Grief

My Dad will have been gone four years this July. It was a long and hard death for him. He'd been diagnosed with Alzheimer's nearly 20 years before. He outlived my Mom by five years, and struggled to the very end in a body that literally disintegrated around him. My sister and her son took care of him and I helped when I could. But in the end we could only wait until he gave up.

I don't remember everything that happened then, but this is what I do remember:

Reading saved my life. My oldest best friend, Loren Rhoads was finishing up her space opera trilogy, In The Wake of the Templars, which she had sold to Night Shade Books. The fact that my friend had made a sale to a major publisher was literally the best thing that happened in.... it seemed like years.

She was on the tightest deadline I could imagine--it was months, where I take years to finish anything. Loren was doing it.

In the midst of all of that, she started sending me the book in progress, chapter by chapter. Now I couldn't tell you if it was one a week or a day, but it seemed as though, I woke up every day to something new, something exciting. Something that wasn't me at work, carrying my phone around all day waiting for the CALL.

My last memory of my Dad was that last day, sitting by his bed, trying to get him to wake up and take some water. It's also of Raena and her adventures. No More Heroes was so much more than a distractaction. It was a story that I could hang on to, in spite of everything. As I read Loren's story, I even had hope that there would be a time I could write my own again. I don't think I ever thanked her properly for that. 

Find all of them here

Day four: Now it's all out of order.... Sigh.

Okay, same story, but the scene before the previous ones. Yep, that's right. Just how it comes out. This is Adella. She's a Doctor, and Leslie's companion. She does not approve of his new job, and they've been arguing about it. And then this happens. Hopefully at some point I can put some description and stuff in there to make it less..... Well, less like this.... Also this one's a bit more like two pages... So, yay. I'm ahead of the deal!

“In the meantime you’re Vicktor’s attack dog.”  She folded her arms around herself and turned away from him.

Les swallowed. Taking credit off people for “protection” was despicable and he knew it. It was who he used to be. He had no defense against her argument. He could tell her that Vicktor had threatened her life, and that made it different this time. But he knew that would only make her angrier.

“I’m going out.” Adella announced in his silent.

“Let me go with.”

“No.” Her voice was flat. “If we are to stay here I need to learn the lay of the place. And I shan’t need you to protect me.”

Les sighed, watching her open her meds bag to draw her derringer out and then tuck it into the hidden pocket in her skirt. No. She didn’t need him, he thought as she settled her hat onto her hair and drew a shimmery silver shawl around her shoulders. Adella had never needed him. It was him that needed her.

Adella made her way down the stairs of the clapboard office/jail/living quarters that she would share with Leslie for as long as it took. She stepped onto the passwalk that twisted through the warren of other such shopfronts and dwellings that made up the Tembrous market. Would it shock Leslie to know that this was far from her first trip into this place? She smiled. He was so ashamed of his past that he never stopped to think that she might also have one that she wasn’t proud of.

What would he think of her, if he knew the things she had done in the name of medicine while she was at university? Back then, she’d been young, and the only woman in a sea of men. She’d been eager to prove herself equal.

She pushed the regret aside. With all of Leslie’s, there was hardly room for Adella’s too. She turned off the main path onto a narrow crowded row where the air was closer, filled with the calls of caged birds and small animals. This was the heart of Tembrous. And Adella knew she was looking or a shop with no cages at all.

It wasn’t hard to find. It hulked at the dead end of the run, it was a full structure, like Leslie’s office. It was a somber black, with curtained windows. There was no sign it indicate what went on within, but Adella already knew.

Inside was shadowy as well. No surprise there. This was surely the darkest part of the market. As Adella stepped over the threshold she caught the faint sweet scent of copper pennies. She paused to let her eyes adjust and found the front room empty. It looked like a parlor, or she thought, a waiting room. There was thick carpet beneath her feet and wingback chairs gathered around a little table.

She sunk one hand into her pocket to find the comforting shape of her pistol and reached for the bell on the counter. Its chime cut the silence and triggered movement in the room beyond.

“Hello.” She made her voice cheerful, but didn’t take her hand off the grip of her pistol.

The curtain drew back and a young man stepped through. He had a smooth, luminous face. As he drew closer she notices that his eyes were red.

Not as young as he looked then, she corrected herself. It also accounted for the faint smell of blood about the place. “Pardon, Missus.” His voice was deep, velvety. “I was caught up in work.”

“Doctor.” She corrected him, lifting her chin to meet the hellfire eyes. “Doctor Adella Fordham.” She did not offer her hand. “I’ve come to inquire about the auction.”                            

He settled behind the counter and smiled, teeth white and stark in the murk. “Forgive me, but I don’t know what auction you’re referring to. This is simply a supply company.”

Day Three. Don't Look!!

Here's how much I trust you guys. This is page two. Yep. This , his where I reveal myself as a true.... What do the kids call it now? Pantser. It should be evident that I:  A, have no idea what's going to happen as I'm writing this thing, and B  Have absolutely no qualms about breaking the precarious PLOT that I do have floating around in there. I promise that when I figure out how this all works out, it'll make so much more sense..... Oh. when Les thinks about the beast, it's his werewolf. There, you go......    

Leslie felt the crack of his nose breaking on contact. Pain flashed across his vision and he returned the blow on instinct. Cabbot staggered back, but didn’t go down. He shook his head and spit a mouthful of blood out on the floor. Then he charged Les, catching him low. The force sent the both crashing through the thin wall of the shack.

