W. David Tibbs's Blog

ForeWord CLARION Reviews gives Kennison's Gifts Five out of Five Stars!

http://www.forewordmagazine.com/clari...

Kennison's Gifts
by: W. David Tibbs

Category: Fiction
Publisher: iUniverse
Softcover, 394 pages, $22.95
ISBN: 9780595398515

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Author W. David Tibbs has crafted a beautifully layered depiction of one life’s journey from start to finish. Through emotional and well-written accounts, Tibbs introduces readers to the character of Ken Kennison, a man born to lowlife teenage parents and sold into a tumultuous life that scarred his very existence.

Beginning at the end and cycling back through Kennison’s life, Tibbs tells readers that there is something special about this particular protagonist. Remarkably he died exactly thirty years from the day he was born. This interesting fact hooks the audience, forcing them to dig deeper for the answers that at first seem so elusive. If that weren’t enough to keep the audience involved, Tibbs presents us with the very first entry in Kennison’s journal, a poem titled “Who Am I?” that sees Kennison searching for answers. The poem seems to break the story down into pieces which Tibbs gifts to us in short but sweet chapters.

Tibbs’s inherent storytelling ability is present from the beginning, and his writing never falters along the way. Each chapter seems as intricately plotted as the last, making the epic journey seem intensely personal and real. Tibbs has a knack for creating interesting, realistic characters that serve to better ingrain the trials and tribulations of Kennison’s existence in the audience’s collective subconscious.

Tension abounds throughout the tale as one is left to wonder what will ultimately become of this forgotten soul, from the summoning of the FBI to investigate his very existence at the onset of the story to the voyage home across the Atlantic near the end. Readers remain utterly connected with the hero, willing him onward when times are tough. We know the outcome early on, but that never takes away from the journey, rather it helps to construct a bond between character and reader.

Throughout the book, we return again and again to the journal and the poems that adorn its pages. Here Tibbs writes of life’s fragility:

To sow seeds in a field that will be our life,
In an orderly way—as the rule of Heaven intended
When before they were often scattered about, haphazardly
With hope that the wind would blow favourably in the right
Direction;
With hope that they might find places to take root and grow.
This simple passage encapsulates the entire novel, demonstrating the preciousness and unpredictability of life on Earth.

Kennison’s Gifts is highly recommended.

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Review by: Liam Brennan
http://www.forewordmagazine.com/clari...

So, now that I had decided to put those little gems that were given to me into this journal, it stood to reason that the journal had to be the focal point of the story. And because the poetry is, in most cases rather touching, my dying fellow character had to be changed from a gruff old man, to a sensitive and much younger man.

This seemed at the time, to be an almost insurmountable task; one that would require much thought, and more than a little inspiration from somewhere outside my own fertile imagination. But, just like any writer who has written any type of fiction, I find inspiration everywhere, and often in some of the oddest ways and places … and sometimes almost mystically.

I had decided by this time that the structure of the story would be based upon the writings I put into Kennison’s Journal, and that all but the bookstore scenes and the ending, would be told in flashback. Good enough, but there were many questions that required answering, not the least of which were; who is this guy Kennison? Where did he come from? How did he come to write poetry in a journal, and for that matter, where did he get the journal?

Well, much of the inspiration that helped me “flesh-out” the Kennison character, and consequently added to the story in immeasurable ways, came to me through a book I read; “Grand Central Winter-Stories from the Street”, by Lee Stringer. As a side note, I loved this book. It is Mr. Stringer’s own account of how his addiction to crack cocaine took him from successful businessman, to homelessness on the mean streets of New York City.

As Kurt Vonnegut said in the forward to Mr. Stringer’s book, “Nowhere in all his first-rate writing has Lee Stringer concealed the hook of collective guilt, should we dare to bite. But those who do bite will find resonant new dimensions, as have I.”

And I add, as have I.

I unapologetically borrowed heavily from Mr. Stringer’s life experiences; made my main character, Ken Kennison, homeless. Also made him an addict, but his addiction being not of the medicinal variety, but addicted to his quest to learn who he was. However, I did make a female character addicted to cocaine—but that came later when I got another revelation, and from an entirely different source, as you will see.

