Most writers compose their version of this story after publication of a work. I’ve chosen to get it out of the way now.

I have, over many months, composed a series of stories–many of them have already been published here–and decided approximately two months ago to set a deadline of June 30, 2011, for publication of a collection of said stories. That date has come and gone and my book has not been published.

Am I worried? A little.

I’ve gone from being on edge to completely relaxed and back again many times over three days since my deadline blew up in my face. Still worried? Not so much. It’ll come; I just had to learn some lessons.

All in all, I was taught a valuable thing: moderation. I set a two-month deadline for publication of a top-notch (well, I worked at it, let’s put it that way) compilation of stories. Not all of the stories were out of first draft status, and not all were completed. Hell, I had to cut two because I simply ran out of time. I juggle a 40-hour night-job, three (more soon) kids, a wonderful wife, Cub Scouts, sports, searching for a new house to buy, and a whole slew of other things. So does everyone else. I get that part.

One of the best things a writer can do for his or her writing is to set a schedule. Create time and space for regular writing. It trains your body to get in the mood. I leave for work at the same time every day, so when it is nearly time, my body says: “Shower, check. Feed dogs, check. Kiss wife and kids, check. Done.”

Unfortunately, my writing schedule hasn’t ever been that rigorous.

I’ve been a writer for many years. In the good old days, when I just carried around a notebook and wrote and wrote until my fingers bled, I wrote poetry. I wrote prose. I wrote short little blurbs of first-draft-is-final-draft emotion that stuck on the page and reminded me of… what? Reminded me that I was on a schedule? Reminded me that this was something I’ve been doing forever and want to keep doing forever? No. It was my body saying something that I didn’t listen to: “Hey dumbass, you’ve got a passion for this.”

So of course, when something better came along, like girls at college, or a real grown-up job, or my family,  I set down the writing and went and fiddled somewhere else. Something else was always more important than the writing, more important than the art.

Eventually, I found myself spiraling down a shaft of worry, of ill-focus, of despair, and eventually learned that it was the artistic portion of myself telling me that I needed to let my creative jism burst across the bosom of reality. I needed to make art, my body would say, I needed to create, and I need it now and if you don’t let me do this I’m going to make it very difficult for you to succeed at anything else, no matter how desperate you are to succeed.

Once the climax was achieved, life would go back to normal. I’d work, I’d play with my kids, I’d make love to my wife.

But the cycle starts over, then.

How does all this tie in to the idea of moderation? I just claimed that waiting for the burst of creation is fulfilling, didn’t I? Well, yes. And no. It is fulfilling, for a time. It is fulfilling for that moments, those moments, that the art is spraying from your pen. When it is not fulfilling is during the moments that make up the in-between-times. I’m not talking about the times where I work, or I play with my kids, or I make love to my wife. Those things are important. But isn’t the art important, too?

Yes, art is important. Art is important enough that it has been a driving societal force for thousands of years, and today it is such a large and enticing place to live and work that hundreds of thousands of “starving artist” types willingly sacrifice themselves and their own happiness for their art. Debate is open on whether that leads to good art or not.

I’m happy with my job, with my family, and with my life in general. If that artsy-fartsy bone wasn’t there buried in my limbic system and controlling every aspect of my character when I don’t let it out for a walk from time to time, then my life would be perfect and complete.

The art is there, the creation is inside, and I have to let it out, but when I let it burst from me like a demon only when it is necessary to do so, then I’m hurting myself. I can’t deny myself the time to accomplish something and give it my stamp of approval and then present it for the world and expect it to be successful. I can’t deny myself the opportunity to do my best.

I thought I had done my best on the manuscript for Stories, up until several days ago when @portiaalex threw me a loop on a literary device that I thought was effective, but ended up confusing and muddled. Now, I have significant rewrites to do! (Thank you, @portiaalex, for saving me from myself.)

In moderation, I broaden the understanding of the things I write. I spend less time in one sitting, but more time spread out through the week, and have a better understanding of what my story is, what my purpose is for writing. By not taking a four-hour chunk on Sunday, but five forty-five-minute segments during the week, I get to spend more time in my story, and less time fiddling around trying to find where I was the last time I left.

