all about me, and anything

A new novel that is a ghost story

2011-03-13T12:01:00.000-07:00

A ghost story at a carnival

2011-03-13T11:56:00.000-07:00

This is how my latest novel, By The Light Of The Carnival, opens:

Ken, a bald beefy carnie, took the old woman’s flabby arm to help her down off the last metal step. “Watch it.”

She landed on the flattened crabgrass while hundreds of light bulbs flashed behind her. “What a sight!”

He chomped down on his toothpick and said, “The ground is a little bumpy here.”

“Whoopsie daisy.” She let him hold her up as she looked down.

Ken pointed at her shoes. “Right here. It wasn’t like that earlier today. The ground has wrinkled up a bit. It’s sinking or something.” He laughed nervously.

She didn’t catch all that, having bad ears. “What a glass house!”

He nodded. “It’s a bit famous.”

The old woman finally let go of him. “I couldn’t believe it. That was really something. Just when I think I’m going to get ripped off at the carnival, I see something swell. That was worth every penny. Who was that ghost in the glass, or mirror, or what was that? What a sight! She was a doozy! The Bride of Dracula, I bet. What a sight! How’d you do that? It looked so real, so artistic!” The old woman laughed and patted the side of her neck as if she should check for fang marks.

“Did that scare you, lady?” Ken couldn’t understand her very well, her dentures seemed to be in the way of her tongue, but he assumed she was talking about the ghost. At this hour, many people saw something odd in there and commented about it. Some came out screaming to bring attention to it enough to sell more tickets.

The old woman smiled big. “That was a neat trick. The ghost lady looked like she’d seen something horrible, herself. The ghost has seen a ghost! That horrible sad face! Those eyes! Just full of terror. So real! But it seemed like World War II. That war was, what, how many years ago? It is today. Right?” She started to count on her fingers. “That was a while ago. Where did that time go? I felt like I was in the ’40s again as if it was just yesterday.”

“What’d ya say?”

“It’s like the ’40s in there! The ’40s! The ’40s! No disco!”

Ken thought she was saying orgies orgies oh disco. “Pretty sexy, huh, to see something like that. It’s old. Old as the hills. Must be the wood floor. It’s all old. Weighs a ton. Nothing sexier than a good old hard wood floor.”

The old woman looked up into the glass and tried to remember what she’d just seen. The memory was now oddly faded, like a dream. “Seems silly now. It’s only a maze. And I didn’t even find my way out the other side. Is there one? Or is this whole thing just a trick? I don’t think there’s a way out. I don’t think it’s big enough to have both ends. What a tiny thing. Shame on you.”

The power cut out of The Emperor’s Glass House and all its frantic lights went black. The bumper car marquee across the way brightly reflected off the front of the dark maze. Ken left her before she could cling to him again. He hurried off to reset the circuit breaker and grumbled, “Yeah, a neat trick.”

The old woman saw the ghostly figure again. The image was of a nervous looking woman in a 1940s gray wool dress, in the very back wall of the attraction; she was leaping from mirror to mirror as if terrified. However, the old woman couldn't be sure she actually saw anything like that at all. The fractured reflections from the rest of the carnival’s lights were so bright. She noticed backwards words flashing in the front glass. She wondered if it was a secret evil curse just for her.

She shuddered, turned, and saw that it was just the reflection of the bottom row of letters of the bumper car sign. She laughed at herself and put her hand over her heart. The power came back on and again the inside of The Emperor’s Glass House looked bright and empty. The old woman took out her pocket-watch and frowned. The glass face had cracked in half and the hands were stuck on midnight. She touched her nose and remembered that she’d smelled candle smoke, saddle soap, kerosene, and all kinds of other smells that had no business inside a glass maze. Now she smelled cotton candy in the air.

A stern bearded lady came by and plopped a big thick mat down at the bottom of the steps, as she asked the old woman, “Is this where the ground is sinking? They say it got uneven overnight. Crap.” The old woman stared at the other’s beard. The bearded lady angrily kicked at the mat to straighten it. “You okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“My watch! My watch!”

The bearded lady continued, “Some people don’t know what to say about that glass house. It’s a haunted place, many say. They’re so touched that they bring the feeling home with them. Some people love it, but others just stay spooked for a while. I bet you’ll tell all your friends and then they’ll come and buy tickets. It’s a shame we can’t fit wheelchairs up in there. No, you have to be able to climb some stairs. Tell your grandkids.”

“My watch.”

“Your what? What’s a what?”

“Watch!” The old woman showed the bearded lady the broken watch.

“Oh. Watch. It’s broke. Crap.” The bearded lady pointed down the midway. “You can win a new watch if you blow out all the red star. Do you shoot a rifle?”

“What?” The old woman pointed at her ear.

The bearded lady shouted, “Do you shoot a rifle?”

The old woman looked at the glass house, remembering soldiers in long coats. She felt sick and looked at the bearded lady in irritation. “Shoot guns?”

The bearded lady was looking at the ground. “Did we have an earthquake?”

Look at it at Amazon!

http://www.amazon.com/Light-Carnival-Peter-Joseph-Swanson/dp/1600762972/ref=sr_1_22?ie=UTF8&qid=1297873941&sr=8-22

2011-01-08T07:19:00.000-08:00

The Sit Up Theory (from Punk Minneapolis)

an excerpt from my published novel

(This excerpt from my published novel is censored for the internet)

(The scene takes place at a pizza parlor where Raven and Becky are working)

“No way. Everybody thinks yuppies are so smart so they can’t get away with anything. They think punkers are stupid so it’s easy for us to just stand there and void out the register even with the manager right there. In fact, once Big Foot actually did laugh at me like I was stupid.” Becky chortled.

