Jim Stallings--Published Works
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Seltzer LakeSynopsisTwo Babyboomer couples, pseudo-radicals from the 1960s, reunite in the 1990s to run a summer weekend, respite camp for troubled kids and their families in Massachusetts. SummarySeltzer Lake is an original screenplay built around the idealized dramatic structure of couples in pairs working together to find a balance in their boundary troubled lives. What we gradually learn is there is a dance, a kind of liberal social waltz, of twos and fours desperately seeking a cranky kind of tolerance for the stresses and strains on parents and young people in modern life. Despite the bourgeois and working class clashes on all levels, the jazzy energy of conflict in the end seems to achieve glimpses of redemption and resolution for those who truly enter the social dance of recovery and find a stronger center of gravity. |
Undisciplined Characters, an Amazon ShortJim Stallings Speaks About Undisciplined Characters:I first published a collection of short fictions called
Tales for Commuters & Other Time Travelers
Four Flash Fictions Published by Inditer.com (formerly an online literary magazine. ) Do not go to the link as it has been taken over by others. Instead, you can read these publications here: 4 impromptus: "Harriet", "A Primitive Replica", "Phillip Green" and "Lizard's Bluff" "Call them what you will - short stories for commuters and time travelers, satellite flak - Jim Stallings' cryptic calling cards are well worth the perusal, but don't miss your station!"
Jim's Recommendations:
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Falstaff's DiariesSynopsisRabelaisian, coarsely humorous, diary novel written during the late 1980s by Wolfgang Falstaff, Ph.D., a peripatetic scholar and philosophical gadfly from England and the Continent; this latter day roguish Falstaff explores and exploits American culture, while studying Eastern thought and seeking therapeutic relief for mid-life depression in a New England meditation center near Boston. SummaryThe European academic gadfly Doctor Wolfgang Falstaff settled in New England and the Boston area in the late 1980s for a period of treatment and study at the Transcendental Institute (better known as "The Farm") located in Marktree, Massachusetts. Throughout his two plus years of Rabelaisian diary notes, the reader may follow his seemingly erratic path through the dungeons of his depression and coarse humor, upward to the highlands of clarity and the saint-like balcony of Far Eastern cosmic views, rebounding into the black holes of nothingness and enlightenment--these clashes of realization can teach us all something about the terrains of postmodern consciousness and the treachery and exhilaration of risking it all for transcendent, nay, spiritual, realization. |
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A Necessary WomanSynopsisA Necessary Woman is a novel of romance, suspense and escape aboard a Caribbean cruise ship. SummaryA talented jazz pianist, Colin Doubleday, receives an invitation for a Caribbean cruise from Deirdre Weathers, one of the world's legendary femme fatale Hollywood stars. Deirdre wants Colin to spend a weekend, possibly longer, on her research ship the Ponce de Leon and collaborate on a song. Colin thinks he may have made a real advance in his club pianist musical career and wants to compose a song for her, eventually entitled "A Necessary Woman," an ironic reference to her iconic role of exemplifying a long creative life. But Deirdre and her partner, Dr. Jerome Bacon, a Nobel Prize-winning geneticist, have other plans for Colin and several other guests at Deirdre's annual fundraiser for the Peak Foundation...a research institute dedicated to the science of maximum-life extension. Colin quickly learns he's been invited for much more than his musical collaboration, and for he and several other passengers, including a young female Olympian, Elizabeth Thompson, a desperate weekend escape is on... In their joint efforts to escape the ship, Colin and Elizabeth learn the ship has disturbing, even horrifying, secrets lurking below decks, out of sight of the multimillionaire, international clientele on the comfortable upper decks. The result of years of tinkering with the genetic resources of human beings has produced a family of residual, fractional personality types, as well as other bizarre, pathetic anomalies. In their attempt to escape the grip of Deirdre Weathers, this maniacally ambitious show biz legend, Colin and Elizabeth and other resident victims must struggle for their very lives. In their incredible escape effort, Colin and Elizabeth discover a respect and love for each other that carries them beyond this tragic weekend and redefines the meaning of "a necessary woman." |
