BLOG – James Riordan

A Bit of Luck

November 16, 2024 2:31 am

Wallace MacGilvery was not bad man. The world of today was not an easy place and he did what he had to do to survive. Maybe he gouged prices a bit at his hardware store sometimes. He cheated a bit on his taxes. Everybody did. They set it up so you almost had to. Just to get by. When he saw the wallet in the road, he was almost afraid to pick it up. At first he drove right past it. But then he looked in the rear view mirror and it sure looked like a wallet. Probably a piece of trash, but what the hell. He backed up. No one was anywhere near it. In fact there were not even any cars on the small suburban street. Just four small neatly spaced houses. Typical middle-class residences with quarter acre lots. Just enough lawn that you had to mow.
The wallet was brown and looked like well worn leather. The thing was though, is that it was fat. Filled with something. Business cards, photos or credit cards maybe. But what if it was cash? Bunch of ones probably. What they used to call a St. Louis bankroll.
Before he knew it, Wallace had gotten out of the car. Now he had a real sense of anxiety. What if it was full of hundreds. There would be some form of ID in it of course, but would he call the person? That would be the right thing to do. Of course he could take the cash and say he found it like that. At least the owner wouldn’t have to cancel all his credit cards and get a new driver’s license. That would be a decent thing to do. Such a careless person would be lucky to get them back. Suddenly, it seemed to Wallace that there should be some kind of consequence for being so careless – some sort of fine imposed by the universe for not taking care of your property. He reached down to pick up the wallet and for the first time, it occurred to him that maybe someone had been robbed, their cash taken and the wallet tossed out the window with pictures and credit cards intact. No, the thief would take the credit cards and try to use them or maybe sell them to someone even more desperate.
The wallet was full of hundred-dollar bills. Wallace counted twenty-two. And there were credit cards galore. Also, a driver’s license. But no pictures. None. Must belong to someone who either had no family or didn’t care much about them. There were a few business cards stuffed in the side pocket, but none of them matched the name on the license…wait, here were a couple in the other side pocket. Robert Donnely was the name on the license and according to the business card he was an insurance salesman. That was a lot of cash for an insurance salesman to be carrying around. Maybe he’d been on the way to the bank. Maybe he’s just sold a big policy and the cash was the initial payment. Or maybe he sold drugs on the side.
Or maybe he was dead and whoever killed him dumped the wallet. That meant two things. It was probably a crime of passion so the money didn’t matter but if Wallace was caught with it, he could be linked to the murder. Now he regarded the wallet as a threat.
As far as threats go the cash could be part of a drug deal gone bad, a robbery or a blackmail scheme. Maybe Wallace should put the wallet back. That would be the smart thing to do. And that’s what he did.
___

The Choice

October 28, 2024 8:55 pm

Miguel Fernando was destined to become the greatest left handed baseball pitcher in history but when he was three he got into his dad’s gardening tools and cut off a good portion of his index finger. Of course, no human being knew this and it was really the fault of Heathrow, his guardian angel who was distracted by a random bolt from an electrical storm on Venus.
Surprisingly, crap like this happened all the time on the supernatural plain where human life was considered invaluable but earthy goals were regarded mostly as a joke. The truth was that human beings didn’t live long to accomplish much of anything significant except make the One Choice that really mattered and that was, of course, Good or Evil. Equally surprising was that choice ratio was about 50/50. Of course, most of the humans who chose Evil really didn’t see it that way. They viewed it as getting their way, not giving in or even fulfilling their Divine Destiny. That’s really what Evil is when you get down to it – choosing self to the ultimate degree.
I know what you’re thinking – the Hitler question, i.e., “what about Hitler?” Human beings always bring that up. Hitler didn’t choose Evil over good until way late in the game, by which time he really didn’t have a lot of choices anyway. Through his life he just chose himself over others. It started out as a determination not to be taken advantage of by people who had power over him and then somewhere it got into not caring what happened to those who stood in his way and then it became killing them off. By the time he was invading Poland and executing Jews he had long given up the power of choice. That’s also how Evil works. If you choose it enough, over and over long enough, you stop getting a choice at all. You can call it Possession if you want but it’s really just an extension of putting yourself first all the time, every time. And no, it doesn’t work the same way if you keep choosing Good or the good of others over yourself. You can always stop choosing Good if you want, but the really Good people rarely change sides. It may take a lot longer for Good to payoff for an individual, but once it does, the feeling is so solid, so real, that it locks in.

