The Writer's Life 7/14

I had another odd, vivid dream last night. In it, I was in bed and someone, probably my mom, was moving the quilt in the area of my feet. Then I heard an announcement over a loudspeaker. I approached a window and saw a repair shop set up in the driveway shared by the Mazzos and Venerusos. When I awoke it took me a moment to realize I was in Sheepshead Bay and not back in my old bedroom on Bay 37th. I was completely baffled, finding none of the wish fulfillment that Freud insists is at the root of every dream. Perhaps it was simply a desire to return to youth. I expect the repair shop aspect was triggered by the episode of the PBS/BBC drama New Tricks I watched last night, which focused on a motorcycle gang using its shop to smuggle drugs.

I doubt the dream was triggered by the DVD I viewed, Largo Winch (2008), an international collaborative thriller about an adopted young man who inherits a fortune when his father is murdered. It was entertaining but familiar, beautifully shot and fast paced, moving so rapidly that the leaps in the plot didn't matter. It did have two memorable scenes: a leap from a cliff was especially exciting, as was the unique murder that set the story in motion. On a scale of five, three.

On the other hand, real life killing is not exciting. As I was on my way to the bank in the old neighborhood, I came upon a crime scene at Bay 35th near the corner of 86th Street. The familiar yellow tape was strung around an area of 50 yards. Inside it, there was a blood stain on the asphalt, something that looked like a plastic bag beside it, and small yellow cones numbered two and three, which may have denoted gun shots. This is a rare occurrence. I'm sure there were more than the four murders I remember, three of which were mob related: Fat Charlie (50 years ago), Arthur Bop and a local funeral hall director. Of course the most infamous was the Yusef Hawkins killing, the night insanity and stupidity forever tainted a great neighborhood.

I had great luck from the get-go today. This morning I discovered that I'd had a Kindle sale of All Hallows during the week, and a borrow of Killing from the Kindle Library, which is the equivalent of a sale. Then, at the floating book shop, a woman emerged from a car and said: "I read about you." Faythe had seen the article about me in the Mill Basin version of the Brooklyn paper. Her family has been operating a convenience store on 20th Avenue for more than 70 years. I thank her for purchasing Killing, and Jack of Chase Bank, who bought two more thrillers, and my niece Isabel, who got me a nice T-shirt while visiting her sister Tanya in Denver. And to top it all off, there was a check from Synovate Surveys waiting for me in the mailbox.

Visit Vic’s sites:
Vic’s Third Novel (Print or Kindle): http://tinyurl.com/7e9jty3
Vic’s Website: http://members.tripod.com/vic_fortezza/Literature/
Vic’s Short Story Collection (Print or Kindle): http://www.tiny.cc/Oycgb
Vic’s 2nd Novel: http://tinyurl.com/6b86st6
Vic’s 1st Novel: http://tiny.cc/94t5h
Vic’s Screenplay on Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/cyckn3f