“Anybody can follow the principles of the sit-up theory if they want to.”

“What’s that?” Becky asked.

“Weren’t you ever in gym class?”

“Of course,” Becky lied. “Only the retards and cripples got out of gym class. Do you think I was ever a retard or a cripple? F### you. What’s the sit-up theory?”

“Have you ever done a sit-up?”

“Of course,” she lied some more.

Raven explained, “Well, the sit-up theory is that at the beginning of the year when they count how many sit-ups you can do, you pretend to barely be able to do only one. Then at the end of the year when they retest you and you can do two, they give you a good score because they think you’ve really made progress. It fools them every time. But, you were able to do two from the get-go!”

“Oh yeah, I did that. I’m cool. I bet you looked really stupid in gym shorts.”

“We all did.”

Becky lied, “I wore black fishnets with bits of cool things hanging off here and there.”

“The Uptown Socialist People’s Union will not be crushed!”

“Oh shut the f### up. Punks are for Anarchy anyway, space ships and Atlantis, and safety pins. Not Unions.”

“Our union is about revenge. An organized revenge, and to have a lot of fun at it.”

She smiled. “Oh yeah, party party!”

The blond guy brought back his application. Raven and Becky both ogled it, as she read, “Oh, hi Brett Smith. You’re twenty-three. That’s getting pretty up there. I see you’ve kept your tummy trim for being a guy that’s getting older. How many push-ups can you do? It’s not written down here. How can you not be dead? Middle class culture is so awful I don’t know why everybody in it just doesn’t die on the spot. You just rot away. I barely got out in time, but you don’t look like you’re even trying to free yourself.”

“You’re free until you go to prison.”

“And, indeed, you graduated. Wooh. But we wonder… did you go to school on the long bus or on the short bus?”

“Stop that,” Brett ordered. “Just give it to the manager.” They did. He left.

“What a dweeb,” Becky said. “I know there was an Izod somewhere on him. Maybe it crawled up his nose and ate his brain AAA-AA-AAH and that’s why we just couldn’t see it.”

LOOK at the blurb and reviews at Amazon!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1600761682/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_d0_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0WTB6ZMTNAX3BGV3FVSH&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846

2010-12-17T09:15:00.000-08:00

Bunny Umber the Punk Rocker

2010-12-17T09:14:00.000-08:00

(this is a little excerpt from my published novel PUNK MINNEAPOLIS)

Bunny Umber, a totally decked out punker with four colors of dreaded hair tied up high in a crowning variety of knots and loops, lollygagged across the covered pedestrian bridge that spanned the Mississippi, linking the west bank of the University to downtown Minneapolis. Reading the graffiti along the way, she wished for something more clever than an A in a circle. Then she saw Jesus Will Save You.

In a flash she was reminded of a time when she was a little girl and had wandered off into the sanctuary of the Catholic Church and the statue of Christ floated down off the wall and pinned her to the floor. Though it had to be a crazy kid’s dream, certainly brought about by something like an unsafe artificial food color, it still seemed too real for her to forget. Her wild decade of punk parties and punk flings and punk drunks never took away the feeling that it had just happened recently. If she didn’t always pound herself over the head with being punk, she’d forget where she was, and once again feel so miserably tiny… so well spoken… so mommy’s good little Bunny honey.

“Love your hair!” a girl said to her, also taking in the sight of thousands of safety pins in rows down her ripped up fishnet tights.

Bunny Umber smiled and nodded knowingly. She loved to be looked at by all the poor drab college dopes who were struggling to be soulless cogs in the corrupt corporate slave wheel. Maybe seeing her grand punk countenance would inspire them to hope for true liberation. It was a hope of hers. Then for some reason, out of the blue, she thought about an Ouija board spelling out the simple little word N-U-N.

“Odd. I don’t own an Ouija board.”

Two male students looked at her in alarm. She decided they needed to be humiliated and bellowed at them, “The Goddess watches thee!”

One veered left and the other right. They tripped over each other, and then tried to catch each other. Bunny Umber smiled, satisfied. “I have power! I was visited by the powers of the spirit Anger and will lead the righteous into the new era of punk liberation!”

The young men ran off.

The back cover blurb:

At a pizza place in uptown Minneapolis, scenesters and a psychic try very hard to find the next cool party and a pure state of punk living in the summating year of 1989. Their overripe imaginations (and beer) bring out bizarre fatal accidents, memories of once being devil possessed, and a vengeful ghost of a hippie who had overdosed.

Go look at the reviews at Amazon

2010-11-10T16:19:00.000-08:00

I once hung out with Prince's girlfriend

2010-10-29T13:29:00.000-07:00

You've gotta see this - I'm so cool (Well, I can name drop, anyway, like nobody's business!!!)

Woot!

http://hotgossiphotreviews.blogspot.com/2010/10/punk-minneapolis-by-peter-swanson.html

2010-04-08T14:34:00.000-07:00

2010-03-29T13:16:00.000-07:00

My book is reviewed in a movie magazine !!! Here's the online version of Impact Movie Magazine (it's there too). Click on the "reviews" button once you're there, and look for Merlin's Charge.

http://www.impactmoviemagazine.co.uk/index.php

an excerpt from my novel MERLIN'S CHARGE

2010-03-21T11:27:00.000-07:00

That night, while sleeping, the gurgling of the creek’s water seemed to sing to Arthur, over and over again, “Diamonds and Toads, I will do harm to you or leave a gift, that is the way of night magic.”