I have decided to push the publication deadline back a month, because I have a few more edits to make, so that I can make this little bit of what I call art the best I can. End of time, we’ll call it. Wish me luck.

It makes me happy to know that my deadline has been pushed back because I’m taking the time to make it right, and by-golly, Dear Reader, I hope you enjoy it!

 

I’ve written about my typewriter before. Well, it broke, so I haven’t been clacking the way I used to. For now, I’ve been tapping on my Macbook, which you can see in the lower left corner.

Recently, though, a friend called me up to say they were having a garage sale. Wonderful, they want me to buy their old junk. “I saw this in acloset, and thought of you,” he said. Then he told me what is was.

A Smith-Corona Electra 120. He said I could have it, unless he wanted me to sell it to some stranger for a dollar.

“I’ll take it, I’ll be right over,” I said.

When I got there, I learned that the 120 is the manual carriage return model; my old 220 had an automatic carriage return, which is, after fifty or more years of life, what failed. This one is still electric, but only the keys. The return is manual. At least making more lines won’t cause the thing to jump across my flimsy old typewriter desk anymore!

As of today, I haven’t done any writing on it. Probably, I won’t til after June. But I promise, soon, that I’ll have a new story up soon, and I’ll have some pictures of the work-in-progress to to with it.

Thanks for sticking with me, Readers. The end of June is cometh, and right soon!

 

———

Morning

 

Looking out the window over yonder,
  there are enough stars to fill imagination,
  there are clouds and birds and trees and things, but you aren't there.

Looking at the coffee in my cup,
  there are thoughts and swirls of indescretion,
  there are dregs and steamy taunts and drips, but you aren't there.

Looking to the future as it rolls along,
  there are chances, there are fears,
  there are times and places where you'll be, and I'll be there.

Afraid, I won't come forward.
Afraid, you won't come back. 

 

Oh, and don’t forget: the end of the month is rolling in! I’ve finished the final edits on story #6 of 9, which you can preview here.

 

And where are the words?

So, Scrivener is a fantastic product. I’ve used it now for about two years. I love it, and won’t trade it anytime soon. I carry two Moleskines – a small, soft ruled and a large, hardcover plain. I read a lot, currently Iain M. Banks, Truby, Ol’ Fitzy, and a little Tolkien. Oh, and Stephen King. Maybe some more. I sit in front of a computer on-and-off for approximately 10 hours by four days per week.

But where are the words?

Cummulatively, in the past six months, I’ve composed fewer than 50,000 of them into some sort of conglomerate, prissy, pretentious notion that I may or may not be, at some level of my psyche, a writer. I’ve read the books – Bird by Bird, On Writing, King & Browne, Strunk & White. Writer’s Market. That other one. Angry Birds, you know, for downtime. I have a nookColor (still no update–ten days left, B&N).

I still sit and stutter at the keyboard, stilted by the ideas, shafted by the vocab, and abandoned by my fingers, which at other times will blast through 90 WPM (or 61, whatever).

Why is that?

Why is it that I sit here, touting myself as writer, but never roaring, never shouting the message that beats inside. Why not spit the story out, feral, angst-ridden, and ornery across the page? What is there holding me back?

The short answer: I have no effing clue.

I sit at my desk. The affectionate billow of my fingers across the keys comes as as a shock and I stop. I look at the words I have before me, hunt more, spend some time with my site, with my ideabox, with some drafts and notebooks and angry birds and Machen, King, Fitz, Dumas, and a lot of the kids from the playground of literature. I looked at R.A. Salvatore, at the New York Times Bestsellers list, I watched the art flow from everyone else and realized… It’s time I got off my ass.

I am writer, see me write.

Look for a special treat at the end of June, this year.

 

Enjoy!

———

A quarter mile from Lamesa, Jack could tell that he was up for disappointment. Over the past two weeks, he had steeled himself as if he were headed for a concentration camp, expecting to see people starving, people dying in the streets because there just wasn’t enough edible material to go around. But there were no people, and that he wasn’t prepared for.

Coming down the slight rise on the northeast side of town, Jack could follow Main with his eyes all the way to the south end. There were five buildings. Two were bars, one of which could provide entertainment as well, for a price, usually crabs or the clap. One dealt used cars and was surrounded by a large lot, one boarding house, and one general store.

