This is not a book review. I did finish reading this book in a 3-hour-end-of-the-book reading orgy, spending an hour last night, and two more early in the morning before the rest of my family was awake.
This is certainly not a book review. But I did read a Stephen King book, 1998’s Bag of Bones, which I picked up from the dollar sale shelves at Half Price Books. And I did love the story.
………………………………………………………………………This is not a book review. Instead, I want to talk about what a novelist can learn and reflect on by meta-cogitating over what this book reveals about King’s work habits and style and author’s voice.
Mike Noonan, the protagonist, is a novelist who writes books that routinely land in the numbers 10 through 15 slots in the New York Times Bestseller List. Obviously, this first-person narrative is coming directly out of King’s own writing experience. But, remember, this is not a book review. I am discussing what I have learned about how King puts a story together.
King sets a back-story for this novel that digs deep into the geographica and historica of the city in Maine where the story is set. The literal bag of bones revealed in the book’s climax is almost a hundred years old. And he takes a compellingly realistic tour back in time to the turn of the Twentieth Century more than once to reveal who the undead characters are and why they do what they do. One thing that makes a writer, a novelist, truly solid is his ability to set the scene, to grow the story out of the background in the most organic and realistic way possible. But this is not a book review. I am saying that King always does this with his books. And if you wish to write at that level, you must do that too. I know I am sincerely trying.
At the end of the story, he clearly tells the reader that he learned from Thomas Hardy that “the most brilliantly drawn character in a novel is but a bag of bones”. So, he is definitely aware that a character is a construct that has to be crafted from raw materials. It takes a master craftsman to build one with the right words to make it live and breathe on the page. He does it masterfully in this book with several characters. The protagonist, the beautiful young love interest, the love interest’s charming three-year-old daughter who is nearly slain in a horrific manner at the end of the book… The living villain is a well-crafted bag of bones, as is the ghost, the actual bag of bones in the story. But this is not a book review. Most of his books, at least the ones I have read, have the same sort of masterful characters.
There is so much more to be learned about novel writing from this book. He literally shows you how ideas are captured, how they are developed into stories, how you overcome “writer’s block”, and Noonan’s book he is writing within this book is even used as an example of how to poetically advance the plot. But this is not a book review. You should read this book. It is a very good and scary piece of work. But you should read it because it shows us how to write and do it like a master.
Valerie was thinking about chores when she wandered out to
the machine shed. She hadn’t gone into
the house yet for a reason. Feed the
chickens and check for eggs. Put fresh
water in the water bottles. God, she
hated Mr. Boofoo chickens! …Err… un-cool
chickens. The ones that were going to
peck at her for checking their nests were all Mrs. But the other part fit. Lingering outside meant she didn’t have to
march out to the chicken house immediately.
She’d get it done… just not
yet.
As she wandered into the machine shed, she saw her Daddy
there, leaning up against the combine.
The engine housing was up and various parts were laid out on the white
concrete floor in a very careful rainbow of different size pieces, bolts, and
screws. Kyle was leaning up against the
combine with a paper in his hands. He
stared at it with red eyes. Had he been
crying or something? It looked like a
bill, this paper that seemed to be making him sad. Then, he suddenly wadded the thing up into a
ball and pitched it across the shed. It
plinked off the corrugated tin wall and banked directly into the empty barrel
there. Two points! But it did not make him happy. Then he noticed Val was watching him.
“Oh, hi, Princess.
You are looking lovely tonight.”
His face was happier by a mile and a quarter, but the redness of his
eyes still showed.
“Is something wrong, Daddy?”
“Of course not. You
haven’t done your chicken chores, though, huh?”
“Well, not yet… I
will go in a minute. I wanted to talk to
you first.”
“Oh? What about?”
That was the thing.
What about? She didn’t really
have a what about. She just sensed that
she needed to talk to him.
“You know how everyone thinks Pidney Breslow is going to be
a great football player this year?”
