[James’ comments in brackets.]

Hey James,

I've snagged Gallows Born and a couple of others that have been in my periphery (gotta figure out what the "Skulker Jones" [0] hullabaloo is all about!) My collection is slowly beefing out into a mighty grotesque behemoth of LaFond treasures in the basement library, mixed up with a lot of old classic pulp fiction, the literary classics, science fiction, and literary obscura.

[I adore the genre “literary obscura,” as well as the term itself. I am thrilled to have a place in the reading corners of friendly houses. For decades as I worked towards an assumed short retirement before expirement, often, an hour before the pre-work nap would be spent looking at the books that had been bought for an older version of me to read; when that little brick house was finally paid off. That was not to be. Perhaps 200 titles collect dust at Sensie Steve’s, under a hundred hopefully help a home schooling family, about 500 live In Pennsylvania and Jersey at three addresses, about 500 hardbacks reside with my youngest son. Perhaps 700 hundred, maybe as many as 800, went into a dumpster in Baltimore County, with no takers, the wretched owner moving from that rental by backpack… Your adding that sad reader’s better work to your like collection, provides some balm. I feel very good about all of the hardbacks.]

I have Melville's Moby Dick accompanied with your essay The Pale Usher: Impressions of Moby Dick as a companion piece—I'll be consulting your thoughts throughout my next readthrough. Maybe you'll turn out to be the second person (besides myself) who finds Chapter 32, "Cetology," the true climax that Melville offered in The Whale! Only real gangsters know…

[The Pale Usher, which I named for what I took was his ode to Poe, was an attempt to use Moby Dick as a mirror of masculine tribal culture in collision with modern economics in regards the monstrous. The original intent was tied up with the Aryas project and is most ken to Beasts of Aryas.]

So the library is steadily expanding. I'd love to be a fly on the wall when one of my future grandkids discovers Big Water Blood Song! They're in for a bloody clambake, crabcake, campfire-y treat!

[I had four readers for that series, two lady friends and two men. They were all disgusted with the Eastern Shore clambake! Lee hoover said, “If you kill Three-rivers or Arrow-holder, I’m not reading another word!]

There's so much to touch on and so many questions with regards to that first Sunset Saga entry that I don't even really know where to begin... I suppose it'll all get drawn out in our upcoming STL meeting in a couple of weeks! A few observations:

1) The different tribal clans all up and down the Chesapeake couldn't be more different than each other, which is totally at odds with the public school misconception that they're just one monoculture that picks aster and goldenrod and bakes acorn cakes together in peace and love and harmony. Not in Sunset Saga they don't! And despite the very real odds that you'd, within 14 minutes of respawning in 1500's America, lose your entrails and have your corpse picked at by Maryland crabs on some bloody, smoky coast—there is still a very real, mutually-understood body politick observed throughout the land (however unfair and calamitous it often turns out to the false-stepper). Our time traveler pals have their faces rammed into this grim reality right from the literal second upon their arrival, and it NEVER lets up. A campfire along in the distance is synonymous with bloodshed—don't you dare go there, if you know what's good for you!

[I chose the 1520, a probable time period for one of the historical Hiawatha’s (like Herakles, there seems to have been a few) and Degeniwida (Two-rivers-comming-together-to-make-one, or Three-rivers) his prophet. Between thosee two figures the Five Nations were formed at about the time that Europeans were dropping anchor all up and down the East Coast, raping Florida and Mexico. Genocide was common in Stone Age North America. I attend powwows with my Eskimo wife and see the constant colonization of what were warrior cultures 200 years ago by white Karen social workers. There was a reason why it took 200 years for the English to make it from the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays to Pittsburgh, which now takes six hours by car. Characterizing these reasons, their form and spirit on a personal level; perspectives of children, women, men, folks of various cultures and inserting people of our mind from the future, was the goal set for Of the Sunset World. As the title suggests, it is not about 1520s Maryland from a liberal American time traveler’s perspective, but about the 2012 America from a 1520s tribal savant’s view.]

2) Three-Rivers and Arrow Holder make for a hilarious duo! I've just gotten to the latter third of the book and they provide a really nice contrast from the 350 pages worth of warriors that precede them. These are not your tough guys, but rather something more akin to hobbits in an indigenous America. Arrow Holder is absolutely precious and fulfills his namesake—a mentally slow fella tasked with carrying arrows, and ironically one of the only characters that our murderous (but likeable) protagonist Jay shows a sincere deep respect for right from the get-go (they appear to be kindred spirits, in a way). The same holds true for Three-Rivers who is more on the soft, cerebral side and is introduced as "Squirrelboy," a wily fella who cares for a tiny injured avian pal living in a robin's nest attached to his person. These two are so completely different from the cast of badasses that we've seen thus far, and they have such a fun depth to them that I can't help but be excited for where their adventure takes them next.

