Day 30: On Writing

I love writing; writing's a bitch. The cliche about the terror/tyranny/loneliness of the blank page and all that. Thirty posts in thirty days is hard, but don't break out your tiny violins for me. I choose it. This year when deciding whether to do NaBloPoMo it all came down to this: Anything that puts me in the chair in front of the blank page is a good thing. 

My hope was to create a habit, and then in December sit down every day and write something. I've got unfinished short story manuscripts, and a book project that needs a solid reworking. And I have in the back of my head a novel brewing. But life things are still unsettled and instead of being a distraction from life, life is a distraction from writing.

Make no mistake, writing a blog is an exercise in egoism. Most of us know our readership is small. Ansel Adams used to say that he photographed to please himself and if other people liked it, that was a bonus. That's true about all of art, I suppose. All I know is if I go too long without writing something I get really antsy. I also know that when I get really involved in a project I obsess on it. 

I don't know if I'll do Blog-a-palooza next year. The first time I did NaBloPoMo was 2011 and I wrote 13 posts. I didn't try in 2012, but made 30 in 2013. Last year I didn't participate either. For some reason it felt like I did more than that but really, folks, it looks like I've only completed NaBloPoMo once before this year. 

What I don't like about it is that some days the posts are not up to my standards. Some days I just dash off something to make deadline. I don't like doing work I can't be proud of. Thank you for reading the good and the bad.

As a thank you, I leave you with the opening for my current short story. It doesn't have a title yet.

On his twenty-second birthday, Julius Worthington III boarded a bus bound for a small, northwest Pennsylvania town, where he hoped the locals had short memories for newspaper headlines. At the Erie county courthouse an indifferent judge did a double-take at the name, peered at him for a short minute, then whisked through the rest of the hearing, after which Julius returned to Philadelphia as Julius Applebite. He had already settled upon Gordon, his mother's maiden name, until he passed a series of Burma Shave signs on U.S 6 and thought Applebite just sounded better. He would tell people it was Dutch.

On the trip home, Julius studied the map of Philadelphia's outlying areas. He didn't know where he wanted to go, exactly, so he started by calculating bike-able distance. But then he figured everything was a bike-able distance if you got an early start. Lots of little nowhere towns in New Jersey, he thought. Tomorrow he would ride.

Day 19: Digging in the archives--a story

Most of my published work is in online journals. Some of those journals have gone under, and some just stopped archiving past a certain date. So I've chosen to post them on my web site, acknowledging their original publisher.

This piece appeared in 'Third Wednesday,' which is still in existence but which is no longer archiving the story. It's called 'Subway Ride,' but it's original name was 'The Feral Nature of a Subway Ride.' They were insistent that I change it and I really wanted the pub credit so I changed it, despite the fact that the journal was based in Ann Arbor, Michigan and I don't trust anything anyone from Ann Arbor ever says to an Ohioan. But the other editing changes they wanted were spot on, so there is a teensy little part of Ann Arbor that's ok in my book. 

I included the original artwork. Enjoy!

Subway Ride

It was only a scratch, a tiny line on my cheek, a mere tracing of a fingernail whose polished edge held a single flaw – an insignificant burr – which found a weakness in the layer-dermal, nicking a capillary and leaving the slimmest, most trifling river of blood ever drawn.

When she had boarded my car, heads turned, eyes pointed, women and men alike. She stopped only to survey the field. I sat alone. She stalked the space, her eyes hungry, her breathing shallow and quick.

Me: Stillness. A rabbit in the tall grass,

She sat, gracefully swinging her hips around and down. Next to me. Our clothing touched but it may as well have been flesh.

I dared not look, tried instead to remember her from five seconds ago. Black leather waist jacket, tailored to fit. Black jeans, bought to shrink. Delicate porcelain skin covering sharp cheekbones, thin red lips, short black hair, not kempt, not messy. An aura, god, an aura. From the loins of Artemis and Eros.

My heart accelerated to the speed of a thoroughbred on the homestretch. She glanced at my hand, a gold stop sign encircling a wedding finger. The way she swayed her head and shoulders to music only she could hear told me such things didn't matter. My eyes darted with uncertainty or embarrassment or expected failure and she laughed.

Do I make you nervous?

Maybe a little.

Good.

