This Blue Ball

Vampires and zombies enter the nano-age

2011-10-30T17:02:00.000-04:00

Okay, so I don't know that this hasn't been developed elsewhere. But for the moment let's imagine that if Hollywood wants to update the vampire and zombie mythologies for our age they gotta come to me! Here's the elevator pitch.

Nano technology is injected into the blood streams of those who can afford it. The self-reproducing nanites fight illnesses of all kinds by low-level sensing of their environment - shared with external computers - and programmed attacks that are controlled from those external computers. This works well for years, until all who can afford it buy into the technology.

Slowly the nanites evolve away from what was injected into the blood stream. At some seemingly sudden point in their development, the built-in self-destruction mechanism is deactivated and the connection to external computers is cut. The nanites develop a new imperative: protect the hive. All those years they survived in the blood stream through the consumption of the energy brought by blood to the cells. They now develop a taste for red blood cells themselves, because of their richness. The nanites also learn to communicate their need simply: you will suffer if you do not replenish the blood cells. The first human hosts develop a network in which they communicate about these changes and learn to consume blood. The blood cannot go into the stomach, however; it must come directly into the blood stream.

The first vampires arise from a group that has their mouths surgically altered to allow the sucking of blood directly. Their vampirism is not lost on them, but their brains have also been affected by nanites, and they have lost any compassion for unaltered humans. As they feed the nanites and those artificial creatures become more dominant in their bodies, they change in other ways as well. They become stronger and quicker; they feel little or no pain. They also gain a sensitivity to light because of an as-yet still functional limitation to the nanites: they cease to function in UV light. This was programmed into them to prevent their casual spread (and protect the corporate profits of the companies selling the nanite treatments).

Zombies, you ask, what do vampires have to do with zombies? If the altered human does not get enough red blood injected into his or her blood stream, the nanites change into a more aggressive and desperate mode. They invade the brain and seek to control it. They don't have the intelligence to control the human mind, but they are able to stimulate the baser parts of the brain. Violence becomes the norm, and if the body is not already half dead from their predation it soon becomes torn-up, infected and wasted. Fine motor control is lost, as is speech. Eventually only the nanites keep the body moving, as they consume it from within.

The nanites in the brain stimulate the desire for - brain. The brain cavity gets direct communication with the mouth so that the nanites can bring any brains or other protein consumed right back up to the skull.

At the same time, whenever the zombie's mouth chomps into something, it leaves behind nanites. The deposited nanites are on high alert and consume and reproduce as fast as they can to start another hive.

Can these vampires and zombies be killed? A stake to the heart or a bullet to the brains? The nanites are not a substitute for organic life; they are parasitic. When the body finally gives out completely, they may seek to abandon it, but even so they are doomed to die for lack of a suitable energy source. A stake to the heart may, in fact, be too traumatic for the nanites to overcome. A bullet to the brain may prevent the nanite stimulation of instinct.

These vampires and zombies do not rise from crypts or graves. They can regenerate a human who is clinically dead, but they cannot work with a body whose cells are decayed.

Are they sufficient to overrun society? The problem is that the disease is already widespread before it manifests itself, and is widely distributed in the most important quarters of society. We don't realize how deep in the shit we are until we have met the enemy - and we realize they are us.

Four memories of my mother

2011-07-05T20:44:00.005-04:00

Four memories of my mother stand out for me.

The first is when we’re very young, not yet in school. I remember the three of us, Scott, Wayne and Sue, running around and disobeying and shouting and teasing and quarreling so much that mom just went into the bathroom and locked the door behind her. Not our best moment, and I suppose in a sense not hers. But that was mom: always evenhanded outside, even when in turmoil inside.

The second is about the same age. I’m sure we were stuck inside and bored, and getting on mom’s nerves again. The eternal cry: there’s nothing to do. That’s when mom showed up with a fondu or sauce caddy, with multiple small dishes full of interesting things: wet coffee grounds, dirt, beans, sugar or salt crystals, I’m not sure what all. “Just feel,” she said. I don’t remember that it kept us occupied too long, but that was mom telling us to stop and feel, discover and enjoy the world around us.

The third memory is from years later. I was in high school, and working at a cannery. I rode my bike every day on the bike trail along River Road. One day, some of the incidental glass on the trail caused a flat. I complained to mom about it the next day. The day after, as I rode along that trail I found mom in the middle of a mile-long stretch, sweeping. That was mom, caring, solution oriented, even when the solution was invisible to others.

