Saalon Muyo

I had to go back to see when I’d hit my 200th post. It took a while, because it’s been two years. Two years for a hundred posts.  Not an awe inspiring rate. When you consider that almost half of those posts were written in the past three months, it’s downright embarrassing.  Not because I wasn’t blogging, but that it was a reflection of how writing has gone for me over the past two years.

In December of 2009 I started my job at the Cultural Trust.  New jobs are a huge disruption. I lose half of a year, at best, to the pressure of fitting into a new home.  Starting at the Trust was far, far worse. Because of how much I still had to learn about development, the better part of a year slipped into the void.  My job was my life.

I was talking with my friend Danielle on Monday, and she asked me a question.  Do I consider myself a writer or a programmer? There were a few ways I could have answered, all technically true.

I’m both.

I’m one now but am trying to transition into the other.

I’m barely a journeyman at both, so who knows?

My answer to her was, I think, more honest than those.  I told her it’s tough to say, because I get paid to do one, but not the other. But I do one without pay, and I don’t know if I’d keep doing the other without it.

I’ve done alright at being a writer.  I have done a miserable job of finding a way to get paid for it.  This isn’t just a problem for my ego.  A paycheck would mean it’s a job, too. It would mean I didn’t have to squeeze out another thousand words after a day spent slamming my head into a website.  Even a small amount of money could be the difference between needing to spend five days programming or four.

So this is where I say enough.

No, not enough writing. Enough wanting. Enough hoping.  I need a plan.

The plan starts today.

I’m going to keep it manageable.  I’m only worried about the next year. Since I know something just north of squat about getting paid for this, I could end up next year with little to show. The plan might need to change midway, anyway, so a year is as far out as I want to think. So, what’s the plan?

Wait, I actually need to come up with one? Um. Hold on a second.

Ok, plan.

First, I have a finished novel. The most important possible thing is for this novel to get into print.  The best case scenario is for publication, even with the tiniest possible press in the world. As much as I would love fame, fortune and the adoration of women for Broken Magic, what I really need are publication credits. I need a resume. I need a book in the wild. I’ll self-publish if that’s what it takes, but I’m not quite there, yet. So here’s step one: If no one has agreed to publish Broken Magic by March, 2012, I’ll publish it myself.

Second, I need another novel. It’s been years since I wrote Broken Magic and it’s embarrassing. More importantly, if I’ve gotten a publication credit on my resume, then I need something that said credit helps me publish. So, step 2: Write the first draft of Mimesis by June 2012. Finish the second draft by November, 2012.  The upside to this is I’ll have a finished novel before the world ends in December.

Third, I’ve been running from film long enough. I’ve been working on a webseries idea with Rachel and it’s weird and interesting and it’s something I can film. I don’t have a lot of hope for anything I film making me money or leading directly to fame and glory, but it’d something with my name people could see. So step 3: Film a short webseries in the summer of 2012. Release it before the end of the year.

Simple, right? 2012 isn’t already making me feel weak and nauseated or anything. No. Not me.

This plan has implications. I’m still going to be working a full time, mind shredding programming job. I’m going to have crises I can’t foresee and vacations and mental breakdowns and any number of other problems. I’m going to hate what I’m writing, have writer’s block, get inspired by something not on the plan. It’s going to be really, really hard. That means I have no idea what my free time is going to look like next year. I’ll do what I can not to vanish. If nothing else, you’ll see me online.

We’ll call this the draft version of the plan. If you have thoughts, suggestions, ideas, hopes or complaints, let me know. But next year, I’m making progress. I’m moving forward.

Or at least, I’m giving it my best possible effort.

Vow made on my 300th post. See you at 400.

Another day month, another tanka.

Your shirt drifts up and
you catch sunset on your skin.
I say something else,
as if I don’t notice this
is a moment that will pass.

The story starts on Thanksgiving. Any Thanksgiving, it doesn’t matter. The family sits down – there are a lot of us, enough that we have to push the kitchen and dining room tables together – and the food gets set out. People take a few bites before it begins.

“I don’t even like turkey.”

