D.A. Gray’s “Wire” is #280 in the never-ending series called BACKSTORY OF THE POEM

Go to Chris Rice Cooper's Web Page by clicking below:

http://chrisricecooper.com/

  

*The images in this specific piece are granted copyright:  Public Domain, GNU Free Documentation Licenses, Fair Use Under The United States Copyright Law.

The other images are granted copyright permission by the copyright holder, which is identified beneath each photo. 

**Some of the links will have to be copied and then posted in your search engine in order to pull up properly

*** The CRC Blog welcomes submissions from published and unpublished poets for BACKSTORY OF THE POEM series.  Contact CRC Blog via email at caccoop@aol.com or personal Facebook messaging at https://www.facebook.com/car.cooper.

All of the Backstory of the Poem LIVE LINKS can be found at the VERY END of the below feature: 

http://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2021/02/will-justice-drakes-intercession-is-251.html 

***D.A. Gray’s “Wire” is #280 in the never-ending series called BACKSTORY OF THE POEM where the Chris Rice Cooper Blog (CRC) focuses on one specific poem and how the poet wrote that specific poem.  All BACKSTORY OF THE POEM links are at the end of this piece. (Right: D.A. Gray at a poetry reading. Copyright by D.A. Gray)

Can you go through the process of writing this poem from the moment the idea was conceived in your brain until final form? In March 2018 a bomber from Pflugerville, Texas began terrorizing Austin with a series of package bombs sent through FedEx.  The 4th bomb was a tripwire in a quite Austin community.  

https://abcnews.go.com/US/alleged-austin-serial-bomber-kills-explosive/story?id=53897636 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/03/20/a-father-a-musician-a-salsa-maker-the-lives-and-futures-lost-in-austin-bombings/ 

(Left: the perpetrator Mark Anthony Conditt)

        

A friend who lived close to this had shared a story of how it reminded him of an experience in Iraq, and his story reminded me of a near miss when the sun reflecting off a piece of wire appeared just a second before we would have driven through it, and that flash of light probably saved us.  It was the unexpectedness of seeing instruments of terrorism at home and having to become hyper-vigilant again that made me start writing.

This was originally two pieces, a memory of the near-miss and the street cordoned off with yellow tape and flashing blue lights. (Left: bombing victim Will Grote III)

        

        The two images were parallel but I couldn’t think of a way of weaving them together or articulate why this moment was even more disturbing.  I remember listening to Dylan and hearing the last lines of ‘Stuck Inside of Mobile’ – ‘wondering what price you have to pay to get out of going through these things twice.’ That, to me, told the story of what a veteran returning from fighting terrorism only to experience terrorism at home. (Right: Bombing victim Anthony Stephan  House)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kh6K_-a0c4 

Where were you when you started to actually write the poem?  And please describe the place in great detail. I was in a Killeen parking lot getting ready to head home after teaching a college class.  I’d heard the news story of the wire and the search for the bomber (at first it wasn’t known if it was the same person) while listening to NPR in the car. My classroom wasn’t far from the Fort Hood gate and I wondered how many others were affected by this experience. I wrote the memory down in the car, and talked to my friend, who was in the area, later that week. The description of the Austin street came later as I began to see the images. (Left: Bombing victim Draylen Mason)

What year and month did you write this poem? March 2018. The same week that the wire was discovered

How many drafts of this poem did you write before going to the final? (And can you share a photograph of your rough drafts with pen markings on it?) It took about three drafts.

Were there any lines in any of your rough drafts of this poem that were not in the final version?  And can you share them with us? I originally wrote two pieces, one of the memory of Iraq and one of the current event in Austin.  The end of the memory I first focused on the odd details that the speaker remembered, and thought later that the way trauma scatters the memory, or at least my ability to remember, felt like a separate poem that would have to be revisited later:

 

‘I couldn’t find my voice at first,’ he says

looking down, as if that detail of weakness

were the fact that mattered most,

and when you’re putting the pieces

of your mind back together after

the trauma passes – sometimes it is.