Additionally, I used Mr. Stringer’s experience selling a street newspaper as a lead-in to a part of my story, and even, but without naming him, gave him a “walk-on role” in the story. However, I did mention his name during one of the bookstore conversations between Rosie, and Will Healy. And finally, Mr. Stringer’s experiences were the guiding force for a piece I wrote and included in my book, titled, “Street Theater”.

For all of this, and his sharing his life experiences with me through his book, I owe Mr. Lee Stringer a great deal of gratitude.

All of this is great so far, yet still, there are questions to be answered, and the biggest one of all is: Why is this wretched soul, this young, sensitive, homeless man, lying in a lonely hospital room, grieving, and dying?

Well, being the cynical cuss that I am, I figure his present, very unhealthy predicament, must surely involve a woman! Only partly kidding, however, I did figure he had to have somehow lost a love, but I had never considered this, and so, didn’t even have a clue as to who she might be.

Then one day, while listening to a song called “Walk in the Sun” from Bruce Hornsby’s album, “Hot House”, and dancing the cha-cha around the kitchen while preparing dinner; yes, I often do this, even now, when it doesn’t look as good as I thought it did when I was young and fit, I began singing the lyrics, and suddenly, the woman whom I had not known before, floated right out of my stereo, and into Kennison’s life.

She took the name, Madeleine, and yes, she is the cocaine addict I mentioned earlier. If you’ve read my book, please listen to the “Walk in the Sun” lyrics, and if you have the imagination of a reader and writer, you may also see Maddie float out of your stereo …

So now I want to put these pieces I’ve written, and like very much by the way, in this journal, and fit “it” into the story. But the question is; how do I do that? Well, the answer lay somewhere in the trusty old, “what if” game—I just had to flesh it out—and I did!

Basically, I abandoned the original story concept, and discarded a lot of what I had written based on that concept. I kept parts that I thought would work with a new concept, and began what would fundamentally be a whole new story line.

Instead of the story beginning in the hospital room, I began with my Nurse Rosie character, but years later. Then I brought in a talented young author named, Will Healy, put them in a New York City bookstore venue, and wrote this new opening scene.

The store was a throwback to booksellers of another era. Whether perusing the titles of the multitude of scholarly tomes aligned high upon unreachable shelves or searching in dusty corners for that nearly forgotten gem, one sensed that every imaginable work of fiction and non-fiction had to be in there somewhere. It was a reader’s and writer’s place—a book lover’s place. It hadn’t changed in decades, until the coffee shop was grudgingly added just a couple of years ago to arrest the flight of otherwise loyal customers to the newer mega-stores.
The plump, middle-aged black woman who stood in front of the bookstore—herself an aberration, a throwback of sorts to another era—seemed to have appeared there out of nowhere. Had she been part of the bustling throng of pedestrians moving hurriedly in either direction on the sidewalk, she had been as oblivious to them as they were to her.
Peering through the storefront window, she held a purse in one hand and clutched a canvas shopping bag with the other. Her expressive smile took on an almost maternal glow as she spotted the young author she had helped bring into the world.
At just twenty-six, William Healy was quite young to be such a successful novelist. However, he had been writing since he was very young, and those close to him, the ones who had always called him Will, were not so surprised at his success.
Dressed casually in jeans, battered deck shoes, and a black T-shirt worn under a tweed sport jacket, he looked more like a graduate student at an Ivy League university than a successful author of action thriller novels.
With classically handsome features, light-brown hair with sandy red highlights, and the greenish gray eyes of the Irish, Will had turned out very nicely, the woman mused. He had the rare, innately captivating presence of a young man who appeared to be in complete control of his universe. Outwardly, at least, he seemed to be happy with himself and contented with where he was in his life.
However, the woman peering through the storefront window knew otherwise, and it was her responsibility to rectify the situation. Therefore, as she pushed through the door of the bookstore, her smile began to fade, and her expression became almost somber.
Soon, she thought, if everything went according to her plan, things would change for Will Healy. For she was about to tell him a story that would turn everything he knew about his life and his talent upside down and, she hoped, restore to him what he had once believed in, help him move on, and change his life for the better.