It’s usually my grandmother who gets things going, but if not, she’s onboard immediately.  This meal, this cake-eater, Thanksgiving meal, is too much work for something nobody likes anyway. Oh, sure, we love the stuffing and the sweet potatoes and the cranberry and the gravy (ok, who doesn’t like the gravy?), but the turkey? That thing’s a bitch. It takes forever to cook and you’re always afraid it’ll dry out before the inside’s done and then you have to carve the thing and then nobody even wants it.  The griping goes on for a little bit before someone makes a suggestion.

“Why don’t we just cook the turkey breast next year?”

Agreement. Hearty agreement. That’ll give us the meat we need, it’ll still be Thanksgiving, but cooking it will be so much easier. Sometimes, for variety, the suggestion is that we do a chicken instead, but the point is the same: easier, simpler, and maybe people will even like it better.  By the end of the night, it’s decided. Next year will be different.

This conversation’s been going for fifteen years.

I didn’t learn why until I took over the cooking of the bird.  We had our pre-Thanksgiving pow-wow to decide what we were going to buy, and we – we being me, my mom and my grandmother – decided that we’d try out cooking just a turkey breast this year and see how that went.  Lovely. Fantastic. No whole bird.  We were actually doing it.  I ordered this giant, organically grown local turkey breast that could feed the whole family, got my recipes together and prepared for the big day.

A week before Thanksgiving, I get a call from my mom.  ”Grandma bought a turkey,” she says.

“What? I already have a breast. It’s like a million pounds. Why do we need a turkey, too?”

“She wants something to stuff.”

Things descended quickly into a shouting match about who they thought was going to cook both a turkey and a breast, and anyway, why had I gone out and bought an expensive and gigantic turkey tit if we were just going to end up with a Butterball anyway?  The shouting match continued through the week and on into Thanksgiving morning itself. A two-oven strategy was devised, where I would cook the breast and grandma would stuff the bird.  Compromise.

Food gets laid out. Family starts to eat.

“I don’t even like turkey.”

Two years later, I gave up.  My family had cyclical Thanksgiving psychosis and there’s no way I could cure it.  I decided to opt out of the whole turkey process. Every year it was something new. A different last minute change, a slight variant on the argument. But it always ended the same, with a family who didn’t even want the thing. Rather than subject myself to the Groundhog Day-like horror of it all, I told my family to give me something else to cook and subject themselves to the turkey that they just couldn’t quit.

This was last year. The night before the big day, my mom calls, all desperate, because my grandmother has dumped off the turkey on them and they have no idea what to do with it. Could I please, please, please come help?  The shouting the previous two years had nothing on the righteous Thanksgiving fury that followed.  A full morning of rage, of my shouting while I grudgingly went about roasting that stupid, stupid bird. Why am I cooking this thing if everyone hates it? Why doesn’t one of the people who keeps forcing us to serve this bird at the last minute come over here and cook the damn thing themselves! I am so sick of this holiday! I’m going out of town next year,  just you see!

Well, it’s Thanksgiving again, and here I am. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about this holiday, it’s that there is no escape from it. On the phone with my mom last week, I had one request. “I don’t care what we cook or how we cook it. Just please decide everything now. If I wake up Thursday to another turkey surprise, I’m going to lose it.”

I shouldn’t have even bothered. After all, there are two certainties on Thanksgiving.

I’ll lose it.

And everyone will hate the turkey.

The apocalyptic month of October, which stretched its Cthuluian tentacles far into November, is finally over. That’s right, friends. The Cultural Trust’s new website is live!

Seriously, check it out!

One thing that’s no fun about being a programmer is that the majority of what you do is meaningless to friends and family.  I’ve built a few really cool things in my career, but you can’t go home and say, “Mom! Look what your son did today! He built an entirely functional model to handle dynamic pricing for flex packages!” Not unless you like that glazed over look people get when you describe technology to them.

Today, though? Today is awesome. Today I can point with a jittery, anxious hand to a brand new website and say that it’s mine. My website. The one I built with my hands. Use it, and you’re using stuff I built. The thing near killed me a few weeks ago. There were a few days of catastrophic stress levels in there. By the end, the stress of it had crept into every other aspect of my life. Erin could almost certainly count the number of days I didn’t come home ranting desperately on one hand.  This has been, hands down, the most stressful month of my life in memory. But look! There be website here!