So you want to be a writer…

February 24, 2024 11:57 pm

Good for you! Write! Write to your heart’s contents. Write about anything and every-thing. Let you friends and your relatives read and enjoy your work. Remember, you don’t have to be published to be a writer. There are thousands of great writers who not only were never published, but never even sought to be published.

So you want to make a living as a writer.

The goal of being a writer was a good thing. A fun thing. It could bring you a lot of joy and fulfillment. Why do you have to spoil it by trying to make money at it? Once you make money from something it becomes a product. And products are evaluated by how much they sell. The people who buy products have a right to have an opinion of them and express that opinion anyway they want.

All that would be okay, but there are other people who are in between the writer and the people who might want to read what is written. They are the gatekeepers -the people who decide who gets to read what you’ve written. They only come into play when money is involved. You can write blogs, posts, articles for small publications and never really have to deal with these people because there’s no money involved so they have no say and no power over your work.

But once real money enters the picture, these people are there. Many of them are agents or publishers, but they can be book, magazine or newspaper editors, movie or television producers or directors, studio or network executives, managers, advisors and investors. It’s their money or someone else’s money that they control so they have a say.

It’s not just them, however. It’s their assistants, secretaries, spouses and interns. They also have a say and often they are the real gatekeepers in today’s world where the supply (people who want to write for money) really outweighs the demand (people who will supply that money). So, you sometimes have a seventeen-year-old working for free at a major company who decides if his boss will get a chance to read your work. It’s not the intern’s fault and it’s not the fault of the boss. I’d like to say it’s the fault of the agents because writers like to blame agents for everything, but it’s not really their fault either. It’s the fault of the system, but that’s really about supply and demand again.

If an individual can make millions of dollars from writing something naturally a lot of people will want to do it. As co-creator of the show, Taylor Sheridan makes 1.3 million dollars for every episode of Yellowstone and that’s just one of his projects. He also created the spin off series 1883 and Mayor of Kingstown and wrote the films Hell or High Water and Sicario. He’s worth over $70 million but it took him quite a while to get there.

You have to wonder how many times did he send in an idea that no one even read or got pitched into the trash by an agent who had a bad day. Lots of times.

And everything changes once you do start making money as a writer. From that moment on, every time you look at a blank page the question arises, Will This Make Money? What ends up happening is you have to sort of sneak up on a project. You have to force yourself to not get anxious or box yourself in. You’ve heard of writer’s block? Writer’s Block comes when you’ve boxed yourself in too tight with expectations. That why so many writers drink heavily or use drugs. What kind of mind screw-ups do you think Earnest Hemmingway or Philip K. Dick went through?

Also, writing pretty much makes you unfit for any other kind of work. Once you let the tiger out, it’s hard to get him back in the cage.

So, my advice for those who want to make a career out of writing is don’t. But I also know that if you really have the gift, nothing I say is going to stop you. And that’s okay because that’s what it takes. Good luck.

The Perfect Throw

February 21, 2024 9:16 pm

When I was about 11 years old, we had a neighborhood dirt clod fight at Marycrest Park. The only rule in a dirt clod fight is you can’t throw rocks or clods with rocks sticking in them. This day was an epic battle which found me leading a group of four or five kids battling against a kid named Donald who was a year older than me and his group. As I remember, they started it and they had more kids, meaner kids and older kids. We were the underdogs. And we were losing. Already two of our kids had gone home crying’. Donald and his top chieftain, Kathy Whitsel, were closing in on our position behind the park maintenance building when I came up with a daring plan. By sending two of our kids out towards the swings, I guessed correctly that Donal and company would go after them allowing me and the other kid in my gang to close in behind them and trap Donald underneath the monkey bars.

By now we had resorted to punching when an enemy was in close range. Donald had hit a couple of my smaller kids and I was out for revenge so when he was down under the monkey bars, I swooped in and punched him hard.

Unfortunately, my dad happened to be outside in our backyard which adjoined the park and saw me do it. Of course, he hadn’t seen the previous parts of the battle. He shouted at me to come over to the fence and the war stopped.

