Liam James's Blog

I was thinking of Virginia Woolf's immortal protagonist, Orlando, and suddenly and very sadly realized, the last we hear of her immortal protagonist, she's in the 1920's. Well, I commenced to rolling up my sleeves and writing a sequel as it were. Indeed, I attempted to continue to foster that humor by emulating the same sort of rambling and inconsistent narration I came to know and love. Just as Orlando ultimately is a witty satire that makes fun of social rituals and literary styles, blending genres and what not, I attempted to do the same. Enjoy.

But alas, the little we’ve collected of this next epoch is difficult to piece together. More than a couple experts have claimed Orlando went “rather batty” at this point. Indeed, what happened to Orlando, now she finally found such peace and completion? Perhaps, like they say in America, Orlando went to pieces after the business of her life seemed to close down.
Nevertheless, Shel was forced into following her all the way to New York and he could only watch like a wallflower while she raged with the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, debating each in turn at various alcohol-fueled parties, particularly with the former about the past and how Jay Gatsby got it all wrong by allowing the past to destroy rather than improve him and help him grow.
At any rate, it wasn’t long until Orlando found herself in a drunken brawl that ended with her forced to defend her honor and prove her courage by partaking in a duel with Hemingway where live rounds were included! Neither parties were hit, indeed the only real casualty of the morning was Fitzgerald, who sullied his trousers and gagged and retched in a rose garden beside the golf course upon which the duel had occurred.
Curiously, once Shel finally managed to track down Orlando, finding her bellied up at “The 19th Hole” with Hemingway, laughing away of their earlier argument, he demanded “What in the world has come over you?” Orlando’s only response was to stare out the window, watching the golf course, repeating, over and over again, “I’m the goose, but I ain’t got no grass.” Indeed, there’s still debate amongst most scholars upon what in Heaven’s name type sustenance Orlando was referring to -food, Mary Jane- as she apparently picked up the latter habit upon one lost weekend with Pablo Picasso.
At this point most experts agree, it was Shel who demanded she get in his taxi and sober up so he could take her immediately to the airport back to bleak old England. For he firmly believed it was the Fitzgeralds, and Hemingway, and Stein, and even New York itself that was causing this raucous behavior in our hero, but one piece of evidence tells a different story. For, one page of Orlando’s journal was found in the very hotel room she stayed when galivanting with The Lost Generation as it were, and although much of it is smudged with ashes and otherwise indecipherable, the phrase, “What now for the goose? Is curiosity gone? Who are we, without work to be done? The Oak Tree must live…” Alas, unfortunately, that’s all that was comprehensible from her journal, every other page found was splattered with “All work and no play makes Orlando a dull boy, no girl! but at least we have Pan Am’s plane log to tell us she did indeed fly back to boring old England with Shel. As a matter of fact, some experts contend she stole a horse from a local farm and rode it like the wind, leaving Shel rather shell shocked, I dare say!
Subsequently, she rode back to the home of her youth where we imagine she must’ve gone to visit those catacombs of her ancestors, perhaps she even searched for the oak tree. Nevertheless, none of this is known, but what is known, is that she once again found herself in a deep sleep! Ten, twenty, seventy years of sleeping! Indeed, she woke up in the 1990’s with Nirvana blaring on the boombox and Pearl Jam hosting Saturday Night Live!
According to the local music connoisseurs, hearing the first few chords of Smells Like Teen Spirit put Orlando in quite the tizzy. Indeed, she immediately went for the egress for to call her horse only to find all was industry; high-rises, skyscrapers, cars and planes, everywhere and everyway. Now, you might imagine this scared our heroine but no, she was only further inspired! And what a guitar she brought home to her flat that afternoon! T’was a Jaguar, the very same model Mr. Cobain himself was shredding and smashing up on stage so often for so many nights.
Now, I’m not quite sure how but Orlando managed to learn the guitar, write a full-length album -which was recorded upon one fated day at Sound City- secure herself a record deal with Smyth Records and hit the top of the charts in The UK all in the span of one inimitable week. What shall I say about her lyrics? Pure poetry it was. Mostly, she sings -or screams- about all being dull and mundane and done already and art being overrated anyway and having nothing to live for and oh! so much more! Oh, and don’t get me started on her first MTV video. For, she was elegant, charming, courageous and muscular, all at once! Yes, the first half of the video she strutted around like a prince, all in red royalty duds, when suddenly, she becomes subdued, picking flowers and tearing up at the sunset while the native peoples look bafflingly on at her sentimentality. In the last minute of the video she’s a housewife trying desperately to clean up and get ready for company, and take a guess who shows up! That’s right, none other than Mr. Nick Greene and oh my gosh, he has a rap group based in L.A. and they’ve got beef with Biggie and Puff Daddy and so many others! Let’s just say Orlando is more than bemused during dinner.
It must’ve been soon after when Orlando found herself in Hollywood, preparing for a role that put her in Victorian times and during dress rehearsal she becomes suddenly, inexplicably weepy and her old friend’s line “the inexhaustible variety of life” never has sounded truer and sweeter as it starts speaking itself over and over in her mind. But when Orlando hears of the invention of the internet, at some late-night casting party with some super rich executives, and all are talking about how the aforementioned will connect us and provide us with everything we could ever want at our fingertips and Orlando simply laughs at the absurdity of the claim. I believe it was Gérard Depardieu who surprised everyone declaiming, “Those little phones are gonna give us all tumors!” Oh, if the effects were only so mild.
About thirty years later, and Orlando’s listening to Noel Smyth from Boston, working as an influencer on YouTube during the COVID 19 epidemic and so she has to wear a mask despite being alone and outside on a sunny day and she’s not allowed to suggest that it might’ve come from a lab and there’s an orange man in the states running for president who claims he could kill someone on Fifth Avenue and that wouldn’t hurt him in the polls and Orlando muses he’s probably right and she can’t help but wonder why the most ludicrous ideas are shaping policy from both far fringes in America and the UK while the commonsense majority cowers in corners at the potential for being outcasted or canceled or and the thought police are out policing and Orlando is just amazed at our mental and physical decline and she can’t help think about The Time Machine by H.G. Wells...
Anyway, she’s recently vanished. That’s right, no one has a clue. No, fair reader, I have no idea! Indeed, she didn’t say where she was going but I have a feeling it has something to do with finding The Band of Gypsies and being a roadie for Noel Smyth from Boston. I hear he's playing another concert at The Burren.

