Rereading the classics

A few books stay on my keeper shelf forever. Others have wandered away (NoMoreLendingBooks!), leaving only their memories. Some, I mean to reread and analyze. Others, I can practically quote them verbatim. In that category:

 Theophilis North by Thornton Wilder. What a charmer. A writing style I will never achieve.

 Falling Woman by Pat Murphy. So cool, even years after the first reading blew me away.

Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer is going to get an analysis - I'm going to outline the structure - because it's so unusual.

Anne Tyler's A String of Blue Thread is going to get the same treatment. The death of the narrator in the middle of the book threw me a loop, but she manages to weave her back into the story in the second half with effortless style. I don't think I can do that, so I need to learn how Tyler pulled it off. Or if she didn't, and I'm just hoodwinked.

Laura Kinsale's Flowers from the Storm. What a hero. What a heroine. What an incredible opening. I still see certain scenes, and I haven't read the book in a long time. Must go find it now. . .

There are many others, but these always jump into my head first thing when I'm looking for a book to pick me up and give me something wonderful all over again.

Oh, and of course, Pride and Prejudice. Or as it's referred to in our house, P&P. Wish I owned stock in that book. It has paid me incredible pleasure dividends over the many years since I first found it.  Dialogue to kill for.





The skies are gray

but it's coming - that elusive sprite, Spring!!! Feels like a Mamas and Papas song, right? Anyway, I'm busy buying out the greenhouse store, collected a new pair of garden gloves, and my snips and trowel are already in action. Yep, I'm getting happy. Humming Pharrell Williams as I dig.

I found a doll stuck in a box the other day, a Madam Alexander Cissy model that was my mother's. I remember my father giving it to her in the mid-50s for Christmas. The doll has red hair, wears a lacy teddy and thigh-high stockings, and is in perfect shape. I wish I knew the backstory, but I don't. Maybe my mom had wanted a doll like her when she was a girl, and never gotten her. Still, it's odd to think of my father, the army officer, buying this sexy looking doll for his wife, the mother of his two children.  She was very proper, my mother. And she kept that doll through moves all across the world, until she passed away.

When I was 8, I got a Cissy doll for Christmas, too. Mine is named Helen, and she has a wardrobe filled with clothes my mother and grandmother made for her. She had high heels that laced around her ankles, pearl studs in her ears, and a white satin evening gown with a bunny fur wrap.  She was the most beautiful doll I ever received, and I, too, still have her. Helen, however, is in much rougher shape than my mom's doll. Helen saw a lot of imaginative play and hair combing and clothes-changing. We are still buddies, even though she resides in a pink doll case. I can't imagine parting with her. 

Especially since my eldest daughter looks just like her.

Running away

I casually mentioned to a friend that, if the weather didn't improve substantially (when will the &* sun come out?), I was getting in my car and heading for Key West. She said to let her know, she'd be there. At that moment, I almost threw a toothbrush in my computer bag, loaded up the laptop, and headed for the gas station for a full tank.

This interminable winter (no daffodils, really???), has given me some inspiration, however. I read an amazing YA book years ago about what happens when the moon disappears and the subsequent climate change kills all crops and descends the Earth into freezing darkness.  The images are vivid in my mind, to this day. But what happens if the climate change is a gradual chilling, not global warming? It's so subtle, we are in trouble as a planet before we know it. It's not a catastrophic Ice Age, but endless summers of cool rain and pale, sickly grass, wet grain, and sweaters. As a metaphor, it works. Society has grown so hot with conflict, it has to cool down somehow. Mother Earth takes matters into her own hands.

Where this will lead, I'm not entirely sure. But I find the premise is intriguing, and as these things go, people will begin populating this dystopian world and hopefully, tell me their tales.  I hope I like them enough to care what happens next.

If not, there's always Key West.

A long thirty days

Not long after I posted the picture of Julia Cabaniss Hayden, my brother-in-law died.  Hours later, in fact, much to our shock and dismay, he passed away quietly in his sleep. No real physical reason for his passing, the doctors said. They couldn't figure out what sent him on his way to his next experience. They were as shocked as we were. He was only 66.

I am sure he decided it was time to go onward. I believe we have to give our consent to pass into the next phase of our existence, and he was worried that his time here was going to become hampered and uncomfortable. He didn't want to be a burden on anyone. Diabetes was getting him down, and he was tired of fooling with it. Two days earlier, he'd had to put down one of his beloved Cornish Rex cats. Nothing felt right. So he made up his mind to leave us. With no wife, no children, and a cold, gray winter, he must have felt as if checking out was the sane thing .

We buried him in the family plot in Illinois, where the deep snow and ice had to be plowed aside to make room for him. I told him he'd better run when he sees me coming in the next life, because he's in deep trouble with me.

Believe me, next time I see him, he's going to get a piece of my mind. A big chunk of it, in fact. We miss him. A lot.

Julia Cabaniss Hayden

Found this daguerreotype totally by accident on Flickr. She's related to my father's mother, through the Henings of Virginia.  My grandmother and her siblings always talked about Aunt Julia of Smithfield, and I have some silver spoons with Hayden engraved on them. It's amazing to see such a lifelike likeness of someone who is just a name on a genealogical tree.  Mr.Hayden was her second husband - her first, J.D. Wilson, died. My great aunt Dolly's real name was Julia Cabaniss Batten, in fact.

What a pretty lady.

First Drafts and the Harper Lee Saga

I have to admit, the news of a new (old) Harper Lee novel sent me into a heavenly place. How wonderful is this, I thought. Then I had a second, third, and even fourth think, and I'm getting goosebumps. Not the good kind. The creepy kind.

So I pulled out the copy I own of Shields' unauthorized biography of Ms. Lee, titled MOCKINGBIRD.  It's well written and feels very grounded, and I haven't read it in a while. So I looked up the pages about Mockingbird's evolution, and what I read reinforced the icky goosebumps.

Go Set the Watchman was a first draft, all right. The agent Maurice Cairn and his wife, Annie Laurie Williams, who agented film rights, saw it as a great start, but anecdotal with no story arc. It needed rewriting, so Ms. Lee rewrote and rewrote, for two and a half years. She produced the best book she could, and it was To Kill a Mockingbird.  I'd been wondering at this news of a "newly discovered" manuscript, when it was clear the agents and Lippincott's editor, Tay Hophof (? I'm sure I've misspelled the editor's name) knew and had read Watchman. Why hadn't they published it after Mockingbird, especially since they were dying for a follow-up novel?

I'll tell you why. First drafts are usually so ugly only their mothers can love them. Then they go through growing pangs and the awkward phase, until they mature enough to be shown to the world. I have first drafts hidden in the attic that I should take out and burn. My bet is, Watchman is that first draft that was filled with passion but plot problems. We've all been there.

Anything by Nelle Harper Lee is worth its weight in gold. I get that. But after years of refusing to put out another book, I can't help but wonder what changed Ms. Lee's mind. 

I can only come to ugly conclusions, none of which taint Ms. Lee, but only those she has trusted.  I would hate to learn who it is, singular or plural, because the wrath of the reading public can be vicious.  If only it doesn't taint Ms. Lee's literary heritage and well deserved stature as a great writer and social conscience.

I pray that is so.

Darkroom

Jane Lewis photographs the dead.  Inside, she's half-dead herself.  Burying her past will be harder than it would be to lower her into the ground in a box.
Chapter 1

 

     Staring at the decomposing body, swelling like living tissue with insects, flesh slipping into the dirt as another bone sank into the loam, Jane forced herself to do what she’d come to do.  Shoot the dead woman.

Sliding the glass into the box she’d made just for this project, she draped a black cloth over her head, the camera, and her body.  Wearing deepest black for this shoot made sense.  No one else was mourning these newly dead bodies.

     Sliding the cap off the lens, she held her breath as pale light poured into the camera, onto the silver, forging images of the decomposing body of a woman of an age that no longer mattered.  The corpse’s flesh had sunk into a filmy coating for bones that would last a while longer, as long as the wild animals were kept at bay by the Body Farm’s razor wire fence.  Gazing through the lens, Jane counted slowly until the image was firmly planted on the glass.  The lens cover slid back into place with no hint of anxiety.

     Jane’s hands shook as she folded the black drape and dropped it into the back of her Suburban.  She had to expose the plate quickly.  Slipping into protective gloves, she began the chemical wash that would turn this nameless, faceless body into art.  A silver plate she’d call “Beauty from Ashes No. 3.”  As the image developed, she had to bite her lip to keep from shouting.  She knew she had ‘it’ right this time.  This poor woman, unknown and unburied, had been relegated to the scientists after the medical examiner finished with her and no one stepped up to claim the remains. What was left of her red hair fanned the ground. Though her final bits and pieces would one day be excessed to the crematory, she’d live on as long as Jane’s shimmery, ethereal picture survived. 

     “I won’t forget you,” Jane murmured as she fixed the plate with the reverence of a pall bearer touching the coffin for the last time.  She didn’t want it hurt during the long drive back to her farm.

     Stripping off the gloves, Jane secured the camera and the rest of her equipment and climbed into the driver’s seat.  With a honk at the guard, she let him know she’d finished for the day.  Getting permission to photograph the decomposing bodies at the Farm had taken a bit of arm-twisting.  Much as she disliked it, fame held some perks.  Her agent assured the scientists who studied the rates of bodily decomposition that Jane would treat her subjects with respect and dignity.  Showing a few of her prior pieces in the Beauty from Ashes series to the gruff, older men who spent their lives trying to find out how and when people died, she’d earned their trust.  She didn’t know if they understood the questions she was asking in her art, but they’d quickly comprehended she wasn’t a sensationalist.  Dr. Brody had even paid her a quiet compliment, when he’d told her he had the same feeling whenever he saw the dead.

