Status of Novel with UPDATES

UPDATE, LATER JUNE, 2006: PULLING SOME CHAPTERS OF NOVEL IN PREFERENCE TO MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY. I HAVE JUST POSTED CHAPTER TWO OF THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY. IT DEALS A BIT MORE WITH THINGS THAT NEED SAID BEFORE I DEAL DIRECTLY WITH THAT COLD WINTER OF THE MURDER, AFTER THE "SUMMER OF LOVE," 1967. Also, I am currently debating with myself about whether or not to drop my pen name, novelvision, for my real name. The reason has to do with the danger that could come to me through persons who can't understand my story. Yet, I truly do believe my life is a write-off, unrewarded by those around me from the very beginning --way back before the identified crime of my youth. I know. Boo hoo. Who cares? But I often now do wish that I could be totally unconscious once more of all these vindictive land monsters, called the human race. I am still debating.


UPDATE, JUNE, 2006: PUTTING OUT FULL CHAPTERS OF NOVEL. While the stated genre of this novel is "Crime/Gangster," such a pigeon-hole placement of my writing is sort of unfortunate. My thinking is much wider than to be defined by one certain day in January of 1968, a day that branded me forever. In fact, the novel may be more about society, itself, than me. Consider what has happened in this country since planes flew into the Twin Towers in New York City, just a few short years ago. Consider how anyone could now become branded. Consider what the terrorists have done to our Bill of Rights. Consider how society, itself, can be used as a weapon against anybody.

I talk about the bullying that happened to me when I was a child. But consider other defintions of bullying. --Wider definitions of bullying. Indeed, I invite you to look at how psychologically invasive many people really are. I invite you to imagine society, itself, used as weapon against the powerless.

**
UPDATE.
Some months back I wrote this status report. I have had a hard time settling down with all my money problems and creditor calls. These things drain the energies of a creative person. This is not some "suffering artist" pose. It simply is. Currently, I have so many irons in the fire that I can't see the flames. I am trying to get on top of that, solve it, and get into my creative mental zone again. But it may be to the good. I am writing in my head, anyway, all the time. The chapters of the novel that I must complete may actually be aided in their depth by this backing-away that has been forced on my by others.


THE CONCEPT OF WHITE PLASTER...

___________STATUS OF NOVEL – End of 2005 ____________

CHAPTER ONE. TELLER STATE HOSPITAL (1968 TO 1982)
BASICALLY DONE.

CHAPTER TWO. MENTAL FORMATION ON MELLARIL, TWENTY YEARS OUT FROM TELLER
BASICALLY DONE. STILL TWEAKING, SLIGHTLY, NOT ACTIVELY.

CHAPTER THREE. SNOW WHITE GOES DANGEROUS
MOSTLY DONE. TWEAKING, BUT NOT ACTIVELY.

CHAPTER FOUR. THE DARK OFFICER
REFINEMENTS WILL STILL BE NEEDED, ALONG WITH GRUNT AND GRAMMAR WORK. NOT ACTIVELY EDITING AT THIS TIME.

CHAPTER FIVE. DR. TEDROW
NEEDS WORK, BUT STATES BASIC MATTERS OF PROGRESS FOR THE STORY ADEQUATELY IF NOT WELL.

CHAPTER SIX. KATE AND DIVA
GRAMMAR REFINEMENTS NEEDED. EMBARRASSING, BUT BASICALLY WELL-WRITTEN. SO FAR GONE, IT’S STAYING. BEGINNING OF NOVEL’S MODULATION TO THE OUTER CHAPTERS.

CHAPTER SEVEN. THE CRIME IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN
BASICALLY WELL-WRITTEN. SO FAR GONE, IT’S STAYING. TOMMY’S DESCENT INTO METAPHOR BEGINS TO CURVE DOWNWARD WELL.

CHAPTER EIGHT. VICKI
OR “EVIL VICKI.” YA GOTTA LUV THE BITCH. BUT HER HAIR’S NOT MOUSSED BACK RIGHT. NOT YET. HER MOTIVATIONS NEED TWEAKING AS WELL AS THE REASONS FOR HER VENDETTA AGAINST TOMMY LATER IN THE OUTER CHAPTERS. SO FAR: WELL-WRITTEN, ARGUABLY.

CHAPTER NINE. ANNISE
ANNISE, “OF COURSE,” AS ANYONE CAN SEE REPRESENTS SOCIETY’S PREVAILING NOTIONS OF WHAT THOUGHTS ARE ALLOWABLE TO BE “MENTALLY HEALTHY.” THIS BEGINS THE REFERENCES TO THE USE OF CHEMICALS TO CONTROL EVERYONE’S BEHAVIOUR, JUST AS TOMMY IS IN DANGER OF THE SAME THING FROM VICKI, IN THE PREVIOUS CHAPTER. THIS CHAPTER IS SO FAR GONE, IT’S STAYING BUT NEEDS SOME EDIT WORK.

