Author Archives: JimArnoldLA

“The Forest Dark” Front Cover!

Well, here it is, this is what we came up with!

The front cover of my new family-of-choice novel, “The Forest Dark,” coming out sometime this May.

A significant chunk of the second part of the book takes place at night, and of course, the image conjures up the idea of an “urban forest.” I like that this photo even includes the relatively “new” Ritz-Carlton skyscraper at L.A. Live in DTLA.

Stay tuned for updates on book and ebook availability. What the heck is it about, you ask? The back cover copy states:

“In 1984, during L.A.’s frenetic Summer Olympics, conservative co-ed Eden von Eiff befriends young gay man Noah Baldock and his boyfriend, Ronnie. Though they become fast friends, Eden feels like an inconvenient third wheel until she meets Ruben Acosta. Little does she know that Noah has also cast his eye on the handsome Cuban. After the wild summer, Eden’s pregnant and struggling to keep this secret from her politically powerful family back east when Noah offers a solution to her problem.

Twenty-five years later, these two Boomers must come to grips with choices they made long ago. Eden’s son Louie is now a social media star with his ambitions set on reality TV. Noah struggles with job loss and his odd “friend” Jivan, who holds a mysterious power over him. Eden regrets not being part of Louie’s early life and wants to change that, but finds mothering a 25-year-old a daunting challenge.

Thinking their troubles have mostly to do with middle age, the wrecked economy and professional failure, both Eden and Noah find themselves tested in ways they could not have predicted. In the process, they discover what it is that’s essential, and what it is that lasts.”

Boomer angst, for sure, and hopefully, lots of irreverent fun along the way. I think this is a book you can even take along to the beach with you this summer – either in paper or electronic form.

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Study: Los Angeles Traffic Still Sucks

Well, this hardly comes as a surprise. No wonder the traffic is worse – I just checked some stats yesterday, and the city of Los Angeles has added close to a million residents since 1980 (about the time I moved to L.A.) so it’s no wonder the traffic both seems and is much worse.

Used to be you really could take Fountain or Franklin across town (from the Silver Lake area to West Hollywood) and it would be pretty quick. Not anymore. So I guess that old quip attributed to Bette Davis (Q: How do you succeed in Hollywood? A: Always take Fountain.) is no longer true. But I’m glad to have lived in L.A. when it still was.
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The Forest Dark – galleys are on my kitchen table

My new book innards, The Forest Dark

Here they sit, waiting for me to proof.

The new novel, The Forest Dark, will be available in May. What it’s about:

Genre: Family Drama/Mainstream-Contemporary/Gay-Lesbian Fiction

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I know that’s kind of vague, so stay tuned for more! As soon as I have a good cover graphic, I’ll launch the Facebook page. There’s a placeholder there already, so you can “like” the page, and I’ll post all updates there as well.

Fresh & Easy, We Hardly Knew Ye

I was dismayed to read this story about Fresh & Easy throwing in the towel after their experiment in the U.S., even though it’s been expected for awhile. I know they had a few stores in Los Angeles, but none of them were close to where I lived.

a Fresh & Easy, but not the one in PS. Flickr photo by jim61773.

However — in Palm Springs, Fresh & Easy was my main go-t0 place for food! When I was out there this January working for the Palm Springs International Film Festival, I probably stopped in every day for lunch and other food purchases. I will miss them.

Here’s My Top Five Reasons to Love Fresh & Easy!

They have a special section to sell nicely-discounted perfectly good “expired” food. Easy to find, cause everyone in the store is huddled there. I would find great deals every day. Most big chains don’t have these sections, or, the only ones I’ve seen are for baked goods.

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Mac ‘n Cheese! They always have several varieties of mac ‘n cheese or other decadent pasta with cheesy alfredo-type sauces. All you have to do is microwave! So nice for those chilly wintertime desert evenings. Yummm.
Pre-washed, pre-cut, pre-packaged fruits and veggies in small quantities! Don’t know about you, but it’s a whole lot easier for me to pony up to my daily requirements for fruits and veggies if someone makes it easy, like washing it, peeling it, and generally getting it ready just to pop in the pie hole. Makes a healthy habit much, much easier. OK, I admit it, I’m lazy. But totally, that’s “fresh & easy!”
They have just a little bit of everything you might want, but not “30 brands of mustard” you have to decide on. I mean, really? You want some caesar dressing, let’s say. Do you really need a choice of 15 varieties on 3 shelves? How about some cleanser for the sink? Same thing. Makes the choice – and your time in the store – much simpler and faster.
Finally, mozzarella and tomato and basil sandwiches all wrapped up and ready to go! So healthy and fresh. And, makes me think I’m France or Italy for a split second. OK, maybe it doesn’t, with the dead sagebrush blowing around outside, but the fantasy is nice.

RIP, Fresh & Easy. I’ll miss you.

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The Beautiful World

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Perspective: Koreatown slayings, meningitis deaths – remember them all

Just wanted to update this today (9/23/21), about 8.5 years after I published the original story, which was really about how white privilege dictates what we see around societal violence and other misfortunes (such as illness) – though I didn’t have that language then, even though I recognized the operative theory. Over the past week, much has been made of “missing white woman” syndrome in the case of murdered Gabby Petito. And it’s not just white women, it’s also white men – who, as victims, are covered more than people of other races/backgrounds. This quite from a story today in CNN.com by Holly Thomas:

“Perhaps one of the most painful reasons stories about pretty young White women seem to capture the public imagination so completely is the subconscious prejudice that bad things aren’t “meant” to happen to privileged people. Safety is one of the aspirational perks of having an apparently perfect life. Well-off White people can generally assume that when they call the police, law enforcement will automatically be on their side and want to help them. But this level of support is far from a universal given, and far too often a function of racial privilege.”