No movement caught Jack’s eye. No sound, hardly a breeze to catch his sweat and cool his skin. The town was dead. Jack dropped to his knees and prayed.

“Christ, that’s twice in two days,” Jack said to the empty road. Ten years ago that was common, but since Izzy and Char were killed it hadn’t happened outside of a handful of feeble attempts. Char would have been twelve now.

Jack pushed himself back up off his knees and walked in silence toward town, pushing away the thoughts of his daughter, ignoring the warm splash of blood as it splayed across the memory of his wife’s body lying dead still on the beige carpet. All that blood soaked into the edges of his consciousness, even as Jack stared blank at the clouds and tried to empty his head. Road dust floated around him, stale and sour.

In town, Jack went first to the bar, the one without the extra-curriculars. He wasn’t in the mood to ogle a dead whore, even if his next chance to off his rocks was weeks away.

Two glasses of whisky down, the pain descended from behind his eyes to somewhere in his chest. One more glass and it found solace in his stomach. That was fine, because from there he could convince himself that it was something different, less gruesome.

Jack walked to the grocery across the Main and refreshed his food stock.

“Tuna. Salmon. Tired of it. Where’s the goddamn jerky?” He tossed the unwanted cans on the floor while the bitterness floated through him. The vegetables were rotted. The dark Hershey’s bars should still be good though so he grabbed a few and threw them in his pack. He walked back and picked up the two tuna cans he had thrown down, and grabbed two more from the shelf. Six cans of beans, three corn.

A crash caught his attention. He whipped around and gave the store a quick scan before dropping to his knees. They popped and Jack groaned. The short knife was already in his hand, pulled so quickly that he hadn’t even realize he had done it.

He closed his eyes and split his lips apart, listening hard for more sounds. A rhythmic thumping began, and light footsteps. Three aisles over.

Jack crawled silently to the end of his aisle, knees angry the whole way, and eased himself into a crouch. He worked slowly across three aisles, checking the corners along the way. On the fourth aisle—off by one—Jack saw him. What is he doing alone? They’re never alone.

He could always tell a Walker. They always had a pungent odor and a smirk that was uncommonly gleeful. Without fail, they stink to hell. Without fail, they look like they could break into cackles at any little thing. A toppled tree, or a falling leaf.

This one was alone, though. Not they this time, but he. Whistling, now. Thump, thump, can after can tossed aside. A can of hominy rolled toward Jack, and he snatched it up. The Walker paused and grunted and started to turn toward the sound, or lack of, caused when the rolling can ceased to roll. Jack reprimanded himself and swore silently, sure the Walker had turned full around and looked toward the end of the aisle where Jack was crouched around by the end cap.

He was certain that if that bastard listened long enough, he’d hear his own version of cans tossed rhythmically aside.

When no more sound was evident, the Walker resumed sifting through sundries, picking out the things that would taste least like shit when cooked in the can.

Jack exhaled slowly and forced his body to relax. He sheathed the knife and pulled his pistol from the holster on his left hip. The dragoon was slow but always effective. One cube of powder should do in these quarters.

The Walker strolled to the end of the aisle on Jack’s left, and began walking up the aisle to his right. Jack sat silent, listening. The footsteps stopped. He heard a box open, heard a plastic bag rip. A grinding sound and a rain of small pebbles flashed across Jack’s mind as the Walker grabbed a handful of cereal and shoved it in his mouth, groaning with contentment.

Jack held his handkerchief against the firing pin of his pistol and slowly clicked it live.

The box hit the floor. Quick patters of running steps flew away from Jack and he leaped out from behind the endcap. He squeezed the trigger and the dragoon howled. The crash seemed to shake the building as the sound echoed against the metal rafters.

The ball struck at the base of the Walker’s neck, and he dropped to the ground, it’s hat flying from it’s head. Long brown locks flowed like water from a burst baloon.

“A girl?”

Jack was dumbstruck. He’d never seen a female Walker before. And he hadn’t heard laughter in many years, but he heard it now, behind him.

“You shouldn’t have done that, old man.”