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At Witts InnSynopsisAt Witts Inn, a Kindle twitter novel, weaves personal & professional tales & gossip about a gang of writers & ghosts on retreat on foggy Monkfish Island off the coast of Maine. SummaryAt Witts Inn is a Kindle twitter novel. This mystery novel weaves together tales of writers on an island retreat in Maine, the mystical fog bound Monkfish Island. The improvisational novel began on about Memorial Day 2010 and ends on Labor Day weekend 2010. Mostly writers come to Witt's Inn to work on new books. They claim the island “drifts” under heavy fogs. The Inn's ownership is unknown. Rumors abound. At Witts Inn, a twitter novel composed of hundreds of small quantum texts of 149 characters, explores the offbeat island retreat's agendas of today's ambitious professional writers. Audit the gossip and sink into the foggy bottom of ghost-ridden Monkfish Island. |
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Difficult PeopleSynopsisThese 172 flash fictions are like spontaneous Zen portrait tales revealing destiny-imbued slice-of-life-moments or whole lives at a glance. DescriptionIn writing these flash fictions over the years I’ve found they are somewhat whimsical, somewhat blue, somewhat comical and in some cases the tales take a truly edgy, dark tragic turn. With the inherent need for immediate conflict in a short narrative, many of the stories scope out the war between the sexes, an endless battlefield of erotica and cleverness. (Be forewarned, many of these erotic tales require a tolerant, mature reader; they are not for squeamish or juvenile readers.) Because of their brevity, the success of the stories depends in part on seeing the character in depth; that’s why I sometimes refer to them as karmic tales or biographies or sometimes as karmic portraits, whether slice-of-life moments or whole life summaries. |
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Dispatches from TumbleweedSynopsisDispatches from Tumbleweed looks at life in the border region of San Antonio and South Texas through the prism of the Japanese haiku and finds nature transcending and unifying our conflicting human dualities. DescriptionA long-absent traveler’s return from the snowy northlands to sunny San Antonio, the capital of South Texas and Northern Mexico, inspires Dispatches from Tumbleweed. This “rolling stone” poet and his wife settle in a San Antonio urban barrio he whimsically nicknames Tumbleweed and through eighty-four prismatic haiku records his first year’s impressions for amigos left behind throughout America. In the generation the couple has been away, San Antonio, named for the patron saint of lost things and souls, has exploded into a large complex urban area absorbing the new but holding onto the old. Here moderns regardless of origin can find and celebrate the fiesta of their true selves and their common humanity. |
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Getting To Know YouSynopsisA man and woman go on what is perhaps one of the most extreme "blind dates" imaginable as they descend unwillingly into a desert-like Hell. DescriptionIn a fast-paced romantic thriller, a man and woman, first unknowingly and then unwillingly, starting from Las Vegas go on what is perhaps one of the most extreme “blind dates” imaginable as they are forced to descend into the Hell of triple-digit August heat in the Grand Canyon. Meet Vic Salem, self-help author, and Shelby Cotton, professional escort woman, as they desperately fight to save their lives in this tightrope walk of life and death trauma. In their dramatic effort to escape and seek revenge on their Vegas enemies, the descent into this exquisite Hades forces them to open up to each other and to the extraordinary primitive natures embedded in their survival instincts. Their search for life reaches vision quest intensity and delivers an astounding series of personal and mythic discoveries unveiling for them the deeper aspects of love, commitment, courage and the profundity of free will. |
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The Latest BloodshedSynopsisA momentous day catches up with a young South Georgia police detective whose life lies at a fateful crossroad. DescriptionJelly Lovejoy, a weary young police detective in Warden, Georgia, takes off a mental health day at the demand of his chief. Jelly decides to wander about his hometown and county talking with lover, friend and foe, listening for clues, current and legendary, about the mysteries that confront him and his hometown. Near the Florida line, semi-tropical Warden struggles with festering social problems beneath the postcard veneer of a sleepy old county courthouse, a restored downtown commercial square and the apparently prosperous retail franchise sprawl of its outskirts. Immigration of Mexican field labor has largely replaced black and white workers on the rich agricultural lands of surrounding Strickland County. Large farm corporations, remotely owned, are buying small family farms unable to compete globally. Old and new social issues jockey for local attention; while overt crimes of racism fall, thefts of property and acts of personal violence rise; an epidemic of drug use, including deadly, homemade methamphetamine, scars the police blotter weekly; turf wars between ethnic drug dealers claim lives in ruthless attacks. Detective Jelly Lovejoy has reached a professional and personal crossroads, and commitment questions, long held in suspension, now fall to earth with the swift relentlessness of gravity. |
