The Sinister Staircase

A Sinister Staircase by Susan Buffum

It appeared in the center of a traffic island where Main Street branched at a ninety degree angle onto Elm Street, at a gentle curve to the left around the town green, or continued straight onto the narrower School Street. The island was triangular with multiple traffic signals like tall, yellow pines with bristling light cones—red, yellow, and green—controlling motor vehicle flow. Brick pathways trisected the island, converging at a central junction, each traffic light situated on its own raised dais enclosed by granite curbstones.

It wasn’t there one afternoon. But, it was there the following morning. It created traffic snarls as drivers slowed to a snail’s pace as they craned their necks, tilted their heads back trying to look upward. Several rear end collisions occurred during the morning commute when drivers abruptly stopped to gawk. A number of verbal altercations took place, but they were brief due to the fact that those involved were more curious about the staircase that rose from the center of the traffic island in a lazy, looping coil.

So high it rose that it appeared to vanish into the low lying, steely-gray clouds hovering just a story or two above the tallest building, which happened to be the three-story corner building that now housed a trendy coffee shop on its lower level. There were people sitting at the counter on stools facing out toward the green, eyes raised to the gray clouds, hands wrapped around ignored wide-mouthed cups of coffee in which sweet, creamy hearts surrounded by delicate curlicues floated atop their contents.

A half dozen brave souls had made it up to the second floor and out onto the small balcony where there were several tiny, round, wrought iron café tables with spider-legged matching chairs. There was an occasional stiff breeze gusting down the street in unpredictable bursts. The air smelled heavy with impending rain and slightly poisonous with exhaust fumes trapped beneath the clouds..

“That wasn’t there yesterday, was it?” wondered a woman with long, unruly strawberry-blonde hair who wore a leather jacket and jeans to a woman of indeterminate age who was sitting alone at the next table, her cellphone held like a prayer book in both her slender, pale hands, her face cast in a slightly bluish light.

“Nope,” came a masculine reply. “City must have slapped it up after five o’clock last night. Another damn waste of taxpayer money, if you ask me,” he muttered. He was dressed in work coveralls, was leaning against the brick wall near the doorway leading back inside the building from the balcony. “I’ve got to get to work so my taxes can pay for more crap like this,” he grumbled as he disappeared back inside. The thudding of his steel-toed boots as he descended the wooden staircase to the first floor felt like the reverberations of thunder beneath the feet of the people on the balcony.

“Is it some sort of art installation?” asked a college-aged girl with bright turquoise hair who stood up from her seat to walk to the short wrought iron railing on the parapet that prevented people from jumping and deterred others from climbing over onto the ledge and falling to the brick sidewalk below. “I bet it’s some artist’s doing, but what’s the point of placing it in this town? No one here appreciates art.”

Her companion, a tall, lanky young man with a fall of brown hair obscuring the right side of his lean, chiseled face shrugged as he furiously texted on his cellphone. “There’s nothing holding it up, you know,” he pointed out. “No supports. Another strong gust coming down Elm Street and that thing will topple over. Mark my words. Someone’s going to get killed.”

“You’re such a fatalist,” the girl muttered, grabbing her backpack from the tiled floor, slinging it over her right shoulder before grabbing her coffee that was in a takeout cup. “C’mon, we’re going to be late for class.” The lanky boy rose, stuffing his phone into his sweatshirt pocket before grabbing his own backpack and cup of coffee. He followed the girl with the turquoise hair to the door, ducking as he passed through.

This left the woman with the blue glow illuminating her face, the woman in the leather jacket, and a middle-aged man with a doughy face, receding brown hair, and black-framed glasses that magnified his watery blue eyes on the balcony. “Is that a kid on the staircase?” he asked, reaching up to adjust his glasses. He squinted through the smudgy lenses at the staircase diagonally across from the balcony. “I think there’s a kid on the staircase,” he said.

The woman with the phone glanced up, her gaze falling on the staircase. A slight frown creased her brow and she gave an elegant one-shoulder shrug before returning her gaze to the screen of her phone. “More a young woman, I’d say, not a young girl.”

