In Evergreen, Naomi Hirahara explores post-war L.A. and recommends Chester Himes

“I heartily recommend that readers check out the novels of Chester Himes.” 

That’s what Naomi Hirahara writes in her extensive author’s notes at the end of “Evergreen,” about Nisei returning from the World War Two internment camps to a changed L.A. "Evergreen" is the sequel to Hirahara's excellent "Clark & Division." Himes’ books play a role in Hirahara’s novel set in post-war Los Angeles. 

You can read more about Himes in James Sallis’ deeply detailed biography, “Chester Himes: A Life” I’ve read Sallis novels “Drive” and “Bluebottle” but plan on finding “Difficult Lives, Hitching Rides: Essays on Noir,” exploring writers like Himes and Jim Thompson. I brought Sallis to Wyoming a couple decades ago to work with student writers. 

Hirahara's author's notes are always lengthy and detailed. In "Evergreen," she recommends books on the the era's African-American presence in L.A. She suggests Isabel Wilkerson’s “The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration,” “Snapshots” from the Community Writers Group of Los Angeles, and Chuck Haddix’s “Bird: The Life and Music of Charlie Parker.” 

I added them all to my reading list. As is the case with many writers, L.A. has a hold on me through books and movies. The crime novels of Raymond Chandler, Michael Connelly, Walter Mosley, and James Ellroy. Other writers, such as the almost-forgotten Jon Fante, black-listed Dalton Trumbo, and poet/mailman Charles Bukowski. (Editor's note: Fante and Trumbo, two troublemakers with Colorado roots). The poems of Wanda Coleman, often called "the unofficial poet laureate of Los Angeles," always hit me in the gut. There are other writers as well as musicians such as Bird and the many rockers who have come and gone. The Doors, Joni Mitchell, Dr. Dre, Red Hot Chili Peppers, etc. And “Chinatown,” that lovely, sorrowful movie. 

"Evergreen" is a compelling mystery. I learned about the many injustices inflicted upon U.S. citizens yanked from their homes and schools and shops in Los Angeles for winters behind barbed wire in placed such as Heart Mountain, Wyoming, which I have visited many times. People in Wyoming, such as the late Sen. Alan Simpson of Cody, supported the building of a museum on the site, a museum which duplicates one of the camp's wooden barracks. Simpson and internee and late congressman and secretary of transportation U.S. Senator Norman Mineta were Boy Scouts during the war, Simpson finding a way for the Scouts to work together, inside and outside the wire.

Hirahara also explores the Nisei who served as U.S. soldiers in Italy during the war. Many were killed. Some returned with severe cases of PTSD, which also figures in the book's plot. 

I have “The Real Cool Killers” on my desk. Published in 1959 by Berkeley Medallion, a 50-cent paperback that a second-hand store marked down to 35. It’s the kind you can slip into your pocket. The cover shows Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones chasing a scantily-clad woman. They are all running somewhere down L.A.’s mean streets, some of which take you to the beach and some to certain death. That’s the cool thing, isn’t it? You can say mean streets and New York City in the same breath. But it’s such a weird juxtaposition with sunny, glossy L.A. I hear Beach Boys’ “Surf City” at the same time “Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown” rolls like an angry wave through my memory. 

Nomads from THE NOMAD gather in Utah Oct. 13

Some of my fellow writers featured in The Nomad Literary Magazine will be reading from their work Oct. 13 at the Utah Humanities Book Festival. The event is 6-7:30 p.m. at the Utah Cultural Celebration Center in West Valley located on the western fringe of SLC. My work is featured in several issues of The Nomad, edited by Rachel White and based in Bountiful. One of my favorite stories set in Wyoming, "George Running Poles," is in the "Breakthroughs" issue. I won't be at the reading as I will be getting myself and my books ready for the upcoming Florida Writers Association conference in Orlando. Would I rather be in Utah? Well, the Wasatch Front is gorgeous in October. Sending my regards to all Nomads.

Zeppelins Over Denver ebook now available on some platforms

The ebook edition of Zeppelins Over Denver is now available on the following platforms for $9.99:

Bookshop

Tolino

Smashwords

Barnes & Noble

Kobo

Fable

Apple

Vivlio

Coming soon: Hoopla, for all of us library folks.

