Cooking the Hook - NEW

 Four fifths. Don't even try to say that twice. Four fifths of writing is seeing the movie you've been living, but from the point of view of the other players, not yours. And if you haven't been paying acute attention to the details, you're screwed. Unless you're a Creative.  So, if you are inclined to make silk purses from sows ears, you gather up your details, and recall the small moments. Action! The late afternoon light, the sounds of food frying, the cigarette smoke in the air, the parakeet squawking in a cage on top of the avocado refrigerator festooned with magnets. Little plastic alphabet letters that came, went and came back again.  She gets up and shuffles the cut up potatoes around in the not hot enough Wesson on the gas stove. A sous chef at seven, I peeled and sliced those.  Rosie sits, digging through her purse for something and coming up with something else. In front of her, a cup of instant coffee with non-dairy creamer and four teaspoons of sugar. T...

Should we waste them? Dreams? I wanted to bank this one.  The van was parked close to the gray, wooden guardrails of a deserted beachside lot. White sand and low-growing creepers drifted over the edges of the worn pavement. I was standing on the guardrail, trying to unfurl a large expanse of cloth over the roof. Damp perhaps? The wind off the water was buffeting me and threatening to snatch it from my hands. Securing the fabric somehow was a two-person job, and I was alone. A battered SUV pulled up, boards and bags roped to the top. The driver hopped out and rushed to grab my flapping sail from the passenger side. Was it sail? I dream about sailboats often. Sailing in easy water. He was young. Twenties young. Dark, shaggy-haired, unshaven, weathered, and as wet as if he'd just stepped out of the sea. T-shirt and shorts stuck to him, water running out of his sandals. He was grinning and laughing as he rushed around to my side of the van to grab me down from the fence and hugged me l...

Or just experiences on the edge? I grew up around people who fixed their own cars and trucks in the side yard or the curb. Mostly to save money, but there was much pride in the "I got this shit" attitudes from the tool wielders. So it doesn't sound so strange that when I was seven or eight, we went to the midget car races at Danbury. Little cars with one seat and big engines.   I remember spectacular snack food: overcooked egg rolls, fountain Coke with a jolt of soft serve ice cream stirred in, and the predecessors of sliders: grilled burgers dripping grease, cheese, and Heinz. Better than the drive-in, but that's coming up. The racing itself was pretty boring. Round and round with no apparent winner. From where we sat in the bleachers, the cars looked like toys. Colors like kindergarten blocks with big numbers in circles on their side panels. The yellow and black striped #8 sticks out in memory.  Maybe that was him, dead halfway up the light pole at the end of the tr...

  In reality, the woman belonged to sometime else as she was just here at this time by accident. A slip of the cosmic order had caused her to be born out of sequence, under the wrong stars. She had been overlooked by the universe. In the book of all names and beings, she was unlisted, with no past nor future written down for her. She was invisible to the gods, the passage of time, and the protection of the stars.

 Anna Bea and Tam had been secretly teaching each other to read and write since the little girl could sit up and hold a crayon. Tam never learned and was reluctant to subject herself to scorn, so she made do as many unlettered adults did. Each morning when chores were done, Tam would take off her apron and smack her broad palms together and say to Bea, “Time for school!” something she had no firsthand experience with. The two-year-old laboriously stacked three county phone books on the kitchen chair, climbed to her perch and waited with her grubby little fists clutching air while Tam got out the pad of lined newsprint and the cigar box full of pencils and crayons. Tam warned her, “Now don’t be letting other people know about our business here,” as the two of them drew copies of the bold letters from the front page of yesterday’s newspaper. The truth was that Bea had figured out reading and writing on her own while she sat on an apple box in a booth at the airport bar with...

       "Put out your hands, palms up. In this one," she touched the girl's right palm at the intersection of two prominent lines. "Ask yourself what you want. Don't speak the words." Anna tapped the center of the girl's other palm. "Ask yourself what you need, again, silently. Think only the questions, not the answers. We'll leave the answers to the cards, yes?"  She  fanned the deck face down across the table and shuffled twice, letting the cards purr. "Now cut the deck and we'll see. " The woman reached across the table, lifted half the stack, set it aside, and cut again, and a third time.  Why was s he stalling?  "Are you ready?"  The woman nodded and knotted her fingers in her lap. She  dealt the cards facing the woman, left to right, smoothly silent. "What you want and what you need." She turned up two cards and put two more between them, face down and out of her reach. She tapped it once. ...

 She burrowed into her pillows and pulled the sheet over her head. “Where did you go?” “It’s not a where,” Sam spoke from the darkness. “Is this a dream?” “Yes. The only place and time we have. Who were you praying to?” “What?” “You called out to Hecate, Isis, Yemana, and Mary. They might shed tears for you, but that’s all.” “And Jack.” “Yes, Jack. Your knight always, but where was he? Mortal just like yourself and still in a cage of his own making.” “I needed him.” “And you got me. He can’t be with you every moment, and you’ll likely outlive him if he doesn’t...” “Don’t say that. Go away." “I can’t until you hear me out.” She put her palms flat over her ears, only to find his voice as deep inside her as Jack ever was. Intimate. Sam’s voice curled in her head like smoke. “You need to understand what you did and how you did it. Gathering power when you were lying on that hard, shiny, unclean floor, hiding from the violence that you knew was coming.” “I didn’t know.” “Yes, you did. ...

