Christmas Time Is Here

 Listening to Pinch, Can

Scored on the white elephant game, the potent bourbon punch, and the chili. 

The chili was full of protein--beef and beans so not proper chili--and took the edge off my hypoglycemic anxiety. I downed a glass of punch before I grabbed some chili, so I was primed (a couple of gummies ingested a half-hour before didn't hurt) and scarfed that shit. 

For the white elephant game, I drew number eight. A few days ago I learned that the number eight is considered lucky in Chinese. Seemed like a good omen.

My contribution to the game was a clearance mini Crock Pot that I picked up while grocery shopping. No one wanted to steal it from the nine-year-old girl who picked it. After the other seven people went, I stole the Crock Pot from her. She ended up with a couple stained glass pieces, one that resembled a bird and another that, I swear, looked like a corona virus. Good times.

Nicole ended up with my Crock Pot and a tiny Le Creuset-like dish she captured on a second steal. Eight seemed to work out well.

Happy Holidays. This excerpt is from Book 3.

Twinkling on every line that defined him, Flynn rode the surf of the voices that broke on all sides. “Do things—even elementary particles—contain some kind of program or DNA that directs them to those equations, to behave in that way? Are those numbers embedded in the system?”

“Whaddya mean, embedded in the system? Like, is the government behind this?” Ra-Ra rambled on shaky wheels, not staying on track at all.

Smiling and still waving her hand in front of herself, Emma replied, “The Illuminati. They’ve harnessed the power to manipulate matter and energy. It started with fluoride in the water.”

Ra-Ra jumped up and twirled around the room. “I knew it!”

Chapter Eight

Flynn was digging what Emma was saying, adding thoughts into it, improvising a view of the Universe in his moment with mushrooms. “So, you brought up quantum physics, string theory, none of which I know very well. What I do know is that, at any given moment, we can determine how a particle is charged or its relative position, but we can’t know both. Yet, that particle is both. Position and potentiality, both of which describe the Universe, at least that minute part of it. Quantifiability. If something isn’t quantifiable, why measure it? But we do, whatever it is, just to confirm our own suspicions about how something… anything works.”

“Ha! Yes!” Emma was feeling sweetly rolled with concepts and questions, tingling all around by what she was hearing. “Something’s missing. Always.”

“And, if something’s not considered, it doesn’t exist to us.” Flynn's smile revealed a perfect set of teeth.

“The world is all that is the case. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. Wittgenstein.” Emma’s heart raced slightly within the tightening bubble of their mutual attraction.

There was something to Emma that reminded Flynn of his mother, something wild and dangerous; something that told him that he’d have to get his own breakfast in the morning. He suddenly wanted to be taken to her bosom and smothered, to be reminded that he mattered; that he was wanted. To feed from a nipple and grasp the skin of she who held him. He felt himself wanting to wrap himself around Emma and get lost inside her.

A desultory Wom! rushed through the room and vibrated into the corners, settling in as Hello, It’s Me created an eddy of swaying bodies in the room. Smiling as it happened, Emma’s voice pierced through. “Everything can be known but not known at the same time. Or vice-versa. Or something.”

“Yeah, dude, but what we do know is that the universe behaves just like we thought it would, based on the initial equation. So isn’t that weird? It’s like everything, from snails to galaxies, follow the same pattern. If everything was just random chance… I mean, it is but it seems like it isn’t. Like God really is in the numbers.”

Ra-Ra leapt up and gyrated around the room, “That’s fuckin rad! Whoo! Whoo! Emma and our friend Flynn just used science to explain God! Quantum particles and shit! Yo! Ya’ll hear that?”

From the ether where he floated, Dave shouted, “Heresies! We must have an inquisition! Iron Maidens and flaming nipple clamps! Whipped cream for everyone! Whippets!”

Whisper rose and glared at Flynn. “Too deep for me. I’m goin to the kitchen cuz I got things to do rather than say,” then marched away with something stuffed high up her ass.

Wanting to jump on Emma, stick his tongue down her throat, dry hump and grope her and hope she’d be convinced to get naked, Flynn looked at the people around him and decided against impulse. Ra-Ra and LA Tina and the Robert Plant-looking guy—who’d since moved from floor-gazing into curling up with Delilah and moaning his dog language into her ear—Flynn saw it was probably not a great audience for hormones sizzled on a griddle.

“Flynn, you rock brah!” Ra-Ra rose and twisted again, as though she needed to screw herself into the sky or was a Dervish in search of some rhythm to spin to. “I gotta help Whisper. But yo, I’m glad you found us,” then flitted into the kitchen on wings of patchouli and shredded denim, leaving the two alone again.

The flow of numbers through this 3-D experience interrupted Flynn’s tenuous grasp on controlling his libido. “I like these numbers,” he whispered seductively. “One and one…”

Emma nodded slyly, “And Dez, over there on the floor, having a discussion with Delilah.”

 Whisper bellowed from the kitchen, “Cake and ice cream, everybody! And sing Happy Birthday! Emma! Get your big ass in here, girl!”

Emma tilted her chin and smirked to indicate that Flynn should come, that a nice, sweet piece would be waiting for him if he did. Someone suggested that The Don put the Beatles’ “Birthday” on for the occasion but Emma told him, “I want China/Rider. You pick the show.”

By the time he was served, Flynn had heard various partiers talk about the ounce-or-so of bud that went into Whisper’s cake and icing. Even with a glop of vanilla ice cream soaking in, the grassy marijuana taste was overwhelming and omnipresent. After washing dessert down with homebrew, he returned to the living room where The Don worked on a Guinea pig-sized piece of cake and ice cream. “Awesome place, awesome party, bro.” Flynn shoved his hands in his pockets and balled up his fists, “You gonna put your mix back on after this?”

“You don’t like the Dead?” The Don asked as he gobbled down his pot cake.

“I love the Dead! A Dead show is like… no other experience in life. And I love the music, it gets stuck in my head all the time. But I wouldn’t say I was a Deadhead, per se,” air-quoting Deadhead without a hint of irony. “But, I love other bands too. If they toured 200 days a year, I’d be a Beatles-head. I’m just not one of those All-Dead-all-the-time Deadheads.”

The Don was still digging into his plate of sugary slop. “I don’t know any Deadheads like that. All the heads I know listen to all kinds of shit. We’re diverse in our tastes, more so than most other people, I think. Look at all the different musicians that the Dead have toured with, played with. Diversity is in our DNA, man.”

Flynn shifted from glib to awkward, as though he’d inadvertently revealed some racist corner of himself. “You have to admit there’s some Heads who are… a little too… militant? In their desire to hear the Dead all the time? Like, almost always. Like… Allison. I try to put on something different, Björk or Son Volt or Oasis and she’s like, ‘Can we hear that Red Rocks show again? Or some Steve Miller?’ I mean, along with Janis and Santana and Airplane and all those other Bay Bands, it’s like this kind of Deadhead who thinks Heaven was invented by Jerry and the boys in that house in Haight-Ashbury and San Francisco was the result.”