     She drove the long hours back to Culvert without seeing the road.  Somehow, every face she’d shot today morphed into that of her mother the last time she’d seen her - dead in the dirt of an embankment hidden from the highway, her murky eyes staring straight at Jane’s four year old self.

     Now, though, she had to get back to the farm and get ready for the work that paid for her rolling acres and all that expensive fencing.  As she pulled off the paved state road onto the gravel drive, flanked by ancient magnolias, she felt some of the tension that rode her shoulders ease up a bit. 

     The white farm house, a classic American four-square, Granting in the shadows of the huge oak trees that guarded its corners, welcomed her with its solid plain lines.  She’d worked long and hard for this home.  Her roots ran shallow, but they grew deeper each day she lived on the this land, these gently sloping pastures, by the pond with its mud-trampled bank where the horses watered each morning when she let them out of their stalls.

     Life in the city had given her a name in art circles, showings in the right galleries, and the luxury of paying for a big chunk of Virginia countryside.  Now, she went to bed to the rustle of leaves or the burping of mating frogs, instead of emergency sirens and neon lights.  The trade-off between the energy of the city and hours that slipped by without notice was worth every penny her farm had cost her.

      Parking the Suburban by the back door, Jane unloaded the plates onto the enclosed porch.  As she turned the knob into the kitchen, she paused, part of her listening still for Beau’s raucous greeting.  His bark should have shaken the house’s framing by now.  Sadness swept over her, a deep, bone-chilling grief she lived with every day. 

     She’d buried the Russian wolfhound near the pecan tree by the stable.  Beau’s affinity for horses hadn’t been returned by the equines he’d wanted as friends.  Nipping playfully at their heels, expecting a game of chase, he’d dodged too close to a cranky mare named Letty.  One hoof caught Beau under his chin, killing him instantly. 

     She’d run to his body, too late to save him, too late for the vet, in the middle of the yard, his blue eyes clouded with death, his skin growing cold.

     Her hands ached to stroke his fur, to run down his spine to his tickle spot, sending his tail beating against her leg.

     The quiet kitchen gave her no greeting.

     “I should get another dog,” she muttered, carting the precious glass plates into her darkroom. 

     She wouldn’t, however.  She seldom made a mistake like Beau. Everyone she loved died.  The horses had been purchased to serve as subjects for her art, nothing more. She’d become death’s child at the age of four and the Grim Reaper had settled in for the long haul.  Beau was just his most recent victim.  Eventually, death would cart her off too.  Often, when the quiet in her head threatened to explode, she wished it would be sooner rather than later.

     “Not tonight,” she protested as she jerked off her filthy clogs and tossed them by the back door. 

     Food.  Work.  The trappings of normalcy, or as close as she could come.  She shook herself out of memories of Beau by staring in her refrigerator. 

Nothing there.  Bread and peanut butter would be enough. She hauled them out of the pantry and made dinner.  Popping her answering machine on, she listened as a man’s voice on the recording boomed into her quiet sanctuary of a home.

     “Just making sure we’re on for tomorrow.  I’ll be in the cabin out back, let yourself in through the garden gate,” he continued after tossing his name out first.

     Grant Winston.  Former stock car Cup winner.   More money than God, and that was before his other enterprises.  Part interest in a professional baseball team.  Much to her shock, he was a Culvert neighbor.  None of her neighbors recognized the name as someone famous. In fact, was he just another farmer, raising big, black Angus cattle on his many acres, using hundreds more as an environmental refuge.  She knew that part had stumped the locals, who wondered why any farmer in his right mind wouldn’t use every acre to its fullest capacity.

     Evidently, the environmentalists backed by Grant wanted to use his image in an ad campaign. A Jane Lewis portrait had been his request, her agent told her, and since her astronomical price had been accepted, Jane was stuck.  She’d really hoped she wouldn’t have to do another portrait, and her fee would force them to turn her down.  Evidently, Grant Winston wanted her and no one else, her agent had told her when she’d called with the bad news.

     Chewing on the sandwich, Jane flopped on the ancient couch in the front room and threw her feet onto the hassock.  She was in no mood to pamper some fancy, spoiled stock car racer with more money than sense.  Not that her portraits were flattering, even when the subject sizzled with natural beauty.  Beneath the skin and bone, blood and tendons, everyone was a skeleton.  Eschewing color, Jane found the core within each subject in brutal black and white.  

     Often, the results weren’t pretty.  In fact, if you looked at the Beauty to Ashes series, they were far from it.  Grant Winston would get what he wanted, a true Jane Lewis.  If he didn’t like it, well, tough.  As a neighbor, she seldom saw him.  Picking up dog food for Beau, she’d spied him now and then at the Southern States store, that was all.  His name had meant nothing to her.  It still didn’t.  Nascar and stock car racing held no interest for her, even if it seemed that every man in town sported a ball cap with a number 24 or 8 emblazoned on the bill.

     A raindrop struck the porch’s tin roof with a quick ping.  Another followed.  Pulling her thoughts from Beau, Jane tried to remember if she’d rolled up the driver’s window in the Suburban. Rain had drenched the valley for a month, making it the wettest spring in memory.  She’d pulled into her yard in a rare lull in the deluge, sucking in fresh air through the opened windows like a drowning victim. 

     A flash of lightning followed by a roof-shaking burst of thunder jerked her to her feet.  Summer storms in the valley had brutalized the lower-lying areas, swelling creeks over roads and into basements with sudden savagery. Oblivious to the rain that now pounded her, she hurried into the yard, car keys in her hand.

     Sure enough, she’d left the window down.  Inside, she turned on the power and pressed the button that raised it. As rain sluiced down the windshield, she relaxed into the leather seat, careless of her wet clothes, her soaked hair.  She loved the sound made by rain on the roof.  The downpour promised air cleansed, even if only for a few morning hours, of the humidity that bore down on the valley this time of year.  Crisp light. Clarity for her lenses.  If the storm blew over before morning, she’d try her pinhole camera.

     First, though, she’d check on the horses. Braving the pelting rain, she popped out of the Suburban and raced for the old barn.  Chris would have brought them in from the pasture and fed them.  Eleven years old, he lived in a rundown farm house on the north side of her property, a small buffer between her farm and that of Grant Winston.  Chris showed up at her door one day and offered to take care of the three animals in return for riding rights.  She’d been glad to take him up on it. 

     The horses embodied beauty to her, nothing else.  Chris had shown her their power and personalities, and along with his lessons, she’d grown to know and admire this resilient child who refused to let anything stand in his way.  If he continued to grow at his current rate, however, he’d never become the jockey he believed was his destiny.  Maybe, Jane mused, staring at the storm from the safety of the barn door, she’d find a way to get him some work with a trainer.  Trainers didn’t have to weigh a hundred pounds. 

     Inside the barn, the horses wickered with the next clap of thunder.  Jane checked each one, stroking soft muzzles to calm them as Chris had taught her.  Unsettled but fine, she decided, as she returned to the opened door to risk a run to the porch.

     The torrent rampaging across the muddy paddock swept soil like a broken dam across the ungrassed yard between house and barn.  Shoeless, Jane didn’t worry as she stepped into the muddy mess. Head down, she raced for the house, cold water pummeling  her back. 

     A large lump of cloth and something else, something that seemed familiar, caught her eye.  Skidding to a stop, she shoved rain-soaked hair from her eyes.  Not here, not now.  She’d just driven back from the Body Farm.  How could this be in her own back yard?

     Not this, but she.  Touching the fabric, caked with mud and debris, Jane made out a flower pattern.  A bit of tattered lace.  A mother-of-pearl button.  A skull.  Bones tangled in what remained of a dress.

     A dead woman.

Fresh Eyes

Taxes. Oh my stars. Hate the whole deal. The paperwork, getting the paperwork together, adding receipts, forgetting something crucial after a ton of work which will have to be redone... Shoot me now.

So to give myself something to look forward to, I'm going to post bits of works I haven't yet given to the reading world. I'm hoping you all will give me honest comments. My writing group has gone into hibernation (because I can't be available, my fault totally), so I need fresh eyes. Anyone willing to give it a go?

                                                SAVING THE SUN GOD
                                                         By Tracy Dunham


Chapter 1

            The day my father was murdered, I bought a Sig Sauer because the goateed guy told me the handgun would stop a three hundred pound crack addict on a high. I also paid cash for a permit and a box of ammunition. Then I drove into the country until I found a dead tree in the middle of a field choked with weeds, and I pulled the trigger until my arm ached and my finger throbbed and I finally stopped crying.

            I wanted to kill the FBI agent who talked my father into helping him recover a stolen Vermeer in some cheap hotel room in Copenhagen. The men who’d stolen the Vermeer killed my father and got away with the money and the painting.  The image of my father dying on a dirty hotel floor ate holes into my gut. Before I go after his killers, though, I am going to terminate the man who put my father in harm’s way.

            That my father would risk his life for a Vermeer wasn’t beyond my comprehension. What made me so furious was that my mother and I had no idea he’d signed on to play hero. My gentle, antiques expert father, with his owlish glasses, his shiny bald head, and rounded shoulders should never have been recruited in the first place.

            Now, at least I’m not in jail for murder, which is a good thing, since my mother lost her mind the minute she heard about my father’s death. Cameron Loudon was the center of her life, and I was part of the circumference. Isabelle Langly Loudon, my mother, art and antiques dealer with my father, now spends her days making ornate, museum quality picture frames that hold nothing but air.

            I should have moved into the family business after finishing my graduate work at Winterthur and a doctorate in art history from Yale, but there’s no way I can drag my mother back into the life she knew with my father. She’d probably stop gluing and gilding the frames she makes day and night, and slit her wrists with an X-Acto Knife. So I took a job teaching art history in a small college in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, where I try to enlighten kids who prefer their art on their iPods, pixilated and miniscule, to slides of the stolen Vermeer that got my father’s throat cut.

