Another Step Along the Way

 It's always a fun day when you send out your manuscript. It's like your baby please don't hurt it and handle it with care. The road along the way to the publishing of The Other Side of Reality: how to survive this war and the next 15 to follow.

Soon I’ll be giving birth to my fourth book

(i.e. flash fiction, poetry, essay, non-fiction, current events, a hybrid) 

To paraphrase the late great Prissy from Gone with the Wind: “I don’t know nothin' 'bout birthin' no books.”

I just wanted to let people know that I am working on a fourth book and am currently about 80% to 90% complete. It’s been a strange winter it started out in November with a wonderful trip to Spain. I’d never been there before, and I loved it as anyone could tell who saw my pictures. Since then, I had surgery on one of my feet and I’ve really been out of commission for much of December/January. Getting older is lots of fun. 

The book will probably be available in either spring or late summer. I believe the spirit of this book will go very well with my prior three books. I personally think this book might be the best of the bunch.

It began to take shape around the time of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I believe that I had a different perspective on what was happening than most Americans did. I saw much of what I was writing about was coming to fruition during that time. For that reason, this book will have a more geopolitical bent than my previous ones did. Where the last two books spoke more about the danger of the domestic situation, the camera this time has moved from an examination of the police state to an examination of the military complex, which has a lot in common. In fact the book that this one probably has the most in common with is my first one Liberté which asked a lot of questions about the European Union and what it meant. Liberté definitely had more questions than it did answers.

We are going through a very dangerous period right now and most Americans aren’t aware of it what we're facing or what it really means. Our press, all across the political spectrum, has worked overtime to misinform the public and keep information from it. Right now, the title of the book is tentatively called "This Side of Reality: How to survive this war and the next 15 to follow."

I have some idea as to how the book’s cover will appear, though I’m not ready to reveal it yet and I will share it a little later when both the book and I are a little further along. I think you’ll like it as I hope to have some easily identifiable characters on the cover. I hope to keep the trust of my readers who have enjoyed my work in the past and if you haven’t read anything I’ve written yet and you’re a little intrigued, I hope you’ll give my writing a chance in the future. This will be a great book to dive into. If it comes out the way I want it'll be poignant and funny.

I hope that all those who haven’t signed up for my author’s page will do so as it is here that I'll post any updates on my work first. I have a facebook author’s page http.www.facebook.com//garyjosephfloyd/ and there’s also one https://theroadsometimestravelled.blogspot.com/. If I’m suddenly thrown off Facebook as social media platforms have been doing more regularly these day, you can always find me here. These sites Will be the first place that I’ll publish my cover reveal. 

Well, that’s all for now. I’ll soon get back to you when more information becomes available…

Best of luck for all of us in the New Year. May we have a safe and successful year,

Gary

1/4/24

 

Writing from Past Experience

 

There have been events in bymy past that I’m compelled to write about. I write about them again and again until the literature is as close as I can get it to how it went down in reality. That’s when I must walk away. It’s then that I know I’m not a good enough writer to get it any better. If I put it out and it fails, it’ll be my writing that has failed. It’s never the lived experience or the inspiration’s fault. It still makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It’s like a hot plate that I’ve stood close enough to feel the fire, but always I’ll remain a few steps away.

Then someone will mention an experience that I’ve lived through, and I’ll look at them and wonder how on earth did you know about that? Then, I’ll realize that they know about it because I told them, but I’ll have only the faintest memory of my role in the process. It’s like my story has been in the ether and all’s I can do is thank whoever it is that was responsible for allowing me to transcribe it and to momentarily feel the gossamer wings of a butterfly before it flies away again.

I choose to share a question from my good reads page and response.

 Mike 7 hours, 26 min ago

Cassandra was the heroine in Greek mythology who could predict the future, yet her predictions were never believed. Is Gary Floyd a modern day Cassandra? What will it take for a critical mass to learn that globalization is not a panacea? Is he a voice crying out in the wilderness, a prophet, or a madman? Or all of the above?