“Yeah.” His finger in the air, The Don nodded as he finished his mouthful of cake. “I know what you’re talking about. ‘Go Niners-slash-Giants, I sure could use some salt-water taffy.’ Not nearly as obnoxious as the Cubby Deadheads, though. Inside Baseball, indeed. So what’s your point?”

“Your mix is superb, bro! Dude, I’ve heard nothing but great cuts since I arrived.”

After taking Flynn into his head for a moment, The Don grumbled, “You should talk to Gooch. He mixed the music for this party. You two might hit it off. He’s definitely not a Deadhead.” Pointing Flynn the way, The Don appeared as if a hairless Frank Zappa had his own Saturday morning cartoon from the early 1970s.

Stumbling back to the kitchen, Flynn was blocked by a jittery and sketchy Casper. “Bro, man… I know you came here with Allison but she’s like, really comin on to me, bro. I mean, man.” Casper looked earnest and apologetic, begging for an OK.

“Go for it, man.” Happy to dump the responsibility of keeping her entertained off on someone else, Flynn sealed his approval with a bro shake. “She’s all right. Just a little crazy.”

Gooch caught that and snorted, “Who isn’t? You don’t know where you landed!”

“The Don tells me you’re not a Deadhead? What?!? And they didn’t drum you out of town?”

“They sure as shit try with their damned drum circles every summer. I take it you’re not a Deadhead, either. So what do you think of all this, the 3-D Ranch, our little town?”

“Methinks yon city boy doth not want long to be in this shire,” Dave raged from his darkened corner. “Like them who said,” Dave switching to a falsetto voice, ‘Oh, tis a grand place to ‘ave a ‘ome.’ And then shat everywhere. And, when the knaves couldn’t handle winters here, left us. Roofs caved in from snow load, the town worse off than when the bastards arrived.”

Gooch waved Flynn to the porch after tilting his billboard-sized forehead in the direction of Dave’s voice. “Dave and The Don can get a bit overboard,” filling his beer, keeping his voice down. “Especially with their libertarian-slash-rugged-individualist shit. ‘True mountain people’ I call them, that mindset. ‘I got mine, fuck off.’ That attitude has never worked in this town, by the way. Yeah they’re hippies, total Deadheads, but off-the-grid crazy with their leave-me-the-fuck-alone ethos.”

 “Gotcha. And our twin brothers are also really into that Tolkien-esque, medieval-speak thing? Methinks tis a bit much.” Flynn suddenly became aware that all night he’d said things he wished had stayed in his throat.

“LARPers, SCA stuff, Society for Creative Anachronism? The kingdom of Atenvelt crest is right over the kitchen door.” Flickers of Flynn’s cynicism made the visitor more agreeable to Gooch.

“Ah, that makes sense. Do they do Ren Faire? LARPers back home are huge into that. Every summer for like, six weeks.”

“Shit yeah. Dave and The Don, a few other people who live up here. They work all winter so they can have summers free to get their Ren Faire on. The twins mind their parents’ store while mom and dad snowbird down in Arizona.” With a tip of his pint, Gooch indicated the two should return to the warmth of the kitchen. “Most people around here spend their winters plowing the pass or working up in Chi-Chi, raking in good money to be out in sub-zero weather and 60 miles-per-hour winds at two in the morning. Work-and-freeze their asses off all winter so they can spend their summers hitting each other with rattan sticks while wearing clothes weaved on looms and spinning wheels. And leather cured from whatever deer they poached last winter, taken off the king’s land.”

“That’s wild. I mean, cool. I mean, I want that kinda freedom.” Flynn paused with mushrooms jangling his thoughts. “Do you hunt?”

“No. I used to with my dad and granddad, but I never had a flavor for it. Spotting something beautiful and then taking its life? Just didn’t seem like a good use of my time, especially since we could always buy meat at the store.” Gooch dripped tobacco juice into a plastic cup. “But about everyone up here hunts. In fact, you just missed the season. For weeks the town was full of Texans and other morons. We do good business up here. For a few weeks, everyone up here’s either a butcher, a taxidermist—or a stupid fuckin Texan. If you see a white plate, give it some hate. But they pay the bills.”

Flynn considered admitting his Texas roots but decided against it. His entire life he never felt like calling himself a Texan, never felt like calling himself anything, fine with reinventing himself as he went along, free from allegiance to an arbitrary identity endowed by an accident of birth.

“I was listening from the kitchen and heard some of what you were saying,” Gooch was looking at his shoes, watching laces become roots and set themselves into the kitchen floor. “Interesting, from what I heard. And understood. Algorithms built into things, ‘programming’ you called it. Then, I think you implied there must also be a master programmer.”

As he watched the kitchen’s floral-patterned wallpaper ripple in rhythm to Fat Man in the Bathtub, Flynn allowed his mind a moment to formulate an answer. His mother had been a C&E Methodist at best, and although she’d signed him up for the church bus, he knew she’d forget within a few weeks and he’d be back to playing alone in his room. Throughout childhood, God was just someone who never answered his prayers. Not an atheist in any sense, he just always had other things on his mind. It wasn’t until spring break of his senior year in high school—the first time he did mushrooms—that God came tumbling back into his mind like a jolly jester, uproariously laughing and singing and dancing and warmly embracing and filling the world with colors and shapes and numbers. In the midst of that trip, he made peace with something that he’d never understood and knew he never would. “Like Cantor dust? Flynn was still watching the wallpaper move, hoping that he wasn’t just babbling incoherently. “See what I’m sayin? Halve a line, then halve those lines and so on. Each resulting level is an infinity but smaller than the previous infinity by one. Yet, an infinity nonetheless. A universe of infinities, but still just numbers.”

Gooch’s expressions switched from curiosity to skepticism, swinging in the crest between his brow and his beard. “Your point? It seems you like when math works for you—in some weird magic way—but also, chaos is key. I don’t get it.”

“Don’t you see, man? Within those infinities are sets of numbers that determine how things will become. Why is that? I dunno but it seems like that order in the midst of chaos is pretty cool. And yeah, I believe there’s some kind of force behind it and to it, that certain things matter because… cosmic rules?”

“Cosmic rules? Certain sets of numbers or patterns, algorithms… yeah,” suddenly zoning out, the kitchen door blasting out colors in waves of rainbow. “Chaos Theory, General Systems Theory. Reiterative functions, how complex systems behave and become. Nondeterministic and deterministic at the same time. Wow. I’d never think of that. But it’s nonlinear differential calculus not the Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz. There’s no magic in it.”

“I think there is magic in it and it’s part of a larger, unknowable mystery.” Flynn gleamed with the creepy self-assuredness of someone holding a battered Bible.

“Unfortunately, ‘magic’ and ‘unknowable mystery’ don’t give us much information about reality,” Gooch settled his beer as he sat on the counter. At the front door, Emma, Whisper, Indian Leo, Toothless Don and LA Tina were stomping off snow and shedding coats. As soon as she entered the kitchen, Emma wrapped herself around Flynn.

“You shoulda gone, Sweetpea,” Emma purred as she pulled Flynn into her big legs. “We were talking to the ghosts up on Monument Hill, our town graveyard. Froze our tits off.”

“So…” Ra-Ra pulled Flynn away from Emma and began poking his chest accusatorily. “Mistah Numbaz.”