(Below Left and Below Right:  D. A. Gray's drafts on his poem "Wire" Credit and copyright by D.A. Gray)

What do you want readers to take from this poem? There is no way to express violence in language that doesn’t leave someone hurt, and there is no way to express violence in language and pretend to be innocent.  Poets often talk about avoiding abstraction as a matter of style but it has a greater impact when it pertains to living together in a society. Overseas, ‘freedom’ results in countless bombs being dropped on families. Here, talk of an enemy fills an armed man with rage which results in grieving families at shopping centers and schools and places of worship.  Linking those two experiences for me is a way of saying ‘you don’t want this.’

Which part of the poem was the most emotional of you to write and why? Probably that last explanation.  But also seeing that wire overseas and knowing what it was a few miles away -- places me back in a place where the oppressed felt it was the only way to be heard, and shows me the place where we are now, a place where people have told themselves they were oppressed.  It would take me pages to unpack that emotion.

Has this poem been published before?  And if so where? In the Summer 2018 issue of Rise Up Review. (Left)

http://www.riseupreview.com/Summer-2018-Poems.html 

Wire

‘Oh, Mama, can this really be the end?’

Bob Dylan, ‘Stuck Inside of Mobile (With the Memphis Blues Again)’

A man I knew briefly in Iraq, who stops 

to talk whenever we’re among veterans,

or on the sidewalk of Austin like now,

recalls the story of his last convoy

on the outskirts of Tikrit.  In 2006, he sat

next to the driver and scanned the road

and the piles of trash on the edge. 

Still, he almost didn’t see the wire,

not until the sun gleamed along its thin

edge before it disappeared under the truck’s

front edge.  

“I couldn’t find my voice,

at first.”  He said it as if that was the detail

that mattered most.  “I shouted but not

quick enough.  The driver looked my way

and shouted over the engine noise. ‘What?’

and I realized we must have tripped it.

I sat there bracing for a blast that never 

came, heart pounding, my driver looking 

for an answer.  I said, ‘nothing’ because

it wouldn’t change what happened then.”

“We lived,” he said “but every night

I feel that pounding as if something is

lifting me off into the atmosphere.

I still wake with two fistfuls of sheets.”

We stand just outside the yellow tape,

cardboard shards, plastic red white

and blue adhesive streamers, a smattering

of nails across the path.  Faces gather

attached to neighborhood bodies

floating up like ghosts to the barriers.

Sometimes we catch a set of eyes

in an explosion of blue light.  

I don’t remember when we left the site 

of the blast; we stood most of the night, 

dumbstruck, both wondering what price 

to avoid going through this twice.

Matt Hohner’s “Saratoga Passage, August 2014” is #279 in the never-ending series called BACKSTORY OF THE POEM

 *The images in this specific piece are granted copyright:  Public Domain, GNU Free Documentation Licenses, Fair Use Under The United States Copyright Law.

The other images are granted copyright permission by the copyright holder, which is identified beneath each photo. 

**Some of the links will have to be copied and then posted in your search engine in order to pull up properly

*** The CRC Blog welcomes submissions from published and unpublished poets for BACKSTORY OF THE POEM series.  Contact CRC Blog via email at caccoop@aol.com or personal Facebook messaging at https://www.facebook.com/car.cooper.7

All of the Backstory of the Poem LIVE LINKS can be found at the VERY END of the below feature: 

http://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2021/02/will-justice-drakes-intercession-is-251.html 

***Matt Hohner’s “Saratoga Passage, August 2014” is #279 in the never-ending series called BACKSTORY OF THE POEM where the Chris Rice Cooper Blog (CRC) focuses on one specific poem and how the poet wrote that specific poem.  All BACKSTORY OF THE POEM links are at the end of this piece. 