“Can I choose?” Arthur asked the water. “Can I choose if I get harm or a gift?”

“You’re only dreaming, fool. Your father was a fool and you’ll fall into his grave, the same fool.”

“Who’s speaking to me in my dream?”

“O’ Fortuna. The wheel spins. The wheel of fortune doesn’t know when it’ll stop. Your story will be one of impossible love and thwarted fertility and familial doom on one half of the wheel. And true love, friendship, and a long life on the other half of the wheel. But the wheel doesn’t know where it stops.”

Arthur wept. “My father didn’t tell me anything. He didn’t even watch me as I sat on the floor, or do whatever it is a real father does. Will I grow to be a man? Can you tell me that much? Can I grow to be a man even though my father didn’t watch me? I don’t even know what he looked like. Will I still grow more?”

“That’ll be your first curse.”

“How can that be a curse?”

“Petty passions, and what’s within the reach of your hand, and jealousies. They always take a man’s mind away from loftier matters.”

Then he was walking through an orchard. He had the oddest feeling his mother and father were ghosts walking by, and they didn’t recognize him. He saw an old woman picking plums. She said, “They’ll never know what you looked like. Their ghosts are looking for you but they don’t know how. Parents usually spend so much time looking at their own children. But yours didn’t ever look at you. So they walk by you now, but don’t see you.”

When morning came, Arthur was exhausted from not sleeping soundly, and Parsifal had to shake him. “Wake up! Wake up! Stop crying! Let’s go see if the dead were dancing!”

“Parsi, what? Did you come to take me away from Uther?”

“Wake up!”

Arthur sat up. “Have you come to teach me how to hunt?”

“Why are you so odd when you wake up?”

“My father didn’t teach me how to wake up.”

Parsifal questioned him, “Why would you need to learn to wake up?”

Arthur didn’t know what to say. “Don’t we learn all we know from our fathers?”

Merlin said, “He’s a mad prince. Maybe that’ll help him be a mad king. They’re all mad.”

Merlin's Charge

2009-08-20T12:59:00.000-07:00

Go to Amazon and read the blurb of my exciting new Arthurian novel.

My Horror Short Story

2009-08-19T08:27:00.000-07:00

To read a horror short story that I wrote, BLACK CANDLES & BLOOD, go here:

http://web.me.com/cnelsonncc/The_Laughing_Face_of_Madness/Your_Stories.html

It's at a new website for all things horror by a Gather friend, Christopher (Gather is a social network site for talking about anything.)

Tedoul is an Australian Teddy Bear

2009-07-04T15:48:00.000-07:00

Alan Bond wrote 3 teddy bear poems telling 3 teddy bear tales. I did the pictures. Here's one. Tedoul is hiding out with a wombat to escape a brush fire that is blazing overhead.

From Stone Garden Publishing, available wherever books are sold.

Google "Tedoul" to find it and get it - for young and old !!!

A review of my novel

2008-12-02T12:35:00.000-08:00

I got a review for BAD MOVIES from Kay M at Gather:

Bad Movies By Peter Joseph Swanson
December 02, 2008 12:58 PM EST

Bad Movies is the third and final book in Peter's Tinseltown Trilogy. If you've read Peter's Hollywood Sinners and The Joan Crawford Murders you might wonder if this book could get any wilder. The answer is yes. I will admit that I blushed more while reading this book than I did the others. Perhaps it is because this one is set in the 1970's, a time that I was alive, and so the 70's slang and situations seem more real to me. But blushing or no, I had to find out what happened to Jill.

Others seem to notice something different about Jill that she isn't completely aware of. When she has those fleeting and distant memories of Mexico and surgeries and a body part long gone, she brushes them aside and looks to her pretty manicure for reassurance.

She's a pretty girl who won the tile of Miss Milk in her hometown pageant and she arrives in Tinseltown believing that the modeling agencies will surely be impressed. But life is tough in the city and her new acquaintance, a pirouetting photographer, lets her know that she will have to pay some dues if she wants to be a star. He introduces her to the world of bad movie making, mobsters and her new boyfriend, a nudist named Bod.

While living in a shaky house near a nuclear power plant with Bod (whose name is actually Bob but thinks Bod sounds more studly), she works on the films that she believes will catapault her to stardom. How could a movie with a scantily clad cavewoman in a desert with giant turtles and simulated naughtiness not be a hit? It ended up being the kind of film that 70's SNL's Leonard Pinth Garnell would have deemed "exquisitely bad."

If bad movies were all that she had to worry about than life would be relatively easy. But no, there are murders and earthquakes and fires and a psycho in a leisure suit and rubber mask chasing her about. And those strange bits of fleeting memory........

This book is a smorgasbord of hilarious characters and outrageous situations. Read this book and you'll feel that you've taken a very entertaining walk on the wild side.

