The Least of My Problems

I got another one of those “send us your stuff for a free edit” emails. This time from Reedsy. They wanted the first 500 words. I sent them the first 500 of “The Great Kerrigan Bank Robbery”. Just to be a dick, because there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell of them opening this up on their “live stream editing” thing on 5/14. But I want to see what they say, anyway. I mean, they might have a clue, unlike my good buddy the USA Best Selling Author Dan Alotta-whatsisass who takes money not to read context and when called out sends flaming, profanity riddled emails that make this chapter read like a Sunday School lesson. Here ya go. As Elmore said, the trick is knowing when to say motherfucker. Most of you have seen this before, but I use it as back-story for the response from Reedsy, which I’ll post.

“You don’t look surprised to see me, Casper.” The lanky, cat like mid-thirties black guy beamed a thousand-watt smile in my direction. Overdressed as usual, in a trendy, peg legged weird shade of blue straight-out-of-the-Sixties suit brushed his hands together like he’d somehow gotten dirty climbing the 2×12 plank stairs.

“Security cam out front pops up on my phone.” I tapped the Otter Boxed device on the table in front of me, showed him some of my own dental work. “This is my ‘go fuck yourself’ face.” I watched him process his good ol’ buddy-buddy fail. “You should take the agency’s Reading People 101 refresher.”

“Ease up, Amigo. That was what, a year ago? We’re good. Now.” He looked around at what amounted to my office – The dusty plywood roof over long dead restrooms and a tool room. No walls or rails, furnished with a long plywood and sawhorse map table, three folding chairs and a couple of used to be coffee creamer beige, now rusting around the edges 4 drawer filing cabinets. All overlooking the concrete floor of an abandoned galvanized small private plane hanger. “You’re doing okay.” So far he was batting 1,000% meaningless in the convo department, something I remembered he was good at.

“I haven’t flown in a year, thanks to you people.”

“By ‘you people’ I hope you mean the agency. The world is rife with enough tensions. You and me?” He shrugged, hit the smile again. “We used to be good together. You got you a pontoon plane for fishing trips, moving tax evasion assets around for clients. You have a King Air at your disposal that belongs to some Indian tribe. You fly the oily’s private MD80 all over the place. Flight plans all filed under a valid license…” He cut the smile, stopped pacing. “A license that’s doing a quick run through a shredder when the FAA finds out it belongs to a man so fucked up he can’t piss on his own shoes when he’s standing up.”

“Show some respect, asshole. He’s a vet like you and me. Only Viet Nam.”

“A dirty war before our time. And not a vet so the VA would know. The oily’s paying his own medical bills to keep the government, your government, away from you. Since we’re calling asshole, you do fly, asshole, you just have to be somebody else doin’ it.” He took a step closer, tilted his head in a big drama black dude quizzical gangsta look. “Why is that with the oily? Huh? You got something on him, some kinda kink or –”

“My first job, when I became a civilian again after Allfuckedupistan, I pulled his daughter out of a sex with underage girls cult disguised as a religious militia.”

“Crazy perverts in the name of God. She want out, or was it daddy’s idea?”

“She was messed up. He wanted her back. I got her out. End of story.” Not. The girl came along, willingly. On the way out she’d grabbed the Browning 45 from my waistband and screamed variations of ‘Stupid horny motherfucker’ every time the pistol barked in the direction of one her ex-cult brothers. Too bad she wasn’t much of a shot, but the horny motherfuckers were far from courageous in the face of gunfire anywhere in their general direction, so she was more of a help than a hindrance in her own escape. Five years later, she looked up at the sky and laughed before she did a swan-dive off a rope bridge in Colorado. Her father was still grateful for what he called the ‘gift’ of those five years. I wasn’t sure if his daughter would’ve called them that. I pulled a small Cuban cigar from a box on the table to break that thought zone.

“Want one?” I offered. “Cuban. Gluten-free.”

“Not today. Company car.”

“Then I’ll spare you.” I tossed the cigar back. I needed a non gluten-free Modelo Dark to go with it, anyway.

He started running his mouth, but I’d found the problem with his suit and wasn’t listening. It was the color of the damn thing. The Turquoise Blue that came in the big box of 64 crayons. One of the colors I could never find a use for. It wasn’t blue, or blue green or any kind of sky I’d ever seen blue and my mother had plenty of Navajo turquoise, and it sure as hell wasn’t that color. That’s the problem with too many choices. The original box of 8 was all you really needed. Crayons and friends and shades of good and bad. Limit your choices, limit your exposure to useless. Like the guy in the suit in front of me.

“Are you keeping up, Paro?”

To be honest, I’d quit listening to him a year ago, could have walked around the desk and thrown him off the loft and been too busy trimming nose hair or tweezing belly button funk to go to his funeral. I couldn’t tell him that, CIA and all. The best I could do with crayons on my mind was “That fucked up suit of yours is the most useless color known to man.”

“Yeah? Well…” His sartorial rhetoric was part and parcel of who he was. He dug into his well of snappy comebacks. “Fuck you.” Like he meant it. But I could see he was wounded. Desk guys make lousy field guys, even if they went to West Point on a football scholarship. We eyed each other for about the length of a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western standoff. A little longer than required, almost enough to be comedic. I folded before I laughed and ruined it.

“What the fuck you want, Tavius?”

“You.” He flipped a 6×8 manila envelope on the table. I opened it. A stack of folded FAA paperwork, making it legitimate for me to fly again. Anything that flew. My military experience, all my certifications, my whole packet. “I, we need you to fly again. Legally.”