Again, I want to emphasize that what happened to Sam and Bret are tragedies, and they deserve to be covered as much as anyone who experiences a similar crime or misfortune. But I do wonder if these stories would have been written at all if they both weren’t white and privileged.

Original Post about Sam Michel and Bret Shaad

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I was touched by this Sam Michel murder story, which I saw just by accident in The Los Angeles Times over the weekend. I was struck by a couple of things beyond the mere horror – and maybe the complacency by which we accept such things as the hazard of living in the big, bad city.

First of all, it was the location of the murder, the Sir Francis Drake apartments on Serrano in Koreatown. This building is managed/owned by the Swel Group, and I’ve looked at many of their properties when searching for K-town apartments both in 2011 and also again very recently. The Sir Francis Drake is an amazing, beautiful building — hands down, it had the largest and probably nicest studios of any building in the Swel Group list. I almost moved into the building in summer of 2011 but found a larger (and cheaper) apartment elsewhere.

My quite recent inquiries into vacancies there were not responded to – don’t know if it had anything to do with this notoriety or not, but I was blissfully unaware of the murder.

The other thing that struck me about this sad story was Sam Michel’s love of Griffith Park, something I share and have since I was in my 20s. So that could’ve been me many years ago, or so many people I’ve known who come to L.A. to create their artistic life.

Our family recently lost someone about Sam’s age to a violent death (suicide, not murder) so I know somewhat of what this family is going through. I also hope someone with information comes forward to collect the newly-upped reward ($100,000) and that the person who did this gets caught.

One of the early reports of this murder in the Times also says that there’ve been 35 murders in Koreatown since 2007. I wonder how many of those have gone unsolved?

Interesting that this particular death, this unsolved murder is the one that’s focused on – and why is that, as there are so many unsolved murders in the city? Certainly his family is not going to let the matter drop, and they shouldn’t. But there’s also a facility with social media and press access that comes with education and class.

Continue reading →

I’ve seen the future and it’s the independent artist: self-publishing

Well, it’s only fair that this blog post should come out on the heels of a previous one which lamented the awful state of book author compensation.

Hugh Howey, the science fiction writer, wrote this piece for Salon which is about as positive on the state and potential of self-publishing as the previous one was negative (also for Salon). (Although that book, “Broken Piano for President,” was published by a small independent, not self-published.)

Howey’s had great self-published success (the “Wool” series, among others) and offers several similar stories. But the real thing that I loved about this piece is that he sees the bigger trend which transcends individual successes, and bodes well for writers in general as well as readers.

He reminds us that “the slush pile is made available to readers.” What that means is that in traditional publishing, it might be only that 1% of manuscripts that make it through the fickle editorial/marketing gauntlet. With self-publishing, other gems are out there waiting for readers to find them.

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Howey contrasts the tired, old style route to literary success with the new paradigm of self-publishing by comparing it to the music business. Why is it we celebrate the hardscrabble musicians and their antics but not the writers who do analogous things? I believe there’s that persistent (and false and misplaced) myth that anybody can do it – anybody can write a book – if they just have the time to sit down and do it. Really? Kind of like that classic piece of modern art that your kid still hasn’t produced, right?

Finding their Son in the Subway

To me, this story is magical.

I see this story of the formation of a family in black and white, on film, in a 1930s or 1940s black and white film, and perhaps Anthony Russo, the New York Times artist who illustrated this Opinionator piece, got his inspiration from that same culture fount.

I’m thinking of “Heidi,” which starred Shirley Temple, and was a Saturday afternoon staple when I was a kid. For some reason (the Christmas connection, maybe? the NYC locale?) this also reminds me of “Miracle on 34th Street,” which also has a family-melding as part of the story.
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Lift me up. The judge in “Heidi” asked Shirley who she wanted to live with. Perhaps the intuitive judge in this case had seen the movie as well, and since the child in question was a mere infant, made the parental decision on a whim and a prayer?

But what I love most is that these two men, especially the writer (Peter Mercurio) were able to say yes to the unknown. Sometimes, when seemingly wild opportunities and totally unpractical ideas present themselves, what is it inside that makes us say yes? It’s opening the door to adventure, and this is really living. This is a definition of life.

Bestseller Makes Writer Nothing — or Close To It

books, books on the shelf

The sad truth of the writerly life: probably, you’re not getting rich. Patrick Wensink lays it all out for you here in Salon.

I’m a firm believer in transparency — here, the transparency which seeks to eliminate wishful thinking and guesswork — both of which seem endemic to the arts.

Painters, dancers, actors — and indeed, writers — often let the magic of following the dream weigh heavily on the practical decisions to pursue the art. Not that it’s not worth pursuing – by all means, it is/they are – I just believe one should take that leap with a clear idea of why. (And a good line on a day job.)

And that “why” should not be about financial rewards. Sure, you may become the next Spielberg, Warhol, Baryshnikov, whoever — but chances are you won’t. Or it may take a really, really, really long time. So there has to be enough love in your heart and passion for the thing itself to enjoy it for its own sake. Otherwise, don’t do it.

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Wensink even calls writing books a “fiscally idiotic quest.” I had a well-meaning friend actually laugh out loud when she asked me what the average monthly royalty check on my book “Benediction” is, and I told her (I’m not telling you – but it’s small – so much for transparency). Yes, it does make one feel like an idiot.

But still, we persevere. There’s some powerful drive there, the need to create, to tell stories, to transcend ourselves, whatever it may be. Then there’s always the hope that someday we’ll get Hollywood-sized paydays (that’s actually a place where writers can make some decent money, though when you average out lean years with spectacular ones, it may not be all that much different from other professions, at least for the vast majority).

So keep writing. You need to do it, and we need your dreams.

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