So what didn’t I do for the site? Well, I don’t do graphics, so anything pretty was the work of graphic designers. While I can execute a layout, I can’t design them, so the look of the site was drawn, so to speak, by someone else, but implemented and coded by me. While programming is a lot like writing, it is nothing like visual design, so I suck at it as badly as I have my entire life. I know just enough about visual art to be seethingly jealous of those good at it. Also there are a few bits of functionality – that spinning carousel thing on the home page – that are free, downloaded website plugins that I then customized. Writing code means knowing when to steal code. I know when to steal code.

The rest is all me. There are a lot of cool things about it that you can’t see, but the neatest is this: If you troll around, you’ll see a lot of event information. When things are coming up, links to buy tickets, and all of that. That information? It all pulls from our ticketing site, culturaldistrict.org (which I co-developed, and which is now all mine for the foreseeable future) with the power of hot, sticky, Ruby API magic. No one has to enter events a second time into the new site. It just slurps them in and shows them. Considering our old site was The Stinky Pit Of Duplicate Effort, this is a big deal. And I built it. Give me a moment to high five myself.

This means that I can spend the weekend recovering.  Since I have no idea how I come off to people (not kidding. at all.), I’m not sure how much of a basket case I’ve seemed for the past month and a half. If it’s been excruciating, it’s hopefully coming to an end.  If not, cool. No idea how I pretended to keep it together.

Now let’s go down to the pub and grab some drinks, yeah?

You can read Part 1 here.

The first time I saw it, I wasn’t interested.  The cover caught my attention, so I pulled it off the shelf and flipped it over.  Something about the description put me off, though I don’t recall what it was.  I remember thinking, “This could go either way. It’ll probably be pretentious.”  I placed it back on the shelf and moved on.

I came back.  You know how some books just call out to you? How there’s something between the marketing copy and the cover and praising quotes that screams out that this is a book just for you? (Or is that just me?) Speak wanted me to read it. It took me a while to get the message, but before long I was back at the shelf, wondering why I’d put it back the first time. I hadn’t a clue. I took it to the register.

Speak is Laurie Halse Anderson’s first, and best, novel.  It’s not a book I like to describe in any detail, because the plot is so simple that it’s hard not to give the whole thing away in a blurb.  Melinda is starting high school, and something very bad happened over the summer.  She’s been abandoned by her friends, alienated from her family, and can’t find the words to speak about any of it. It’s about how we blame ourselves for terrible things that happened to us, and how shame and fear and loneliness force us into silence.

It’s more than just a great story to me. Speak shifted something in my head and in my heart. There was something so raw and personal in the narrative, something utterly immediate about it all.  In most of the young adult fiction I’d read, there were good characters, but they rarely felt like real teenagers.  I love Vicky from A Ring of Endless Light, but she’s a step detached from the way it felt to be that age.  Most of the really good young adult fiction gives its characters the right problems. They feel the right things. They just don’t feel them the way, or with the intensity, that I want. Speak was the real deal. Speak was being in high school again.

One of the reasons I’d jumped from kids’ books to Stephen King was It. Unlike the books written for my age group, It didn’t screw around. The kids’ heads were a bigger mess even than their lives.  Speak felt the same way. Melinda was real.  Not just the pain and loneliness, but her perspective, her wit, her sense of humor.  No one is a simple reflection of the big bad thing happening at that moment in their lives.  The rest is still in there, laughing and snarking and screaming at everything happening around us.

Speak isn’t the only book to strike so personal a tone, or to do it so successfully. But it was the one I read at the right moment, when I was ready to understand it.  The difference between books we love and books that change us can be found there, in the timing of finding them.  For me, Speak was the first time I really understood what being personal meant in a story. It taught me the line between a novel telling a story and being that story.

When things fell into place for my first novel, it was no surprise that it was the story of a teenager I wanted to tell.  I didn’t, and don’t, consider myself a young adult writer. If you backed me into a corner, I’d say I was a fantasy author first and foremost.  But after Speak, I knew I had to find that tone, to find my way that far inside of a story.  Maybe it was because a young adult novel had opened my eyes, or maybe the most raw and turbulent emotions in memory were of my senior year of high school, but a young adult novel was the only possible choice.

