Light Becomes What It Touches, an E-novel

 

Who is he? Where is he? Answers come slowly in a kaleidoscope of fractured recollections.

Day by day the doctors and nurses at his bedside confirm that he’s consented to a US Government experiment in the use of MDMA injections as therapy for veterans and former government employees with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder who’ve been classified as a danger to themselves and others. 

He calls himself Gardner and, taking the advice of professional counselors, begins to keep a journal each day, addressing each entry directly to a woman he names Charity believing she’s the only woman he ever loved. 

Healing begins as little by little shards of memory return.

You can find the novel here: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/book/1144504381;jsessionid=EEBC3FC0BF2EF2D2E9C8E5582B19FA13.prodny_store02-atgap08?ean=2940179173618

Everything To Declare, an E-novel

 

A young adult novel with a coming of age theme, Everything To Declare is a story of travel seen through the eyes of an aspiring artist, Whit Blanchard. Whit hails from the tiny cattle town of McPherson, Kansas and at the age of nineteen, yet to see the ocean, he learns of the death of his best friend Richard due to suicide. Whit is stunned by this news and decides to pause his studies a while at Kansas State, where he's yet to declare a major, and using what little money he's saved he travels alone overseas, specifically to Spain. While there, sketch book in hand, he meets Hernan from Venezuela and together they travel to Lisbon, and Tangier, Whit all the while drawing pictures of what he sees, honing his skills in Spanish, viewing masterpieces of art, and coming to terms with the passing of his beloved friend. 

You can find the novel on Amazon, on Barnes and Noble, and on many other international platforms.

Here is a link to the book Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Everything-Declare-John-Michael-Flynn-ebook/dp/B0CJQ9MM2K/ref=sr_1_5?crid=K7IS2IJALPJL&keywords=john+michael+flynn&qid=1695717901&s=books&sprefix=john+michael+flynn%2Cstripbooks%2C74&sr=1-5

And here to Smashwords:https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1456295

No Tourists At The Cup Defenders, a Basil Rosa novel

This is the third novel in the Basil Rosa trilogy that takes place in Rhode Island in the late 1970s and early 80s. Thank you to Meric Bulca for the cover painting, and to Erika B Hollen for the design.

You can find the novel here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1025315

***

No Tourists At The Cup Defenders is narrated by commercial fisherman Pee Wee Coyle who tells the story to James, detailing the short life of Victor Silva, who was James' father. 

Pee Wee's narration is the fulfillment of a promise he made to Vic’s wife, Loren, that when their son James was old enough, he’d share what happened to Victor.

Raised in Fall River, the son of immigrants, his mother speaking very little English, his father, having suffered multiple strokes, unable to speak and living in an elderly care center, Victor Silva, aged 23, believes he disgraced his family after being discharged from the Navy for selling narcotics. Working on the wharves in the city of Newport, Rhodde Island is where he believes he can make amends.

Victor works seven days a week, earning $50 in cash per day. He lives in nearby Bristol and rises at 3:30 a.m. each day to drive to Newport. His Bristol apartment, a simple garret, is next door to a drinking club for immigrants and their sons who reside in Bristol. Here, in the evenings, Vic unwinds with local men who make him feel welcome. It seems to Vic that the purpose of his life is to create a sense of home.

Arriving to Bowen’s Wharf on time each day, Victor rides out on the ship Iron Jane at 5:30 a.m. with a rag-tag crew employed by Aquidneck Fish under Skipper Sonny Lombardi. They’ll empty nets kept in the Atlantic from early spring to late fall. They pull these nets up by hand, store the catch in a heap on Iron Jane’s deck, and return to Bowen’s Wharf to sort and store it.

