The book I have been using as a demonstration of my writing process, showing you the second edit of each chapter at one chapter per week, is now finished. It is also published and available on Amazon.
The book is a novella, meaning it is only about 15,000 words. I have not shown you the last few chapters on Tuesdays, but if you have been reading every chapter in order, it isn’t too much to expect to charge you 99 cents to get the whole thing from Amazon, is it? Not everything in life is free. At least, not in my experience.
The next Tuesday offer will be The Necromancer’s Apprentice, either another novella, or a short comic fantasy novel.
Bobby and his book were perched in the rocking chair on the porch with Horatio curled up on the rug by his feet. The reading lamp was on, but otherwise the porch was mostly dark. Dad and Grandpa had finished closing the porch-window shutters over an hour earlier. Thunder rumbled eerily somewhere out in the dark of the early evening.
“It sure is spooky out there,” said Shane from his seat in the darkness around the porch sofa.
“It’s just a summer thunderstorm,” said Bobby, turning a page.
“Whatcha readin’?”
“Sherlock Holmes.”
“Oh? What’s the story called?”
“The Final Problem.”
“Is that a good one?”
“No. Sherlock fights Professor Moriarty at a waterfall in Switzerland called Reichenbach Falls. They both go over the edge and fall to their deaths.”
“Sherlock dies?” Shane sounded genuinely alarmed.
“Yeah. But he’s not real. And he comes back to life. The Hound of the Baskervilles happens after this story.”
“Oh.” Shane sounded relieved.
Then the place was briefly white with light from outside, and the thunderstrike that followed almost instantly meant that lightning had hit something nearby. ProbaHbly the lightning rod on the barn’s cupola.
But Bobby and Shane both jumped as the electricity went out, leaving them in inky blackness. A few seconds later, the lights were on again.
“What was that!?” Shane practically screeched.
“From the ozone smell in the air, I surmise that lightning struck nearby. Close enough to cause a brief power outage via electromagnetic pulse.” Horatio looked calm and unconcerned as he said it.
“Horatio says that the lightning struck the barn and caused the electricity to go out for a moment.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t wish to alarm anyone, but I smell rats out and about,” said Horatio.
“Professor Rattiarty?” asked Bobby.
“What?” said Shane.
“Yes, but not alone. He has the corpse of a poisoned rat with him. Possibly Darktail Ralph. He probably wants to tempt me to poison myself.”
“You won’t eat the dead rat, will you?”
“No! Yuck! I don’t want to eat any dead rats!” remarked Shane loudly and with disgust.
“I concur with your brother. I will not be eating any rats tonight either. Rattiarty is himself filled with rat poison.”
“What? Rattiarty is poisoned but not dead?”
“What… what?” gasped Shane. “Are you talking to Horatio again?”
“Rats often ingest poison slowly enough that, instead of slaying them, they become immune to it.”
“What are we gonna do if the rats are now immune to poison?”
“They are? Bobby? What is Horatio telling you?”
“What are you telling me, Horatio?”
“Professor Rattiarty is out there now in the storm. He’s out of evil minions and wants to challenge me to a final battle.”
“Horatio says Professor Rattiarty wants a final showdown now.”
“The evil rat is out there in the storm?”
“He is.”
“Bobby, if you open the porch door for me, I must answer the rat’s challenge.”
“Now? In the storm?”
“Yes. If not now, then never. My aged body is soon to give out, and I would not let that evil rat continue to threaten the Niland family that I have loved for so long, and who loves me in return.”
Bobby put Sherlock Holmes aside and rose from the rocking chair.
“Bobby, why are you crying? What did the dog say?”
“Not now, Shane.”
Bobby moved to the porch door. He opened the screen door inward and the storm door outward against the wind and the driving rain.
“Bobby! What are you doing?”
Horatio leaped up and bolted out of door as a lightning strike illuminated everything with a burning blue-white light.
Bobby thought he saw the rat scampering across the farmyard as the light faded to blackness.
Shane, terrified, jumped out into the downpour.
“Horatio! Come back, doggie!”
Bobby, too, went out in the rain. Straining his eyes to try to find Horatio and the rat he was chasing. He could see nothing. A car out on the gravel country road had its brights on as it barrelled along towards Highway 69 going much faster than it should in the rain.
“Horatio! Come back, it’s not safe!” Shane screamed, crying as he shouted it.
Grandpa Butch was suddenly directly behind Bobby.
“What’s going on? Why are you boys out in the storm?”
“It’s Horatio and the rat.”
“Shane! Come back to the house!”
“Grandpa, Horatio is out here in the rain somewhere! Bobby let him out the front door!”
A car horn blared. Brakes screeched. Bobby thought he heard a sickening thump out there on the gravel road. And the car skidded to a stop in the dark and the rain.
“Oh, god, no! Shane!”
Grandpa ran toward the car. Bobby followed right behind. As they drew near the stopped car, they heard Shane crying as if he were heartbroken.
“Shane! Are you all right?”
“Grandpa, it’s Horatio.”
“Butch, I am sorry,” said Mr. Beetle Jones, out of the car and kneeling by the lump of soaked fur on the gravel road, illuminated by the headlights.
Bobby’s stomach quivered, leading to an uncontrolled string of chest-constricting sobs.
“Ah, Horatio. You have been a good and faithful friend,” said Butch Niland wearily as he kneeled down and petted the badly damaged body.
“Is he…? Is he dead?”
