You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
Thank goodness, Biden’s not in our face every day.
Especially with another outrage, another assault on decency, like his predecessor.
Instead, he’s too busy doing the job.
And there are those who fault him for that.
As for his family loyalties, look in the mirror before speaking. Please.
He’s a man who never really fit in. Anywhere.
That doesn’t necessarily make a leader.
Or why he can’t quite slink away.
Well, we also had the telephone – and memos, sometimes delivered by a mailman and sometimes by an office courier and sometimes, gasp, in person by the boss himself. Or maybe just his secretary.
But when I began drafting Big Inca Versus a New Pony Express Rider, the Internet was somewhere over the horizon. Yes, online communications did exist in what we now consider some crude form. That’s progress for you, I suppose.
Still, in developing the story, I wanted some kind of encrypted exchange between the distant handler and young Bill in the field, and that led to the technical arrangement described in the novel.
Thus the events could be disclosed in a series of memos covering a three-year period. It’s almost like playing cards, one at a time.
To tap into their exchange, just click here.
With America’s reputation as a melting pot, it’s surprising to see how long some ethnic tensions continue – often for generations.
Sometimes it’s simply in the ways values differ – the extent to which cunning is admired or detested, for instance, or how the family is expected to behave at the dining table.
Sometimes these erupt in a marriage of spouses from different backgrounds.
And sometimes the conflicts arise in the Old World the family fled in the first place. Think of the Balkans or Middle East, for example.
In Big Inca Versus a New Pony Express Rider, these come to the fore in mysterious ways in the isolated community of yrUBbury, especially once Bill puts the Company agenda into motion.
That is, once Big Inca also begins moving mysteriously in the background, drawing and redrawing the battle lines, largely along ethnic identities.
It’s a wilder fantasy, after all, than Wall Street. To continue, just click here.
Somewhere along the way of drafting Big Inca Versus a New Pony Express Rider, I began imagining living in the top of a traditional textiles mill tower. Once I moved to New England, where the 19th century mills had proliferated, I soon discovered that the towers basically housed worker stairwells, even when topped with a big bell, elaborate clocks, or impressive weather vanes. Even so, my fantasy of dwelling with a view over the millyard and its surroundings kept growing.
You should realize I’m something of an ascetic – and I like open views, rather than curtains – so the idea of living in a small space such as that holds a romantic appeal. It’s rather like a forest lookout, actually – the kind Kerouac, Ginsberg, Snyder, Whalen, Welch, and other writers once occupied. Naturally, it’s not the kind of bedroom where you’d do elaborate entertaining, either. Anything would have to be intimate.
But what happens through the nights in the empty rooms below? To follow the developments, click here.
In many communities across the Northeast, the once neglected mills along the running waters have found new life as commercial real estate. Often, high-tech firms and other startups find them to be flexible incubators. Other times, floors are occupied by stylish residential condos or office suites.
The small city where I live proves that, three decades after the boarded up windows were once again open the light and the spaces within refurbished. The new tenants were the key to a revitalized downtown, especially.
Before relocating to New Hampshire, though, I envisioned something similar while drafting my novel, Big Inca Versus a New Pony Express Rider. Actually, I had no idea that was about the same time the mills were being restored one by one by developers like Joseph Sawtelle. Not that he was anything like Bill’s mysterious Boss.
Oh, how I love the mills – even before we get to the intrigue in my novel.
The seed was planted back when I lived along the Susquehanna River and was introduced to the trail that twisted through a wooded strip between the water and the freeway.
The site included a bridge now closed to vehicular traffic and a low dam that once diverted water to power cigar factories along the shore. The mill trace remained, filling with moody water after a heavy rainfall.
As I imagined the vanished mills as they might have been in their prime, Big Inca Versus a New Pony Express Rider began to take shape. The town where I lived, after all, was in economic decline and would have welcomed an infusion of investment.
That wasn’t a singular site, even along that particular river. As I would later observe, the opportunity was repeated throughout the Northeast – and many of the communities still had the old buildings, usually in boarded up condition.
As the intervening decades have demonstrated, I wasn’t completely off-mark.
Come along, then, and see where it leads. Just click here.
Jnana's Red Barn 