Dad in 1949, Ann in 1953

The top is dated on the back Feb. 24, 1949, which was seven months before I was born.  Dad is in uniform, but I cannot tell where it was taken and mom did not write anything on the front or back of the photograph to give any indication, though dad was stationed at McDill AFB in Tampa, Florida when I was born in September.

The bottom is dated Week of September 14, 1953.  Apparently, the wheels must belong to a birthday present for my sister.

Mom and dad 1947

The top photograph says "Bluebonnets & Geo[rge]" June 18, 1947.

The center photograph says "Summer '47".  But the back is dated April 17, 1947.

The bottom photograph is dated July 1947 by Eastman Kodak Company.

Circa 1951-2

The top photograph is annotated that it was of my sister and me at 1 and 2 years old in Victorville, CA, which would have been circa 1951.  Dad was stationed at George Air Force Base.  (I have no idea what I am carrying in my hand.)  Dad was to be shipped to Korea after the outbreak of hostilities there in 1950.  Since he had been a POW in WWII as a bombardier with the Army Air Corps and whose plane was going to crash after damages received over the Rumanian Ploesti oil fields, the crew bailed out and dad was soon captured by the Germans and sent to a camp in Southern Germany for the remainder of the war (primarily all of 1944 and half of 1945).   He did not want to repeat that experience in Korea and, somehow, was able to leave active duty with the Air Force and return to the states.  (He would remain in the Air Force Reserves for at least enough years to retire with a modest pension.)

The bottom photograph was approximately a year later when we were living on Broadway in Santa Ana, CA, after dad was out of the service.  We would have been about 2 and 3 years old in 1952.  This is likely a photograph taken on the front or back porch at Easter since we appear to be dressed up and it is a (rather faded) color photograph.  (Again, I have no idea what I have in my hands.)  

These were two more photos from the newly discovered shoebox of miscellaneous photographs taken over a number of decades from the 1950's through the 1980's that my mother likely had kept and escaped my organizing project of inserting them all into large photo albums in the 1990's.

"Every boy wants a Remco toy!"

"Every boy wants a Remco toy!"

Such was the 1959 slogan for the Remco Movieland Drive-In Theater commercial (it's on youtube with Patty Duke playing the girl who also wants a Remco toy for Christmas).

The photo above was apparently taken on Christmas morning 1959.  We had spent that fall living with Willene and her two children in one three-bedroom house of a duplex across the street from the triplex dad was having built for this extended/blended family after they were married in early 1960, after dad's and mom's divorce was final.

We had liked Willene and her kids, given that we'd visited them in their Tustin home many times while she and dad were dating.  She'd given us no reason to anticipate a different personality other than the one she'd projected for more than a year.  We were wrong.

In that photo, in the lower right, is a box that contained a car-carrying truck made of rubber/plastic, with three cars stacked on the trailer.  Unfortunately, the cars would only stay in place using three rubber bands, one for each car.  At some point, Freddie took those three rubber bands because his Christmas present had been plastic figures that were now gathered together using three new rubber bands, exactly the same three rubber bands I was now missing and needed.

I was indignant and loudly complained when I realized what had happened.  (We apparently didn't have any more rubber bands, so he was either going to have to fess up to having taken them and give them back, or one of us was going to have to do without.)  Something else then happened that startled and angered me and was a precursor to what would transpire for the next three and a half years.  We would have to put up with this response, living under Willene's cruel thumb, along with barely tolerating the thieving nature of a step-brother who had no conscience.

Willene, also now indignant that I was accusing her precious son of theft, walked over to me and whacked me, hard, across the side of my head.   This was a whole other side to this woman that we had never experienced before but would many times in the future.  What was even worse that she then did--as if to justify her hitting a kid who was not even yet her stepson--was to say when dad protested, "I gave those rubber bands to Freddie!"   She lied.

This was to become the worst aspect of her defense of Freddie's behavior in the years to come--to lie about what had actually happened or to pretend it never happened.  (Which is worse?  That Willene saw the rubber bands I was using and needed but took them to give to her own son, or that she was now lying about having given those rubber bands to Freddie, knowing that Freddie had likely taken them but was fine with lying about what had happened?)

