600 Plus

The next excerpt from Earthen Vessels appears below, in honor of my 600th view. Enjoy pages 15 and 16. As always, comments are more than welcome.

It had been a chilly fifteen degrees the morning Maggie bundled up and headed for Denver International. When she reached Dallas that afternoon, the temperature there was close to fifty. She mailed her coat back home the following morning from the Mexico City airport, where the temperature was almost eighty. The temperature here in Miraflores was higher yet, with the humidity thickening every minute.

“Look,” she sighed, rubbing her eyes. “It’s just that…just that it’s already hot as hell out, and I’ve had about … about six hours sleep in the last thirty-six. All I want…I just...”

Marc was giving her a quizzical look, which she, in response, returned. She realized then that he was looking over her shoulder, out the window. Turning her gaze in the same direction, Maggie saw that a jeep had pulled up alongside Marc’s plane, and a man in a striped shirt was climbing out of the driver’s seat. Marc’s eyes were fixed on the striped shirt as he spoke.

“Wait here,” he ordered, before he strode out to the plane. Maggie immediately began wracking her brain: how could she make Marc change his mind and fly her to the research station? She saw the two men speaking for a moment before Marc pointed her way. She heard them start to shout at each other, but couldn’t make out what they were saying. Then her head snapped toward the ominous thud of Hector locking up the hatch on his own plane. Once he took off, Maggie knew she really would be stranded out here.

Panicking, Maggie burst out the door in Marc’s direction. “I can pay cash,” she blurted out before she realized how desperate she sounded. Striped shirt gave her an angry glare and so did Marc. He took her elbow roughly and spun her back the way she’d come.

“I told you to wait inside.” He flung open the door and nearly flung Maggie through it. She hardly noticed.

“And I’m telling you. I’ve got the money right here.” And then, right in front of him, she bent over to rifle through her bag on the floor. Marc had to look away to keep his mind on the business at hand. She straightened up and turned to show him a sheaf of bills pulled from the bag.

A protective impulse kicked in for Marc, an instinct he didn’t think he had. He folded his hand over hers, over the bills, and was about to tell the stupid chick to put away her money. When his palm came in contact with the cash, though, the impulse passed. The words that came out of his mouth then were, “Payment up front or no deal.” 

 

Leaving Maggie with strict instructions to stay inside the office, Marc went back to exchange a few parting words with Mr. Striped Shirt. (For security reasons, Marc’s associates made a point of not knowing one another’s names.)

Just so that nothing was lost in translation and just for emphasis, Marc planted both hands possessively on the fuselage of the twin engine as he spoke. “See, you don’t own this plane-“

“You don’t own this plane,” Striped Shirt interjected, his face like a stone.

“Okay, okay. Technically, legally, I don’t,” Marc conceded. “But I was the one who took the initiative to steal it from the technical, legal owner. So I decide for myself if I have time to take on a passenger before I make your deliveries, and I-”

“They’re your deliveries.” The expression was even more granite than before. “I done my part and I won’t take the heat for you after you fuck this up.” Without another word, the striped shirt then turned to move his jeep clear of the plane’s take-off path, another hint that Marc had better get a move on.

Marc was determined to get in the last word, but was left with nothing to say. “You don’t own the plane,” he shouted after the driver. “And you don’t own me!”

Wanted: an agent... to find me an agent

The logic train behind that heading is leaving the station now: Hop on, won't you?

Writing is what I do. I'd like to keep doing it. I'd like it to be all I do. In order for this to happen, I have to have readers. In order to have readers, I have to promote my book. Promoting the book means taking time from what I really want to do, which, as I mentioned, is writing. (Next stop: Publishire)

Wouldn't be nice if there were people to do some of that promotion for me? There are such people: they are called publishers. They connect with retailers, produce promotional materials, issue press releases, and get the book reviewed, so that it finds its way to the readers. (Next stop: Agentown)

Wouldn't it be nice if there were people to help authors and publishers find each other? There are such people: They are called literary agents. The agent directs all that promotion to publishers, convincing them to get the work to the readers. Wow, great! So now all I need to do now is get an agent. (Next stop: Netville)

In this day and age, finding an agent - like everything else – is mostly done via the Internet. You log on to search engines that direct you to websites that list literary agents, possibly hundreds of them. You log on to those sites and sift through the listings to find which ones will consider unpublished authors in your format and your genre. You log on to their sites to learn their submission procedure. Finally you submit your work and you wait. (Next stop: Mt. Patience)

Wouldn't it be nice if there were people to help authors find agents? Wouldn't it? Are there such people? I don't know. All I know is I'm spending a lot of time trying to find an agent to find me a publisher to find me some readers. I'm not complaining – I'm glad for the opportunity. It's just that, well, it's time I'd rather spend writing. (We've come full circle and this is the end of the line. As you exit, mind the gap.)