“No, it’s a child,” he disagreed. “All gangly legs and bare feet on a day like this. Where’s her mother, I want to know,” he replied.

“She’s probably downstairs having coffee. You know how kids are. Easily bored and restless. They like to play,” the strawberry-blonde woman said.

He hauled himself up off the tiny, spindly-legged chair to go to the railing recently abandoned by the girl with the turquoise hair. He caught a faint hint of her cinnamon scent hanging on the heavy air. It made his stomach growl. His thoughts veered to the huge cinnamon roll he had seen in the pastry case behind the counter downstairs. He’d eaten breakfast before leaving home. However, he thought he might have to buy that obscenely enormous pastry and take it to work with him this morning. It was too much temptation to ignore with that scent teasing his olfactory sense. “I think she’s carrying a basket.”

 The women didn’t answer him. One was too absorbed in what she was reading on the small screen of her phone. The other was watching a crow that had landed with a flutter of dark wings on top of a nearby streetlight.

“She doesn’t even have a jacket on, or a sweater. She should at least have a sweater, or a sweatshirt. And some sort of shoes on her feet. She must be cold.” He thought he should go down there and offer her his jacket, but people were such alarmists these days. His kind gesture might be misconstrued as an attempt to molest the girl if he fumbled while trying to button it around her, if he accidentally touched her. One couldn’t even be a good Samaritan in this day and age without someone taking offense or misconstruing good intentions.

Down on the street, the girl hesitated, stopping on the bottom step of the staircase. Across from the island, on the corner, was a hair salon with sparkling golden letters painted on the Main Street side windows. Beside that business was a small bookstore. The proprietor of that shop stood outside the door on the granite stoop smoking a cigarette, one hand thrust into the front pocket of his jeans as he surveyed the morning traffic. The sleeves of his hoodie sweatshirt were pushed up to his elbows revealing lean arms with sinewy muscle snaking around the bones beneath his skin. He wore high-top canvas sneakers as bright a shade of red as arterial blood.  Next to the bookstore was a café, the heads of its patrons in the booths against the front window were bowed over their breakfasts, already having dismissed the mysterious staircase as some sort of advertising ploy, or ridiculous addition to the recently renovated downtown.

The girl seemed to take in everything with one sweep of her calm, dark eyes. She shifted the basket, and then leaned down, setting it on the brick pathway. It rested against the bottom step of the staircase.

“Gathering eggs, little lady?” asked an elderly man who walked crooked over so that he appeared to be the living personification of the cane he gripped in his left hand. The girl gave him a frank and curious look. He nodded toward the basket at her feet. “In your basket, you got eggs?”

“No, sir,” she replied softly. “It’s empty at the moment.”

He dipped his right hand into his deep trouser pocket then dropped a shiny quarter into the bottom of the basket. “Now it’s no longer empty,” he said, nodding his head with satisfaction as the white silhouette of a striding man lit up indicating he could cross the street safely.

A woman holding the hand of a toddler dug her free hand into her jacket pocket, plucking out a dollar bill that she dropped into the basket as they passed by, following the elderly man across Elm Street to the sidewalk in front of the coffee shop. The girl’s head turned as she followed their progress along the sidewalk toward the library on the corner.

Then she frowned down at the money in the bottom of the basket, squatted down and plucked it out, tossing it onto the bricks and then standing up with a defiant scowl on her face, as if daring anyone else to defile her basket by dropping money into it. She folded her thin arms as two men crossed Elm Street to the island. One walked past her to press the button to make the light change so they could cross. The other stopped, looked down at the girl who tilted her head back to look up at him, her face still set in that jaw thrust forward expression. Their eyes locked and held as he crouched down, picking up the dollar bill and the quarter. He rose to his full height again, stuffing the money into his windbreaker pocket, his expression daring her to remark upon his taking it. “You got something you want to say to me, little girl?” he asked, a hint of mockery in his tone, a subtle dare shadowing his words.