“Yeah. The big goof
is just a freshman and he’s already made the varsity team. What about him?”
She had to say something fast… but that usually meant saying
something stupid because she couldn’t think
fast.
“Do you think he would make a good boyfriend for me?”
“You are ten, Princess.
He’s fifteen or sixteen, isn’t he?”
“I’m eleven. Mom is
younger than you are.”
“Only by two years.
Not as big a deal.”
“You don’t like Pidney?”
“I like him fine.
But you are ten. Any boy who
thinks he’s going to be your boyfriend will have to get past two bear traps,
some electric fencing, and my shotgun loaded with rock salt.”
“Why rock salt?”
“It won’t kill him, but it will sting like hell.”
“Oh.”
“Besides, don’t Pidney and that girl Mary Phillips already
have a thing going on? They are always
together.”
“They are best friends.
They live next door to each other.
More like brother and sister.”
Kyle laughed. “Pid’s
a red-blooded American boy. They may say
friends to each other, but when they
are alone together, well… Dagwood
Phillips needs to have some rock salt in his
shotgun for that.”
“Nobody’s gonna shoot Pidney are they? I mean, I think I am in love with him.” There may have been a look of terror on
Valerie’s face at that point. She
really wasn’t sure.
“No, Princess. No
one is really going to shoot him. It’s
just a joke that fathers say whenever they are thinking about their daughters
and young men. Besides, I never figured
I’d have to shoot Pid anyway. I always
reckoned it was more likely to be somebody like that Murphy brat.”
“You’d shoot Danny?”
She wasn’t sure how she felt about that one.
Kyle laughed. He
walked over to his daughter, put his big greasy hand on her neck and gently
pulled her face up next to his heart.
“I love you, Princess.
I would never intentionally do something to break your heart. But I will do everything I can to protect
your heart from being broken. Just try
not to like the boys I might have to shoot for something, okay?”
He said that last with a laugh that told her he loved her and was only playing with her. Daddy was her real handsome Prince.
Yesterday I posted another maudlin doomsday post. I probably gave you the opinion that all I do with my time is mope around and think about death. And maybe write a little creepy black Gothic poetry. But that’s not me. I am a lover of the humor in stories by Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, and Kurt Vonnegut. I am a former teacher that managed to teach the entire zoological range of possible middle school and high school students in Texas and did it without being convinced to hate them rather than love them. Yes, my heart is full of mirth and love and memories of weird kids and troubled kids and kids that could melt the meanest of hearts.
My passion is writing fictional stories about the kids I have taught, including my own three, and setting it in a fictionalized version of my little town, the place in Iowa where I grew up. And I put them in plots of impossible fantasy and science fiction in a way that can only be explained as surrealism.
Nobody reads my books. So far, at any rate.
But that isn’t the important thing. The important thing is that, despite my illness and deteriorating quality of life, my books now actually exist. I put off being a full-time writer for 33 years as I finished my teaching career. A writer has to have something to write about. So, teaching came first.
Writing novels was always the ultimate goal, however. I am a story-teller. The story itself is in the very center of my heart.
Canto Three
–Discovery Doesn’t Happen Without Risk
Leaving the Ghost House, Valerie waited until Conrad Doble
had left. She didn’t like old King Leer
looking at her. She would’ve been
happier if Pidney had stayed around a bit longer. Not only could he protect her, but she really
liked looking at Pidney’s broad shoulders and cute behind. But Pidney left when Mary left. She didn’t have to worry for too long though
about being alone with Conrad. He left
shortly after Pid and Mary. Danny Murphy
and Ray Zeffer were both still there.
“You wouldn’t mind if we walked you home, huh, Val?” asked
Danny.
She looked out the cellar doorway where Conrad had just
disappeared. “It would be kinda good to
have two guys around when I have to go back home and that creepazoid is around
somewhere.”
“We promised Pidney a long time ago that we would look out
for you,” said Ray.