So, I'm working on a new piece presently and I AM taking reviewers comments into consideration, one of which being that I don't include enough dialogue. Well, one of the reasons I don't is I have so many digressions. Here's one, for example, digression that is, that I literally just removed in the hopes that the dialogue will flow more favorably to the reader:

"Oh, and occasionally he would hear how awful his covers were. This confused him; it was called “Book Brains” after all, not “Book Covers”. When we talk about The Great Gatsby, do we talk about the dull, disembodied face with androgynous eyes and disgraceful tear floating above that nebulous carnival or whatever? No, we talk of how hot Jordan is and how fun she’d be to get behind and how much action Gatsby sacrificed for dumb old Daisy and why Nick Carroway never called that photographer friend again after what must’ve been a jolly good time in his apartment at four in the morning in his undies. But I digress, why would anyone expect an impressive cover from an indie author in the first place, don’t they know we’ve already sacrificed enough precious time we could’ve been making money or love to write our piece of sh*t pieces? Well, not me, of course, indeed I’ve only put off a game of polo with Tom Buchanan to proceed. Look at him out there, bad-mouthing dumb old Daisy again; when will she ever learn, good Lord. But I digress, hadn’t these young people ever heard not to judge a book by its cover? Apparently, indeed, admittedly that’s all some of them do. But why don’t they just go to an art gallery or AI creator app or something?