The voice was like coarse sandpaper. Jack turned to face the speaker, his hand already moving to his short knife, but the attempt was feeble and stupid. Jack knew that he had crossed a line, and he thought of Izzy, of Char, and of how it had felt to see them dead. He wondered briefly who the girl was.

The second Walker was on Jack in half a heartbeat, a huge knife pressed against the old man’s throat, and the creature’s sick breath washed over him. He had never been this close to one in daylight, and was appalled. He couldn’t even think of the thing as human anymore. It’s skin was gray and over-thick, almost calloused. A sore oozed on one cheek, but the fluid was dark yellow, almost brown. Not pus, not an infection. There was not redness around the wound. It was like mucus, like the snot that drips after a long walk through a dust storm. Jack’s breath hitched in his throat.

“I’m gonna kill you, old man.” The Walker’s words loosened Jack’s throat and made him feel a little more stable. The throb in his stomach lessened.

“Just try it, ugly,” Jack said.

The creature chewed on his lip, furling his brow. He spat in Jack’s face.

“You insolent shit,” the creature said and broke Jack’s nose.

Jack crumpled on the tile floor of the grocery and tasted blood and snot. He spat back, toward the floor rather than at the Walker, and began to reach around his right side, that facing away from his attacker.

“What is your name, ugly? I hate to have to keep calling you ugly all the time.”

The Walker howled with rage.

“My name? My name? What in hell do you want with that. Wanna steal my soul with it? Wanna eat my flesh, pick your teeth with my bones?”

“No, ugly. I just want to know what to call you. In case I ever need to know.” Jack’s hand found the tang of the short knife, but the appearance of two more Walkers at the grocery store’s entrance caused him to let it go. The newcomers appeared out of breath.

“Murgan,” said one of them, “is everything O.K.?”

Jack chuckled. Murgan kicked him and turned to the others.

“Shut up,” Murgan said. “Idiots.”

“We heard an explosion,” said the other—another female, Jack noticed. “Thought maybe—“

“We found him.”

“What?”

“Don’t be so surprised, Angela,” Murgan said. “Dusk told us we would have the traitor soon. He’s hear. He—“

Murgan turned when he heard the click, and Jack launched himself up, taking the shot he had reloaded while Murgan’s back was turned. The ball bearing embedded itself in Murgan’s right arm. Jack’s left swung around with the knife and slashed at him, but the unnamed Walker bashed Jack on the back of the head and the world crisped away in a sparkle of blackness.

 

My question is, is that OK? I’ve given a synopsis to a few people, and let a couple “ideal readers” (to quote Stephen King) check it out, which of course is the cardinal sin of the first draft, but I can’t get the nagging feeling out of my head that I’m going too fast. Even the long sentences and narrative unrelated to action seems to carry a vibration of suspense.

For a guy who writes things that are mostly designed to scare folks, I think this is OK. But I’ve got sixty two thousand words to go here, and I’m stuck wondering if the damn story is a whirling dervish throughout the whole show.

I’ve got to slow it down.

So here’s what I came up with: a subplot. Two subplots.

Rereading what I’ve got so far–in addition to the next ring of Hell for this second cardinal sin of first drafting–and hearing my readers and synopsis-ees speak their minds, I see that there are two characters that intrigue folks almost as much, if not more, than the main character, the inevitable Jack Chandler. Two subplots, ready-made for broadening the pace of the story, and providing yet more urgency to the initial story.

Murtag, a shape-shifting Demon-thing known as a “Walker,” has developed an odd sort of friendship with Jack. Well, he will shortly.

Isabella, Jack’s wife, carries a secret when Jack visits her by the Devil’s hand.

These two keys have unlocked enough other story to keep me busy and to relieve some of the tension that my original plotline has quivered to life in its taughtness. Right now, the seventy-five hundred words are a story in existence, and a novel in the making, unlocked by these bits of information.

My advice, fellow writers, is simple: Keep an eye on your characters; you never know what they’re going to do.

Besides. I can always fix it in the second draft, right?

Anyone else have advice? Please feel free to share.