“Numbaz! Noom-bahs! Room-bahs! Zoom-bahs!” Toothless Don scatted from his seat on the counter, his elven beard shimmying as he played bongos on his thighs.

“All these numbers you got tripping around in your head. I heard the Powerball jackpot is up to over $300 million. A record jackpot, broski. We should pick some numbers and play em.”

“Um. We don’t have Powerball in Colorado,” Dave spoke up, drawn out from the world where he resided. “Remember. This is a state where you can’t buy alcohol or cars on Sunday.”

“Yeah, but Flynn says he’s going to Delaware and they have Powerball, brah.” Ra-Ra snapped her dreadlocks back and forth as though she’d puree the room with her head. “We could all kick in and buy like, a hundred tickets, and he could get em for us.”

“Yeah…” Flynn wasn’t sure what was being asked of him, if she wanted him to pick numbers or buy everyone’s tickets. “I mean, I’m flying out early on Wednesday, and I don’t have to be at work until Thursday. So, I guess I’d have the time but… keeping track of everyone’s numbers…?”

“No. Dude. We come up with some numbers for fun, y’know? If we win, no matter what number gets picked, we all split the jackpot. Like that.” Ra-Ra clutched Flynn in her gaze, assuring him that everything would work out. “All for one, one for all? Diggity, brah, that’s why you’re here. With us. Right? This convergence. God and numbers and all this.”

All at once, Flynn’s mind was full of his car, the 3-D Ranch, mushrooms, beer, weed smoked and eaten, the people surrounding him with love—everything that had led him to the moment he was in. “I love it. It’s so this place.”

“Dank!” and Ra-Ra was dancing where she stood, rocking the kitchen floor with her stomping. “Who’s in?”

“How much?” LA Tina called out while fingering through her clutch. “All I have is twenty.”

“That’s ten tickets, if you pick a Powerball number and really, why wouldn’t you? Everyone who wants to do it has to throw in twenty,” Ra-Ra reached into the back pocket of her jeans and pulled out a book of fives then slapped LA Tina’s twenty into the palm of her hand for the start of the pot. “Two of us. Flynn, you’re in, right?”

“Fuck yeah! OK, so we have thirty tickets…”

 The Don pulled a small salad of bills from his pocket and found a twenty. “I’m in.”

“Forsooth, my brother! You always said it was a waste of coin!” Dave’s voice still seemed to come from the walls.

“Tis, but tis only for fun. Why not have some fun, my brother?”

“No thank-ee. I prefer odds that aren’t similar to that of a soft landing on the surface of the sun.”

“Eh,” The Don shrugged as he slapped the bill into Ra-Ra’s hand, “if I win, he automatically gets half, anyway. And if I don’t win, I get to hear about it the rest of my life.”

  

Shoot Out The Lights

 Listening to Prison Song, System of a Down

Another workshop, another excerpt put to bed. 

I wouldn't have this novel written were it not for the workshop process. Other eyes on my work not only made me a tighter, cleaner writer, it gave me the confidence to push forward with my vision. 

Traditionally published writers in my groups told me to pursue the traditional route and that's what I'll do until there's nowhere else to go but self-publishing. I'm not trying to punch down on self-publishing but it's not where I think my book's future is. 

The piece I ran by Sunday's group got another gander tonight. When I ran the "pitch it as upmarket urban fantasy because it's got ghosts and magical realism" idea by them, they not only agreed with me but helped me refine this pitch:

POWERBALL is 193k of upmarket urban fantasy that weaves over a century of tales regarding fortunes made, stolen, and lost. Struggling, Pogo Springs, Colorado—an old silver-mining town with a tawdry past and a troubled future—is suddenly blessed when several  residents win a Powerball jackpot. The stage is set during the summer of 1997, when Emma and Gooch smoke a radically hallucinogenic strain of marijuana grown by lottery winners, one that engenders portals to alternate dimensions and universes. Gooch watches Emma leap from a canyon’s cliff into the abyss of one of the myriad mysteries burrowed within the novel.

Enticed into joining Emma and Gooch’s trip, readers are introduced to mountain folk and counterculture types: Hippies and Deadheads, a biker gang, skateboarders and snowboarders, New Agers, white supremacists and Nazi skinheads. Additionally, the story introduces the town’s silver-baron founder, his cagey nemesis, and various other ghosts. As past and present stories unfold, it’s apparent that lottery winners have various agendas for their fortunes—funding a brewpub and marijuana growing operation, the construction of a casino, a terrorist attack on Washington D.C.—all planned and carried out as the mountains tumble down.

Parallels with the past intertwine with threads from the present, the trip skewing from expected trajectories toward elements of magical realism. While the book’s focus is the core group of lottery winners, the narrative swings back and forth from the 1880s to the story’s present, like a pendulum spiraling out into ever-widening arcs.

Quite by accident, POWERBALL is a zeitgeist novel that includes themes such as: the transformational potential of psychedelics; right-wing terrorism; numerology and Pythagorean magic; craft beer; the nature of consciousness; 1990s computer hacking and other cultural tidbits; skiing, snowboarding, and skateboarding; the Grateful Dead and hippie/jam band scene; quantum physics; and a firm commitment to the Oxford comma.

Kind of a lazy way to query, if you think anyone's gonna read your damn blog.

A buddy said my work reminded him of The Monkey Wrench Gang meets Fear And Loathing. Nope, not even close. My friend Paul said Ken Kesey (Cuckoo's Nest not Electric Kool-Aid) and someone in tonight's group said the same thing, also referenced Naked Lunch.

No. Thank y'all but, no. Paul said he was just searching and I haven't heard back form tonight's workshop commenter. 

An excerpt from Book Two, Chapter Five:

Each day after school, he’d make his way to the library and the sound of Miz Purdy Byrd’s perseverating squawk, “You need to be out by five. So I can eat my dinner. Doors are locked at five o’clock sharp.”

Five was also five minutes before Purdy put a large splash of Kentucky bourbon into her sweetened tea. Gooch learned about her habit one evening after he’d gone unnoticed when she did her quick check of the stacks, returning to his reading once her thin shadow passed the nook where he’d huddled. The book that engrossed him was an account of the Astor Expedition, explorers and Indians, Spanish traders, trappers, mountain men, with a portion describing country he knew. By the time he realized he was going to be in serious trouble with his parents, Purdy was potted.

When he showed up at her desk to be let out, she interrogated him on why he’d been such a sneak and what it was that had held his attention so intensely. After showing her the book, she immediately knew where his head was and began a drunken rant about the town’s history.

The granddaughter of Thomas L. Oldham—Pogo’s official biographer, publisher and editor of the county’s oldest newspaper, The Swinger Advertiser—Purdy had been librarian longer than anyone could remember. For reasons known only to her, she opened up and shared with Gooch things she believed people probably wanted to hear but didn’t need to know. With the youngest Yamaguchi, and several fingers of bourbon under her belt, she recognized the only other mind who gave a shit about stuff that happened in the past. With him, she felt comfortable enough sharing stories she’d held close all her life. Over the years, when Gooch took the time to stay late, he heard tales from notes she said were turned into ashes the day after her grandfather died.