It’s odd to think about how those little choices push us into place.  Without the Coming of Age Literature class, there’s no way I end up in the young adult section of Barnes and Noble to see Speak.  Without Speak, I haven’t a clue what I’d have written, or even if it would have been any good.  A few steps taken out of laziness and intuition, and I find myself, years later, with a young adult novel behind me and a second down the road.

Thank God I didn’t take a class in mid-20th century American depresso-lit, right?

Ten years ago, I would have laughed if you’d told me I’d be writing young adult novels.  I barely read young adult novels when I was a young adult. Other than reading seemingly every single Three Investigators book, A Wrinkle in Time, that Tripod trilogy and a few I’m sure I’ve forgotten, I basically skipped from Mouse and the Motorcycle and Ramona books straight into It and The Stand and every single Anne Rice vampire novel in print. One of my friends in junior high had already jumped to cool, edgy adult books, you see, and peer pressure dragged me along.

It took a misunderstanding to change things.  For someone who hated every English and Literature class he took in high school, filling a humanities requirement feels like signing up to fight Tarmon Gai’don. They’re all different flavors of excruciating pain and humiliation, and the best for which you can hope is that you get to read a good book or two (that they’ll ruin with inane analytical essays) and a final grade that won’t kill your GPA. Scanning the list of available classes, one caught my eye as more interesting than the rest. It must have been because it sounded different. Not another review of 18th century European romanticism or examination of mid-20th century American depresso-lit. The subject? Coming of Age Literature.

Hey, I loved Catcher in the Rye. It would be more stuff like that, right?  Vast swaths of fantasy are basically sword-and-sorcery enhanced coming of age tales. This would be cool!

On the first day of class, I got the reading list. It started with The Hobbit. The excitement stopped there. What the hell was this list of books? Catherine Called Birdie? Hatchet? The Chocolate War? These were frakking kids’ books! I didn’t go to college to read kids’ books! This was an offense, a travesty, an insult to every functional brain cell in my noggin. This. Would. Not. Stand.

But if I change classes, I’d have to do…oh…never mind. You know what? Griping will be way easier than taking a stand.

Things did not start well. I loathed Catherine Called Birdie with every fiber of my being. It was every bit the simpering kiddy crap I was certain this class was passing off as real fiction. The next two were better, but still kids’ books.

Something was happening, despite the parade of insults the professor had marching over my refined taste. I was starting to like the stuff. Maybe it was because, unlike so many literature teachers, she didn’t bristle when I wrote scathing essays about the books. Maybe it was because there was a real passion for what she had us reading, a passion that couldn’t be there simply to mask laziness or bad taste. She cared about this stuff.  It took a while, but I started to get why. The books got better, my indignation faded, and I started looking forward to the next book.

That class? It changed my life. I did my final project on Madeleine L’Engle. I read every one of her Kairos books, not like they were an assignment, but like a ravenous fan that couldn’t stop. These weren’t books for children. They were books about growing up.  Sure, like every genre, there’s a pile of pandering garbage, but this wasn’t a lesser genre. God, I had been treating it the way people treated Science Fiction and Fantasy. I was an elitist jerk. And I was wrong.

It depresses me that I can’t remember the name of that professor. She was incredible, and she conned me into see things her way by letting me tell her how silly and wrong her way was without failing me for my effort. I left the class no longer seeing young adult books as something less than other books. They were just stories from a different perspective, that’s all. The name of the class hadn’t been a lie, or a misdirection. Calling it young adult fiction minimized it. This was coming of age literature.

I still wasn’t going to write the stuff, though. That came later, after a book called Speak.

Part 2 is available here.

To everyone who read, commented on, or passed along word of the first two chapters of Broken Magic (which you can find here and here): Thank you. I don’t break out the bold lightly. I’m an italics sort of guy. The bold is for you, to show you how much it meant for you to stop by and participate.  It really and truly helped, and I can’t thank you enough. High fives and cookies for everyone.

Where does that leave me and my novel? Let’s start with the novel.