“I don’t really know you very well, Ray. Why do you wanna help me?”
“We are like second cousins or something,” said Ray. “Grandma says there are connections between
the Zeffers and the Clarkes. Back a
couple of generations maybe.”
“Besides,” said Danny, “You may only be ten years old, but you are so beautiful. We’d do anything for you just because of that.”
“That’s kinda sexist, ain’t it? You know my mom and I are both feminists, right?”
“Maybe,” said Ray, shoving Danny for having been so
stupid. “But it is entirely true.”
She looked at him then… really studied him for a moment. Ray Zeffer, tall and thin, was nice to look at too. He had big brown eyes like a deer… Bambi’s eyes. Those eyes could look soulfully through you like x-ray eyes. He could see Valerie’s heart inside her ribcage. She shivered ever so slightly because of those big Bambi eyes. But those eyes were sad. Something about the way those eyes looked at you told you that something deeply sad and soul-searing had touched Ray. She was fairly sure his mother hadn’t been killed by hunters though.
“Let’s go then. If
you walk me to the north edge of town, that will be good enough.”
“You skated in all the way from the farm?” asked Danny.
“Walked to town,” she answered. “You can’t use the board on the gravel
roads. It is only two miles.”
“That’s still a long way,” said Ray. “But if you don’t mind, we’ll walk you all the way home.”
“I don’t mind. You
are both very sweet to do it.”
***** The walk along the gravel roads had been pleasant. The rocks and sand crunched under your sneakers in a way that was reassuring. Your feet were firmly on the earth when you walked on the gravel. No danger of floating away into some dream world. And the sound the gravel made could warn you of oncoming cars both ahead of you, and behind. Stalking King Leers too. They couldn’t sneak up on you without being heard.
“That farm place there is where I live with Daddy and
Momma,” said Valerie. She looked at Ray.
“We know where you live,” said Danny. “We all three have lived in this town all our
lives.”
“Oh, yeah, I know that,” said Val sheepishly. She didn’t want to be awkward in front of
Ray.
“It’s a nice farm,” said Ray. “Your dad must work hard with so many acres
to till.”
“Yeah, he’s pretty busy in the spring, summer, and fall. He should be in the fields now picking corn,
unless he’s finished all the corn that survived the hail in August.”
“I’d be in the fields now, too,” said Ray sadly, “except my
dad passed away two years ago. We just
rent our land out now, Mom and me.”
Val knew about Ray’s father.
He had passed away in the Summer of ’82 from a heart attack while
driving his tractor in a field down by Dows, Iowa. Maybe that’s why Ray looked so sad all the
time.
“Do you miss it?” asked Danny. “The field work, I mean?”
“Not really. Being a
farmer is a hard job. It’s like you are
never done working.”
“Danny wouldn’t know,” said Valerie with a mocking
grin. “His dad works in an office in
Belle City. He counts beans or
something.”
“He’s an accountant,” said Danny frowning fiercely. “Bean-counter is a nick-name for an
accountant. He doesn’t actually count beans!”
“What does he really count, then?” asked Ray.
“Payrolls and prices and ledgers and stuff… I think,” said
Danny. “But I have done field work! You know I walked beans the past two summers,
Val! You walked ‘em too!”
“Ack! I hate walking
up and down the rows with a hoe, pulling button weeds and chopping rogue corn!”
said Ray.
“I like it,” said Valerie laughing. “I pretend some of the weeds are people I
don’t like or who have made fun of me. I
grab ‘em by the throat and yank their little fat heads off, or I chop them in
two with the hoe. Besides, walking beans
is how I got to see Danny naked last summer.”
Danny was seriously blushing now. If Val hadn’t killed him with embarrassment
before, this was sure to do the job now.
“Tell me about it,” said Ray with a chuckle.