The last memory is from my college years. One year I took a trip to Europe and didn’t have the money to go back to school that year. That year I took our dog Shayna on a lot of walks. One day we happened on a bird nest with chicks, and Shayna scooped them up without a thought. I told mom and she said I shouldn’t have let the dog do that. “That’s nature, mom,” I said, “you can’t change nature.” But mom saw it differently. She educated herself about dog training, and a couple years later she told me proudly, “Shayna and I saw some baby chicks today, and she behaved.” That was mom, caring about what we learn from our world and what we do to shape it.

I feel like the disease that took mom slowly put her back in a locked bathroom, only this time unable, not unwilling to communicate with us. And yet even this time it was on her terms. She never lost the grace and openness and underlying love that marked her life.

Carriers

2011-02-26T17:14:00.001-05:00

I'm partial, as said, to zombie movies, despite the violence they inevitably portray and legitimate.

Carriers is an interesting generic twist. The humanity-destroying virus is there, but it incapacitates and kills. It doesn't set loose the brain-munching hordes.

As a result, the horror in this movie comes not from the people who are sick. It's what the healthy do - to stay alive.

Reminds me of reading The Road, a book that shook me to the core. What do you do to your offspring - in this case, a boy who was about the age of my younger son at my reading - in the name of life?

At the end of the world, where only a fringe of people still exists and is in all likelihood doomed, what pain and suffering is that life worth?

This movie asks also, at what price do you save yourself? "Those are the rules," they say in the movie, but when faced with merciless rules, can you draw the line of compassion at - only yourself? A child always changes the equation, but what is life worth at the absolute limit?

Venus at Dawn

2010-05-22T08:00:00.000-04:00

[For NPR's 4th 3-minute fiction round]

Venus at dawn

He woke up in the swamp, frogs croaking ominously all around, an occasional bird song moving across his hearing with the familiar Doppler shift in pitch. The sky was illuminated in one corner by an approaching dawn, while nearby the morning star sparkled between branches. The moon had long disappeared, and the pin-cushion lights had all gone out except for this one. He got moving.

What drove him most was the hunger. It had been forever since he had found something sustaining. He could lick the dew on broad leaves and peck at bits of edible plant life, but there wasn't anything that could fill him. He went wherever the ground was green, but hadn't gotten close to anything that moved on its own.

From a farm and a stable he had somehow ended up out here, driven away by sticks and yelps. So what if he had bitten one of them. It tasted sweet. Now he was in a delirium from want and confusion and spite. The sense that had never yet failed him was smell, and he went from one hint of a promise to another, though each time it dissolved into empty odors from the muck or brackish water.

Then a smell repeated between others, grew stronger and eventually stayed with him. He was on course, had only to dodge a few trees and stop. The source was close, beneath him somewhere. A single plant beckoned but that couldn't be. It was a feast down there, the smell of flesh and excess, a place to find others and mingle and procreate. His whole life was there.

The fly landed on a button of color. Before long there was a rattling snap and he was blocked by green. He bounded in every way but couldn't escape, tricked, he dimly recognized, by a brainless stalk. Eventually he was still. Light still entered from above between the trap's interwoven cilia, and atop his head an eye took in the last flickering reflection from Venus.

Zombies and vampires

2010-03-10T20:47:00.000-05:00

Maybe like you, I'm tired of both subtypes of the undead. Still, I am unable to resist a zombie movie. I was thinking about this phenomenon after having seen Zombieland twice in two days. In both cases, we're not really sure what these creatures are about. There are two strands of zombies: those who are crazed cannibal creatures, who might as well be dead; and those who are (un-)dead but still ravenous. With vampires, there are the ur-vampires and there are the made bloodsuckers.

We accept without much comment that these creatures naturally won't feed on each other and would rather starve for humans than turn on each other. The more logical notion would be that their populations would quickly implode through internecine conflict. There is also the ambiguity in most representations of when a victim is killed outright and when said victim is turned. Sometimes there is a logic to the procedures, sometimes not.

We put up with a lot of non-sense.

Why do we like zombies so much? I am afraid that it is the guilt we feel in "us and them" thinking. There is no hesitation in creating an "us and them" out of zombies, no moral or ethical ambiguity, what fun. And still we get to off humans. Grim.

