating my lips. I was in imagination heaven." If someone asked what I was doing, I said, "I'm building the Alaska Highway." "What an dumb ass my brother is," Gaylene said. Kevin tells how he was nicknamed Copperhead. "In grade four I got the nickname Copperhead. I licked pennies and stuck them on my forehead. "I'm a Sumerian," I announced to my parents, "like in long ago Babylon." "That's lovely," said my mom. "What an idiot," said Gaylene. "My dad said nothing but lifted his newspaper higher. It shook a little like he was laughing behind it. When I discovered crazy glue I stuck eight pennies across my forehead and admired myself in the mirror. I wished I had read the instructions. My mother tried to soften the glue with warm cooking oil, but it ran in my eyes making everything blurry. I staggered around, my arms outstretched like Boris Karloff in the Mummy." Kevin has a best friend named Greg Popper. "Greg was a sports fan. He knew everything about everyone who ever played professional sports. He skipped school to listen to the Yankee's last game of the 1961 season. Roger Maris could break Babe Ruth's record of sixty home runs. His parents were at work, so he lay under the covers maneuvering a radio dial that broadcasted more static than words." "In the fourth inning, Maris hit his record breaking sixty-first home run. Greg got so excited he jumped up with the blankets over his head, stumbled, hit his head on the bed post and knocked himself out cold. Roger rounded the bases as he lay unconscious." Kevin graduates from high school and goes gold mining. "When I graduated from high school with top honors, I already knew what I wanted to do. I had staked three claims on Blanc Raven Creek thirty miles upstream from Dawson. I was going to hand work the claim until I earned enough money to purchase equipment then I would become the Gold Czar of the Yukon." "Elder Chief Daniel told me, "I know that creek. I camped there many times looking for game up and down the river. I always thought to prospect it but it didn't seem right. It seemed the creek was waiting for someone else to claim it. Joseph Copper named it Blanc Raven. He met Trudeau in the early 60's and fancied himself bilingual. He hardly knew two words of French. He told me he saw a white raven with a nest of white chicks on the creek." The story goes on to tell about Wilhelmina the niece of the Halloos of Rock Creek. Kevin courts her much to the objections of the Halloo men. Kevin and Winch Halloo have a fist fight. Kevin and Wilhelmina are married and move to Blanc Raven Creek. Gaylene, not married, becomes pregnant and gives birth to a Down Syndrome baby which she abandons. Wilhelmina loses her baby in tragic circumstances and takes 'David' from Gaylene to raise as her own. A car club is organized by Jeb and his friends. They are bullies, beat their women and travel to Whitehorse to race. One member, Frankie, flirts with Jeb's girl Gaylene and is thrown out of the club. He suffers the loss of his friends in a small town. I'm about 14000 words into the story and it seems to be working. I have never written fantasy but I think with 'The Book of the Sasquatch' I'm going to get involved in ancient north American fountains of youth and maybe some fable cities of gold. Thanks for being interested, David I've had a terrible last 6-8 months. I thought I would never write anything decent again. I couldn't write stories that had energy and enjoyment to them.
I wrote five chapters about Sasquatches and ran out of steam on that. I tried to complete a book of essays on religious and spiritual subjects that didn't work. I also started another book of short stories that stalled. I sought out and was given advice, went on line to find things on development of characters, plots and so on. I wanted to hear genuine approval, it wasn't coming. My confidence was down. Then today I read two chapters of my first book and there it was staring me in the face. I write best in the first person. I had been working on a short story called Copperhead Tarbox Beals and I changed it to the first person and it worked beautifully. Praise flooded in, the sun broke through the clouds and there is hope!! Writing should have some ease to it, a flow of energy, it should be enjoyable. If its not enjoyable to you why should it be enjoyable to a reader? Recently Margaret Atwood gave advice to writers in a National Post interview. She said you have to "jump in" just like a person taking an ice dive. On a lighter note. In the early 70's we lived in Dawson City. There was a respected elder couple named Annie and Joe Henry. Remarkable people really. Annie took a liking to Wendy and our son Adam. She made a pair of moccasins for him. To this day I feel honored that she had done so. The book 'Talking at the Woodpile' was once written as a novel and was changed to short stories on the advice of my editor. In the novel I write about Annie and Joe, their wisdom and Joe's interesting stories about a mammoth grave yard he discovered. Regards David Hello Fun Seekers, |
About Me
I'm a general building contractor and fiction writer. Living in the Yukon since 1962. Archives
March 2016
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