Everybody loves a lover, sang Doris Day. And my theory as to the reason February has only 28 days is because Cupid was exhausted after courting Valentines all those torrid nights. Couple more might have put global warming over the top. Makes for a spicey good month to peek between the covers, though.

Book covers that is. Just so happens, a friend asked me on Facebook about a long, lost romantic adventure novel of mine called DRUMMERS ON GLASS. Had to dig out old files to even remember it, and since it’s apropos for a Valentine’s Sullygram, I posted back that I’d summarize it here:

Begin with an aging itinerant knight of the road with a glass eye – Deacon by name. A chance meeting with a young ‘gator-poacher leads to the old man arranging an illegal sale of some hides. Using the favors of a New Orleans French Quarter queen to distract the naïve young poacher, the flim-flam Deacon collects both ends of their promised split and goes on the lam.

Escaping the city, he boards at a farm owned by a discrete but sexually frustrated widow. When her teen son is about to happen onto their tryst in an upstairs bedroom, the Deacon clambers half-dressed out the window onto a porch roof. His bare skin contacting the hot siding propels him off the edge into a tangle of lilac bushes. Drawn to the expansive fast talker, fatherless Burt is mesmerized by Deacon’s gift-of-gab as he explains away the circumstances. Soon the young man begins to idolize the older one, and the novel expands in three directions.

First there is Lemon Tree Park, a fictitious race track Deacon invents in order to manipulate his bookie operation. Second, we have ongoing attempts by Deacon to seduce the sexually frustrated but circumspect widow. Third, there is Burt’s romance with Lisa Kay Kane who loves his innocence and regards the flim-flam man with great suspicion.

Much to Lisa’s chagrin, Burt soon becomes a runner in the bookie operation owing to his indebtedness to Deacon. The indebtedness is because Burt’s dog Willie tries to join in another attempted assignation by the seasoned couple and ends up crunching Deacon’s glass eye when it pops out. Complicating this is Duke, Burt’s rival for Lisa, whose amorous challenges are covertly neutralized by Deacon. 

Tying plot threads into Gordian knots is Deacon’s specialty, and DRUMMERS ON GLASS intensifies with evolving schemes and new characters. Among the latter are Josh (a young black man befriended by Burt), a grieving bar owner, some hard street characters, and a savvy youngster with sickle cell anemia.

Tragedy, comedy and romance intertwine until it all comes full circle. There are ironies, revelations, tender initiatives and hard realities as Burt comes of age; and a strange juxtaposition that perhaps redeems the unflagging Deacon as he returns to the road at the end.

DRUMMERS ON GLASS was sold but never published. Readers may know, my career has been mainly through the New York traditional hard-cover giants through the 80s and 90s before ebooks and self-publishing changed the landscape. I wrote a 1-page proposal for DRUMMERS ON GLASS around 1988 and E.P. Dutton (Penguin empire) gave me $5,000 to grease the skids and write the novel. Alas, they demised their trade division soon thereafter, and DRUMMERS got hung up in a contractual war between Viking and, I think, NAL. I wanted it to go to Viking, and the thing dragged on for a year until I asked for a reversion of rights. A few years later, it was suggested that actress Jennifer Connelly could play the female role of Lisa Kay Kane if the book was sold to film. I found a letter I actually sent Connelly, and I remember missing a call from NYC late one night. It seemed to fit that it could have been from her, and it will haunt me forever that I simply waited for a second call that never came.   

Wish I could adequately share my own adventures here in Minnesota with you. Recent storms have produced a paradise for Nordic skiers like moi. Here’s how I put it in a recent social media post:

It was one of those once in 100 skis yesterday. Brambles of light reached out before I even left the car, each blazing beam a branch, a twig or a vine encased in white confection. Sharply etched silhouettes and shadows comingled with sunlight as if the forest had cast its soul onto the sweeping trailhead. Silence roared. I stepped into my bindings and in one stride was swallowed in a blaze of diamonds. Perfect rhythms engaged me from some primordial source I cannot name. When every muscle in your body is summoned in sync with the world around you, you know you are home.

Have you ever been inside a snow globe? The first thing you lose is time. There is only the moment you are in. The second thing you shed is your baggage from the ruts and routines of muggles. I take just my soul and the fantasy of my inamorata with me when I enter nature’s parlor, sharing what can only be shared with conjoined hearts and minds. Memories and dreams screen easily on pure white snow. The magical journey glides into the cosmic ether, circles numberless stars, and is tethered back to Earth. We return full senses five, awakened to every brilliant detail – a natural high so keen that every lesser part of life becomes wasteful. A few Crystal Cathedral photos are included below, but you cannot record something unrecordable. You can only live it, then stumble thumb-tongued ever-after trying to describe what is utterly beyond images and words.

Wishing you the same inspirations I enjoy in the photos below. Among them is a poster that Jan Fredrik Lockert, distinguished Norwegian author of a definitive Eagles’ coffee table book, sent. The poster refers to a song video Glenn Frey dedicated to me for use of a line from one of my novels. Click this link to see the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsoeuisdgNw  

Thomas "Sully" Sullivan