It was a long time ago and I have made my peace with how we were treated so many years ago.  What was most important is that we eventually fought back and finally demanded that we be allowed to live with our mother, a solution that was better for all concerned.  We would eventually no longer allow Willene to "discipline" us, and she would be rid of two kids she never really was willing or able to raise fairly.  

Approximately 1965

During a current move by my sister, we came across a shoe-box filled with dozens of color photos either thought lost or non-existent.  (Back in the 1990's, I had organized hundreds and hundreds of my mom's photos into several large albums when these must have evaded my search.)  The four above represent a visit by my Grandma Breeze and Uncle Robert in which we posed out front of the rental house on Cypress and two on the observation platform above the LAX theme building/restaurant.  The year is either 1964 or 1965.  (We road with Uncle Robert the summer of 1966 to White Cloud to visit Grandma Breeze--and in those photos both Ann and I look older than in these photos.  It's more likely 1965 because we had only moved into the 8940 Cypress house in the early summer of 1964, so it's less likely that it was that year.)

First man I loved

I just learned a couple of hours ago that the first man I was attracted to, and probably was in love with, died on July 7, 2017.  J. P. Mullaney and I met in German class at East LA Junior College in the Spring of 1968.  I moved in with him, briefly, before final exams in his studio apartment next to East LA College that semester.  (We were watching TV together in that apartment the night Bobby Kennedy was murdered at the Ambassador Hotel in LA after he'd just won the California Democratic primary.)   I remember we also stood in line with a couple hundred others to watch the premiere of THE GRADUATE in L.A.

The first night we slept together, several minutes after we got under the covers, he rolled over to wrap his right arm around me and I stopped him, thinking that he must be asleep and unaware of what he was doing.  Perhaps I was not sure of myself, but I was also certainly naive.   Nothing physical happened after that except a few times we wrestled on his convertible sofa before falling asleep next to one another.  But the day he drove me to the airport that Summer of 1968, when I flew to Alaska to visit my cousin and his wife in Anchorage, we stood facing one another, barely a foot apart.  He looked deep into my eyes before we left his apartment, smiled that particular wide grin of his and reached out, pulling me close and hugging me tightly.  I was too surprised to know how to respond to that unexpected hug, especially in that era when men never hugged, and kept my arms at my side.

I was only 18--not confused really so much as tentative and a bit afraid.  And when I saw the relationship that Doug and Sue had during the week I stayed with them, I knew that was something I wanted for myself.  So when I returned to Southern California, I never called Jim again.  He did call me once at the house on Cypress, but I was coolly distant on the phone, something I regret to this day.  Perhaps I sensed that we were on two different paths or, more likely, I was not ready to be who I was going to become in the next two decades and more.

I read in his obituary that he had been happily married for 44 years to the same woman (his wife appears to have predeceased him).  They had four children.  He remained at the same job as a Federal attorney for 35 years, missing only one day of work in all those years, after graduating from Cal State LA.

He was described as a loving and incredible father and husband.

When I knew him, he worked as an orderly in a hospital while he was going to East LA and was dating a woman doctor at the hospital.  I would remember him now and then during the intervening years and wondered where life had taken him after I ended our friendship.  (I had certainly been unkind, but I had been given so many mixed messages during our six-month friendship that perhaps I was also protecting myself.)

He was 72 when he died, having been born in 1945.  So, he was four years older than I and had already been in the Air Force before he came back from Vietnam and enrolled in college.

If he was genuinely happy living the life he pursued after we parted, I am glad to hear it.  He was a good soul and I am very sorry to learn of his passing.  He had a wonderful life but so, at long last, do I.  His was a more direct path, it appears, while my life went through so many very painful twists and turns.  In the words of poet Robert Frost,

"I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."

The whole team is on the cover of Volume 9.