            I keep the Sig Sauer in my desk drawer, and whenever I’m sick of grading idiotic freshmen essays on the similarities between Titian and Andy Warhol, I imagine what I’ll do when I meet the man who led my father to his death and my mother into madness.

            Now, I know how to use the gun. And I will. When I find him.
______________________________________________________________________________

Chapter 2

“You really shouldn’t burn those.”

            Leslie is a former student I hired to watch my mother while I’m lecturing or holding office hours. She’s a lanky girl with long mousy hair and thick glasses, the same sort of nearsighted my father was. I think that’s one reason why I hired her. That, and the fact that after she graduated, she drifted into my office one day and said she thought I needed her and she needed a job, and she liked my mother, so I should hire her.

            I have no idea why she gravitated to my mother while she was an undergrad, but I’d come home and find her in my tiny kitchen, having a cup of tea with mama, chatting away about the latest Hollywood gossip while my mother nodded and smiled and didn’t answer.

            She hasn’t talked in two years. My mother, not Leslie. Leslie has a running mouth that would drive me to distraction if I had to be with her eight hours a day, but her chatter seems to calm mama down. When Leslie’s around, she works less maniacally on the frames, and Leslie makes sure mama doesn’t start swallowing glue or nailing her hand to the workbench.

            The elegantly coiffed woman with a chignon and classic Chanel suits now wears a pony tail, when I can get her to sit still long enough to tie one, and baggy shirts over sweat pants. Feet that strode in three-inch heels handmade in Italy now shuffle along in sneakers with untied shoelaces. I used to dab some Joy perfume behind her ears, hoping the scent would wake her out of her malaise, but she bats me away now when I try it.

            I’ve collected today’s output of picture frames, only two, thank God, and per usual, I’m headed for the college’s waste burning facility. Usually, I toss them in the heap headed for the fire simply because there’s no place for any more empty frames in the tiny, two bedroom house I’ve been assigned on faculty row. All the little brick houses, with their 1960s sameness, share an anonymity I crave.

            Before my father’s murder, my mother would have slept on the sidewalks in London before agreeing to live in such blandness.

            “Why shouldn’t I burn them?” I’m willing to give Leslie a say in this. I really don’t care about the damned things.

            “Let’s have this conversation outside. Will you excuse us, please, Mrs. Langly?” Leslie pats mama’s hand and gives me a look, which has become, strangely, adult.

            She moves the teapot closer to mama. “The tea’s still warm if you’d like another cup, Mrs. Langly,” Leslie tells her.

            Mama stares at the table as if reading an enthralling book.

            I’m always startled when my mother and I are addressed as “Langly.” Even after two years, it sounds odd, as if we’re not real people, but actors in some bizarre play.

            I’ve taken my mother’s maiden name and made sure everyone uses it for her too. After father’s murder, the FBI couldn’t offer any assurances that the art thieves who killed him wouldn’t come after us. Father was well known in the art world, as was mother. The federal agent who briefed me implied that the thieves might assume mama was in on the scam to steal the Vermeer back, and revenge was a definite possibility, especially since the ransom money, all brand new American dollars, disappeared into the void. The Vermeer’s thieves were madder than Rasputin that they didn’t end up with the cash, feeling, as amoral idiots are wont, that they deserved it and the Vermeer.

            The man who warned me had a twitch at the corner of his left jaw and fingers that tapped his knees. When his eyes refused to meet mine, I knew the threat was worse than he’d said. “Take measures to protect yourselves,” he said.

            Leslie and I stand on the front porch, which is really just a concrete stoop, and I’m not paying too much attention. Everything’s out of kilter these days: the weather, my temper, mama’s frame-making mania. I just want to shut my eyes and make the world reverse two years.

            Leslie’s explaining something to me about having senior art students learn framing from mama, when I realize there’s a car coming up the hill, one I don’t recognize. Faculty row is jammed with older Toyotas and Subarus, economical cars that suit young and newly minted PhDs, counting the days until the tenure vote. The black Mercedes with tinted windows defies the norm.

            “Whose car is that?” Interrupting Leslie, I nod at the Mercedes. “Seen it around lately?” I can’t see the license plates clearly enough to tell if they’re in-state.

            Glancing at the car, Leslie shakes her head. “Some rich kid coming to check out the school, probably heading up to the stables to see if it’ll be good enough for the horses she’s planning on bringing.”

            A plausible explanation, I think, until I notice the driver’s wearing dark sunglasses and has a grim mouth. My distance vision, much better than my ability to see up close, seldom fails me. Instincts for self-preservation jump through the barrier of my seasonal malaise and I grab Leslie’s arm and shove her into the house.

            “Get mama,” I hiss, trying to remember my plan, “and take her out the back door. Go to the stables through the trail in the woods.”

            A line of old forest rims the small back yards on Faculty Row. Riding students trot along an uneven trail looping through it to reach the lower campus to avoid leaving horse droppings on the road. When I’m tired of hiding in my office, I strike out on the trail, stalking its dirt path from its end at the highway a couple of miles uphill to its end at the main entrance to the school.

            "Why, what's wrong?" Leslie's staring at me as if I've grown horns and fangs.

            I glance at mama, unsure how much I should say to Leslie with mama within hearing distance. When mama’s eyes lift to mine, I’m shocked at the recognition in them.

            “There may be a problem. I don’t want you and my mother here, that’s all. It’s probably nothing, but I’d like you to do as I’ve asked, and get out of here. Now.” Taking mama’s hand, I pull her to her feet as gently as possible, but Leslie’s frowning at me as if she’s contemplating calling Social Services to report a case of elder abuse.

            “Mama, it’s okay, I can handle it.” I need my Sig Sauer, just in case, and then I’ll feel like facing whatever’s coming up the hill in that black Mercedes. “Go with Leslie and pat the horses. I’ll be up to join you in a bit.”

            Leading mama to the back door, I practically shove her out of it. “Leslie, don’t argue,” I interrupt as her mouth opens and I recognize the stubborn glare in her eyes. “This isn’t the time, do as I ask, right now. Stay in the woods and don’t come back until I fetch ya’ll. Do you understand?”

            My dreams, night after night, exhausted me as I tried to work out an escape plan from the college, should we need one. In every one, I was as unprepared as I am now. Yet the woods figured in each panicked flight through my nightmares, offering the only hope of safety. I’m nowhere near as prepared as I thought I was. In fact, I’m about to lose it.

            “How long…?”

            “I don’t know. Now go,” I watch Leslie tug mama across the small grassy area towards the first tree line while my mother stumbles and turns to me, her eyes, I swear, imploring me to come with them. I wish I could.

            The Sig Sauer is in my room beside the kitchen. Fumbling in the drawer of the bedside table, I grab it and slip in the full clip I keep with it. Women my age sleep with condoms nearby – I keep a weapon instead.

            Fisting it into my hand, I’m at once relieved and terrified. Even with hours of practice, I doubt I’m going to be any match for a professional who kills for a living. My only chance is that whoever wants us, mama and me, wants the money more. The money that disappeared while my father bled to death on the floor of a cheap hotel room. The money the FBI agent said was in a briefcase one minute, and gone the next, along with the Vermeer. Neither have surfaced in two years, and the bad guys and the FBI are royally pissed. The bad guys expressed their displeasure by killing my father. Even though the FBI says the money didn’t go home with their agent, I’ve always wondered.

            So I am both maniacally angry and worried. I feel as if hours have crept by while I argued with Leslie about taking mama to the stables, but when I check, peering through the front curtains like a neighborhood gossip, I see the Mercedes hasn’t yet made it as far as our house. If they’re looking for us, mama and me, they saw me with Leslie on the front stoop. Running will only send them after mama, so I need to handle this on my own.

            I’ve never understood the expression about knees knocking up with fright, but I do now. My hand frozen on the Sig Sauer’s grip, I have no idea if I can shoot someone I haven’t dreamed of killing. Revenge is one thing, but this may be another.

            Sure enough, the Mercedes stops in front of my tiny house. I wait for what seems like hours. Finally, a door snicks open. Somewhere where I don’t want to face this, I’m thinking about German engineering and its precision, realizing their standards apply to weapons as well as cars. Thank God.

            “Dr. Loudon?” Sunglass Man, his shoulders straining the seams of his dark jacket, wears a black shirt, opened at a very large neck. No chest hair peeps out. His skin is as pale as a grub’s.

            “Sorry, no. Can I help you?” I pray I sound as nonchalant as I think I do.

            “My employer wishes to speak with you,” His English is accented, but his meaning in clear. “Dr. Loudon.”

            “I’m sorry, you have the wrong person. Check with security in the administration building. Better yet, I’ll call them for you.”

            “Don’t do that.”

            Before I realize he’s moved, he’s striding up the walk to the stoop. My instincts say run, but I’m tired of my instincts. For two years, I’ve waited for this moment, and now that it’s here, I’m not about to give in to my fears. Not again. I don’t know what’s changed, but I want this to be over with, once and for all.

            “My wife told you she’s not the person you’re looking for. Is there a problem?”

            Jumping at the sound of a voice coming from behind me, I twirl and fall face-forward into the arms of a man about six inches taller than I, blocking the door to my house.

            “Who’re you?” I blurt into his shoulder, where he’s pressed my head with one large hand as his other splays against my lower back.

            His chest hard against mine, I fight to free myself until I realize it’s useless. He’s as strong as anyone I’ve ever met, although, granted, academicians and antiques dealers don’t tend to work out much, if at all.

            “Shut up and do as I say.” Whispering in my ear, he jerks me behind him, hiding me as effectively as a brick wall. I’m insanely grateful I don’t have to face Sunglass Man by myself, but still, how the heck did he get into my house?

            “What the…?” I stumble into the small foyer, sure I’m in the middle of some bizarre dream. Hunching over, I can see what’s happening on the walkway from under my fake husband’s arm. The Sig Sauer seems awfully small in comparison to these two men, facing each other like gunfighters in a spaghetti Western.