“Snavely Pogo didn’t come from nothing, that’s for sure,” Purdy roared on a snowy night some weeks after Gooch’s grandfather died, one of her eyes closed so there’d be only one of him to look at. “His people were wealthy merchants in England and he was giving them a bad name, so they shipped him off to America with enough money to get him gone. He’d pretty much squandered everything by the time he got to Silver Chalice. That’s what they called this town before he made everyone name it after him. When he got here, he decided he’d make his fortune by cheating people. Found a game and figured out how to rig it. Just an all-around prick.”

In the following few years, Miz Purdy Byrd’s words were verified in scribbles found on ledgers and letters discovered after Gooch’s father signed the deed to the resort.

“We moved the family in!” His mother announced in the hotel’s lobby. “The Family Inn, Ha! Isn’t that funny?” her cornball humor not lost on, but buried by, the rest of the family. Months of packing culminated in Yamaguchis occupying the resort’s Presidential Suite, moving in only after the plumbing was fixed. Goats and chickens were all that remained on the ancestral farmland they’d left. After showing the resort’s four floors and introducing children to a few permanent residents, Mom led her brood through the restaurant’s kitchen and down stone steps into what had been Pogo’s wine cellar, chatting up everyone the entire way.

April, the oldest and everyone’s boss, stopped midway before beginning her tantrum. “Ohmygawd! This place is gross! I’m going back upstairs! Ohmygawd!”

Their mother stopped, shot April a glance to suggest her princess could return above ground. Then, she folded her meaty arms over breasts that had no more hold over time than she did. “No one’s to come downstairs unless it’s with me or your father. Got it? Augie, you and Christmas stay out until we say. Or unless you’re with one of us.” Leaning in, her large cow eyes bounded back and forth between the two she knew would not heed her words. “Haruki?” using her husband’s Japanese name, she let him know that his complete attention was expected. “You tell them!”

Herman Yamaguchi was shining his flashlight into the bunghole of an old beer barrel. Rising from a crouch, his commanding voice gave the impression that his slight frame was much larger. “I think we should do a short tour back there, show em it’s nuthin but junk.”

That was the last thing May wanted to hear. “No! Those two… they’ll just want to keep coming back and getting into things, junk or not. They’re the cats Curiosity didn’t kill. Yet.”

“May, you know they’ll come down here no matter what we say. Might as well show em now that there’s nothin but a junkyard in those caves.”

Their mother retreated up the stairs in a snit, miffed her husband had twisted an admonishment into an excuse for adventure. “Have your fun. But don’t blame me if those two wind up lost or eaten by bats. I have things to do.”

Gooch and Kris bounced in their shoes as they waited for their mother to finish her ascent. As soon as the door at the top of the stairs slammed shut, their father shot his children a look that told them he’d mastered the art of waiting out their mother. Hitting a switch, he lit up the passage beyond the wine cellar and waved his children to follow.

The first stop was a room just inside the passageway, three sides of sheer rock closed off with a brick wall about eight-yards long and more than a foot deep, the door torn out long ago—the Crypt. Having served as the sanctuary and hideaway for previous owners of the hotel, it was packed with what could have been props from a movie: trunks with straps and skeleton-key locks, labels marked with the spidery characters of cultured penmanship; a huge stuffed barn owl atop a bookcase, tattered wings spread to disturbing effect; various iron safes, open to anyone aware that all lock combinations were listed on the front desk’s blotter pad; and, a sports car-sized maple desk from where the rest of the room’s clutter appeared to radiate.

“I’m not looking forward to going through all this crap, but I can see this being a very nice space. Once it’s cleaned out.” Herman Yamaguchi’s gaze darted around the room. “So… let’s see the rest of this junkyard!”

Outside the Crypt, the passageway grew warmer as it wound its way to the next cave, a much larger room encrusted with calcium and lime, guano-like green and white drips covering everything. Gooch’s eyes widened at the series of ovate vats in the room, pumps he imagined as gigantic fossilized dinosaur eggs. Pipes large and small crisscrossed the ceiling, chattering and clanking with life, needle-like stalactites birthed where mineral water had dripped.

“The town’s geothermal heating system runs through this contraption. Old timers say Pogo used to cut the heat when he was mad, which I’m told was pretty often. If he did, it happened here.”

Next, an expansive room revealed what had been the employee cafeteria during Pogo’s reign. “Lights don’t work from hereon in,” their father muttered as everyone’s flashlight beams scissored madly through the darkness. “Folks took about every piece of scrap metal outta here, ripped copper wiring out of the walls. After Pogo, the later owners didn’t appear to have much use for this room or anything beyond this point. Gramps will tell ya, people got so desperate during the Great Depression that they sold about everything they had just to get by. None of it worth fixing up for anything. Kinda scary, after here.”

Just across the hallway from the cafeteria, an open expanse revealed where laundry chutes fed to several tubs of bubbling spring water. Beyond that, the trio stepped cautiously past several caves that appeared to have once been residences—curtains for walls, places where bare bulbs once dangled on wires, cots and broken furniture strewn about, piles of mildewed clothing and bedding rotting on the floor. After entering a cave the size of a one-car garage, Kris whooped when she discovered crates of plumbing supplies, electrical equipment, and other implements of construction—buckets and boxes stuffed with pieces fused together by rust and calcium. The tour ended in a long room where heavy timber and rebar held back mountain from tumbling into the hotel’s basement.

“This is where it ends.” Their father threw his hands up to show that it was time to go back. “I told you there wasn’t much to see. Just junk, but I know you kids thought it was interesting junk,” his pupils turned up to point above. “I’m with you. It is interesting. Old junk from even before Papa-san’s time.” Before making their way back to the wine cellar, they stopped in the cafeteria to consider what remained. A cracked and torn parquet floor was littered with piles of plaster and pieces of shredded conduit, the copper and scrap metal raiders not tidy with their work. Walls that separated the dining room and cafeteria line from the kitchen, dish pit, and pantry, were battered open where wiring and plumbing had been ripped out, wounds exposing bent chicken wire and the bones of framing. “We’re going to get this place back up and running,” their father boasted as he led them back past the damage. “I want our dining room for paying customers only, not people eating from bags. Full-time residents will come down here, socialize, eat well. Their elevator opens up over there,” pointing his beam to where scrap wood had been tacked together to create a barrier. “Someone probably put that up to keep guests from wandering around down here.”

As they made their way back toward the wine-cellar steps, Kris’s hands were knotted up, pounding out a savage rhythm on her thighs. “Dad, there’s a dumbwaiter in the kitchen. I saw doors. On every floor when Mom took us upstairs. Augie is small enough to fit in it. All I have to do is lower him into the kitchen and he can open the door for me.”

“I saw em, too. Yeah, you can’t keep us from coming down here!” Electrified, Gooch ran in place as possibilities flooded his attention. “And laundry chutes. I saw those!”

“Augie,” lifting his son by the arm, Gooch’s father shook him to absolute awareness. “You tumble down those chutes and I’ll put your butt on KP for the rest of your days!”