“I’m sorry, boys. He was an old dog. It is a blessing that it was over quickly. It means his life won’t end in prolonged suffering.”
“Bobby, how could you?” cried Shane. “It’s your fault! You and your dumb old imagination. You shoulda never let him out of that door.” Bobby could take no more. He lit out for the house as fast as he could run. The lightning and thunder lent drama and illuminated his path.
“He’s actually daring to come into the barn again,” reported the turncoat barn cat, Greeneyes.
“Has he got that stupid boy with him? That Bobby fella?” asked Whitewhiskers Billy, the number-three rat in the gang.
“Not just him, but the two fantastical friends, too.”
“You mean the baseball-bat boy that killed ChickenKiller?” asked Stupidrat, the number-last rat now that ChickenKiller was nothing but bones in the gravel by the pump house.
“Not just him. Also, the beautiful princess that always wears blue clothing and always looks so gorgeous that I almost fall over dead.”
“Horatio T. Dogg is so brazen and conceited, Boss, that he thinks he can dare to come sniffing about your kingdom without so much as asking Greeneyes for permission,” said Darktail Ralph, the number-two rat.
“You must be patient, my anxious minions,” said Professor Rattiarty in an oily voice from the darkest shadows in the stack of haybales. All you could see of Rattiarty’s hideous face were the two glowing red eyes staring out at everybody from the darkness. “Sooner or later Horatio will make a mistake. We will have him fatally outnumbered and make an end to him. Remember, the old Dogg is getting old.”
“Right, right, Boss. We’ll be patient.”
“Greeneyes, get up on the highest hay bale so the humans can see you. They will see a barn cat and think that no rats could possibly be around,” ordered Rattiarty.
“Right away, Boss.”
*****
“Look, there’s a barn cat up there,” said Mike. “There’s no way there are any rats around in here, or the cat would get ‘em.”
“That is a fine-looking cat,” said Blueberry. “He looks fat enough to have eaten several rats.”
“That’s Greeneyes. He’s in with the rats. Rattiarty gives him chicken parts and other food so the corrupt cat will be the lookout for the evil gang of horrible rats. They are probably up there right behind him, giving him orders, and using him to spy on us.”
“Bobby, you are mentally insane sometimes,” said Mike. “Rattiarty? I bet you have all of the rats named already, don’t you?”
“Well… yeah. Horatio sniffs them out and tells me everything.”
“What are their names?” asked Blueberry.
“Well, there’s Darktail Ralph, Rattiarty’s right-hand rat. And then there’s Whitewhiskers Billy, and Stupidrat, and ChickenKiller… but he’s dead. Mike, remember the rat you killed with the bat when you and the Pirates were out here doing batting practice?
“Oh, yeah. So, that rat had a name, did he?” said Mike.
“Of course, he did. Rats are people too, aren’t they?”
“NO. Just no.”
“Bobby, I appreciate your wonderful imagination even if Mike doesn’t,” Blueberry said sweetly.
Bobby grinned at her. If only…
*****
“The dog is coming right NOW!” screeched Greeneyes, just before he disappeared from the top of the stack of hay bales.
Horatio T. Dogg, with his green hat on his head and Meerschaum pipe in his mouth, appeared in his place, cooly looking down into Rattiarty’s lair in the hollows between the hay bales.
“So, Professor, we meet again,” said Horatio.
“But not by accident this time. It was all part of my plan,” said the voice behind the glowing red eyes in the darkness.
“Oh? How so?”
“I lured you here to show you I survived our last encounter after all. And my rat forces are growing again. Did you really think we would be satisfied with just turkens this time? They are no challenge. I killed Little Bob with a mere thought.”
“Oh? It was you that convinced him he was a penguin and could swim underwater in the horse tank?”
“No, I… er, um, I mean… Yes! I killed him with mind control.”
“I don’t see how. Little Bob only had a tiny chicken mind.”
“But I have already worked my magic on the Niland family. Do you know why Grandma Niland passed away?”
“Lung cancer.”
“Ah, but who caused that cancer?”
“Not you?”
“How did she get infected with cancer?”
“Cigarettes in the 50’s when teenagers thought it was cool to smoke?”
“No. My talents as a carrier for disease. I did that. And I am warning you, you don’t know how to stop me before the next one dies.”
“What next one?”
“Um, probably the Grandpa.”
“I can stop you by killing you all right here, right now with my teeth and claws.”
“Stupidrat! Attack!”
“Yeah, let’s attack now guys!” screamed Stupidrat as he stupidly leaped at Horatio’s growling mouth.
The other rats all quickly withdrew into the shadows.
*****
“That’s just one dead rat. And your dog probably grabbed it before the cat could. We saw him scare the cat away.” Mike was frowning darkly.
“Really, Mike! Horatio says they were all up there, plotting to kill my Grandpa. This one sacrificed himself so the others could get away.”
“That’s not exactly what I said,” said Horatio.
“Oh, sure! An evil rat professor with glowing red eyes. And they are going to take down Butch Niland, your wise old grandfather!”
“Well, it’s true. Horatio told me. Sorta.”
“You and Blue and your imaginations! I don’t believe you two!”
“I believe you, Bobby.” Blueberry always believed Bobby, no matter how strange a thing it was that Bobby claimed.
“You both better learn what imagination really is before bad things happen to you both. You can’t make your way through life by juxst making up stories about it.”
Bobby nodded silently. Mike was right. He needed to know what imagination really was, and how God meant for him to use it.
Catch a Falling Star 