  The restaurant was a rambling, one-story clapboard building. The weathered wood had never seen a coat of paint, and the windows were frosted over with grime. Strings of Christmas tree lights festooned from the eaves and looked permanent. It was midday and there were only three cars and a pickup parked out front. Behind the building, close-cropped grass stretched into the distance. Two small vintage propeller planes were parked a short walk from the rear of the building. As late as the fifties, small airports like this dotted the countryside, their accompanying bars hung on the edges of the now mostly unused fields. They ducked inside the cool darkness. The bar stretched the whole length of the room, lit by vintage neon beer signs shining through ranks of sparkling bottles of liquor and polished glasses. The timbered ceiling sloped back to an addition where small tables lined the wall of windows that looked out onto green. The old airplanes looked ready to fly. The bartender nodde...

 He might have sensed Anna standing behind him because he leaned over and reached for the weapon on the floor. More a sword than a knife, it was two feet long, a third of that, the leather-wrapped handle. The double-edged blade was glazed with blood. It looked heavy, cumbersome, and crude. She watched a fat drop of Maryann’s blood fall from his hand to splash brightly on the pale rag rug above the tip of the blade, like the dot of an “i”. His bloodstained hand was floating down to the knife when her hand slipped into the shadow of his and took it the way the gulls at the beach steal a sandwich even as you lift it to your mouth. His hand closed on nothing, and she heard a sub-aural grunt as he looked down to where the knife had been. Anna placed one knee on the bed and gripped the weapon like a Louisville slugger. Left-handed, like the great Ted Williams, she swung for the fences, her fluid follow-through ending in a bone-jarring stop as the tip of the blade bit deep into the plaste...

After the crying came the scolding. After a hearty meal and a wash, she wanted to go back out.  "Nonsense", the experts say. Colin and I agreed that we would respect this new facet of her personality and be sure she's never out after dark. Prudent. I like nothing better than hanging out in the front yard, the three of them lolling on the warm concrete or the tall grass. Free as cats.  Camilla came to us damaged goods only three years ago . I've been fairly sure that the head injury she sustained as a kitten and her broken wrist last year,  affected her range of skills as a cat. Silly me.  I've had a lot of cats in my life. Characters all, each with deep personalities. She's the only one who has undertaken adventure on her own. Unless something chased her. In which case, bravo on getting away, and good on ya for putting your wayfinding skills to work.  Something about the smug way she strolled into my bedroom after seven days AWOL to go face down in the food bo...

So read the stained, hand-lettered sign on the front door.      Ace sat with his back to the room and appeared to be reading a small prayer book. Actually, he was tearing out the pages one by one and eating them, chewing slowly, and looking up at the ceiling of his cage as if he was memorizing the text. Billy, the Winsock’s owner and bartender, said he only ate one or two pages a day—it was not as if he was hungry. Billy fed Ace every time he fed himself. In fact, he fed Ace first, like he was worried about being poisoned; a fair concern because he treated the cook like dirt.      It bothered Bea to see Ace locked up like that. It was obvious that he was constantly pissed off, unlike most captive monkeys, who sank into apathy after a while. If anyone but Billy approached the cage, Ace screamed and flung himself around inside. If you put your hands anywhere near his reach or grasp, there would be blood. He once bit off and ate a drunk’s little...

  That was then. This is now. O....shun. Breathe that O in. A prayer. Let the breath lift your heart, spirit riding along.  Lay a sweet caesura. Just one lub-dub. Then let the shun take grateful wing. Again, slower. Lower.  Peace, like a river, Paul said.  O-shun. I didn't know I was calling her. 

  All those hearts .  I forgot that Love's a player. A fierce one.

Lessons l dropped in on a webinar yesterday. A free Zoom thing for screenwriters suffering from Writer's Block. The guy was quick to let us know that in the screenwriting world, there was no such thing as writer's book, like three times in the first 5 minutes. I sighed, capped my fountain pen (I was serious about taking notes), and wandered off to do something. Anything. Some minutes later I came back just in time for him to stop beating around the bush and get to the reason I set an alarm. Cynical much? I quote the man, but the light shone on the fact that I already knew these things. Self-evident. If there was more, I didn't want to know. This was plenty.  "If you're losing interest in your story don't expect your reader to hang around." And "What's the structure of the story? What I see as a jigsaw puzzle. Knowing that finding the shape of it was something I used to do without laboring over it.  Then, at some point, I started saying I was ...

