Along with several fictional characters, starting with the narrator, "Blue Hill" features some real-life people -- Jack Nicholson, for example, albeit in fictionalized form.
And now, enter John Lennon (and Yoko and Sean). As with much of the novel, this scene is woven into the larger story of narrator/protagonist Mark Gray and first love Sally Martin.
To learn more about the book, which published on October 6 - and to order in audio, Kindle or paper formats - visit http://www.gwaynemiller.com/books.htm
By senior year, I was pretty damn cocky.
I’d directed six films, and one had been favorably reviewed
in The Village Voice and another praised in a wrap-up of student artists
in The New York Times. I’d been contacted by a couple of New York ad
firms regarding employment after graduation, but I’d told them to take a hike.
I was an artist—so said The Times—not a corporate suit. Bud was heading
to L.A. and I was going with him and Sally was going, too…or so she believed.
I can’t pinpoint when I became derisive of the woman for
whom I’d sold the only thing of material value my mother had left me.
I suspect it was after September, when I declined to live
with her, using some pathetically lame argument about space and freedom, and I
know for certain it was before she got knocked up. My guess is late October. I
was running the first annual NYU Jack Nicholson film fest and on this
particular night we’d screened Cuckoo’s Nest for a sellout audience of
300, including John Lennon—John Lennon!—who’d arrived, unannounced, with Yoko
and Sean.
During the discussion period, which I moderated, Sally
raised her hand and said: “If Chief could talk all that time, why’d he wait so
long to say something?”
Utter silence in the auditorium.
Bud rolled his eyes and The Voice’s film critic
looked pained and if Lennon hadn’t been fussing over his son, I bet he would
have had some sharp-tongued barb.
I did not let on that I knew Sally.
“Thank you, Miss,” I said, “now would anyone care to pick up
on Professor Pagliano’s observations on Nurse Ratched as a metaphor for
neo-capitalist authoritarianism?”
Lennon did, and his remarks were printed in the next edition
of The Village Voice, along with a photo of me handing him the mic.
Later that evening, alone with Sally, I said: “If you have
to be so stupid, can you at least not do it in public?”
“Why was that stupid?” Sally said.
“Oh my God,” I said, with blustering intellectual
indignation, “now you want me to explain your stupidity. It’s like the
Bunuel subtitles again.”
`Well, I hate subtitles,” Sally said. “If I want to read,
I’ll get a book.”
She had a point, a good one in fact, but I didn’t see it
then. There was a lot I didn’t see then.
If I hadn’t gone home that Christmas, I suppose our
relationship would have been over, finally, by year’s end. But I did go home,
and Sally did too, and Christmas Eve found us together and it was like the
calendar had been turned back.
I told Sally I loved her and somehow we’d make things work
and we should consider tonight a fresh start—all the sweet talk a twenty-one-year-old
guy who hasn’t been laid in a month can muster. We made love that night, and
every night for the remainder of the holidays, and we went back to New York
together, and several weeks later, when Doris Wong began strongly hinting that
my day was soon to come, I told Sally it was over—this time, for good.
She didn’t plead.
She didn’t ask for explanations and she didn’t call or come
by, and when two weeks had passed and Doris hadn’t moved past hinting, I called
her.
She didn’t want to talk over the phone.
“Meet me at Rockefeller Center,” she said, and hung up.
The funny thing was, the second I saw Sally, I wanted to
kiss her.
Go figure—I can’t wait for her to be out of my life and once
she is, all I can think is I want to kiss her. Kiss her and take her clothes
off and spend a week in bed with her. Like Yoko and John, except no peace-in, but sex
non-stop.
I swear, no one had ever looked better: her lips redder than
I remembered, her hair so long and silky and brown, her skin so rosy. I mean,
she was like Barbara Hershey, another actress I had a thing for then. And I did
kiss her—this clumsy thing involving contact with her cheek. We exchanged
pleasantries and then we skated and after, as we drank hot chocolates, she told
me she was two months pregnant. Given how we’d spent the holiday – together
virtually 24/7 – there was no shred of doubt about paternity.
More "Blue Hill: posts:
-- On a return to a hometown, a reunion with a first love.
On the run from the law and deep into his journey into the past, Mark Gray, the protagonist of "Blue Hill," returns to his home town, where he meets Sally Martin, his high-school girlfriend and first love. A long-buried secret will soon be revealed.
-- Reviews for “Blue Hill” are coming in and they are favorable!The reviews for my latest book, "Blue Hill," a novel that is a profound departure from my other (mostly horror, mystery and sci-fi) fiction are looking good! I will post more as they arrived.
READ REVIEWS:
https://gwaynemiller.blogspot.com/2020/10/reviews-for-blue-hill-are-coming-in-and.html
-- Fenway Park on August 18, 1967: Tony Conigliaro struck by pitch.
Mark Gray, the protagonist of "Blue Hill," is a young Red Sox fan when slugger Tony Conigliaro is beaned by a pitch during the Sox "Dream Team" of 1967. The pitch changed the real-life Tony C. -- and had a profound impact on the fictional protagonist of my new novel.
READ THIS EXCERPT:
https://gwaynemiller.blogspot.com/2020/10/fenway-park-on-august-18-1967-tony.html
-- The possibility of reconciliation, and an outrageous climb in a Maine Nor'easter.
Mark Gray, the protagonist of "Blue Hill," is the son of a now-retired Episcopal priest and '60s social activist. Their relationship has been difficult since Gray's childhood, but there is always the possibility of reconciliation. Maybe it will occur when Gray, now one of America's Most Wanted criminals, visits his elderly father, who lives in Blue Hill, Gray's hometown, and proposes an outrageous climb of a favorite mountain... in a raging Nor'easter. Read the excerpt here.
READ THIS EXCERPT:
https://gwaynemiller.blogspot.com/2020/10/mark-gray-protagonist-of-blue-hill-is.html
-- Quite a cast of characters.
Along with several fictional characters, starting with the narrator, "Blue Hill" features some real-life people -- Jack Nicholson, for example, albeit in fictionalized form.
READ THIS EXCERPT:
https://gwaynemiller.blogspot.com/2020/10/quite-cast-of-characters-another.html
-- Fenway Park.
Baseball is a central theme of my new novel, "Blue Hill," a departure from my other fiction, which has been solidly in the mystery, horror and sci-fi genres.
READ THE EXCERPT:
https://gwaynemiller.blogspot.com/2020/10/blue-hill-excerpt-from-chapter-four.html
-- Listen to the books!
Listen to a clip from the audio version of “Blue Hill” Blue Hill and also some of my other books, including “Thunder Rise,” King of Hearts,” and “The Work of Human Hands.”
LISTEN:
https://gwaynemiller.blogspot.com/2020/09/listen-to-books.html
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