“There’s lots more of that, you know,” she replied.

“Lots more of what?”

“Money,” she said, her thumb popping up and flicking in a backwards motion over her shoulder to indicate the staircase.

“What do you mean? There ain’t nothin’ up there,” he retorted.

“Yes, there is. There’s lots and lots of money up there.” He started to scoff at her, but her face was suddenly cherubic, full of that innocence young children radiate. She cocked her head slightly toward her left shoulder, then bent and grasped the handle of the basket. “You’ll need this to carry it back down in.” She held the basket out to him.

He looked skeptical, but reached out and took the handle in his hand. “Chuck, c’mon, man,” said his friend from near the light signal pole. “She’s pullin’ you leg. There ain’t nothin’ up there but sky.”

“Doesn’t hurt nothin’ to run up and take a quick look. Kids don’t lie, right? She’s too young to know how to lie. It’ll just take a coupla seconds. Up and back. Hang tight.” He gave the child a little push to one side and quickly began climbing up the staircase.

“What’s really up there?” asked the other man who pushed his long, dirty, blonde hair back from his face with one hand. He didn’t know why Chuck thought the girl was a kid. She was older than his teenaged daughter. There were the curves of an adolescent girl beneath her simple white shift. They were rather intriguing curves with their promise of filling out to become womanly curves in a few years’ times. “You can tell me.”

“Everything you could ever dream of,” she replied.

“You don’t say.” She nodded, giving him a surprisingly coy look for such a sweet looking young lady.

“She wasn’t yankin’ my chain, Jimmy! Money! There’s piles and piles of it up here!” came Chuck’s distant, excited, and incredulous voice from high above their heads.

“See?” she said.

Jimmy put his foot up on the bottom step and grabbed the railing.

“I wouldn’t go up there, if I was you,” said a voice to his right.

He turned his head and saw it was the bookstore proprietor who had come across the street and was now standing on the island on the brick path. “What business is it of yours, weirdo? Go on back to your shop and stick your big nose into a book, and slam it shut!”

The bookstore proprietor smiled affably and shrugged. “I read a lot. Maybe you should take it up, reading. It never bodes well to climb a staircase you don’t know what’s at the top of.”

“Money! I’m rich!” came Chuck’s gleeful voice, followed by a metallic clatter.

Jimmy, the bookstore proprietor, and the girl all watched as several coins rolled down the staircase. They landed at Jimmy’s feet. He grinned smugly at the man from the bookstore, before shoving him aside and dashing up the staircase. “I’m comin’, Chuck! I want some of that cash!”

The bookstore proprietor sighed, turning his eyes toward the girl. She was a small child with short blonde hair, brown eyes, and lips that curved into a sly smile as he just gazed at her. He nodded, and as he did she seemed to waver in his vision like a mirage, or an image reflected in a funhouse mirror. She appeared to grow from child to adolescent, to young woman, to matron, to crone before becoming a child again. As he studied her, took the measure of her, the basket came rolling slowly down the staircase. “What do you collect in your basket?” he asked her as she bent to pick it up as it came to rest against her bare ankle and foot.

She looked down into the basket then reached inside. Half her arm seemed to disappear into the depths of the basket, although to his eyes it looked rather shallow. “Hands,” she said as she lifted a man’s clenched hand from the basket by the ragged, gory stump of its wrist. The book proprietor stepped back one big step as the girl smiled up at him. As she smiled, the hand she held unclenched and a shower of coins fell onto the bricks at their feet with a discordant metallic clatter. She laughed, her laughter as sweet as honey, but there was something tainted lurking within it.

The bookstore proprietor nodded as he kicked a nickel with the toe of his red sneaker. “That certainly is a sinister staircase,” he remarked. The child tossed the disembodied hand into the air. It vanished. Clutching the handle of the basket, she turned and began to climb the stairs without replying. His eyes followed her until she vanished into the gray clouds that still hung low over the intersection.

