Two Novels Accepted by Curiosity Quills, But...

I am pumped that Curiosity Quills, the small press in the DC area that published the very dark/suspense work Blow Up the Roses has now accepted two more novels. But.

These two mystery/suspense novels feature the same protagonist: Philip McGuire. He is burnt-out foreign correspondent who had his hand mangled in torture by the Hezbollah and quits journalism to return to his college town to buy and run a bar. Adventures come his way.

The two works (may be more; I don't know) was a kind of homage to the Travis McGee series by John D. MacDonald. I read that series not so much for the story, but because it meant I got to spend more time with Travis. His reflections on life, his mini editorials, his romances were wonderfully created by the master. I was hoping readers would want to spend time with Philip.

The first novel, Heal My Heart So I May Cry establishes his background and gives him a situation where he ends up encountering the torturer who mangled his hand when he was kidnapped in Beirut and gave up all the details he knew of the Marine compound that was later blown up with the loss of 237 soldiers.

In this novel, he has a bittersweet romance with a university journalism student that has an O. Henry ending (boy, does that date me).

Here's a taste from the beginning:

The car stopped. The hood was taken off my head. My good hand was untied from the interior car door handle. The bright sun of Beirut blinded me. My pupils squeezed tight. My eyes adjusted a little by the time they had the back door open and were pulling me out of the car so I could look again at the face of that son-of-a-bitch, the one they called Mohammed, who had taken so much joy looking into my eyes while the cutter had done his work on my hand, the hand now wrapped in the dirty napkin as I held it high against my heart. I looked at that motherfucker's face and felt the hope that hate gives. The hope that I'd see that face again and have a fair chance to get even. Fuck that. Have an unfair chance. Have any chance to get even. You and me someday, Mohammed. Give me that, God, I prayed. But God hadn't answered any of my prayers lately. Maybe I'd be due someday.

  

In the second novel, a half-Navajo and half-white character who believes he is a witch plays a major role. He calls himself "Koyoteh" (coyote). Both novels are set in Lawrence, KS, which is home to Haskell, a college for American Indians. Two Navajo girls have come up missing. Researching the Navajo culture led me to their creation story, which is as complicated and fascinating as Greek mythology. I think, and hope, I have created a full retelling of that story that is better than any that exists in any fiction work. I titled this work "A Heart to Understand." To make this novel even more complicated, the romance in this novel involves an illegal Chinese immigrant trying to sneak out of the US to go back to China and with an ulterior motive for contacting Philip.

Here's a taste of that work:

"Another Indian girl's missing, Phil."

"That's two now, isn't it."

"In two months. No bodies found. Yet. Officially, it's another missing person's case. The police still take the attitude that Indian students from Haskell run off all the time. But Navajo aren't solo runaways. Being in a group is too important to them, especially girls."

"Navajo?"

"Both have been Navajo. Could just be the odds. Highest percentage of students at Haskell are Navajo. Both had friends, left behind too many personal possessions to be runaways. Got to be kidnappings. When I was in law school I did a summer internship in a law office in Gallup. Did a lot of reading into Navajo culture and Native American sovereignty rights. Word gets around. I began to represent Native Americans around here. Some of them came to me asking if I could help them make the police investigate more. But, hell, there's not much they can do unless a body turns up. Shitty thing, isn't it, hoping a body will turn up? They're all upset and angry. Not a good combination. The Navajo believe in this cause and effect deal. They don't like having these ugly effects without understanding or knowing the cause. I'm afraid it could be a serial killer with a thing for Indian girls. And one of my clients has a daughter whose Navajo girlfriend is really spooked. I've talked to her and I've got a favor to ask."

"What's that?"

"I'd like to hide her out here."

"Out here?"

"Sure. The kidnapper must be prowling the Haskell area. He wouldn't be prowling around here. And she's really shaken. Something going on she won't tell me about. And you could use the help now that you're laid up. How about it?"

"Well, sure. If that's what you want," I said as I watched him walk to the window on the other side of the room that looked out over the drive up to the house.

"Phil?"

"Yeah."

"That Chinese girl. You said she had really long hair?"

"Down to her butt. And we're talking a tall girl here."

"Really beautiful?"

"Stunning. Even features. Sexy mouth. Full lips. High brow. Why?"

"She's walking up to your front door."

Okay, here's that but.

Editor doesn't like the titles and urges me to change them to something more consistent with the genre of mystery/suspense. I have to admit my titles, Heal My Heart So I May Cry and A Heart to Understand sound more like romance novels. I have lived with these titles so long it has become very hard for me to brainstorm within myself for new ones. But I have also learned that a writer should heed an editor's suggestion.

