Wolf DeVoon

Hi. Not to detract from everything else posted above, but - er - you realize that Christine Blasey Ford was reportedly involved in CIA recruiting at Stanford, right? Her father was CIA, and her brother allegedly worked at law firm Baker Hostetler and organized Fusion GPS. Another "big law" outfit, Perkins Coie, was the Deep State money laundering pipeline. In 2009, President Obama appointed Robert Bauer, chair of the firm's Political Law practice, to become his White House Counsel. Bauer returned to private practice with Perkins Coie in 2011. In 2015, Hillary Clinton named Marc Elias as general counsel to her campaign. Hmm. Somebody explain it to me, what's a "Political Law" practice?

Could be, I guess. Google initially relegated by latest novel to Amazon's Mexican server, invisible as an English-language title. It's possible that I annoyed someone in government. My important stuff is uploaded at Vimeo https://vimeo.com/user66655576 and there are three more videos in the can, recently completed, which I will upload to Vimeo when I have wider bandwidth at a neighbor's house, perhaps tomorrow. Evil saboteurs can complain to Vimeo, if they wish. Special thanks to William. It matters enormously to receive encouragement.

Good news. Dear Alan von Altendorf: Thank you for submitting your video appeal to YouTube. After further review, we've determined that your video doesn't violate our Community Guidelines. Your video has been reinstated and your account is in good standing. Sincerely, — The YouTube Team

Sorry, it was deleted by YouTube, a strike against my account for reasons I cannot comprehend.

https://youtu.be/s7awpJDLL9M

https://www.amazon.com/Eight-Ruthless-Novels-Wolf-DeVoon/dp/1725562448

https://youtu.be/HRGX2FiHOS0

I've completed a new novel, set in 1975, when the Cosa Nostra had an iron grip on the city of Milwaukee. It's embarrassing to ask anyone to read and review it, because it's a tragedy and ends badly for the hero and the brave brainy girl he marries. 'Partners' begins and ends in a hard Wisconsin winter, from the first few flakes of November to snowbound Christmas, a February blizzard, finally a freak March ice storm, an actual event that occurred in 1976 and paralyzed the city of Milwaukee for an entire week. After the ice storm melts, winter is over and the tale ends, four months of gun battles, love, and loss. When the story opens, cold weather worries a lonely young man, reading Help Wanted ads at 3 a.m. in the Water Street Ham and Egger. His adventures take him to Mequon, Brady Street, the Port of Milwaukee, Shorewood, Oak Creek, Winneconne, Door County, and the Core. https://www.amazon.com/Partners-Wolf-DeVoon/dp/1722608595

It is my fervent wish that no one reads Partners. It starts out innocently and immediately gets worse and worse and worse. The profound happiness of newlyweds freed from hardship and danger, alone together in a remote snowbound cabin is almost too much to bear, given their fate. Do not read this book. The ending is so intensely sad that I find myself unable to write in the future, as if I had crossed some terrible red line, a lifelong moral law against tragedy.

Partners completed, 68K, available on Amazon in a week or two. If you'd like a pdf for review, email wolfdevoon@gmail.com

All I can report are the books I loved, RLS Kidnapped and Treasure Island, C.S.Forester Hornblower series.

Kind of you to reply. Not every kid is a winner in the game show of life. One of the defects in Miss Rand's work is the 12-0 jury nullification of Roark's felony.

Too late now. As we say in the card game schaapskopf, what's laid is played.

Parenthetically, how embarrassing that writing involves crying. I'm working on 'Partners' deep in the third act. Going one paragraph at a time, I always finish each scene that I start (usually a page or two, sometimes more). As is my custom, each newly completed scene is saved, then exported to pdf for a critical read and to look at punctuation and line spacing. What happens next, of course, is that I launch the pdf, sometimes backspace many pages to read a longer sequence. There's amazing warmth in certain scenes that I haven't seen in a long time. My whole heart burst into tears when Kyle and Karen did something that soared in celebration of thoughtful newlyweds and lasting love. What a sap. You know what else forces me into involuntary tears of compassion, every damn time? Mary Poppins. Two kids at a window, watching her descend by aid of an opened umbrella. "It's her! It's the person!" Jane exclaims to her younger brother Michael. Terrible. I cried on the set of The Marionette. The crew worried that I had lost my mind, but the performances were wonderful. Happened more than once. Writing a novel is far worse than directing, because I'm staging it and performing it with the power of literary art. Sometimes I think that writing should be a licensed profession, stop me from putting my heart through the wringer like this. I dread the next chapter because Jimmy must die.

Oh, good. I have published a special book, just for you. I earn 2 cents per copy sold, planning a fun trip to Elko with the proceeds. http://www.lulu.com/shop/wolf-devoon/authors-exist-to-please-and-flatter-readers/paperback/product-23701079.html

I'm slow, but I get there. Authors win readers by being pleasant, agreeing to bullshit, service with a smile, ever so grateful ?

In the years remaining, I want to attempt work that seems personally important, such as it is.

Baffled. I'm sure you're right, but have no idea why.