I have two choices with Broken Magic. I can send it out to more publishers and agents and see where that leads. Broken Magic is, and always has been, a bit of a hard sell. Especially for a first novel, it doesn’t have the kind of showy plot features that make it easy to pitch. It was the book I wanted to write, and I love it dearly, but it’s not doing my any favors with publishers. The other option is that I self-publish. I’ve been circling that idea for the past 6 months, and while I’m not opposed, the idea of marketing my novel makes me want to lie down and sleep. I’m a terrible marketer, and if I go the self-publishing route, I need to stop being terrible. I have absolutely no idea how.

I’m planning on doing both. Or, at least, continuing to query while I look into doing it myself. I hope to have another query or two out this weekend, and while I wait, I’m going to look into my options for self-publishing. Advice on the latter would be appreciated.  The important thing is this: Getting it out in front of people has made dealing with Broken Magic urgent again. A mixture of hopelessness and despair had been sapping my will, and I was starting to hide from it. This has shaken something loose. I’m going to take advantage of it. Like, now.  I’ll keep you all in the loop.

What about me?

Here’s something I never expected to happen after I finished my first novel, especially before it even got published: It really, really psyched me out. Though I’ve written a fair bit since, I’ve made no meaningful progress on a second novel.  Not for lack of trying, either. There are two projects between which I’ve bounced. All I’ve got to show for them are piles of notes. Why? While Broken Magic is by and large a quiet, low key thing, it has a special distinction. It was the first time I wrote something that sounded like me, through and through.

You spend the first million words you write chasing your own voice. You can hear it when you think a story through, but the words that end up on paper, for a very long time, are a corruption.  The voice you hear in your head rings clear as a tuning fork; you know when what’s on paper is off key.  Broken Magic, whatever its other merits or flaws, was when everything fell into harmony, and when I finally saw myself in all the threads of the tapestry.

It scared the ever loving hell out of me. Because what if I couldn’t do that again?

Broken Magic is closer to the bone than I usually write, which probably made it easier to make friends with my prose and get it to play along.  There’s been a voice ever since, asking if the only reason I got this one right was because I’d cannibalized so many of my own neuroses in its construction. Broken Magic isn’t a story about me, but it’s a much less obfuscated look into my head than I normally write. What if that’s the only reason it worked? What if I can’t find myself again when a story requires more smoke and mirrors?

I know that’s nonsense. But it wormed its way in and only time and distance dug it out. For the first time since Broken Magic, the heartbeat of that next novel is loud and clear, and hasn’t slipped away regardless of my other work and writing. That means it’s time to write again. Not something I intend to throw away (and, yes, in the last year I’ve written two novellas I never intended to publish; don’t ask), but something that matters.

That’s where I am, and that’s where Broken Magic is. If I haven’t said it enough, let me say it one more time. Thank you, so much, for the support. I didn’t expect this all to help. It did. Thank you.

(If you missed it, you can read chapter 1 of Broken Magic here.)

What is Broken Magic?

We all have our kryptonite. People who push just the right buttons, who make some idiot part of your brain start singing about capital R Romance. That’s just about when you run head first into a wall. Whatever it is about them that grabs your brain and shakes it is fantasy, and fantasy works best from afar.  Get too close and things get real. The fantasy breaks. Or you break, hoping if you do, the fantasy will stick around. It’s not always the other person’s fault. It’s yours, and your fantasy’s. You can become a slave to chasing it if you let yourself.

Magic’s like that. Uncontrollable, as likely to burn as to bless. But seductive. Not in spite of. Because of.

Broken Magic is about fantasy and magic, and the cost of trying to control them. Also theater, and high school, and finding yourself through painful and embarrassing mistakes. I could have stopped that sentence at “high school.”

Now, chapter 2.

2. Thanks, Babe

Somehow, I go from sitting next to Laura, feeling uncomfortable, to sitting at a table with Ridley, Celeste and all of their trendy, musically literate friends – and feeling way more uncomfortable.  I think this is what happened: Laura accepted an invitation to hang with Ridley for a bit, and I followed her without a thought.

Here’s what I’m not so sure about.  Did I follow Laura because I wanted to be close to her, or because it happened to put me at a table with Celeste?  If I said I did it because it got me away from the teen thespian squad, would you pretend to believe me?