Can you go through the step-by-step process of writing this poem from the moment the idea was first conceived in your brain until final form?  “Saratoga Passage, August 2014” was, at the time, my latest attempt to capture my experience as an adopted child. Having been adopted when I was five months old, I’ve known about it for as long as I was cognizant (my parents did not keep it a secret from me). I have always wondered intensely about my birth mother. My birthday was within two days of my first draft of this poem, and I finally felt I was ready to sit down and write a poem to my birth mother, about whom I still have no information. I had written at least one or two other poems about my birth mother, one of which had already been published, but hadn’t yet felt like I’d come close enough to capturing my experience as an adopted child. I say “close enough” because one can never really get one’s personal experience perfect for others to understand, but it’s the attempt that counts. (Above Right:  Matt Hohner.  Photo Credit Shannon Kline. Copyright by Matt Hohner)

The poem was written in red ink, since I couldn’t find a blue or black-ink pen to use. I rarely handwrite in anything other than black ink. I’d left my little reporter’s pocket-size spiral flip notebook at home here in Baltimore, so I had to improvise. These days, if I don’t have my notebook with me, as long as there is charge in my phone, I’ll use the Notes app to compose, either typing it in or dictating it, then emailing it to myself to copy and paste into a Word document in order to start shaping, revising, editing, adding to, and crafting it. I often use words like “hammering” when it comes to crafting my poems after the first draft, as it often feels like a physical act, beating and pounding the words into useful form in the heat of things, then letting them “cool” for a day or two (sometimes merely hours) to put distance between myself and the poem, a little like standing further back from a painting to see the whole piece a bit more clearly before returning to the close-in, detail-oriented wordsmithing. I should note that I do not view my editing as violent; on the contrary, it’s an act of creation, but the real exhaustion sometimes after working and reworking a poem until I’ve stopped editing it (as opposed to finished editing it, since I often think about how a poem could have been better long after it’s been published).

SO. It was late in the evening, after dark, my wife was already asleep, and I had this burst of thought and feeling—the ol’ inspiring wind vibrating through the lyre strings—so I headed out to the small deck overlooking the narrow Saratoga Passage waterway between Whidbey and Camano Islands. The Perseid meteor shower was in full swing, the air was cool and the night clear and quiet, as the tide ebbed three stories below me. I had the right interconnected, swirling  braid of natural metaphors to help me as I sat down to try to capture how I felt at the cusp of my 43rd birthday. (Right:  One of Matt Hohner's rough drafts to the poem "Saratoga Passage, August 2014"  Credit and Copyright by Matt Hohner)

I was probably out on the deck for a couple of hours, writing by the light spilling out of the room, which, though bright enough for me to write by, wasn’t hindering my wife’s sleep.  (Left:  Saratoga at dusk.  Credit and Copyright by Matt Hohner)

When I finished jotting down my thoughts and observations, I came back into the room, tucked the draft into my suitcase pocket, and went to bed. When I got home, I left it sitting on my desk on the base of my desktop computer for about a month, until I was ready to return to the rather intense feelings in it and begin the real “scheisse work” (as my beloved, late mentor at Naropa University Anselm Hollo was fond of saying) of shaping it into a poem that worked well on the page. I don’t remember how long it took me to truly be “finished” the poem, but it was easily weeks of on-and-off editing bursts when I had the impetus and discipline to head back into the word-forge with hammer and tongs, apron on, ready to lean into it once more. (Above Right:  Saratoga at low tide.  Credit and Copyright by Matt Hohner)

Where were you when you started to actually write the poem? And please describe the place in great detail.  I began writing this poem on a half-sheet of paper torn from a notepad in the room of the fancy inn where my wife and I were staying in the small town of Langley, on Whidbey Island, in Washington’s Puget Sound. We’d decided to splurge, since it was the last part of a vacation that started with our attending my namesake cousin Matt’s wedding at his now-in-laws’ family farm south of Seattle, within view of the side of Mt. St. Helens that blew off all those decades ago. (Left:  balcony on which "Saratoga Passage, August 2014" was written. Credit and Copyright by Matt Hohner)

