Year: 2014

First Fall Run

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It’s the first day of Autumn, and that’s awesome for a runner like me.

Let’s get one thing clear.  I’m not a fair-weather runner.  I say that with all respect and love for the fair-weathers out there — I was one, too, once.  I know that life.  You ponder running in the summer when it’s too darn hot and you say, “well, when the weather cools off a little bit and it doesn’t feel quite so much like my skin is actually boiling off of my body, maybe then I’ll get out and run.”  Or maybe you made the old standby resolution at New Year’s when it was colder than my black, black heart outside and realized that perhaps the forbidding temperatures in the single digits and teens weren’t quite your speed and that, perhaps, April was in fact a much better time to start the whole running thing.

I get it.  But I can’t live that way anymore.

Something happens when you push past the three mile mark in running.  Up until that point, you consider yourself a jogger, maybe, or a sprinter, or maybe somebody who does a little running on the weekends or as part of a bigger exercise regimen, but past 5k it becomes serious.  The training wheels come off.  The drudgery of your bi-daily run has been replaced by some snarling, feral need to run.  There’s no putting it off til April or October.

No, the all-weather, all-season runner knows that he (or she, obvs) will continue to run whether it’s hot enough to literally bake cookies in your buttcrack or cold enough to make buttcrack ice cream.  The first hot days arrive in May and I think, with all the grim inevitability of that deep-voiced guy from the movie previews, it begins.  The last balmy night in November passes and I know that Winter is coming.

The temperature in the daytime climbs steadily from seventy, to eighty, to ninety, and still we’re out there.  The clever ones run before dawn or after dusk, but the lunatics are out there in the full light of day, roasting alive, logging their miles and waiting for September.  But even the nightcrawlers begin to suffer in Summer.  The humidity dragon sneaks in through the door you left open and makes your seventy-degree morning feel like ninety, sees you back at the house following a quick three miles looking as if you’ve just swum the English Channel.  The washing machine gets a workout like it’s never known.  Your significant other turns up her nose when you come in for a post-run smooch.  (Okay, maybe she does that year round, but in the summer, you can identify.)  You start to hate running again.

But today it’s September 23rd, and that means Fall is here, and Winter is coming.  And here in Atlanta, boy, does it feel like it.  This morning it was a delightful 57 degrees, cool enough to put a chill in your fingertips before you get warm from the exertion, but not so cool you even have to think about long sleeves or gloves or any of the mess that comes when the temperature really starts to drop.  Cool enough to slip a windbreaker on the sprout as I strapped him into the stroller with me (yeah, he wakes up at 5:15 now to go run with me… it’s a problem).  Cool enough to make you feel alive with the touch of Autumn and pumpkins and all that other stuff that fills the roughly three weeks before Winter sets in.

If there’s a perfect temperature for running, it may well be 57 degrees.  After months and months of cooking inside my skin just from stepping out the door for a run, 57 degrees feels like an ice bath after a sunburn.  A cool drink of water after a mouthful of habanero salsa.

I only wish the fall weather would last longer, but as any Atlanta resident knows, we get maybe three weeks of it before the bottom drops out.  Time to suit up and get out there.

Some Stories You Should Read

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This post is a shameless plug for some fiction written by myself and other authors.

Chuck Wendig, over the past three weeks, organized a 3-part Collaboration Challenge over at his website.  I played each week, writing the first 500 words of my own story (There Are Things in the Well), writing a second 500 words for another story (Clank), and finally writing the conclusion of a third story (A Recipe for Disaster).

I’m happy to say that both of the stories I collaborated on aside from “A Recipe for Disaster” were picked up and concluded by other authors.  Yesterday I reposted the finished version of “There Are Things in the Well“, and today I saw that there have actually been two part 3’s written for “Clank.”  In no particular order, you can find them here (Clank 1) and here (Clank 2).

It’s been a fascinating exercise, first of all, to pick up and continue the work started by another author, and second, to see what strange new directions other authors take with material I’ve started.  In short, a really cool little idea.

Thanks to Angela Cavanaugh, George Kaltsios, Underastarlitsky, RoseRed, Matthew Gomez, and Clay Ashby for their unwitting collaborations.

Character Consideration

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Working on the edit today, I realized a thing.