Danny was hesitant, but certainly didn’t want Valerie to
tell it. “Well, er… I made a bet with my cousin from Clarion
about who could clear out the thistle patch in his row faster. The loser had to do the next two rows stark
naked, with the winner holding on to the clothes. I didn’t know anybody could chop thistles
that fast.”
“After two rows in the sun with that white skin of his,”
said Valerie, “he was red all over… just like a cherry… even in places a person
should never be sunburned.”
All three of them laughed about it and Danny didn’t even die
of embarrassment. Almost, but not quite.
“We’re here,” said Val at last. “Thank you for walking me home. You are both gentlemen, and very gallant.”
“What does gallant mean?” asked Danny.
“Like a white knight,” said Ray, “protecting the princess
from evil.”
“Are we white knights?” asked Danny, looking directly at
Val.
“One white knight and one cherry red jester, I think.”
Danny grinned again. Ray laughed. It was good to hear Ray laugh. Some people simply need to laugh more.
Describing the feeling of entering the Ghost House for the
first time would prove quite difficult for Valerie when she tried to do it later
on in Miss Bierstadt’s class for an English essay assignment. But at the moment she crawled through the
Tunnel of Doom, she would’ve described it as a feeling in her belly like eating
a bowl of iced earthworms and trying to find a place to throw up in a jungle
full of man-eating plants that smelled an awful lot like marigolds or
something. It was that kind of
combination of anticipation, bad smells, icky things to see and touch, and the sensory
deprivation of entering a candle-lit darkness from the bright September world
outside.
“Welcome, Miss Valerie Clarke,” said freshman football hero
and huge Polish hunk Pidney Breslow.
Valerie was deeply in love with the square-shouldered giant, and
sincerely hoped he would be the leader of this Pirate club.
“Hello,” she said, almost timidly.
“You are just in time for the first official meeting of the
reforming Norwall Pirates’ Club,” said Mary Philips brightly. Mary had extended the official invitation to
Valerie to come here, although Val didn’t really know why. Mary had said that she didn’t want to be the
only girl in the club, but why would a girl like Mary want to be in a boys’
club? She had a bad feeling that the
high school freshman girl also had her cap set for winning Pidney as a
boyfriend. But, plain-looking as Mary
was, Val was only mildly concerned.
A quick look around as Danny Murphy crawled in after her
revealed the other boys in attendance at the secret meeting. Ray Zeffer, another high school freshman was
there. He was kinda handsome in a way,
too, but he was always so sad-looking with those big puppy-dog brown eyes of
his. He had a neatly combed mess of jet
black hair too, which was also attractive.
Val could easily learn to like this club.
The other boy, a high school junior, was kinda creepy. His name was Conrad Doble. He was the only one at the meeting who had
been a member of the original Norwall Pirates.
He was tall and thin, with lank blond hair that hadn’t had a haircut in
too long. He had a distinct problem with
facial Acne. And he insisted on leering
at Valerie, like he wanted to take a bite or two and eat her up. For the first time Val understood why he had
the semi-Shakespearian nickname of King Leer.
“You know that re-forming the Pirates is a sucky idea,
right?” said Doble, leering at Mary Philips for the moment. “There’s no way to go back to those
things. Milt Morgan had all the ideas
and told us what to do. Brent Clarke was
the leader and made the ideas happen.
How are we gonna fight werewolves or undead Chinese wizards without them?”
“You know that those adventures were mostly lies and fairy
tales,” Mary said.
“Still, who will be the wizard? And who will be the leader?” Doble glared at Mary accusingly. “I actually saw the werewolf!”
The two older boys, Ray and Pidney looked at each other
sheepishly.
“Re-forming the Pirates was my idea,” said Mary. “I think I should be the leader.”
“A girl as leader?” asked Doble. “We only used to let girls in for sex
parties.”
“Be careful what you say to Mary, Goon,” said Pidney.
“Or what? You’ll beat
me up with your football muscles?”
“No,” said Ray. “The
two of us will beat the crap out of you.”