How many drafts of this poem did you write before going to the
final? (And can you share a photograph of your rough drafts with pen markings on it?) This poem has easily had dozens of past lives before I settled on its final state. Once I start typing a poem, sometimes from first draft onward, I don’t print it out to mark or edit it, nor do I use the “track changes” function the way I would electronically with a word file from, say, a participant in one of my workshops, or a poet friend who asked for my input on a poem they are working on. I usually print the latest draft of where I am with the poem before calling it quits for the time being as a sort of time stamp on the work in progress, so just imagine a clearing’s-worth of paper in a stack for just this poem. I need to be able to see it on the page, physically. It helps me understand what needs to be trimmed or where something might need to be added or rearranged. (Above Right:  Anselm Hollo)

Were there any lines in any of your rough drafts of this poem that were not in the final version?  And can you share them with us? You might be able to discern some lines and words not in the final poem from my photograph of the first draft. The final line breaks and shape of the poem came from the hours and hours of editing it as a Word file. The process of making this poem was solitary, so I don’t have any interactive evidence of the editing process, other than the photo of the original draft with squiggles and arrows and crossed out lines and notes up the side margin-edge.

What do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem? I hope readers get the deep sense of disconnectedness I as an adoptee have with what many people almost take for granted as their moment of origin, their emergence into the world. I do hope that perhaps an adoptee will read and identify with my work, and know that they are not alone, that my voice might lend a bit of itself to their experience, and maybe even help them find their own voice and self-ness in their situation. I want folks to know that uncertainty about an aspect of oneself—whatever that might be—is okay. At times it can be a hard thing not knowing one’s familial stories of immigration, triumph, tragedy, marriage, etc. from a genetic standpoint. As with everything I write, my goal is to bridge a gap, to communicate, to connect with others, and thus reaffirm our collective existence. It’s my reaction against the obfuscation, lies, truth-denying, façade-making, advertisement-like sound-bit cheap language we find ourselves immersed in minute-by-minute via social and other media. Now is not the time, quite frankly, to be fucking around as a poet. People are still, as W.C. Williams once pointed out, dying from the lack of real news in the world; poetry, when done right, can be that news of our own humanity which we are all desperate to hear. 

Which part of the poem was the most emotional of you to write and why? The last few lines. It returns me to myself in the here and now, all these years later, imagining the moment of my birth to a mother I’ve never known. Nothing’s changed. I’m still alone in the world in a way relatively few people know. And everything has changed. I’ve spoken my self-truth into the universe.

Has this poem been published before?  And if so where? “Saratoga Passage, August 2014” was shortlisted for the 2015 Ballymaloe International Poetry Prize in Ireland (now called The Moth International Prize for Poetry, and was published in The Moth, Issue 20, Spring 2015 

https://www.themothmagazine.com/ 

and The Irish Times, Friday, April 24, 2015. 

https://www.irishtimes.com/ 

 It was also the winner of the 2015 Lascaux Prize in Poetry. 

It’s in my first collection, Thresholds and Other Poems, published by Apprentice House Press in 2018.

https://shop.aer.io/apprenticehouse/p/Thresholds_and_Other_Poems/9781627201810-4208?collection=/0 

Saratoga Passage, August 2014

Whidbey Island, Puget Sound

Up late, I watch the Perseids etch their brief furies through

high, cold, moonlit air. My wife of eleven years, partner of 

twenty-one, sleeps in the room behind me. Three stories down,

the salt tide slides away from concrete bulwarks, slips quietly back

into itself: the air’s fragrance leavens with life and decay as twelve hours

of water give way to rocks maned with kelp, sand rivulets emptying 

under carcasses of hundred-year-old driftwood, and the distinct whiff

of an uneaten fish, speared by talons and dropped, bottom-sunk until now.

In two days I will be forty-three. I know nothing of my birth, hold no

narrative of my making, nothing of the weather that day, what you wore, 

who drove you to the hospital. Above, particles ricochet in skips

and scratches through the dark emptiness between stars. I must have been 

like these: a brief interrupter of cycles, growing for nine moons, released out

of you and away into space, gone but for an umbilical scar, fading into the sea 

of darkness and memory, covered by the rhythm of tides, washed by time

into something smooth you carry, but cannot touch. A loon at the bend 

trills across glassy currents; sound of wingtips in flight touching calm water.