Friends: any ideas?

Happy to share manuscripts with anyone really interested in all of this. Guess if you're reached the end of this long blog, you may well be!

Hail Mary Pitch for Kickstarter Project

Seems appropriate to talk about the history of The Saltness of Time, the novella I want to turn into a print book using a letterpress and funded through Kickstarter. That campaign ends Dec. 3 and I'm nowhere near my goal. Very much appreciate those who have donated. If the goal isn't reached, Kickstarter will refund your donation. I even received $100 donation from this person: Алексей Ухловский.  Anyone translate that for me?

But if you're interested in reading this work, even without donating, no problem. The Saltness of Time, is available as an ebook and it is also included in the paperback collection of stories, One More Victim. I consider them literary works and worry: does that label turn off many readers? Does it you?

 

Here's the back story on Saltnesss. In my 20s (in Lawrence, KS, and in Florence, Italy, and in Oiso, Japan) I was writing. Trying to write. Probably the Hemingway Nick stories influenced me. But I had a vision of creating a series of linked stories featuring myself in high school and my best friend I called Fred. Some Fred stories worked out (those are in the One More Victim collection, too). Some stories you learn to give up on; some you go back to. The Saltness of Time was one that kept pulling me back. But it wasn't until my 40s that I reentered it in a serious and productive way.

***

An aside here: young writers, be patient; let things fester inside you. Don't think you've failed before you have. Don't think you've succeeded before you have. Many stories are like wine: they need time in the cask. Don't get drunk too soon on them; don't give up on them either. Or, don't listen to me at all. Seems plenty of young writers are doing much better than am I in this epublishing business. Maybe the best route is to ignore geezers like me.

***

Writing the novel Crazy About You, I discovered a technique that seemed to work for me. It was in first person, but allowed a kind of leaping forward for the character so he could look back upon himself. Just because you are in first person doesn't mean you have to stay in the present.

An example from Crazy:

At the drive-in, Gwendolyn and I both had chocolate malts with our cheeseburgers. Was beef better then? Was milk sweeter? Why is it that a chocolate malt and a cheeseburger is never as good as it was in high school? As we get older do our tastes become jaded, too, the way our ideals do?

The main character in The Saltness of Time is relating his story to a captive group of listeners in the present. But he's talking about the past.

That made Saltness complicated to write. The reader learns the story through the narrator who is one of the listeners, but 90 percent of the story is listening to what the main character says. And then the story teller tells a story that was told to him, so there is a story within a story. This technique created interesting tensions. It also provided the listening narrator in the present with opportunities to comment on the speaker of the tale.

Maybe this taste will clarify the above mush:

He was a little spooky. But I figured he was harmless. And there were myself and Ted to protect the girls, snuggling against us as we sat on the divan. We both had our arms around our respective women, sharing the commingled warmth of our young bodies in front of the fire, the only source of heat in the hotel. Sleeping arrangements had yet to be worked out. We had taken two rooms and, by looking at Ted, I could tell he was sharing the same hope I had: that we would take our girlfriends to our own beds, as we each certainly had done in the past, but neither of us knowing if the sisters would acknowledge that fact to each other through the act of allowing it to occur again in the presence of the other. The alternative was unappealing: sharing the narrow, double bed with Ted.

The stranger sat in an overstuffed chair near the fire, getting up as needed to feed it new logs.

"I haven't told many people this story. Perhaps you'd rather not hear it. I know how hard it is for young people to listen about what rocked the hearts and flamed the passions of old people when they were young. It seems so long ago it's hard to believe lives back then were blood and bone real. And what happened to me that night reached back into the last century. I mean, Gabrielle was born in the 1880s. No, wait, might as well get it right. She was eighty-nine when we ran across her and that was in 1963, so she would have been born in..." He stopped briefly to calculate in his head and Stephie, the little math whiz, spoke up with the answer, "1874."

This approach, too, gifted to me the best ending sentence I've written for any of my works. (Shame on any of you who get The Saltness of Time and skip to the ending!)

The phrase "saltness of time" comes from Shakespeare ("Some smack of age in you, some relish of the saltness of time," Henry IV, part II). I was thinking more of the salt beds of the dried-up, inland sea below the rich soil of the Kansas prairie. And, of course, the salt beds, too, within each of us that we develop with time.

But back to the whole Kickstarter business. Don't you think this would be a wonderful read in a print book from a letterpress book, hardbound by an old fashioned bindery? Hope you do. $100 donation would get you that book.