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NEWS AND VIEWS - APRIL 2021
WRITING NEWS I started writing a new Signalverse novel this month -- The White Ribbon and the Heart of the Night, which will serve as a direct sequel to The White Ribbon Runs the Red Lights. I had originally planned to write a "playground noir" mystery novel after finishing up The Brassfire Fleet, but I had so much trouble with the outline that I finally just put it aside and started in on this White Ribbon sequel instead. I don't think it's going to be a very long book -- maybe 40,000 words? -- so I'm hoping to have it done by the end of the summer. Also, The Brassfire Fleet came out last month. Check it out! * * * * * * * * BOOKS ON BOXING 
I'm a big boxing fan, but I don't really follow modern boxing all that closely; I'm much more interested in the history of the sport. So I read a lot of boxing books and biographies. Here are some of my favorites: In This Corner...! 42 World Champions Tell Their Stories by Peter Heller. This is one of the best boxing books I've ever read. In the early 1970's Peter Heller went around the country interviewing a bunch of aged champions of the 1910's, 1920's, and 1930's -- legends like Mickey Walker, Tommy Loughran, Jack Dempsey, and many more -- and assembled their stories and anecdotes into this book. It's a funny, sad, salty collection of tall tales, amusing incidents, and memorable quotes, e.g. Gunboat Smith: "Today, if I had to do it all over again, I'd stay somewhere down in my own class, which was 170 pounds, light heavyweight. I wouldn't be fighting those big bums that weighed two pounds less than a horse." Not all of the information in the book is accurate -- the fighters were remembering things that happened decades ago, after all, and their big egos sometimes get in the way of the facts. Tommy Loughran claims he beat Harry Greb five times, for example, and Johnny Wilson claims, ridiculously, that he lost his title to Greb through some kind of fix. But it's funny and interesting anyway. The Last Great Fight by Joe Layden. This one's about Buster Douglas's epic upset over Mike Tyson in Tokyo in 1990. Upsets happen all the time (Andy Ruiz's victory over Anthony Joshua in their first fight comes to mind), but this one was special. Galvanized by the death of his mother, Douglas put everything he had into this one fight, and against all odds, he won. Inspiring. A Flame of Pure Fire: Jack Dempsey and the Roaring Twenties by Roger Kahn. An excellent biography of Jack Dempsey, which goes the extra mile by placing him within the larger social context of the 1920's. Live Fast, Die Young: The Life and Times of Harry Greb by Stephen Compton. A gigantic biography of the immortal Harry Greb, the greatest boxer of all time. This was a much-needed book when it came out in 2013; despite his stature, relatively few books had been written about Greb, and most of them (James Fair's awful Give Him to the Angels for example) were full of recycled legends and tall tales, which made it difficult for researchers to separate the fact from the fiction. Bill Paxton's The Fearless Harry Greb and Springs Toledo's Smokestack Lightning: Harry Greb, 1919 are also worth a look. Barney Ross by Douglas Century. A biography of Barney Ross, the fantastic lightweight champion of the 1930's who went on to become a war hero in World War II. This guy lived a hell of a life. * * * * * * * * TRANSFORM! Never really been into Transformers, but I'd really, really love to have one of these: * * * * * * * * THE LONG NIGHT  Until January of this year, I had never had any trouble getting to sleep. My usual bedtime routine was to watch some anime or something around 9:00, get into bed around 10:00, read for half an hour (usually non-fiction), turn off the lights, and just go to sleep. This was my routine for almost twenty years. I might have lost a little sleep if I was sick with something, or worried about something, or if I had friends over for a late-night gaming session, but sleep itself was never something I used to worry about or think about all that much. This changed in late January. I don't know how it happened, or why it happened, but all of a sudden I started having trouble falling asleep. I started staying up later and getting up earlier, and it got worse and worse as January turned into February. Five hours a night, four hours a night, three hours a night. I started taking drugs -- first melatonin, and then Tylenol PM and Zzzquil. The melatonin had no effect on me, and the Tylenol PM and Zzzquil filled my head with weird, intrusive thoughts; a couple of times I woke up in the middle of the night thinking the TV shows I'd watched before bed were real. So it got worse and worse, and by the middle of February I was only getting an hour or two of sleep each night. I went almost four nights without sleeping at one point. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before; I thought I was going to die. It was an absolute nightmare. So I went to the clinic, and got a prescription for a mild sedative. The first night I took one of these pills, I slept like a baby, but the next night it didn't work at all. It made me feel sort of drunk, but it didn't knock me out. So I took two the next night. Nothing. I didn't like the way any of these drugs made me feel, so I stopped taking them after that. I eventually managed to get to sleep a couple of nights without taking anything, and I've been doing better since then, but it's become a chronic problem for me -- I'm currently stuck in a pattern where I sleep eight or nine hours one night, and then don't get any sleep at all the next. On my good days I wake up feeling like a million bucks, and then on my bad days I'm so groggy I don't feel like doing anything. It's really affected my quality of life -- I've only been writing every other day, for example. I keep telling myself that this will pass, and that I'll eventually get back to normal, but it's been three months now and I'm still dealing with it. I've tried just about everything -- meditation, yoga, chamomile tea, the 4-7-8 breathing technique, paradoxical intention, relaxing music, different pillows, different blankets, and on and on and on, but nothing has worked reliably for me so far. If you've got any ideas on how to fight this kind of insomnia, please, let me know. |