The fire flashing in Ray Zeffer’s eyes was even more intimidating than
Pidney’s football muscles, and Pidney’s football muscles were seriously huge.
“Yeah, well… I guess
there might be benefits to having girls in the Pirates,” grumbled Doble
menacingly.
“So, it’s settled.
The Norwall Pirates exist once more,” said Mary with a sparkly
smile. “I will be the leader and Pidney
will be second in command.”
“Who is the wizard?” growled Doble. “Milt is the hard one to replace.”
“I get that you always thought of Milt Morgan as Merlin and
Brent Clarke as his King Arthur,” said Mary, “but do we really need a wizard?”
“Yeah, I think we do,” insisted Doble.
“You know we don’t have to let you be a Pirate this time,”
warned Pidney.
“I’m the only real
Norwall Pirate here,” said Doble imperially.
“You have to have my permission to even do this.”
“It’s all right,” said Mary.
“What is it you think we need a wizard for?”
Conrad Doble stood up to his full height and lightly bonked
his head on a cellar rafter. After he
rubbed his somewhat flattened head of hair, he went over to a nearby cabinet,
and removed the right hand door which basically fell out when you touched
it. He reached in and brought out a
large peanut-butter jar filled with formaldehyde. Floating in it was the severed head of a huge
black cat, its dead eyes popped and staring.
He placed that on the crate in front of the old couch.
“Gack! What’s that?”
asked Pidney.
“The secret mystical symbol of the Pirate leader,” said
Mary.
“Smart girl,” said Conrad Doble. “If you know that, then surely you know what
a wizard is for.”
“I’m guessing the keeper of secrets,” said Mary.
“The teller of stories!” Valerie blurted out.
“Yes!” said Doble.
“Both of those things. But
story-teller most of all. That’s what
Milt used to do. He told us stories and
made us believe in stuff.”
“So, who here is a story-teller?” asked Ray Zeffer.
“Tell us the story of your Uncle Noah,” Pidney said to Mary.
“He is NOT my uncle,” said Mary. “He’s just Dad’s friend. I used to call him uncle when I was little.”
“But that’s the idea, isn’t it?” asked Pidney. “That story you were telling me about your
dad’s friend on the freighter in the South Seas? You could tell us that.”
“Maybe. You have to
give me time to pull it all together. I
think we need to leave that position open for the moment, to give others here a
chance to tell a story of their
own.” Mary glared in Conrad’s direction for a change.
“Okay,” said Doble.
“It’s a deal.”
“Who will be in the club?” asked Pidney.
“I invited everyone here to be a Pirate,” said Mary. “I think all of us need to be here. The Norwall Pirates used to be a group of
friends that supported each other and helped each other through hard times. That’s what we all need again. Especially Ray.”
Ray Zeffer blushed and looked off into the darkness of the
far corner of the cellar. Valerie
wondered why. She decided she would find
out… soon.
“Why didn’t you invite Billy Martin?” asked Danny
Murphy. “He needs to be a Pirate too.”
“You are right,” said Mary with a smile. “But I didn’t know where to find him or how
to get the message to him. Inviting him
can be our first club project.”
“Club project? You
make it sound all girly!” complained Doble.
“Adventure, then.”
“Yeah, better.”
So it was decided. Valerie Clarke was now the second girl ever to be a Norwall Pirate. She smiled to herself, but when she caught Doble looking at her again, she changed the smile for a frown.
Deaf-mute Terry Houston, sock-puppet Zearlop Zebra, and fool Murray Dawes
I have begun work on novel #10 in my Hometown Series about the imaginary little Iowa town where I grew up. This novel is called Fools and Their Toys. It is basically a novel about how human beans communicate, mind to mind, heart to heart, and mouth to ear.