“Last time I flew for the company, I lost all this. And a recently overhauled Beech D18 I liked better than most people I know, including some family.”

“You were compensated.”

“I got fucked.”

“Yeah,” he yipped a tight chihuahua laugh, “and she’s coming back. In fact she’s no more than,” he checked some Dick Tracy electronics on his wrist, but it was an act. He was being fed through what looked a small piece of soda straw stuck to his ear. “Twenty-five minutes behind me. And closing. So…we need to hit it and get it.”

“Who is this ‘she’ behind you? I don’t like female clients. They –”

“End up dead? You liked the last one well enough.” He was enjoying himself. Too much. “Cavanaugh Moreno. Remember her? On her way. In a yellow Fiat convertible.”

“Cav’s dead. I saw –”

“You saw theater. She had a blood bag taped to her body armor.” He smiled at something, probably me thinking Cav was dead, face down, all that blood… I wanted to explode, maybe choke him till his head popped.

“You two weren’t supposed to get along,” he paused, his brain stuck somewhere, trying to tell a sanitized version of an unsanitary story. “Much less end up, ah, desnudos juntos in the Columbian jungle. Her boyfriend wasn’t supposed to catch you actually doing it and reload with live rounds, and you…” He put his hands down on my plywood, leaned in like the weasel in charge he wanted to be. “Regardless of your past chaos factor, Ms. Moreno is going to walk in here, and you, my friend, are going to be surprised and amazed and so happy to see her you might shit yourself. And after all the yadda-yadda has cleared, and she’s convinced that you’re thinking with your dick again and you’ll agree to do whatever she asks you to do, you will agree to do it. In your professional capacity as a shady will-fly-for-food or sex kind of guy.” He straightened, brushed the arms of that goofy suit like proximity had gotten him dirtier. “You killed her last boyfriend. She hasn’t found a replacement. You clean up some, you’ll be okay.”

I couldn’t talk. I tried. I did something with my hands spread out about as wide as a basketball. They shook a little.

“Yo, Paro, chill. The Cartel would have killed him if you hadn’t. They kill people for fun. Make a spectator sport out of it with people who steal from them. There’s a man down there, uses nothing but a pair of lineman’s pliers. Takes him a week to kill a man. You did Lupe a favor.”

“Fucking his girlfriend out from under him before I killed him?”

“I didn’t call it that way.”

“You didn’t have to. Cav. Is she –“

“That’s what you’re going to tell me. Every move she makes, every breath —” His ear must have beeped because he held up his hand before he could finish his lyric recitation. “Gotta run.”
He found the stairs in three long strides. I heard him take them down, two at a time. No mean feat without a handrail and in the shoes he was wearing. Halfway to the hanger door he turned, looked up. “You’re running a business here, Paro. Get a handrail or I’m calling OSHA about those fuckin’ stairs.”

I flipped him off. The CIA, OSHA and no handrails were the least of my problems.

NVDT – Another (Sorta) Book Review and Random Thoughts on

Well…That Was Awkward by Megan Montgomery

I don’t read romance novels. I need to do a better job of reading covers. However, if I had read the entire cover (in my defense it was a thumbnail on Amazon) I would have missed a well-written book loaded with multi-faceted emotions, attitude, clever dialogue and situations and likeable, not vanilla characters who showed up knowing their lines without author assistance.

Why did I send it to my Kindle? I’m a cover guy. As you can see, it’s one of those recently ubiquitous cover and font styles—But—girl with tattoos, pier, big dog, and the title. There I was reading it and liking the anti-establishment weightlifting grumpy tattooed female protagonist with a mom and dad wanted a son name (Emerson), her dog and her environment. Ms. Montgomery does a good job of moving you in, That, and a real treat for me, people and personalities emerge instead of being back story narrated into existence.

The whole sex part of a romance novel waited until well into the book and (for me) the brushed nipples and detectible erections were easily skipped. Because they weren’t the focus of the book. This is a real book. You know, drop the sex gimmick and you still have a story. Full of the emotional roller-coastering a self-described social outcast goes through with the handsome, buff, can’t be a fighter pilot anymore Deuteragonist, her quirky small town ‘family’, plus a little mystery, a brother with a past, who’s that woman? Why are you still here? And others. As for the ’family’ Ms. Montgmery populates this book with believable characters that don’t take up too much space. Like a great plate of Mexican food. Here’s the two things that make up the middle of the plate surrounded, but not overwhelmed, by a cast of (sometimes weird) garnishes.

Further, the author makes a point of calling out the trope in dialogue between the characters! No author pointing it out. Listen to this, the characters do it. Without going book review, I’ll simply say Emerson’s truck breaks down, with John in it with her, ostensibly to help move some large furniture, and while stranded, they discuss the 1934 Clark Gable/Claudette Colbert classic It Happened One Night. Obviously not the original ‘I like you but I don’t’ vehicle, but there it is.

Could I have done without the occasional (blessedly short) glistening hard bodies workouts and some lightweight, not overindulgent sex? Yes. But why this book hasn’t been lightly sanitized for Hallmark or taken as-is on Netflix/Freevee et al. is a real waste.

Truth told? There are parts of this book, the protag’s emotions, frustrations, behaviors, I wish I’d written (or published) first. I could readily identify my potty mouth female coming of age saga protagonist. Only Ms. Montgomery did it in way less space. How? Because she gets the hell out of the way and puts this book squarely where it belongs. On the characters’ shoulders. This was a fun read I might have missed, and one instance anyway, where a modern Indie romance is way more than adverbs and erogenous zones.

