Tag: fiction

FESTERING ETHNIC TENSIONS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

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.

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LIVING IN A TOWER OVERLOOKING THE ACTION

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

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.

This one even has a little deck attached, off to the right.
This one even has a little deck attached, off to the right.

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.

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ABANDONED MILLWORKS AND REDEVELOPMENT

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

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.

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DEALING WITH A NEW ECONOMICS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The once bustling town of yrubBury is Bill’s first assignment out of college. Is there room for an international conglomerate to quietly slip in and take over? It’s all up to Bill.

In secret dispatches to his distant boss, Bill is led step by step deeper into global intrigue. Is this really the New Economics?

And what of the underground, the kind that moves through the night, out of range of detection? The kind that profits Big Inca, big time?

They collide, as it turns out, in seeming backwaters like yrubBury – with poor Bill caught in the crosshairs.

The Third World must be reckoned with, along with many of the ancient currents of old Europe transplanted to North America.

Not exactly what Bill anticipated when he accepted the job and its demands.

Dear Boss, he might type: Save me!

As if his boss might really have an answer. Other than, “You’re out on your own, Bub. Keep me posted.”

Inca 1~*~

The novel is available here.

TRACING THE MILL RUNS ALONG THE RIVER

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

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.

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EVEN NIGHTMARES OF HISTORIC PROPORTIONS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Dreams, even nightmares, carry us far beyond rational thinking and on into realms of deeper perception. Along those free-flowing lines, Big Inca versus a New Pony Express Rider is a trip atop raw forces percolating through high-stakes financial and political power plays here in America and abroad.

In the novel’s three-year course, daily encoded messages between Bill in the field and his boss in corporate HQ – plus two colleagues who flit in and flit out – sketch a covert gamble centered on restoring historic but decrepit riverfront mills for secret technological manufacturing.

So what do you do for a living? And how does it make a difference?

At least Bill’s not flipping hamburgers. Or selling video games.

He could be grateful. At least until Big Inca starts flexing muscle, in the background.

And then it’s a race for his life.

The Inca have a brutal history to be reckoned with, after all. As Bill discovers, history’s far from finished. Pay attention when the Third World comes calling.

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The novel is available here.

FRESH OUT OF COLLEGE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Bill’s just a generalist fresh out of college when he’s tapped by an international conglomerate to scope out some historic riverside mills and the down-at-the-heels town that surrounds them. A job’s just a job after all, isn’t it? Even when he’s expected to work under cover? Isn’t it what any good anthropologist would do?

As his reports find favor at corporate headquarters, he’s instructed in the machinations to covertly buy up the decrepit millyard under the pretext of restoration. In the process, Bill slowly recognizes his real mission is far more complex, challenging, perhaps even sinister – and lucrative – than he’d entertained. It’s a mindboggling brew.

Even before moody Big Inca shows up in the background.

Inca 1~*~

The novel is available here.

INC. TO INCA

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In a global economy, even a backwater town’s at risk.

To go from Inc. as in Incorporated to Big Inca is just a small leap in the miasma of international corporate espionage and conspiracy – especially when a frontline player has to run for his life.

Take it from Bill … in the mill.

Inca 1~*~

The novel is available here.