This is my first blog post after my Thanksgiving morn's heart transplant (TP). It is almost six months post TP and my health is good--except that shortness of breath remains such that I can't walk two block w/o resting. I'm at the gym about 5 days/week for 1.5 hours and I have a trainer who is teaching me boxing. I started jumping rope with 2 jumps before rest. I'm up to 30 jumps before losing ALL my breath now. I've dropped from 18% fat to 16.5% in 2 months. I'm trying too much stuff deciding what to do in the future. I wanna teach English in Taiwan, learn Japanese in Japan and hang with my friend, Martin, in Sweden (I think he's recently married). I'm also deciding whether to self-publish LOVOLUTION or seek out an agent. I'm leaning toward the former just to get the thing over with. My loft building (HGL) just formed an Audio Visual club and my show suggestion is scheduled to be the first filmed. The club leader said "Our first project will be Dr. Jessie show about Romeo. We are in need of writers on the team, Any suggestions will be helpful." We'll see what happens. I've paid for an online Copy Editing class at UC Berkeley to start in the Fall. I attended my friend, Toni Ann's book reading last weekend. She was really good! Below is something on LOVOLUTION.
PEACE, Jesse Rhines, PhD
Dear Rare Bird Books,
Yesterday, I visited your Los Angeles office in search of an internship, volunteer position or part-time paid position and was told to contact you via email. I would like to enter the publishing realm after teaching for ten years at Rutgers University, retiring with a disability to Los Angeles and after having a heart transplant Thanksgiving last year, 2017.
I have just enrolled in a UC Berkeley (where I earned my PhD in Ethnic Studies) extension course for copy editing that will start in September 2018. I read your book, Black Sheep Boyand was reminded of my early family life. I “juxtaposed” it against my, hopefully, soon-to-be-(self?)-published novel, Lovolutionfor the “juxed mems” section of my web site http://memoirandutopia.weebly.com/home.html.
Black Sheep Boy(BSB) has some things in common with my, hopefully, soon-to-be-published novel, Lovolutionand with remembrances of my own family. Both books are about (1) the early life of a schoolboy, (2) but BSB and my family recollections concern pre-college days (3) while Lovolution goes through and beyond graduate school. All three have fairly dark underpinnings that dovetail with sexual mystery, psychological confusion and societal misgivings. I view Lovolutionas Catcher in the Ryemeets American Psycho.
BSB protagonist, Boo, is a Cajun boy born in Louisiana and raised by an originally Pentecostal mother turned Catholic. My mom was Catholic too and my brother, like Boo, attended Catholic school. Even before school both boys at least suspected that they were gay. Both were also neat-freaks, ready to clean up the messes at home that other kids left behind. In third grade at my school, boys jeered each other with the term “punk”. I called my brother that once and he nearly blew his lid off scolding me. I was confused, especially after the dictionary told me that a punk was just a piece of wood. Boo’s cousins called him “fag” when he cleaned up their mess and his response was perplexity as he rubbed the chest of his G.I. Joe toy soldier.
Bradley,Lovolution’sprotagonist, falls in love with books before he enters school and seeks them out in public libraries and in a dilapidated bookstore where he interacts with war veterans who lecture him on the evils of global politics. The vets look on as he meets and kisses his first love, a girl his age that dies soon after the couples’ first and only teen sexual encounter. Bradley continues school but is haunted by confusion over the nature of love and how it is interwoven with worldly evils.
Both Bradley and Boo experience significant self-doubt and delusions as they continue through school. Challenges, often sexual/romantic, that do not yield satisfactory self-conceptualization bedevil them. Young Boo enters then leaves a psychiatric ward and Bradley leaves his fiancé at the altarbefore putting an end to his confusion.
PEACE, Jesse Rhines, PhD
Dear Rare Bird Books,
Yesterday, I visited your Los Angeles office in search of an internship, volunteer position or part-time paid position and was told to contact you via email. I would like to enter the publishing realm after teaching for ten years at Rutgers University, retiring with a disability to Los Angeles and after having a heart transplant Thanksgiving last year, 2017.
I have just enrolled in a UC Berkeley (where I earned my PhD in Ethnic Studies) extension course for copy editing that will start in September 2018. I read your book, Black Sheep Boyand was reminded of my early family life. I “juxtaposed” it against my, hopefully, soon-to-be-(self?)-published novel, Lovolutionfor the “juxed mems” section of my web site http://memoirandutopia.weebly.com/home.html.
Black Sheep Boy(BSB) has some things in common with my, hopefully, soon-to-be-published novel, Lovolutionand with remembrances of my own family. Both books are about (1) the early life of a schoolboy, (2) but BSB and my family recollections concern pre-college days (3) while Lovolution goes through and beyond graduate school. All three have fairly dark underpinnings that dovetail with sexual mystery, psychological confusion and societal misgivings. I view Lovolutionas Catcher in the Ryemeets American Psycho.
BSB protagonist, Boo, is a Cajun boy born in Louisiana and raised by an originally Pentecostal mother turned Catholic. My mom was Catholic too and my brother, like Boo, attended Catholic school. Even before school both boys at least suspected that they were gay. Both were also neat-freaks, ready to clean up the messes at home that other kids left behind. In third grade at my school, boys jeered each other with the term “punk”. I called my brother that once and he nearly blew his lid off scolding me. I was confused, especially after the dictionary told me that a punk was just a piece of wood. Boo’s cousins called him “fag” when he cleaned up their mess and his response was perplexity as he rubbed the chest of his G.I. Joe toy soldier.
Bradley,Lovolution’sprotagonist, falls in love with books before he enters school and seeks them out in public libraries and in a dilapidated bookstore where he interacts with war veterans who lecture him on the evils of global politics. The vets look on as he meets and kisses his first love, a girl his age that dies soon after the couples’ first and only teen sexual encounter. Bradley continues school but is haunted by confusion over the nature of love and how it is interwoven with worldly evils.
Both Bradley and Boo experience significant self-doubt and delusions as they continue through school. Challenges, often sexual/romantic, that do not yield satisfactory self-conceptualization bedevil them. Young Boo enters then leaves a psychiatric ward and Bradley leaves his fiancé at the altarbefore putting an end to his confusion.