The soft heartbeat of waves lapping the receding tideline grows fainter as

the frozen cosmos delivers hot specks into fleet fire. I listen as ocean

and moon sway their eternal slow dance, one drawing the other closer, 

then releasing. I have known this pulling-to and letting go, the

profound momentary ripples, the desolate stillness that follows.

I have known the searing white heat of entry into this world alone. 

Matt Hohner was shortlisted for the 2015 Ballymaloe International Poetry Prize, published in The Moth, Issue 20, Spring 2015 and The Irish Times, Friday, April 24, 2015; winner, 2015 Lascaux Prize in Poetry from Thresholds and Other Poems (Apprentice House 2018) (Right: Matt Hohner in March of 2021.  Copyright by Matt Hohner)

CRC Blog Analysis on WHAT DRIVES MEN by Susan Tepper “Between Two Men”

 *The images in this specific piece are granted copyright:  Public Domain, GNU Free Documentation Licenses, Fair Use Under The United States Copyright Law.

The other images are granted copyright permission by the copyright holder, which is identified beneath each photo. 

**Some of the links will have to be copied and then posted in your search engine in order to pull up properly

***The CRC Blog welcomes submissions from published and unpublished writers. Contact CRC Blog via email at caccoop@aol.com or personal Facebook messaging at https://www.facebook.com/car.cooper.7 

CRC Blog Analysis on WHAT DRIVES MEN by Susan Tepper

“Between Two Men” 

     Susan Tepper’s novel    What Drives Men was published on June 21, 2019 by Wilderness House Press 

https://www.wildernesshousepress.com/ 

and book designed by Steve Glines.

https://www.facebook.com/steve.glines 

(Left: Steve Glines Facebook logo photo) 

The official summary of What Drives Men:  “Susan Tepper's new novel is a picaresque romp. A Gulf War vet battling PTSD is tricked into chauffeuring millionaire country music legend Billy Bud Wilcox from Newark to Colorado. Everything goes wrong. Tepper expertly skewers a vast collection of characters on a wildly entertaining road trip from hell.”

Even though most of What Drives Men takes place on the roads between Newark, New Jersey and Colorado, Russell’s own struggles and traumas are not contained in the United States, but across the ocean to Iraq and across the waters in his own brain. What Drives Men has all of the conflicts that the book cover suggests:  conflict within one’s self, between one another, and with nature itself. (Right: Susan Tepper.  Copyright by Susan Tepper)

        

Susan Tepper describes the book cover as bringing all of these conflicts the main character Russell faces into one metaphysical image: “As for the cover, we did a lot of talking about it, me and my publisher Steve Glines, and we didn't want it to be an obvious cover, because the book doesn't start out as a road novel. It's about a man in search of himself, a man who has lost himself during the Gulf War. We also wanted the cover to elaborate on the title what drives men? And so we chose this cover of a man attempting to navigate an impossible universe, using a gondola, a universe with many moons and choices.We wanted a metaphorical cover that sums up Russell's confusion and ambivalence regarding his place in this world.” (Above Left: Susan Tepper's writing room where she wrote WHAT DRIVES MEN.  Credit and Copyright by Susan Tepper)

Click on the link below to read more about Susan Tepper

https://www.susantepper.com/ 

Click on the link below to order What Drives Men from Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/What-Drives-Men-Susan-Tepper/dp/1733118500/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=what+drives+men+by+susan+tepper&qid=1618963468&sr=8-1 

        

Russell is a disabled Gulf War Veteran suffering from PTSD, living in a childless marriage with wife Maggie.  Then two things happen in his life that change it for the worse:  while in a park he is attacked by a squirrel who he believes is a weapon of mass destruction, especially when the squirrel causes him to bleed. Then his wife Maggie decides to leave.  