            I just hope my guy has the faster draw. I like his size compared to Sunglass Man’s, but that doesn’t mean he’s quick. He’s wearing a worn denim shirt, smelling like it needs a good wash. I don’t care, he’s between me and Sunglass Man.

            “No problem. We’re looking for Isabelle Loudon, and we understand she’s living with her daughter, here at the college. Her daughter Francesca.” Sunglass Man spreads his legs, his knees slightly bent as if he’s getting ready to leap, his hands crossed under his jacket.

            “No one here on Faculty Row by that name. Like my wife said.”

            “I’m calling Security,” I croak from behind the dark-haired man who’s taken over my house and seems to know why I’m terrified of the Mercedes and its occupant. Words has a hard time emerging when there’s a huge, scary lump in your throat.

            The older men who form the campus security force, most of them retired from the military, are no match for the hunk of muscle blocking my walkway. I don’t want them hurt any more than I want to die. I’m all bluff, but no one needs to know that.

            “You heard the lady. Good day.”

            If someone talked to me in that tone of voice, I’d turn tail and run like the wind.

            My intruder’s shoulders are as wide as those on Sunglass Man, looming on the sidewalk. Turning his head slightly, his eyes still on the front door, my imposter of a husband slams it shut behind him. His eyes blue and dark with intensity, he gives me what he probably thinks is a smile, but the lines beside his mouth look as if they hurt.

            “Run. Don’t stop until I find you.”

            I have no idea how he got into my house or where he came from, but as far as I’m concerned, I’ve been given another chance. To heck with facing my fears and fighting them out on Faculty Row. If my savior is half as smart as he is handsome, he knows what he’s talking about. Twirling, I try to race for the back door, my heart thumping peanut butter and my feet encased in leaden shoes. The horror of my nightmares floods over me, carrying me into the fear that I’ll scream and no one will hear, that my mother will bleed to death at my feet, and I won’t be able to move to help her. I can’t get beyond the kitchen.

            “Didn’t you hear me? He’ll kill you and your mother.” His words, almost a hiss, cut through the images terrorizing my paralyzed brain.

            Facing him, my hands knuckled into a knot over my pounding heart; I can’t move a muscle. “I know that. I’ve got a gun.”

            “Can you use it?” He darts into the kitchen, glancing around the room as if expecting to find a rocket launcher on the counters. “Any other weapons?”

            Wow. He sure changed tactics quickly.

            “Who’re you?” Why would he think I have a stash of guns, for heaven’s sake?

            “It doesn’t matter who I am. Where’s your mother? I’ll get her out of here too. Keep the gun handy.”

            The pounding on the front door added to the knees quivering despite my best efforts to still them. “Gone. I sent her away when I saw the Mercedes.”

            “Will he find her?” His hands envelop my shoulders, and I feel safer the instant he touches me.

            Now is not the time to fall in love, but I think I am doomed to do so if this man can get us out of this horror show in one piece.   I shake my head. It’ll take mama and Leslie at least twenty-five minutes to reach the stables by following the horse trail, as slow as mama walks. “I’ll call the stables and ask the groom to hide them somewhere.”

            “Do it.” Pulling a weapon from his shoulder harness, my mystery man flattens himself against the kitchen wall, facing the front door sideways. “From a bedroom phone, Stay out of sight.”

            There’s no time to dart into my room before the front door splinters and Sunglass Man barrels inside, both hands fisted on the biggest gun I’ve ever seen. Frozen in the kitchen, I know now’s my chance to kill the bastard, whoever he is.

            But I can’t get the Sig Sauer out of my pocket.

Rule breaking

When my daughter was a senior in high school, the administration declared Senior Prank Day dead. Basically, it was a senior tradition that in the spring, the graduating seniors would do something silly, like wear crazy clothes and cartwheel in the hallways, etc. It didn't involve anything dire or dangerous. But as old white men who are principals in large high schools are wont to do, the principal decided he'd had enough. Anyone participating in Senior Prank Day would be suspended. I thought the whole thing ridiculous and said so.

My daughter is a rule follower. In fact, she gets very annoyed at those who don't follow the rules. I'm very grateful for her sense of obedience and basic inability to get into trouble on purpose, but I'd been hoping she'd screw up at least once before she turned 18. After all, that's what the teen years are for. Make mistakes while you're young, learn from them, and go forward a wiser person into adulthood.

So when she came home from school and said she'd been suspended for participating in Senior Prank Day, I couldn't help but give her a high-five. "Yes!" I crowed. "Good for you!"

She couldn't believe it. Here I was, her mother the lawyer, ecstatic she'd broken the rules and been suspended. Only it wasn't true. She was pulling my leg. She and I had a good laugh, and I gave up my hopes she'd ever misbehave. I was cursed with a perfect daughter, something I'd never been. How could I have gotten so lucky?

Rule breaking has its place, however. Passive resistance, freedom marches, the Underground Railroad, the Suffragettes, you name it, there's a history of changing the ways things have always been by breaking the law or shaking up the status quo. Fighting for justice, equality, and the basic freedoms of all mankind haven't come cheap. Lives have been lost, empires have fallen, good people have done what needed doing to bring about change no matter the personal cost. I admire them all.

Writers need to break the rules, too. We need to take the story where it needs to go, and if it's not comfortable or acceptable in the unhallowed halls of modern publishing behemoths, too bad. The book will find its audience. Nothing can stop a right idea.




Can't tell you

how many blog posts I've written in my head. Fat lot of good that does. Words slip away with the next project as easily as melting snow in the sun.  When I'm composing in my mind, it's all pithy, witty, or relevant (I'll settle for one of the three), and I go on my  merry way, feeling as if I've actually put the fingers on the keyboard.

A lot of writing is like that. Bits and pieces get stored in my brain until I think I'll explode, bone and hair all over the walls.  That's part of my process. I think about a story, a character, a scene for years until it's time for it to get the heck out of the little gray cells (as Poirot calls it) and onto something more permanent.  Wait a minute, I, of all people, should know there's nothing permanent or protected about a hard or jump drive. I have too many 3" disks that can't be read anymore, they've deteriorated so much.  And that's why there are boxes of manuscripts sitting in my attic. Everything I do goes on paper in the end. Not that paper survives, but at least it'll last as long as I do. I hope. Fire and flood notwithstanding.

Right now I have a story thread, and I mean a slim thread, banging in the frontal lobes. I really like it, but I'm not sure what to do with it. It'll get there, or it won't. If it slips away in the night, it wasn't meant to end up on paper.

I just finished Tana French's Broken Harbor. I love her writing, but I fear that her lovelies won this book over plot. The theme -there is no why - got hammered in once too often.  It felt as if she went back and inserted the theme in just those words to make sure it got recognized in the midst of the poetic prose and clever craft. Not my favorite book of hers. I did love one character though - a total original, a failure in some ways in his life, but great success as a character. He's the true innocent, a man who cares too much. Liked him way better than the hero.

And now it's January, that gray, ugly, and barren month. I swear I'll wear red just to perk things up, but I find myself instinctively reaching for black, just to fit in with the this month's mood. Good time to write scary stuff.

Attic Finds

I was putting wrapping paper and gift boxes away in the attic, and couldn't believe it when I unearthed a hat box containing these two treasures. The one with tulle is my wedding hat, made by my mother from antique lace. The other is part of my mother's wedding veil, made by her mother from real Brussels lace.  I thought them both long lost.

My wedding dress was designed by Becky Besoulis, a Chicago designer known for her leather and lace creations in the eighties. My dress was exquisite lace over silk jersey - very unbride-like but perfect for me. My mother's gown looked like a pale pink explosion of tulle and lace. She refused to wear white because it made her freckles stand out. I played dress-ups for years in it, and its hoop skirt petticoat lasted even longer.

Wasted effort

I am ticked. About a book. A book with real style. A solid story premise at the start.  Great cover. And it fell apart in the last quarter. I don't get it. Where are today's editors and why aren't they doing their jobs? When there's a hole in the logic of a story, that's unforgivable. I can only imagine there was a rush to get the book out, and no one noticed the glaring question, never satisfactorily answered, of why the hero wanted to kill the heroine in the beginning. And one sentence seems to be all the explanation the reader gets as to why he changed his mind. Blah!

Remember J.K. Rowling's first mystery written under the nom de plume of  Robert Galbraith, I think?  Liked the sleuth a ton. Decent mystery. But there was never an explanation for why the murderer hired the hero to find the killer - himself. Yikes!

I've read lots of books with super first three chapters, and after that, the mundane and banal is all we get on the printed page. As a writer, I think I know what happened. The author polished the heck out of the first three chapters to get the book sold based on the beginning and an outline. After that, the deadline interfered with the same level of commitment to rewrites. It is a sad truth of the industry.

I won't buy any more books by this author, which is a shame. But I won't be fooled a second time by a killer cover and super opening chapter.


Third Grade, 1953

My DH's 50th high school reunion was held this past summer. For a variety of reasons, we didn't go, though we'd planned on it. Anyway, he just received a packet of nostalgic items from the reunion organizers, including a booklet containing the bios of classmates, their updates about their lives, and a picture of the third grade classroom many of them were in together. All thirty of them.

My DH's classmates have led interesting and constructive lives. Many, many have found ways to contribute to justice and the environment, while quite a few chose to teach. His generation was one of givers - even though they were in the thick of the Vietnam era and had to serve in the military. It's as if one bad hand was parlayed into a winning game, and they took advantage of it. I must admit my admiration.Those Midwesterners know how to do the right thing, and do it they did.

