Tail Gunner To Be Published — Black Sheep #103

Tail Gunner, B-17G, Liberty Belle

I received word last week that a short story very close to my heart and soul is to be published in a small fanzine/newsletter, called Black Sheep (issue #103, October/November I believe that will be).

Copies of issue #103 may be purchased at:

Black Sheep

Madelon Rose Logue

3868 Centinela Avenue #12, Los Angeles,
CA 90066-4459

“MRL,” as she is affectionately known, does not so much charge for issues as request donations (her newsletter is typically about 20, 8.5 x 11 pages).

Now, there’re no links to it here (except for this one), because Black Sheep is a homegrown publication whose readership very much likes its homegrown feel and heft (there was a survey a couple years back or so). It is all done by hand, and has a circulation of only about some 100-200. Now it is a fanzine…to a system of beliefs you don’t need to subscribe to…but within its pages my short story will appear. Some things have neat labels, and some don’t. I prefer to think of my beliefs as not having a neat pigeonhole. But, since you’re curious, it centers around creating your own reality (yeah, I obviously have issues there–maybe for a later posting?), and I’ll leave it at that, because the point of this post is to announce the albeit “tiny-press” publication of a short story that means a lot to me, and of which I really wanted to share with the world.

Or another really wanted me to share with the world….

But either way (and among other reasons), we all write to be read, right?

I’ve documented my journey for “Tail Gunner” in a handful of posts (you can start here). This Liberty Belle link has the links to the other posts. The condensed version of the journey is that one day I felt really close to another version of me I feel used to be: a B-17 Flying Fortress tail gunner in WWII. It sparked a whole bunch of synchronicities that came together as this very Twilight Zone-like story.

Getting this story published was never about the money. So few things I do ever are. It was about giving a dead guy some air time, if you’ll pardon the pun. About acknowledging his life, death, and continued existence elsewhere. Giving him some valuable energy that I think has, indeed, helped him out–and vice versa.

I don’t much feel him around anymore. I think that’s a good thing.

We all have to move on. Every now and then I do still feel him, but during the creation of this story, I kept running into him, running into all manner of synchronistic material related to the story, like the Memphis Belle movie, the Liberty Belle, third-party talk about ex-WWII B-17 pilots, etc. “Tail Gunner” is one of my favorite stories, and the Black Sheep seemed perfectly suited to its reincarnational aspects, given its raison d’être. “Tail Gunner” explains so much…the odd feelings I’d experienced over the length of my current life. How I’ve always “felt something” when in the back of large planes, or the curious “outlier” experience of mine, playing around in-flight with the refueling rig in a KC-135 so many years ago. How I’ve been so weirdly taken by all pictures of B-17s (no other aircraft hits me anywhere close to how the “Fort” does). Pictures like these…I am transfixed, speechless, and spellbound.

It just all fits.

And every time I’ve read this story, I’ve shed a tear. No exaggeration. Emotion wells up. Not sure how much longer that’ll last, but for now…it does.

I’m not asking that anyone believe as I do, reincarnation–like any other system of belief–has its believers, but real or imagined, I think it does pose a distinct fascination among many. This was my attempt in dealing with what came across my emotional landscape one day, while staring up into a ceiling fan. So, I hope you’ll take the time to send a couple a bucks to MRL’s way, read the story, keep an open mind, and see if “Tail Gunner” doesn’t take you to another place and time and stir within you any unusual “memories” or feelings….

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy….