04 November 2009

Flower Lady of Santo Amaro Market



Amorella here at the weekly open air market Carol and Richard frequented while working in Sao Paulo almost forty years ago. This brings a smile because the woman was always friendly and kind and gave Carol a single flower every week. The Orndorffs’ always bought a bouquet, usually similar to the ones along the bottom left corner of the photo.


The point is that Richard has never forgotten the flower lady even though he doesn’t remember her name. The Dead do not know in advance who and what they will remember from life in the Merlyn books. Grandma’s stories continually reflect this conditional in death. Each of her stories through the three books is taken from a human individual, one of the Dead. A few of these characters will also be found in book four, The Rebellion. After all, they lived before the rebellion of the first ten thousand (or so) still conscious people in HeavenOrHellBothOrNeither.


This is news to me Amorella. I thought I had to create all new people for this book and I did, but I never have been able to get beyond the second chapter. I spent almost a year on those pages what with research and all.

Let’s show the reader an example of this work.


I don’t know what I would show, plus, what difference does it make, book four is not going to be written as I thought.

I’ll pick something.


What for? I see no purpose in it, Amorella. Obviously, I wasn’t on the right track otherwise I would have gone further. This is what happened in book two of the first three book series, Home (Stuck, Home, On Earth) that focused solely on the Marsupial and human species. I found myself in chapter two with no where to go until you intervened and the character, the Soki, (yourself) wrote with the help of another major character, Friendly, a Marsupial. Once I was not mentally (consciously) involved the book moved forward and on through book three.

Then, when I was ready to publish you suggested I add more depth and meaning to the work by adding “The Brothers” and “Grandma’s Stories and putting those first three books into “Pouch Text”. What was I going to do, say no to making the books have more depth and meaning as far as I am concerned?

You had the free will to say ‘no’ then, and you have the free will not to finish the next three books now.


I am ever curious to see what words can come out of my head as long as they make sense in a fiction. I can’t write books when I’m dead. Besides, I am retired and I have the time. I love my MacBook. The tips of my fingers stop, but they advance outside myself into a recording computer machine. Being one with the keyboard is as being one with the world.

What an unabashed Romantic I am. How embarrassing to see this on the screen. I set myself as a man of integrity and reason and this open-minded Romantic persona comes up.

Others may have worse notions pop up in their heads, orndorff.


If I live long enough I’ll finish the six books, and if I don’t, well, the books will be as done as I am. It won’t make any difference to me then in any case.

Amorella, I don’t feel comfortable showing an example of what I have written for book four as I will begin it again.

That is reason enough.

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