I am still trying to unlock the secret of getting the ebook on Amazon and Ingram Spark. Amazon is the site for Kindle where I buy and read most ebooks (just snagged two free ebooks on Bookshop during its promo the day before Amazon started the fall sales blitz). I filled out the form for Amazon a few weeks ago but nothing so far. I uploaded to Ingram, the company that prints my book, but keep getting error messages. Anybody had any problems at these places?

I used Draft2Digital to format my ebook for other platforms. Worked like a charm. Recommended. Thanks to my critique group pal Liz for sending me to D2D. Meet her and other Cheyenne, WY, area writers at the Laramie County Public Library book bash Saturday, Oct. 10, 2-4 p.m. 

Ebooks are important because some 75 percent of all books are bought this way. Before cataract surgery, I read ebooks so I could enlarge the type in dark mode on my K-Reader, or I snagged large print books at the library. Post-surgery, I have laser vision and can read War & Peace at 50 paces. I won't -- read it in grad school. 

Author royalties tend to be a bit better for ebooks. Electrons cheaper than paper and ink and mailing.

Keep reading! 

Wetlands gotta do what wetlands gotta do

Feeling afloat in Florida.

According to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife's National Wetlands Inventory, my house sits between two segments of "freshwater emergent wetland." Our neighborhood, Groveside at Ormond Station, sits between two segments of "freshwater forested shrub wetland." It doesn't take too much imagination to know that, before Groveside, all this wet land was connected. 

I live in former wetland in Flagler County but my roots are beachside in Volusia, a few-hundred yards from a very wet ocean. About 10,962,052,282,368,000,000 cu. ft. of water, according to Google. Climate scientists say that some of that salt water will one day infect our Florida aquifer and might just roll over us all.  

For now, I'm on dry land in Flagler County. Just the other day, returning from a podiatrist's appointment in Daytona, I passed a trio of Flagler Sheriff cars, the sheriffs meeting at the side of Airport Road, discussing something important. A quarter-mile to the east lies Ormond Beach Fire Station No. 94. My house sits in Ormond Station on former wetlands claimed by Flagler, the county named after the railroad robber baron who often visited his RB chum John D in Ormond. My address is Ormond Beach 32174.

I voted at the Korona Fire Station in Flagler, permanently closed but open to voters on Nov. 3! Korona is an old Polish community near Bunnell. My parochial high school was named for the first Spanish priest to say mass ashore in Florida. We used to play Bunnell in basketball. The Father Lopez Green Wave vs. the Bunnell Bulldogs. Sometimes we city-based Sanctimonious Catholics won. Sometimes, the Holy Rollers rolled.

I now vote in Flagler County, as I blogged on Aug. 19. We get mailed and e-mailed notifications from Kaiti Lenhart, Flagler County Supervisor of Elections. A banner reminds us that YOUR VOTE COUNTS! Remember this on Nov. 4 when another pack of lunatics is elected because you didn't vote on Nov. 3. Lenhart's e-mail reminds us of upcoming deadlines. You can vote now. Do it. 

I grew up in Daytona. I graduated from Father Lopez in 1969. We lived a half-block from the beach. It was open to us 24/7. In 1964, men and women in bathing attire rode horses in the shorebreak. Our dog Shannon hunted the shallows for anything edible. We surfed. Tossed frisbees. Tried very hard to engage teen girls strolling by. We worked evenings at the Village Inn Pancake House or Murphy's in Bellair Plaza or as clerks or bellhops or room cleaners at the Mom-and-Pop motels along the beach. We were pool lifeguards or gremmies who sold suntan lotion to cadaver-pale visitors from Michigan.

I'm now a septuagenarian living on former wetlands. Wetlands were named for a reason. They don't care what they are called. As we say in Ormond Station, wetlands gotta do what wetlands gotta do. We don't say that but we should. The annual late-September high tides got a lot of attention. The roads in Tomoka State Park flooded. Miami streets flooded. The Pacific Ocean was angry. Beachside California houses were swamped by big waves. 

None of the many houses and apartments I lived in in Daytona/Ormond/Holly Hill have flooded. I grew up in two houses, each a half-block from the beach. They are still there, still dry. 

I wonder about 100 years from now. This will be the land of our great-great-great grandchildren.

Will the wetland reclaim its territory?

Where is Tomoka County, Florida? And what in the heck is a PETD?

My story collection, first published in 2006 by Ghost Road Press. GRP gave up the ghost a few years later. The collection was republished by Hummingbird Minds Press in 2021.
 

