Posted on 11/21/2008 10:06:00 AM PST by johnwcassell
At 0230 I typed the words THE END into my manuscript of UNCERTAIN PARADISE: 1973 ***The Latter Days***.
It was electronically submitted to my publisher...the contract is signed.
I told my wife I was within ten or so pages of finishing it yesterday morning. Her reaction: "Hmmmm."
After nearly thirty years of marriage I was able to translate: wake me up when we're rich.
She's got to be kidding. Barack Obama mentions a book and it's a best seller. He'll never read my stuff.
Part One of Uncertain Paradise: 1973 deliberately left several threads unresolved. That is, after all, what part ones [parts one?] are for. From my adoring single digit public came the cry "write the sequel...I want to know what happened to Connie...is Sybil a Communist...will Desmond Colgate start a vicious dictatorship...all that stuff.
Well, among this samll elite group I can talk freely. All the questions are answered in its twelve chapters and some 312 pages. There are several surprises but at the end, the reader will have all the answers to those nagging questions.
While beloved by those who read it, part one is something like number 2,000,001 in sales ranking. Two million books are more read than mine?
Can you imagine a line with 2,000,000 people ahead of you?
Almost like not being in line at all. I guess that was my dear wife's point.
Fact remains, I like to write and sales be damned. When I write I literally enter the world....or part of it...I'm writing about. Any writer can tell you that's a unique and very powerful feeling.
This is my eighth book. Will there be a ninth? I dunno. I would sure love to. As in the last two months, it would help me escape the malarial madness that grips this country these days.
We elect an African American...African Indonesian? well African anyway to the presidency and say we're not racist. This country is more racist today than when Governor Wallace stood in the doorway. And it's sicker and more irrational than ever.
I got news folks...this country won't be racist the day it demands a modicum of experience, a modicum of patriotic values, a modicum of character from anybody running for its highest office.
Well enough of that. The writer has his craft to help him stick his head in the sand for up to eight years at a time...just the right amount in this case. You'll remember I'm the guy who spent ten of the last twelve years south of the Equator in the tropics.
I still have trouble accepting what happened to my country in my absence. In all the presidential elections during the time, I was away, the popular vote hovers around 50-50.... There is no longer a consensus on the most basic societal decisions.
Not good.
But...I could be wrong...I hope I am. It's just with the media in this country abandoning its traditional watchdog role and going in for shameless Dr. Goebbels type propaganda...as it has with increasing irresponsibility since the Vietnam War...we simply as a nation are flying blind.
The new book goes back to another troubled time...the year the Watergate crisis exploded. Mainly it is a politco-socio-military drama...tough to write but fun to read.
I hope those who seek it out will find truth and pleasure within its pages.
God bless...
John W. Cassell
John W. Cassell has just finished writing his eighth book of life at the time of the American Cultural Revolution of the Late Sixties, Early Seventies. Other works include Soldier of Aquarius: 1969-1970 a mostly autobiographical story of life on the road in the Counterculture and DeVilliers County Blues: 1972 , a police procedural mystery thriller.
Cassell retired in 2006 from a career in law enforcement and criminal prosecution. Since that time he has authored over one hundred book and cinema reviews distributed throughout the internet on various platforms and several guest opinion editorials published in ISRAEL NATIONAL NEWS.
Congratulations and when do we get to read it?
Congratulations!
At least you are in line and you are published.
thanks for asking! it should be available through Amazon and most other bookssellers come the first of the year.
Well said!
Thanks. I will be looking for it.
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