RAINBOW ARC OF FIRE: A HOUSE DIVIDED

Because the series does have appeal to readers of all ages, I have revised this volume in the series, specifically Chapters 33, 34, and 62 to remove the adult content.  Any print-on-demand copies obtained from amazon.com will be for a general audience.  So are the digital downloads of this volume, also on amazon.com   The first edition copies, which I will again be giving away at Comic Con Palm Springs, will be the remaining copies of the Adult Audience Only version of the novel and will not be given to young people or kids.

The Wonders of VistaPrint

Using VistaPrint, I have created a Rainbow Arc of Fire bookmark and business-card-sized "hero cards".  Anyone who would like a set, just respond with an email to gregs5@hotmail.com and an address and I will mail them for free.

RAoF Hero Cards

During the Palm Springs Comic Con this past August, we gave away post cards to anyone who wanted them.  Images of the heroes as well as the last two volumes in the series.  They proved to be very popular, especially among the younger attendees.  Below are the 10 superhero images, obviously, that we used.

The mysterious duo.

The second wave.

The original duo.

The rebellious four.

Who Has Dominion? cover change

This is the only other cover to have a significant alteration from the original.  The coloring of the center image is much more like the original artist's conception.  The printing process for the original cover tended to lighten, and make more pink, that artwork.  That is now corrected.

Olive Branch cover change

Brian, my new cover artist, altered the front cover slightly.  However, it still retains the spirit of Anita's original design, including the image of the dove I photographed, with the olive branch in its beak, that adorns the entrance plaque to the White Cloud, Kansas, cemetery on the hill above the town where my Grandparents, my mother, Anita, my Uncle Robert, my Aunt Doris and her husband, "Hap", and many more Nuzum, Breeze, and Hook great grandparents and great uncles and great aunts reside.

The novel itself partly takes place in White Cloud, Kansas, where the main characters are attending the funeral of Aunt Doris and Uncle Hap in 2003.

It is here where members of the Rainbow Arc of Fire team learn of a potential planetary invasion as first North Korea, then China and Russia, are being systematically demilitarized by a mysterious craft from space.

Shattered Dawn cover art change

Anita, who created the cover art for all of my novels except the first, died a year or so ago. With her death, I lost access to all of the artwork from the novels.  I was able to get help recreating all of the previous covers, but not this one or the next.  We were forced to change the cover of Volume 9, SHATTERED DAWN.  But at least we were able to put all of the LGBT characters on the front cover with their superhero uniforms.

A House Divided now appropriate for a younger audience

The turquoise volume, A HOUSE DIVIDED, now has been severely edited for those three chapters.  It is now appropriate for a younger audience.

All titles now available as print-on-demand copies on amazon.com

The final two volumes in the series are now available in inexpensive paperback volumes ($4.50 to $7.00, depending upon the length of each book) on amazon as print-on-demand copies:

They have always been available as digital download Kindle editions for only $2.99 each, the cheapest amazon will allow.

Comic Con Palm Springs 2017

I attended the Palm Springs Comic Con over the weekend of 25-27 August, giving away over 1200 books from the series, to promote RAINBOW ARC OF FIRE as physical books.  Many adults, many adults with kids, and many kids stopped by and took full or partial sets of the books--it was hectic much of the time, with interest in the series and the lure of free books.  However, in re-reading A HOUSE DIVIDED over the past two days, I realize now that Chapters 33, 34 and 62 have explicit sexual content, meant to make a point in the novel but entirely inappropriate for younger readers.  I had not read any of my novels in more than a decade and had simply forgotten that these three chapters existed in A HOUSE DIVIDED, published in 2002.

If anyone is reading this blog and got full sets of the series, or knows of anyone who got this book, make certain that those three chapters at least are not seen by readers who would be offended or traumatized by strong language and extreme adult content.  Had I had the time before the Con to revisit the series, this volume especially, I would have warned anyone taking this volume about the content.  And I would certainly not have allowed any younger readers to have the book.

The remainder of the novel is fine for all readers, and I believe this is the most entertaining and expansive volume in the series.  (Rewriting that novel today, I would likely remove the adult content and make the point I was making in a different way.)

I deeply apologize for any problem that this might cause and hope that all parents do screen the contents of any books their children have exposure to.  

-Greg Sanchez