Quitting time often comes at twilight. A young man, “a greenhorn” earns respect from seasoned vets such as Mitch McSherry, part owner of Aquidneck Fish and foreman to Sonny. Mitch sees potential in Vic, who’s learned he’s gotten girlfriend Loren pregnant. For advice, Vic turns to Pee Wee Coyle, who is an experienced lobster fisherman with a stellar reputation in the fishing community, but Pee Wee is often away at sea, so Victor decides to seek advice and friendship from his younger, energetic co-worker Pat Degnan, also a greenhorn. 

Pat doesn't have Pee Wee's life experience behind him, but he provides Victor a sympathetic ear. They’ve both made an enemy in Cliff Larch, who dislikes Vic because, as Mitch’s nephew, he’s jealous of his success. Cliff dislikes Pat because Pat’s been sleeping with Marla, Cliff’s ex-girlfriend. Cliff is also a drug-dealer. 

Victo warns Pat to stay away from Cliff and Marla. Pat doesn’t listen. Still, their friendship endures. When Pee Wee is in port, the three of them get together. Pee Wee dates Pat’s sister.

Victo, in spite of his steadfast work regimen, struggles to pay rent and bills. He takes no time off and is forever on the brink of exhaustion. Loren remains a soothing presence, her family likes him, but Vic’s worried about how they’ll make ends meet. 

Then his father dies. Everything about life and his relationship with Loren feels unfinished and this weighs on Vic’s conscience. He brings Loren to his father’s funeral and they stay with his family in Fall River. 

He must tell his mother he’s going to marry Loren, that they already have designs on a small house Loren’s father has agreed to help them purchase. They love each other and, best of all, Loren is pregnant. 

There’s one hitch. Vic fears his mother won’t approve. Loren is a pious Catholic, but she’s not Portuguese.

Vic tries to convince his mother this doesn’t matter, that he’s found true love. Though disappointed, his mother agrees to the union, but only if they’ll marry at her church in Fall River.

The long summer wears on and wears Vic down until one August evening, near the point of collapse, he sees Pat Degnan and Cliff Larch fighting on the wharf. Most crewmen have gone home.

Cliff stands for everything Vic’s trying to rebuke. He watches as Pat takes a beating from him. Vic chooses to defend his mate, and he gets in some quick punches until Cliff stabs him in the neck with a grappling hook, piercing Victor's carotid artery. 

Vic dies in the ambulance on the way to the emergency ward. Loren never marries. Pat leaves Newport altogether, though not before he and Loren create a fund to help Loren raise her child alone. 

For twenty years, Pee Wee stays in touch with them both and contributes to this fund. His final contribution is this telling of Vic’s story.

Groovemasters Night At The Met Cafe, a Basil Rosa novel

This is the second novel in the Basil Rosa trilogy set in Rhode Island in the late 1970s and early 80s. You can find it here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1025316

***

Groovemasters Night At The Met Café pays homage to Balzac’s Lost Illusions, chronicling one autumn of a May-September romance in Providence between Shura Levy and Ship C. Cusack. 

At age 20, Ship prefers his middle name, Chandler, and narrates this tale of joie de vivre. Self-absorbed, brimming with enthusiasm and unearned confidence, insecure and impatient, yet so guileless and eager to succeed that many can’t help liking him, Chandler is burning to know what love is. He must know. It’s all so urgent.

At the novel’s beginning he’s employed at Channel 36, Providence’s only public television station at the time. He’s also acting in a play directed by Shura Levy in Newport. When the play closes, Chandler suffers a bout of depression. He also loses his job due to funding cuts. He finds happiness in dating Shura, who, cigarette and glass of scotch in hand, agrees to educate him in more ways than one, but he must promise her, “We’ll always be friends no matter what I choose to do.” 

Inspired by her guidance, Chandler finds work as a line cook, lands a small part in an original play and makes visits by bus to Boston where he eat his grandmother's soup, listens to her stories, and helps his ailing grandfather by giving him a hot shave. 