If you haven’t read the book, but intend to, I won’t be ruining anything by telling you that the canvas shopping bag clutched in the old black lady’s hand, contains the journal, and written on its pages are those magical little pieces that I wrote in a flurry, and wondered how to use in the story.

Okay, so I decided, or better stated, I was compelled to write Kennison’s Foil, start to finish, but what I had at that point was merely the fetus, and a bunch of scribbled notes. However, among those notes I found some interesting words—some sparks. At various times, don’t know when or where I was at the times, I had scribbled, among other words, “death”, “wretched soul”, “angels”, “hospital room”, “mercy”, “dark and quiet”, and “journal”.

So nearly ten years after having come up with the story concept for Kennison’s Foil, with several pages of my notes propped up in front of me, I extracted words from here and there, and wrote the following paragraph:

In the waning hours of a dank, over-cast November evening—in a dark and lonely hospital ward, a wretched soul lay surrounded by Death’s vigil. While Mercy, with compassionate charity, waits with the spirit of an unborn child, for the faith someone once lost—to be restored again, and help that soul return to the light….

And that paragraph would eventually change everything.

With that paragraph as my guidepost, I began playing the “what if” game again; some characters were dropped, others entered, new venues came into focus, and the story started to move in the general direction that I wanted it to. But then again, there was that eight-hundred pound gorilla, named, THE MIDDLE, still defiantly parked in the middle of my writing space, and once again I had run headlong into him!

What to do now? Well, I thought, get help! I found a writer’s group at my local Barnes and Noble store in Henderson, joined, told them my problem, and our consensus opinion was that I “feared”, for any number of reasons, getting a story written to the end. And perhaps the remedy was to write some very short stories, with very short beginnings, middles, and endings.

So, that was my challenge, and I took it on with great enthusiasm! I wrote a few very short little stories, read them aloud to the writers group, they critiqued here and there, but generally nodded their approval, and said, now, go finish this story that you were meant to write!

And I did, but I kept going back to those very short little stories I had written, thinking about how good they were, almost poetic in nature, and I became fascinated with this new genre. So fascinated in fact, that even while working on Kennison, a word, or phrase would come to me, or I would hear something in a song, or see something in a movie, or TV show that sparked another very short little story. I found myself typing, or scribbling down things all the time and everywhere. And I found them not only a joy to write, but almost mystical in the way these precious little gifts were given to me. And I thought; I have to work these little gifts into my story somehow, and one of those aforementioned words that I had jotted down over the years, “journal”, came to mind, and “Kennison’s Foil”, became “Kennison’s Gifts”.

Side Note:
I mentioned that it was almost mystical in the way these little stories came to me, here is one examples of that strange experience.

A group of employees of my wife’s bank were here in Vegas for a meeting, when one of the young men received the devastating news that one of his new twin babies had died. Of course my wife related this sad story to me that night, and we discussed our sadness for the young man’s loss.

A while later, maybe a day, maybe a week, not sure, but as I was walking from the local library to my car, a voice in my head said, “Where are you Mikey?” That question haunted me throughout the day. Then that same evening, after dinner, and while sitting with my wife out back on our patio, she read a magazine, and I wrote down what that strange question meant to me.

As I wrote, paragraph, after paragraph, I began to tear up, and by the time I had finished, I was openly crying. Quite understandably, my wife was alarmed, held me, and tried to console me. When I regained control of my emotions, I said to my wife, “Remember the young fellow who lost his twin baby?” And then I handed her the piece I had written, and said, “This was given to me just now.” While reading what I had written, my wife cried as well.

I later wrote a scene where one of my main characters, Nurse Rosie, explains to another character, how she lost faith in God, when he took one of her twin babies from her. Then I put the piece I wrote that night, as the very last part of the Epilogue of Kennison’s Gifts.