You can find Bad Movies in paperback at Amazon and at http://www.stonegarden.net

BAD MOVIES (is a book)

2008-10-15T06:58:00.000-07:00

BAD MOVIES is my new novel

2008-10-15T06:35:00.000-07:00

The third novel of my Tinseltown Trilogy, Bad Moves, is now out. Here is the first scene:

Bad Movies

By Peter Joseph Swanson

prologue

I was packed into the most expensive beaded gown that I'd ever been packed into. With my knees bound together, I hop-skipped up the wide steps to the vast glossy stage. I was accepting my 1976 Celluloid Intelligentsia award for best supporting actress in a comedy. The comedian host made a face at me like it was too amazing an upset to be true. I was now the world's biggest sex change star. I wanted to bolt the other way. I wanted to run to the bathroom. I kept saying to myself, "I really am worthy," though I didn't quite believe it.

Smiling graciously, I seized my award. It was far heavier than I’d expected. I felt the big block of metal slip through my greasy fingers. It caught against a press-on nail, which for a sickening moment I feared might pop off and fly across the stage. I turned to the crowd that was so big I couldn't see anybody. In my distinctive voice that could be a bit like a frog I went into a gushing litany of heartfelt thank-yous to those craftsmen who'd made me clever, beautiful, and almost always in focus.

The instant I was backstage, an incredibly beautiful young woman with the most ludicrous cotton candy hair skedaddled up to me. She grabbed my award and said, "We need this back. It's not your real award."

I questioned her. "What?"

"You have to return this. It's just a prop. We'll send you your permanent one. Let go! See? We'll get you one with your name stuck right there!"

“Huh?” I didn't hear her. I was so out of it. I was high on myself. I thought she was trying to steal it. Of course I held on for dear life. My nails popped all over the backstage floor as we both jerked this way and that with it. Then a heavy cinderblock fell from high above and struck the beautiful woman on the head.
I'd been a fool to think she'd been brainless.

Lights started falling onto the floor with explosions of glass. Sparks showered down, igniting the dust on a curtain. A man in a tux ran by. He was screaming and holding his bloody forehead. If he was a big movie star I couldn't tell. One end of a long metal catwalk dropped down and swung out and hit the backside of the set. It ripped a swath out of it. As it swung back in, the comedian host of the show was stuck to it. He dragged across the backstage floor. There was blithe applause from out front. The comedian host pulled himself off the catwalk and scrambled to get back on stage, but the fire curtain that sealed the stage away from the audience dropped like a guillotine. He was knocked on his belly. The audience screamed in alarm. All was dark backstage until rows of ceiling work lights finally clicked on. I looked up and spotted a man in a yellow leisure suit in the ropes. He was dropping, slowing his descent by keeping himself tangled in them. When his feet finally touched the stage floor, I saw that he was very ugly.

He pulled out a pistol and shot at a charging security officer, stopping him dead in his tracks, if not killing him. Then the ugly man quickly turned and looked straight at me. His eyes were cold. I was mortified. I watched his finger squeeze as he fired his gun deliberately at me. The bullet was stopped by the award that I wouldn't let go of. He aimed and fired again. I was hit in the shoulder but I didn't feel it yet. I just stood like a dummy. I must have been hoping someone would yell, "Cut!" They didn't. He aimed again – he fired again. I dropped the award. I gasped in indescribable pain as the award crashed down on my pedicure. When I looked at the gleaming block of metal on the floor, I could see two bullet dents in it. The man aimed at me again and all I saw were his tiny mean eyes.

Then, like one of those science fiction movies that have a budget, several men stormed in and shot the ugly man with strange long guns that set off electrical bolts. The man convulsed and fell. As people still ran around screaming, more curtain dust flashed briefly into flames. The men in black grabbed the electrocuted man and dragged him away, while the colorful "Singing While You're Swinging" backdrop fell over all of us like a long parachute. I somehow just stood there under the crinkled blue sky.

When I woke up, I was being wheeled through a white tiled hospital shower room. I was still dripping with water as I was being shoved off to somewhere else in a wheelchair. A grinning doctor stepped up to me. He handed me a glass of champagne. “Congratulations.”

"Bless you," I said, grabbing the glass. Then I grabbed the bottle. The bullet was dug out of my shoulder on local anesthesia. I was awake so the cops could ask me impossible questions. I meant to ask, "How did I get shot?" but it came out, "How did I get the award?" A frowning lady cop shook her head like I wasn't anybody and hadn't deserved either.

~

And then there's another scene, and then the story starts over (almost) at Chapter One, to find out how she got there !!!

You can check out the blurb and order it from the publisher, Stone Garden Publishing:

stonegarden.net

Joan Crawford and the wardrobe lady

2008-04-04T09:02:00.000-07:00

She charged into the wardrobe building, blowing more kisses in the direction of the secretary at the lobby, then looked at the two giant 1930s pictures of herself - one in a gorgeous maid’s uniform and the other in a sleek black beaded little number, both Adrian designs. She ignored all the other framed stars. “Those were the days.” She invited herself into the main studio.

“Miss Crawford!” Helen Rose greeted, stepping back from an easel. “How lovely for you to come back so soon. My, aren't you raring to go.”

Joan blew a kiss. “What a beautiful dress you have on. But then you do have the best taste in dresses.”

“Thank you.”

Joan said, “They say there was just another Joan Crawford out there. But I think she sounded like a he. I’m sure of it.”

Helen replied, “Probably your stand-in. And the cold is always going around.”

“Oh, sure. Are you making me a big white dress like Adrian would have done? Are the 30s back in fashion?”

“No. Not at all.”

“No?” Joan grew worried again. “But she was just seen – and that’s what she was wearing. That wasn’t your dress?”

“God, no.”

Joan was flustered. “What do you think of my new shoes? Aren’t they adorable?”

Helen said, “Yes. Very cute.”