Fool Harker Dawes, Murray’s uncle
Now, I should tell you, calling them “human beans” in the previous paragraph was not a spelling mistake. It was the kind of pun that fools like Mickey often employ. And I don’t consider the word “fool” to be an insult. After all, the fool in a Shakespeare play often says the thing that sounds the wisest in the play. And all the world is a stage, and all the people merely players. But I do acknowledge that fools can actually be stupid, too. Their whole purpose is to make you laugh.
Probably the most foolish thing about this novel about fools and foolishness is that the narrator is a zebra sock puppet that the ventriloquist protagonist uses to be able to talk and communicate. Murray Dawes has a condition that makes people think he is slow of mind because he is unable to create speech in his own mouth. He is actually quite brilliant. But that doesn’t come out until he finally has the puppet to do the talking for him. Zearlop, then, is the narrator who puts the entire book in his own words even though he has brains made of wadded newspaper and cotton stuffing.
I have long worried that this particular book would be hard to write. But just like the last three novels it is now flowing out of my word processor as if it is writing itself. I do hope I can hang on to life long enough to make it real.
When I am trying to organize some book magic, I tend to light the scented candles in my bedroom and get out the old sketchbook, as well as some fairly recently purchased pens and ink. Yes, I mean, I do storybook magic by drawing. This explanation comes from a teacher who no longer has any class, a nudist who never goes naked anymore, an atheist who believes in God, and a wiseguy who knows he’s really a fool. Magic is 99% hard work and 1% drawing pictures.
So, if you have drawn the proper conclusion from that first paragraph that Mickey is being a stupid old idiot again and he doesn’t really know anything about magic. I beg to differ. I started experiencing symptoms of prostate cancer and indications of another serious lung infection brewing up a couple of years ago. I decided then not to take my complaints to the doctor because I have no money left to spend on health care for myself. Either diagnosis, if it is accurate, is a death sentence for me under Trumpcare. I would rather simply drop dead unawares than have to live with an actual looming deadline that, once passed, I would truly be dead from. So, I have gone about my daily duties and flights of fancy without worry. And, miraculously, I woke up this morning still being alive and able to write. That is magic, isn’t it? I think it is.
Both books are free if you buy them through Kindle Unlimited.
My inevitable conclusion to this experimenting was that I can create a book from black and white drawings and mix in paragraphs that tell all about Tellosia, the fairy kingdom that exists within my boyhood hometown in Iowa. A sort of field guide, if you get what I’m getting at. And I could mix in the black and white graphic novel I have been working on for more than a quarter of a century, The Hidden Kingdom. It might actually attract some readers based on my artwork and its reputed popularity with people who don’t have to actually pay for it. It might be a way to actually sell some books. So, I am going to try it, and you can’t stop me.
Valerie was on her skateboard on Main Street. She was thrashing. It didn’t matter how dangerous Daddy said it
could be. She was a thrasher, and she
knew how to ride. If he thought he could
forbid her from doing it, well, that was just so boofoo! No.
She couldn’t use that
word. Not after Danny Murphy told her
what it actually meant. Yeesh! Okay, un-cool, then.
She was ten. She was wearing her latex biker shorts. You know, the ones Mom forbid her to wear because they were skin tight. But why did it matter so much? It was not like she actually had a butt to show off. She could ride her skateboard naked and no one would really notice. She did an ollie off the edge of the sidewalk and onto the hot pavement. Summer was ending, but the last day of the Labor Day weekend was still hot. Iowa hot. Eighty degrees in the sun with warm, humid air that boiled you right out of your biker shorts sort of hot. But Valerie wasn’t ready to find out if it was true that no one would notice. She needed to keep them on. They were black with a purple slash of color on the sides. Her favorite thing to wear.
Across the asphalt street her wheels and trucks buzzed as
she rode to the south side of Main Street.
It was a small Iowa farm town.
Only maybe four cars were parked there at any one time, and no one was
on the street but her. Still, she wished
she could burn her way across right in front of someone’s moving pickup truck
and scare them into dropping a bale of hay or two. No one marked her passing by in one of the
most boring places in the whole Mr. Boofoo Universe. No.