Back in Providence, he enjoys lots of sex and long philosophical conversations with Shura, a RISD grad from Long Island who gave up painting for the theatre and who describes her lifestyle as one of “genteel poverty.” She reads Zola and Shakespeare and waits tables, travelling periodically by train to audition for plays in Manhattan. 

Shura finds Chandler charming and amusing, though insists he not get too attached. She treats him to exorbitant meals and they go out often to blues bars, and they sleep late after enjoying wild sex all night. Shura becomes something of a dominatrix with Chandler, as well as a star on the Providence theatre scene. As much as she likes the attention from locals, she despairs over being pigeonholed as an actress who must play mothers and aunts. Time is running out. She must move to Manhattan. Her goal all along has been to make it there in the theatre.

Life begins changing rapidly for Chandler. His roommate Gail moves to Los Angeles. His other roommate, Kevin, has been diagnosed with a strange new disease called AIDS. His Iranian friend KJ, who still hasn’t married Bree in order to get a green card, has been forced to live in a squalid room with Derek and Doughie, a pair of male strip-tease dancers. Chandler’s new roommate, Marshall, is turning out to be a cocksure bully who insists Chandler is “a homo” who likes “Frenchy” things. 

While Shura’s away in Manhattan, Chandler realizes how much she’s at the center of his life. He fears the longer she’s away, the more she’ll lose interest in him. 

Shura returns and meets with Chandler to explain why she was away so long. She had an abortion. Chandler is puzzled and feels betrayed. Maybe he’d want to have a child with her. He does love her, after all. Why hadn’t she discussed this with him? Had there been another man? He doesn’t like admitting that this is possible. Shura elaborates gently to Chandler how difficult a decision this was for her, telling him, “Having a child is not what I want right now.”

Though they resume their romance in Providence, it’s more subdued. They watch Jean Luc Godard movies at the Avon Cinema, and have what feels like one final fling seeing The Groovemasters on a Thursday night at the Met Café. It’s after this night that Shura reveals that she’s found an affordable apartment in Greenwich Village. She’s going to move, at last. She’d like Chandler to visit, though not until she’s settled. 

It’s already November and Thanksgiving. Chandler goes home to his parents, feeling lost and knowing when he returns to Providence that Shura won’t be there. A chapter has ended. His life will be different, one he’s not even certain he wants to go back to.

Perhaps Shura had been right when she’d told him, “Love is in the grasping.”

Eightball At Grady's Palace East, a Basil Rosa novel

There is a description below of this first novel of a trilogy set in Rhode Island in the late 1970s and early 80s. You can find the novel here: 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1025313

A thank you to Erika B Hollen for help with the cover design.

***

Eightball At Grady’s Palace East blends 1970s drug mules, dealers and low-level mafia operatives with a story about friendship, love and survival among a variety of creative spirits and an immigrant who calls himself KJ. The K stands for Ken, as in the doll mated to Barbie, and the J stands for Jones, as in one of America’s most common family names. 

Born Khosrow Hor, KJ is a Baha’i immigrant from Tehran whose student and tourist visas have expired. The year is 1979. His parents left the United States just prior to the Khomeini revolution in Iran and now that The Shah has been deposed and the Mullah’s have come to power, KJ cannot return to his homeland. 

He fears his parents have been murdered. He tries repeatedly, but he cannot contact them. Anti-Iranian sentiment in the U.S. is at an all-time high. Finding gainful employment appears impossible. With Leland Sibley’s help, KJ is hired as a dishwasher, paid in cash. Scotty Greco helps too, introducing him to neighborhood friends such as the acting student Orbit, the low-level capo Little Nazo, and soldiers Vinnie Vee and Lucio DiPippo.

