Hula Bula Baby

Paintballs, politics, pot and pipe bombs - this must be Paradise!

This is the story of a story that bubbled up in my weird little brain a while back and somehow made it into a Word document in the form of a manuscript called Hula Bula Baby. An unpublished novel, one that I've been shilling to literary agents for about a year with little to no success.

I like to think that my expanding list of agent rejections has more to do with the story's  relative strangeness factor, as opposed to my skills as a writer. Not to mention, the unfamiliarity many agents have with novels populated with oddball characters -- chief among them, a female private eye with hyperadrenalism, bent on revenge -- all wrapped up in an exotic setting not often found in your local book store, the gorgeous Big Island of Hawai'i.

And with flying paintballs, macadamia nuts in a wide array of stomach-churning flavors, a plethora of pipe bombs, fruity candies in the shape of human tushies, eyeball-searing dashikies and an obnoxious tropical drink all part of the story, what's not to love?

On these pages you will learn all about Hula Bula Baby and the people who populate both it and my mind. Please feel free to read about the characters and what motivates them, and take a look at some pics of the places depicted in the novel. Take some time to find out a little about me and why I wrote what I wrote and why I keep plugging away at trying to find some poor sap to represent me and my novel. Also, be sure to check out some sample chapters I've posted on here. Comments and critiques are encouraged. Just don't be too nasty.

In the end, I hope you like what you see and read here. If not, no worries, brah -- maybe one day we can meet up in Hawai'i and discuss it over beers and musubi. My treat.

 

Mahalo nui loa

Days like today

There are days when I get the feeling that I can’t stop writing. Monday was one of those days; I think I racked up well in excess of 2,000 words for my manuscript, Loco Moco Mama. Yesterday was a good one, too, as I eclipsed the 1,100 word mark.  

Today? Not so much. A paltry 204 words.

Perhaps the day I had today was what Thomas Mann referred to when he said, “A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”

I do take some solace in the fact that it happens to the best of us. Maybe, though, if I follow some tried-and-true advice, there may yet be hope for better days ahead. Even for an amateur like me.

Going Rich

Sarah Palin gets $1.25 million for her memoirs. That's a lot of new outfits.

If a dead tree falls in a city, does anyone even notice?

As a former newspaper reporter, perhaps I should be more alarmed than I am about the decline of American newspapers. Yet I am not. 

Circulation numbers for the country’s 25 largest newspapers continue their downward spiral. Much of this is a result of this quagmire we call an “economy,” but part of it too is attributable to new business practices that newspapers have instituted in response to said economic downfall, which may result in a short-term loss of circulation. These include shifting revenue streams from advertisers to readers (via higher subscription rates) to reducing the number of days for home delivery.

There were some gainers, including – for some inexplicable reason – the local dead tree of record here in Las Vegas.

Much wailing and gnashing of teeth accompanied this latest news about newspapers. Perhaps, tough, we should put it all in context. Yes, more and more people are turning to on-line sources for their news (not just news and opinion blogs but on-line versions of newspapers as well as AP, Reuters, etc.). Of course, most folks still rely on television for their news – which isn’t necessarily a better option than newspapers, as we all know. But the industry is evolving, in the same manner that radio did when TV became mainstream, and as TV reacted when the Internet entered more and more households. This is just another step in that evolution.

Here’s a thought: Newspapers will still be around in the future; they just won’t be what we all think of as “newspapers” today. Many newspaper that exist today could become on-line only (the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is an example). However, hard-copy versions will still be out there, although in a different form. It may come to the point regional newspapers that cover numerous metro areas replace stand-alone big-city dailies. (For example, it’s not difficult to imagine a single newspaper for Phoenix-Tucson, or Baltimore-D.C.) That makes sense to me as the nation becomes increasingly crowded and cities expand their boundaries like concrete amoebas.  

As they do, they’ll just clear out some of the dead wood. Pun intended. 

Gadgets – all around us, gadgets.

Behold the child, by Nature’s kindly law,
Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw;
Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight,
A little louder, but as empty quite;
Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage,
And beads and prayer-books are the toys of age.
Pleased with this bauble still, as that before,
Till tired he sleeps, and life’s poor play is o’er.

