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Apr 10, 8:09pm

Passion, jealousy in Hermosa Beach
by Austin Siegemund-Broka
Published April 3, 2008

Scott Michael Gallagher sits in front of Jamba Juice, his red Border Collie at his feet, while 9-year-old son Dylan sucks a Chocolate Moo’d in a nearby chair. The sun shines through a thin blanket of clouds as mothers survey their shopping lists on their way onto Vons.

It’s a typical scene for beach cities locals, but fans of Gallagher’s writing will know it from somewhere else: his novel Geneva, a semi-autobiographical account of life, love, and loss set mainly in Hermosa.

Gallagher, 43, has lived in Hermosa for over 20 years. In that time he’s pursued his writing avidly, raised a kid, and touched the community on many levels. Geneva, his second book and first novel, plays greatly off his community life.

“Men and women all read it, and say ‘Wow, that sounds like something that happened to me.’ So yeah, it’s fiction, but semi-autobiographical at points,” said Gallagher.

Geneva is a down-to-earth work about a simple beach-loving Hermosa local whose random brush with a beautiful young woman leads to romance, marriage, and a child. As the story progresses, bitterness and resentment begin to grow between the couple, threatening the life they’ve built together.

Gallagher’s approach to storytelling is direct. His first-person descriptions of growing love and hate are well-crafted, not overly-stylized, and capture an authentic “beach bum” tone. The novel explores the beauty and the foibles of life and love.

It’s possible to misjudge Geneva by its somewhat sexy cover, which does little to convey the range of themes that are explored within.

“It looks like a romance novel, and it has nothing to do with that,” he said. “It’s about life, passion, love, jealousy, feelings – you know, it’s a human story.”

Gallagher describes the work as “literary fiction,” citing as influences not William Shakespeare and Danielle Steel, but Ernest Hemmingway and Franz Kafka.

‘Love to write’
Gallagher’s start in writing was modest, beginning with a few pieces on the Internet and some published poetry. But with a little perseverance and some careful thought, Gallagher hopes he is developing his product into a maturing entity.

“I [started] with poetry at about 23, like most people do, and then I realized I wanted to expand,” Gallagher said with a chuckle. “I love to write, and when I don’t write, it just feels like there’s something missing there.”

Geneva came in 2007 after four years of work. Gallagher said he based the book on actual events that occurred in Hermosa about 1996, which gives the book both its detailed story and its close ties to the community.

“It took four, four-and-a-half years to write because there were a lot of chapters I had to get rid of and a lot of editing. The basic story was there, and I just had to know what to put in, and that takes time,” said Gallagher.

Gallagher himself was introduced to the beach cities in 1983. He followed the footsteps of his father, who did business in Manhattan Beach and finally settled in Hermosa. Gallagher owned two video stores – Hermosa Video on Hermosa Avenue and Manhattan Video in Manhattan Beach – perhaps ironic for a budding writer of books.

“My dad worked out here in Manhattan Beach; I was born in Philadelphia but I came here in ’83 and stayed ever since,” Gallagher said.

And he put down roots.

“I was commissioner of basketball about three years ago, and I’ve coached baseball, basketball and soccer every year but this year,” said Gallagher. “But besides the video store and doing stuff with the kids, I know a lot of people just from living here so long.”

With the publication of Geneva, Gallagher is looking forward to a May reissue by the Amazon imprint Book Surge of his 365-day meditation book Search Your Self, under a new title, Words of Wisdom. The book, originally published in 2000, includes contemplation-provoking quotes from sources as varied as Gandhi, Rousseau, Bertrand Russell, Blake, Maslow, Jung and the Bible.

His next writing project is kept under his hat.

“I am going to write another novel,” said Gallagher. “I have two ideas, but I’m not sure yet, so like Hemmingway said, it’s bad luck to talk about it.”

Geneva by Scott Michael Gallagher, 404 pages, paperback, $24.95. Available at Amazon.com and bookstores. E

http://www.amazon.com/Geneva-Scott-Michael-Gallagher/dp/142419184X/ref...

Mar 13, 12:25am    (1 review)  writing  http://www.amazon.com/Geneva-Scott-Micha...