CHAPTER TEN. PROFESSOR BANK
I DREAD ALL THE CATCH-ALL STUFF THIS CHAPTER MUST YET DO. BARELY IN SKETCH RIGHT NOW. UGH! GOT TO IMAGE UP! “NOVELVISION AT TACTICAL.” (AS OPPOSED TO AIR-HEAD “STRATEGIC”)… YET THE PROFESSOR COULD BE MY COMIC RELIEF CHARACTER --IF ANYTHING CAN REMOTELY APPROACH COMEDY IN THIS GRIM, EXISTENTIALIST STORY. WILL LEAVE NOTES ON-PAGE, EVEN IN POST. MIGHT SNAG AN IDEA FROM A READER. THIS CHAPTER MUST MODULATE TO CHAPTER ELEVEN, THE FIRST OUTER CHAPTER. SARA’S INTRO BEGINS. AND “THE LADY IN BLUE”? YES OR NO? –AND THE CURIOUS DEATH OF MY MOTHER?

CHAPTER ELEVEN. THE INSPECTORS
CAN TOMMY BELIEVE HIS EYES NOW? THE CURIOUS WORLD OF SADISM AND MASOCHISM. AS WITH PREVIOUS CHAPTER, HERE IS WHERE MORE JUICE IS NOW NEEDED TO MOVE ON WELL. UGH! IMAGE UP! AGAIN, NOVELVISION AT TACTICAL. AND MATTERS OF A CLANDESTINE WORLD OF EAVESDROPPING ON US ALL –AND NOW HOW IN THIS WORLD CAN THE SERIOUS, PRIVATE PERSON GROW PSYCHOLOGICALLY? --THE ISSUE OF TOO MANY PEOPLE BEING TOO INVASIVE OF OTHERS. TOO MANY PEOPLE BEING TOO “S” ON THE S/M SPECTRUM: A BASIC DRIVER FOR OUR CONSTANT WARFARE AND REVENGE. –YET THE BASIC “MEANING” OF THE HUMAN RACE? OUCH!

CHAPTER TWELVE. FREDDY
MY FATHER. NEEDS BRIDGING AND SOME EDIT WORK, BUT OTHERWISE, WELL-WRITTEN. – VICKI’S ANALYSIS: “IF FREUD WAS A WHORE.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN. THE SECRET VIOLENCE
THE NEXT CHAPTER IN LINE TO BEGIN THE TACTICAL WORK. VICKI EXPLAINS JANINE’S MURDER HERE, THUS COMPLETING HER END OF THE FAUSTIAN BARGAIN. BEYOND THIS POINT ALL IS IN EDIT AND BEST LOOKED AT DIRECTLY AT THE INDIVIDUAL CHAPTER POST. OUTER CHAPTERS UNDERWAY AT THIS POINT. THE NOVEL WILL HAVE TOMMY UNJUSTLY ACCUSED OF STALKING BY SARA, EXTORTED ONTO MORE PILLS FOR PSYCHOSIS BY ANNISE WHEN HE IS ACTUALLY AUTISTIC. AND IT WILL END WITH VICKI’S THREAT. IT’S EVIL. DOWNRIGHT.

…FYI: THE LAST OUTER CHAPTER WILL BE NUMBER NINETEEN. –N]





** Initially, a post on Blogit.com where my novel emerged over the course of a year:
ABOUT ME. ABOUT THIS BOOK.

THIORIDAZINE, commonly called “mellaril,” is a very curious drug. An old-line antipsychotic and neuroleptic, it is both a good drug, as well as very dangerous drug. Exactly when it became evident to the medical community that mellaril could cause sudden cardiac arrest, I just do not know. The history of that aside, this is the fact: My various psychiatrists thought it prudent to remove me from this drug that I had been on for more than thirty years. I had taken mellaril at a subclinical dosage voluntarily for years. I was able to get it because my diagnosis of “schizophrenia, paranoid type” remained unchallenged --except for the occasional foray by this psychiatrist or that, who thought I might actually be manic-depressive or bipolar. But even when diagnosed as bipolar, I was able to get my mellaril in addition to these other agents that did nothing but foul me up once in a while. I played along for I did not want to admit to anyone the extent of my anger. It was because of my anger that I took my mellaril. I could not let anyone know just how violently angry I was at some of the people around me, for people for some odd reason had always parted me out for their bad treatment and their ridicule. But this may really be the reason for my anger and the reason that I committed murder in the first place when I was a boy of sixteen: It is now believed that I am autistic. That’s right. Autistic.