 But the most interesting part of the packet for me was the third grade class picture. Most of those seven and eight year olds graduated from high school together, and their lives are open books to one another. One girl killed herself not long after cap and gown time, another died of cancer. Some lost their lives later, and like young men in my class, several came home from Vietnam in body bags. Some married high school sweeties, only to divorce down the road, and being good Midwesterners, they were embarrassed by the failures of their marriages. It's an interesting amalgamation of old-fashioned with the seismic shift of values that roared in with the sixties. I was younger then, and my high school life was in the throes of the sixties revolution, while my DH's was out of college and being drafted. Those few years made quite a difference.

I also didn't grow up with the same people my entire life. Leading a nomadic life was the norm for both of my parents, as well as my brother and me. Friendships lasted the length of an assignment, then it was on to the next school where you were the new kid all over again. While there were many obvious drawbacks (three different teachers for me in third grade, three different high schools), I learned how to be happy wherever I was. Friends and cliques didn't define me. I never felt the need to conform. I was who I was.

Yet I wish I could hear from my third grade classmates (at least one classroom) and find out what defined their next fifty-six years. How did they make it through the sixties? Or did they implode? I'll never know. It's like a wonderful book I'll never get to read.

I envy my DH his deep roots.

Thanksgiving 1967

Thanksgiving was always white linens, sparkling silverware, and the good china in our house. My mother believed in family sit down dinners, big time. Often, we were living where Thanksgiving wasn't even a holiday ( always felt wrong to me, I mean, who doesn't believe in giving thanks?), but we still had a big family feast. Aspic with celery, ambrosia, oyster stuffing, wild rice, asparagus, etc.

In November of 1967, or it could have been '66, I'm not sure, my mother had invited a large number of Americans working for the embassy in Ankara.  She'd snagged some celery root for the aspic (buying celery stalks was unheard of in Turkey back then), and she and the cook had been working on the dinner for days. Tables were set, crystal sparkled, and we were ready for the traditional American feast, a tiny reminder of home in a foreign land.

Unfortunately, there was a political and military crisis involving Cyprus or Israel, I don't remember which, and everyone was locked down in the embassy. Twenty-four hour work went into effect, and our Thanksgiving dinner was over before a forkful was lifted to lips.  Mama arranged plates of food and sent them to the embassy via the embassy driver.  Then she, my brother, and I surveyed the remnants.

My mother's aspic was famous in our family, but it didn't travel well. Twenty-four aspics remained on the fancy tables. My brother and I took one look at each other, grabbed silver forks, and began eating.  I still remember that aspic as the best Thanksgiving dinner, ever.

I've never been able to duplicate that memory of my mother's aspic satisfactorily.

What's in a name?

Recently, I called about setting up a new account with a company I've never dealt with before. The young woman on the phone (probably younger than my kids) said she couldn't do it in my name with my husband 's because we had two different last names. I almost dropped the phone but managed to sputter, " but we're married!"

No deal. Their system couldn't handle it, even though women have used their real names, not their husbands' last names, since I was a youngling in the women's lib movement. I've handled all the prior incredulity over our different last names with some aplomb and a modicum of grace, I like to think, over the past thirty years or so. My own mother gave me grief, and she was quite the feminist.

But for some reason, this recent impasse really ticked me off.  I was fuming around until my husband (to whom I offered  my last name when we married, but he declined ), placed it in perspective for me.

" How 1950s of them, " he chuckled, and went back to what he was doing. Okay dear, I get your point.  I can't control antiquated thinking.  Rant over.

But I can't help thinking how odd it is that I can write under multiple names, and no one blinks an eye.


A Quiet Place

I have a home office.  Love it. Filled with bookshelves, lots of windows and light, favorite pictures, and a desk, I've spent many hours here writing. When our tabby was with us, he would curl up in my lap while I typed away and keep my  lap warm. When a book wasn't behaving, he'd helpfully pounce on the keyboard to make it straighten up and fly right.

Now, though, my office has become a sort of family hub. Everyone wants to congregate in here, and why the heck not? The comfy wing chair with its own over-the-shoulder light is perfect for reading. The conversation is usually lively. We enjoy each other's company. But. . . .

I need alone time. Crave it. One cat is all I can handle when working full tilt on a book. So when the perfect solution presented itself, I pounced. More later, with pictures, when everything is finalized. No, not leaving my husband or ditching les enfants.  We're even adopting two cats. (It'll take two to replace one wonderful tabby.) But I can't wait.

I've been thinking of new stories and characters. The old ones are so well engrained, I'm wondering if I want to play with them for the next year or so. It's hard to leave the familiar, but I'm ready, I think, to take the plunge. Growing up, we moved every few years, so change isn't anything new. But it has been a while.

If I'm not here for a while, you'll know what's happening. Sort of.

Whaddya want?

I find that when I ask my characters that question, the answers tend to throw me for a loop.  So ever the clever one, I go "no, no, what do you really really want?"  Then I'm in the drink.  Swimming for my life. Up the creek, and every other cliche for a writer in trouble. Their answers never fail to scare me silly.

Usually, I have a pretty firm of idea of the answers before I start writing. I also know what happens in the last chapter before a word flashes on the screen.  But when chapters start taking weird leaps and awkward pirouettes, I hustle back to basics. What is the reason for this chapter? How does it advance the story? What do we learn about the characters in it, that we didn't know before?

If those answers don't jolt me off the hot seat, I know it's time to dig deeper. A simple desire isn't enough to keep the story percolating. Why not? you may well ask.  Because what makes a good book better is when you have characters with desperate, deep, devastating desires and you keep them away from whatever will save their souls.  They can't have it. Won't even get close unless  I relent and throw a bone in a weak moment.

So ask your characters what they would kill to get, take it away, lock it in a deep vault, and make them sweat emotional blood to unlock the box.  That will get a book back on track.

Annual Halloween Short Story

Those of you who follow this blog (bless you, one and all) know I write a short story every Halloween for my children. I've been doing this for years and years, and as they grew older, the stories became more adult. Here is this year's Halloween goody - less fattening than chocolate, but just as fun, I hope.


 

The Spirits Within

            Brady hated Halloween. Everyone dressing up like a super hero or something else stupid had never worked for him. He knew, better than anyone, that you couldn’t pretend to be someone else. He’d tried. Still didn’t get him any friends.

When you’re a foster kid, you’re who your file says you are. It was that simple. The people you lived with had read the whole thing, and there was no changing their minds. So you stuck it out until the next foster family, and you started all over again. For sixteen of his eighteen years, Brady had hoped, wished, and begged to be set free, to be eighteen and on his own. Then it happened.

He’d aged out of the system. Didn’t matter that he was still in high school. Didn’t matter that he’d finally ended up in a decent neighborhood with a decent school. But when he turned eighteen, the money stopped, and the people who’d said he was like their son told him he’d have to start paying rent if he wanted to keep his bed in their house.

Brady told himself it was cool. Fine by him. He’d hang around long enough to get his high school diploma, then he’d split. So he took what jobs he could find that didn’t need a car to get there, and so far, he was paying on time. Now, though, he ate fast food in his room and avoided the people in the house as much as possible. He wasn’t family anymore, just a renter.

The whole thing sucked. But what did he expect? No one had ever cared about him, not for a second. He was another name on a long list for the social workers, and just another mouth to be fed, when they felt like it, for the fosters who’d been paid to keep him. That was life, and he was used to it. Stick to yourself, get that high school diploma, then start your real life, he’d told himself since forever.

So this new job was close enough to walk to after school.  He worked from three to midnight, with time off for dinner, which he never took because he wanted the money more. Like most of his jobs, it was stupid and mindless, but he was getting a kick out of jerking the clients’ chains. A Halloween place called The Spirit Store had opened up in an empty video place, one of those deals that plastered neon green and orange signs in the windows and was crammed with Halloween crap. Cheap stuff, all of it, and probably toxic as well. Not that he cared if people wanted to poison themselves with black lipstick and nail polish. His job was to help people find costumes and then ring them up. Period. The place didn’t get busy until after five, usually, and the closer to Halloween, the busier it had become.  Not tonight, though. Good thing, since the twerp who was supposed to be working with him hadn’t shown up, hadn’t called, and for all Brady cared, was dead.

The store could get creepy when it was quiet. Normally, Brady liked quiet, since he didn’t get a lot of it in a house filled with younger foster kids. Tonight, though, he was getting a little goose-bumpy.  Couldn’t say why.  Just felt something, like whispers in a dark corner where he could catch a word here and there, but nothing cohesive.  An air of dark anticipation hung over him, a feeling he tried to deny but couldn’t.  If he could have swatted it away like an annoying swarm of bees, he would have.

As it was, he chalked up the heebie-jeebies to being tired and depressed. No matter how hard he wished it were otherwise, the school year was creeping along at the pace of a guy going home to tell his wife he’d been caught hiring a hooker and the court date was in two weeks. All he wanted was out of this life that clung to him like a bad smell. To be on his own.  To have a real job, make real money, and have real friends. Wasn’t going to happen in this town, that much was for sure.

Just when he was about to check out the whispering still coming from the back of the store, a woman pushed open the front door. He gave her a glance, but he sure didn’t feel like helping her.  She looked like the type who’d open every costume package and leave without buying anything. So instead, he finished setting up the display of Halloween makeup until, with her standing right beside him, he couldn’t ignore her any longer. Who shopped for Halloween stuff at eleven at night?

“Can you tell me where I can find a slutty princess costume?” The woman demanding his attention wasn’t much older than he was. Pretty in a bleached blonde kind of way, but wearing too much lipstick and pink stuff on her cheeks. She wore bright orange, tight shorts and a skinny T-shirt he recognized as belonging to a chain that sold wings and beer to men who only dreamed about having a woman like her.  Hot and sexy, he imagined is how other men would describe her.

“Uh, I don’t think we have anything like that. I can show you where the women’s costumes are.” Turning, he headed for the side of the store crammed with over-priced, flimsy, cheaply made shit.

“I like your shirt,” the woman said, pointing to it as if he’d never seen it before.   “ ‘Don’t piss me off, I’m running out of places to bury the bodies.’ So cool.”