This sets the stage for the vulnerability of the soon to be 50-year-old man – he’s lost just about everything when he comes across an ad of a car service office requesting a driver to drive the legendary country-western singer Billy Bud Wilcox from Newark, New Jersey all the way to Denver, Colorado.   His new boss Nina loans him her brother Leo’s vehicle, a bright and shiny black Lincoln Continental for the journey. There is just one requirement or warning about driving Leo’s car – if it receives even one scratch or has the scent of cigarette smoke, Russell is dead meat. Russell promises to treat Leo’s car with the utmost care and respect; and with a promise of a big tip from the legendary singer, Russell is set to go on the journey.

        

Billy Bud Wilcox otherwise known as BBW is an obscene, grouchy, mischievous, cussing, pussy obsessed old man who demands he gets his way at every possible moment, and, along with a suitcase containing $40,000 in case, it’s almost guaranteed BBW will get his way.  But not with Russell, within the same day he meets BBW he is wishing he never took the job and considers BBW like an enemy, or a bee buzzing in his brain, and Russell cannot wait for this driving job to be finished. 

        

Throughout the drive the two argue about everything and almost all of the time: when they are driving, when they stop to eat, stop to gas up, or stop at a hotel for the night.  One of the many things they argue about is BBW’s inability to not flirt with women, oftentimes, calling each woman by the name Shelley Lee, and then sobbing for Shelley Lee to not leave him, which convinces Russell that the old man is senile. 

        Soon Russell is more than BBW’s driver but his brother’s keeper, making sure the old man doesn’t walk on ice, much less walk away and disappear.   He even encourages BBW to bathe and shave but receives a big fat no.

        The two men have their first decent or amicable conversation while driving through Pennsylvania.

       “Tell me about the love of your life.” As if none of the morning drama had ever occurred.

        “Are you talking to me?” said Russell.

“Who else is in this car?  Just you and me.  Me and you.  Right or wrong?”

“I guess so.”  Russell feeling uncomfortable. It didn’t strike him as the sort of thing he wanted to share with Billy.

“Come on, now. Don’t be shy.  You saw my crocodile tears.  Let’s see some a yers.”

“You want me to cry?”

The old man chucked.  “Not cry.  Bare your soul, boy.”

Bare your soul boy.  A song he might’ve sung at the height of his career.  Except Russell never bared his soul.  Never.  Asking Stan if he considered Maggie nice was about as far as he ever got baring his soul.  He wasn’t even sure he had one.  If people asked:  Do you believe in God?  Russell always said:  I don’t know.  No point agreeing to something that felt unimaginable, extreme, even far fetched.  The day the squirrel jumped out of that tree, if someone had asked:  Do you believe in God?  He would’ve said:  I believe in the devil.  The devil jumped out of that tree and bit me.  Of course nobody asked. 

“Cat got your tongue?”

“What was the question?”

“You gotta ask twice, no point askin’.”

Russell groaned.  “Do we have to talk about this?”

“Yep.  If you want to clear the slate.”

Clear the slate!  What a joke.

He listened to an ad on the radio for Listerine.  He thought about telling the old man how he was walking along minding his own business when this rodent (as Clara called it) flies out of a tree – this virtual Batman attacking him on the neck.

“Her name is Maggie and she left me,” he said.

“When?”

“Some time ago.”

“What season?”

“I don’t know.  Winter I guess.”

“Ah-ha!  I knew you had issues with winner.  You don’t like it.  Maybe you used to, now you don’t.  You and Maggie husband and wife?”

Russell groaned again.  “Do we have to do this?

“If you want to get your mind free.  Or do you want to be daft in your old age?”

As if you’re not? thought Russell.  “I feel like having a pepperoni pizza.”

The old man cracked up laughing.  “That’s Maggie talkin’ from your gut.  She’s still got you hot inside.  Still smokin’ for her.  You want to eat her pepperoni, that’s what you want.”  He made obscene noises with his lips.

Things completely change when they come across three drifters in a cowboy bar in Ohio:  pretty blonde Sonia, African American beauty Peaches, and blonde-headed man Tad. At BBW’s insistence and Russell’s strong displeasure, the three join Russell and BBW on their journey to Colorado, in what they believe is BBW’s lucrative ranch where a white stallion is waiting for them to ride upon. BBW is ecstatic to be sitting in the back seat between Sonia and Peaches while Tad sits upfront with Russell; the whole time Russell regretting he took on this job and as impatient as ever for the job to end.   