 

i’m withered and you’re pale
but then i look again
and see you full of life
see the way you’ve always been,

you sparkle and i fade away,
the days drift on like waves and then
float in to fill you up and see
the way you might have been

you blossom and your foliage continues
to extend
and while i crumble, i just lay there
in the dirt, but then again,

in all the ways you’ve grown, i’ve faltered,
and all i’ve kept the same, you’ve altered.

January 14, 2010
Canyon Lake, Texas

 

I’ve been asked a slew of times today why I choose to torture myself like that, and I usually respond that it isn’t torture, doing something you love. If I ate ice cream for desert three times a day, wouldn’t I love it? (The answer here is, “yes”) So, for one month out of the year (and more, if I can convince the wife and kids) I indulge in writing and feel like a real, honest-to-goodness, professional writer.

I even have the second job just to pay the bills!

Wrimos, Unite!

 

"My speech slowed down and the room started to darken. In the blackness that had overtaken my eyes, stars exploded."

She sent me a text message inviting me to join her upstairs. That’s how it all started. Of course, I went to join her. I couldn’t resist, really. Her skin slid across my mind, dotted with freckles. The faint smell of lavender tickled my nose, and in my mind I was already curled up in the bed with her, nuzzling against her shoulder, sliding my hand along her thigh. I had known for a long time that she was a nutcase, but as I imagined what could happen if I decided to ascend those stairs, logic and reason headed out for a sultry evening alone. I was the third wheel on their outing.

The bedroom door was already open. When I walked in, she was laying on top of the blanket cuddled against an extra-long body pillow. She was completely nude.

I tore my shirt off and slid onto the bed and ran a hand up her thigh and kissed her side, just below the ribs. I ran my hand over her buttocks and along her back, brushed my lips against her skin, nearing her breast.

The pinch and burn in my shoulder gave me pause, and my groin ached and my mouth longed to meet those curves. I looked up, and saw a hypodermic needle prtruding from my shoulder, stuck in all the way up to the hilt.

I leaped off the bed and began shouting.

“What? What the… Why?”

My speech slowed down and the room started to darken. In the blackness that had overtaken my eyes, stars exploded.

When we were young, Meribelle and I were neighbors, or, more truthfully, our parents were neighbors. Our fathers worked at the same accounting firm. Her dad was a fraud examiner and my dad was a janitor. Her dad liked wine and golf and my dad liked beer and baseball. They did not like each other. Our mothers were quite close, both being excellent seamstresses and members of the local quilt guild. As a result, she and I became friends. My mother and her mother would sit and chatter on a bench at the park near our neighborhood, Meribelle and I would take turns pushing the merry-go-round. I would run through the standing puddles in the rutted tracks around the edge of it, run so fast that the whole world would become a spinning, confused blur. Occassionally, I would catch flashes of reality, still-life paintings of the world that existed outside of our circle dominion. I saw Meribelle’s mother’s blonde hair and smiling face. The I would see Mer, see how she was beautiful, like her mother. I was seven. Mer was nine.

For hours in a child’s dream, the merry-go-round would spin and I would watch Mer and most times she would watch something else, would create her own still-lifes in the outside world. The clouds would sail by in the whirling circles, the grass was green and soft and stretched on forever. The world would spin and I would spin and Meribelle would sit across from me on the merry-go-round and I can’t remember a happier time than that. I lifted my hand to smooth my hair, and found it wouldn’t budge.

I tried to lower my face to see the problem, but found my chin held fast. The breeze was dying down, and the light was drifting away, and flashes of angry red and auburn snapped me awake. My eyes rolled.

Mer’s red nails scratched my face. Her red lips snarled across bared teeth. Her breasts jostled distractingly, threatening to make sense of this mess.

“Welcome back to the world, honey,” Mer said.

I tried to speak and couldn’t. My mouth was full of those spinning clouds, that cool grass. She let go of my chin and slapped me. I felt the gash from her nails and knew that blood would come soon. Red, like her nails. Like her lips. As she turned and strode away from me, I noticed her red panties.

“I’m so glad you could make it.” She turned and pouted, looking very sexy, given the circumstances. “Are you going to go all emo on me since you didn’t get a fuck?” Her breasts were spectacular.

My body was beginning to catch up to reality and my heart was thumping. I could hear the torrential breeze, hear the nasal shuck and maw of my breathing. I realized that the clouds and grass that filled my mouth were not those things but cotton and silk. A sock and a scarf. I still could not speak.