-- Alexander Pope (1688–1744),  Essay on Man. Epistle ii. Line 274.

This week, Barnes & Noble entered the e-reader fray when it announced plans to launch its  Nook, in November. Just in time for holiday gift giving.

B&N’s e-reader will make three of these things on the market, as the Nook follows in the footsteps of Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s Reader. I’m not sure what the major difference is in all of these gadgets, although B&N provides a handy chart comparing/contrasting the features of its toy with its chief competitor, Amazon’s Kindle 2.  

The fact that B&N is, to an extent, forsaking printed books for their electronic counterparts is irrelevant. What this announcement got me to thinking was, what is this infatuation—dare I say, obsession?—that society has for gadgets?   

Yes, that makes me sound like a crusty old “back in my day…” fart. But let’s look at the lay of the land, beginning with

• Computers. Aside from desktops and laptops, there are netbooks. Their sole purpose is to connect to e-mail and the internet; they aren’t equipped with word processors or spreadsheet programs, which kind of makes them no more useful than
• Cell phones. Back in the day, you used these things to talk to people. Then came texting. Then came Internet connections. Then “apps” for iPhones that, I’m led to believe, do a lot of cool things, like play
• Video games. Yep, we’ve come a long way from Atari (mercifully). Now we have PlayStation, X-Box, Wii (yes, I own one), and others I probably have never heard of. Not only can you play these things with other real human beings, but you also can shoot other pixilated people via a network connection. Of course, these games come with driving soundtracks using songs available on
• iPods. Yes, I own one of these too, as does my wife. Comes in handy at the gym and for backyard pool parties, among other purposes. Of course, you cannot download music from iTunes or rip CDs unless you have
• Computers.
  

Thing is, all these toys are practically obsolete the moment you take them home. Somewhere, some smart person is devising the “next generation” of Expensive Electronic Toy X, which you absolutely MUST own (even in this economy) since yours, you know, after a couple of months, is just so old as to make it useless. The ultimate victory of planned obsolescence over your wallet. 

What happens to the old expensive toys after they’ve passed their wear date? Well, it’s safe to assume that—along with donations to Goodwill and other charities—a lot of them wind up in landfills. There, long after they’ve played their last game, sent their last text, and played their last iTune, their inner toxic nasties will slowly break down; through time, that stuff will enter our water and food supplies. In the words of environmental activist Jim Puckett, “Consumers get value out of the gadgets, and then pass off all costs of contamination.”  Do all these things make our lives so much better that we need to make an even bigger mess of the planet once we're done with them?

I’m a dinosaur. I only learned to text a couple of months ago, on an LG Shine (which, by today’s standards, is a relic among cell phones). I’ve had the same desktop PC for about three years now. I purchased my 80-gig video iPod refurbished, not new, from Apple. I suppose the only toy I have that’s remotely up-to-date is my Wii – and I’m sure the good people at Nintendo are probably working on a new model of that, as well.  

As for e-readers, again, I will stick to real books. No muss, no fuss, no toxic nasties getting into the watershed. How’s that for an earth-friendly gadget?  

 

I hate you. Now, would you please buy my book?

In a move of brilliance certain to make friends and influence people, crime novelist James Ellroy (L.A. Confidential, The Black Dahlia, White Jazz, American Tabloid, etc.) recently espoused his distaste for Las Vegas -- even as he prepares to visit our fair city on his current book tour.

An inconsequential columnist in the local dead tree of record reports that Ellroy, referring to Las Vegas, said, "It's not even hate in a good way... It's not a place I approve of. I don't want to go back. They told me to go there and sell books, I'll go there and sell books."

Oh, the humanity.

Granted, nobody in their right mind should confuse Las Vegas with other municipal bastions of literary integrity. And yeah, we are the bimbo of major U.S. metropolitan areas. But Ellroy doesn't "approve" of us? This from a guy who lives in L.A., no less!

Anyone who doesn't like Ellroy as much as he doesn't like Vegas can drop in and listen to him read from his new novel, "Blood's a Rover," Sunday, October 25, at the Clark County Library, 1401 East Flamingo Road, beginning at 2 p.m. Dice clock gifts are optional.