Autistics are often socially clueless. They make many social gaffs. They are often bullied, and they are often parted out very early in life –and shunned. And the rebukes they suffer seem to them so unfair. Some of them feel very wounded by life, and some, like me, are more angry than they dare let on. Yet those with high-functioning autism can seem so normal. Many are quite inarticulate, while some are very verbal. I can seem quite glib, even affable sometimes. But it’s work, because the autistic must intellectually calculate just how he is seeming to “the normals.” And just for your information, beware of the angry person who has no way to speak. –And beware of even the articulate person, often male, who has no forum, too. That is why a writing site like Blogit.com is so good for me. It’s like turning in a .357 Magnum for a much better weapon: a word processor. For, in many ways, this book is about how Columbine can happen, and how the voiceless, not just the autistic voiceless –can turn to violence.

Like most autistics, I prefer to be alone, away from those who hurt me so young. Remember, social behaviors are learned –those seemingly little things like being affable. Please remember, that because of my crime, and my diagnosis –whether or not my beginning diagnosis of schizophrenia was right or wrong – it did afford me this: thousands of hours of group therapy to watch and learn some of the social skills of the “neurological typicals,” or “NT’s” as autistics often refer to them --and what I refer to in this book as “the common run.”

But I am still very shy. I avert my eye gaze. I look like a wuss. And this is one of the problems for me, and it makes me even more angry. Sometimes, I would like to tear someone’s head off who unjustly labels me a weirdo or a “faggot” –or a pervert—without even trying to understand me. It makes anyone angry to be dismissed out of hand. (By the way, there is nothing wrong with being a “faggot” and don’t think there is always something wrong with being perverted –unless you are a predator.)

Now, I did not know about Asperger’s Syndrome until recently. However, I remember remarking to one doctor that I seemed smart but dumb. “--Almost autistic,” I had told him. Of course, the idea was dismissed. But I did find out that my father’s brother spent most of his eighty years in the State Training School –for autism. And I looked around at other male relatives. And, even before I heard of Asperger’s, I had reason to wonder. For I saw in many of them -- a certain rigidity in the way that they handled their social interactions. People have often thought that my father self-medicated on alcohol for manic-depression. But maybe drinking was actually his way of dealing with the social pain of autism, not his supposed manic-depression or bipolar.

So I took my mellaril until around my late forties. It was like a kind of inner armor that I carried with me inside. But the doctors began to ease me off the drug in my late forties. But my anger seemed amazingly stable. I attribute this to lower hormonal levels in my body due to my age. Still, and this could have been very serious: By going off mellaril, after such a long habituation to the drug, I was driven very sex crazy. Now suppose I had been of a sexually sadistic sort. In regard to this, also remember the murder I committed as a boy was with .357 Magnum Smith and Wesson revolver. It was not a sex murder, at least by how we define all this. I talk about all our violence being possibly sexual in my novel. But the murder, itself, was with a gun. And it certainly did not turn me on when I did it.

But this matter of revenge and counter-revenge began to interest me while I did my time for murder at the State Hospital. Behaviorism and the thinking of B.F. Skinner was in the wind at that time –and, also, I found myself reading THE ETHICS of Spinoza. I have had reason to think about the motivations of everyone in regard to this idea of how our “free” volition may actually only be a seductive illusion. And while my natural geeky path toward the “hard” sciences was fundamentally thwarted forever by my crime in reaction to the childhood hurt put on me by the common run –I found another thing to consider: Just what is our human motivation?

This novel could have been written as an autobiography. But I wanted to write it as fiction for one main reason: I want to at least attempt to show you the thinking processes of my protagonist, “Tommy.” And I don’t really want to write a book that is only about social disparagement and the pecking-order issues of mankind. For this writer, through Tommy, is still very much the scientist-philosopher.

And this is why I hope my novel will go further. You need to see this. We all need to see this. Our problem in this world is not just the sadomasochistic motivations of the human race. And I do explore that theme heavily through Tommy’s personal inquiry into BDSM edge play. This is the reason that going off my lifelong addiction to mellaril plays so heavily in how I almost destroyed myself through sex a few years ago. The mellaril angle is the book’s bridge to the bigger issue of humanity’s “Desire.” That Tommy puts it so loftily is no accident. For Tommy wants you to know of Schopenhauer’s deep thinking about the evil of life, itself.

No. Our present problem on this planet has to do with meaning. And sex –if it becomes unsupported by the passing of religious culture-control myths may not work for humanity in the future. I really believe that as long as humans believe in free will, there will be war. Yet, who but those like Spinoza, can bear a world without free will? Such a world would be meaningless. As Tommy will conclude for you, in this complex web of thinking: We have this choice: Meaninglessness or War. --N