EVEN NIGHTMARES OF HISTORIC PROPORTIONS

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.

Inca 1~*~

The novel is available here.

FRESH OUT OF COLLEGE

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

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.

 

 

BEWARE OF BIG INCA

The New World – North American and South – comes clashing in the down-at-the-heels mill town of yrubBury when Bill sets out on his first job out of college.

He could easily be a Pony Express rider venturing out onto the frontier – or a lonely station master, saddling the next horse and holding it ready.

This time the frontier has one foot in the past, a time of water power and European immigration of labor. And rather than the Great Plains, his route runs through urban blight.

As Bill discovers, history’s never finished. Especially when Big Inca starts lurking.

Inca 1~*~

 The novel is available here.

REGARDING THE DLQ

Jaya, in Promise, isn’t the only character in my fiction to address a concept I’ve dubbed the DLQ, or Dedicated Laborious Quest. But she does, I’ll argue, come closest to aspiring to an artistic expression for its encounters.

The DLQ, as I envision it, is the long-range discipline of spiritual pursuit, one that can be found in any number of variations in any number of religious, artistic, social activist, or even athletic lines of action. It’s a blending of heart and head, body and soul, awareness and discovery – the poet Gary Snyder refers to something similar as the Real Work, for instance, or maybe simply “daily practice” will touch on it as well.

One of Jaya’s concerns is a search for a fitting vehicle to embody the experience. Essays are too prosaic. Poetry? Sometimes. Drawings or paintings? To a degree. Maps of a kind? Getting closer, I’d hope.

Even so, I’ve wanted to leave the ultimate form she uses open to the imagination.

And then, more recently, I came across something that comes closest. An exhibition of Shaker art and artifacts at the Farnsworth Museum in Rockport, Maine, introduced me to what are called Gift Songs or Gift Drawings or Gift Paintings, which take their name from the faithful artist’s position as a medium receiving the song or design from a deceased member of the sect (that is, given) to be conveyed to another, living member of the sect (also, as given). To be appreciated, these must be seen in the original, full size, since much of the detail gets lost in reproduction. Sometimes the words are in a secret, private language and alphabet. Sometimes they blend. The lines flow, turn upside down, sideways. The works are sprinkled with artwork as well as words. Are they magical? Or simply mysterious?

Whichever, they spring from a tradition and discipline and practice to utter something deep in the heavenly desire and earthly community of a particular recipient.

I can tell you Jaya would have been most impressed. Definitely.

Promise~*~

To turn to my novel, click here.