Walking up the steps in silence, the children hoped their father would drop his ire with Gooch’s elbow. “Let me talk to your mother about you kids playing down here,” their father winked as he turned the cellar-door handle. “I could use your help, anyway. Going through all that stuff and figuring out what’s garbage and what’s worth keeping.”

In the weeks that followed, while their mother remained buried beneath yards of fabric that the chittering tooth of her sewing machine turned into curtains, bed spreads, pillow cases, or covers for any salvageable stick of furniture, Gooch and Kris spent countless hours sifting through the things in the basement with hopes of finding some rare gem or nugget of gold. As Kris inspected buckets of U-joints, C-clamps, E-boxes, and other things not identified by the alphabet, Gooch and his father scrutinized letters from another century.

After several hours of shuffling papers, reading their contents and then determining their worth, their father gasped, “Man, this guy Pogo was a real prick,” crinkled sheaves of fine stationery appeared to drip from his pinched fingers. “He tried to bully town council. People he bought and paid for. Wanted em to let him tear up graves so he could build on Monument Hill. Offered em good money but they weren’t havin it. Then his lawyers threaten to shut em down, whatever they do, but they don’t care, they got people buried up there and they’re not gonna to move em, not for anything.”

From what Gooch read, Pogo’s attorneys nearly always responded to demands of payment with, “The amount listed above and not one dollar more!” Without a doubt, Pogo was prone to paying pennies on the dollar, some cavil used to undercut the price initially agreed upon. When laborers and contractors went after wages they’d been assured they’d be paid, Denver lawyers replied with the kind of legalese that local sheriffs were obliged to tell friends and neighbors, “Looks like you’ve been fucked, well and truly.”  Gooch told his father that “total prick” was one of many ways to describe Pogo.

Interminable and redundant legends spun from the hotel’s oldest residents also helped the Yamaguchis further gather a story of Pogo Springs, one that was probably more accurate than what was presented in the lobby of the visitor center. There, in what had been Mrs. Pogo’s itinerant residence, an oleaginous account was presented on typed pages arranged next to the creepy portraits of Pogo—one that most visitors confused with “Lurch” from The Addams Family—and his plain wife and daughter. Other stories and pictures were pressed beneath plexiglass on various daises, black and white photographs that made it look as though it always rained or snowed in town, amenities to the visitor center council sprung for when the mayor and his town council were shitfaced drunk. The presented text alongside the photos had been taken almost exclusively from the musty pages of Oldham’s “Snavely C. Pogo: Being a Frontier Philanthropist and Titan of Economics, His Story One of Inspiration for All Young Men Seeking to Make Their Way in the World.” A book confined to an extremely small circle of readers.

By all accounts, Pogo had come to the Silver Chalice mining camp in the spring of 1883. Legend maintained he’d hawked Spanish knives, exploding pistols, bull whips, French pornography, and nostrums infused with dangerous amounts of laudanum.  While Oldham’s biography merely mentioned that Pogo had, “generously provisioned mine workers with the sundry requirements of their trade,” accounts from the hotel’s oldest residents hinted Pogo did substantial trade in whatever miners couldn’t find from the camp’s stores, including whores and cocaine. In less than a year after arriving in Silver Chalice, Pogo secured the deed for one of the most profitable mines in Colorado, his silver stream adding to an already flooded market. Pogo’s luck was remarkable to no one but Oldham, who wrote,

“What providence! O! Fortuna’s wheel did lift him to Olympus in mere months, in a manner and with munificence befitting gods of industry, capitalism and beneficence of the Invisible Hand, most certainly directed by our Lord!”

 

His fortune made, and the town his barony, Pogo bullied other business owners into scrapping the camp’s Silver Chalice name, after a local pastor pointed out the name’s suggestive connotations, then made his eponymous demand while adding Springs as a way to promote his resort and the heated waters that bled from the mountain’s heart. As Oldham put it with typical oaken prose,

“Snavely Pogo endeavored to attract the cream of the Republic’s eastern aristocracy to the salubrious environs of the Vino de Magdalena Mountains, where they might partake in the palliative properties of the area’s God-gifted springs. Built during the seasons of benefice in the glorious year of 1889, the hotel was the largest jewel in Pogo’s silver crown, an apotheosis of Victorian opulence and a testament to his self-made plenteousness.”

 

“We sure have a lot of these books.” Kris dropped copies on the floor for the popping sound.

“We’re keeping those,” Old Gooch said, “stop doing that. We’re giving those away in the VIP baskets.” He also said to save the ones every guest left behind, like a Gideon Bible, to go into the next set of VIP baskets.

In time, father and son joined the handful who’d read Oldham’s vaunted tome. After agreeing that the book was terrible, Gooch confided, “Miz Purdy Byrd said her grampa wrote it that way cuz he didn’t want anyone to read it, that he knew it was all lies and things only Pogo wanted to tell. And she said Pogo didn’t know bad writing, thought all those big words made him look more important.” Ten when he slogged through Pogo’s biography, it was the year he and his father spent nearly an entire ski season discussing the book between runs.

“If that craphead realized the real money is on these slopes, he might not have died so lonely and miserable,” his father squeezed past lips stiffened by frigid winds blasting the lift, the chair rocking with each gust. Gooch idly digested his father’s take on Pogo while looking at the sheer drop beneath the tips of his skis, imagining what the land below looked like in the days of miners and Indians. The history of Snavely Pogo, the town, and the hotel became a constant topic of conversation between Gooch and his father, especially when the two of them shared a day alone on Chi-Chi’s double-black diamonds, or Forest Service fire breaks. After stripping away gloves and goggles, they’d puzzle over facts and evidence. Mostly just the two of them. Mother was a blue slope skier at best and had lost affection for snow and cold with each passing year; Kris was overly-cautious, always overthinking the terrain ahead; and, getting April onto the slopes was like trying to put a sweater on a cat. Gramps usually stayed in the lodge, playing gin with the other shuttle drivers. When his father wasn’t making extra money as a ski instructor, Gooch and his dad were left to themselves on the slopes, the old man blasting down the mountain with moves that made other skiers stop and watch. Both talking town history in moments shared on the lift, while shedding gear, or after one of them spilled out and needed time to gather nerves back into a tight frame. Sometimes, his father talked about his childhood, his time in the Army, and his days on the family farm.

“Your Papa-san used to say, ‘I don’t know what’s fun about sticks on your feet in that snow.’ He and your uncles didn’t understand what I felt in these mountains. For them, it was all about work and getting the most out of country that’s pretty particular about what gets to grow. And we all worked our butts off, but there’s not much to do but ski after snow got everything covered. My brothers Hero and Rye were into school sports, so neither of em cared much for skiing or the cold and snow.” 

 

You Set the Scene

 Listening to You Set The Scene, Love

Timer was set at 30 minutes. That's all I give to this. Then go back to writing, open some rough chapters and see what else they need or identify fat that needs trimming. 

Here's my WIP laid out, old skool.

I'm terrible with keeping track of ideas that I just don't have time to fill out completely. If I'm in the groove with something, I need to stay on task. Otherwise, all is lost. ADHD has great benefits but terrible deficits.