As I walked over to him, Kathy Whitsel shouted “Ha-ha, Rear-End is in trouble.”

That was the enemy’s favorite taunt since my name was Riordan. I hated being called that.

My Dad, blue-collar factory worker that he was, always stood for fairness. “Jimmy, I saw you hit that kid when he was down! You’re in trouble…get in the house!”

“That’s not how it was, Dad,” I stammered. “Those kids…”

“In the house now!”

As I walked around the fence to the Park entrance I saw Kathy Whitsel heading for her house, still laughing and shouting, “Rear-End! Rear-End! Rear-End got in trouble!”

She was far away by then, but I took the one dirt clod I had left and lofted it at her. It was the perfect throw.

Five minutes later her father was at our front door telling my Dad that I had hit his little girl with a rock. She really wasn’t hurt, but now my dad was really mad. He turned on me and I said, “It wasn’t a rock, it was a dirt clod. And it was a perfect throw.”

February 21, 2024
Categories: Uncategorized . . Author: A Well Thought Out Scream Edit

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Author receives Who’s Who Lifetime Achievement Award

June 20, 2019 6:00 pm

Nationally known author and local resident James Riordan has been awarded the 2019 Who’s Who Lifetime Achievement Award in the Writing Category.

The Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award is an honor reserved for biographers who have demonstrated leadership, excellence and longevity within their respective industries and professions.

Besides Riordan, other 2019 honorees include former Secretary of State Colin Powell and Associate Supreme Court Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Marquis Who’s Who has remained the standard for reliable and comprehensive biographical data since 1899. The Who’s Who Lifetime Achievement recognizes individuals who have achieved excellence in the industry. These individuals have excelled in their field for at least 20 years.

Riordan is the author of 45 published books, including the New York Times Bestseller “Break on Through: The Life & Death of Jim Morrison,’’ upon which filmmaker Oliver Stone based his movie “The Doors.’’

“Break on Through” has not only been called “the most objective, thorough and professional Morrison biography” by the Times Book Review but also was named as one of the 10 all-time best rock biographies by amazon.com.

Riordan also wrote Stone’s biography.

Published by Hyperion in December 1995, Entertainment Weekly called the book “an unflinching biography … enough spectacle to fill a month of daytime-TV talk shows.”

The New York Post said reading the book was like “the sensory overload of watching all of Oliver Stone’s movies back to back.”

Riordan’s first book was “The Platinum Rainbow” (written with Bob Monaco).

It was called “one of the best how-to books ever written” by the Los Angeles Daily News and “The ultimate career book on the music industry” by Recording, Engineer & Producer.

Critics described Riordan’s “The Bishop of Rwanda’’ as “one of the most important books you’ll ever read.” And “The Coming of the Walrus,’’ Riordan’s novel about the 1960s as “the definitive book on the era” and “a hilarious tale of a harrowing search for the greatest truth of all.”

Riordan’s career began in the music industry where as a songwriter, manager, producer and concert promoter he worked with several well-known artists.

In 1976, he began writing a newspaper column on popular music, Rock-Pop, which he later syndicated.

Riordan became one of America’s premier rock journalists with articles reaching millions of readers, including those of Rolling Stone, Crawdaddy, Circus, Musician and newspapers such as The Chicago Daily News, The Kansas City Star and others.

On April 9, 2000, Riordan’s 16-year-old son, Jeremiah, was killed as a passenger in an accident that involved three drunk drivers.

Shortly after this, Riordan founded Make it Stick, which works to warn teens of the dangers of substance abuse and publishes a magazine distributed to high school students.

Since 2012, Riordan, through Make it Stick, had produced the Kankakee Area Music Awards, which recognizes talent within a 25-mile radius of Kankakee.

In April 2019, the eighth annual awards were presented in front of a capacity crowd at the Majestic Theater in Kankakee.

It Ain’t Easy Being Bob : A Well Thought Out Scream by James Riordan

May 24, 2019 9:40 pm

This week we are republishing this year’s most popular blog which was on Bob Dylan accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature back in March. Last week Bob Dylan performed in Stockholm and while he was there he met with the Nobel Prize Committee and accepted this year’s award for literature.

Source: It Ain’t Easy Being Bob : A Well Thought Out Scream by James Riordan