What's the attraction of vampires? The empty husk and the need to fill it with something from us. We may see it in euro-trash or homegrown charmers. We want the rush of knowing that our life energy has undeniable attraction to some other creature, even if only for consumption. We may find it scintillating or titillating to imagine the kind of creature that lives off life energy, but in the end we are looking in a mirror and seeing only ourselves. And the blood we would let drain for a sense of our importance.

In honor of the 2nd 3-minute fiction contest over at NPR

2009-09-27T19:05:00.003-04:00

I love the idea, and I sent in a story this time, round two. I found it intriguing that they prescribed the story's opening: "The nurse left work at 5 o'clock." Most of the selected stories - and I assume most of the submissions - picked up on the ominousness of this opening. Why do we care about a nurse unless it's something sensational or requiring the attention of those for whom simple vocational designations may be enough. Lots of cops - hospitals - etc.

My story was equally dark. I could tell from the judges' selections that the story below was not going to fair well - not character-driven enough, a bit too pretentious and with its sketchy symbolism, a tad too much. On the other hand, I didn't like the stories they selected for the most part. Puffs of character sketches, not always well written. Sour grapes are in that statement, but there is something in vinegary insight, too.

====

Vector

The nurse left work at five o'clock. Did she look around any differently that day? Could she feel the first flush? We don't know. I do know that I ride the same bus, sometimes the very same schedule, 5:10 downtown route. On that muggy August afternoon, there was an oppressive yellow brown haze, at the tail end of a heat wave and a merciless summer. But the smog and late sun would have softened the silhouettes, made the sidewalk grime seem less like decay, maybe more like dirt. She made the bus and got in.

The bus would have tinted everything blue again, a mockery for tired eyes: bluish fluorescents and purple adhesive filters on the windows. In that light, everything seems foreign and unforgiving, even the seatbacks and handholds glistening from hands and human oils. There were twenty-three people on and off the bus during her ride. Five would later sit where she sat.

Those great panes of glass frame the world for you, despite the disconcerting jolts, while spots and smudges remind you that others have come before. You grow accustomed to two-second stories of this construction worker ambling alone; that couple bouncing out of sync as they walk in a one-arm hug; those kids gathered round a handheld, craps or drugs, you can't be sure. Then the bus stops and you look impatiently at a world of cars and pedestrians still moving, while you wait on a green light or someone to board.

I don't know her name and address. She got off seven stops later. Did she have far to walk? I ride on, but once I did get off. The neighborhood was lifeless, but no longer quarantined; it seemed no different than my neighborhood, maybe nicer. How many did she greet? If we only knew who she was, but it's better you don't, we are told.

The heat aided this vector. It became the most prolific, the most deadly - so many that we lost track, and so much has come since then, it's understandable. Sometimes I feel like her personal historian, even though I only know her from her routine. That one afternoon in her neighborhood, a chill gray October day, I wanted to knock on doors until I met someone who could point to the building and window. I wanted so badly to bust in the front and any subsequent doors until I stood in the doorway to her bedroom, the one from which she never emerged. Is it still, I would have asked for effect, right to have lived?

She might have answered, her strength waning with the reddish sunset: not with what you know, not for this. But it is, I want to say, looking out the open window at the sun's last lip, it is. Just tell me your name.

Is homage egotism?

2009-05-17T11:32:00.004-04:00

So, I wanted to write the Bog Monster in part to pay homage to Franz Kafka and the Metamorphosis. Now how egotistical is that? And I find my sensibility for characterization is still influenced by Thomas Mann's.... What is the guy thinking?, you may ask.

I don't know. I'm not writing knock-offs. Gregor Samsa becomes a bug in a human world; Derek Sorensen becomes a human in a bug world. And I can't just write a single story, in the way Thomas Mann did so masterfully - they're layered, post-modern thick, but without the artistry that says, there's a reason for all this disorder, even if you can't see it.

The reason for my disorder is that's how I see stories. Layered. Banal. Marginally profound. Incomplete and competing. The narrator confesses a predilection for "B" movies and their kind of stories. That was a confession. It's as close as I'll get to those to whose work I owe so much.

It's finally time!

2009-03-06T22:18:00.002-05:00

I have finally finished The Bog Monster of Booker Creek and - although much less onerous still time-consuming - its website.