All you need to know from the blurb – Emerson and John meet on the boardwalk as the moonlight dances off the Chesapeake Bay. She thinks he’s gorgeous and comes down with a case of instalove. He thinks she’s a panhandler and gives her five dollars.

**I discovered after reading Well…That Was Awkward and writing this review that the book won several well deserved Indie awards. So it wasn’t just me.

NVDT Writerly Thoughts – Sense and Sentences

We hold these truths to be self-evident. All men and women are created, by the, you know, you know, the thing. – Joe Biden, President of the United States

Again. Da fuck?

I have a great book on the self-editing shelf, Sin and Syntax by Constance Hale. It’s a grammar book. Yeah, I know, barf city, but it’s not that kind of grammar book. It’s a grammar and rhetorical device skill booster with some of Elmore Leonard’s “sometimes ya gotta break the rules” thrown in. Mostly it’s about enhancing writing at the sentence, often word level. Blurb cutouts –

*Distinguish between words that are “pearls” and words that are “potatoes”

* Avoid “couch potato thinking” and “commitment phobia” when choosing verbs

I mentioned something about direct language the other day, but that’s not really what this post is about. No, this is about how we are bombarded, every day, with absolute shit for sentences. Complete, total crapola we have to get our heads around before we can move on to the next presentation of WTF did they say and WTF did they really mean? And sadly, it’s everywhere from broadcast news to Presidential briefings to internet forums. There is no escape. Other than – Let’s not be part of the problem.

Looking for handyman to fix kitchen drawer knobs and to screw two of cabinets. Also if you can help with chaulking of bathtub sides – Post on Neighborhood App

My energy comes from creating and meeting people. Internet Forum introduction post

Service today for McKinney man murdered – Chryon, Fox 4 News

I need to have yellow roses delivered to someone .. any recommendations of a good place?? – Post on Neighborhood App

Used Donkey Forklifts For Sale – Craigslist, Dallas

FREE – Bissell vacuum – $50 – Facebook Marketplace

Back in those days, a tiny oil lantern used to light up the room which hangs over the fireplace – Busted, Pete. 🤣 (Beetley Pete’s Blog)*

I didn’t editorialize any of the examples so that, for your own enjoyment, you may take the first impression as a sort of surreal verbal impressionism, and move forward to enjoy unpuzzling the true meanings.

*I can pick on Pete occasionally because he has a sense of humor, and an education and enjoys a good eyebrow raiser. And he’s got 8,000 followers who, like me, probably went huh? and read on by.

NVDT Writerly Thoughts – Enough Already With The Breath Blowing Bullshit (And Some New Year’s Observations)

I mean seriously, can’t we all agree that “blowing out a breath” (and its siblings) is lazier and more redundant than a six person city pothole crew all with their cell phones out and all leaning on one fucking shovel?

Godamighty. I don’t know where it started. Further, I don’t want to know. But it’s epidemic. And it seems to be an Indie trademark because I don’t see much of it in mainstream publishing. But – It might be big in some “genre” I don’t read much. But it’s like cockroaches in New Orleans in what I’ve picked up lately.

(Aside – “Breath Blowing” lives in the same writerly universe with “pulled (or made) a face,” “shot a look,” “made a gesture” etc. but breath blowing has gotten way more traction lately.)

I first noticed it in one of “USA Today’s Best Selling Author” books. Because with Kindle Unlimited I can read that stuff for free, so I try them. And damned if the protagonist is male or female, there is a lot of breath being blown out. In many various encounters and symbolic for many, often ignored, “tell” emotions. It’s like a gimmick to avoid a “feel” tell. See, I didn’t tell you how I/He/She/The Alligator felt. I/He/She/The Alligator simply blew out a breath. Defeated, surprised, exhausted, confused, frustrated, sad, happy…That shit was all up in the air. It would be okay if the writing or dialogue up to the breath blowing was indicative of “why” the breath blowing, but that is rarely the case.

“Well, goddam,” I opened the door and blew out a breath.

“‘Well, goddam’ why?”

My question exactly. A naked Amazon delivery driver? Your ex wife with a shotgun? Your neighbor shaking a bag of dog shit she swears in Arabic belongs to you even though you walk in the alley behind her house, not through her front yard? The smell emanating from the open door was disgusting/floral/cheap/musty/fresh? Could we use gagged or screamed? No. Popular thought says opening a door is a great place to blow out a breath.

“I caught sight of Cheryl and caught my breath.” Did Cheryl or someone else throw it at you? Was Cheryl going into the men’s restroom (or other action left out) a problem? Why? Was it set up properly? If so, that would make the whole breath thing irrelevant or redundant. Or both.

Guess what? There’s a whole rest of the body that happens when breath gets blown out. Are we all too lazy to hit the body language thesaurus? Or the tag or emotion dictionaries or have a little creative moment with ourselves? No. Shoulders don’t rise or fall, no one perspires or clenches. We don’t even gasp, choke, snort, eyes don’t bug out, mouths don’t tighten… I opened the door and blew out a breath. Next line, please.

Like our mothers told us with the lemming parable. “If Jimmy and Johnny and Betty Sue all jumped off a cliff, would you?” Further admonishing, “Just because everyone is doing it doesn’t make it right.”

Much has been made about New Year’s Plans and Old Year Recaps. Well, 2023 got away from me for a lot of reasons, he said, blowing out a breath. I do not have a writing to-do in Excel. Nor do I have storyboards awaiting my attention or a series to finish or publishing goals so I can point to modestly expensive monuments to myself standing tall but ignored in the ether along with 500 million others. In fact, the only thing I have promised myself is not to write as many crappy scene setup paragraphs as I did last year. It was a bad habit I picked up being lazy. I said, blowing out a breath. But I made a promise to myself to do better.