Soon the five individuals must face the greatest conflict of all while they visit Iowa’s Crane Pelon Falls. By the time Russell drives to Nebraska, he reexamines his and BBW’s relationship: Are they enemy or foe or something in the middle?  

        

Susan Tepper has been a writer for twenty years and is the author of nine published books.  She writes in all genres, with stories, poems, interviews, essays and opinion columns published extensively worldwide. An award-winning author, Tepper has been nominated nineteen times for the Pushcart Prize and has received a Pulitzer Prize nomination for the novel ‘What May Have Been’ (currently being adapted for the stage as The Crooked Heart). 

        

        Her story "Africa...then" was published in Gargoyle Magazine 2020 issue #72 and has been nominated for the Best American Mystery/Suspense Series. Other awards include Second Place Winner in Story/South Million Writers Award, 7th Place Winner in the Francis Ford Coppola sponsored Zoetrope Contest for the Novel (2003), Best Story of 17 Years of Vestal Review, a nomination for NPR’s Selected Shorts Series, and other honors.  

        

        Additionally, Tepper has been an editor at Wilderness House Literary Review and Istanbul Literary Review. For seven years she was panel moderator of the SMALL PRESS PANEL at Marymount Manhattan College Writers Conference, which eventually morphed into the Hunter College Writers Conference. FIZZ her reading series at KGB Bar, NYC, ran for a decade, and showcased the talents of our literary stars as well as many first time authors. 

        

        Before settling down to the writing life, she worked as an actor, singer, flight attendant, marketing manager, overseas tour guide, TV producer, interior decorator, rescue worker and more. She blames it all on a high interest range. Tepper is a native New Yorker.

Gwen M. Plano’s "The Culmination, a new beginning" is #230 in the never-ending series called INSIDE THE EMOTION OF FICTION

 *The images in this specific piece are granted copyright:  Public Domain, GNU Free Documentation Licenses, Fair Use Under The United States Copyright Law.

The other images are granted copyright permission by the copyright holder, which is identified beneath each photo. 

**Some of the links will have to be copied and then posted in your search engine in order to pull up properly

***The CRC Blog welcomes submissions from published and unpublished fiction genre (including screenwriters and playwrights) for INSIDE THE EMOTION OF FICTION.  Contact CRC Blog via email at caccoop@aol.com or personal Facebook messaging at https://www.facebook.com/car.cooper.7 

****Gwen M. Plano’s The Culmination, a new beginning is #230 in the never-ending series called INSIDE THE EMOTION OF FICTION where the Chris Rice Cooper Blog (CRC) focuses on one specific excerpt from a fiction genre and how that fiction writer wrote that specific excerpt.  

What is the date you began writing this piece of fiction and the date when you completely finished the piece of fiction? I began writing it in January 2020, but in February my writing was interrupted by surgery. Once back on my feet, I wrote steadily and finished the first draft in May. I sent it to the editor during the summer, and then to the publisher in September. 

 

Where did you do most of your writing for this fiction work?  And please describe in detail.  And can you please include a photo? I live in the Midwest and am fortunate to have a small office in my home. It is there that I write.  Though I have a laptop for travel, I’m attached to my desktop computer when I’m home. 

What were your writing habits while writing this work- did you drink something as you wrote, listen to music, write in pen and paper, directly on laptop; specific time of day? I usually begin writing very early in the morning, around 4:00 am, and that practice was true for The Culmination. Silence helps me focus and early mornings are particularly quiet. Often, I sip on coffee or tea as I write. Though I enjoy music very much, when I’m doing serious writing, I appreciate silence. (Left: Gwen M. Plano in her office. Copyright by Gwen M. Plano)

What is the summary of Culmination, a new beginning? The Culmination can best be described as a military thriller. It tackles difficult topics such as denuclearization, the power struggles over oil in the Middle East, as well as the ever-present danger of war. Readers will find themselves sitting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, walking in the historic Red Square, and laughing with children in an orphanage in Turkey. They will glimpse the horror of war and watch the give and take of a negotiated peace. Readers will also meet the two heads of state who fall in love and subsequently commit themselves to creating a world in which all are family. 