As a native to the city’s Federal Hill neighborhood, Scotty Greco has big ambitions to work as an actor and to rise from drug mule to capo under the tutelage of Little Nazo and Little Fig Triventi. Scotty’s proud to claim KJ as his first friend from the Middle-East. So is Leland Sibley, a transplant from a small town north of the city. Leland tries to help KJ, just as he helps his ailing, widowed mother. Nearly each cent he earns goes to her. He and KJ need Scotty and his connections. They take orders from Little Nazo, who schools Leland in how to use a .38 and gives him one along with protected status as the go-to cocaine dealer at the Grady’s Palace East bar. Though not an Italian-American, Leland can still get “made” if he proves his worth to Triventi. He works with Scotty and KJ running money and drugs throughout the city’s seedier neighborhoods. Their friendship transcends their cultural differences, but they live a dangerous existence.

KJ decides he wants out. He’s met Bree, a waitress at the restaurant where he washes dishes. She loves theatre and has encouraged him to write a play about what it’s like to live as an exile. Orbit, too, encourages him. As does Serena, another waitress and Bree’s best friend. 

Leland knows Serena. He used to date her. He cannot say no to KJ’s request that he talk to Little Nazo and arrange a way out for him. Leland talks first to Scotty, who says they’re in for life. Leland’s unaware that Scotty has been deceiving Little Nazo and giving information about drug pick-ups to Nazo’s rivals. This leads to Scotty getting murdered. Now Leland wants out. There’s only one way. He must kill Nazo’s rival that Scotty was working for. After that, he must leave Providence. 

As Leland prepares in secret for his assassination attempt, KJ, with Bree’s help, completes writing his play. He proposes marriage to Bree and she accepts. Now he can get a green card. Orbit has helped too, finding a theatre to stage KJ’s play. 

It’s the night KJ’s play opens. Leland has promised to come, but it’s also the night that he must make his first hit in order to get out from under Little Fig Triventi. Details have been worked out, but even if Leland succeeds, he won’t be able to stay in Providence. Nor will he ever never see his friends or his mother again. 

What will Leland do?

Milk Blossom Pushes Free, a Basil Rosa novel

 

Thank you to Tony Sturtevant for the cover image.

You can find the book here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/1053013

At the age of 35, Ruby L. Hermosa would like to know how her life became so complicated and difficult. The year is 2022, having survived in her native Manhattan during the Covid-19 lockdown, Ruby is now seeing herself and the city bounce back. Broadway plays and musicals are casting again, and so are movies.

 
A third-genration actor and singer, raised by her Tony-award-winning grandmother, shunned by her drama queen of a mother, Ruby is laboring to get career back on track. She still doesn't talk to her mother, now a widow who has taken her husband's inheritcance money and exiled herself to a life poolside with cocktails in Costa Rica. 

Ruby's in mourning, as well, over the sudden death of her closest friend, Diego, a dancer in Alvin Ailey's company who was killed in a car accident. To complicate matters further, Ruby believes she's fallen in love with Montag Carlin, a loyal practicing Catholic just like her, and she dreams of starting a family with him. 

Ruby's also convinced she's Sarah Bernhardt and, though she sees various doctors regarding this obsession, her mood swings and her compulsive behavior, she remains committed to writing and rehearsing her one-woman play about the famed French diva, though her agent wants her to abandon the demanding project and choose more commercial opportunities. 
Ruby won't. She knows, believes, is absolutely convinced she's the second coming of Madame Sarah. She needs to write and perform this play. 

She's talented and she's had some success in the professional theatre, but will Ruby be able to balance, post-Covid, her desire for continued career success with a desire to marry Monte and have a child with him? 

Will she reconcile with her agent, or will she fire him? 

Will she, with the help of therapy and medication, shed her delusion about being Sarah Bernhardt?

Will she come to terms with her mother, at last, and most importantly with herself?

God Wore Denim, a Basil Rosa novel

A thank you to Erika B. Hollen for designing the cover.

You can find the book here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/1042180

Danville, Virginia native and narrator James Robert Bradner, known as JB, is an octogenarian, widower, a recovering alcoholic and a Vietnam veteran with a passion for Western North Carolina’s history. As both love letter and elegy, he recounts daily life on a family farm and his friendship with a new arrival, a 13-year-old boy named Junior. 