“Are you sure? You like them, really?” Joan pointed her toes out this way and that. “You’re not just saying that? I trust your opinion. You have the best taste. I’m so glad this studio has you while I’m here. It’s a comfort to me.” Joan plopped down the heavy alligator portfolio and loudly unzipped it. “We’ll make a great team. Designers always love to work with me because I give one hundred and ten percent back. But I haven't worked hard enough yet for you though and I don't want to look like a frump.”

“I'll take care of that,” Helen assured her. “You won’t look like a frump.”

Joan gushed, “I brought ideas! Ideas ideas ideas, I'm so full of them and I can't wait to start working. We gotta ponce me up good. I want miles of taffeta so that I look like I just fell out off a cloud. I want it to swirl around me like a great magical carousel in some fanciful ballet. I want it so great that the department stores can't copy it. Goddam them! I won’t look like I came off the rack!”

Helen frowned. “But the department stores have always copied your wardrobe. You’ve been the biggest fashion influence on America. People certainly weren’t running out to wear what Gloria Swanson wore.”

“Sure – Adrian and I were the first great fashion team and we used to make fashion in the world. But now I'm too big a star for that. If you want the girl next door - go next door. This picture has to look bigger than it is, goddamn it, and it can't be sold in a department store. The script is a bit two-dimensional. I'm a bulldozer on gams. So we'll just distract them by pounding them over the head with dresses. That's how I got through most my past MGM weepies - making them look like a million bucks! Have you seen the script? Ain’t it a riot? I just yell at everybody and they call it a Joan Crawford picture. Goddam MGM!”

The rest of the THE JOAN CRAWFORD MURDERS is out in paperback at http://stonegarden.net/ (in general fiction)

a bit from my new novel (in paperback)

2008-03-29T16:02:00.000-07:00

Joan washed her hands and then picked up the phone to dial her secretary to find out how much fan mail had arrived.

Henry Rogers, Joan’s publicist, stepped in the door. Mad at him for not getting enough newspaper coverage, she decided to make him wait and listen to her phone call, hanging up and redialing to get someone else, instead. “Marilyn, sweetheart, wake up. It's me. Joanie. I know you have nothing to wear, are you naked now? Are you laying on top of your bed naked? Are your breasts covered with your sheet? Tell me! I have some pink pantyhose you can have. Are you awake? Hello?”

“What?” Marilyn Monroe asked.

“You can have 'em!” Joan offered, winking at Henry. “Hey! They're all the wrong color for me and I didn't even pay for them. MGM did. I was going to wear them for my Two Faced Woman number, but we decided I'm going to play a black woman - just to make it exotic. Pink is all wrong. And it's a bright pink. It'll go with your coloring quite beautifully.”

“Pantyhose?”

“Yes.”

Marilyn asked, “Have you worn them already?”

“What?”

“Did you put them all the way on – all the way up?”

“Of course,” Joan assured her. “I thought it would be very very exciting for you to have a few pairs of pantyhose I've already worn, for good luck, you see, since I'm such a big star and you're just hoping to get established.”

“No, thank you, Miss Crawford, but I really don't want any pantyhose that have already been worn by somebody else. That's just … ”

Joan imperially insisted, “I am NOT just any ol' somebody else. I am Joan Crawford and I am offering you Joan Crawford pantyhose. I thought that would be exciting for you - being that you're so disadvantaged right now and I understand how that is. When I came to Hollywood I had nothing but the few clothes I stole from some friends in Kansas City, which is neither here nor there right now, I needed something! I was winning all those dance contests and had to wear a dress! Nobody was kind to me! Everybody was waiting their turn to kick me back down. I had to scratch and claw for everything I have now!”

“No thank you Miss Crawford. That's so very sweet of you to think of me, but I don’t know … ”

Joan slammed the phone down, gulped her drink, and turned to Henry. “I try to help. You just heard me try. I know what it’s like to be just starting out in this town and not have much. Can you believe the little starlets today? Back when I was just beginning I'd have taken a pair of silk stockings if they were offered to me and I wouldn't dream of asking if they'd been used, I'd just look for the run! What is it with people today, the young people - they're so damn SPOILED! They won't even take a perfectly perfect pair of pink pantyhose that goes well with their coloring. How does she know she won't need them someday? Why doesn’t she just let me help her get started? I know I sure needed help when I first came to town. I was grateful! If it wasn’t for Bill I’m sure I’d be a blah housewife somewhere right now.” Joan squinted at the publicist. “And why are you here? What is it that you do?”

THE JOAN CRAWFOD MURDERS can be found in general fiction at http://stonegarden.net/

Who Wears the Crown Around Here?

2008-03-28T13:20:00.000-07:00

This is how the new Tinseltown novel starts

2008-03-27T08:13:00.000-07:00

THE JOAN CRAWFORD MURDERS

Chapter one

The day had been so exciting that she drank way too much. Just as
she was about to pass out, there was a knock at the dressing room
door. She opened her eyes, opened the door, and saw a Joan Crawford
in an old fashioned padded-shouldered 40s suit. She was
confused. "Huh?"

"I'm Joan Crawford."

She answered, slurring, "Noooo, I'm Joan Crawford!"

"I'm the only Joan Crawford, so I'll have to kill you."

"BALLS! Look whah-you're wearing! It's goddam 1953, for chrissakes!"

"Bloody knife!" Bloody knife!"

Joan squinted, trying to see straight. "Who are you?"