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Feb 15, 8:52pm

From THE LOVE POEMS OF MARICHIKO

VII

Making love with you
Is like drinking sea water.
The more I drink
The thirstier I become,
Until nothing can slake my thirst
But to drink the entire sea.


XII

Come to me, as you come
Softly to the rose bed of coals
Of my fireplace
Glowing through the night-bound forest.


XXV

Your tongue thrums and moves
Into me, and I become
Hollow and blaze with
Whirling light, like the inside
Of a vast expanding pearl.


XXXVIII

I waited all night.
By midnight I was on fire.
In the dawn, hoping
To find a dream of you,
I laid my weary head
On my folded arms,
But the songs of the waking
Birds tormented me.


XLV

When in the Noh theater
We watched Shizuka Gozen
Trapped in the snow,
I enjoyed the tragedy,
For I thought,
Nothing like this
Will ever happen to me.


LV

The night is too long to the sleepless.
The road is too long to the footsore.
Life is too long to a woman
Made foolish by passion.
Why did I find a crooked guide
On the twisted paths of love?


LX

Chilled through, I wake up
With the first light. Outside my window
A red maple leaf floats silently down.
What am I to believe?
Indifference?
Malice?
I hate the sight of coming day
Since that morning when
Your insensitive gaze turned me to ice
Like the pale moon in the dawn.

--Kenneth Rexroth

Feb 15, 8:31pm

                                                                  

                                                                                          On the Road
                                              
A pain stabbed my heart as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world.

Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.

My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them.

Write in recollection and amazement for yourself.

I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.

--Jack Kerouac

Feb 8, 11:50am

A Lyric for Dancers




We are gathered together on this page
To compose a song, a lyric for dancers.

Displaying our free form, we are as the stars:
Twinkling, scattered, mysteriously distant,
Yet purposeful and near.

Some nights we can’t be seen at all,
While others we are so intimately close
You can get lost in our arrangements.

Read into us when and what you will.
We won’t explain, we won’t apologize.

Take what is there and wonder at it,
And sing it, sing it until it becomes your song and
Unrecognizable as any other movement but yours,

Like your eyes.
This is our unselfish mission,
This is our night-sky-poem for you,

The dancers.

copyright1998 Scott Michael Gallagher

Feb 8, 11:34am

Don't judge a book by it's cover--American Proverb



I am like a book, with pages that have stuck together for want of use: my mind needs unpacking and the truths stored within must be turned over from time to time, to be ready when occasion demands.--Seneca

People get nothing out of books but what they bring to them.-- George Bernard Shaw

A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted. You should live several lives while reading it.--William Styron

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.--Francis Bacon

If there's a book you really want to read but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.--Toni Morrison

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Feb 6, 3:58am

From Notre Dame de Paris 


She was not tall, but her slender and elastic figure made her appear so. Her skin was brown, but one guessed that by day it would have the warm golden tint of the Andalusian and Roman women. Her small foot too, so perfectly at ease in its narrow, graceful shoe, was quite Andalusian. She was dancing, pirouetting, whirling on an old Persian carpet spread carelessly on the ground, and each time her radiant face passed before you, you caught the flash of her great dark eyes.


The crowd stood round her open-mouthed, every eye fixed upon her, and in truth, as she danced thus to the drumming of a tambourine held high above her head by her round and delicate arms, slender, fragile, airy as a wasp, with her gold-laced bodice closely moulded to her form, her bare shoulders, her gaily striped skirt swelling out round her, affording glimpses of her exquisitely shaped limbs, the dusky masses of her hair, her gleaming eyes, she seemed a creature of some other world.


--victor Hugo

Feb 6, 3:41am

SHE WAS A PHANTOM OF DELIGHT

SHE was a Phantom of delight
When first she gleamed upon my sight;
A lovely Apparition, sent
To be a moment's ornament;
Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair;
Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair;
But all things else about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful Dawn;
A dancing Shape, an Image gay,
To haunt, to startle, and way-lay . . .

--William Wordsworth

Feb 6, 3:06am

Dreams have as much influence as actions.

Every soul is a melody which needs renewing.

In reading, a lonely quiet concert is given to our minds; all our mental faculties will be present in this symphonic exaltation.



The flesh, alas, is sad, and I have read all the books.

You don't make a poem with ideas, but with words.

--Stephane Mallarme