Tonight's Main Course is the opening of Book Three of Powerball and man, I introduce a lot of characters. A friend wondered if there were too many but I can't imagine writing it any other way. 

Due to some comments by agents and editors (who were very complimentary of my work, it just didn't "fit what we're currently looking for."), I broke my 16000k+ chapters into sub-chapters, so it's broken down like, Book One--Chapter 1/Chapter 2/Chapter 3; Book Two--Chapter 4/5/6 and so on. Because those have a theme based on the songs I titled the Books after. 

And that last sentence was written under the influence.

Book 3, Chapter 9, excerpt 1:

Thump.

“Could it be any fucking colder? Jesus!”

Thump. Thump.

“Shit!”

Thump thump, thump thump, thump thump.

“So is that all you’re going to do? Pound on the fucking steering wheel? Shit, it’s cold. Fuck.”

To twenty-three, Flynn thought, count it out. Thump. Thump. Thump and so on. Then turn the key. What the fuck, there was nothing else he knew to do. He’d thrown open the hood and checked cables and connections but was no mechanic, had no idea why the car had died. Count to twenty-three and then turn the key—that was his best idea.

Black walls of lodgepole pine narrowed the night sky’s light into a narrow rill. Allison stared out the filthy passenger-side window, as if to see whether some crazed psychopath was camped out in the trees, just waiting for fresh meat to appear on the highway. Her hand rattled inside her purse as she desperately searched for pills.

Thump, thump, thump. To twenty three.

“So what are we going to do?” Head down in her bag, Allison sought Xanax her doctor-father had prescribed her. “Start walking? Start a fire? Fuck… I know I had some more… you didn’t eat them, did you?”

“You know I don’t like pills.” Engine steam had long since disappeared, nearly twenty minutes since the car shuddered and shut down, the engine quiet but for a soft hiss.  When he first opened the hood, water seemed to come from everywhere. Twenty-three and maybe the motor would cool down enough to get them to the next town.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

“God, would you stop that? You’re giving me a headache!”

Flynn’s feet softly tapped out one-two, three-four, a surreptitious dance he did while resting his head on the steering wheel, his count to twenty-three at least shutting out Allison’s pill-popping chatter. After hitting his last beat, lights suddenly rimmed the rearview mirror with an eerie corona, the growl of a motor growing louder with approach. Jumping out of the car, Flynn stood in the middle of the road, raising a flaming lighter in the air as though showing love for a band’s performance. He hit the lighter again and again and again, again counting to twenty-three.

Looking back toward the lights, Allison’s terror returned along with thoughts of crazed mountain people with hatchets and chainsaws, cages for enslaved women and hooks for human flesh. Headlights slowed, the dancing lighter apparently having gotten someone’s attention. “This is fucking groovy,” Allison growled as she popped another pill. “Thanks for bringing me along for this fiasco.”

A truck, old and beat up, fat tires and slightly raised, pulled off the road in front of the car, the smell of freshly-burned weed evident in passing. After it groaned to a stop in the gravel, two guys got out, their long hair and baggy clothes silhouetted in the headlights.

“I dunno, it just died.” Not knowing what else to say to these guys, Flynn threw out his arms. “On our way back to Colorado Springs after a show in Chi-Chi.”

“We’re on our way back from Chi-Chi. Hee-hee! Wee-wee! Wheeeeee! Saw Shakedown, brotha’, best damn Dead-cover band ever! Sweet! Schwing!” The speaker was the shorter one, by almost a foot. Constantly moving as if being shocked by some remote research assistant, animated in a way that, along with his slight stature, made him weirdly imp-like.

“Whee! Whee! Whee!” he pig-squealed. A corresponding scream erupted from inside the car along with feet pounding against the glove box.

 “I can see the first problem you have is a woman on board,” the taller one muttered, then moved to the exposed engine and hit it with the beam of his flashlight. An older Native American man revealed in his lantern’s glow, frilled buckskin adorned with beads and stones, chest draped with several necklaces, feathers poked into a thick mane of long, black hair.

“A woman! The hobbits brings us a woman!” The short one pranced to the passenger side and pressed his face against the window, “Baby, baby, baby! I’m in love! Schwing!”

More screaming in the car along with things being thrown at the window.

“So you guys were at Shakedown?” The Indian guy bounced the flashlight’s beam over the motor, not seeming to search for anything in particular. “You guys get high?”

“Yeah, but we’ve been out for days. Touring the mountain scene. Smokin other people’s buds since Friday.”

“Oh, we’re good, brother. Just seeing if you wanted to smoke some.”

“Yeah, we’d love that. I’m Flynn, by the way. Allison’s the one having a meltdown in the car. I mean, she’s totally pissed about this whole trip. Weed would definitely calm things down a bit.”

“That’s cool. I’m Leo. That’s Toothless Don scaring your girlfriend. I suggest we smoke a bowl and try to figure something out. I don’t know why you’re car’s dead.” Waving the flashlight in the air, he called, “Don! Get over here and have a look. I can’t see anything.”

Toothless Don waved bye-bye to Allison while kicking a heel up behind him like a fountain’s flirtatious Cupid, then was up in the hood with knees resting on the grill. “Whaddya think, Leo? Whaddya thing? Think thing? Ding! Ding! Ding! It’s a motor. Japanese, I thing! Nuthin’s on fire! Schwing! Water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink! Bet it’s a water pump froze up! Betcha betcha betcha!”

“What the fuck was that?” Allison was shaking when Flynn opened her door, her hands hiding her face, rippling fingers like battling tarantulas. “Are these guys... okay? I thought you were getting raped out there!”

“Yeah, yeah, they were at the same show we were at. They’re cool, I think they’re going to help. Chill, babe. The other guy asked if we wanted to get high.”

“Um… YEAH!” Allison swung her door open, and wrapping her coat tightly around her breasts, shuffled eagerly to her new friends.

The hood clattered with the sound of Toothless Don’s head hitting it. “Baby doll! Schwing! Made you come with my mechanical prowess! Oh yeahhhhhhh,” his voice dropping several octaves into a guttural growl.

“Hey guys!” Allison greeted them as fellow travelers, Deadheads, stoners—family. “Heard there’s herbage out here! I’m Allison!”

Leo filled a bowl from a pouch attached to one of his necklaces while the group huddled on the side of US 144. “The bad news? We don’t know what’s wrong with your car,” Leo said as the piece circulated. “It’s late and no solution until at least morning. The good news is, we have a friend who’s a genius with cars. Better news is, we have some friends who have room for you to crash, if you want, until your car’s fixed. They’re partying, but if you’re up for it, that’s an option.”

“That sounds awesome! And we can pay,” Allison added, “for the room and everything! We don’t want to take advantage.”

“What about the car?” Still making payments on his junker, Flynn was pissed that it was dead where it sat, wasn’t thrilled that it would be momentarily abandoned on some back-country highway. Mostly, he was annoyed that Allison had just obligated funds he might need to pay for repairs.

“Come with us,” Leo slammed the hood closed and started walking to the truck. “Our mechanic friend will tow it then tell you what’s wrong.”