Then a kiss. All this occurred, except the kiss, I swear, silently, telepathically, while she stared sidelong at me. With her little finger she snatched a trickle of sweat from my cheek, and cut me.  She daubed at my face until molecules of red smeared her fingertip. She held it up to me; I tasted. She tasted. Finger lingering inside lips, mouth. Gentle vacuum, pulling, raising clouds of ache that swirled and danced with the vapors of pheromones and perfume. My nostrils flared for more. I inhaled all she could give, sorting through the odors of commuters and students and vagrants and old men rotting from the inside and diapers in need of changing and the ozone made by the sparks of the electric motors that propelled us.

We rounded a bend and she leaned into me with a pressure that was more than mass times velocity times centrifugal force times the gravitational pull of bodies. I leaned too, away; don't show the neck. I prayed for mercy.

The train straightened out and she took her time un-leaning. Finally upright, she looked at me again. I fidgeted, my eyes searching for a safe place to land. I could only look at her. We stared for minutes or miles, then the train slowed and stopped. She slid off the seat, still staring, and rose to leave. She kept me in her sights all the way to the exit.

The doors parted. She waited. The cut on my cheek burned and I didn't know if it would be extinguished by staying or going.

It's not my stop.

I know.

It could be, though.

I know that too.

Where I Post One of My Stories Because, Well, I Can

The second to last day of blogapalooza brings us a story I wrote and had published in a little online journal founded by the multi-talented  and tireless Dale Wisely called Right Hand Pointing, for which I am the fiction editor. This may seem self indulgent, but pretty much all blogging is self indulgent so why not?

I do this for two reasons. One, I would like to expose this story to people who may have missed it the first time around. And second I hope that you will follow the link and read other stories and poetry, and even feel moved to submit.

Right Hand Pointing is dedicated to short form poetry and fiction, as well as art.  Stories are 500 words or fewer. Poetry is 16-20 lines and usually under 75 words. Art is 1000 words because, well you know what a picture is worth.

We have a strict policy of not publishing the work of the editors, but we decided to celebrate issue #50 we would invite a few long time contributors as well as the editors to submit. You can find my piece here as well as a prose poem here. Please check out the issue and the other writers, and then other issues, and then you should binge-read the entire collection. It beats Breaking Bad.

Also a brief note about tomorrow. I'm planning a sort of summary day, where I'll revisit some of the things I've blogged about over the 30 days. The content and tone will depend heavily on the outcome of The Game so stay tuned.

Without further ado, my story.

Justice System

They have emptied all the prisons in Arkansas, like racing pigeons from a coop. Something about budget shortfalls; it's all over the news. Banks and shopkeepers board up windows, and police work 24 hour shifts. The National Guard fuel tanks and Humvees, and parents pack for unplanned trips out of state. I watch all this on TV, pistol on the bed, waiting for you to knock on my door.

Mama doesn't know where I am; I've moved four times. You can't use her to get to me like that time when I was working produce at the BiLo, and she convinced me to let you steal the night deposit. She said brothers got to stick together. I should have known they'd look at me first; I was always the one getting caught. They couldn't prove anything but they fired me just the same. I was out of work eight months. Had to live with Mama and you and all those chickens.

Then she got me to go in with you on that scam taking old ladies' social security checks. Besides the drive all the way to Fayetteville, which I hated, that one old lady shot at us. Lucky she didn't know the kick on a .45 or we'd have bled out right there on Leverett Ave. I had told Mama the BiLo was my last job but she worked me little by little, sitting next to me on the couch, bringing me those pudding cups I like, telling me how she had plans for us all but life wouldn't stop holding her under the water, and she needed me to watch out for you cause if anything ever happened to you she'd die. I said, "What about me, Mama?" and she said, "You can take care of yourself, you got your daddy's grit, but Bobby Jr., he's delicate, like an albino in the desert and you gotta be his shade, Lester, you gotta be his shade." After that I always pictured you all par-boiled in the exercise yard. I imagined flying over in a blimp to shield you from the sun, but the blimp was being driven by Mama because I didn’t mind if you burned.

I figure you'll ask cousin Berty where I am. She never could keep a secret, and I'm sick of moving anyway. I did my six months after turning you in. It was a sweet deal but I knew this day would come, I knew it long before I saw the police on TV in their riot gear, long before I sat on the couch with Mama eating pudding. I knew it the day we did our first job, you stealing pizzas out of the Dominos car while I fumbled for tip money for the driver. That pizza didn't taste as good to me as you and Mama thought it did, and that was the day I knew we'd end up here.

I wish I knew where 'here' was, though, Bobby Jr. I wish you'd walk through that door, your scraggly beard framing that stupid grin, so I could know for sure where I ended up. I wish you both would come, you and Mama, so I could figure out where I'm going next.

Justice System first appeared in Right Hand Pointing, issue 50.