When I set about the not-insignificant task of changing Accidentally Inspired from a stage play to a novel, one of many changes I orchestrated on the front end (read: before I actually got into the draft and all the pieces started coming off like a bunch of janky flywheels) was the addition of a love interest.

It seemed natural.  Still seems natural.  She’s not out of place in the narrative.  I think I gave her a totally plausible raison d’etre or however you say that fancy French thing.  I like her character, but I’m not like in love with her character (that would mean I had invented a character too perfect and would therefore be a Bad Thing).  She plays a role in the story but is not, strictly speaking, critical to it.  All in all, for a late addition to the party, I’m pretty pleased with her.  However, I’m afraid that she may be entirely out of place in the novel.

I can’t be sure.  I waited a good six, seven weeks to dive in and start the edit, which I think has been enough time for me to distance myself from the prose.  However, in reading this character, I begin to wonder.  When I originally conceived of this idea, oh, let’s just call it ten years ago, the principal ten characters sprung immediately and organically into being.  Each played his or her role perfectly, fitting together like jigsaw pieces.  Now, revisiting the story, changes are inevitable.  As I’ve noted before while I was writing the draft, in its translation to the long-form novel, the story has sprouted new legs and arms, a tail and a few new tongues.  New characters sprung up like strangling weeds, and strangely, each seems to fit the new narrative just as well — if in a smaller capacity — as the originals.  To be fair, the love interest fits in there, too.  But to stick with the puzzle metaphor, the thing is not finished yet.  I’ve got the edges and the corners built, and I’m working my way in to the meaty center, and a lovely picture of a foggy London Bridge is taking shape.  Problem is, the love interest sure looks like a foggy bit of bridge or possibly a bit of misty waterfront, but it’s possible, just possible, that she’s a piece of the Golden Gate instead.  You know, she’d fit the theme, but it’d be wrong to say she was intrinsically a part of things.

Problem is, of course, that now the demon of doubt has its scouring claws in my brainmeats over the whole thing, and now my entire take on the character is tinged with the unmistakable feel of overthinking.  Am I resisting her because she’s not a part of the original narrative and thus feels unnatural?  Is she just fine where she is and she’s only tripping my radar because I’m hypersensitive to imperfections in the draft?  Maybe she’s truly honestly unnecessary and I’m ignoring my genuine justified doubt over her in a bid to cater to a hypothetical audience I’ve not even earned yet?  Probably, as with so many things involved in this process, it feels murky because the mushy center of this narrative cake hasn’t finished cooking yet, and I won’t really be able to iron out an answer until I clean up the story a good bit.  Maybe my keyboard needs more chemicals to properly ponder the question.

One way or another, I’m going to have to make a call on this girl sooner or later.  Problem is, having woven her somewhat intricately into the draft, I’m terrified at the prospect of having to remove her thread.  If there’s nothing wrong with her and I cut her out, then I’ve defaced this tapestry ostensibly for nothing.  On the other hand, if she’s poisoned and I don’t cut her out, she could rot the whole project from the inside.

Like so many other things, the best I can do for now is flag her for further consideration and toss her on the pile of “deal with this later.”  That’s a pile of problems I started in the draft and which is growing at an alarming rate since I picked up the edit.  I imagine that in just a little while it will develop its own gravity and pull me through a ripple in spacetime where my story will stretch out to infinity and the only sustenance I’ll have is my own failed, mangled prose, squealing like that belly-alien thing in Total Recall for me to put it out of its misery.

There are Things in the Well (part 3)

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I’m happy to say that this story which I wrote the first 500 words of got picked up by some other writers and finished. Here’s the completed tale, finished in a very different (but no less interesting) manner than what I pictured when I set the thing in motion. Thanks to RoseRed and Underastarlitsky for running with it.

underastarlitsky's avatarUnder a Starlit Sky

This week’s Chuck Wendig challenge is to write the final 500 words of a story that 2 other people have already written the beginning and middle to.

So I chose Pavowski’s story, There Are Things In the Well, to continue, which Rose Red continued here. But i’ll post both parts before my ending so you get the full story.

There are Things in the Well
“Here she comes, Elvy.”