And If I write too much dialogue and hang out with the characters and don’t push some semblance of story along at lightning speed using a lot of transparent narrative tells, that’s tough shit. What they do and what they say is often more entertaining than the “real” world. To me, anyway, and let’s face it – none of us are doing this with a publisher (other than ourselves) breathing down our necks.

I’d also like to hit some kind of posting organization. Like if it’s a serial, maybe every other day and stop stalling on book reviews and litter them between my flashes of literary brilliance. And if I don’t have anything to say, fuck it. That’s it for starters, I said, finally, blowing out a breath.

HAPPY GNU YEAR!

FYI as a PS – There is never a reason to avoid direct language. ‘It totally sucked, but I’d volunteered’ works way better than I hitched up my drawers and blew out a breath. Just sayin’.

NVDT – (Sorta) Book Review and Random Thoughts

“The only people who teach at these places are freaks and geeks. And when you’ve got a headmistress who looks like that”—she pointed to my mom in all her hotness, who stood talking to the McHenrys thirty feet away—“it’s easy to see what Mr. Eyecandy was hired for.”

“What?” I asked, not understanding.

“You’re the Gallagher Girl,” she mocked again. “If you can’t figure that out, then who am I to tell you.”

I thought about my mother—my beautiful mother, who had recently been winked at by my sexy CoveOps teacher, and I thought I would never eat again.*

I don’t do book reports, or plot synopsis. These days it seems I read hoping to be entertained, but invariably I end up learning something I could probably have lived without, but I count that as a positive even if it only reinforces the obvious, like blowing out a breath three times a page. None of that here.

In case anyone wants to skip the rest, here’s the quickie. This is a how-to textbook for broad spectrum YA readership. Just sayin’.

I’d wanted to read this book since I saw it on a library display table years ago. I picked it up, read the blurb on the back, got called away without committing the title to memory. A while later I saw another one along the same line (imagine that) but it had a sorta boyfriend taking beginner guitar lessons. I knew that because I read the first couple of pages. Try as I might, I couldn’t locate either via searches or librarians. I have forgotten where now, because I have acquired too many books lately, but I know it was not in the $10 Bag O Books, but I saw the title, grabbed the book, rushed to give whoever (maybe even a garage sale person) my money. Well, actually I sauntered like the cool old guy I am, played it cool at transaction and all the way to the car.

I was not disappointed. And here are the whys – which I had to bullet to stay on track

• Not a word out of place. Nothing I read was close to awkward except the perfectly awkward tone of an awkward scene.
• The protagonist’s voice is never off. Something difficult in a first-person narrative of any sort, much less one with emotional depth, “written” by a female teen, much much less a female teen age spy in training living in an all-girls school for, that’s right, “exceptional young women.” Read that as young geniuses in spy training.
• The lead, Cammie (Cameron Ann when her mother’s mad) Morgan, is perfectly Cammie Morgan. Oh. My. Gosh. Totally. And there’s another thing. This book is adventurous, clever, awkwardly flirtatious, full of potentially lethal action, interaction and humorous teenage situations. Written so well the reader is there. Right there. All the time.
• Every emotion in the book is tangible. Fear, confusion, jealousy, heartbreak, cunning, secrecy, loneliness, curiosity, the new girl, good food, bad food, rappelling, fighting for training or their lives, boy-ology, wardrobe failure (one of my favorites) how to be a “normal” girl, pick a lock, hack a website, bug a room, hotwire a car, take driver’s ed. Many of those in pursuing stalking a “normal” boy with spy skills to find out the burning question in every early teen’s life “does he/she like me?” All as real as being there.
• It’s all of that stuff, and clean enough to pass Walmart and Disney censors. Disney never shies away from action, but you’ll also never hear a Disney Princess or the tag-along Prince (or Thief or Guide or…) say “Well, Fuck” when the opportunity for a surreptitious OMG kiss gets blown.

But Macey only wrenched her arm out of Bex’s grasp and said, “Don’t touch me, b——.” (Yeah, that’s right, she called Bex the B word.)

Now see, here’s where the whole private-school thing puts a girl at a disadvantage. MTV will lead us to believe that the B word has become a term of endearment or slang among equals, but I still mainly think of it as the insult of choice for the inarticulate. So, either Macey hated us or respected us, but I looked at Bex and knew that she was betting on the former.*

***

I’d be lying if I said there weren’t some issues with the series after this book, but they are not with Cammie, or the author who keeps her crew true while fulfilling the demands of the publisher and no doubt Disney who optioned this book right after release. What follows is a discussion of the slippery slope of writing a series to task for a mainstream publisher.

What I gathered from interviews with the author and some asides to those interviews, in the beginning I’d Tell You was a standalone novel. That becomes obvious as soon as book 2 because a few things that were set up in I’d Tell You had to get pocketed, shelved, resolved or realigned to make a series work. The tenor of Cammie and her roomies couldn’t change, just a few major peripherals. Cammie is, after all, a teenage girl, in a book about girls, who are girls regardless of being “exceptional” and the rare boys are…Well, confusing. Even to geniuses who know how to kill a man with uncooked spaghetti, speak 14 languages and do PhD level chemistry. Which are all the plates the author has to keep spinning while “younger-izing” an emotionally charged action-based roller coaster adult spy thriller. While never losing the protagonist’s and her very distinct and personable friends’ voices to produce a series.