Thanks for reading.  If you want to find more of my work, my web site is here.

Thanks for reading.

A larger-than-truth story

 Oh, Woolly Night

Tonight as I got ready to close up the kennel, looking forward to a quiet Christmas Eve with the family, a young couple came through the door, with a puppy. 

"We must leave town and we need a place for our little Jaspar. Just for two days."

"I'm sorry," I said, "I'm all full."

"Not even a small cage for a puppy?"

I let them peek inside the rooms and showed them we were full. Plus he hadn't had all his shots. They couldn't hide their disappointment but were very polite. 

"Is there nothing you can do for us?"

I have to admit that I was tired, and there was corned beef in the pot waiting for me, and while I normally try very hard to help people in need, I just wasn't feeling it. Still, they were so nice, I had an idea.

"I have a barn out back and he can stay in there. There's an old whelping box and a bale of straw, and you can bed him up in there. I'll go out once a day to feed him and only charge you half price."

Now, I kind of meant it as a joke, because no one would really agree to that. But they looked at each other for a moment and then said yes. I grabbed a flashlight and showed them the way. We filled the box with straw and got him a bowl of water and they left without so much as a look back. It hit me then that I was likely going to get stuck with a puppy. Still, I was getting hungry and more than a little chilled. 

The kitchen table overlooks the back lot where the barn and kennel are. During dinner I noticed a lot of activity near the barn. A couple of raccoons scurried in and out, a small gaggle of Canadians wandered in; the stray cat that hangs around slinked into the corner; and an unusual number of cardinals landed on the railing next to the door. A sheep from the Joseph farm down the street even made an appearance.

As I watched, a bright light rose over the barn, bathing it in a welcoming light. Out of the shadows came three people—men it looked like, carrying rifles. Hunters from the acreage out back I surmised. This was starting to get interesting and I wiped the coleslaw off my chin and went outside. 

"What are you doing here/" I asked the hunters, noticing that none of the animals were scared away by us. A cardinal even landed on my head.

"We heard there was a puppy here," said the tallest hunter, "we wanted to see it."

"Why?"

"We heard it's a really excellent puppy," said the hunter with big feet.

The hunter with glasses said, "Yeah, maybe even a champion."

"Where'd you hear that?" I asked.

They looked at each other and shrugged. It was then I saw that the rising light in the sky was a police helicopter. The hunters tossed some beef jerky and a handful of peanuts into the puppy's bowl and stole off into the darkness. The helicopter made a couple of passes around the barn, then disappeared behind trees. 

I opened the flashlight app on my iPhone and shone it in the barn. Two geese were keeping the puppy warm, and while cardinals kept watch, the cat watched mice play from his perch on a shelf next to an old carburetor. I shone the light on the puppy who was snuggled happily between the geese, sleeping.

"That sure is a pretty good puppy," I said aloud, and the sheep glanced at me. "But," I said to him," I wouldn't go so far as to call him a champion."

"Baaaa," he said.

"Humbug to you," I said. 

The gander eyed me scornfully.

"Don't give me that," I said, "he walked right into that one."

I went back into the house for a heavier coat, a couple of Christmas cookies and an old sleeping bag. I grabbed a box of Cheerios on the way out, and picked up a lawn chair from the garage. Then I set up inside the barn and settled in for the night, tossing cereal to the geese and the birds, and eventually falling asleep next to the sheep. When I woke in the morning everyone was gone except the puppy, who was curled up under a half a foot of straw. I figured the kids would be up pretty soon and would be getting restless.

One of the hunters, the one with the big feet, ran into the barn.

"You ain't seen the other two, have you?" he said.

I shook my head. He looked past me toward the whelping box. 

"What are you going to do with that puppy?" he asked.

"He's not mine," I said.

"Yeah well," he said, "we'll see about that."

"Who are you people?" I said. 

He peeked outside, looked one way, then the other, then lit off for the wood line. I looked down and the puppy was peeing on my shoe.

"You're not THAT good a puppy," I said, and he looked at me with guiltless eyes. I fed him some Cheerios and he licked my hand, wagging his tail. I thought, "Still..."

 

How Many Cats Does One Novel Need?

A terrific writer friend of mine has written a novel and has asked me to help her publicize it. "But my blog is mainly a pet blog," I said. "It's got cats," she said. She also pointed out that I once had a post titled How to Play the Cymbals.

Here's Kristen Tsetsi

And here are her cats: Hoser is the brown & white, Simon is the black & white.

Her book is titled 'Pretty Much True' and I will let her tell you all about it.

