Terry Richard Bazes's Blog, page 2
May 7, 2012
Goldsmith’s Return for Free: for Those of You who didn’t win a free copy of Lizard World
Yes, I know: 369 of you were hoping for a free copy of Lizard World and only 3 of you won the prize � which means that 366 of you went away disappointed. But I don’t want you to be disappointed. So I’m going to be giving away free e-book copies of my first novel, Goldsmith’s Return � which the late, great Joseph Heller called “a novel of unusual ability and imagination.� I will be giving it away on the next three Sundays � May 12th, May 19th and May 26th. All you have to do is go to the Amazon website, search for Goldsmith’s Return � and download the book. What’s the catch? There is no catch. My first novel will be yours for free and I hope you will enjoy reading it. And please tell your friends that -- on May 12th, May19th and May 26th -- Goldsmith’s Return will also be theirs for the taking.
And don’t I want anything in return? Well, yes: I hope that some of you who didn’t win a free copy of Lizard World will decide, after all, to buy a copy.
A shameless suggestion, I admit: but there you have it.
And don’t I want anything in return? Well, yes: I hope that some of you who didn’t win a free copy of Lizard World will decide, after all, to buy a copy.
A shameless suggestion, I admit: but there you have it.
May 3, 2012
Titulomania
I contracted titulomania when I was very young, too young to fight off the first, virulent onslaught of the disease. Fortunately, though, titulomania is now (for the most part) a relatively rare and harmless illness—not the raging epidemic it was when the hunger for baronies, dukedoms and thrones set cities on fire and turned nations into fiestas of looting, rapine and slaughter. It is a kindred illness—celebromania—that is nowadays far more common and pernicious: sucking up all the oxygen, fouling the public airways, gobbling up book and movie deals. But the mania for titles has become no more dangerous than a foot fetish and the poor titulomaniac (faced with a shortage of available crowns, coronets and castles—and too timid to poison those who have them) is little more than a misunderstood eccentric.
I once offered to give my younger son (then fourteen years old) a large raise in his allowance if only he would agree to address me as “Your Grace.� My enterprising son immediately agreed and so I would have had the enjoyment of this honorific (which is, of course, my due) if only my extremely generous bargain had not been nixed by a higher power.
What I particularly like about “Your Grace� (in addition to its Ducal flair and to the old-fashionedness of its once being a courtesy-title claimed by Kings) is the word itself with its connotations of aesthetic elegance and of a gift bestowed by a deity. That is not to say that I wouldn’t be pleased by even one of the much less august titles. I would, for example, happily answer to “Your Lordship� or even to “Your Excellency”—and if I were referred to as “Your Worship� I would not take offense. But ecclesiastical titles (“Your Holiness� or “Your Eminence�) leave me cold. Military titles, though, are quite a different matter: or at least they were in my impetuous youth.
My father had been discharged from the army with the rank of Major, and I remember feeling that it was quite unfair that this very appealing title could never pass down to me. Luckily, though, there was a war on when I was in college and I knew someone who could get me a title if I’d only sign up for the NROTC. Still, I’d always been an army man, not only because of my father, but also because I knew that Napoleon had been a general and therefore understood that a high rank in the army was just a stone’s throw from a throne.
So I’d never considered a naval title—and yet I was sorely tempted. But, when it came right down to it, my extreme dislike of violence (especially any directed toward me) was a substantial impediment to my accepting a martial dignity. But when my friend explained that, if I didn’t enlist, I’d be drafted anyway—and given the lowest rank, I took a deep breath and signed on the dotted line. For the next three days I enjoyed the prospect of my Title. On the fourth day I was to wake up at 5 A.M. and report for morning drill. But in the battle of deadly sins, Pride was trumped by Sloth—and I would probably have become an Admiral or a Commodore if I hadn’t overslept.
In those days I had ambitiously taken on a double major in English Literature and Marijuana Studies. Unfortunately, those two disciplines sometimes interfered with one another. And so I was in a thick cannabis haze just beginning to be lifted by an overdose of No-Doze, when I heard my professor of Medieval Literature say that—in addition to the church and military (where a stratification of titles was rigidly preserved)—academia was one of the last, impregnable bastions of the feudal hierarchy. Since even then I felt myself to be a suffering feudal refugee, I suddenly woke up. Doctoral robes and hoods, my professor continued, and in some instances even a splendid doctoral sword, were as much the distinctive regalia of an elevated feudal status as a ducal coronet.