Extra Stuff

I went back through after reading for fun and amazement and discovered a secret. Straight, plain language. A lump in the throat, a drizzly rain, a dust encrusted passageway, sharing secrets with the emotion/sensation right there, called what they are. Uncomfortable. Confusing. Embarrassing. Dirty. Even in tags – (Person) said, plus action tag. Often simple, occasionally endearing, always precise, and never too much.

I think writers, even unconsciously, think about being clever here and there. Or we’re bored, let’s get on with it. Or it isn’t working, let’s force something. As far as I could tell, there is none of that in these books other than after book three the whole “what the publisher wants” continuity kicked in, just like all the shit Rowling came up with for the Potter crew to get into and come up against. In fact, the thread in Gallagher Girls beyond Book 1 is tied to the old “who killed my father/mother” conspiracy trope and the secret society of corrupt whozits who are out to stop discovery of the truth. A trope which I confess to disliking more than a proctology exam. Does the author pull it off? Yes. Over the last three books with some of the tried-and-true Bond-esque protagonist MIA, memory drugs etc? Yes. Is the voice and control and in-scene writing there? Yes.

So, if you get off into this series, you’ve been warned. However, I got hooked on I’d Tell You because it’s addictive in that, like Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn “Oh damn, what are they doing now?” way. Particularly good for someone who writes female protagonists. And it was, again, as flawless as a book like this can be. Even if it’s not your cup of (beverage) but you’d like to read, or write a mainstream, mass-market, broad-spectrum YA with depth, here’s your textbook. And unless you’re dead or don’t care you’ll find yourself cheering for them not to get busted, hanging your head when they do, laughing at their discomfort (‘cause we were all awkward teenagers once), disliking their antagonists, wondering with them about their world and their teachers…

*excerpt from I’d Tell You I Love You, But Then I’d Have to Kill You

NVDT – Scenes From Deep in the Can via Power of Suggestion

I was trolling book covers the other day, and this one jumped off the screen reminding me clearly of a scene close to the end of the epic Hot Girl series. By the way, the first time Meyers introduced himself he was in England as Deanna Collings shadow. Hired by the Fairy Godmother(s)/Guardian Angel(s). All the other backstory, why Meyers had to get out of L.A. for a while, who hired him for the Godmothers, why Deanna is in this mess in the first place is novella length, so here’s two consecutive scenes late in this sequence, released by a pissed off girl with a booze bottle book cover.

***

“Need some help with that?” Meyers, with couched amusement over his official police liaison’s suspect interrogation.

“No. I need you to keep watch on the door for any of your dangling hardware lot needing a piss.” Maire pulled Pauly’s head out of the commode by the root of his ponytail, let him gasp and slammed him back in the bowl, held him down and checked the second hand on her watch. She pulled him out again.

“Where are they?”

He coughed water, tried to shake his head. “Faw yooo, kray bish.”

“Fuck you, too.” She smashed his face back in the bowl, looked around at Meyers. “Me? A crazy bitch? Where did he get that?” She waited until Paul bubbled, pulled him back.

“Where. Are. They?”

He blew water up out of his nose at her.

“This is the lady’s rinse and repeat, friend,” Meyer’s stepped into the stall behind her. “A few more and you won’t come up breathing. All for a shit bag the likes of Dereks? The drugs never were, Pauly. Neither were the Arab princes or the money. You two dumb fucks were set up.”

“Listen to the man, Pauly,” Maire yanked the ponytail. “Dereks has legged it with mum’s cash and the bird, left you and your mates well and truly fucked. Tell me where he took the girl before I drown you for being too stupid to live.”

“This is bloody wrong.” Paul blew more water from his nose, tried to shake his head free from Maire’s grip. You can’t do —” She faced him into the bowl again, let the second hand go around almost twice before she pulled him out. “Hampshire! Guwhaaaaw! Bloody fucking Hampshire…” He spluttered, blew water, coughed with a deep heave behind it. “Wallops. Wood. Bluh uh hooooaaahhh. Back. Pocket…” Maire let him go, dried her hands on his shirt tail while he coughed and wheezed into the bowl. She stuck her hands in the back pockets of his jeans, handed a folded paper to Meyers. She stood, pulled Paul up by his ponytail and gave his face the once over.

“Shit, Meyers. He’s so pale he’ll bruise up like a week-old banana.”

“All I’ve seen is you trying to help him. Easy to slip on a wet tile floor, running like he was.” He kicked Paul’s knees out, left him in a push-up on the rim of the toilet. “See? Clumsy fuck.” Meyers dropped the horseshoe collar seat on Pauly’s shoulders. “Get the uniforms in to clean up the mess, Maire,” he held up the folded paper. “We need to move.”

***

“There he is!” Andy snatched up the phone. “Eh? What? Who? Who? No, stick it up your arse, Meyers…No, ‘mate.’ Fuck you!” The phone crashed into the wall and shattered.

“Tell me, Andy,” Deanna couldn’t decide if Andy was going to explode or cry. “Tell me what’s wrong because this whole thing is every kind of messed up. Really. I mean it, Andy, I don’t like this, at all, so just fucking tell me.”

He screamed something unintelligible, grabbed her, tearing Jackson’s Christmas present lace blouse.

“You bastard! This…This was a gift, you, you…I’m done with this little play of yours, curtain or no.” She pushed past him headed for the door. He body slammed her from the side when she passed, smashing her left side into the doorjamb. She felt a sharp pain and a burn. He pulled and spun her around the back side of the bed again.