Most blog posts, articles, or interviews about new novel releases focus on the author, the novel, or the human characters in the story. But what about the story’s animal(s)?  

My novel Pretty Much True…, released today by Missouri Breaks Press, has an oft-overlooked animal character in Chancey, the cat belonging to (or living with) Mia, the protagonist, and in two additional cats who live one floor below Mia with her hippie neighbor, Safia (one of whom suffers what has to be the ultimate cat humiliation when his owner/mother waves his paw for him while holding him in her arms).

 It’s safe to say that if Pretty Much True… were about cats, Chancey would be the protagonist. While not described in much physical detail, Chancey is a gray and brown cat who coincidentally resembles my cat Hoser. While his appearances are relatively few, his presence is always felt, even when he’s hiding in another room to avoid cigarette smoke and/or Mia or just sleeping in another room because that’s where the sun happens to be coming through the window. 

Because John’s readers come here for his animal-related posts, it made perfect sense when he agreed to allow me some space on his site that I would talk about Pretty Much True…’s animal characters. This is the first opportunity I’ve had to do that, so I’m pretty excited.

The questions below are questions I imagine readers would ask about Pretty Much True…’s cats.

Q: Why is there what might be called “the protagonist of cats” in Pretty Much True…?

A: It started out as a natural decision to make. I’m almost 40, and I’ve never not lived with a cat (or more than one cat). So it’s difficult for me to imagine a character, a house, an apartment, an existence absent of a cat. He just showed up.

After a while, though, Chancey became a helpful little character, providing yet another way to illustrate the change in his mother/owner (who really does love him) after her soul mate leaves for Iraq. For example, she feeds him absentmindedly, or she forgets to feed him. And when she smokes after having quit several months before, he’s there to communicate, as he runs out of the room after smelling the white stream, “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

Q: Why does the neighbor have cats, too? How many cats does one novel need?

A: It depends on the novel. This novel apparently needed exactly three cats. One for Mia, and two for her neighbor, Safia.

If Mia had more than one cat, there would be too much cat activity distracting from the story (one cat is normal, but two protagonist cats is a bit intentional).  

On the other hand, if secondary character Safia had just one cat, it wouldn’t suit her personality, nor that of her cheery, loving husband. They have a happy home down there, under Mia’s linoleum floor, with “two cats in the yard.”

Safia’s cats, who frequently escape from the apartment and wind up in the stairwell, also gradually bring Mia and Safia together. In one early scene, Frankie the cat is sitting outside Safia’s closed door, and Mia finds (what I think is) a funny way to let Safia know her cat is in the hallway. This is the first interaction, of sorts, between Mia and Safia and sets up their later acquaintanceship.

Q:  Why is the cat named Chancey?

A: I honestly don’t know. It’s a strange name, and I’m not sure why it came to me. If I think about it now, it makes sense and seems appropriate considering the novel’s subject matter, but I didn’t give his name a lot of thought before assigning it to him.

Q: Does Mia ever mistreat Chancey? I don’t like reading books (and will in fact often refuse to read books) in which animals are mistreated or killed.

A: I refuse, also. No, she never truly mistreats Chancey, but they do have an argument, and he’s in danger of being burned in a fire, at one point.

When you live alone (as Mia does after Jake leaves for Iraq in 2003), and when you have emotional needs (simple affection), sometimes the cat becomes the target of too many expectations. In one scene, when Mia is feeling particularly vulnerable and sees Chancey on the other side of the bathroom door through the small crack near the floor, she reaches through the space with her finger to try to touch his paw. When he immediately backs away, she’s, I think, understandably (and very vocally) angry, even if it’s not Chancey’s fault.

The fire is best left a mystery, here.

Q: Does Chancey ever meet the downstairs cats?

A: No. They never meet.

Q: Does Chancey get to have any fun in the novel?

A: He does. Mia brings home a sucker-dart gun (originally intended as an addition to a care package for Jake, but she decides, after a hellish few days with Jake’s mother, to keep it), and when she uses it to shoot at pundits and politicians on her TV screen, Chancey bats them down. It’s a great cat toy.

If you have any of your own questions about Chancey and the downstairs cats (anyone need a band name?), I’ll be happy to answer them. For more information about Pretty Much True…, please visit my website. You can also purchase the just-released-today(!) novel on Amazon, either in paperback or for your Kindle. (It’s also available through most other book retailers.)

Thank you Kristen. I cannot wait to read it. (Note to readers--I've read much of her work over the years and the girl can write.)

Lastly, the correct answer to the blog post title question is: All of them.