As he began to look away his eyes fell on the woman standing on the second floor balcony of the coffee shop on the corner. Her face was still illuminated by the screen of the cellphone she held like an open book in her hands. Her eyes rose from the screen to meet his from across the street for a long moment. Slowly, her eyes lowered and her left hand moved as she tapped on her screen.

In his pocket, the bookstore proprietor’s cellphone rang like an old bicycle bell to indicate that he had a text message. Her eyes rose from her phone’s screen as he pulled his phone from his sweatshirt pocket. He tore his gaze away from hers as he tapped the screen and opened the text message. I’ve got your number, he read.

“I bet you have,” he murmured as he swiped the screen and it went dark.

He glanced again toward the balcony, but the woman was gone. The staircase, however, was still in front of him. The coins still littered the brick path at the foot of the stairs. Cars flowed past as he walked to the yellow street signal post and pressed the button, then waited for the ghostly striding figure to light up in the small rectangular signpost across the street in front of the hair salon. There were people on that sidewalk waiting to cross to this island. “Let them come across,” he thought as the figure lit up and he stepped out between the parallel lines of the sidewalk, striding quickly back across the street and over to the granite stoop of his shop. As he opened the door and stepped inside, he flipped the book-shaped sign that hung on the inside of the door so that it read OPEN.

Walking through the store, he noticed a book that had fallen from the shelf. He went to pick it up, to place it back on top of the bookcase in the empty spot that marked the space it had recently occupied. Turning it over in his hands, he saw that it was a copy of Some Must Watch by Ethel Lina White.

He laughed.

(NOTE: The novel Some Must Watch published in Great Britain in 1933 was adapted to the screen by screenwriter Mel Dinelli and became the basis for the film The Spiral Staircase in 1946 , starring Dorothy McGuire, George Brent, and Ethel Barrymore.)

Last Night

   So, last night I'm writing the seventh version of a story that's been kicking around in my head when Kelly sits down across from me and says, "I have a great idea for a little ghost story for the next Ghost Stories LIVE! which is coming up in April. She says it involves a magician. I say, "Well you'd better write down a few notes so you don't forget." "Notes?" she scoffs. "I'll just write the story."
    I blink and she's done (well, a few blinks, but it seemed like only one blink before she was holding up a page filled with her tiny crabby printing. I said I'd read it and she laughed, reminding me that I can't see her writing never mind read it. She said, "I'll read it to you." She proceeded to read the story.
   Wham! One strike of the hammer and she nailed it! I sat there in awe of her...much like she has sat in awe of me in the past. 374 words...to my way of writing, that's just barely a beginning paragraph!! Kelly Buffum- you are incredible!
   Today we're laughing about the size of the table of contents when she finally puts her book of flash, micro, and very short fiction ghost stories together in one volume...the table of contents will be longer than the pages full of stories!!
   Gotta love her! She is a maestro of mini fiction.

The Clockmaker's Son Release Date postponed

I thought I would be releasing my NaNo novel from 2017 this spring, but there might be a small delay...there's something in the works that I can't talk abut right now.

I did complete my final revisions and corrections. Kelly's taking her whack at finding all my comma issues and anything else she can catch that I've missed during multiple read throughs. You really do need fresh eyes, critical eyes and not just your own tired, jaded, forgiving eyes when getting a book ready to be published.

Off in pursuit of stretching cats!

Waiting on Nor'easter #4

Well, I've heard all sorts of weather predictions as this fourth nor'easter approaches us...but here it is 9:30PM and nary a flake of snow has fallen so far. Kelly and I had to run out to Walmart after dinner tonight so I could get some things for work that we've run out of, and she needed applesauce for her lunch bag. We were laughing as we waited for the light to change so we could turn into the parking lot- about the mad rush for bread, milk, and toilet paper being practically non-existent this evening...although we've gotten snow with the past three storms we've also gotten rapid thaws immediately following them. Spring is here as of today. The daffodils are three inches high already.
     I think we've all become rather blasé about these "nor'easters" here in western MA.
     I think we're all sick of them, sick of winter, and ready for the warm kiss of spring to touch our cheeks.
     I've been doing some spring cleaning- something highly uncharacteristic of me. I do not like to clean, will normally clean only when I can't sleep and then I'm a whirlwind while everyone else is fast asleep.
     I'm anxiously awaiting the arrival of the printed proof copy of The Clockmaker's Son. This is the time when, although I've read the book half a dozen times, I worry about continuity issues, missed verb tenses in the same paragraph/chapter, typos, and some huge obvious error somewhere in the story! Stress is my BFF.
     Going back to looking out the window and wondering where the snow is...