“Kris-Kris. Gris-Gris. Cree-Cree. Whee! Girl fix anything, everything! A genius, a motherfuckin genius. You’ll see!” thrusting his pelvis Allison’s way, Don added, “Schwing!” then a bouncing, “Boing-oing-oing!”

The four of them packed into the cab of the truck, Don in the middle, Allison on Flynn’s lap. “Welcome to Pogo Springs,” Leo said as he dropped his rig into gear and dripped a sly grin, “you may be surprised by what you find. Be careful with our sacred waters.”

Not far from where they’d left the car, the road spilled through a cleft in the mountain, twisting along water that had torn open a canyon. Boulders the size of buildings declared where the mountain still had more of itself to give to the creek.

“So, we’re headed to the 3-D Ranch by way of Kris-Kris. She’s going to tow your car and give us a shortcut to town,” Leo said as he maneuvered his truck past walls of tree and rock. “Toothless Don is one of the three Ds.”

“That’s my story and I’m stickin to it.” Don opened his mouth with a dumb-guy gape, revealing nubs like miniature rotted apples hanging from his gums.

“The other Don—The Don we call him—he and his brother Dave make it 3-D. They’re identical twins but you can recognize the difference. The Don had chemo last year and his hair never came back. He’s the extrovert of the two. Dave is really quiet, in his head a lot. It’s Emma’s birthday. You can’t miss who she is. There’s homebrewed beer and shrooms and more pot like the stuff you just smoked. Hippies. Freaks. Deadheads. Our tribe.”

Just beyond the “Pogo Springs 3” sign, Leo turned the truck across double lines onto a dirt road that ran parallel to the highway for several hundred yards, then skirted away into mountain shadows. Rattling bones on washboard ruts, the truck followed a serpentine path down into a vale where a split gate blocked their path. In the chaotic chiaroscuro of headlights, Flynn and Allison could see the shadows of a two-story house rimmed by banks of dark machinery and wrecked cars, row after row of banged up metal rusting in the dark. Leo jumped out and went to the gate, started yipping and howling like a coyote, pushing his body up from where he gripped the wrought-iron bars. An apparition materialized on the other side of the gate—tall, dark-skinned, long hair hiding a face, wearing an Einstürzende Neubauten t-shirt, black denim legs stuffed into the petals of unlaced work boots. The mysterious figure unlatched the lock and opened the gates.

“Kris-Kris!” Don erupted and shot out of the truck, leaping across the gate to attach himself to the apparition’s neck. Kris hugged him back with a tap-tap-tap distance and then pushed him back toward the gate, as if handing off a baby with a shitty diaper. All the while, Leo gestured with a helicopter spin of his hands, signing as though some prison gang switchboard, shouting over the chugging rumble of the motor. In an instant, Don was back at the truck, on Allison’s side, tapping on the window, a lecherous grin revealing his five teeth. “Keys, please! Tease me! Squeeze-ee! We needs keys! Squeeze keys to me or ya ain’t gettin nuttin!”

“For God sake, give him your keys,” Allison hissed. “He wants to help.”

“I’m trying, but you’re still on my lap.”

Allison jumped over onto the rest of the seat, “Then let me move my fat ass off you.”

“Geez. It’s not so much that you’re bulky but awkward.”

Bulky and awkward pretty much defined the remainder of Flynn and Allison’s weekend.

Kris-Kris led them through the junkyard to unlock another gate, one just beyond a stone bridge and opening up to a narrow street lined with ramshackle cabins daring the rocks above them to fall. From there, Leo took his truck down into where the town coalesced and nudged itself into something to be regarded. Within two turns and three minutes, they arrived at their destination—a split-level house with a worn 1970s chic and a patchwork fence of planks and pieces of plywood. Dark spots in a dusting of snow showed where footprints had earlier forged their way to the porch.

Toothless Don spun through the door and began buzzing around, bumping off partiers and furniture like a disoriented bee. “Leo!” someone called out as the others entered, their addition to the party initially announced by stomps on the porch.

The Don stood just inside the door to greet them, one hand wrapped around a pint glass, the other sweeping inwards. “Welcome to our shire! Greetings, fair friends! M’lady! M’lord!”

“Allison and Flynn, roadkill from up the pass.” Leo was looking farther back into the house, where the kitchen and action were. “On their way back from Shakedown. Naturally, interested in beer and shroomage.”

The living room was empty of people except for some dude who looked a lot like a young Robert Plant and was zoning into a poster brought to life by a black-light’s glow. Threadbare and broken furniture surrounded a floor undulating with warps and bumps. In one corner, a stereo’s flickering indicator lights blinked from within a cavern of stacked albums, boxes of tapes, and racks of CDs. Rush was playing, and the smell of marijuana smoke gave the place a kind of “I’m home!” groove. Just past the door, a side room was lit in red to reveal walls lined with shelves holding thousands of comic books, each issue sheathed in plastic.

“So, Chez 3-D,” The Don continued. “Bedrooms and bathrooms this way and that,” fingers slicing air like a flight attendant explaining exits, “…aaaaaand, onto where the people are…” motioning them to the kitchen. Two black Labs jumped up from the floor to greet the newcomers, looking to be petted and scratched. “Samson and Delilah. She’s the littler one. And these people are… Ra-Ra. Casper. LA Tina. Our birthday girl, Emma. Whisper and Carlos on lead and rhythm, Gooch on the counter and, my brother Dave on bong.”

Dave took a pull, cleared the tube with a lift of the pin and waved, giving the go-ahead with his exhale for everyone to resume as they were, as if they’d been something else during the lead-up to his introduction. The girls greeted their guests with vigorous hippie hugs while the guys stayed put to flash peace signs, How-dos and S’ups. With Robert Plant-dude as an initial hint, it was apparent that everyone in 3-D had ingested psilocybin at some point prior, in varying amounts, each elevated into their own unique level of trip—some melting and stirring in the scene, others engaged in lively conversation.

“You’ll want this to wash down the boomers,” The Don said as he opened a side door off the kitchen to where a pony keg chilled on a porch.

“Beer brewed here!” Toothless Don was dancing around Indian Leo while flashing his Jack-o-lantern smile. “Here, beer! 3-D homebrew! Dee’s true hoodoo! Whoo-hoo!”

“Leave the door open! It’s hot in here,” LA Tina whined from the kitchen as The Don filled two pint glasses with beer the color and consistency of robust coffee.

As Flynn watched the glasses fill, he scanned the room, eyes landing on Emma’s statuesque beauty. Not daring to allow his gaze to linger, he slowly checked out the rest of the crowd. “Cool people! I think we’re gonna have fun.” Tilting his chin down and dropping his volume to a near whisper, “That chick, LA Tina or Latina? Is she a he? Cuz she looks like a dude dressed like a chick.”

 “Latina! El lay! Olé! Schwing!” Toothless Don smirked at Flynn and blew him a kiss.

“Both.” Indian Leo sipped his beer and examined Flynn past the rim of his glass. “Latina or LA Tina, she don’t care. Two-spirits, Ick we ka-ka zo. She’s a she who got nuts anna dick. You’re not her type. She goes for cowboys, construction workers… manly types.”