The musicians and groupies, or whatever you call the group of friends every local musician brings with them to gigs, have pushed four tables together.  At one end of the line of tables sits Ridley.  And Laura.  I am not at the end with them.  Through confusion that may or may not have been faked, I became separated from Laura as soon as the tables were rearranged.  I took the first convenient, open seat.  That put me directly to the left of Celeste.  Go figure.

Everyone starts heaping praise onto the musicians.  They say intelligent sounding things that really aren’t intelligent at all.  It’s like someone opened up Rolling Stone and started reading random phrases out of the music reviews.  But Ridley’s expression makes it clear he’s digging it, so who knows?  Attention turns to Celeste, and I finally have an excuse to really look at her without having to stare.  I don’t bother to pay attention to what everyone is saying.  I could care less.

I try to figure out how I’ll describe her to people, later. I can’t say she’s beautiful, because that doesn’t get it right.  I know I said cute before, but I’m talking about someone I can’t take my eyes off, not my cat. It’s like her features are a bit off, but somehow fit together perfectly. Eyes just a little too large. Cheeks slightly too pronounced.  Hair too messy to have been styled, yet too tame to be unplanned.  Pale, but not vampiric, skin.  She sounds more like a deviantART drawing than a person, doesn’t she? I’m doing a terrible job of this.

By this time, the hangers-on have turned their attention back to Ridley.  In response, I think, to something Laura has said.  I must have missed it.  This leaves me with a second more to watch Celeste before it gets creepy.  Unless, of course, I say something.  Which is impossible.  I’m a coward.  I’m a coward with nothing of worth to say.

“You sounded great.”  Ugh.  Should have kept my mouth shut.

Celeste’s eyes move to me, and she smiles. When she speaks, she sounds just a little bit shy.  Shy I was not expecting.

“Yeah?”

I tell myself this is not time to turn into jelly and mumble off a few idiotic comments and spend all week regretting it. Then I squeak out a pitiful, “Yeah.”

“I don’t know.  I’m just filling in.  I don’t have much experience on stage yet, you know?  This was just practice,” she says, continuing to smile, like I’m doing nothing wrong. Like she’s not already looking for the exit ramp for this conversation. Like she wants to talk to me.

“Then I guess I can’t wait to hear the real thing,” I say, sounding suddenly all confident and smooth. Like I’m good at this. Only I’m not.  It’s just her that smile is making it impossible to feel awkward.

“You mean that?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Wow.  Thanks, babe.  That really means a lot, coming from someone who just met me.”  She grabs my hand, the one I’ve got lying on the table, and shakes it.  “I’m Celeste, in case you missed it the ten times Ridley introduced me.”

“Neil,” I say, and let go before I give myself the idea that the cool touch of her hand means more than hello. Boyfriend. She has one. She’s friendly, not interested.

Ever notice that the outside world has a real problem keeping to itself?  It sends its favorite agents of annoyance, the trio of doom, straight to the table to make a scene.

“Hey, some of us need to work tomorrow, Laura.”  It’s Karen who speaks, with the other two standing behind her, nodding.  I look up to watch, and so does most of the table.

Laura, interrupted in the middle of flirting with Ridley, doesn’t turn immediately.  I know that kind of look.  She’s trying to come up with a reason to stay that doesn’t give her away to Ridley.  Flirting is like that.   Owning up to your interest kills the whole game.  Admitting attraction comes later.  With open mouths.  And tongues.

Or so I hear.

“You guys drove separately.  We don’t have to go home together.”  It’s a weak try, especially for Laura.

Karen glances back at the table, pretending to care about other people and their needs.  The only time she can act is when she’s screwing someone over.  “Sally has to work, too, but she didn’t want to say anything.”

Laura relents.  She was Sally’s ride.  “Give me a minute, ok?”

Karen smiles.  A win.  “Sure.  We’ll get our coats.”

Celeste is still over my shoulder, but I can’t bring myself to look at her.  I don’t want to say goodbye right now.  I’m never, ever going to see this girl again.  What was the point of even meeting her?  It’s not like I can ask her for her phone number.

  “So,” she says, maybe a little disappointed.  Maybe. I turn before she finishes the sentence.  “I guess that means you’ll be going, too.”

“Unfortunately.”  I manage to say it with a smile.

“Definitely unfortunate.”