I notice an odd convergence with This Blue Ball, given that I set out to make a very situated novel, after having written Blue Ball as if it could have unfolded anywhere in the country. I didn't intend it, but the same loose and interwoven structure is followed in the Bog Monster.

I still have worked through a narrator, but this one is very present (where Blue Ball's was by definition invisible).

I worked with everyday characters, though all have a certain symbolic value. The Blue Ball had representative figures, but the plot dominated. Here, it's almost Seinfeldian in its lack of resolution.

Hot doc in Scribd and space-alien-infos

2008-08-31T20:32:00.005-04:00

I discovered a few weeks ago that the novel had suddenly won a "hot" rating on scribd.com. I was pleased and surprised, but the reason for it was a bit more sobering. I am relatively certain the whole source of it can be found in the most common search terms used to find the document on scribd, all of which seem to involve these words: preteen, Indian, sex, lolita. I know they're all in there, but the search gives you, well, the wrong impression about the book. At some point and in someone's or some ones' minds, this coincidence made the novel seem mighty attractive.

Even though scribd continues to be the most popular venue (at least that I can check) for the novel, the fire is off. I'm sure folks were disappointed to find that pornography is a topic in the book, not its mode.

Here is another interesting venue for the novel, the first one to take the "share-alike" Creative Commons license seriously: http://www.space-alien-ufos.com . The editor there took the time to provide chapter headings for each "day" and generally did a nice very job of laying it out. I find the titles are a nice addition, even if they do interfere a bit with the conceit of the narrative. Or maybe I'm taken in by the assurance that at least one person has read the story with some care!

I also like that its author is identified as Wayne Muller. I'm sure that reveals something about the location of the editor, in a way that nicely echoes concerns of the novel's weblog author....

Heard about the bogmonster?

2007-12-11T22:26:00.000-05:00

I'm all bog monster all the time now. The working title of my next book is The Bog Monster of Booker Creek. You can hear a first reading from it here.

It's a more personal book. I'm afraid people will find themselves all too tempted to map the characters onto my family and acquaintances. So let me make the standard disclaimer: the characters are all invented, and any similarity to individuals living or dead will be taken as a compliment.

In fact, I was inspired at several points to make fictional characters who share attributes with real people, but they (the fictional characters) were all conscribed for the purposes of the narrative. Insofar, resemblance is superficial and ultimately deceptive.

Wayne

Scribd handles audio version; and Rowling's revelation

2007-10-27T14:04:00.000-04:00

Audio books are crazy popular. I wanted to create one of This Blue Ball, but didn't want to hear my own voice reading it. I uploaded the novel to Scribd the other day, and after a considerable wait, a very respectable if (still?) incomplete audio version emerged. Here it is embedded:

Download the mp3 version to hear it.... it's all auto-generated with a sped-up female computer-generated voice. I have to say that sass comes through that voice, albeit unintentionally.... I love the way irony sounds when delivered with such deadpan, repetitive delivery.

Why do I especially like this? Well, now that J.K. Rowling has let her cat out of the bag, and I find out that I've misinterpreted the unicorn origami in Blade Runner all these years, I can finally reveal who I believe is the unidentified narrator of This Blue Ball.... Have a listen to the recording, and think about it for a while. Who might regret the loss of life. Who might owe someone. Who might have the technological wherewithal... Just listen...

Is there a clue in the text? I think several. Can you go another way with this? Absolutely. Have at it!

Blooking Central

2007-08-28T21:12:00.000-04:00

See Cheryl Hagedorn's blog for her reaction to the blook in This Blue Ball.

I have nothing but respect for people who can devote such energy to what amounts to a public service, an intellectual mill creating the grist for the rest of us.

The lens is destroying narrative

2007-04-11T22:50:00.000-04:00

Here's the problem. The lens demands too much visual perspective, not enough mental perspective. We have become so used to the cold still third-person perspective needed to render a scene visually that we are unwilling to change our narrative engines to make use of the perspective of the narrator.

The omniscient narrator acts like a lens across the pages we write, but doesn't invite us into the story as a construction. It's all stagecraft and the most awkward of dramatic irony.

We put up with so much manipulation by the narrator who doesn't identify him- or herself, or his/her perspective, because we accept that the narrative will fulfill an experiential need on our part (I want my scifi; I want my romance; I want my murder mystery). The narrative lens fits that model of literature perfectly.

