Huey Dusk(my first official review)

My first review of the original Huey Dusk was Luke warm. Here are some excerpts.

The world Whit has created is pretty fantastic, in every sense of that word. A world where clowns are real people, not just guys in make-up doing a job. You cut a clown, he bleeds white. A world where mimes really don’t speak.

By definition, a novella has less time than a novel to pull the reader in, and thusly it is imperative that the reader is captivated within the first half a page. Unfortunately I didn’t find Huey Dusk quite achieving that. This was in no small part due to the very choppy nature and static prose of the opening scenes. Nonetheless, there was still something in these scenes that made me want to know more. A clown who’s taking drugs just seconds before entertaining the children… Not your normal opening scenes, but certainly the kind that makes the reader want to plough on. I’m glad I did.

Due to the word count there’s a little less story in this novella than I would have liked. Indeed I felt it was a story with more promise, so much more I’d not been privy to. The world Whit has created is pretty fantastic, in every sense of that word. A world where clowns are real people, not just guys in make-up doing a job. You cut a clown, he bleeds white. A world where mimes really don’t speak.

What I liked about this review was that it was honest and picked up on all the parts that I hoped one would pick up on. He said the prose was static and choppy; I might have added dreamlike. When I originally wrote the story it was only meant to be a one paragraph piece of flash fiction. But I just kept adding to it paragraph by paragraph. It was intended to be expressionist art, so to speak, designed to be unsettling.

He also alluded to a paper thin plot. Again I started writing this story as a series of vignettes and realized I had something more. So, to me, the thin plot again makes this minimalist art and gives the story a very cultish vibe.

In subsequent stories, Huey has changed quite a bit, and I have never been able to recapture the magic of the original-- I'm not sure I want to. For those who want to form their own opinions about this story they can buy it either at www.untreedreads.com  or at www.amazon.com.

Thoughts about my new work in progress.

I loved the last story I wrote so much I thought I would do a spin off of. It could be classified as a prequel because it covers the younger years of a minor character in Trouble Follows. The piece will be a nod to Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest. Yes, this has been done before, but I feel there can't be enough Red Harvest knock offs. So I am going to contribute yet another to the literary and pulp market place.

I find the setting of the country, especially the Northwest, an intriguing backdrop for a gangster novel.  It gives the yarn a very surreal touch to see fedora wearing gangsters in Montana surrounded by snow-capped peaks and evergreens. One just doesn't equate those things.

Emmett Kelly

Emmett Kelly was a circus clown in in the 1930's who took on the persona of "Weary Willy". Weary Willy was  a sad sack, and what made him distinct was that he did not wear white face, and was modeled after the Depression Era hobos. At the time this was unheard of since clowns were supposed to be happy. But Willy was not. He'd be the one sweeping up after the circus. His most famous schtick was trying to broom away the circus spotlight.

I really like the Emmett Kelly type  of clown, and I unknowingly did a nod to Weary Willy in my first Huey Dusk story, with my character Moppy.  Moppy was a janitorial clown.

Moppy's act was to dance on stage with a mop and then scrub the air with a giant squeegee. I think the major difference between Willie and Moppy is that Moppy will slice you with a straight razor if you cross him.

Eating Poetry

Eating poetry is the title of a Mark Strand poem. As of lately that is what I have been doing. I have been reading it and writing and as Mark Strand put it, I am letting the ink dribble down my chin.

Oh and Happy New Year to all!!!