A dice roll. We try to narrow the odds by picking an Objectivist mate, or as Gordon Liddy said to me in explanation of his wife, "Good genes." But still, it's a dice roll, and kids have unusual characteristics, horizons of their own. Twenty years is a long time to be perfectly rational and perfectly wise every minute. Shit happens. I think I had 50 fights with school teachers and administrators, some public, some private. At least a dozen errors of judgment dealing with my daughter, several million mistakes dealing with my wife. The duty persists through thick and thin, loved or hated, admired or scoffed at. Parents use themselves up. New life is the purpose.

Sorry to intrude, want to inject the notion of voluntarily chosen duty. Parent is a big one, a 20 year commitment, supersedes marriage and personal wellbeing. Cop, lawyer, Marine, tinker, tailor, spy -- most public service careers have a dimension of duty that's like a one way door involving classified or confidential knowledge.

Did I mention that I dislike taking chances? - a risk averse gambler, betting every sous.

Physical work saves me. A tall dead red elm crashed in the last storm, crumpled a cow panel and wrecked the gate I built. Yesterday the trunk and big limbs got bucked with a chain saw, enough to clear the wreckage, so I could repair the gate. Hauled four wheelbarrows of dry wood rounds to the concrete pad behind the wood barn, piled them high on top of another cord of windfall, two thirds of which was a huge oak struck by lightning and felled by the power utility, because it might hit a pole if it fell uncontrolled. Just now I gathered brush, hauled it to the burn pile, six trips like the huntsman in Snow White, armloads of twisted branches. My women flip out in a panic whenever I light a burn pile, eight feet around and almost as high, the flames shooting up 40 feet for a few minutes, then a long hot burn as it collapses. I get yelled at and I patiently point to the evidence. See? Didn't get away from me. I stood by with jugs of water and a shovel. Nothing but flat cold ashes on a calm green day. Last week, I installed sheetrock on the ceilings of an old farmhouse bathroom and front porch with room dimensions and rafters that were wacky, nothing square or uniformly spaced. The rock weighed a ton, had to keep it braced with one hand and the top of my head, fumble for a screw gun on the ladder, dropped dozens of screws. Exhausting work for hire, sore for days. It saves me, like the sound of thunder and hailstones battering my writing office, doing fun notes like this one. Whenever I complete a chapter of 'Partners' I'm so upset with a dramatic finish that I have to go out and do physical work, split wood with a mawl, pick up the string trimmer and whack an acre or two, take a hand saw to the sycamore and stop it from growing into a 7000 volt high line. Insistent nature is always victorious, unless you fight it. We have bears, coyotes, cougars, and meth head trailer trash in beat up wrecks on the county road that bisects our property. There's a rifle with a scope next to the front door. Anything is good, an excuse to get up from the keyboard, forget if I can. The story follows me wherever I go, scanning the ground for rattlesnake and copperhead, worn work gloves on my hands. I forgive myself, try to focus on physical reality, avoid injuries. Small and old, I have to work slowly. The wild calm grandeur of nature is sedative. To begin a new chapter is so daunting a task that it takes days to conceive, test driving ideas. It takes forever to see the solution, always a notch higher and deeper. Stories cannot go in reverse or tread water. Characters do not become simpler, unless they die. I'm in the habit now of quoting an epigram from a literary source on the title page. In 'Finding Flopsie' I recited Scott Fitzgerald to introduce Chris's story, O. Henry for The Way Peachy Saw It. The venerated opener for 'Partners' was Jim Morrison: "The future's uncertain, and the end is always near." Oh, but not near enough, miles to go before I finish. Tense miles uphill. Not just the present business of writing 'Partners,' a particularly challenging endeavor, but writing as such, each page a little more difficult because I keep aiming higher. Whether that succeeds or fails is less important. Novelists do not become simpler unless they die. The dog helps. Always something to do, food, water, trim endlessly with a scissors, flea baths and tick removal. He's hilarious, too old and shrewd to be tricked. Doesn't even look up when I call him. He has general store privileges, lays on the floor on Wednesdays when folks come to sit and swap gossip at the tables in back. I throw horseshoes in the shade of a walnut tree outside, try to hold my own with a crew of old faces, ignore their protestations of frustration and watch them toss double ringers. Three or four hours away from writing, a lifeline. If all else fails, there's Solitaire, a 3% chance of winning. I play from 5 to 7 in the evening, eat something and listen to vain asshole Mark Levin pat himself on the back. After eight hours of writing, I need to quit, wrung out and creatively drained. Talented people don't have these problems.

addendum, profuse apologies: "tales of brave Ulysses" was sung by Jack Bruce/Cream https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8hLc_nqx8g

First, I thank all for replying. It helps more than you know. WRT to heroes, the ancients cast a long shadow, tales of brave Ulysses, as Page and Plant put it In song. Then the Vikings, more Led Zep. What's funny, of course, is that modern Danes still think of themselves as Vikings, conquerors of Britain, rulers of Greenland, which used to be green in the Medieval Warm Period. Sorry, I digress. It's embarrassing to talk about heroism. All of my work for the past 20 years addressed the question, and what I found is that heroes do wrong. It is always a gamble in the absence of foreknowledge, and the most surprising discovery of all is a romantic partner who shares the risk of losing everything, doesn't flinch from the heartless, reckless business of action. My women are always stronger than the men they love.