My military career, I knew, was over. Not only because the dignity did not entice me, but also because I nurtured an ambition to overcome my then-lifelong celibacy, I saw no possibility of becoming Pope. But here, at last, was a way to secure an impressive title. I looked about me at my fellow students at their desks and could see, their young eyes already firmly fixed on the dollar sign, that they were mere sojourners in the university. No, they would not go for the glittering prize.
I did, an ominous thirteen years later, nab my doctoral title. But despite my exalted rank, I find (even when I wear my robes and hood) that I am often unable to exact my rightful tribute of awe and deference. Worse still, if I dare to identify myself as a doctor and foolishly admit that my specialty is literature—and that I have therefore not achieved the grandeur of a podiatrist or a proctologist—my disclosure evokes a barely concealed contempt.
So maybe that’s why, after decades of remission, the old crown-craving delirium—just as it was in my glory-fevered childhood—has come back with a redoubled vengeance. At one stage of the disease I found myself compelled to wander through the seedy, multi-million dollar marketplace for titles. (For there are others, many others, who are similarly afflicted.) I have also, aided by DNA analysis, sifted through the ashes of my ancestors, looking for royal gold. And I must concede that—so far—not one person has either bowed or curtsied, and that I have yet to claim my throne.� But I have acceded to a barony and know myself to be descended from a line of kings.
I once offered to give my younger son (then fourteen years old) a large raise in his allowance if only he would agree to address me as “Your Grace.� My enterprising son immediately agreed and so I would have had the enjoyment of this honorific (which is, of course, my due) if only my extremely generous bargain had not been nixed by a higher power.
What I particularly like about “Your Grace� (in addition to its Ducal flair and to the old-fashionedness of its once being a courtesy-title claimed by Kings) is the word itself with its connotations of aesthetic elegance and of a gift bestowed by a deity. That is not to say that I wouldn’t be pleased by even one of the much less august titles. I would, for example, happily answer to “Your Lordship� or even to “Your Excellency”—and if I were referred to as “Your Worship� I would not take offense. But ecclesiastical titles (“Your Holiness� or “Your Eminence�) leave me cold. Military titles, though, are quite a different matter: or at least they were in my impetuous youth.
My father had been discharged from the army with the rank of Major, and I remember feeling that it was quite unfair that this very appealing title could never pass down to me. Luckily, though, there was a war on when I was in college and I knew someone who could get me a title if I’d only sign up for the NROTC. Still, I’d always been an army man, not only because of my father, but also because I knew that Napoleon had been a general and therefore understood that a high rank in the army was just a stone’s throw from a throne.
So I’d never considered a naval title—and yet I was sorely tempted. But, when it came right down to it, my extreme dislike of violence (especially any directed toward me) was a substantial impediment to my accepting a martial dignity. But when my friend explained that, if I didn’t enlist, I’d be drafted anyway—and given the lowest rank, I took a deep breath and signed on the dotted line. For the next three days I enjoyed the prospect of my Title. On the fourth day I was to wake up at 5 A.M. and report for morning drill. But in the battle of deadly sins, Pride was trumped by Sloth—and I would probably have become an Admiral or a Commodore if I hadn’t overslept.
In those days I had ambitiously taken on a double major in English Literature and Marijuana Studies. Unfortunately, those two disciplines sometimes interfered with one another. And so I was in a thick cannabis haze just beginning to be lifted by an overdose of No-Doze, when I heard my professor of Medieval Literature say that—in addition to the church and military (where a stratification of titles was rigidly preserved)—academia was one of the last, impregnable bastions of the feudal hierarchy. Since even then I felt myself to be a suffering feudal refugee, I suddenly woke up. Doctoral robes and hoods, my professor continued, and in some instances even a splendid doctoral sword, were as much the distinctive regalia of an elevated feudal status as a ducal coronet.
My military career, I knew, was over. Not only because the dignity did not entice me, but also because I nurtured an ambition to overcome my then-lifelong celibacy, I saw no possibility of becoming Pope. But here, at last, was a way to secure an impressive title. I looked about me at my fellow students at their desks and could see, their young eyes already firmly fixed on the dollar sign, that they were mere sojourners in the university. No, they would not go for the glittering prize.
I did, an ominous thirteen years later, nab my doctoral title. But despite my exalted rank, I find (even when I wear my robes and hood) that I am often unable to exact my rightful tribute of awe and deference. Worse still, if I dare to identify myself as a doctor and foolishly admit that my specialty is literature—and that I have therefore not achieved the grandeur of a podiatrist or a proctologist—my disclosure evokes a barely concealed contempt.