Ever watch any anime?  You know how, when they get surprised, their blinking makes this plink plink noise?  That’s basically my response.

“Neil,” I hear Laura say from behind me, “let’s go.”  She sounds pissed. If she can’t stay, no one can.

I try the talking thing again, one last time.  Not to Laura.  “Well, it was great getting to meet you.  Maybe I’ll get lucky and run into you again.”

“Yeah,” Celeste says, still smiling.  Then she, I don’t know, bounces in her chair and makes a sort of “Oh!” noise.  It’s a little weird.  “I’ll be playing again in two weeks at the Quiet Storm. Eight o’clock.  There’ll be some kind of party afterwards, too.  You definitely should come.”

Is she…inviting me to a party?  What the hell is going on?  “The Quiet Storm?”

“Neil!”  Everyone’s impatient with Laura, so she’s taking it out on me.  I gracefully ignore it.

“It’s on, um,” Celeste nods quickly as she tries to remember, “oh!  Yeah.  Penn Avenue in Bloomfield.  You know where that is?”

Laura again:  “Neil!  Come on!”

“No, I don’t,” I say, getting up from my chair as I talk.  “But I’ll find out.”

Celeste gets up too, and, God help me, she’s still smiling.  Boyfriend, boyfriend, boyfriend.  She says, “Great!  It’s Saturday at 8. Not the next one. The one after.”

“Cool. Right. I’d, uh, better go.  Now.”

“Thanks for the support.  Seriously.”  She waves.  “See you Saturday.”

I can’t wave.  I’m pushing in my chair and trying to back towards the door before I get killed.  I nod and smile, and hope I don’t look like a moron.  When I reach the door, I’m greeted by glares from just about everyone.  I ignore them.  There’ll be plenty of time later to worry about Laura hating me.  First, I need to figure out how to get myself back into the city in two weeks.

In case you missed me flogging this video on Twitter yesterday (and you’re as behind the times in seeing this as I am), I give you this as thanks for your support yesterday.

Something retro on my necklace!

I finished my first novel, Broken Magic, in 2007. Since then, it’s seen the inboxes of about a dozen publishers and agents.  When there was a response at all, it was what you’d expect: Sorry, but it’s not what we’re looking for.  There have been gaps where I just gave up, gaps which are the greatest cause of embarrassment for me. I mean, I got through the pain and suffering of finishing a novel, only to sit on a query letter for eight months?  One of those queries are out right now, and I’m coming up on the point at which I need to decide that I’m never going to see a response.  The Silent No. The only thing worse than the Form Letter No.

That leaves me with a choice. Do I continue to send out letters, or do I decide that this is not a novel that will be published?  Before the latest round went out, I’d been on the verge of self-publishing.  I’m sick of the thing sitting, mostly unread, on my hard drive.  I like it. I wouldn’t still be sending out rejection bait if I didn’t.  But it was finished so long ago that it’s getting to be a bit of a drag to have to talk about it in the abstract.

Today, I got dared.  I should have made them double dog dare me, but I fold like a 1,000 thread count bedsheet.  The dare? To post the first chapter of Broken Magic for all to see.  Or, to be more specific, for all ten of my readers to see.  Because I fold so easily, I agreed. And because I’ll talk myself out of it if I give it too much time, I decided I’d need to do it immediately.  I hope, in some way, posting this will force my mind to make a decision, and that next week I’ll be sending out another query letter, or formatting Broken Magic for publication on my own. Because the first two chapters form a more coherent mini-story than the first chapter alone, I’ll be posting chapter 2 – “Thanks, Babe” – on Monday.

Beyond that, without further ado, the first chapter of Broken Magic.

1. Small Blonde Thing

There is someone playing music in the back of the room, right hand making maddened up-and-down motions across guitar strings.  I can’t hear a note of it.  Instead, there is the screeching, bubbling nightmare-sound of hot steam forced through milk.  I’m paying more attention to a college student making cappuccino than the musician.  I can’t remember the guitarist’s name, but I’m pretty sure the girl making cappuccino is Ann.

I haven’t come alone.  There are ten other people with me, spread out across three tables.  All theater kids.  I guess I’m one, too, but I don’t feel like it.  Last week was the deadline to join tech crew.  I signed up on Friday.  Today is Saturday.