“You stupid fucking cow! Down to you, all this…buggered…Myers has Paul singing soprano in the loo…It was all a setup…SHIT!” He reached for her throat, she put a stiff-arm palm in his chest. With her free hand she wrenched the full bottle of red wine from the middle of the guest basket, swung, bashed it under the corner of Andy’s right eye. He crumpled, she skirted the end of the bed, grabbing the Rover’s keys off the nightstand, took two long strides and kicked the front door open.

She yanked on the old Rover’s door, jumped in, slammed the truck into gear and took off with the back hatch up and driver’s door open. She blew through the hole in the rustic stone fence at the entrance of the wooded cabin park, turned right and floored the Rover, yanking through the gears, swearing about left footed clutch pedals. Two miles down the narrow road she had to decide whether to hit a tractor head-on or go rough. Her last second decision sent her over a wide wooden bridge where she lost control, bounced out into a shallow drainage ditch while the driverless Rover rolled on through a used caravan sales lot, into the side of a red and white chrome trimmed Fifties style round-backed camper and exploded.

NVDT Random Thoughts and a Sorta Book Review

I considered posting more in the Indie Bookcovers Series, but I’ll hang on to the last of my friends a few more days. Also, after some public and private commentary, I considered (very briefly) publishing the first half of Jackson’s second year in L.A. to put some context on the press agent meeting and run it all the way through to the Chick Flick Finger Fiasco. Consider yourselves spared.

Instead, I received the $10 a bag book notice from the library. I haven’t made it through the last bag. Because everything I picked up didn’t appeal to me? Yes. That old Devil perception. I’ve always said there’s something to be learned from a book even if 99% is objectionable on some level. What did I learn from the last batch? That list is too long. When I get my new bag, I’ll come back and list the contents of the last bag and maybe someone can tell me what I did wrong.

The best of the last bag (so far) is Kerry Greenwood’s original Phryne Fisher vehicle Cocaine Blues. I dislike the entire Danger Barbie genre. And the pretense for Miss Fisher is historically implausible, but I chalk that up to entertainment. The time period makes it perfect fodder for playing dress up, which I believe the direct readership for these enjoys. If we remove discussions of Miss Fisher’s wardrobe from Cocaine Blues, we’d have a good old-fashioned R rated pulp.

What I like about Cocaine Blues is how the author can put us in a place with few words, and not too many adverbs, complete with a “feel” without saying “felt”. From boring parties to grand hotel lobbies, grubby streets, a tableau of ill-mannered youth to the discomfort of a hospital. The author did go slightly over the top repeating a rant against the “butchers” who performed back-alley abortions. Greenwood described the victim well and sneaked in some backstory on the two rough cabbies who discovered and carried in the victim (as the cabbies are re-occurring). But the soapbox gets one good, solid hit for me and next. I found this reminiscent of the repeater with a new audience scenes in Beverly Hills Dead.If abortion or women’s rights were the theme, or the trope of this book, then by all means lean on it. I have found that male chauvinistic pig behavior in general is a sub-theme, but that gets one thump for every behavior as plenty.

On that note, the author reduces a semi-violent act to the swiftness it deserves. Just as she doesn’t dwell on the abortion victim’s situation, the cause gets star billing and the result is BAM. This is refreshing, as recently I have read some really boring fight/confrontation sequences full of psychobabble and reading like a step-by-step guide to hand-to-hand combat.

I haven’t finished Cocaine Blues, but unlike every other book in the last bag, I will. Is it a stellar mystery? I don’t know. Does the farfetched-ness of pretense make suspension of disbelief impossible? Not so far, as it is character driven. Can I skip the two pages a chapter of Miss Fisher sorting her fashions and half a page of how she’s dressed and why just to go out of her room? Yes. Why would I make those concessions? Because what the author does very well is that smooth preciseness of place and people without the oppressive feeling of too much “telling.” The same reason I read John D. MacDonald and skip his moralizing and ruminations of shifting societal paradigms. Because past the extra word count window dressing there are some interesting characters, reasonable dialog and a no-bullshit Danger Barbie who has so far not been oversold, other than as a mannequin with a heartbeat, and as readers we get to see who she is by what she says and does. Thank God for no retired lesbian leaning CIA assassin resume.

The other bad habit to me (remember all is perception) is telling me (or the reader) the outcome of something regardless of whether it’s in suspense or a foregone conclusion. Let us get there by ourselves. The following passage comes at the end of the angry female doctor berating the back alley abortionists (at least three times) and demanding the men me who brought in the victim accompany the doc to the police station, and her response to their reticence to go. Here we go –

*‘I am not asking you to love them, nor will they be concerned with your petty crimes. You will come down to Russell Street with me this afternoon and you will tell them everything you know, and I will answer for it that you will walk out again. Do you understand?’

They understood. Please. Stop where it Stops. We know from reading the doctor isn’t going to take “No” for an answer.

If this doesn’t sound like reading for entertainment it probably isn’t. But learning something from a well-turned phrase can be entertaining, and none of the last batch were even this close to being useful other than as a what not to do. Plus, if you like this kind of thing (I liked the TV show) then this is top shelf Danger Barbie.

*From Cocaine Blues, Copyright 1989 by Kerry Greenwood

NVDT Writerly Thoughts – The Quandry

Is it really shit, or is it just me? Does it matter?

I bring this up because I have read (part of) more than several books that ended up in a growing pile of ‘donate,’ or in the case of my Kindle, a lengthening que of ‘delete.’