A character narrator seems like a cheap trick now. And maybe it is.

But at least we can follow the story on a shakey shoulder cam like a participant, not a consumer.

Overdue

2007-02-12T21:10:00.000-05:00

Hey,

this blog is lonelier than ... I've been working on a follow-on novel for This Blue Ball, and have lost interest in the obliquely political posts that occasionally emerge. But rather than see 2006 trumpeted here longer, I thought I would jump in and announce that I haven't given up on writing - quite on the contrary - and intend to continue muddying the literary waters.

Wayne

Web 2.0, Web 3.0 and non-sense

2006-12-02T12:47:00.000-05:00

There are ideas that mean little but communicate a lot, and then developments that cannot be communicated but mean the world.

Where are we? Web 2.0 - big splash, little wake. Web 3.0 - emperor's clothes off and washed - away.

Where is the sense in all this? The media-time. The web reloaded - whatever the version number - means that we continue to engage in virtual dimensions.

We surfed Web 1.0. We consume and share on Web 2.0. The verbs, as important as they are, do not really communicate where we have gone.

String theory tells us to stop hanging up on 4 dimensions. That's where we are in our cultural interactions. The media have always been ways of mixing up groups, people, ideas. Virtual media are deeper, stronger, more thorough mix-ups.

The medium is the message? the massage? No. The medium outlives the message. The messages come and go like the wake of stones thrown by kids on the shore. Where's the shore, and who are these idea people?

That's the question that is both non-sensical and essential.

Paperhand Puppets define "mask"

2006-08-12T21:59:00.000-04:00

I saw their show in the forest theater at UNC - Chapel Hill this evening. A fun show, earnest in its attempt to be professional theater while still maintaining a much more loose performance. Extraordinary props. Talented physical actors.

I can highly recommend them - the impact is visually very strong and the effect sometimes reminiscent of Robert Wilson 's slow motion plays and operas.

But it was the masks that struck me - you can see many on Paperhand Puppet's website. They are neutral, yet engaged faces - as apt for John Henry as for Buddha. The human face stripped of emotion but engaged with the world around it - unable to adapt, to shrink, to plea. The body - with oversized hands in both these cases - must speak for the emotion, the plea. The face remains placid.

As we expect emotion running over the spectrum of feelings that we are accustomed to seeing in faces, we see nuance in placidity. Is that a sad or happy face? It feels like both, and we know which by looking.

But of interest for this novel is the story teller. Is the mask the reflection of the story teller, a focus of the story, or just a prop along the way, no more and no less important than a balled fist or an outstretched hand?

I also just recently saw V for Vendetta. Another mask, another purpose. Equally riveting, but because of the leering smile and distorted features, all of which reminds of a folk's traditions, it makes us want to push away the mask and see the individual underneath. What is driving that individual, what expression is there to be found on his face? Of course, his face is so destroyed by adversity that it cannot communicate. There is only the creature of the vendetta (at least until Natalie Portman kisses the mask!)....

A mask is a point along a trajectory in a narrative. It forces us to bundle sense, ties meaning to that point in the narrative and forces us to draw the lines backwards and forwards when the mask no longer matches the anticipated face. There, the mask begins to speak in our eyes....

"Free Online Novels"

2006-07-12T19:59:00.000-04:00

Jennifer L. Armstrong maintains this list of online novels: http://www.free-online-novels.com/ and recently added This Blue Ball to her list. (Thanks!)

It seems to be popular, at least based upon the number of referers I'm seeing in my log. Very handy list!

W.

I am fictional

2006-05-30T19:40:00.000-04:00

What is it that makes me more than that? My most public statements have been in fiction. Even a political rant (see a couple posts ago) was couched as an extension of a plot device.

It's how I see the world - everything and nothing at stake. Meaning under siege; human dignity at stake; intolerance and indifference at every step. So what do you do? Do you take a stand, damn the consequences?

Or do you write another story with a protagonist who is neither good nor evil, but as malleable and fallible as any of us? Do you couch it all in ambiguities and sad little ironies?

On the day after Memorial Day....

Blooker Prize

2006-03-06T20:58:00.000-05:00

I was hoping to make the short list, but it was not to be.

The shortlisters all seem pretty good, though.