Three studio security guards rushed into the hall and two of them
dragged the kicking and swearing impersonator away. A third guard
stayed and asked, "Are you alright Miss Crawford?"

Only able to think about having had far too much to drink, she tried
to keep her eyes open, and found that her tongue had became
stuck. "Mah-laaah."

He chuckled. "All right Miss Crawford. I'll lock you in now for the
night."

"MGM can go-ta Hell!" She hiccupped as she slammed the door. She
grabbed her razor sharp silver From the Desk of Joan Crawford letter
opener and held it out to the room like a weapon as if she was still
in danger. "Wha-ya want!" She sliced at the air. Then she realized
she didn't see anybody else in the room. "Oh." She went to put the
letter opener back but missed the desk by a foot and it fell to the
floor, sounding a pretty chime. She didn't hear it as she fell to
her knees knocking an empty vodka bottle to the side. Then she
started to raggedly snore.

* * * * *

The phone rang. She woke up. "Goddam! Why am I on the floor? That
must have been some party. Oh, my head!" She picked up the phone
but it had stopped ringing, so she washed her hands, popped some
aspirin and fixed herself a drink. While she washed her hands again,
the phone rang again. She grabbed it. "You're speaking to a star!"

"Cranberry! You get to be Joan Crawford again! You get … "

"Bill!" It was Joan's oldest friend, the ex-star, Billy Haines, who
helped her start out in the silent days. "Bill!" Joan shifted the
heavy metal telephone to her other ear as she began to rub freesia
glycerin on her elbows. "Is that you? Bless you! How dear of you
to jingle-ling me, here! How's my favorite fairy dust? How's your
hubby, Jimmy? How are my favorite Hollywood homosexuals?"

It's in paperback in general fiction at: htt://stonegarden.net/

The Joan Crawford Murders ... in paperback !!!

2008-03-20T09:32:00.000-07:00

In the second novel of the Tinseltown trilogy, Joan Crawford returns to MGM in 1953. Her comeback to her alma mater is to make the garish musical Torch Song. Joan suspects that it’s hokum, and that she’s getting too old for such parts, but she is desperate to make it work. That includes living at the studio in her dressing room during production. All the while, a psycho killer Joan Crawford drag queen stalks Hollywood to eliminate other Joan Crawford drag queens, and Joan is so strung out on vodka and super strength diet pills that she isn’t sure if she has taken up murder herself. Her gay best friend is poised ready to help her party. A powerful gangster is only interested in saving her reputation until death, and her loyal hairdresser has a son who has his own sneaky Joan Crawford secrets. The final epic showdown between Joan Crawford and Joan Crawford is beyond any movie ending ever filmed.

Check it out at Click HERE

I do book cover art, too

2008-01-23T11:58:00.000-08:00

Over at Squidoo (an odd place, I think, but then it takes me awhile to warm up to new places) I have posted pictures of book cover art I have done, for what's out and available now.

Once there, you have to click on them to get the whole image.

http://www.squidoo.com/bookart

I'm wearing Joan Crawford's dress.

2007-11-16T11:08:00.000-08:00

Joan said, "Don't complain about the casting couch. It's better than the cold hard floor.

Stocking Stuffer

2007-11-02T08:03:00.000-07:00

What do you stuff your stockings with? No, not your foot. My paperback novel HOLLYWOOD SINNERS would make perfect Christmas stocking stuffers, yes? So buy about 3 dozen (the book, not nylons) and you'll be set for the Holidays!!!

And I got a new review yesterday, at GATHER, hooray :

A Review Of Hollywood Sinners by Peter Joseph Swanson
by Kay M.

November 01, 2007 03:21 PM EDT
rating: 10/10

Is the grass always greener? Starving young Karin Panotchitch, a sheep farmer's daughter, was sure she would find greener pastures in 1930's Hollywood . After disposing of her abusive husband she set out on the highway, certain that she was destined for stardom. What did she find in Hollywood? The title of this book is fair warning.

Karen is both a victim and a perpetrator. At times I felt sympathy for her while at other times I wanted to slap her silly and often I found myself cheering her on. I think this is the way her boss, Mama Gravy, might have felt about her as well. Mama Gravy is the the lesbian owner of the dance hall where Karen ends up after failing to find gainful employment in Hollywood shops. A girl has got to eat.

When Karen is not dancing, she is cavorting with sleazy B movie directors and a mobster family who are planning to take over MGM. Yes, murder and mayhem ensue! Now what would a girl like that have to do with a nun on a trolley?

No dull moments in this book. I laughed, I cried. Well, actually I am lying about the crying part. You can find this book in paperback at StoneGarden.net.