Speaking to us from his room in a retirement home, JB’s focus is centered on a single harvest season on a family farm in Macon County, North Carolina. JB is married to Bonnie, also a recovering alcoholic and a dental hygienist born and raised in the town of Franklin, where they lived together for over three decades, and where the family farm that JB worked on for 25 years was once located. 

This farm was owned and run by Rod and Thorne Shepherd. Rod is married to Bev, who is one of Bonnie’s closest friends. Thorne is a bachelor. Both men are veterans of the second world war. 

There were two things that made this one harvest season special for JB. First, it was the presence of an outsider, 13-year-old Junior, who just showed up one day to sleep on a cot in the basement of Rod Shepherd’s house, sharing a room with Rod’s son, Duke Wayne. Second, it was the year of the Shepherd’s most lucrative burley tobacco crop. 

JB narrates in detail the day to day life and challenges of working in a crew as a field hand, supporting a way of life that in many ways has all but vanished in the United States. He recounts in detail the lessons that Junior learns from him, but that Junior also teaches him. He comes to understand that it is never to late to learn or to reinvent one’s self. 

He also details the personalities of Rod Shepherd’s son, Duke Wayne, Rod himself the patriarch of the farm, so to speak, and his brother Thorne. There are the hands, as well, men such as Earl Cabe, and Lee Locust. There is Bev, Rod’s wife, a churchgoer, a dedicated farm wife, taking care of these men and ultimately explaining to them why Junior has come and what his relationship is to her family. 

The Shepherd brothers raise not only tobacco but beef cattle, hay, soybeans, okra, potatoes and all sorts of garden vegetables. JB sees, day by day, that Junior really wants to learn. The boy asks many questions. Along with Thorne, a lifelong bachelor, Junior bonds with JB. In time, the men will learn Bev’s secret, that the boy came to the farm because his mother is addicted to crack cocaine and in rehab, and his step-father has been, for years, abusing him. 

As Junior bonds with the men, asking them all sorts of questions about farming, animal husbandry, the region and its history, it becomes clear that he’s a boy seeking guidance. Each of them, as adults, have by chance been forced to provide it, whether they like it or not. 

Duke Wayne is also seeking a better understanding with his father, Rod. The two have fought for years, Duke having moved out of state and only returning to the farm annually to help with the fall harvest. 

A friendship and a fraternal dynamic develops between Junior and Duke Wayne. JB relates how the different men find, in their various ways, a father figure within and without, fatefully and intimately in such an usual and quite beautiful pastoral setting.

Witness Marks, a Basil Rosa novel

Preacher Everett Micah Zachery narrates this novel of interconnected lives, of stories from the many parishioners of his church, Glad Tidings, in the fictional southeastern city of Belinda in the United States. The preacher's stories address joy as well as despair, recovery as well as failure, and delve into themes of racism, adultery and addiction. 

A thank you to Tony Sturtevant for the cover image.

Based On Joyce, an E-novel

 

With the death of his alcoholic mother, Marcello Andrade, raised in Reading, Pennsylvania as the son of an adulterous butcher and former boxer, has sold the house he grew up in, pulled up stakes and moved to Kansas City to reinvent himself. Marcello narrates his story of discovering love and friendship in a world beyond Reading.  

You can find the book here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/1408887

The Blizzard Surfer, an E-novel

 

Where does the impulse to murder come from? I don't know. Nobody does. I explore this idea in The Blizzard Surfer, as we follow the imaginings and the heartbreaks experienced by Daniel Currie, a gentle soul, a well-intentioned, sweet and puzzled boy who cannot stop watching television as a way to cope with the reality, and the memories he has from the time when at the age of 15, he learned of his father freezing to death in his car while stuck in traffic on Cape Cod during the Blizzard of 1978.

Here is a link:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/1404665