This is How Fast Self Publishing can be

     Last Sunday I was about 2/3 of the way through the final edit/revision of The Clockmaker's Son. I was chatting vis facebook messenger with author friends Kate Anderson and Melissa Volker when I mentioned I needed a cover for the book. Melissa jumped right on that. After asking a few questions she disappeared. Less than an hour later she was sending me a picture of the cover she'd designed- holy moly! Lightning strike and a bullseye! A few tweaks (color of wolf, where to locate the wolf head image, a few background touches) and the cover was basically ready! They she started work on the back cover! By late Sunday night I had had a lesson in back cover blurbs (keep it brief, make it compelling). I came up with something and sent it, but agreed to sleep on it and get back to her on Monday evening after work. Monday arrived and before dinner Monday night I'd sent her the tightened up, polished, very brief (especially for me!) back cover copy. By bedtime I had front and back covers, spine...and a full book (front and back cover with blurb) promo ready to upload to CreateSpace, and social media to promote the book!
     I finished the interior copy edits/revisions early Wednesday morning and then uploaded the interior file and the cover image to CreateSpace. The file went into review as usual. On Thursday after work I was able to see the book on CreateSpace, and ordered two proof copies that night. Today (Saturday) I received notification that my proof copies were in the mail!
    Six days from book cover creation to proof copy in the mail with said cover.

     Now I need to say something else. Last June, Kelly and I founded the WhipCity Wordsmiths after being encouraged to start a writer's group in Westfield by Artworks of Westfield. I was reluctant because I had belonged to a writer's group in Westfield back when my playwright friend, Jim Curran, was still alive. Kelly and my sister Lynnmarie were also members with another woman whose name escapes me, Maryann S....? We used to meet in the reading room of the Athenaeum. We used to write to prompts and then read our work and receive gentle critique.
     I did not want my authors group to be that author's group. I wanted something more along the line of the New England Authors/Writers Coffeehouse, a traveling group of authors who meet at various locations and just talk about writing, writing opportunities, and offer one another feedback and support. These are the big dogs in the area. They are fascinating to join, listen to and connect with.(I've been fortunate enough to attend one of these get togethers here at Blue Umbrella.)
     But this little group Kelly and I have put together is a for local authors trying to find their toehold in the world of literature. It's more a social and support group for authors and writers- a gathering where we can kick around ideas, help one another, offer and receive advice, hook one another up to services for authors/writers (beta readers, book cover designers, proofreaders, editors) and share information about local author event opportunities where we can promote our work, and stay abreast of writing contest news/deadlines. The thought of sitting around a table writing to prompts is simultaneously braining numbing and anxiety inducing, something akin to test anxiety. I do write my best under pressure (well, sometimes), but that's when I already know what I want to write. I am thrilled with how this group is progressing toward that goal. The past three meetings have been fantastic!