I'm excited. Quite excited am I as soon I'll be publishing "A Light in the House" The Novel. I'm not quite certain how to punctuate that yet. But more importantly, the cover! finally, something I'm not shying away from! secretly ashamed of! its creation through laziness. I mean, my cover to Book Two was flagged for God's sake! Oh, I suppose due to having no text; I was in a rush and promised myself I'd publish by the end of summer and there I was, mid September, with the clock ticking, can you blame me? No, I did my homework this time, and now have quite the suitable cover. I hope you like it as I hope you like the novel. An admission is now required, an apology of sorts; you see, I wouldn't say I lied but rather, I fibbed to many of you, promising each of the three books in the series could stand alone. Quite a withered argument it was, doggedly standing against winds of reason, ah the sagacious readers of Goodreads. Indeed, although each book contains its own arc of sorts, one really needs all three to truly grasp the journey of Joe, to understand who he is and why he is this way and where he's going. I think you'll love it. I'm only gonna charge fifty dollars for it and for that, you'll thank me. I hear they're even making a movie of it starring James Dean's AI duplicate as Joe. Sorry Leo, he's simply cooler than you, yes, even his AI version, now run along and do a prequel of The Titanic why don't you and let the adults talk. I kid Leo! Ah, but moreover, the musical score will be composed but none other than Noel Smyth!

Hi all, I'm now on instagram if you want to connect and look at my charming photos liamjames1978

Also, I have some cool things coming up in 2025. I'll share one: I'm getting a new cover for my first novel, "The Demon Lover: Art and Offences." I always rather dismissed the importance of covers but I've received enough feedback at this point for me to reconsider. I may even do one of those free promo thingys for it.

Anyway, hope you're enjoying the last few days of 2024!

LJ

Hey friends and colleagues, with my Sagittarian birthday coming up on Sunday, I've decided to give a gift to the world of readers, to run a free book promotion for "Ghosts and God (A Light in the House #3)", my latest and greatest novella! It begins tonight! Wednesday 11/27 at the stroke of midnight, Pacific Standard Time and goes till Sunday 12/01, the very day of my birth. Oh, I hope I wasn't too much trouble, mommy, comin' out sideways and all. But I digress, Thursday's Thanksgiving, right smack in the middle of this affable promotion, and if you're like me, you like to run up to attics or down to basements on that day with a book (or in this case, ebook) while all the blathering relatives ramble on. So, don't miss this splendid opportunity to catch my magnum opus, indeed my best work yet! Happy Thanksgiving https://a.co/d/ifdvb4O

Hey friends, just wanted to update you on Book III; I'm really excited about it! I'm just refining the final scene and then it'll be done! Phew. Not much else to say other than it's given me a lot to look forward to. Work is good, and it's great when we're working on something that moves us. Anyway, I hope you all have good work waiting for you tomorrow and beyond. Bye for now. I'll post again once it's done. -Liam

Riding the ‘T’ one invariably comes across young, hustling bachelors making a go of it. Songwriters, like any other storyteller, have the luxury of stepping out of themselves and living vicariously or reliving past lives, as in this case, through the aforementioned Boston bachelor. Trust me, I know the musician in question and, I dare say, that Noel Smyth has been on more than a few debauches. Nevertheless, he never fails to intrigue me. The guitar begins, raucous and rowdy, all angry, country-like, and we're wont to expect the speaker to end up as rad and rizz as the accompanying strings, indeed, with this sweet thing he's found. Yes, he's sitting with her at the T station trying so hard to bring her home.
And what happens -spoiler alert- he passes out only to wake up alone in the station having missing the final train! Ha! Well done, Noel Smyth. I dare say this song's autobiographical. I kid, I kid, can't wait to hear the new album. https://open.spotify.com/track/34v7nT...

Well, here we are, end of July. But summers go faster and faster. Oh father time. At any rate, I'm working away inching toward the ending of Book III. And I am now fully certainly this will be the final Book in the "Light in the House" series. That's right folks, it'll soon be closing up for Joe. I know now of Joe's fate. It is where he was heading all along only I never saw it until recently, and bam, it became crystal clear. I will not provide a single spoiler. I'll only promise this will be, by far, my best writing to date. I'm just not certain it will wholly be able to serve as a "stand alone." There's been too much wrapping up happening. No, I take that back. I think it will serve well as a stand alone, only, it will be quite a different experience for those who have read the prior books in the series. Well, I suppose that's all for now. Just wanted to let you know of my excitement for this, my greatest effort. Other than that, my cat snores healthily on behind my head, no one in the entire Milky Way has yet to read "The Demon Lover: Art and Offences" and I've become rather okay with that. Indeed, there's so much politics in it, I've rather outgrown -even the third-person narrator's biased! Nevertheless, there's something a little wistful, sacred about its anonymity. The fact that it's never been read. Indeed, it should be that way, for I had long had the notion I'd go back to it, refine it, and so forth, but I scarcely wonder now if I'd go too far and subsequently, its singular, its rough roots would become irrecoverably altered. No, I'll leave it. And I won't lower the cost a penny. I dare say, I may even raise the price, three, four shillings perhaps, not a farthing less! Be good, fair readers. Enjoy today. For time waits for no one.