The Mr. Un-Cool Universe. She had to remember not to say that other
thing anymore. Especially in front of
Mom, even if Mom didn’t have a clue what it really meant.
She was headed for the Ghost House on the south eastern edge
of town. The Ghost House was the only
remaining haunted house in Norwall, Iowa, and it had collapsed in on itself.
It was more a pile of broken boards and garbage than a house, but it was
the place where she was headed because, unknown to most of the adults in town,
the Ghost House still had a functioning cellar, shored up with railroad ties by
her cousin Brent Clarke and the rest of the original Norwall Pirates. The Pirates had been a secret club in the
1970’s, a secret that nearly everyone knew at least one thing about. They had been a liars’ club of young boys who
supposedly caught a werewolf once and chased an undead Chinese wizard around
town. Liars’ club was more than just a
local nickname for it. It was more of a
literal definition. But she had been
called to attend a secret Pirate meeting.
A meeting that shouldn’t exist because there had been no Norwall Pirates
since they had graduated high school in 1978.
Mom would have a fit if she knew Valerie was headed to the
Ghost House. It was the kind of run-down
rattle-trap that all mothers worried about.
No decent mother worthy of her official Mom-card would stand for a child
of theirs going to such a place, especially not Val’s Mom, the Queen of
Worrywarts.
She thrashed her way down Whitten Avenue and then around the
corner, zigzagging for two blocks, and then passing Ugly Bill’s Junkyard to the
huge pile of broken crap that had been described to her as being the actual
place.
She came to a stop, kicked up her board and grabbed it, and
looked around, not quite as certain now as she pondered a wilderness of junk,
thistles, and burdock leaves. Ugly Bill
Pixeley had tons of used car parts and wrecked truck parts from which he
salvaged the pieces that he, his brother, and his two idiot sons put together
as trucks and other vehicles which he then sold at a huge profit. Pixeley was a talented mechanic and a very
crafty self-taught engineer.
“You here for the Pirate meeting?” asked Danny Murphy,
pulling up on his bicycle.
“Yeah,” she answered, popping her Bazooka Joe bubble
gum. “Mary Philips says it ain’t just
gonna be for boys anymore.”
“Yeah. I heard that
too. And I’m glad you’re gonna be a Pirate,”
Danny said with a sly grin. He was a
sophisticated man of twelve… well, not really… but he was a boy older than
Valerie by an entire school year, though only about five months in age. Older boys being in the club was one of the
main attractions for her. “It will be
cool to have the most beautiful little girl ever born in Norwall in our club.”
Valerie blushed and dropped her eyes a little bit at
that. Her Uncle Dash had always said
that about her since she could remember.
But it was one thing to hear it from family, and something else to hear
it from somebody she rode the school bus with.
Some things get around by word of mouth a lot faster and farther than
you ever wish they would.
“Do you know how to get inside?” Valerie asked.
“I can show you a secret entrance … for a kiss?” Danny blushed intensely as he proposed the
bargain, a truly dark red that can only be achieved by somebody as
boney-skinny, white-skinned Irish, and shy of girls as Danny Murphy was.
“Boys who think like that all grow up to be rapists,” Val
shot back at him. “That’s what my Aunt
Jennifer says, anyway.”
Danny turned an even darker shade of red-violet. Valerie was suddenly feeling guilty, as if
she might possibly have caused his head to explode from embarrassment by her
cutting remark about his personal urges.
She didn’t dislike him. She just
didn’t want to kiss him.
“Aw, I didn’t mean anything by that. I’ll show you the Tunnel of Doom.”
Danny pointed to a large concrete drainage tile that had been rolled up against the side of the Ghost House’s foundation. She could see that if you crawled through the tile, you could enter through a large crack in the brick foundation. Spiders and potentially snakes to crawl through. Ughh! But Valerie was no Shrinking Violet. She pushed Danny out of the way and went in.