Check it out:

http://lulublookerprize.com

The Conspiracy Engine and the American Iraq War

2006-02-20T18:38:00.000-05:00

The novel mentions an as yet unconfirmed "conspiracy engine," designed to help individuals follow a conspiracy through its prototypical twists and turns, down to a reasonable depth. A four-layer model underlies the engine, as in this schematic example:

Level            Example
-----------------------------------------------------
Action           Two parties in conflict
Covert Action    While third parties remain neutral,
              they supply arms and intelligence
              to one or the other side
Disinformation   Both sides spread stories about
              the actions of the other, while
              denying their own covert actions
Grand Conspiracy Superficially disinterested third
              parties await their payout:
              weakened parties of the conflict;
              compromised third parties; profits;
              opportunity to play white knight...

So, how would the engine characterize the origins of the Iraqi War?

The relevant parties here are the USA and Iraq. Interested parties are Israel, other Arab countries, European countries. Let's see. Europe and Arab countries remained for the most part neutral or negative toward the US action, although the Arab leadership had to be happy to get rid of the madman and Europe had to be secretly pleased: they could benefit both by the US discrediting itself and by playing the white knight when the mess at the end of the war would require an unbloodied third party to assist. Israel could benefit from the preoccupation of extremism with Iraq - although they would equally recognize the risks of providing more fodder for extremism.

Meanwhile, Iraq prevaricated and Washington twisted the truth into an unrecognizable pretzel - clearly the stage of disinformation.

Does the grand conspiracy point back at Europe and the Arab world? Israel? No, hardly. Washington played itself the fool - building a ridiculous case for the war that would inevitably unravel. Questionable motives constantly come up, as if oil or personal vendetta or even neo-conservative belief in American righteousness could explain this realpolitisch coup. No, Washington was more than willing to play away its international post-9/11 goodwill and compassion for the simplest and basest of motives: a war would keep the neo-conservatives in office long enough to begin to unwind government itself.

The real conspiracy was the government's against the American people, all in the name of patriotism and against the memory of the thousands lost on 9/11. The bill for the Iraqi war made no difference to the ruling elite: the higher the bill, the quicker the dismantling of the domestic role of government in the name of fiscal sanity, while insanity reigns all across the executive. The congress is cowed in the face of war; the judiciary is already complicit.

Welcome to the American Iraq War - a conflict fought half way across the world as an assault against the American political soul.

manybooks.net

2006-02-11T08:22:00.000-05:00

A week ago I discovered this site. It repackages out-of-copyright and other available books for downloading to portable devices. I gave them a text copy of This Blue Ball and a day later it was up in multiple formats, including the ever-reliable PDF.

I highly recommend checking out the site: manybooks.net.

What's the word?

2006-01-21T20:00:00.000-05:00

Hate it? Enjoy it? Unsure? Uninterested but still found your way here? Wondering what in the world inspired me not to leave it in the proverbial writer's drawer?

Let me know. Post a comment!

Printed edition available on Lulu

2006-01-01T22:22:00.000-05:00

The power of the press.... digital version.

Lulu provides a no-risk environment for publishing your text, without all the mark-up and hassle of the vanity presses and other print-on-demand services I looked at. I'm very impressed. They even recommend making use of Creative Commons licensing.

You can order this novel at Lulu using this URL:

http://www.lulu.com/content/202593

A bit naive...

2005-12-21T00:16:00.000-05:00

When I decided to write a novel based on the genre and form of a weblog - and then decided to release it on the Web - I actually had no idea whether this was trod territory. The answer is 'of course....'

I point you to places where I quickly informed myself:

http://fictionalblogs.blogspot.com/

http://www.blogfic.com/

Now, mind you, these sites document that this is still a nascent field with little fictional activity.

So - my novel is a (humble or not) contribution to the future of fiction.

W.

Novel version 1.0 is now released....

2005-12-14T22:46:00.000-05:00

Version 1.0 is released. It's under a Creative Commons license. Check it out....

http://thisblueball.com

The website will be improved over the next few days and weeks, but the content of the novel is frozen, at least for a while.

What's the story about? - On one level 'E.T. meets the Matrix.' On another, human situatedness and paths to redemption. On another, kinds of knowing. On yet another, the frailty of human relations. An interracial love and tale of sacrifice.

Anything special? You can read online (some control exists over formatting); download as PDF; or (my personal favorite) get a daily email or a personal RSS feed to experience it as a serial.

If you find your way there and then here, I'd like to hear what you think.

Wayne