Johnny Rocket & Those Bustling '20s ... Finding Marble for Mr. Zelensky

By Billy Orton

WHAT DOES THIS NOVEL MEAN?

As quagmires unfold, ripples splash even the calmest shores. It’s Summer 2028. Those Bustling ’20s. Four graduates now face their own quagmire, as they celebrate their biggest choices in a tiny town, as flames rise and neighbors must stand together.

AND FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE....

Because this book is written in “real time,” the author includes the press release which announced that the first half was done, and, like life, it got tweaked and morphed by the fluid nature of reality.

NOVELIST FINISHES HALF A BOOK AS CRITIQUE OF RUSSIAN INVASION OF UKRAINE

(Long Beach, CA) – April 8, 2022 – An obscure novelist who struggled for six years after a massive stroke to finish his fourth novel has managed in the first six weeks of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to crank out 20,000 words on the rippling effects of Mr. Putin’s quagmire.

Set in June 2028, the opening seven chapters of “Johnny Rocket & Those Bustling ’20s... Finding Marble for Mr. Zelensky” tells of four high school graduates facing their own quagmire, as impacts of a new Cold War reach the calm waters of Maine.

“I couldn’t just do nothing,” said Billy Orton, who finished three novels by 2015, when a stroke and brain surgery kept him at St. Mary’s Medical Center, in Long Beach, for a month.

Calling 2016 his hardest year, the former press secretary and PR hack counted himself as the “luckiest soul in America” that year, for while everyone else had to endure the “most miserable awful terrible election in history,” he simply had to learn to walk and talk and reach again.

Incredibly lucky in physical recovery, his hardest challenge proved writing. After starting several novels, it wasn’t until 2022 that he proved able to produce “No One Cries for Monå Lizé,” a romantic comedy of two women who win an essay contest and must drive across the country during the outbreak of COVID to take the keys of a dilapidated hotel in a tiny town in Maine.

A couple weeks after finishing the book, Orton turned to fiction as his tool to confront the Russia invasion of Ukraine. Starting February 24th, he produced 7,000 words in days, to observe that the war’s impacts will ripple across time to change everything, from life in small towns to Republican candidates running for president.

Part One of the novel starts in Maine, using characters from Orton’s fourth book, and includes one teen wishing to enlist in the Army while another wants to attend Columbia University.

Weaving military numbers and strategic changes of the war, the first half wraps up in Manhattan, where the teenagers get drawn into a showdown by two Republicans – Governor DeSantis, of Florida, and Ivanka, the former First Daughter – fighting for the 2028 nomination.

But even fiction cannot be written in “real time” without being fundamentally impacted – to quote Winston Churchill – “because of the extreme urgency and rigor of events.”

When the author began work for chapter six – on March 26th – he intended to put the two Republicans into an epic debate at Madison Square Gardens, but everything got tweaked when the real president delivered a major address in Warsaw on the arrival of a new Cold War. The chapter instead morphed into an address to the nation by President Gavin Newsom.

“I created an international incident on the Danube,” said Orton, who invented a crisis, with a Russian warship ramming into an American destroyer in the river that feeds into the Black Sea. Now, rather than a showdown debate, the GOP contenders play political patty cake and plan to flip a coin on who will face President Newsom. “History is not static.”

Now done with the first half of the novel, Orton aims to finish the book by Election Day 2022.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Billy Orton
• Release date: Feb 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005271718

Billy Orton

Bill Orton is a writer who spent 25 years working for politicians and organized labor, but, after a stroke, became the luckiest soul in America, as now his only job title is "obscure novelist."

Book preview

Johnny Rocket & Those Bustling ’20s

Finding Marble for Mr. Zelensky

Novel by Billy Orton

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2022 Billy Orton

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please visit Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer to purchase your copy. Thank you for respecting the work of this author.

What does this novel mean?

When drips of a quagmire fall, the ripples roll across time to reach the calmest shores. Welcome to Those Bustling ’20s… a booming economy, despite inflation and uncertainty. It’s Summer 2028 and four high school graduates now each face their own quagmire, while their town prepares for the Midsummer’s Eve Bonfire, for as flames burn the decks in Mr. Putin’s war, neighbors must choose to stand together at the water’s edge.

What is Post Gender fiction?

This author is likely not alone in believing that gender simply shouldn’t matter in fiction. Perhaps this series of five novels can coin post gender as a phrase that pushes aside wokeism and sexism, to promote fiction that paints three-dimensional characters who are defined not by the body and clothing, but by their words and deeds. In these novels, the romantic figures suggest that love and courage must outrank hatred and domination. Lori Lewis and December Carrera met because of a mutual friend, fall in love, argue like any couple, get married, and have a kid. By simply being normal, they learn parenting is tough and also life’s greatest reward. As the real world is ripped apart by erupting hatred and unbending division, perhaps the best this book offers is a prayer at the dinner table, words by a retired Army Sergeant – Liz Roccé – to say that while The Omnipotent One can see clearly into the human soul, our own eyes stay clouded by harsh judgment.

Art on the Cover

The author thanks The Mirror of London for the Feb 2022 map depicting the pending invasion of Ukraine. The art and coverage by Defense and Security Editor Chris Hughes can be found at The Mirror, and is well worth visiting. Maps suggest that victory over tyranny rests in the hands of each Hero, for – like London – Kiev can take it.