He didn’t tell her it was the only black T-shirt he could find at the thrift store, and since all the sales help at his job were required to wear black, he bought it anyway. No one had complained.

“Here you go.” He pointed to the rack of costumes. “Let me know when you’re ready to check out. We close at midnight.” 

He had to get some sleep before he caught the 6:30 bus to school. The walk to his house, not his home, would take at least twenty-five minutes. He was gonna be so happy when he could grab that piece of paper at graduation and start his real life. He just knew having a diploma would make up for all this shit he was going through.

“It sucks working this late, doesn’t it? I just got off my shift.”

He stared at her. Making conversation wasn’t in his job description. “Yeah, I guess. But I go to school, so I gotta work when I can.”

“Me, too. I’m going to the community college, working on my LPN.  I want to be a nurse someday.”

Brady shrugged, wondering where this was going. “That’s good, I guess. Me, I’m going to write books.” Surprising himself by his disclosure, Brady turned, ready to flee for the front of the store. Talking with girls wasn’t really his scene.

But she reached out and put a hand on his arm, and he was trapped.

“What kind of books? I love to read. Don’t have much time these days, but whenever I get a chance, I pick up something. Usually Fantasy. I love other world stories.”

Despite himself, Brady found himself liking her. Underneath all that make-up she was kinda pretty. “Me too. I really love Game of Thrones, too.”

“Oh, and the show on HBO is great! I love the dragons, they look so real.” 

“I don’t get HBO. Don’t own a TV.” He didn’t explain that he didn’t want to intrude on the new crop of fosters that had just moved into the house. To them, he was the outsider, even though he’d been there first. They had no problems with hogging the TV, but then, they hadn’t been in the System long. They thought they were still “Normal.”

“That’s too bad, but you can catch up when it comes out on DVD. Shouldn’t be too long.”

“Don’t have the money for that kind of crap.”  Sweat rolled down his back between his shoulder blades. He hadn’t talked with a woman or girl for this long a conversation since he was a kid and thought he was like everyone else.

 “Got to get back to work. Cameras.” He pointed to the corner where a black rectangle protruded from the ceiling. It was left over from the video store days and didn’t work, but the Spirit Store owners told everyone who worked there that it did to scare them into pretending to be working. Brady had taken the time to check it out and knew otherwise.

“Okay, thanks.” The woman seemed unhappy with him, he couldn’t figure out why. Who cared, anyway? Did she expect him to flirt, say something nice? Not in his job description. He kept to himself, always had, always would. Flattering women wasn’t in his job description.

Whatever he’d done, worked, and the woman paid for her costume with a credit card and was out of there before 11:30. Hesitating in the half-opened door, she turned to look at him.  For a second, he thought she was going to ask him something, so he turned his back.  He wanted to close up early.

In a way, he was sorry to see her go, but he didn’t even say “good night.”  She’d made him wonder for a few seconds if they’d known each other in a foster home as kids, the way she seemed to feel they could talk like friends. Nah, couldn’t be, he’d decided. She was just the overly friendly type. Usually, that kind didn’t come within ten feet of him. Something about him scared them off, and he was good with that.

 He waited fifteen minutes for someone to come through the door and ruin his plan to close up early, but no one did. He’d already straightened the crap up, so all he had to do was hit the lights and lock the door. It was electronic and programmed to turn green when the alarm was set, as if anyone would want to break in and steal any of the cheap merchandise. He got to the house by 12:15 and let himself in through the kitchen door, creeping upstairs after stealing milk from the fridge. They’d never miss it, because he didn’t use a glass, he drank from the milk container. The idea of them never knowing his lips had touched their precious milk gave him a reason to smile. Smiling was a hard deal, but now and then, he used those muscles.

Two days later, he heard a sound bite of the news when he was heading upstairs after school to change into his work clothes. The announcer said a woman was missing and her name was Gloria Redfern, she was a waitress at Hooters and twenty-two years old.  Her parents, with whom she was living along with her three year old son, said she hadn’t come home from work two nights ago. Anyone with information, blah, blah, blah.

Taking few steps down the stairs so he could see the TV screen, Brady recognized the woman who’d wanted the slutty princess costume, her picture totally different from the woman he’d seen, because she was cuddling a little kid and smiling like a proud parent. Still, he knew it was her.

“I gotta use the phone,” Brady called to the kids clustered around the TV, waiting impatiently for their “program” to resume.  He couldn’t afford a cell phone and the fosters were required to keep a working house phone, so he didn’t worry about not having a cell. No one called him anyway. Picking up the phone, he headed upstairs where he could have some privacy.

Dialing the information number he’d seen on the TV screen, Brady was put through to a man when he said he was calling about the missing woman. Normally, he’d have ignored the whole deal, but the photo of her with her kid had bothered him.  He didn’t want that kid to go through what he’d gone through. Probably the grandparents were old, and the boy would end up in foster care in the end, and that wasn’t right.

Brady described exactly when the woman had left the Halloween store to the man who’d identified himself as Sgt. Lowell. Said he was positive of the ID. Told him the address of the store, his name, home address, and every other stupid thing Sgt. Lowell wanted to know. But when the cop wanted him to come down in person to talk about the woman, he put on the brakes.

“I got school and two jobs, and no car,” Brady muttered. “You want to see me, you come to me.”

Now he was sorry he’d gotten involved. This was going to be a hassle and he couldn’t afford any time off from work, not with his next rent payment due in a week.

Still, he was surprised when he got called to the principal’s office the next day. The man he’d spoke with on the phone was in Mrs. McTavish’s desk chair, along with another man he introduced as Detective McCray, who leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, staring at Brady as if he were a particularly ugly bug. The guidance office had been cleared for them, and Brady found himself repeating everything he’d already told Lowell. When he complained that he was missing his classes, Lowell gave him a look like he was some kind of doo-doo smeared on his shoes.

“A woman’s life is at stake here. I think it’s a little more important than shop class.”

“It’s honors English, and I’ve already told you all I know.” Brady rose from the chair facing the guidance counselor’s desk and grabbed the door handle. “I’m outta here.”

“Not so fast, son.”  McCray shoved a beefy shoulder into the half-opened door, almost catching Brady’s hand between it and the jamb. “Tell us more about yourself, why don’t you?”

That was when Brady knew they weren’t telling him something. He’d seen enough “Law and Order” on TV growing up to recognize the trouble he was in. He also knew enough to keep his mouth shut.

“I’ve told you everything I know, and if you want to talk more, get me a lawyer.”  He’d heard the line so many times on TV, it sounded almost natural.

“Guilty people want lawyers, not innocent folks.” Lowell was trying to be charming, but Brady wasn’t falling for it.

“What’s the real deal?” Brady wasn’t letting go of the door handle. McCray might outweigh him by fifty pounds, but Brady was wiry and strong, even if he wasn’t over five foot, eight. All that walking gave him a muscle edge over the slightly paunchy detective. “You’re not just looking for a missing person.”

“Don’t you know?” McCray smirked at him. “Sure you do. You were there. Tell us how you caught up to her after she left The Spirit Store. And where’d you dump her body?”

“What the hell?” This wasn’t TV, this was real life, something Brady knew all too well. “Dump her body? What kind of joke is this? How do you know she’s dead?”

Lowell shook his head, as if Brady had screwed up, big time. “We’ll be getting DNA right now, the team is at your place. Can’t argue with science.  We’ll find yours on her body, that’s for sure.”

Brady wasn’t as dumb as they thought he was. They’d told him they didn’t have any body.  Any sympathy he’d had for the woman and her kid dissolved like sugar in rain. Once more, life was handing him lemons and he was just supposed to swallow the bitter juice and smile.

“Not mine. If it’s there, you planted it. Now arrest me, get me a lawyer, or get out of my way.”

Lowell and McCray looked at each other, speaking a language only they could hear. Ignoring McCray’s body-block, Brady forced himself through the door. “Leave me alone. You’ve got nothing, or I’d be in handcuffs.”

“Let me cuff the little twerp.” Lowell was almost pleading with McCray. “Just for fun.”

“We play this by the book. We can’t afford any screw-ups.”

Brady heard the last just as he sprinted down the hall, his heart thrumming like a rabbit searching for his warren with a fox hot on his ass. What the . . . ?  His mind kept looping with the photo of the woman and her kid, and despite the hassle he’d been through, he still felt sorry for the little boy.  Looking down, he ran full-bore into the guidance counselor.

“Brady, I was just looking for you. We need to talk.” Grabbing Brady’s elbow, Mrs. McTavish pulled him to the side of the hall. “The police think you had something to do with that waitress who disappeared a couple of nights ago. They said her car was covered in blood. ”

“I didn’t know about her car,” Brady snarled. “When they dragged me into your office, they told me I killed her.  But they don’t have her body.”

Mrs. McTavish looked stricken.  “I told them to wait while I tracked you down.  They weren’t supposed to talk to you alone.”  She paused. “But you are eighteen, and an adult. They can do what they want. Brady, I need to know how much trouble you’re in. Is there anything you should be telling me?”

A small, round woman carrying too much weight, Mrs. McTavish looked like a pickled egg about to burst out of her shell.  Staring at her, Brady had to force himself to stop imagining what she’d look like, exploded all over the hallway. He tried to remember she was the one who’d gotten him into Honors English, and how she kept telling him he could do anything he wanted in life. At least she’d pretended to believe in him.

“No,” he answered with unqualified certainty.  “Nothing at all.”

“Then be careful. I don’t know why they wanted you, but I saw pictures on my computer this morning of her car. Pretty gruesome. I know you had nothing to do with this, but if you can help with anything, anything at all, tell them so they can find the real killer.”  Wringing her hands, Mrs. McTavish glanced up and down the hall way over his shoulders.

“What if she’s not dead? What if it’s someone else’s blood?”  He was thinking aloud. “Where’d they find her car, anyway?”