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 Buy Devil's Hopper online (paperback or hardcover): |
Devil's HopperSynopsisIn the Massachusetts hamlet of Marktree, the discovery of a colonial era, mummified couple sets off startling discoveries that threaten to turn the lives of its citizens inside out. DescriptionIn the new millennium hamlet of Marktree, Massachusetts (just west of Boston), the Pongawog Indian tribe has gained the right to dock a Long House casino boat on their sacred territory along the meandering Charles River. During excavation of the dock, two bodies are exhumed from a cold spring bog. Their mysterious appearance sets off a chain of strange events that unravels the history of the town and turns the lives of its citizens inside out. Key to this mystery and its solution are a spirit circle of psychics operating through the local Unitarian parish; like their spiritualist ancestors they attempt to solve the mystery of the bog couple through psychic means combined with historical research. History recapitulates itself age after age; and as the ancient wisdom warns: the sins of the fathers will be visited upon the children. Yet carrying on in the old way of hard scrabble Yankees, these citizens of Marktree muster up like the Minutemen of old, and press on through the round of four seasons into an uncertain, but perhaps redeemable, way of life. |
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Buy Hunters in the Fog online (paperback or hardcover): |
DescriptionDuring WWII my father kept a diary during his 300 combat hours and 81 missions as a decorated P-47 fighter pilot in England. This book celebrates and honors my father and mother's participation in that difficult time. The screenplay Hunters in the Fog looks into the mysteries of luck and fate in war. Why is it certain pilots, regardless of their refined skills in war, fall victim to death, chopped short in youth? My father turns over that question in his diary. He notes the near misses to himself and other pilots, the mysterious accidents, the horror of fiery death and the strange beauty and suspense of aerial warfare. With his advice, and inspired in part by the classic characters of Dumas' The Three Musketeers, we fashioned a similar set of personalities who must survive 300 hours of deadly aerial combat to complete their tour of duty. |
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 Buy Neon Nirvana online: |
Neon NirvanaSynopsisA romance of the New Age set in Texas, a screenwriter and an artist discover through his past life regressions that their past and future destinies are mysteriously intertwined. DescriptionIn what Joseph Campbell might call doing creative mythology, in Neon Nirvana novelist and anthropologist Jim Stallings entered the popular New Age world of "past life regression" therapy; the narrative frames the encounter of a man and woman at a New Age summer retreat in Texas...a screenwriter seeking new directions in his life who is aided by a psychic artist. The novel uses the ancient mythic plot of the visit to the underworld (here the unconscious stored memories of past lives), as Yvonne Cienfuegos guides Isaac Blackford into his karmic past through his descent into his "life dreams"... Through this lucid dreaming journey together Isaac and Yvonne discover their soulmate destinies are mysteriously and redemptively intertwined. |
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 Buy Tales for Commuters & Other Time Travelers online: |
Tales for Commuters & Other Time TravelersSynopsisCaptivating blues zen-like tales, impromptus and stories for actual commuters or just life's travelers with only minutes to devote to insightful destiny-imbued fictions. In Tales for Commuters & Other Time Travelers all readers are metaphysical commuters through time and experience; and in the new millennium's overbooked modernity these blues, zen-like stories, ranging in reading time from one minute impromptus to quarter-hour stories, offer wide-ranging reflective pleasure, both whimsical and serious, during the kaleidoscopic betwixts and betweens of our daily lives. |
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back
in 2002 and still in print. This was aimed at the busy reader who maybe
had a bit of reading time on a train, plane, vacation or perhaps bedtime
reading. The pieces in this new forthcoming collection, Undisciplined
Characters (working title), also range in reading times from a minute or
two up to perhaps five minutes, yet convey complete tales about troubled
and troubling people. Here the author provides an inexpensive sampler of
eight of the 171 stories, in e-format (.49 cents).
Copyright © 2002 Jim Stallings.
All rights reserved.
Designed and Maintained by RM Stelting.
Updated:
26 Jan 2012