THE CHARACTERS

The Four High School Graduates

Jonathan Roccé IV, the older brother who wants to escape

Jimmy Roccé, the younger brother who will never leave

Nichole Bland, the town’s barista who feels no hope

Riley Lewis Carrera Beach, the aspiring zoologist

Riley’s Parents

December Carrera – The Mother, Essayist and Hotel Owner

Lori Lewis – The Father, Olympian and Soldier

The Roccé Family

Elizabeth ‘Liz’ Roccé – The Mother, Soldier and Sculptor

Otto Gebbermann – The Father who met Liz at the Synagogue

Liz’s Uncle, Sergeant Major Oscar ‘Bear’ Roccé

Politicians Touring the Nation Together

Lucille Lugar, of the Indiana Lugars, who pulls Johnny around

Ivanka – The Hot-Chick-in-Chief, and the former First Daughter

Florida Governor DeSantis, who gets told Don’t Say WTF

Those Doing Their Maine Thing

The 25-year-old volunteer fireman who thinks he’s King of the Fish

The Representative of the County Board of Education

The Owner of Armistice Coffee

And Those on the Path to New York City

Bobby McGee – The Comedian Working during Those Bustling ’20s

Filippé, son of Volaré, two gorgeous men that show the meaning of love

Army Technical Sergeants rounding up new soldiers

A Private First Class popping corn with recruits

Part One – Looking for Luck

Some towns are so small they are known not by their name, but, instead, by roads or monuments, or, whether aircraft carries are being built near by, or, in this case, by an old hotel, for even during the warm summer days of Those Bustling ’20s, memories fade away, except of monuments and hotels, because it seems that as wars rage, the snow of life blankets all that once you could see.

Chapter 1 – Those Bustling ’20s

"And I’ve also brought a voter registration card for each graduate, because Mainers do their own thing, said the representative of the County Board of Education, distributing high school diplomas, certificates of recognition from local politicians and forms to vote and to register with the draft to the four teenagers who had been educated by one teacher hired by the County for classes held in a single converted hotel room of the Harbor House Inn, where three of the students lived with their families, who either own or manage the hotel that had been built a century earlier to house shipyard workers during the Great War and to lodge injured Doughboys returning from Over There to get long-term military medical treatment for survivors of The War to End All Wars."

* * *

So 2028 is the first election we get to vote in, said Riley Lewis Carrera Beach, son of the owner of the hotel, December Carrera, who had won the Harbor House Inn by her essay on love, devotion and marriage, in a contest held by the Maine Tourism Board, which had sought a good PR angle to dump the abandoned hotel into the hands of some lucky winners who could bring new life to a tiny town, in a tiny county, of a small state.

Doesn’t matter to me if Gavin Newsom gets reelected, said Jimmy Roccé, to his older brother, as each of the three shouldered a stack of wood they had chopped to carry into the Harbor House Inn, to prepare for the new tradition of midnight meals at the hotel after the Midsummer’s Eve Bonfire. It’s not like politics touches my life.

I ain’t registering to vote, said Jonathan Roccé IV, who carried the name of the first family member born in the United States after the family fled another pogrom, and who earned his stripes Over There, during the Great War, and who lived two years after the Armistice at the Harbor House Inn to recuperate from a gas attack that had almost crippled him. I’m going to New York City and change my life.

I got invited by Dr. Jacob Koopman of Columbia University to tour his Earth and Environmental Engineering department, said Riley, proudly, struggling to open the door to the lobby of the hotel. I’ll become a zoologist.

You both go and let Bobby McGee shack you up in New York, said Jimmy, easily swinging open the door, and leading the trio across the huge lobby to the massive fireplace, to stack a pile of wood as tall as any of them. This’ll be my home forever.

Not me, Brutha, said Jonathan, who everyone in town just calls Johnny Rocket. I’m going to Times Square and enlist, like every true Rock.

What about the war? asked Riley, looking nervously, to make sure no parent was in the lobby.

They’ll send him ‘Over There’ to fight and die, said Jimmy.

Then I’ll kill me some Cossacks, said Johnny, and make Vladimir Putin cry.

* * *

You’re sure not eating much, Johnny, said Liz Roccé, to the oldest of her identical twins. The retired Army Sergeant had spent every summer of her childhood staying in the Harbor House Inn and used every military leave to build her growing family there after she married Otto Gebbermann in a synagogue while stationed in Germany, and later would stay in the shack called The Barracks that her uncle, Bear Roccé, also a retired Sergeant, had built after the hotel had finally closed, so that her military brats could join her in carving marble from the family’s quarry for a monument that now guards the hotel that the new owner asked Liz to help manage and revitalize.

He doesn’t know how lucky he is, said Jimmy, as the Roccé family sat with Riley Beach and his parents, who, since June 2020, had eaten every meal together at the largest dinner room table in the County.

Johnny scowled at his brother, but said nothing, at he fumed at the table that seats twenty and which had been the gathering point for shipyard workers of two world wars and two cold wars, and a mess hall for injured soldiers, and the hotel that neighbors used to host visiting family, or a honeymoon stop for wedding couples finding new lives. When COVID-19 retreated and another cold war flared, the Bustling ’20s filled the table, as the region’s economic exploded from Gavin Newsom’s push of another 600 ship navy, including constructing of two aircraft carriers in Portland Maine.

Since we’re gonna be really busy, Johnny probably just wants to run away, added Jimmy, tossing the trap of luring his brother to announce his intention to enlist. I’ll never leave til I beat Bear at rowing, which’ll be never.

"Especially since