Simply because a written work isn’t your “cup of tea,” “shot of tequila,” insert your own cliché, does that automatically make it shit? It seems to me a revelation of true shit is also partly based on opinion and intangible assessments beyond the lack of the authors’ craft skills. Lack of, or a low level of craft control is an immediate ‘put me down’ shit flag, but it’s not everything that makes us put a book down. The ones I’m curious about are the subjective secondary things that make us shake our heads and say “Done.”

I don’t know about you but I’m sure I miss some decent stories that might not be true shit because an unfortunate blurb or the first line tells me I’m in a style land that impatience won’t let me invest in.

Or I invest to a point and the author whips out a blatant authorism, that, at least from my standpoint as a reader presents as ‘Well, why bother now’ might be, and obviously is to a decent percentage of readers who find mine fields of author poop invisible, acceptable, or in some cases comforting. I tacked on that last qualifier because there are obviously readers who are incapable, for one reason or another, of suspending disbelief enough to get lost in a work and find the ‘author as hand holder/adventure buddy’ style comforting. I discovered this group of readers while reading wildly mixed reviews of certain authors’ works that I found questionable as far as storytelling goes. Those in my camp were along the lines of “sophomoric buddy book shit” while others were in the “Can’t wait for the next one” like those lost souls who await next month’s crop of formulaic romance novels.

The quandry part of this post is in my pile of given-up-on books, I have a handful I could review, but based on what I want from a book they fall short. However they are otherwise free of crappy, misplaced sentences, grammatical or structural errors and aside from flat-out clumsy author intervention or let’s interrupt this story by inserting chapters of highly detailed, useless to story momentum bullshit, most of them are, to my mind simply overtold. Mostly in that way authors believe they need to tell the readers what they’re going to tell them or not knowing when it’s time to stop loading the donut with sprinkles. Compounding the quandry – I like some of these authors as thinkers or human beings or admire some aspects of their skill sets.

So. Talking Indies here, should I be honest about what I think with a ‘personal opinion’ caveat, thereby encouraging those who aren’t me to pick up this or that book, or rate it based solely on opinion? Which I feel is unfair to authors who busted ass to write something coherent whether or not I cared for it stylistically, or let it slide with a no review?

Mainstreamers are a different thing. It’s open season. Because they and/or their publisher should know better than to promote shit based on nothing but nepotism and name recognition.

NVDT Book Review

You Can Take The Girl From The Prairie – Stories about growing up on the Canadian Prairies – Darlene Foster

Quick Review – You know I don’t do book reports, so you have to read it or wait for the movie.

I rate a lot of Indie books at least three ways, so here goes

Content (plot) Five Stars – Come on, these are memoirs. Anything less would be akin to saying “Your life was shit, three stars.” I’m sure people do that, but not me. The genealogy bits were blessedly short on the Biblical style litany of who begat who and were very interesting from a historical perspective on immigration and the sheer stamina it took to survive just over a hundred years ago. Given the conditions, it’s a testament to will that the human race made it this far.

Content Execution Four Stars – Only because this was a (too) quick read and, as short as it was, a bit long on overlap. Over a greater distance, it wouldn’t have been noticeable. How that happened -The author previously published several chapters independently as short stories and that accounts for the overlapping elements in this anthology. When Kindle said “done” I was looking forward to more depth of fun-filled familial romps, stern mom admonitions and the like, so a good deal more of the train station and deer type stories, balanced with the tragic loss of a sibling would have been nice. I say that because there’s no way you live on a farm in the middle of nowhere and not get up to all sorts of stuff. I know, I spent my summers in the Ozarks where my grandparents had to drive fifteen miles to a telephone. Not because they couldn’t afford one, the lines weren’t run. And to stay out from under their feet on daily farm duties I spent my days tied to and under the supervision of a goat who wouldn’t let me get lost or too close to anything dangerous while roaming the hills and hollers.

Nuts and Bolts Five Stars – While there is very little in the way of linguistic “spice” in Darlene’s work, the lack of Tabasco does not mean it lacks color or is in any way boring, poorly assembled or vaguely edited. Quite the opposite. A good bit of her work is in YA and younger and she always exhibits an even flow, no slop linear approach. In fact, like the genealogy bit and the subtleties of her storytelling above, you’ll find you learned something from Darlene’s work without feeling taught. No soapbox. No hokey vehicles. How excellent a writerly trait is that?

Summation – A quick, enlightening read. The first chapter is golden, shows an author in full command of spot on short story telling and needs a place in a book of more like it. The others form an informative, touching, and loving look at family life in a remote, but far from desolate landscape.

You should read it. If you’re afraid of memoirs, then only for the classic short story it opens with that could stand with any of the big shot short story authors’ works.

A Beautiful Corpse – 2

“You coulda walked, Meyers.” Lieutenant Purcell stood on the white sandstone pool deck, feigning interest in the forensics crew working the rear patio of the Dubrev mansion while he took in everything peripheral. “Gotten a chump to call it in if you were feelin’ like a citizen.”

“Junior here left prints.”

“You don’t have a handkerchief, or a shirt tail?”

“In my repository of Purcell quotes I kept hearing ‘Somebody always knows something.’ House is too big to be empty, so we stuck.”

“Somebody always does know somethin’ but ‘JAMF’ is my favorite. I stole it from Eastwood. You’re sayin’,” he shifted his gaze to direct. “You didn’t hit it because we’d be havin’ a conversation sooner or later, one or both of you lookin’ to be tap dancin’ JAMFs?”

“Only till we didn’t amount to anything. But it would’ve been extra wasted effort getting to where you need to be.”