500 and counting!

It's so exciting to see how quickly this blog is growing! One hundred visits in just the last ten days! In observance of this latest development, here are the next few pages from Earthen Vessels. I hope you enjoy it.

... I see that that letter grieved you, though only for a while.

2 Corinthians 7:8 (RSV)

Marc’s mind was suddenly racing: Could this woman be part of some vaguely remembered frat parties from two years ago? His memory was cloudy, and her yapping didn’t help.

"I'm Maggie Boyce,” she announced. Like he cared. "It's actually Mary Margaret, but almost nobody calls me..."

She wasn’t bad-looking, with platinum hair and bright green eyes. But she was a little old for him, Marc thought, pushing thirty for sure. And a bit too voluptuous for his taste. Then again, some nights it hadn’t mattered who the girl was. In any case, she couldn’t expect him to remember her name - could she? And this letter she mentioned - was he being sued? Destruction of private property. Breach of promise. Oh, God - paternity suit.

“Has a letter come in for me lately?” he asked Esteban urgently.

“¿Como?” Esteban yawned.

Hearing English again had thrown Marc off. “Una carta - ¿recibí una carta?”

Esteban lifted his arm limply toward Marc’s desk for a second before letting it fall against his leg. Marc saw just the girl, timidly pointing a finger at the desk behind him. Only now did he turn away from her, to rifle through the stacks of paper there.

“Actually,” she ventured, “it maybe doesn’t matter so...”

Then he came across an envelope he hadn’t noticed before. “¿Cuando lo llegó?” he shouted, studying the U.S. postmark. When did this arrive?

There was a pause and a sigh from the back room. “Mm ... una semana pasado - dos tal vez.”

“Two weeks ago?” Marc was raving as he ripped open the envelope. “Geez, if you don’t specifically ask, they don’t tell you...”

“It’s no big deal,” she tried again to interject. “It was just to sort of warn you I was coming.”

“...knows I don’t look through this junk ...” he mumbled as he pulled the paper out and unfolded it. Instead of reading it, he glanced up at her. This was not a legal notification of any kind - he knew, he’d seen enough of them. It was just a hand-written note from a - he flipped it over - from a Paul Schiffler.

“I got your name from Paul Schiffler,” the girl was saying. “He said you ran an air taxi down here, that you gave him a lift several months ago. You transported his research samples sometimes.”

At last Marc could breathe a sigh of relief. This ditzy chick had taken five minutes of his time just to say that she was a business referral. And what was she chattering about now?

“You see, I connected with Paul on the Internet and he said he'd been down here, and I said I wanted come too, and well, he mentioned your name." She paused here for a breath.

He looked at her blankly. "And..?"

She glared at him. “Okay, fine. This isn't a social call,” she said, finally getting down to business. “I need a lift into the interior right away,” she said, pulling out a map. “To a research station. It’s right on the map here.” She pointed, but he didn’t have to look.

“No can do,” he said flatly. He decided to take a load off and look over this letter after all. The handwriting was an effort to read, so he just scanned for key words. “...referring a client .... Maggie Boyce ...” Now why did that name sound familiar?

“You’d be back here in a matter of hours,” the girl was saying.

“I said I can’t,” he emphasized each word. “I got shipments to make. I’m out of here - north to Guatemala by tonight.” He went back to the letter. Frankly, not professionally qualified and emotionally ... if you can talk her out of it ...

"Oh, oh, I see,” her voice dripped with sarcasm. “Well, in that case, I guess I’ll just hang around here in the middle of nowhere doing nothing, until that cargo pilot comes back sometime this week or next...” He looked up again from the page. Was she still here? He was trying to enjoy the first letter he’d gotten in months. “...since it’s too damned inconvenient for you to help me out!”

