Hill walking

 

Steam Punk got put on hold. I spent a week reading Eight Ruthless Novels, Vols. 1 and 2, to judge what happened from 1987 to 2018. How long is that? A lifetime. Thirty years, not counting a previous 30 of camera experiments, kid plays, teenage comedy scripts, and Hollywood screenplays that didn't always make a great deal of sense, especially "The Guitar Player From The Black Lagoon." It was gestated in a Pacific Heights laugh riot among four stoned hippies and it became extremely bizarre in 3rd draft after meeting Dutch rock legend Herman Brood at a quiet restaurant in Spaakenburg, trying to help a talented tormented man ravaged by heroin. He was unable to eat a bowl of soup, escorted by a burly personal manager who got Herman on stage if he was well enough to perform.

 

See? I know everything about the raw guts of life and nothing about an ideal man, which I'm supposed to etch in the heart of hard handsome Billy Larko, a casino owner. Don't ask. It has to be that way. Ideal men are free, empowered, untethered, independent. Told to lock down, Larko opened a Testing Lab in the Bowery. A real enough laboratory, entrance to a three-story speakeasy with gaming, a showroom and private parlors, expensive top shelf drinks and reasonably fine dining from 11 pm to 5 am. Out of work Broadway actors wait tables, earn good tips, and the showroom has a house band with nationally known vocalists on occasion and a showcase of starlets doing torch standards, Love For Sale.

 

I don't want to write Steam Punk, and I have little choice in the matter. Either I project an ideal man and illustrate precisely what ideal means in Larko's demeanor and actions, or ... or nothing!

 

I can't back down without attaining a summit, which is called a cairn in Scottish hill walking. It sounded okay to me, how hard could hill walking be? So I went hill walking with my snooker partner John Oliver, a cheerful little Scot who owned a corner shop. We "walked" almost vertically up Ben Nevis. It took over three hours of strenuous nonstop effort and it nearly killed me, staggering, gasping for air. That's what has to happen with Steam Punk, a murderous hill walk that will take multiple years I might not have.

 

Here's the deal with hill walking or writing a big literary novel. It matters every time you ascend another angular step. You do not have the luxury of leisure, or level steps, or predictable results. All you know for certain is Don't Slip, pay attention to every inch of a misty clouded mountain.

 

Kicking around ideas for the third act. Maybe it's the cairn. I have to create a new style of writing, slave to a silly rock song: "She looked at me with her big brown eyes and said, you ain't seen nuthin' yet."