So maybe that’s why, after decades of remission, the old crown-craving delirium—just as it was in my glory-fevered childhood—has come back with a redoubled vengeance. At one stage of the disease I found myself compelled to wander through the seedy, multi-million dollar marketplace for titles. (For there are others, many others, who are similarly afflicted.) I have also, aided by DNA analysis, sifted through the ashes of my ancestors, looking for royal gold. And I must concede that—so far—not one person has either bowed or curtsied, and that I have yet to claim my throne.� But I have acceded to a barony and know myself to be descended from a line of kings.
March 6, 2012
How Lizard World was Born
I was down in Florida with my family, visiting a zoo that harbors a variety of reptiles and other exotic animals. We were part of a small audience watching a zookeeper demonstrate how to put an alligator to sleep by stroking its upturned belly. Something about that man fondling that alligator amused me so much that it struck me with the force of a revelation: I had just met one of my characters. Not long after that I sat down at my keyboard and began to wonder what kind of voice this embryonic character might have -- and what he might want to say. After a while I found myself typing the following sentence:
“A sink had fallen on the Komodo monitor and busted up its head pretty bad.�
After that sentence appeared on my computer screen, the zookeeper Lemuel Lee Frobey and his Uncle Earl started walking around their family-owned reptile park named Lizard World. I wrote a half dozen pages, but then put them aside and tried to forget about them. They just seemed so strange, that I couldn’t believe that this was the novel my capricious Muse was asking me to write.
But after several months, I found that I simply couldn’t write anything else. “Take it or leave it,� said the Muse. And so I said, well, okay, I’ll take it. Hesitantly, I went back to my pages -- and the words started flowing again. And that is when the dentist, whose acquaintance I had made in an earlier little book I had written,
suddenly found himself in this new book, driving down at night into the heart of the Florida swamps.
After that I had a number of other hunches. Each one was an idea I found myself so drawn to that I just couldn’t leave it out. For example, I had long wanted to write about a Poe-obsessed horror novelist who murders editors: one day I realized that this psychopath had to be my zookeeper. I was also thinking a lot about alligators � and it occurred to me that perfume might be manufactured from the secretions of their musk glands. I was so intrigued by this idea that I phoned the Bronx Zoo and was told by one of their experts that he, too, had long been fascinated by that possibility. And that’s how the perfume factory came into existence in my novel. Another plot element that intrigued me was the idea of a brain transplant. It dawned on me that the kidnapped dentist was going to be the brain donor, but I didn’t know who was going to get his brain until I started experimenting with the voice of a 17th-century English Lord. Whenever I had an irresistible intuition, I knew I’d found something else I had to stir into the soup. After a while I’d stirred in so many curiosities that my story seemed like the brew in the Weird Sister’s cauldron:
“Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg, and howlet's wing. . ..�
By now the potion had begun to bubble and steam � and out of it, gradually, the monster arose.
“A sink had fallen on the Komodo monitor and busted up its head pretty bad.�
After that sentence appeared on my computer screen, the zookeeper Lemuel Lee Frobey and his Uncle Earl started walking around their family-owned reptile park named Lizard World. I wrote a half dozen pages, but then put them aside and tried to forget about them. They just seemed so strange, that I couldn’t believe that this was the novel my capricious Muse was asking me to write.
But after several months, I found that I simply couldn’t write anything else. “Take it or leave it,� said the Muse. And so I said, well, okay, I’ll take it. Hesitantly, I went back to my pages -- and the words started flowing again. And that is when the dentist, whose acquaintance I had made in an earlier little book I had written,
suddenly found himself in this new book, driving down at night into the heart of the Florida swamps.
After that I had a number of other hunches. Each one was an idea I found myself so drawn to that I just couldn’t leave it out. For example, I had long wanted to write about a Poe-obsessed horror novelist who murders editors: one day I realized that this psychopath had to be my zookeeper. I was also thinking a lot about alligators � and it occurred to me that perfume might be manufactured from the secretions of their musk glands. I was so intrigued by this idea that I phoned the Bronx Zoo and was told by one of their experts that he, too, had long been fascinated by that possibility. And that’s how the perfume factory came into existence in my novel. Another plot element that intrigued me was the idea of a brain transplant. It dawned on me that the kidnapped dentist was going to be the brain donor, but I didn’t know who was going to get his brain until I started experimenting with the voice of a 17th-century English Lord. Whenever I had an irresistible intuition, I knew I’d found something else I had to stir into the soup. After a while I’d stirred in so many curiosities that my story seemed like the brew in the Weird Sister’s cauldron:
“Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg, and howlet's wing. . ..�
By now the potion had begun to bubble and steam � and out of it, gradually, the monster arose.