“Extra? There are times you’re almost as smart as you think you are. Save me some more time. Mr. Bryston is it?” Slight head turn to pull Huntley into focus. “Will the crime scene boys find your prints or any sexual leave-behinds on or in the floater or the house?”

“No, sir.”

“Meyers?”

“Never taken the tour. What’d you find in there?”

“A hundred-year-old deaf Chinaman makin’ a huge breakfast over a stove belongs in a fuckin’ restaurant, blissfully unaware the Master of the House is in his screening room fulla holes he wasn’t born with.”

“Full’?”

“It’s not pretty. Anger and result, not art.” Eyes still on Huntley.

“Not a hit?” I said, fishing.

“Not unless they’re tryin’ to throw us.”

“The shit eating grin says you’re not buying that angle.”

“Care to tell me why, wise ass?”

“Because you have the gun.”

“There you go bein’ smart again. Kid?” He turned away from his study of the young chauffeur, backhanded toward the house. “They’re through with the patio. Grab yourself a seat up there outta the sun. Meyers, let’s walk.”

***

Purcell and I strolled to a back corner of the property, where he stopped outside the wooden single garage door of a landscaper’s shed. He lifted the flat door without it making a sound, and we stepped into a cool dark that smelled of garden chemicals and composted manure topped with the sweetness of not long dead grass. A match flared, landed on the tip of Purcell’s half a cigar, generating the effect of a vampire’s face floating in smoke.

“This where you get my story, compare it to the kid’s?”

“No.” Purcell found the light switch, flipped it, bathed the shed in a gazillion watt overhead. “This is where I can smoke a cigar without a handful of teenagers in HazMat suits telling me it’s a crime scene and to take my nasty habits outside. Outside past the yellow tape.”

“Do they say please, or sir?”

“Huh,” snorted. “Lotta ‘sir’ any kinda way they say it sounds like a disease.” He puffed the cigar, held it for observation at almost arm’s length before deeming it worthy, stuck it back in his teeth. “To answer your earlier question, you’re gonna take the chauffeur for me.”

“Ask him yourself. He’s straight up.”

“Straight up like you? ‘Here’s the truth, Lieutenant. As much of it as I think you oughta hear?’ Fuck that. You’re gonna get all his side of it and give it to me.”

“Share and share alike?”

“You work your angles, share them with me.”

“Before or after I run them down?”

“Let me decide.”

“That kind of play ruins everyone’s timing.”

“Then do you what you think is best but keep me in the loop ‘cause I need to work this one like it’s my job. I say that because I need you to work this one like you have an investment in figurin’ it.” He hit the cigar, relished it, exhaling slowly. He gave the shed a cursory once over, gave the cigar a look of mild loss, stubbed it out in an upside-down lawn mower wheel sitting on a scarred, wooden plank workbench. Purcell pulled his shoulders out of their tired slump, squared himself inside his suit coat, killed the light. He waited until his eyes adjusted, shuffled his junk by pulling on his fly. “Alright, they oughta be ready in there for our private screening with the show-biz fossil formerly known as Marlon Dubrev. Hope you haven’t eaten lately.”

***

I wouldn’t have taken Huntley into the mini theater, but Purcell wanted reassurance on his hunch about the kid. He got it. A woman in Blue HazMat and wearing large round glasses that magnified her eyes into prize winning pecans had her hands full catching Huntley’s projectile bile in a plastic bucket with one hand and keeping him upright with the other. A tall male HazMat came to her aid, and they walked him out between them.

“Happy?”

“Happy he didn’t do it?” Purcell growled. “For your sake, yeah. I wish he’d yawned like it was old news and his clothes were covered in blood, ‘cause I coulda used a quickie.” Purcell’s left hand went out, palm up. “Take a good look. Whatta you hear?”

Someone not angry but murderously furious with Marlon Dubrev had shot him seven times, not aiming but emptying the clip of a 9mm semi-auto before they bludgeoned him with a foot tall green marble replica of Michelangelo’s David on a square white mica flecked base where an egg size chunk of Dubrev’s brains clung from a corner. Dubrev was slumped to the side on an uncomfortable looking red velvet Victorian couch. Where his head should have been was nothing more than hair and bone fragments stuck to a blood-soaked gold satin throw pillow. HazMats, all wearing the round magnifiers, worked the floor of the media room in a line using forceps to pick up tissue and bone and bagging it.

I raised my chin at the gory tableau. “Who the fuck gets this angry?”

“Why does ‘who the fuck’ get this angry,” Purcell thumbed his nose. “When it was a dead child bride of an antique, that’s not news. An antique nobody under forty ever heard of with his head bashed into hamburger isn’t news. But the antique and his child bride both dead on the same Sunday morning? That’s news.” He accepted a stack of paper from one of the HazMats, rolled it up, put that hand on his hip. “I’m figurin’ one of them pissed somebody off, and this is payback.”

“You’re thinking this is a primary and collateral?”

“You’re not?”

The passions in the scenes were as different as night and day. I could hear a cop half a house away yelling into the Chinaman’s hearing aid and a yapping dog shut off behind an upstairs door. “Nobody hated the dog or made him watch it die, and it sounds like the Chinaman lives in. And he’s still alive. One for the girl,” I said. “One for Marlon. Two perps, two very different, very personal ‘whys’.”

“We’re not even started yet and already you’re a disagreeable JAMF.” He shrugged, gave a slight head nod toward the double doors. “See if your chauffer’s got some pink back in his cheeks, then get outta here an start askin’ questions. And Meyers,” he pointed at me with two fingers that needed a cigar between them. “Stay in touch. Regular like.”