I was asked today if I liked Createpace and why. I do like it because it gives me complete control over my book projects. I can also pull a book off Amazon or Kindle, or both, when I've made revisions or corrections and then get it back on there within 48 hours or less looking and reading better than before. If your big brand name publisher messes up your book and all your mistakes are printed, you can't say, whoa! Stop the presses! I screwed up! Sorry, they aren't going to pull your book and let you fix it. You have to negotiate a corrected second edition, I suppose, but they're not going to put out a second edition unless they're made their money back on your poorly edited and not exceptionally well proofread first edition. I, for one, get annoyed reading my favorite authors and finding all sorts of errors in the text. I probably have issues...but if I'm putting a book out there, I'm going to make sure it's the best it can be, no matter how many times I have to pull it to make tweaks. But, I guess if you're making big bucks because you're a big name author you probably don't care if your books read like crap because your fans are still going to buy them anyway. I'm a basically unknown author, so if someone stumbles upon one of my books I certainly want them to read me at my best, not like I'm a lazy writer who rolled out of bed, didn't have her morning coffee and wrote sloppily. I need to present myself to impress the reader. CreateSpace allows me to do that.


   

Another Snow Day & An Amazing Friend

It's Tuesday and it's snowing, and will continue to snow into tomorrow. Can I just say, "I've had enough of this?"

This winter has really wreaked havoc with my RA with frigid cold spells and then a week or two of unseasonably warm days and chilly nights. My joints are screaming that they've had enough, too.

The only good thing happening today is that I'm working on the final revisions to my NaNo novel from last November, The Clockmaker's Son. I've the interior book file all formatted and ready to upload since late Sunday night. Now it's the last careful read through and final revisions, corrections, grammar, continuity check time.

And here's the really awesome part. I put it out there this past Sunday evening that I needed a cover for this book. Author and graphics artist/designer (and good friend)Melissa Volker jumped right in with both feet within moments. She had a mock up of the potential cover done within an hour! I loved it, we exchanged messages and she tweaked it according to my responses. Last evening I sent her my final version of the back cover copy that she needed to add and a short time later she sent me the completed front and back covers and spine file ready to upload to CreateSpace! She is, to say the very least, AWESOME! I am so lucky to count her as a friend and not just a fellow author. She's also a WhipCity Wordsmith so this right here is a prime example of the type of support I want to see among members. If one of us can help another, then we should put ourselves out there and do it. Melissa will receive full credit for her cover design and assistance in an acknowledgement inside my book on the dedication page which will let people know that she does this sort of thing, and maybe they'll contact her and she'll get some additional work out of this. It's exposure for her, and it gives my new novel a more professionally designed cover than I would have had otherwise. It benefits both of us.

So, let it snow outside. While I'm stuck taking it easy on achy joints inside I'm rereading The Clockmaker's Son, and feeling nothing but warmth in my heart because I have such an amazing friend.

Fun with Riley

My cat is small, lightweight, and very fluffy. He's mostly gray but has a white belly, white paws, and a white bloop on the left side of his face. He has pea-green eyes. He looks like a little gray fox, and just recently, Kelly pointed out to me that he plays like the fox we saw in the backyard the afternoon on the day before my father passed away. Riley Beans likes to toss his toy plastic springs up in the air, then leap up and pounce on them. He'll swat them, chase them down the hallway, grab it in both paws, toss it up in the air again...and the whole production begins again. It's fun to watch him because he gets so involved in his play that he's oblivious of everything else.

Tonight, when I lay down across the foot of the bed to write in my journal, he jumped on the bed like he usually does to have "quiet play" with me. Quiet play is that he lies near my pillow and watches what I'm doing and I'll wiggle the pen around for him to catch, or slid my hand under the covers and he'll attack my fingers. Sometimes he burrows under the flannel blanket and attacks my fingers that are on the outside of the blanket, which can be more dangerous for me since I can't really see when he'll attack. He's got sharp little claws!

When we first adopted him he wasn't a very sociable kitten. He'd been fostered in someone's home but I think they mostly kept him in a cage and didn't interact with him much. When I adopted him he was by himself in a cage in a room by himself. He had no problem taking over Kelly's room when we brought him home. She was away a college at the time. So in the week between my adopting him and her coming home for Thanksgiving that November, he more or less ruled the roost, not taking any attitude from his older brother, Revere. Kelly had adopted Revere in June after we'd lost Isador.