Even today I cannot read that piece without crying …

Fast forward now to 2001, and a lot has happened in my life since the conception of Kennison’s Foil. My wife had gotten the opportunity to transfer to Florida, the place we had always vacationed, so I quit my very lucrative sales job, and off we went.

Two years, and one severe heart attack for me later, and my wife’s Florida job fizzles out, and we were back in Ohio again—but only briefly, and then we were off to another position in Salt Lake City. This is good. I’m writing again, we’re taking trips all over the area, skiing, and having a good old time. Eight months later, and another severe heart attack for me, this one on the ski slopes, and we get the chance to head to warmer weather in Las Vegas—and we’re off again.

In the intervening years, I had lost my mother, a sister, two brothers, a nephew, and a brother-in-law. So a year or so in Vegas, I start thinking about my own mortality, and figure out that if I’m ever going to actually write a novel, I’d better get to it very soon, or I may not live to see one finished.

But now, I no longer had dreams of writing “The Great American Novel”, and becoming rich and famous. My goals had been moderated drastically. At that point in my life, I wanted desperately to just get from the beginning of a story, through the middle, and finally be able to write, “The End”.

I didn’t talk about it much, but I did have a glint of a dream left, and that was to see my name on the cover of my book. I had led a very good life, traveled to many places, and at that point, I just wanted to leave behind something with my name on it—something that said, “I was here once too.”

Deciding that come hell or high water, I had to finish a story; I opened my writing files, and for some unknown reason, I took out Kennison’s Foil—now attached with many scribbled notes, and ideas, but virtually nothing of any consequence written. To this day I don’t know why I chose that story from among the many that I had half-written, but thankfully, I did.

A challenge and the mystically surreal parts come next …

In this post I’m going to take you on a trip through my imagination, and tell you about all the unfinished stories that came and went between the conception of Kennison’s Foil, to the actual writing of Kennison’s Gifts.

Following much needed lessons on “Theme & Strategy”, “Plot”, “Scene & Structure”, “Characters & Viewpoints”, and “Dialogue”, I was ready to write the best fiction money could buy. Well, at least I thought so at the time. However, as you will learn, there was still one seemingly impenetrable wall that I had not yet run up against, but would soon come crashing into head on.

Stories I started, but couldn’t get through: (They are all copy righted, so no use in stealing)
T.O.S.O.T.C., “The Other Side of the Coin”. Love this story about two little kids, a Jewish boy, and a Catholic girl, who live next door to each other. Told mostly in little vignettes, each having something to do with the toss of a coin, follows the lives of the two main characters as they grow up. I started writing it in a screenplay format, have thought about turning it into a novella. What I have is adorable, but never finished it.

“The Obese Connection” This story idea was given to me by a rather rotund customer of mine. When I told him I was trying to write a novel, he suggested that I write a story about a wife who is feeding her husband to death. I laughed of course, but he said, while patting his large belly, “Don’t laugh, that’s exactly what my wife is doing to me!”

From that concept, I came up with the idea for a large private detective named, Ezra Pound, who is wealthy, well educated, and haughty, and who is called upon, and only takes those cases that are too baffling for the local police, or in-house insurance investigators. After solving a case, he then writes novellas about his exploits. By the way, my character’s name is the same as the American Poet, Ezra Pound, whom I learned about while researching different kinds of poetry, which the use of came much later.

I thought this concept would work nicely into a series. The first case would involve the mysterious death of the third husband of a beautiful and curvaceous Italian woman. And you probably could guess that he was obese, and died of a heart attack! Never finished the story, but think I will some day.

“August Blue-Blue Knights Investigations” Another series, this one for TV. Fantastic characters and great venues would supply endless stories. First episode started very well, got muddled up, and hit a dead end half way through. It also went to the file cabinet drawer, and I’ll probably be dead before it sees the light of day again! Too bad, one of my oldest sisters loved it!

I could go on and on, my file cabinet is over-flowing with half finished stories, some I might say, have great potential. However, you may have noticed what all of these stories share in common—no? Well it’s that seemingly impenetrable wall that I had not yet run up against earlier, but with all of these stories I came crashing into head on. That wall is known in the fiction writing business as THE MIDDLE! And I think most writers have banged into it many, many times during their career.