My life as a school teacher is definitely over. That part of my story is complete. I thought, as I found that driving for Uber to earn extra money was becoming too difficult to do, that maybe I could get healthy enough to be a substitute teacher again. Money-wise it makes sense. Three days of substituting in a single week would easily surpass my best days as an Uber driver. And they correctly figure withholding for tax purposes, something that neither my teacher pension nor my Uber account seem capable of doing. I face tax penalties again for 2018.
But my health never seems to stabilize since the car accident in August. Of course, that figures too since my diabetes has gotten worse, insulin has gotten more expensive, and my personal economy tanks monthly. So I have to let go of teacher daydreams. Those chapters are now closed. I must read on more slowly and carefully in the Book of Life.
The Wings of Imagination
The way forward is now through being a story-teller. Writing and drawing are things that I can do without leaving the house, sometimes without even getting out of bed. I know that becoming even more sedentary is basically a slow death sentence. But my arthritis, COPD, and diabetes have all worked hand-in-hand to reduce my mobility. They also make driving more dangerous. So, slowing down probably reduces the chances of sudden and destructive death. And I have never been more prolific in my writing.
Davalon the Telleron alien, Anneliese the gingerbread girl, and Francois Martin the Sad Clown Singer
I have published eight novels. They are, in order of publication, Catch a Falling Star, Magical Miss Morgan, Stardusters and Space Lizards, Snow Babies, Superchicken, The Bicycle-Wheel Genius, Recipes for Gingerbread Children,and The Baby Werewolf. Number nine, Sing Sad Songs, is in the revision and editing stage and will be completed early in 2019. I have When the Captain Came Calling well under way, though the end is not yet in sight. And I recently began work on the rough draft of Fools and Their Toys. I am also working to finish my graphic novel, Hidden Kingdom.
These novels of mine will probably never generate meaningful money in my lifetime, but the creation of them feels like the fulfillment of my life’s arc. I spent four decades in education, and now I am investing my remaining life force in story-telling, using many of the students and fellow teachers in novels of surrealistic fantasy and humor, giving meaning to the memories of a life spent in service to higher ideals.
Player #3, the powerful Miss Perez
So, there you have it, the Story So Far. I will continue to work on it, polish it, perfect it, and continue not to worry if no one reads it or even cares. It is my story, the story I live to create, and that is all the meaning that matters.
I have been using the Tuesday post for this blog for a very novel thing. Yes, that’s an ironic pun made with 55% pure iron. This once-a-week exercise in fictional weirdness is basically a forge for failing novel ideas.
I began with the Stardusters manuscript for a stalled sequel to Catch a Falling Star. I worked it out with a rewritten Canto per Tuesday. And I turned the weird little climate-crisis science-fiction comedy into a passable piece of novel noodling. I was also able to use it as a test novel for the Amazon Kindle Publishing method of turning it into a book that I could hold a copy of in my two hands.
Aeroquest as a novel is now out of print.
Then I tried to rehabilitate my first and worst published novel, Aeroquest. I found I had a lot of very good individual Cantos (which I was using as a faux-poetical and somewhat snooty substitute for the word chapter). But the overall story was fractured and incoherent. What I eventually decided to do with this book is to break it up into at least three separate stories. I don’t know if I will ever republish this book, it is there to be worked on for as long as I’m still kicking.
So, what will I do with Tuesdays now?
This is now the longest stalled manuscript I have going. It has some definite problems and plot holes. I might choose to revise and edit it in this space on my blog. If I do, it will be even more of a real rewrite in front of your eyes than the first two. I initially thought these Novel Tuesdays might yield input and criticism that might prove useful. But of the few people who are actually interested enough to read this word-wrenching and rearranging, I don’t seem to get any thoughts beyond likes and hope-you-succeeds.
Anyway, I am pretty well addicted to this odd writing behavior by now, and next Tuesday yields the start of a new novel, whether you are ready or not.
Catch a Falling Star 