My first book of short stories is now available free on Kindle Unlimited. You can also buy the ebook for $3.99 or the paperback for $14.99.

I just formatted my novel "Zeppelins Over Denver" on Kindle Create. It will be an ebook shortly. Amazon AI Gremlins will alert me when it's ready. I prefer you buy the paperback, read it, and spread the news. I do admit that much of my reading lately has been on my Kindle Reader and on my Pixel. I did this when my vision was compromised by cataracts (the devils) and I needed high contrast and large type. A kindly eye doctor, assisted by fantastic nurses and my ISBA (Incredible Shrinking Bank Account; gas, alas, at $4.49!), removed the lenses which had been with me since my youth and replaced them with new ones. I now can see without specs most of the time except when I have to read the small print on meat packages from the grocers' shelves who must think that all of these gray-haired people wandering around the burgers and brats have had cataract surgery and can discern an "n" or a "k" at six inches. 

Read my stories. They can transport you to the Wyoming, post-World-War-Two Colorado, and even 2003 in a place I call Tomoka County, Florida, but most locals know by another name. The story is "Safe at Any Speed" and it begins this way:

Bob Rogers stumbled upon the vehicle of his dreams at the 2003 Tomoka County Leisure and Travel Fair in January. First he had to navigate displays of behemoth recreation vehicles, gleaming travel trailers, and a sea of customized vans. He dodged wave after wave of beaming salespeople touting their vehicles’ extras, such as built-in dialysis units (“Travel and Transfuse in Comfort!”) and satellite TV systems (“Never Again Stop for Directions!”). The prices stunned him. After less than an hour of touring vehicles bigger and pricier than his first house, he headed for the exit. That's when he happened upon the display for Mick Blake's PETD Extravaganza. 

What's next? 

You know what to do.

Just call me a visionary

Spent the last couple days on Kindle Create. I set up the docx file of “Zeppelins” so its available as an ebook on Amazon KDP. Took me awhile to get there as the Ridgeway Press released the paperback in late May. I was conjuring ways to promote my book set in 1919 Colorado. It’s a bit strange to be living on the fringes of Florida wetlands but pining for the Rocky Mountains. Doesn’t help that Florida summers are hot and soupy. I spend most of the time in AC. It reminded me of depths of Wyoming winters, spending most of my time in heated spaces. Here people pine for the cool of winter and Wyomingites get spring fever as they wait and wait for the day when the short spring turns into summer. I used to swoon in late March when spring threatened. I mourned June 21, the longest day of the year, in which Rocky Mountain summer would begin to fade. Now I’m all turned around.

It is my good fortune that I can now see the changing seasons. Dr. K removed the filters from my eyes and gave them new lenses. No more cataracts. I’m reading my own novel in its proper form and not in final manuscript form in large print on a high-contrast screen. It’s miraculous, is it not, that this can be done? It was expensive. I spent all of my book-buying funds for the next 25 years which would take me to the nice round number of 100. But what good are books if you can’t see?

I thought little about my eyes until my 40s. I was in a dark restaurant holding the menu at arm’s distance. My work colleague remarked that I needed glasses. Poppycock, I said, or something like it.  She handed me her reader glasses and told me to bring the menu closer. I did. I could see the type. “Gimme back my glasses,” she said, now holding her menu at arm’s length. I bought readers the next day. They’re called this because it’s the reading that begins to blur.

When you’re a kid, you hold books up to your face or even at arm’s length and you can see fine. It helps that the text is short and simple. “See Dick Run. See Dick fall. See Spot bark. See Sally laugh.” Easy, right? But then come chapter books and assigned books and books my parents are reading but hide away. “Not for kids,” Dad said. I learned to read in earnest when I dug those books out of his underwear drawer. They were not necessarily books on the Catholic Church forbidden list. But some had bad words, such as “fug” in “From Here to Eternity.” There also was kissing and groping on the Oahu beach, at least in the movie.

I thank all of the doctors and researchers who brought us to this point. I know Salk and Sabin and Madame Curie are tough to remember when RFK Junior’s scary face comes on Fox. There’s a prescription for that: “Don’t watch Fox!"

In Memoriam: Wendell Berry, 1934-2026

Rest In Poetry, Wendell Berry. He died Aug. 31 and
this is a bit late in coming. But I liked this image by
Theo the Catholic Worker. It says so much.