Well friends, I've been working away, whenever I can on Book III. I almost missed a work meeting today because I was so much in "flow." But that phone! Hide it, honestly, it's a creative killer. When I get great ideas for lyrics, for plot events, for anything, I write them down on paper; I no longer use the "notes" app on my phone. Why? Just the mere swiping from my home screen over to it -all the little numbers representing notifications. Each of those thousands of details send off sprinklers of digressions in the mind. And mine isn't as sharp as it once was. In those ten or fifteen seconds it takes to call up my Notes I'll invariably forget that great idea that would've certainly saved humanity. Alas but I have my paper. I like the yellow legal pads. But I just heard my coffee maker beep which means I gotta grab it and get on back to Book III. Honestly, it's the best writing I've ever done, lyrically speaking. I'm not sure what anyone will think of the events. Of course, I'm not sure if anyone will actually read it either. Lol That's okay. Work is good for me. I'm pretty sure Joseph Conrad wrote radically about work -and I use the 1980's slang usage of the term radical, but who knows, maybe it was radical as well. Anyway, in Heart of Darkness, he talked so eloquently about work and how we're really nothing without it. Fitzgerald as well, in "This Side of Paradise" -Amory Blaine speaks of being nothing without his "personage" which apparantly encompassed his literary prowess among other things. Bla bla. My coffee's getting cold. Bye bye.

Aerial shot of the carnival at night. The sky is pitch black but the carnival emits a sharp contrast as it emanates a hazy glow into the atmosphere. It is blurry and there is an odd hum coming from the carnival below. As the camera descends, rather unsteadily, the strange sound of maniacal laughter is heard which intermingles with the soundtrack: a bizarre harpsichord. Perhaps a refrain or two from a song about revenge. Then, once the camera lands at ground level -literally from the floor- it will appear to be surveying the carnival, via shaky camera pan. As it proceeds to stalk and search the revelers -unbeknownst to them- it will take upon a steadier gate, that of an aristocrat's P.O.V. Suddenly the searching will stop. At the center of the shot, amongst a dense, raucous crowd, will be a figure at a great distance appearing crapulous, overly affable. He will go in and out of focus and carnival goers will pass by the camera frame frequently blocking the jovial man from view but the camera will push relentlessly onward. The camera will proceed slowly, only now with the rhythm, the beat of the music -the aforementioned harpsichord- ever toward this dancing, this gluttonous figure. As it does so, the swarms of revelers will begin to split, indeed, to part, as if repelled by whomever is approaching. Only the eternally daft will not be certain at this point they are seeing the carnival through the eyes of Montresor. There will be groups of gallivanting carnival goers guffawing and dancing but even the wildest will seem to unconsciously move away as the being approaches. Indeed, the whole population will soon part forming a direct path to the crude, the crapulous figure who is now visible to be a man dressed as a jester with conical cap and bells.

Hmm...yes, I must ring up one of my Hollywood connections.

"My dear cat, won't you fetch my little black book? It's by the gramophone in the West Wing, before the veranda."

"What?! Confound it! I know you're not a Labrador I..."

"Mrs. Danvers is busy!"

"What?! I'm not wasting time! This idea is gold, my dear cat! Trust me."

"Pish posh! Book III will get done, don't you worry your whiskers. I can finish that story with my eyes closed, indeed, after twelve High Balls!"

"I'm not overconfident!"

"Well fine, you'll be sorry once Orson Wells rings me up."

"You'll have no chance of being an extra either.
Who's to say Montresor never owned a Sphynx."

"That's it! No Fancy Feast for you!"

"Zounds!"