Riley had juvenile gingival hyperplasia which means his gums were growing over his teeth, and eating away at them. The vet originally wanted t pull all his teeth out, but we asked him to look into something else because Riley was only 5 months old if that and I thought it would be cruel to pull all his teeth. So, the vet did some research and then decided to try lasering the gum tissue back from Riley's teeth by himself, a procedure he'd never attempted before. He did an excellent job. Riley lost three teeth because they couldn't be saved and cleaned, but he came home with fresh breath for the first time in his life. He's been fine with annual cleanings since...some cats don't outgrown this. He was lucky because he did.

But it took him a long time to learn how to play. He liked to sleep, he was skittish and hid when people came to the house. He didn't seem to know how to play. Both cats had a large box of toys but only Revere would play with the catnip and squeaky mice, the crackle balls, etc. The first thing Riley played with was a hair elastic, one of those thick stretchy bands you get in the hair accessories aisle. I had longer hair that I'd pull back into a ponytail at the time. He was sitting on the bathroom counter one day while I was putting my hair in a ponytail. He was watching me, and then he looked down into the still open drawer and saw one of those elastics in there- and quick as a wink he snagged one and tossed it out into the hallway, then leapt off the counter and pounced on it. That was his favorite toy until he got a little bag of plastic springs I found at Dave's Soda and Pet Food City- cat toys. He loved picking up the springs, carrying them around in m\his mouth, dropping them and swatting them up and down the hallway.

The springs are still his favorite toys. He has never played with a mouse or a ball.

Over the past year and a half he's really bonded with me and become my best bud. He sits in the chair beside me at the kitchen table when I write. He lays near y chair when  sit in the living room. And he sleeps snuggled up beside me every night. Wherever I go, he goes. He's always looking at me as f reading me like a book, or he's studying me...like a lab experiment? I don't know, but he's cute and he's won my heart.

He's fun to come home to after a bad or long day at work. He's so devoted now...and he does such cute things. And he talks. Well, at least he thinks he's talking to me. I usually can understand what he wants- treats, to play, for me to follow him and pet hm.

He's also a master manipulator..he knows how to play his mother and get his way!

John calls him the little devil in gray fur. Well, he lords it over the man of the house too, sitting at the end of the couch and glowering at John until he gets up...and then he portly takes the warm sot against the pillow John rests his head on while watching TV. What a smug bug he is when he has his way!

I call him the fluffy tyrant. Kelly calls him the brat.

But, I think all three of us love the little guy.

And yes, we love Revere, too, but it's Riley Beans who s loaded with purrsonality!.

I Crack Myself Up

I finished the proofreading and first edits of The Clockmaker's Son (2017 NaNo novel) tonight. Sometimes you can find some funny stuff that you've unintentionally written when you're reading through your work for the first time.

Tonight's killer typo was "The aloha wolf wanted him dead." Of course I meant ALPHA wolf!

Well, that will get corrected n the final version.

Overall...when I finished writing this novel on either the fifteenth or eighteenth day of NaNo last November I totally lost interest in it because I wasn't sure, after several false starts, that this was the story I wanted to tell. I threw it (in a binder) on the dining room table and ignored it for three, nearly four months (if you count the remaining days of November and the first week of March of this year).

I had no motivation to even look at it.

But three days ago, after seeing several pictures of the clock tower that had inspired the novel, I dug out the binder, now buried under several others, and began reading. It starts slow and I might tinker with the beginning, but then things begin to happen. Relationships develop while others disintegrate and fall apart. People are killed. A young woman struggles to find her place in the world. The prodigal son, not a well-loved figure in town, returns and more people die. The young woman is nearly destroyed, but finds an inner strength and resolve that she never realized she had. The clockmaker's son comprehends that there is only one thing he can do and sets his course to accomplish that deed.

I won't say more...the novel isn't exactly what I had thought it would be, but it stands on it's own four feet. I can work with it, tinker with it a little, and it'll be fine.

Will begin the edits and revisions to the computer file tomorrow. Should have a new novel out of this in April- fingers crossed!

What's with this Winter?