So, the eight-hundred pound gorilla, firmly ensconced in my writing space, was named The Middle, and I had to find a way through, or around him, or forget about writing fiction all together.

And, I nearly did …

Now resolved to the fact that writing a story wasn’t as easy as telling stories from my childhood exploits to my kids, I set out to learn how to write fiction.

At first, I subscribed to writing publications, and purchased and studied several books on “how to write fiction”. In my opinion, among some of the best of these were “The Elements of Fiction Writing” series from Writer’s Digest.

Finally, after several months of study, I decided to try actually writing something again, but didn’t even think about Kennison’s Foil. Instead, being a mystery and thriller fan, I was thinking in that direction and in search of an idea that would get the juices flowing.

Then, while traveling from the Cincinnati, Ohio area, over to Indianapolis, Indiana, I read a newspaper article about some young men’s bodies being found dumped in rural parts of Indian, and Ohio. I have read that one of my favorite authors, John Grisham, hates doing the research for his stories. Turns out, I don’t. In fact, I love it, maybe too much!

That same newspaper article I read linked the dead men to a gay bar in Indianapolis. That intrigued me, so there I headed in search of a story. Keep in mind I’m still in my early to mid forties at the time, still capable of taking care of myself, and of defending myself if ever required. In other words, I was fearless.

My first and only venture into a gay bar was quite an experience, and a story unto itself. One of the first things I saw as I sat at the bar was a notice on a bulletin board warning; “Someone is killing us! Be careful who you leave with!” Now, I have to say, that if I was gay, that’s a warning I would not have taken lightly!

Anyway, I learned all about the killings, much about the gay lifestyle, and club scene, and much, much more. I was honest with the bar tenders about why I was there, and they, and a few patrons were very accommodating with their knowledge of the killings, and helpful with the background for my fledgling story idea.

So, I began writing this story about a serial killer who is killing young gay men in Indianapolis. My main characters were Sandra Palmer, an unmarried female police detective, and her black partner, Maurice Whiteman—a notorious womanizer.

I wrote and researched as best I could, got about a third, to half way through, when I figured out once again that I didn’t yet know what I was doing. Back to learning once again, but this time the “how to books” were supplemented with live writing classes, as well as input from two writer’s groups.

A side note:
They finally caught the killer of those young gay men from the Indianapolis area. His name is Larry Eyler, and his killing spree was documented in the book, “Freed to Kill”, by Gera-Lind Kolarik. Turns out, that besides the gay bar in Indy, I was close to where the killer was on several other occasions as well. One of his favorite burial grounds was in a field right down the road from one of my best customers—one that I visited regularly. And he frequently ate at a truck stop diner where I always took those customers for lunch.

For those who read my fist blog posting, you may notice that I changed the blog title to, “The Evolution of a Story”. I’ll explain.

Being the inquisitive sort, after enjoying an entertainingly unique story, whether written for a book, TV show, or screenplay, I often wonder how the writer came up with their story. I believe “Kennison’s Gifts” to be both entertaining, and rather unique. So, I invite you to follow along on the more than ten year journey I took to get from here to there.

In my first posting, I wrote about how this story came to me, in what I thought to be such a strange and enchanting way, that I felt the convergence of events that spawned the original idea might be worth telling.

After explaining those events, I told about playing the “what if game”, and from that stroll through the “what ifs”, I said that the idea for the story was born.

However, I mistakenly said that the idea for the story was born. I’ve since thought about that, and what I really had at that time was only the conception for a story. My dictionary defines “Conception” as, “the beginnings or origin of something. In my case, something conceived in my mind, as a result of pondering the divergence of events I mentioned earlier.

Next step: How do I get this concept, something I had only imagined as a broad abstract idea, and one that I had only the most basic understanding of, and make a story out of it? Or, in biological terms, how do I get from embryo to fetus?