  The first ring threatened to split her head. She pulled the receiver off the hook by the cord before it could ring again; the handset clattering on the wooden floor making her wince. No one spoke. She sat up and pressed the receiver to her ear. Someone was breathing. In the background, muted voices, music, glass touching glass. “Where are you?” “A bar.” They listened to each other breathe for another minute. His lips closer to the mouthpiece, her ear, he said, “What are you wearing?” She looked at herself in the mirror, confused. “Why?” There was another long pause before Jack said, “You’ve never done this, have you?” “Done what?” “Do you want me to hang up?” “No!” Her face flushed as she realized what he wanted. “Should I start again?” “Nah. Don’t do that,” he said. “I don’t want you to do that.” “Then what?” “I want to see you. Tonight. Can you get away?"

       Sister Somna was waiting for him at the gate. Even though agitated, she said nothing, never did, and flapped her hands for him to follow her to the stables. Jones leaned out of his stall with his ears laid back and lip curling at the sight of the man. Any man.  A black, cross-eyed goat sat on its haunches, leaning against the stall door. It hissed at him. Then, from all corners of the yard, Coupe and the little nun were ambushed by a large flock of chickens demanding to be fed. The quarry had delivered the stone that morning. The driver was a superstitious lout and couldn't stop gawking at the black nuns robed in white. It astonished him that the black coffee of their skin didn't seep into the stark white wraps they favored. His father had told him that Catholics were devil worshipers in disguise and he had once been a policeman, so there. The goat clinched it for him. He hastily rolled and shoved the blocks of marble down the wooded ramp that was padde...

  There is little to know. It’s dark and I’m thirsty. It’s quiet. A soft, steady wind coming and going from  different points of my compass. I’m floating on my back in water as warm as the air. It moves like the sea,  lifting me closer to stars I don’t recognize. Lowering me down like it’s a living, breathing thing I’m inside of.  Pain comes with those fake stars, stays too long, and wears out its welcome. If I think about place, position,  or perspective, I get dizzy-sick, so I try not to think ‘there’ or ‘where’. At least pain is an anchor. There’s touch and smell. Kind, caring strangers peck at me, busy but gentle, all sharp with antiseptic over sweat. A woman who smelled like fresh dirt and green things held her hands to my face and bargained with strange gods. Another touched my hands, my hair over and over. She smelled like a party. I’m washed, dried, stabbed, dressed, undressed, stabbed. Repeat and again. Then he comes, holds my hand. A life force, a drag...

 I've had the devil's own time figuring out how to market Prophets Tango and to whom. When I was filling out the categories offered by KDP, the reflex, without a lot of options, was Paranormal Romance. I've given readers a pretty comprehensive synopsis to keep away the people who went to that category looking for vampires, werewolves, shape-shifters, and other deviant shit like Tentacle Romances and Sex with Dinosaurs.  Yeah, I'm judging. That is some fucked up stuff and they should look into therapy.  Anyway, those who have read the entire serial know that something else is going on. I just wasn't sure what to call it. I had heard the term "magical realism" before and the only context I had was "One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez which I read years ago and liked.  Now, add to that "Midnight's Children" by Salman Rushdie, "The House of Spirits" by Isabel Allende, and "Beloved" by Tomi Morrison. So...

  Starting at dawn to beat the heat got them to lunch by ten-thirty. They lounged on the crude temporary front steps, ate sandwiches from paper sacks, drank Gatorade or beer, and smoked. Gabe tipped his head back, looked up the front of the still-skeletal structure, and asked, “How are you with heights?” Jack shrugged. “Spent half my life on rooftops. Why?” Gabe looked skyward again. “Good, ‘cause way up there on the third level, this layout has a row of clerestory windows. If Ray had his way, we’d be working off ladders, but I’m gonna break his balls to rent some scaffolding.”  He pronounced it ‘clear story’ and Jack was thrown. He knew what they were, but just last night he heard it pronounced clair-RES-tory by a guy he’d stabbed and thrown off a moving train. “What did you call them?” Gabe repeated, “clerestories. Big, fixed-pane fuckers. Heavy as shit. Expensive.” Jack dragged his tongue along the new sharp edge on his lateral incisor. “Just another day at the office. Clea...

  Jack knew little of his mother and less than nothing about his father. The dark green sweater with the name tag “Bridget” could have been borrowed. Or stolen. The rest of her clothing, a shapeless house dress, and worn-out Keds, were shabby. She was probably Catholic, given where she was when Jack’s birth overtook her. Sister Agatha would describe her to him just once. Once was all Jack would need. “Tell me about my mother.” Sister Agatha sat across from Jack at the chipped, enamel-topped table in the convent kitchen. Jack, perched on the step stool in his pajamas, was eye to eye with her over a glass of milk and a peanut butter jelly sandwich she’d slapped together for him. He was just seven; the so-called Age of Reason, with an appetite that had no off switch. He was the worst student with the best grades in Holy Spirit's third grade. Ag taught reading and writing and she knew Jack’s apparent brilliance was some kind of trick he was playing on all of them, but it was played...