Elvert crunched on a handful of candy and shaded his eyes against the sun. “New girl?”

Trom kicked at a snail and nodded toward the twig of a girl walking down the dirt road about fifty yards distant. “Leza, I think.”

The stones of the well were cool against his back, and in the sweltering humidity he was reluctant to leave them behind. Still, she’d only be new in town for so long. He stood and stretched and spit his lime…

View original post 1,410 more words

A Recipe for Disaster (Anonymous Author Collaboration Concluded)

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Chuck’s challenge: A three-author anonymous collaboration, concluded.

Matthew X. Gomez began the tale.  His bit lasts up until the first asterisk.

Mickie continued the tale.  Her bit lasts up until the second asterisk.

My bit concludes the tale.  I wish I’d been able to “end” it properly, but there’s just so much here.  I hope I’ve done their work justice.

 

A Recipe For Disaster

 

I’m sitting on a rooftop across from a bank robbery in process when I feel that tingle at the base of my spine telling me someone’s trying to get into my head. I brush it off at first, a minor annoyance as I gaze down the scope of my highpowered rifle, mentally daring one of the jokers inside to show their face.

Then the tingle gets more persistent, a buzz in my ear, an itch at the bottom of my foot. The probe is turning into an attack.

“Control, do the tangoes have a ‘path on record?” I don’t have to talk loud, the microphone taped to my jaw will pick up every whisper, just as the camera mounted on my helmet is picking up and broadcasting in high res.

“Negative, Ballista, no ‘path on record.”

I bite the inside of my cheek as the buzz turns into a drill. I smile, scanning the windows. If the ‘path is any good he could be anywhere, even halfway across the city, running overwatch on their gig. Still, I’ve got to wonder what a group of Ascended are doing robbing a bank. Aren’t there better things they could be doing? More profitable gigs? The ‘path they’ve got probably thinks he’s being subtle, but given how long I’ve been at this he might as well be marching a brass band down Main Street.

I start simple, throwing mental images to shock and dismay. Goatse. An exploded head. That time I caught my mom blowing my uncle, along with all the associated hatred and disgust that went with it. Finding out my wife was cheating on me with her best friend. That time I woke up covered in vomit with no recollection of how I got there, but there was dried blood under my nails, and blood on my shoes. All of it.

The drill disappears as rapidly as it started.

“We have confirmation that one of the tangos is down.” Control’s voice is always the same. Cool, collected, and with as much emotion as discussing this week’s corn futures.

The corner of my mouth twitches up into a smile. Maybe I pushed a bit harder than I should have. Maybe the asshole shouldn’t have gone around poking where he shouldn’t have.

“How many confirmed tangos still standing, Control?”

“Whisper confirms four tangos still active. All are confirmed Ascended.”

Bile rises up in my mouth and I fight to swallow it back down. I should have figured it was the case. They don’t bring us out for your run-of-the-mill robbers. No, we get saved for the special cases. Lucky us.

“Ballista, we have confirmation of movement. Looks like they are coming out the front door.”

I swing the gun around, get a bead on the door. It swings open. I don’t have the best angle where I am, but I bite down on my lip and concentrate. Hostages start walking out, hands on their heads, eyes a bit glassy looking. I curse when I see what walks out next.

****

It’s her.

What follows is a moment of disbelief and I feel as though I am falling through infinite blackness.Not dead. It’s the only thought I cling to. Not dead, not dead. Then horror-stricken, I am consumed with guilt. How could I have known! It was as if she had been here in this very building for those lost ten years with these psychos, held at gunpoint and waiting patiently for daddy to save her.

Then my heart freezes over as I realize there is no gun to her head. In fact, she cocks a rifle of her own with skinny arms. Her expression, upon which I once placed sweet kisses, is stony and grim. Then there are other things I should have noticed first off— the sharpness of her cheekbones, jutting hard against her flesh, chestnut hair gleaming like liquid bronze. Characteristics of all the Ascended. I groan in despair. Christ, Ixa, what did they do to you?

Her head whips in my direction as if she somehow heard me and I gasp. The blue of her eyes is piercing and I know she sees me through the darkness. Sees me clearer than anyone possibly ever has and I feel weak. My finger loosens on the trigger. She smiles then, a slow and knowing leer and the mental barrage begins again and I nearly collapse from the onslaught of the white noise that fills my head.