Please include just one excerpt and include page numbers as reference.  This one excerpt can be as short or as long as you prefer. Leaders from nine countries with nuclear arsenals gather in Reykjavik, Iceland to negotiate a nuclear disarmament treaty. Vice President Margaret Adler from the United States chairs the meetings. After an intense and heated exchange between two heads of state, Adler calls for order and addresses the group.

“If we’re honest with ourselves, or anyone else, we’d admit freely that we don’t trust, that we live in fear, and that we are always ready to impose a deadly strike. In fact, our power is measured by our ability to destroy. Isn’t that right?

“No one suggests that we abandon our need to protect our country’s boundaries and our people. Rather, today, we lay the foundation for an alternative way of relating. Shall we proceed?” 

Members glance one at another and nod their agreement.

For the next two hours, the leaders present and discuss their preliminary ideas for progressive nuclear disarmament. The Pakistani leader asks for a break, and Adler concurs.

“Let’s reconvene in fifteen minutes,” she says. 

As chairs get pushed back, and people stand, Adler walks out onto the deck. A chilly breeze brushes her skin, which she welcomes. This is her first visit to Iceland, and she smiles. What a perfect location. 

The Russian President interrupts her reveries when he stands by her side. “This is a day I could not have imagined, standing shoulder to shoulder with the Vice President of the United States, looking out on ...” 

Adler smiles, “I couldn’t have imagined it either. Here we are, the two most powerful countries in the world, nations who have hated one another for a century, marveling at natural beauty and a child playing with a kite. No, I couldn’t have imagined.”

President Smirnov gives a side glance and asks, “Where did it occur?” 

Adler realizes that he’s noticed her arm prosthesis. “Afghanistan.” 

“Ah, another reason to hate Russians.”

“Don’t we all have reasons? You wonder who holds the power—truly. Those of us who can destroy, or a child who plays innocently with her kite?”

Why is this excerpt so emotional for you as a writer to write?  And can you describe your own emotional experience of writing this specific excerpt?  I never expected to write this book, but in some ways, I had no choice. The characters crowded into my office and insisted that I listen to them. In a very real way, they wrote the book. I simply tapped the keys and learned of the urgent need to become family. 

Growing up in Southern California, Gwen M. Plano loved learning and she loved imagining stories, some grandly epic, all personal and heartfelt. She taught and served in universities across the United States and in Japan, then retired and focused again on her stories. Her first book, Letting Go Into Perfect Love, is an award-winning memoir recounting some of her struggles in life while providing insight into the healing process. 

Gwen shifted to fiction after this first book and joined forces with John W. Howell in writing a thriller, The Contract: between heaven and earth. Its sequel, The Choice: the unexpected heroes, soon followed. The Culmination, a new beginning is the third book of the series. This summer the final book of the thriller series, The Call for freedom, is set for publication. Gwen lives in the Midwest with her husband, traveling and writing. Her four adult children and her four grandchildren are her pride and joy. (Right: Gwen M. Plano with her husband Larry in 2020.  Copyright by Gwen M. Plano)

CONTACT INFO:

Blog:  https://www.gwenplano.com/blog-reflections  

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/GMPlano 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/gmplano  

Amazon Author’s page:  https://amzn.to/3eAU2Bt 

BOOK LINKS:

Letting Go into Perfect Love - https://amzn.to/3bToO7t 

The Contract between heaven and earth - https://amzn.to/2U2Lgmv 

The Choice: the unexpected heroes - https://amzn.to/3lcz8eA 

The Culmination, a new beginning - https://amzn.to/3eEWkj9 

All of the Inside the Emotion of Fiction LIVE LINKS can be found at the VERY END of the below feature: 

http://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2021/03/stephenson-holts-arranged-marriage-is.html