[Both characters are based on ME, combined with Tecumseh and his brother The-open-door, who took an arrow in the eye playing as a clumsy kid. I am a total retard when it comes to some very basic things like working on cars, basic carpentry, figuring out any gadget, remembering which is the safety and the mag release… It took me, my entire life, 20 times longer to learn a physical task than it did my brother Tony. That is Arrow-holder, the slow me that got picked last for wiffle ball and played left field in Little League. The other me is the sensitive fellow who is so alienated that he sees things that better adjusted people miss. For instance last night, I saw a news program about a new law insuring the safety of medical care givers, to include home care givers. My wife has a heart issue and the hospital wants a nurse coming here. Her native instinct is to say, ‘No, I have my Yeti!’ This is an extension of police powers into the home under cloak of medical care, a legislative process to make sure the next “shelter in place” ordinances have teeth. I see this while others do not—that is the Three-rivers effect, what Hienlien called being outside the fishbowl. This is why real badasses ask me to train them, because they lack my loser perspective. Three-rivers has a protein allergy and is physical based on a kid I body-guarded in 2010. He was a little Asian, cars champion with a 30,000k backpack, and a super cute mother. I walked them to her BMW through a crowd of DeeCEE and Capital Heights negro thugs. One had a gun. One was a college offensive lineman. One had chucks. One was a university basketball player. Before I was hired, they mugged nerds on the lot. I had my sweater and pen and said, “Back,” and my chattel obeyed. That is the three-rivers effect, weaponized bullshit. At the time I as writing Of The Sunset World, I said to myself, Imagine if I gave this kid Dante Justine as a meat shield? That fit the Charlie/Jay nerd/over jock mesmerism, which I experienced at the real Charlie’s hands. Now that would be fun to write I thought, and did so.]

3) My exposure to Sunset Saga started with the book Out of Time, which I understand was your attempt at developing a self-contained, short pulp novel that captures the spirit of the series in one book and may be read completely out of order. I cannot help but see similarities between protagonists "special boy" Posie Senski and Jay Bracken of the series proper. Is Posie more-or-less a Dollar Tree version of Jay? Or—and please DO NOT SPOIL on account of my inquiring mind—are both protagonists products from the same future origin? In other words, are these two special thugs your non-organic garden-variety meathead grown in a lab as assets to serve the Bill Gаtes-lookalike nut that awaits at the end of time? It's okay to tell me to "keep reading, dipshit!"

[Yes. These are clones gestated in pods and given dream backstories before deployment. Posie Senski is a patterned character, 60% Jason Van Veld Huysen, whose boxing manual I ghost wrote, and my recently deceased friend “Guru” Rick Senski. Dollar Tree is right. If I put Jason and Rick in a prison cell with Dante, with one lunch tray, Dante would be eating it, using Rick as a chair and Jason’s back as a table. The Timejumpers, since they largely do not know their own origin, were too obscured for readers who, today, lack subtextual eye for detail. They are Military [Hoost] and executive [1] protection [Jay, Posie] models. The executive protection guys are oversexed bodyguards of female executives. Cube, in the novel by his name, is one of these. That is another side prequel along with Organa. These EP models are handled by female intelligence clones [Tina, Sable, Bitch One, etc] who easily command such meat heads. The military models are all homosexual, so that these bitches cannot seduce them. For each batch, as these are limited edition clones, I use a fighter I know, like Erique for the guys Jay goes after in Den of The Ender, or an actor. Jay and his twin (who is in Organa) are both based on the actor Yule Brenner, upgunned with MMA middleweight powers. I do think that DNA of actors from the time “before everything got fake and gay,” will be used as the basis for clones. This is the key staffing article in MRE, which I write now. I just guessed about the assertive sexual nature of Indian women, based on social reports from the past. I was far more right than I know. My wife literally claimed me in public, as “beardiful and badass,” when she noticed I walked around Felony Flats alone as the Bantus came in to hunt her folk. Once she saw me looking at a 30 year old woman who smiled at me, and says, “Oh, she is beautiful! Please, don’t make me run over some young woman with my car for going after you.” So, here I am, a geriatric Jay finding out I was right about these people.]

Other than Sunset Saga, I am reading through your latest work Humanitarian Daily Ration and will preparing an article that centers around some of the ideas that were explored there. It brings out the interplanetary hermit within me in a way that only Robert A. Heinlein was able to achieve in his early writing's tendency to capture slice-of-life ambiance (Farmer in the Sky; select Lazarus Long vignettes in Time Enough for Love). I want to know what a planetary settler had for breakfast and why they avoid that bog over yonder, and I'm getting that vibe from Humanitarian Daily Ration so far, which I like.

[I had Hienlien in mind when I wrote HDR, Farmer in the Sky and The Green Hills of Earth.]

We'll talk soon! I should have a manuscript for you printed up and ready to go during your visit. I have more to say about my writing, but that'll take reallocating what energy I've devoted to the writing of the thing over to describing the thing, and I'm not sure if I can pull that off right now! I'm sure you'll understand my plight.

Tyler

…

Tyler, you are still working and have a family. Sorry I tried calling, I think, during bedtime, last night. You have already begun writing an unplanned novel as we communicate. Since you have volunteered to curate The Sunset Saga, I hope it helps you in two ways: practice preparing books for publication and also venting your nonfiction impulses in the way that our predecessors did a hundred years ago, corresponding with each other about their trade.

I caution you, do not write about your writing, until you have completed that work. Do not even talk about your plot, your characters, as this will delay their appearance in print, in word. Writin workshops and advice are meant to keep you from writing, as are books on writing. I know, I read over 30, rereading On Style and Wells Root’s the Script many times. You want to get these stories, that are breaking out of you, into the Word, the sacred aspect of our race, something that can live after you. I have entire novels, about 20, that are written in my head, a long time ago, including WhiteSkyCanoe in 2012. Speaking our words out of time, ahead of time, postpones their appearance down through time. Keep the cork in that bottled story until you have a glass to pour it into.

Notes

0) A Hoodrat Halloween, an unfortunate linguistic themed experiment in folk music inspired homeless debate society logic... is the prequel to Skulker Jones.

1) See Organa for these and a third lesser type, the Goon, or cop.