Her voice rose a little with each word she spoke so that she ended with a shout. He looked a little surprised and let a smile escape one corner of his mouth. This woman, he could see, was not about to be talked out of anything.

In trying to finish the last paragraph, he reached the words that stopped even him cold. Mother ... six weeks ago ... now her sister ... cancer ...

And don't sweat the mushy stuff

(Gentlemen, you may want to change the channel)

 
A member of my local writing group has amazed us all with the suspense novel she is crafting. She is kind and quiet and a devoted Christian, but she writes so convincingly for the maniac killer in her story that we find ourselves eying her suspiciously. Recently she put out an e-mail call for help to critique her most recent efforts. I wondered if she had finally hit a block in the make-your-skin-crawl department. “This time it's really dicey,” she said. “This time it's ... the mushy stuff.”

Right away I knew exactly what she meant. Many a potential (female?) author gushes at the prospect of penning breath-taking love scenes. These are some of the most pleasurable scenarios of adult life, after all. To fabricate such fantasies in fiction ought to be nearly as good as the real thing. Right?

Wrong. I maintain that love scenes some of the more difficult aspects of fiction writing. You start with something that is, by nature, spontaneous, but you have to script it and choreograph it and then turn it back into something that you hope is spontaneous. Again. Real-life romance is all entertainment and emotion (with some physical thrown in if you get lucky). But writing romance is intellectual and it is work.

Then you worry: Will I embarrass my family? Will I shock my co-workers? (I work at a parochial school) And will I face the question, “Is this based on real life (wink-wink)?”

When the TV movie The Thornbirds came out, female viewers just melted over the steamy bits. However, Richard Chamberlain insisted in an interview that love scenes are difficult for actors as well, partly for the reasons I listed above. As an author, I'm glad that I at least don't have to worry about wig and costume malfunctions, and I don't have to personally, physically bring my story to life in front of a viewing audience.

The happy news is that with fictional romance, as with real world romance, when it's good, it's really good.

Celebrating a milestone!

Total views for this blog just passed 400! I know that may not seem like much to some, but I'm so excited, I've decided to share an excerpt from the very beginning: First book, Parte Uno, Chapter one, page one.
Enjoy. I'd love to hear comments.

O, that I had wings like a dove,

For then would I fly away and be at rest.

Lo, then would I wander far off and remain in the wilderness.

I would hasten my escape from the storm and the tempest.

Psalm 55:6, 7 & 8 (KJV)

Maggie just had to get some sleep. After all the air miles she'd logged on the job in the last two years, she thought she could sleep on any plane, anywhere, under any circumstances. But the last day and a half were a blur of stopovers, layovers and weather delays. And all this on top of a set of jangled nerves. This latest leg on the journey had been the worst. It wasn’t even a passenger plane, but a cargo plane. The pilot said his cargo often included wild animals, which he transported from the jungle to zoos or wildlife refuges. The plane was smelly and loud, the seats were hard, and the fee was excessive - and it was the only ride she could get this way for days. Maggie grabbed at it.

She’d gotten no sleep the previous night in Bogotá, and no sleep on the cargo plane, thanks to the pilot chattering non-stop in a Spanish she could hardly keep up with. So it was with dry, blood shot eyes that Maggie looked around at what was laughably called an airport on the map. The mid-morning sun illuminated a lone plane, a Cessna twin engine, on the concrete. There were a few little buildings dusted with dirt from the airstrip - the rickety little hangar, a few tiny outbuildings and the one against which the pilot, Hector Ramos, had stacked her things. The sign over the door read Oficina.

Upon entering, it took a moment for Maggie’s eyes to adjust to the building’s dim interior. Then the sight of the young man behind the desk made her hopeful. With sandy hair, fair complexion, and expensive sports shoes casually crossed atop the desk, he had the look of a fellow American about him. Maybe she’d found the person she’d been looking for right off the bat. Maybe this trip would go all right after all.

“Excuse me,” she said. He lifted his eyes from the magazine he was reading, but otherwise did not move. “Good morning,” Maggie continued. No answer. Apparently he was a local after all, though he didn’t look like a typical Colombian.

