Stream 2

Discussion of some of the subculture involved with the current project deserves special consideration. Creating something that would shock reader sensibilities would be all too easy. Doing that would not require the injection of any sort of speculative fiction, which is notable in the imaginary substance "cuvalo." Shock and awe has a limited appeal in the wider scheme of reader demographics, and for that reason arguably a shorter lifespan as art with relevance to timeless considerations. Looking at the first thirty pages of "Blood Red" one may hardly believe that the goal of the work is to stand the test of time, but such is the case and has been all along. The romance and family side alone dwarfs other considerations going into the project, and those things, love for someone close and love for a family, stand at the very center of timelessness. All of the accompanying negative emotions that follow along with those positives more than account for balancing grittiness requisite in the true epic, but just to be safe there's also a very real epic going on above and beyond the romance and the small family at the center of the novel. That portion of the work involves a massive subculture that most people just won't know anything about.

I struggled with whether or not to tell the truth about some of these things. Needless to say, sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction and people believe what they want to believe. Casting all of the second guessing aside and plunging to the heart of the matter, I became very familiar with drug dealing in the 1980's. I wish that I could say that it was only my father who did those things, but it wasn't. He admonished me in every way that he could not to follow that path. Nothing he could have said would have changed my mind. I idolized the man and wanted to be like him in every way, totally ignorant of how incredibly difficult his life had been.

I was a total failure as a drug entrepreneur. In hindsight it becomes clear to me that my father took a direct hand in my private life and made it impossible for me to make any money that way. I would have been murderously furious (an unfortunate use of language, that) to find that out at the time. I made it far enough to know how things worked, and it could be conjectured that simply gaining the knowledge I did is altogether detrimental to enjoying a normal life.

Decades later it's painfully apparent that the things I learned set me apart from my friends and acquaintances in so many ways. It's almost like there are two worlds. There's the safe, happy world where people raise families. In that world when acts of violence and law breaking take place those events leave ripples in a still pond. The police arrive, the system starts to work and everybody is kept safe and sound.

In the other world the safeguard is honor among people of power. Events, violent or otherwise, don't cause a stir. Family is still held sacred, but human life means a lot less. The police aren't safe or the vehicle of the system itself has turned its back, so help never arrives after a phone call, if a phone call is ever made. If everything goes according to plan, then everything is copacetic. When plans deteriorate, all along lines of communication where people are making a profit lives begin to turn upside down. In the wake of those big money substances people are left empty and broken.

There's not much left to say about it. Shortly very disturbing things will be available to be read here, and a lot of good things before the end. It's not all about shock or I would have the story set up to handle about twenty-five pages of free flowing, unanchored, no-holds-barred offensive material. Instead, meh, there's a plotline.


[There's no way to write anything biographical about my paternal ancestry, the same way there is no way to write anything autobiographical about myself. How does one verbalize glances and unspoken moments? How do people go about putting words to the unspoken? It can be done, but the truth of maters only lasts for moments, and then other pressing thoughts and histories come weighing down. What was true one moment is only a portion of the truth in the next, and then barely true at all before the end, depending on points of view. So many times I have tried to vocalize my ponderances, only to come up empty, my words snatched by a glance at a cloud in the sky, distracted in the crucial moment and left without anything to think or say. This is another one of those things. One thing that can not be said to be untrue, in any way shape or form, is that I come from a merchant's home, if by merchant one includes the barter system and the occupation of trader therein.]