This morning Kelly and I got up and ran to Dunkin Donuts at the Ponds for breakfast. It was sunny and 44 degrees. We wore hoodie sweatshirts and sunglasses.

At one o'clock we left home to do some shopping, antiquing, and furniture browsing. The wind had kicked up again and the skies were becoming cloudier. We still had hoodies on.

At quarter of four we headed home and the skies were charcoal with massing clouds. It looked as if it was going to rain. When we got home at quarter past four there were signs of raindrops on the deck stairs and deck. The skies east of us in West Springfield were black but out skies were cloudy, overcast, gray.

We got inside and no more than a few minutes later Kelly said, I think it's hailing out. We looked outside and sure enough small, round beads were literally raining down from the sky. Being who we are, I grabbed a camera and she grabbed the cat and we went out on the deck to document the "beads" falling from the sky. Revere, who is black and white, had round dots of ail in his black fur. Kelly had them on her blue t-shirt and in her hair. We went out twice. The sun was shining and we thought we might see a rainbow, but now...guess that only happens with light refracting through rain.

And then we had a snow squall and it got very dark...within a few minutes of coming inside. It snowed and the temperature dropped into the 30's. It was beginning to look like winter again as the sun set. There is a coating of snow on the deck and cars.

So we began the day with a hint of approaching spring in the air and ended the daylight hours with a firm reminder that winter was still the present season and she's not ready to acquiesce to spring just yet!

You just have to love New England where it seems you're never appropriately dressed for the weather because the weather is constantly changing throughout the day.

Reading Old Stories

While my laptop was off to Texas for a new hard drive I spent a few days reading Dark Tales by Shirley Jackson, a Penguin Classic paperback. She was the queen of delving into the cracks in our psyches and prying loose the nightmares lying deep within them. It reminded me that some of my early writing was heavily influenced by Shirley.

Two nights ago I had to go dig out binder #9 (from a sixteen binder collection of my early work in a cabinet in the den) so I could read the typewriter written copy since the story does not exist on any computer at this time. It's a dark little psychological story about a young wife's disillusionment with her marriage. Her husband already takes her for granted and never notices any changes she makes to her appearance. Then one fateful day they wind up eating at the same diner, she alone at the counter, and he with another woman in a booth. It's quite possible from the look of things that he's having an affair and that opens the cracks in the young wife's psyche and she does something truly awful.

Another story from the 90's is about the fracture in an Irish couple's marriage. The wife runs off with another man, leaving behind two young son's and a husband who is struggling with anger, disbelief that she would do such a thing, and depression. His older sister comes to help take care of the little boys who show their anxiety over the departure of their mother by becoming fearful of fairies and pookahs and such. The wayward wife and mother, meanwhile, has become disillusioned by the man who had promised her a more exciting life- he's not exactly all she thought he was, and she's thinking about going back, but afraid of how she'll be received, therefore she delays leaving her lover. Tragedy, of course, strikes.

In another story a police detective is involved with his chief's under-aged daughter. He knows it's wrong but he can't stay away from her and she's maddeningly nonchalant about his feelings for her, and then makes the mistake of telling him she has the power to destroy his career when she becomes angry with him- and he kills her. And even though he is meticulous about removing evidence from the motel room, he inadvertently leaves one damning piece of evidence behind on the bathroom sink.

I wrote a lot of darker stories back in the 90's, and I suppose, even back in high school I was entertaining myself with these kind of stories. But, like Shirley Jackson, I have a humorous side. I also have a romantic side.

And then there are the children's stories I wrote for Kelly when she was growing up. I haven't even looked at them recently!

When I go back and read older material I sometimes can't even remember writing it. I have grown and changed over the years. Sometimes the older stories and prose pieces are more lyrical then what I write these days. Hard to believe I wrote poetry, a lot of it, from ages 12 through my early 30's...but  really don't even know where all of it is anymore.

For someone who less than ten years ago didn't think she could write a novel...I've proven myself wrong a number of times! Which reminds me, I have several novels on the dining room table again...patiently waiting for me to pay some attention to them again. Soon...