“Buenos dias,” she tried, but still there was no reaction from him. She had hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but she haltingly tried one of the local Indian languages she’d tried to learn. She got nothing but a confused look.

“¿Se habla ingles aqui?” she finally asked. Does anyone here speak English?

“Only me,” he answered in a low Texas drawl, but his face remained as impassive as before.

“Why didn’t you say so?” she asked, exasperated.

“Why didn’t you ask?”

“Couldn’t you tell I’m an American?” she asked.

“Couldn’t you tell I am?”

Maggie started to answer, but held her tongue, reminding herself that she needed something from this man. She drew a shaky breath to calm her shot nerves. She would be pleasant if it killed her. “I’m looking for a Marc Hansen,” she said in a controlled voice.

“Never heard of him,” he answered.

Skeptical after their first exchange, Maggie didn't take this answer at face value. “Joe Hansen?” she tried. He only shook his head, shaking the trendiest of sunglasses perched atop his head. Maggie rummaged through her bag and produced a slip of paper. “How about Marc Johansen?” she asked, reading the note she'd scrawled there.

“Hey! That’s me!” Only now did he bother to take his feet off the grimy desk. His rickety swivel chair groaned as he turned to face her.

“You weren’t expecting me?” she asked. “You didn’t get the letter?”

“Mail’s a little slow out here,” he drawled.

The mail’s not the only thing, Maggie thought. Then when he finally bothered to really look at her, she saw a mild panic spread over his face. She didn't know why that should be, but she tried to explain. “Well, the letter’s not all that -”

“Esteban!” he shouted. Had she done something wrong? Was he cursing at her? “Esteban!” he repeated, jumping to his feet. The sound of shuffling feet came from the little room behind Marc, and it started to make sense - in a twisted sort of way. A lanky young man - Esteban, she supposed - now leaned against the back door frame. At the sound Marc asked over his shoulder, “I need to know,” he said, “Did I get a letter?”

***

God is in the Details

Punctuation may seem like one of those “small” things we're not supposed to sweat. I often hear would-be writers describe past English teachers as “comma Nazis” who beat down the creative impulses of their students. “Who cares if I put a dash or a semi-colon there?” these aspiring authors rant. “What difference does it make if the quotation mark goes after the period?”

I'm sure there are writing instructors out there who do ignore lyrical prose and discourage enthusiastic students, so intent are they on ferreting out stray semi-colons and exposing errant ellipses. But if we let them, these fuss-budgets can help us bring clarity to our writing.

Allow me an analogy. Let's say you invite friends to dinner because you're a fantastic cook with a vast repertoire of recipes. However, after they arrive you tell them if they want clean plates, they'll have to wash them themselves. Also, they'll be eating with plates on their laps because your table is towering with junk. After all, you're too busy creating a delicious meal to be bothered with details like clearing off the table or providing clean forks. No matter how good the food tastes, your guests' enjoyment of the event is seriously hindered because you didn't care enough to complete the experience.

Likewise, we puff ourselves up saying we're expressing important ideas, forming flowing phrases built on precisely right words. We can't be bothered with quotation marks and colons. But you've invited a reader into your world and your writing. Don't make them to guess what you mean or figure out what you intend. That takes them out of the experience.

Don't sweat the small stuff

A decade or so ago, I added the following to my collection of favorite quotes: 

“Any idiot can face a crisis, it is this day-to-day living that wears us out.” (Anton Chekhov)

I think of this quote often, because it's so true. A child goes missing, a car veers off the road and we hear,

“I barely looked away and suddenly he was gone.”

“I took my eyes off the road for just a second and the car was up a pole.”

How often do we hear of terrible fights breaking out between people who later say, “It was all over the silliest thing.” When the big stuff hits, some mysterious reserve within us kicks in to handle it, but the little things often make us the most emotional.

Case in point: Recently I had a heated argument with a co-worker about whether to type one space or two after a period. It's an argument I've had with others before, and a casual glance at this entry will tell you where I land on the subject. It's not as though it even matters, really, but it makes me crazy when I see it done in what I learned was the “old-fashioned way.”

I've got lots of specific thoughts on the virtues and pitfalls of punctuation, and will post them all in due time, but for today, I guess I just want to say, “Watch out for the little things.”