Mer turned to a small wooden table, the folding kind from Target, and fiddled for a moment. I looked down, my hands were duct-taped to the arms of a chair. I tried to kick my legs and found them secured, too. I looked up again, saw the dresser and nearly sucked the gag back into my throat.

On Mer’s dresser was a picture of the two of us at the park. We were sitting on the merry-go-round.

“You ready tiger?”

My eyes, wider I’m sure than silver dollars, fixed again on Mer’s breasts for a moment, then her face. I wish she’d put those things away. But not that much. She held up another needle, a larger one than I had succumbed to before, and flicked the end of it. Light glared against two small drops of liquid that flew from the tip. I lurched against my restraints.

She took a step toward me, and I stopped struggling.

She took another step, and my heart nearly stopped, then began to race, like a four-banger kicking into overdrive on a steep hill. My breath against the gag was hot like exhaust.

I looked down at my shoulder and was relieved to find the syringe gone, but the rubber tube tied around the bottom of my bicep frightened me.

I looked back at Meribelle and she was smiling. Great, a gag. Dear, sweet mother of Christ! Let it be a gag. A joke between friends.

Another step. She was strutting like a catwalk hussy. I looked down her long legs and found her feet wrapped in stiletto heels.

I tried to struggle again. This made my head sway, made my stomach slosh. If ever there was a time where I wished for a stronger stomach, now was that time. I could feel the burning bile rising in my esophagus, and worried about what would happen if I threw up with a gag in my mouth.

Mer was about three steps away. I shook against the duct tape, but it would not give. Two steps. I gave up and sat still, pushed my head back against the back of the chair, and tried to slow my breathing. Darkness was creeping in again, light was dimming, shapes were blurring. One step away. I pushed my head forward, my stomach now a ball of wet cheese and my skin oiled with sweat. I was looking at Mer’s red heels and garnished a little satisfaction at the idea of chucking on them, then remembered the gag.

Without really realizing what I was doing until it was done, without memory of the motion three seconds later, I ligted my head and looked at Mer. Her face was stunning, and her teeth were perfect. The spike-toothed needle was not. She flipped her hair, and there was a deafening flash of black and then her hair came floating back to rest against her neck, and the world spun past her on the merry-go-round and I could see her face getting closer and I was afraid and then I kissed her. I was seven[teen].

The sun faded out though and dim nightlight filled my vocal sphere again. My lips were still pressed against Meribelle’s and I could smell lavendar and I could taste Camel cigarettes on her tongue. I knew they were Camels because she had smoked two packs of them a week in high school and a pack a day since. This wasn’t the first time I had kissed Mer. But what am I getting hung up on this for? I’m taped to a chair and she is holding a hypo filled with God knows what for a purpose of God knows which.

Mer pulled back and broke the kiss.

“Mmm,” she said. “Yummy.”

I tried to speak and an underbaked fudge of sounds spilled out of [my mouth]. She had removed the gag. And kissed me! Thank Christ, she’s only fooling around.

But, if it was just a joke, why didn’t she let me loose?

“Let me up.”

Mer giggled.

“Why would I want to go and do that, now I’ve got you right where I want you?”

“Let me up, Mer. This isn’t funny.”

“You mean you’re not having any fun?”

“No, fuck no. I’m tied to a goddammed chair and naked and you keep sticking needles in me!”

“Just the one. You passed out before I could get the second one in.”

“Well, that’s great! Now let me get the fuck out of this chair.”

“No, no, and no.”

She punctuated those three no’s with a fingertap to my chest, then my belly, then the trail of hair [below my navel]. I felt the tingle run through my abs and felt my groin stir. How can she be this evil?

She grabbed me, then turned around and slid against my chest. I shook her off best I could (which didn’t work) and screamed. Any other time? Sure. Now? No.

 

I had a little fun with Jack Chandler’s adventure and decided to share. It’ll spruce up the site a little, too. Add some color. Enjoy!

So begins the story of Jack Chandler...

My apologies to Wordle for not using their embedding tags. I wanted something larger than a 1"x1.5" thumbnail.