The objective of storytelling, the point of it all, isn’t to write about something.

The idea isn’t even to write about something.

The highest goal of your storytelling is to write about something happening.

When you can execute the last one and still make your story about something… then and only then will you have elevated your story to the level of art.

Okay, so I’m not a blogger. Yet.

I consider the weight of that three letter word. Yet. “At some future time, sooner or later. In addition. Implying continuation from a preceding time,” so says the dictionary. Future time drawn out into eternity, into a distance I cannot see.

That stretched out intention calls for more letters.

“Eventually” might be a better word.

Regarding my last post, the phrase “Chasing Sammy” is allegorical, which leads me to “Fingertips Pt. 2.” Is that a leap or what?

“Everybody say yeah!”

I’ve known men who don’t dance but have been moved to high steppin’ when “Fingertips Pt. 2” rattled out of the speakers. Even that awkward shy guy couldn’t keep from tapping his foot or nodding his head.

The song is virtually free of lyrics; or I should say that the handful of free-style rambling commands are nonpolitical and neutered. No whining and wailing about lost love. No hate the rich, eat the poor ranting. No save the whales.

“Everybody say yeah (yeah), yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!”

The rhythm and texture of Stevie Wonder’s harmonica back when he was Little Stevie Wonder, and his call to “Clap yo’ hands just a little bit louder” is both sprawling and primordial. And inexplicable … being pulled up out of your chair like that.

Few people sit still through “Fingertips Pt. 2.” Those who do … you, the unmoved … what contrary current powers your electrical system? You missed the rhythm, and like Sammy (who was long lost before he disappeared), you are my curiosity.

My Unlikely Saint began as a short story called “Chasing Sammy,” about a high school classmate who, after college and a law degree and a few auspicious summers, suddenly disappeared. Many of us thought he had met some awful fate, because it did not seem probable that Sammy would voluntarily walk away from this Garrison Keillor small town, charmed life: sailing on Lake Minnewaska, working in his father’s pharmacy, discussing Nietzsche with his cousin, reading Chabon and Martin Amis. He had to have suffered an involuntary and untimely death. There was no other explanation.

Not so.

Sammy was alive and well and living in the Cities. Sammy chose his forever separation. What compels people to walk away from the good life? From friends and family? From that Garrison Keillor town on the prairie? The compelling part of the equation is that Sammy wasn’t posing or pouting, only to return into the folds of community once he’d found himself and excised this vernal rebellion from his system. No. Sammy’s departure was permanent.

How do you abandon your life? Few people walk away and mean it.  

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=My+Unlikely+Saint

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/my-unlikely-saint?keyword=my+unlikely+saint&store=ebook

My Unlikely Saint is now available, published as a paperback novel by CreateSpace and as an e-book for Kindle and Nook. Sony, Kobe, and Apple to follow. Soon. (One step at a time, Ladybug).

Which leads me to my quote of the day:

“What has reality done for you lately?”

—Kelly Goldberg

Writer Jennifer Sands needs a story, and the lone woman sitting at the bar just happens to have one. However, the story isn’t free. The woman needs a get-away driver.

She’s a career criminal working in disguise. Her intricate makeovers are foolproof, her aliases borrowed from the Catholic saints. But she’s no Simon Templar saint; crime is not glamorous, and sometimes you bomb. This criminal is the real deal. What Jennifer has stumbled upon is a true crime confessional, a cozy Catch Me if You Can, so to speak. Maybe even a best seller.

The job isn’t risky, the woman tells Jennifer. It’s research, Jennifer tells herself. One quick step in the gutter can’t hurt. But the job gets botched (or so it seems). What remains is a mishmash of tales on tape. Unable to make sense of these ramblings, Jennifer’s best-selling confessional turns into an impossible mystery.

Enter one bruiser of a detective who’s been chasing this criminal. He pulls from his case file a snapshot of Jennifer behind the wheel of the get-away car. She can’t argue the evidence. Now she must find this woman and discover what crime, if any, she has witnessed. And the thorny detective is the only one who can help her.

My Unlikely Saint is a mixed genre novel, an accidental mystery as seen through the starry eyes of Jennifer Sands. It is the first book in a densely plotted, parallel twosome.