A SECOND NOVEL. Currently moving (snail’s pace, massive interruptions, a significant redo) towards the end of a second draft of a novel tentatively entitled The Wrap. Wrapping it up, as in film, as in a life, as in the end of the world as we know it. It started out as a riff on new age conferences, but that was back when there were such things, gatherings of word-lovers, myth makers, poets and lovers. But I found myself in satire land and no, that’s not what I wanted. I paused. But the characters did not. They remained in my brain hunched in the dark around a dinner table refusing to shut up. So I listened to their shared history of the 1960’s and began writing from there. But did we really need yet another regurgitation of the ’60’s? We did not. So, what if I could think of this as a draft, as research, as backstory and character development? But why do all this backstory if I wasn’t going to bring the characters into actual story? Who were these people now? What were their conflicts, struggles, obsessions, failures, myths, relationships? So, that opened up draft number 2. I wrote, rewrote, got better, found a voice, lost interest, screwed up, became a paper artist, exhibited in Japan, Holland, museums, got older, wrote on the side and finally came to the conclusion that the world did not need yet another material art object. So I gave up my studio and concentrated instead on the lightest material of all, words. There are of course many words in the universe, billions and billions of words, entire alphabets floating around like in a Laurie Anderson virtual reality piece. The sky, as Rumi said, is full of beggars. But unlike sculpture, words are weightless, they are quantum, in the sense of a little packet of energy, you can’t catch them unless they are processed, and distributed. What freedom! Liberation! Draft 3 was a big “what if” as I moved into to speculative fiction where I dropped my guys, who were beginning to feel like extended family, into a world where water eats the coasts and fire flattens the interiors. I’m watching them figure out how to live at the end of their world. They are filmmakers, sculptors, poets, migrants, heads of agencies protection migrants, diplomats wives, art collectors, one big Greek family, questioning what is art at the end of the world? Do we keep writing anti war poems? Shake our brooms at armed robots? Write about drilling holes in Antartica to learn how much time we have left? Put up installations about extinctions?
We’re moving now towards the ending, Whoopi.
And because I’m sensing living now in an end game, for my physical body, for the dog, for those I love, for the country, I’m sensing that our beautiful planet will spin on without me. Everything changes, nothing stands still, there is always the lurch, the dishevelment, the action/reaction even as this glory called nature spins under my feet taking no notice.
I’m also writing a serious of short pieces entitled Potluck At The Death Café, maybe as stand alone, may as a collection. The first one was recently published in Unpsychology Magazine, the edition called Edges, which is currently available here on Medium: https://medium.com/unpsychologymag.
North Atlantic Press published this book in 2009. Ten years later, there was a change of hands, the book was allowed to go out of print. I decided its life wasn’t over, so I’ve republished under the studio-glow imprint with a different cover (to keep it out of the sports section), did some revisions and here it is, on Amazon in print and kindle.
An Obese White Gentleman In No Apparent Distress is a fictionalized account of a real martial man legendary both in his own mind and in the minds of those who loved him, a hero to some and a lesson to others.
Two people meet on an island in landlocked Vermont. Time goes on, stories are told, lives are revealed through interwoven timelines, one tracking Max’s past through NYC, Japan, Nepal, California, Vermont; the other following the unfolding relationships of his final years.
The capacious cast is a memorable assortment of seekers, grifters, gurus, spiritualists aikidoists, magicians, artists, dogs, celebrities, families.
“Riki Moss debuts with a wonderfully original comic novel about art both fine and martial, redemption through love, beautifully written and full of memorable characters.” …Michael Gruber, author of The Forgery of Venus, The Good Son and others,
“Powerful, earthy, funny and spiritual”…Jane Pincus, co-author of Our Bodies Ourselves.
I never stopped being astonished at Terry Dobson’s passion, his happy ruthlessness and his compassionate joy, Anything he asked me to do, I did, and I would have been happy to give him my car and my horse, had he asked”…Robert Bly, author of IronJohn, poet, winner of the National Book Award.