Gary J.Gary 45 minutes ago 0 votes
This is most interesting now going into a pandemic where almost every other country has shut down all its travel. The supply chains are breaking down, And ordinary citizens find no one they can turn to for help. Instead, they are watching their elites bicker about nothing.
1 comment | edit | delete | flag *

15240837Gary J. I will also say the one thing that surprises me is that the government would ever do anything to try to keep people safe as they did initially but as I speak it appears they are facing a decision to either do their job and actually not make as much money off the stocks or to sacrifice the teachers and it appears the teachers are expendable. That really doesn't surprise me. 

Great advise

 I absolutely love this quote probably the best writing is always the ones where the little voice in the back of your head is asking am I saying too much, am I stepping out of line, and then you just say the heck with it and go with it.

Thomas Wolfe and the 1936 Nazi Germany: Writing History in the Present

I have often said that writers, back in the old days, engaged in the times they lived in. Unfortunately, too often this skill is lost on younger writers. By doing so, they left a superior record of the history they witnessed. The person I’m choosing to focus on, tonight, is Thomas Wolfe. Wolfe did spot on depictions of New York City in the 1930s. He always had a keen eye for detail that he would bring to Nazi Germany.

For whatever reason Wolfe’s books sold incredibly well in Germany. According to Germany economic policy he was unable to get his money out of the country. He often travelled to Germany, where he lived like a king on his German royalties. Wolfe was in Germany for the 1936 Olympics. His descriptions of what he saw were first rate.

 

“Meanwhile, through those tremendous banner laden ways, the crowds thronged ceaselessly all day long. The wide promenade of Unter den Linden was solid with patient, tramping German feet. Fathers, mothers, children, young folks, old-the whole material of the nation was there., from every corner of the land. From morn to night they trudged, wide-eyed, full of wonder, past the marvel of those banner laden ways. And among them one saw the bright stabs of color of Olympic jackets and the glint of foreign faces: the dark features of Frenchmen and Italians, the ivory grimace of the Japanese, the straw hair, and blue eyes of the Swedes, and the big Americans, natty in straw hats, white flannels, and blue coats crested with the Olympic seal.”

 

Wolfe being a product of South and of his times didn’t have much use for African Americans. Still, he had a different opinion of Jesse Owens. He actually took pride in his accomplishments.

“And there were great displays of marching men, sometimes ungunned but rhythmic as regiments of brown shirts went swinging through the streets. By noon each day all the main approaches to the games, the embannered streets and avenues of the route that the Leader would take to the stadium, miles away, were walled in by troops. They stood at ease, young men, laughing and talking with each other-the Leader’s bodyguards, the Schutz Staffel units, the Storm Troopers, all the ranks and divisions in their different uniforms-and they stretch in two unbroken lines from Wilhelm-strasse up to the Brandenburger Tor. Then, suddenly, the sharp command, and instantly there would be the solid smack of ten thousand leather boots as they came together with the sound of war.”

“It seemed as if everything had been planned for this moment, shaped for this triumphant purpose. But the people-they had not been planned. Day after day, behind the unbroken wall of soldiers, they stood and waited in a dense and patient throng. These were the masses of the nation, the poor ones of the earth, the humble ones of life, the workers and the wives, the mothers and the children-and day after day they came and stood and waited. They were here because they did not have money enough to buy the little cardboard squares that would have given them places inside the magic ring. From noon until night they waited for just two brief and golden moments of the day: the moment when the Leader went out of the stadium, and the moment when he returned.”

When Wolfe wrote these passages, he knew that his time, in Germany, was coming to an end as he would not be welcomed back after it was published. There’s a wonderful scene of a Jewish person trying to get across the border and being able to get his money out of the country.

“At last he came-like a wind across the field of grass was shaken through that crowd, and from afar the tide rolled up with him, and in it was the voice, the hope, the prayer of the land. The Leader came by slowly in a shining car, a little dark man with a comic-opera mustache, erect and standing, moveless and unsmiling, with his hand upraised, palm outward, not in a Nazi wise salute, but straight up, in a gesture of blessing such as the Buddha and Messiahs use.”

Wolfe did not live long enough to see if his prediction was true, which it no doubt would have been. He died of a brain hemorrhage at 39. He left a huge pile of papers which were put together and made into four books.

Future Writing

Been absolutely hard at work to the follow up to Liberté. I've got the scaffold all designed and now I've got to come up with some filler. https://www.amazon.com/Libert%C3%A9-Days-199…/…/ref=sr_1_14…