Realizing he’d stepped into something he didn’t know how to scrape off his heels, Flynn stuttered, “She’s, uh… not why I was asking, dude. Got no problem with that but no… I mean, I came here with Allison and she’s…”

“Ali ma gal lee! Schwing! Whoo-hoo! She one hot twat, whatcha got! Got sweet honeypot!” Toothless Don erupted as though his crotch would shoot through the room like a bottle rocket. His babble trailed off as he spun from the porch and back into the kitchen, women screeching and squealing as he fondled and pinched his way through.

Back with beers, Flynn was greeted by Allison’s stoned grin and emotional ambiguity.

“Help yourself,” Whisper offered them a mini skirt-sized bag holding close to five pounds of mushrooms. “Grab some.”

“Walk me out in the morning dew, my honey,” Emma belted from the belly, stomping on whatever was on the stereo.

The perfection of Emma’s voice and facial features multiplied attraction for Flynn as she unloaded the breadth of her voice. Trying not to be creepy, he turned his attention from her to The Don, who was idly juggling at least a half-dozen shot glasses.

“I know you probably hear it a lot but you really look like…” Flynn toasted The Don as he snagged a handful of shrooms.

“Frank Zappa,” The Don deadpanned, ending his juggling act by catching every shot glass into a tidy tower. “Only all the time. But that’s cool. I love Frank, the Mothers. Too bad cancer took him. Nice, right?”

Hoping Don was asking about beer and not cancer, Flynn flushed his dose with a hasty slug of stout. “Good. Great. I mean, you brew this?” Clearing his pint to wash down the telluric tang of the mushrooms, he funny-faced his way back into the moment. “It’s really delicious. The beer.”

 

Until Midnight

Listening to Sarah Smile, Hall & Oates 

Thought I'd have to cancel tomorrow's Zoom writer's workshop. Until my friend Lester RSVP'd, it looked as though our regular Sunday meeting was getting the kind of attention my tweets get. 

I have 14.2k+ followers on Twitter and my tweets get over a thousand crickets. 

Needless to say, I'll at least see Lester who writes Civil War historical fiction at the moment. Prior to that, he brought mostly urban fiction short stories, all very good, mostly a loser or crank as the protagonist. LitFic stuff, the first story I read of his also historical fiction--like the novel he's bringing to group--black lives in post-World War II rural Georgia. I love his work because it's dark and my work is dark af. 

In the moment, I'm working on the novel I thought I could finish for NaNoWriMo but only made it to 30k words. Very different than Powerball's omniscient third-person narrator, apparent setting in this world circa 1990s. This work is set a hundred years later, the planet injured badly by climate change, the technological singularity running the planet in a seemingly utopian society.

My Saturday was spent working overtime, making Christmas money, then some chores, the reward being working on Cooking With Van. First-person voice of a non-binary person raised outside the towers--where the singularity has housed 95% of the world's population--and an incredibly good chef.

My timer's running out (more on that later), here's the rough stuff I've been working on tonight:

“Whatcha readin?”
“Pearls Before Swine, Myra Sandusky. Probably read it a half-dozen times. Epic. I have five books in that pack, a couple of em are over a hundred years old that I keep wrapped in tissue and a sweater. Sometimes on the road, I find a spot that’s so pretty, so peaceful, that I’ll stop and spend my day there reading, set up my camp and settle into the beauty of the land.”
Carly made me think about why I was out on the road, in the wilderness, taking what I needed and giving to the scavengers. What my purpose was and where I fit into the ecosystem. “I never got to be very good with readin. I had to teach myself. I can do numbers like, in my head, but words and sentences? Couldn’t really get into that.”
“That’s tragic. Words, sentences, the way that certain people put them together and transport me to another world? I’d perish in this world if there were no other worlds to escape to.”
“I’d love to escape to another world, right now. Nothing but snow outside, you and me in here. Don’t get me wrong, you’re great company, Carly, but I wanna be somewhere else.”
“I gotcha. You’re good. So… kinda on topic… you gonna carry this baby to term? You’re runnin out of time to decide. I can’t do no abortion but, if we turn south and get to the rez? I know someone who can do it, a real doctor.”
At no point had abortion crossed my mind, it seemed I was destined to have a baby, bein so far on the outs that Carly was the only person I’d told my truth to since Ramon. “How far are we from the rez?”
“I reckon about two weeks, and in this snow? Probably more than that. Some rough terrain getting in there, too. It’ll be more than three weeks if we take this trail back to the road that goes into the rez.”

Let's try this...

Listening to: Don't Let Your Deal Go Down, Sam and Kirk McGhee

I finished Powerball, my novel. Well, almost done. Still workshopping it--the pic I post is from my Sunday group--but it's getting close to the end.

It just occurred to me that I should stop pitching it as LitFic and go for upmarket Urban Fantasy. Except it's not exactly urban, it's more small town. And the fantasy part is mostly magical realism. 

For the moment this space is just for promoting my book. Maybe I'll post what I record during Zoom workshops (if I can figure out how to do that). 

So... this is just me telling you why I'm doing this. I promise subsequent posts will be worthy of a read.

That's the post. Jesus and Mary Chain just came on and I wanna sit and listen to it, enjoy the Jack Herrer that got me here.

Backyard haiku

Mating rituals

Dead leaves chase each other in the wind

Like two horny moths

 

Boom, boom, doom and gloom

boot heels scraping out divots

turf torn up by Goths

 

Alone, a boy cries

ice cream bakes on the blacktop

where bullies gloat

 

Where the water drains

things wriggle in putrid pools

a stick is a boat

 

It’s time for nighthawks

crepuscular insect clouds

and barbecue smoke

 

Spinning soccer ball

Dad spanks his daughter’s ass then

gives his son a poke

 

Brown lizards skitter

into cracked bricks’ crevices

swallowing their catch

 

 

 

My neighbor’s dog bark

insanely whimpering when

I unhook the latch

 

Gray hair and limp gait

little dog pulls them forward

but stops when they kiss

 

Boom stereo thud

“Check me out, motherfucker!”

shatters quiet bliss 

I'm too old for angst, y'know?

 I hate my job.

Let me qualify that--the job is OK and, in this economy, I should be grateful to have steady employment. TBH, the work isn't demanding but stultifyingly dull. At the end of the (work) day, I have plenty of intellectual and creative capital to sit down and write. Or query agents/editors/publishers, a labor that has resulted in numerous rejections. My day job doesn't interfere with my unpaid second job, so that's cool.

It's the soulless corporation I work for that I hate. "Office Space" writ large and most of you know the lament--incompetence at the top rewarded while front-line workers bear the brunt of that fuckery--so it seems pointless to indulge that trope. But the struggle of signing onto work every morning, to seethe at the masturbatory emails polluting my inbox, is daily degradation.

Query and wait. It will be so satisfying when that offer comes and I can walk away from serving self-aggrandizing dipshits. 

My novel is written, a beast at 194,000 words. To market it, I split it into two parts. I'm still line editing and workshopping but it's a complete manuscript. 

Hello Blogger, My Old Friend

It's been awhile. Been writing a novel and tweeting a lot. And I get a mighty rash from that.