Mrs. McTavish was looking at him as if she’d never seen him before. “Parked in that lot beside the soccer field, off Landston Pike.” 

He knew the place well. It was half a mile from his house, and he’d passed it on the way home from work at The Spirit Store. Had she been dying there when he’d been trotting home? Why hadn’t they found a body?  He knew better than to ask Mrs. McTavish anything else.

“Hope they find her. Or whoever did it. Now I gotta get to class.”

Before he could escape, she caught his arm. “I was coming to find you to tell you Principal Willston wants you to go home. He doesn’t think you’ll get much from class today.”

Studying at her, Brady read the truth in her face, her eyes. “He thinks I’m a killer, doesn’t he?”

She refused to confirm what he knew to be true. “Go home, Brady. Don’t say anything to anyone about this. I’ll call you when you can come back to school.”

“So I’m suspended because I sold some lady a costume?”  This had to be a joke of cosmic proportions, and he was the butt end of it.

“Just go home, Brady. I’ll call your parents and explain.”  She sounded tired and sad.

“Don’t bother. They’re not my parents. Just my landlords.”  Jerking free of her hand, Brady ran for the front doors. He could feel the detectives’ eyes following him as he sprinted across the bus line to the road leading back to his house. His room. His rented room.

When he finally got home, his former foster parents were standing in the front yard, steaming mad. Pausing at the edge of the walk, Brady stared at them and received nothing but glares in response. Not a word was spoken. He knew, as he watched policemen walking out of the house with boxes, that they would take any and everything, whether or not it was his.  He wished he had a computer so he could pull up the pictures Mrs. McTavish had mentioned, but he used the one at the library when he had to write a report. 

For a second, he thought of approaching his former fosters and telling them it was all a mistake, that he had nothing to do with anyone’s disappearance, but the half-step he took onto the grass was as far as he got. His landlords turned their backs to him, effectively saying anything and everything they would have said with words. He was an outcast. No affection, no support, no concern for his welfare would ever cross their narrow little minds.

He’d always known he was alone, but he’d never felt it as keenly as now. No one was on his side. What was he supposed to do now?

He had the twenty dollars he allowed himself per week for food in his pocket. Eating wasn’t high on his priority list just now. His cash was hidden under a floorboard in his room, and he was feeling kinda light-headed because he’d skipped dinner and breakfast.  Maybe he could hang out in a McD’s for a bit, wait for things to settle down, eat from the dollar menu. Think. Try to figure out why he was a suspect.

The security cameras at the Spirit Store didn’t work. All he could think was that the woman had left her costume behind in the car, along with the credit card receipt. They’d found out he’d been alone in the store when she came in, put two and two together and come up with eighteen. Stupid jerks. Anyone who knew him, knew he’d never hurt anyone.

Then again, who really knew him?  His stories, the ones he wrote out longhand in half-used school notebooks, were the closest thing he had to friends. None of the stories were about people pleasant or even kind, some even portrayed evil as he’d seen and known it in his own hard life. But of all the stuff in his room, the few clothes, the school assignments, the money under the floorboard, all he wanted were his stories.  The money would be helpful, though.

He thought about all of this as he nursed his drink, refilled it, drank it slowly again, and pushed around the cold French fries on his tray at McD’s.  Darkness fell and the shift changed behind the counter.  He bought another dollar hamburger, chewing it slowly.  Finally, he knew what he had to do.

The walk to the soccer field was so familiar, he could do it with his eyes shut. He’d blown off work at The Spirit Store tonight, so he was probably fired, but he had expected that anyway. The detectives probably made sure he’d never work there again when they’d talked to the store manager. Halloween. Such a stupid excuse for a holiday. Not even a holiday, an excuse for people to pretend to be someone else. He did that every day of his life, pretending to be normal.

The parking lot lights glared on the yellow crime scene tape that fluttered around one spot.  The woman’s car must have been there, he figured, and now it was gone. Probably towed for forensics to get a better look.  He looked out onto the broad expanse of grass. The color was otherworldly under the sodium lighting.

No soccer game tonight, not even a pick-up.  Sitting in the bleachers overlooking the field, Brady slumped over, cradling his face in his hands.  Nothing felt real anymore. Even his skin didn’t belong to him. He’d thought that if he could see where the woman had come, he might get a feeling for what had happened to her. How pathetic was that? he asked himself.  He wondered how far he could get if he started walking now. There was nothing for him here. No home, no school, no friends, no answers as to why the universe had chosen him to beat up.  If he’d believed in that reincarnation crap, he’d have said he was a real creep in his life before this one. There was no other explanation, because he’d never hurt anyone in his life.

Even though he’d been sitting in McD’s for hours, he felt as if he’d been walking the whole day. Every muscle ached. Hauling himself from the bleachers, he started across the field with no particular direction in mind. He was just going to keep going until something stopped him. The dew soaked his sneakers, and the hems of his black jeans sopped up more wet. Shoulders rounded, Brady remembered every word he’d spoken to the woman, hoping for a clue.        If she reappeared, live, she’d explain Brady had nothing to do with whatever happened to her. Everyone would be nice to him, even that prick detective, who’d have to apologize.  Mrs. McTavish, too, for asking him if he had anything to confess. She’d be nicer to him. One thing though, he was never going back to the house. He’d stiff the former fosters on the rent and get another place. Somewhere where he could have friends.

The other side of the soccer field led into woods.  Not paying attention to where he was going, he trudged onward until he tripped on some vines and went sprawling. Cursing at his continuing bad luck, Brady pulled himself to his knees and glanced around for other obstacles.  By now it was dark enough that he had trouble seeing. Great. Getting out of the woods and onto the open near a road was the smartest thing he could do.

As he wearily arose, he had second thoughts. The brush and trees would provide him with some shelter.  If he could find a big tree, he could sit against it and get some sleep.  No one was looking for him, he assumed. The cops probably figured he wasn’t going far with no money and no car. So why not spend the night here? Except for the bugs, the place was okay. He’d seen it enough in the daylight.  Even seen a few deer come bounding out of the tree line, now and then.

The tree he selected was broad enough to support his back. Squatting down, he swiped away some nuts and debris at the base before settling down. If he could just sleep a few hours, he’d think more clearly. Come up with a real plan other than walking until his shoes disintegrated.  Sighing, Brady wiggled around, trying to get comfortable until, without realizing it, he was asleep. At first, he dreamed of being cold and wet and angry because he couldn’t get dry. Slowly, though, he sank deeper into a dreamless sleep, deeper than any he’d ever experienced before.

When he awoke, he didn’t know where he was or what time it was. The sky dark, the air heavy, he was nonetheless soaked in a warmth he didn’t understand. What was the source of the heat, clearly not sunshine? Rubbing his eyes open with his dirty hands, he shouted in surprise as the woman he’d met in The Spirit Store squatted beside him. Glowing as if she were radioactive, she smiled at him.

Brady tried to speak, but couldn’t.  Lifting one finger to her lips, she gestured for him to remain silent.  Then, to his shock, she spoke.

“Not looking good for us, is it? I’m dead and you’re going to be a goner before dawn, in all likelihood. You want to know why I came into your store? Do you?”

Brady nodded, though he’d never thought to question her appearance. She’d just been another customer.

“I was hiding from a man. A customer at the restaurant. He’d been in every night for a week, always sitting at my table, always trying to ask me out. It’s against the rules, we can’t date customers, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer.” Shaking her head, she smiled sadly at Brady.  “He’d started waiting for me to get off my shift, then he’d follow me to my car.  Night before last, he had someone with him.  A lookout, I guess. Then the first guy tried to grab me and kiss me, while the second man pulled up in a car and tried to shove me in. I maced him and his buddy and drove until I saw an open store. Yours. When I pulled in, they drove off. But I knew the first man, the one who tried to kiss me, he’d been following me home earlier in the week, so he knew where I lived. I figured he’d be waiting for me there, but my parents were there, and my dad would try to protect me.”

Brady tried to speak, but couldn’t. She shrugged. “I didn’t want my dad to get hurt, so I stayed as long as I could with you. Then I drove around, hoping he’d get tired of waiting for me, and leave me alone.  But I was wrong.

“He’d hidden in the back seat of my car. The locks don’t work, so it was easy, and I didn’t see him. He made me drive out here, and then he raped and killed me.”

Brady remembered the creepy sounds he’d heard in the store that night, almost as if someone was whispering in the back. Sheez, he thought, could they have been in the store and he never saw them? How could they have gotten in? The employee entrance opened in the back into the stock room, and he guessed the shift before him may forgotten to lock it. He hadn’t entered that way, preferring to use the front door just to piss off the manager, if he happened to be there. Not that night, though. And the prior shift left through the front as well.

Brady started to tell her he thought maybe the two men were in the store when she came in, but she laid a finger on his lips that was as solid as his own.
            “Let me finish. You need to know everything, so you can be ready if you decide to do this.”

She was matter-of-fact. Bad stuff happened, there was nothing to be done about it but to take the body blows and come out the other side as best you could. That much Brady understood.

“I fought, of course. Hurt him, too.  He’s been hiding, afraid for anyone to see him because of the shape he’s in.  I want you to find him and take him to the police.  Tell them the truth.  If you can’t do that, he’ll kill you. So you have to be strong.  Do what you have to do. Do it for me, do it for yourself.”

Fearing he’d lost his mind, Brady was sure he was hallucinating.  That was, until she stood and pointed to the west. “He’s in a storage locker he has at the corner of the street by your store. I haven’t seen his friend since the parking lot at the restaurant, but I’m sure he locked my killer in there. The bastard who killed me thinks he can stay hidden until you’re arrested. He knows the police have been questioning you. He put some of my bloody clothes in the dumpster behind The Spirit Store for the police to find, just before he went into hiding.”