http://stonegarden.net/
ISBN: 1-60076-041-4

Sister Agatha of the Streetcar

2007-06-01T13:17:00.000-07:00

Carol hopped on the Santa Monica Boulevard line heading towards Silver Lake and soon the nun got on and sat by her.
Carol beamed. “Sister Agatha of the Streetcar! It’s so wonderful to see you again. And your robes are so clean all the time. How do you do it? You practically glow.”
“Do I, Carol? I see you glow from within today. You must have been praying. Boy you glow.”
“Not really. But I’ve been wanting to be a star, real bad. Have you been praying? Oh, of course you have. You’re a nun.”
“I have been praying for Oklahoma.”
Carol put her nose in the air. “Oh. The immigrants. And it’s very dirty over there.”
“That land is now a vast sea of dust. It is the valley of death. Fierce waves of heat blow over the face of the earth as if God has abandoned it. The Virgin weeps as she sees how the Earth of life and green plants has withered. Only the bones of herds give detail to the white dust. And just outside Lawton there’s the bones of a little girl who got lost. There is nothing sadder and I have been praying for her. The cola bottles around her have become buried in the blowing dust and only the top of her bones stick out - only a few tips of her ribs and a small circle of her skull at the top of her pretty little forehead. Tonight I will go to her and help her into the hands of Mary, who always has room for all the departed lost children on her lap. Even the ones that have been withered into bones.”
Carol frowned. “How will you get there?”
“On my broom.”
Carol imagined a nun flying on a broom and belted out a laugh. “You’re funny!”
Sister Agatha of the Streetcar chuckled along with her and then asked, “And what’s your bowl for?”
Carol held her bowl up. “A cactus! I’m going to a cactus show! I’m going to be a star! Do you want to come with me? Can nuns go to things like that?”
“Certainly. I love agricultural shows. And I love dog shows and most of all I love food and wine shows. I love to walk the vineyards. But I have many sad people to pray for today.”
“No praying for me,” Carol boasted. “I’m not sad at all today.”
“Wonderful. Then we’ll pray a happy prayer.”
“There’s a prayer for happiness?”
The nun nodded. “That’s when it’s fun to pray.”
“Do you have a happy prayer to me?”
“Certainly.” Sister Agatha of the Streetcar closed her eyes and smiled. “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside still waters. He restoreth my soul; he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.”
“I grew up with a lot of sheep. Did that make me a shepherd too? Like the Lord is my shepherd?”
Sister Agatha of the Streetcar tapped the side of her gleaming white habit and wimple. “Yes. So you understand sheep. You understand more than you realize.”

an excerpt

2007-04-27T10:36:00.000-07:00

Hollywood Sinners - just the first scene

(this is from my pre-edited file. So if you see a typo, avert your eyes)

By Peter Joseph Swanson

Karin scratched at the paint on some rotted wood as she looked out the narrow window of her basement apartment. She was thinking about the new invention that she’d just read about in her new March 1939 Look Magazine. It said, “Spun from coal”. It claimed to be showing the very first pictures of a new sheer hose made from Nylon, a safe fiber already used in toothbrushes and fishing string, but for hose it was thinner than number 60 sewing thread.

“You need Nylon hose,” Karin told the legs of the few women outside walking by. And she wanted them for herself, too, but she knew they’d be far too expensive. The ten-cent magazine had already used up the last of her piggybank. It was Monday and her husband wouldn’t be getting anymore pay until Friday. So she’d also be skipping more meals.

Karin Panotchitch was sixteen and had already been married a year. Her twenty-seven year old husband worked at a shoe factory assembling cardboard boxes and it was a good enough job for the place and time. But then after work he went to the pool hall until late in the evening, spending most of his pay. He spent most of his weekends with his mother, who he said was always ill. Karin hated her marriage. She hated her husband’s horrible jokes, bad breath, bad manners, and awkward last name. She was glad he was gone so much. She was glad that he’d probably forget that this day was their first year wedding anniversary. She assumed people were required to make whoopee with a spouse on a day like that. Karin was young, pretty and married, but she hadn’t made whoopee in eight months.

She spotted a cockroach on her floor, chased it and lost. She sat back down on her musty sofa and began to bawl, feeling utterly sorry for herself. She finally fell asleep. She woke up hours later to the loud sound of her husband almost falling down the wood stairs, very drunk. Though he’d somehow kept upright when what was underfoot was uneven, when he got to the tiles he fell to his knees and then his side. He ordered, “I want some fried potatoes.”

She had no food but she didn’t admit it. Karin just said, “Rest. It’ll be at least ten minutes.”

“Stupid bitch!” He blindly crawled sideways towards the couch and missed it, hitting his head on the fieldstone wall. He yelled at her unintelligibly as he backed up and finally found the cushions. He started to loudly snore.

Karin took one of the firmer throw pillows and put it snuggly over his face. He didn’t struggle for air. He just stopped breathing and died. Karin looked carefully at the pillow to see if he’d slobbered on it. It didn’t seem like he had. She smiled and put it back and then went to bed. She had trouble sleeping. She tossed and turned and tried to not think. But she was so hungry, and a hot greasy fried potato with a bit of salt was all she thought about until morning.

When the sun came back and it was bright enough in the room to read, Karin began to study her Look Magazine again. She carefully turned the large pages so they wouldn’t wear out. In the ads, a Plymouth Coupe went for 645 dollars and a Sedan for 685. She wondered how anyone could afford all that money. There was an article about U.S. Fascists but she didn’t care about that. She went back to the page about the Nylon hose and she read about how the Nylon will soon supplant silk. The silk came from Japan and their economy would suffer, as Nylon would be made at home.

Karin was glad for that as she wondered where she could get a job making Nylon hose. She imagined a marvelous tall clean white factory with shiny silver machines of the most advanced design making musical purring sounds as it spun out fibers like cotton candy. She imagined herself surrounded by mountains of hose that smelled like a cross between new clean pencil erasers and hot sugar. She assumed she’d get complimentary pairs to wear and she could wear three pairs at a time if she so chose so her legs would look like those of a flawless china doll as she sat at her Nylon-making workstation.

She looked up at her dead grey husband and finally wondered what she should do about him. She frowned; he was still such a bother. At the sheep farm she grew up on, dead animals were just dumped in a back ditch. People were supposed to be worth more dignity than sheep. Sometimes.