The first story idea I had, began with the conversation between a cantankerous old man as he lay in a hospital bed dying, and the spirit of the unborn child, who will take his place among the living. Thinking about the first line of the story, I imagined the unborn child spirit calling out the name of the old man, and automatically, I wrote the name, “Kennison.”

If you haven’t yet guessed, that is the name of the late comic, Sam Kennison, a stand-up comic that I liked at the time. Sam Kennison’s coarse stand-up routine character fit my dying man character’s outward demeanor perfectly. The title I came up with was “Kennison’s Foil”, a foil being one that by contrast underscores or enhances the distinctive characteristics of another—ergo, the innocence of the unborn child spirit being the contrasting foil to the gruff old Kennison.

The story was to be told in back flash, where we would learn that the gruff old character had been a good man in many ways, had gone through the many hells life can dish out, and in the end would pass on some of his life’s lessons to the unborn child spirit.

The idea seemed great, I had gotten from embryo to fetus, and I was excited! But remember, I began to write when I was traveling four days a week, and bored when my wife suggested that since I was always telling stories, that I should try to write a novel.

Easier said than done! And after mounds of inked paper had piled up, I finally realized that I didn’t have a clue how to write a story. So I put Kennison’s Foil away, and set out to learn how to write fiction.

This story came to me in such a strange and enchanting way, that I thought the convergence of events that spawned the original idea might be worth telling.

In the summer of 1968, after surviving a tour of duty in Vietnam, I had a freakish accident, and had the first of my two death experiences. As I stopped breathing, and was clinically dead, I felt as if I was floating above the room. I could see the people below hovering over my body as they attended to my wounds. Luckily, I was resuscitated by an army buddy, and when I slipped away again, was resuscitated a second time by a paramedic administering CPR.

Later when recalling those events, it seemed to me that I had felt enormously at peace, and thought at the time, that if this is death, it will be OK.

Thirty-one years later, while living in Florida, I suffered a severe heart attack, died a second time, and had a completely different death experience than before. I saw old photographs from my life, beginning with my childhood, and leading up to the present. As they seemed to float past me, they became increasingly fast moving. As they reached almost blurring speed, they suddenly stopped, and I thought, wait, I have more photos to see.

I learned later that a doctor had been beating on my chest repeatedly, while waiting on the defibrillator. I was told that they had shocked me with the paddles three times before my heart began to beat again.

Sometime in the early 1990s, between those two major events, I watched a TV news magazine program that examined the stories of several people who had died, and been brought back to life. The TV show termed these as near-death experiences. Some of these people told of similar experiences to my own, and others said that they had been drawn toward a bright light, but were sent back by someone. All experienced a similar euphoric feeling and all seemed to think as I had, that if they had died, it was OK.

At another time, I watched a news magazine show that told of several people, who at a very young age and without any previous training had exhibited some phenomenal artistic abilities. The show did not attempt to explain this phenomenon, but simply left viewers to wonder how and why.

I was raised by a Christian mother who insisted that I attend church and Sunday school, but I have never been a religious person in a dogmatic sense. Though I do have my own spiritual beliefs, I have no particular argument with anyone else’s. So, when it comes to religious faiths, I am simply by nature the wondering type, and I don’t necessarily disbelieve in anything.

At the time the story idea came to me, I was spending four days a week on the road as a sales rep, and I was lonely and bored. My wife, I suspect being tired of listening to my complaints, suggested that since I was always telling stories to our kids, I should try to write a novel.

With all of the events I’ve previously described converging in my mind at the same time, I played a game called “what if ” that I had read about in one of my “how to write fiction books.” I thought, what if, when a person dies, their soul returns into that bright light that some of those folks on the TV said they were drawn towards. And if that is true, perhaps a new soul comes from that same light to inhabit the body of a new born baby.

From there, the “what if game” led me to imagine what would happen if a life, at the instant of its death, were to pass on to a new life, at the instant of it’s birth, some special gift. Which is the only thing I could come up with that explains the phenomenal artistic abilities of those children that I mentioned earlier—and from that stroll through the “what ifs,” the idea for this story was born.

Use the link below to preview my book at google books.

http://books.google.com/books?id=FzZw...