Then it stops as quickly as it started and leaves my ears ringing. I look to her again and her face darkens. Her message is loud and clear: She can kill me where I stand. Tears sting my eyes.Baby, please forgive me! How could I have known?

Then, Control over the earpiece, “All four tangoes in sight, please confirm.”

I say nothing.

“Ballista, targets are four adults: three males, one female. All confirmed Ascended. Confirm that you are in shooting range and take the shots.”

I swallow hard, my throat sandpaper. I breathe, “Control, I have reason to believe the female target is Ixa Manning, the subject of a missing persons case.”

I am met with the sound of fingers flying across a keyboard as Control checks the case file. “The case for Ixa Manning was closed nearly ten years ago, Ballista. She was legally declared dead.”

“Fuck that, you think I wouldn’t recognize my own daughter?” I hiss into the mic.

“Ballista…” a hint of warning tinges the cool indifference in the voice. “This is no time to lose your head. That woman is not your daughter. She is a traitor and a terrorist. Now, take. The. Shot.”

My mind races. The girl I am sure is Ixa never takes her eyes off me as she grabs a fistful of hair of one of the hostages, a wailing woman shaking so badly she cannot remain on her feet. Unfazed eyes shine challengingly at me as she positions the nose of her weapon beneath her captive’s ear.

****

I see it unfold in slow motion as the training takes over.  Neutralize the threat.  The scope comes to my eye and I squeeze the trigger.  Ixa’s eyes track my bullet and it freezes, floating ponderous in the air an inch from her nose, still spiraling, whispering interrupted death.  She hurls the woman to the pavement, and with her free hand plucks the bullet from the air.  Her eyes fix me through the scope, crystal-blue and glowing.  I know what’s coming; I throw the rifle aside and reach for my sidearm, but she steps the distance in a heartbeat.  Her sharp, seeking fingers bury themselves in my throat as she lifts me from the ground.

Control is barking in my earpiece, but her face is mere inches from mine, contorted into a mask of too-perfect cheekbones and too-blue eyes gone vivid in the colors swimming in at the edges of my vision, and I’m lost.  I don’t struggle.  What good would it do?

In a flash, it’s ten years ago, Ixa is swinging with the careless abandon of a ten-year-old on a peppermint-red swingset in Glaston Park.  She shouts, “I’m flying, daddy!” and my perspective shifts.  I see through Ixa’s eyes, now; see Daddy turn and draw a previously unseen pistol and dart into traffic, forgetting about his daughter at the call from Control.  Rough hands yank me from the swing and hurry me to a waiting car, and I scream and cry for my Daddy, Daddy who always saves me and will follow me anywhere, but Daddy doesn’t come.

Another flash.  I’m still Ixa.  The transformation is taking hold; my eyes grow brighter in the mirror, the spectrum of previously invisible colors explodes in my vision, my mother’s obituary incinerates in my hands, my father — me — weeps behind a dusty windowpane.

Flash.  Ixa’s body, laid out before me, peppered with gunshots, blood pooled and congealed.  Ixa’s voice in my mouth.  “Looks good.”  Flash.  Planning the heist of this meaningless bank.  Flash.  Myself — Daddy — looks back at me through the scope of the rifle.  It’s time.

Flash.

She’s given me this gift before she kills me; the gift of knowing.  It’s enough.  My eyes focus on hers and she’s my baby again, precious, harmless, innocent.  I smile, cough up a mouthful of blood.  The gun slides from my grasp.  Then her black-hole pupils erupt with blue flame.

“Ballista!  Three Ascended are down.  We’ve lost the fourth.  What is your situation?  Ballista??”

On the street, it’s pandemonium, but up here, it’s silent, just for us.

“Sweetheart,” I say.

“Daddy.”

Her eyes are almost piteous.  She yanks me upwards, hard, and I look down and see my body topple over the railing, see my head dashed to bits on the pavement, hear Control chattering away in the shattered earpiece.  But I’m weightless, effortless, floating in my daughter’s unearthly embrace.  She peers into my eyes like she’s weighing my soul.  “Will you come with me?”

What else can I say?  “Anywhere.”