Brady knew now he didn’t have a choice.  Finding incriminating evidence where he’d worked would be all the detectives needed to send him to prison.  He’d been in an emotional prison so long, he didn’t think he could stand another kind.

“Tell me what to do,” he croaked.  His face hurt from looking at her. She seemed as pretty and made-up as when she’d come into the store, not bloodied and battered.  “I don’t have any idea.”

Reaching into a pocket in her tight shorts, the woman pulled out a gun. “He used this to keep me quiet, then to kill me. He thought he threw it in the river, but I found it.  The storage locker is number B-102.  Shoot the lock off.  His friend will be back soon to let him out.  Now, before it’s daylight.”

“I’ve never done anything like this. . .” Brady started to whine.

“Do it now, or you’re going to die. Don’t ask me how I know, I just do. Make up your mind, and do it.”

“Okay.”  As soon as Brady shoved himself upright, the woman disappeared. One second there, the next, not. If she hadn’t touched him, he’d have known it was a dream.  But one bloody fingerprint rested on the back of his left hand, and he knew whose blood it was.

The short sleep had helped him, and fear fuelled his progress to the storage lockers.  A high chain link fence surrounded the storage lot, but Brady didn’t find it hard to scale. Finding the numbers was hard in the dark, but he was outside B-102 before he knew it. Fumbling for the lock, he almost dropped the gun when he heard noise inside the locker.

“I know what you did!” he yelled, mostly out of fear and false bravado.  “She told me! I’m here to get you and turn you in!”

Before he lost his nerve, he shot off the lock.  With echoes of the sound reverberating in the concrete corridors of the storage place, Brady flung open the door. 

The man inside bowled Brady over like a toy, growling like an animal.  Losing the gun, Brady clawed at his attacker’s face with a strength he didn’t realize he had.  This was life or death, the woman had warned him, and if he didn’t fight back, he’d end up as dead as she was.  And he didn’t want that.  Life wasn’t worth crap, but he had more living to do. He could make it better.

“No!” Brady screamed as he took body and head blows that had him reeling. “You can’t kill me like you killed her!” 

Brady now knew the woman had fought for her life like a cornered wild animal.  That’s why the car was such a horrible scene, and why he had to fight harder than even she had.  For this man who was suddenly on top of him, his hands around his throat, squeezing the life out of him, needed to die for what he’d done. As rage and fear crescendoed in him, Brady struck back, using every trick he’d used in fighting the bigger kids who wanted to put him in his place in all those awful foster homes.  Hatred for his mother for leaving him alone to grow up like he did, hatred for what this man did to the woman to orphan her little boy, exploded in Brady’s chest.  Blood rage washed over him, freeing him from all semblance of decency. 

He would kill this man, and it would feel good. Clawing his way closer to where he’d dropped the gun, Brady knew his attacker was too focused on killing him with his bare hands to notice he’d gotten the gun. And was raising it. And was pulling the trigger.

Later, when the police came, they found the woman’s body in the locker along with the bodies of other women who had disappeared over the past year. The smell alone sent crime scene techs gagging into bushes.

Brady didn’t hang around long enough to see the whole scene unfold with the police.  Wandering back to the woods, he called for the woman, and when night fell again, she reappeared before him.

“I’m sorry,” was all she would say at first. “I hoped you’d live.”

“It’s okay,” Brady asserted, feeling free for the first time in his life. “I got him before I died. He won’t hurt anyone else.”

“They’ll think you were part of it, that you were a team with him. They’ll figure out two men had to be involved.”

Brady shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I stopped him. He’ll never hurt anyone else.” He didn’t tell her there wasn’t anyone to be hurt by whatever the police said. No one in his life would care for more than half a second.  In a way, it felt good to be free from worrying about what he was going to do with the rest of his life.

“I miss my little boy.” She was walking beside him, through the trees.  “But I can’t go back to see him. It’ll just confuse him and make him sad.”

“So where do we go from here? What’s next?”  Brady was pleased to see that he wasn’t bruised or bleeding and could speak normally, even though his killer had crushed his larynx.

“Not sure. The second man is still out there. We’ll be led to the next step, is my gut feeling. We’ll find him, then figure out what to do. Thanks for being here with me. I didn’t like the idea of doing this alone.”

“Me either. Hey, tell me about your kid, won’t you? I like little kids.  I used to be one.”

“I’m sure you were.”  Her laugh was filled with silver and light. “It’s good to have a friend so I can brag about him. He’s my favorite topic of conversation.”

Friend. Brady had a friend. He felt better than he ever had when he was alive. They walked side by side while she chattered on about her kid, and Brady was flooded with an emotion he didn’t understand. At last he realized that’s how happiness felt.

He’d take it. Being dead wasn’t so bad after all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

Money and Publishing

I can't believe it's been over a month since I wrote this blog. Yikes! I'd like to say I've been tripping through exotic locales, dining on fancy French cuisine, or flying across oceans, but alas, none of this is a valid excuse.

A fancy trip or long excursion happens only in my imagination. Yes, the book is coming along. Yes, I got sucked into OUTLANDER on Starz, which necessitated re-reading the first book, which I read over twenty years ago. (Still a good read, btw.) Yes, I've been busy with life. All hollow reasons for not paying more attention to this site. Mea culpa. I promise to be better.

One of my distractions has been my preparation for the C3 Conference to be held at Hollins University on October 20. I've been invited to participate on a panel presenting career paths in writing. Or as I prefer to call it, how to get your head and other parts of your anatomy out of the morass of academia and make some bucks with your talent. Yes, I'm one of those heathen. I believe in selling your work for dollars (and Euros and Pounds and Pesos, etc.) and to heck with the "emotional satisfaction" of seeing your work in print. For free. In academic publications or magazines that do nothing for you except maybe help you get an assistantship somewhere making a few bucks. But hey, you were true to your art! Or, it was all you were expected to do. Phooey on that.

I made $5000 for my first western. Hardback. In 1983. At a time when Westerns were in decline. I expected much less, so $5000 was like manna from heaven. It also taught me to think big picture. I'm told the current market in traditional publishing is paying much, much less these days. In fact, Harlequin is paying first time authors around $3000 in advances. Some pull in only $2500. That's the rumor, at any rate, since I'd never sell to HQ and don't intend on doing so. They did their authors dirt on e-rights and have yet to admit it. Other houses now require signing authors to agree to a gag clause in their contracts. No spilling the beans on how much money they're making. Montlake, a division of Amazon, is one of those. I'd never sign such a clause. It's my money, I'm going to tell anyone I wish to tell how much the contract paid me. Or cost me. Depends on your viewpoint.

As part of my research for this conference, I compiled some web sites with interesting information. I'm including it here as well. There's truth in all of them, but remember, these people have their own realities. Take what you want from them, ignore them, but at least give what they say a solid consideration.


Money and Publishing                                                                                   Tracy Dunham

Informational Sites

1.  Show Me the Money – www.brendahiatt.com/show-me-the-money.  (The only site that has fairly current information, though the figures here are from 2013, and word is that the money has dropped significantly since then.)

            As an aside, some publishers are now writing gag clauses into contracts, forbidding authors to disclose their financial agreement. For example, Montlake (Amazon) has such a clause.


2.  selfpublishingadvice.org  Lots of good articles

3. warriorwriters.wordpress.com (Kristen Lamb’s blog) – Show Me the Money –What’s the Skinny on Author Earnings? (Very good analysis)


4.  publishersmarketplace.com   They publish a free daily rundown of the current markets, sales, who is moving to what publisher, etc.

5.  pop-verse.com//category/creative-industries/publishing  (tons of good articles)

7.  juliestock.wordpress.com (Sept. 29, 2014 post titled How much does it cost to self-publish? Caveat – all figures are in Bristish pounds)

8.  janefriedman.com (lots of guest bloggers, including Eileen Goudge, who discusses her loss of contract and successful foray into self publishing. Claire Cook’s article about leaving her famous agent and publisher to strike out on her own is interesting as well.  Jane teaches digital publishing and media at UVA.)

9. blog.nathanbransford.com – 4/15/14 guest blog by Natalie Whipple on self publishing v. traditional publishing

10. smittenbybooks.com (1/15/14 post)

11. beverleykendall.com/files/self-publishing.pdf  (She surveyed 822 self published authors, with 65% having no previous publishing deals.)

12. Check out Bella Andre, JA Konrath, Bob Mayer, Claire Cook, Teresa Ragan online. They’ve all been very, very successful. Konrath and Mayer get into specifics of “how-to.”

 

 

 

 

Bob McDonnell's banishment from Eden

Although I know and like people who are solid Bob McDonnell supporters ( not so much his wife, tho), I have to say we should have seen his conviction coming from a mile away.  Rachel Maddow said last night she didn't think he'd be convicted, but we all should have. Why?

The answer came to me last night. His defense was from the story of Adam and Eve. "She made me do it. It was her fault, she said this was good so I took a bite. Then I took another. She's to blame!"  Fits perfectly for a man who touts Christian values and traditional marriage as the cement of civilization. Many, many Christians blame woman for original sin.  I am not surprised by this defense, but am saddened. No, not saddened. Sickened.

I attended an old and respected women's college. The then-college chaplain was a tall, imposing man of quiet rectitude. The students uniformly admired and respected him. I was invited to one of his small get-togethers,  much to my surprise since I didn't have any classes with him.  We were chatting, the chaplain and I, when he turned the topic to original sin, and he informed me that all sin was the fault of Eve and therefore, of all women.  I may have been all of 19 years old, but I asked him what he was doing at a women's college, if he felt that way. He turned his back and stalked off. I have never felt the respect that many of my friends still have for the man.

Blaming women for all the world's ills isn't new. It's at the root of the degradation of women in every level of society, every culture.  Maureen McDonnell maybe an unpleasant person, but she's not the root of all evil. Bob McDonnell made his own bad choices.

Isn't it time we took away all power from the Adam and Eve myth?