~ end of excerpt ~

Thanks for reading. The whole fabulous epic tale can be found in paperback at Stone Garden Publishing. It's in "general fiction". It's gorgeous!

Peter Joseph Swanson

READING IN THE BATHTUB?

2007-04-02T10:48:00.000-07:00

Here are two new (customer) reviews for my new novel Hollywood Sinners.

1) Fun Romp through old Hollywood, April 2, 2007

Reviewer: Elizabeth Heskett - 5 stars.

This is the perfect book to sink into while taking a long soak in a tub with glass of wine. The story is so engaging and takes you to a time of movies that is long gone. One of it's guilty pleasures is that you can become engaged with the character easily and vicariously follow her on her path to stardom. I highly recommend this novel for a fun romp through old Hollywood.

and this one is wild! -

2) Each sentence led me down a path of anticipation, hungrily reading faster and faster to discover the events that unfolded. Karin's continuing quest for stardom takes her from tragic and seedy back rooms where those in the bowls of Hollywood continue to spin the wheels that propel the star to the inevitable. A very good read filled with action, savvy, esoteric Hollywood slang, humor, tragedy, a real combination leaving me breathless on numerous occasions. Swanson's gift with words beckons to the reader as a delicious appetizer - teases the taste-buds, to consume more and and more in an attempt to finish all. A fast paced tale spun in a maze on the road to a dream in Tinseltown. - Suzanne McKitterick

I guess that means they liked it!

Peter Joseph Swanson (the author)

my first review for my first novel

2007-03-30T08:57:00.000-07:00

Peter Swanson's Hollywood Sinners is a loopy "Wizard of Oz" where assorted down-at-heel characters, all of them of questionable virtue, cross paths in 1930's Hollywood -- specifically and tellingly, in 1939 when "The Wizard of Oz" was filmed. Farm girl Karin Panotchitch is journeying to Oz -- or rather, Hollywood -- to become a big star, but instead of munchkins to lead her down the yellow brick road, she meets sinners with delusions of grandeur who make up Hollywood's underbelly. Swanson's writing is off-the-wall and irreverent, speckled with period slang, and characters with names like "Mama Gravy," reminiscent of Ronald Firbank ("The Flower Beneath the Foot") whose work, although dubbed a "specialized taste" (and often published at his own expense), has gained recognition and its own cult following. The first in a Tinseltown trilogy, Hollywood Sinners shows a deranged sense of humor and love of Old Hollywood, portraying a city with more sinners than saints, by far. But the "angels" are there, too, in the form of nuns who are shaping eyebrows as much as saving souls. - d. nowak

Hollywood Sinners

2007-03-01T08:07:00.000-08:00

my new book blurb written by Tracy Hamby:

Karin Panotchitch, raised on a sheep farm and then married off to a drunken loser, finds her way to 1939 Hollywood at the tender age of sixteen, determined to be a star. Along the way, she meets up with Ramon Classic, who with his many brothers is ready for a hostile takeover of MGM, Mama Gravy, the colorful and opinionated proprietor of the run-down Gold Rush brothel, and Sister Agatha, the mysterious nun who seems to turn up every time Karin (now Carol Pan) rides the trolley. Hollywood history, flying bullets, and big dreams make for a lively story about what happens when a sheep farmer's daughter tries to make her dream come true. First in Swanson's Tinseltown Trilogy.

check it out at:

http://stonegarden.net/

see below for book cover!

my novel HOLLYWOOD SINNERS is out

2007-02-17T08:05:00.000-08:00

In 1939, a farm girl goes to Hollywood to be a star. She leaves it full of bullet holes and dead gangsters.

to go to the online publisher, Stone Garden Publishing:

http://stonegarden.net/

COMING SOON from Peter Swanson

2007-02-04T12:29:00.000-08:00

COMING SOON from Stone Garden Publishing!

coming soon from Chippewa Publishers!

new link for Peter Joseph Swanson

2007-02-04T10:28:00.000-08:00

http://peterjswanson.livejournal.com

Peter Joseph Swanson

2006-12-09T15:47:00.000-08:00

Peter Joseph Swanson

2006-12-05T08:43:00.000-08:00

coming soon

November 2006

2006-11-05T11:58:00.000-08:00

the bio, the links

2006-09-01T13:00:00.000-07:00

I will have two novels coming out (soon). Hollywood Sinners (a 30's gangster starlet melodrama) and Hidden River (a drag queen's erotic tale).

I grew up on a goat farm near the Mississippi River near Mark Twain country. I did as much theater and art in high school as I could. My college degree was in art, cinema and photography. I’ve won two awards for film making in Minneapolis.

I’ve worked at grocery stores, a pizza place, a punk coffee shop, and at two large groups homes for mentally ill and retarded adults. Being involved in labor organizing, I was the recording secretary for the Steel Workers union. I’ve always written stories and poems. I had five self illustrated children’s stories published in Canada.

Did I say I'll have two novels out? One from Lady Aibell Press (an imprint of Chippewa Publishing) and one from Stone Garden Publishing. I do a Joan Crawford comic strip for Outlands Magazine, a monthly gay publication in Reno.

My links:

http://www.swansonnovels.blogspot.com
http://www.petersjoanart.spaces.msn.com
http://www.aliendragdoll.wordpress.com
http://www.200poems.wordpress.com
http://www.joancartoons.wordpress.com
http://www.derailedpoems.blogspot.com

The poems and Joan Crawford art change every month!