They exploded in a heap, Les on the bottom. He tasted copper at the back of his throat, but the beast made the pain fleeting. He was already healing. He flung Cabbot off and got to his feet. Then he hauled the other man up too. There was a thin crowd gathering, and Les knew he had to end this before they decided to join in.  “I’d prefer to come to a civil solution. However, if you insist on continuing this violence, I will oblige you. But you should consider that you’ve already got all the licks in you’re going to.”

His next blow was lower, and he caught Cabbot as he doubled over.

Now that his face was on the mend, Leslie remembered to hold back. It still wasn’t close to a fair fight, but Les didn’t want to kill Cabbot.

In fact, he realized as he turned loose of the man, he’d make a fair ally against Vic. And as thought came to him, Cabbot clocked him again, hard.  “Wait,” He put his hands up, open. “This is no way to negotiate.”

“That’s not what this is, son,” Cabbot laughed. “This is me beating you down.”

Les felt the eyes of the crowd on him, and he knew he couldn’t be seen backing down on his first day. “You’re mistaken.” He said, pulling his pistol clear of the holster. “This is me, getting what I came for. One way or another. Now. Don’t be a fool.”

Day Two of the Page a Day Challenge. 300 wordsish makes up a page.

I promised to stick three pages up a week. Oh, I'll write seven, but c'mon. Even I don't want to read some of that. I don't know what all the pages will be, since I'm working on a couple of different things, but here's one from the Neo-Victorian novel that I'm middling my way through. It's near the end of the middle, and it's the prelude to a fist fight. It is almost entirely as it is from my notebook. So, um.... Well, here it is.......

Les was not pleased at the number of names on his list. Twelve shopkeeps this week would need convincing. Twelve.

He hoped that his size would be all the convincing they would need to pay up.

He wondered what Adella was doing. It was just as well she wasn’t here to see him set off to begin his duties. She wanted to believe he was better than Vicktor—so did Les, but the truth was they had been the same once, and the bad man still lived in Leslie, no matter how deeply buried. He wanted to leave it buried, but he knew if he wanted to kill Vicktor, he couldn’t.

So he set out to find his the first name on his list.

“Afternoon, Mr….” Les paused to consult is list. “Cabbot, is it?”

The man rose from is chair and stood eye to eye with Les. “It is.” He answered. “Who’s askin’”

“You can call me Mr Fordham. I’m here on behalf of our mutual friend, Mr. Ketchem.”

“No friend o’ mine.” The other man’s eyes narrowed to slit.  “And neither are you, if you’re his man. I’ve no interest in what he’s sellin’.”

Les smiled sharp and said, “You’ve already bought it. Now Mr Ketchem needs his cred.”

Cabbot looked Leslie up and down and laughed. “Or what?”

Leslie stepped closer to Cabbot. He widened his smile to show teeth. He did not what to be this man again, yet he was slipping into the role quick. “Or I go to work. And then you pay.”

“I don’t need protection from the likes of you or him.” Cabbot told him. As he spoke, he caught hold of Leslie’s right forearm, gripping hard enough to prevent him from side-stepping the punch.

Black Light: Loren Rhoads, David Bowie and Ziggy Stardust.

I didn’t begin this story alone. In 1983, Loren Rhoads was my best friend. She still is, though we’re separated now by the width of the country. But back then our world was MTV. It was Adam Ant and the Police. It was used records from Saturday trips to Ann Arbor. And most of all it was David Bowie. It was the year of “Let’s Dance.”

With his bleached white hair, asymmetrical smile and deceptively bouncy pop music, this was a vastly different Bowie than I’d met years before in the middle of the night. That shrill and jagged Bowie that had been there no one else was. Still, since I was aspiring punk rocker, I might have given Let’s Dance a pass. But it was inescapable, spilling out of every car window that passed my open bedroom window that summer. And what it did for both Loren and I was lead us to the past. I remember that Loren bought albums. She bought all the Bowie she could.  We listened to Diamond Dogs on her stereo in her bedroom, puzzled over the lyrics, let the imagery color our imaginations. For Loren, Diamond Dogs was a starting point for short stories. For me, it was farther back. For me it was Ziggy. “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars”. Trace, Asia, Weird and Tommy were all born from that album. But the story, Trace and Asia’s story, began with one song.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UQvBzo_rJA

In the words of “Lady Stardust," I saw Asia, standing in that sweaty, hungry crowd, listening. I watched him feel what he could never say aloud, and I felt him lose the chance to ever speak up. Asia became the unnamed character in Bowie’s story for me. And then it became a different story. The membes of Black Light are from Michigan, because we were from Michigan, they are from the ‘80’s because so were we. Asia became a place to hold all my feelings of Midwestern repression. Ziggy became Trace; beautiful, and human, but completely unattainable. Even now when I listen to the Ziggy Stardust album it's full of energy and bravado, still a candle against the night.

Eventually, Loren's writing and mine took different paths. She has gone on to write more than anyone I know, and you can check out her blog here: httpp//:lorenrhoads.com/  

In fact, go look at her newest novel, Lost Angels, co-written with Brian Thomas: http://www.amazon.com/Lost-Angels-Above-Below-Book/dp/0963679422  It's an amazing book, and you need a copy, believe me. 

She's still the only person in the world who I can spend five hour in the same room with, just writing....with occasional tea breaks. And I don't think I'll ever be able to thank her enough for that first copy of Ziggy.....