I’m out of place.  With the theater clique.  With everyone in this place, this coffee shop not meant for suburban high school posers.  At least I’ve learned enough about coffee to have ordered without sounding like an idiot.  I can only hope knowing the difference between a latte and cappuccino is enough to keep anyone here from realizing I don’t belong.

Ann, or whatever her name is, turns off the steam.  Musician-guy finishes a song.  Another one begins.  It is ten minutes before I fall very, very hard for someone I’ve never met.

For now, I’m here because of the girl to my left.  I’ve never done theater before.  The only theater I’ve seen? Musicals.  I’m not even sure if I like theater.  But she’s the best actress in school.  If you want to spend time with her, you’re going to have to be near a stage.  Her name is Laura, and I’ve been mooning over her for two months.  It took me all of that time to get the courage to sign up for tech crew.  Where I found the cojones to sit next to her, I’ll never know.

Laura knows I exist just long enough to say hello to me.  Then she’s talking to a friend, flirting with one of the fifteen other guys in the room who aren’t me, or just plain ignoring me.

At the moment, I think she’s perfect.

Most of the people with me are girls.  There’s Sally, a sophomore, who is either Laura’s protégé or rival, depending on what day it is.  Janet Haller, who I’ve never heard called by anything less than her full name.   Kevin, Greg and Karen, the trio of doom, the worst actors in the school whose only talent is bulldozing over other people’s good ideas.  Paula, who threw up on stage on opening night during last year’s musical.  She won’t be getting another lead.  Nina and Francie, the token lesbians of the theater program, who aren’t actually lesbians at all.  But being called dyke is the price you pay for dressing in black, doing theater and hanging out with another girl all the time.  Actually, being called dyke is the price you pay for going to high school, being female and not dressing in Tommy.  Nina and Francie are just easier targets.

And there’s Laura.  Queen of the theater.  Short red hair.  Dressed in the kind of almost-ratty, old-looking clothes that only a trendy actress could pull off.  I don’t think they even match.  Tall and thin, small busted but shapely.  She’s beautiful, she’s talented, and I’m pretty sure she isn’t wearing a bra.

Everyone female is enamored with the man playing music.  Laura set the tone as soon as we sat down.  “Damn,” she said, and that was enough.  No one has spoken since.  That half of every song was obscured by cappuccino-sound is irrelevant.  A hot man is playing music, and conversation can wait.

I have lots of time to think about how the music really isn’t all that good.  Simplistic.  Trite lyrics.  Lots of stupid crowd pleasing ad-libs, like inserting the name of the coffee shop into the song.  I think of voicing them, tearing the man apart to take some attention away from him.  But really I just want to talk to Laura, or listen to her talk, or imagine that she has something resembling attraction to me.  That last one is sort of hard, what with the need for a drool cup every time music-guy starts a new song.

Rebellion begins with the trio of doom.  Whether or not they’re enjoying the music, or find music-guy attractive, is not the point.  Fifteen minutes of silence because Laura wants to gawk is far too much.  Greg fires the first shot.  “You think he’d go out with me?”

Laura peels her attention off of music-guy.  Turns to Greg.  Her ability to switch moods on command is frightening.  Remember, she’s an actress. “Don’t be a tool.”

“He’s probably would.”  Everything Karen says has a lazy slur to it, like she’s barely got the energy to speak.  It irritates the hell out of me.  “Grunge isn’t your type, though.”

Greg shrugs.  “True.”

“But he’s definitely hot,” Kevin adds, making sure to keep an eye on Laura as he talks.

Laura knows what they’re doing.  Getting her angry is what they want, and Laura isn’t the alpha for nothing.  “You really think he’s gay?”  She says it like she’s disappointed.  Like she believes them.   For a second, I wonder if the trio has won this round.

“He’s a little bit feminine,” Greg says.

Karen nods in agreement, suddenly acting sympathetic.  “He’s got the aura, you know?”

Laura considers this for a moment.  Everyone at the table slides a little forward in their seats.  I want them to be right.  I want music-guy to be gay so she can stop staring at him.  But I don’t want to see her dropped a peg by these three.  Stupid conflicting emotions.  Why did I come here tonight, anyway?

A song reaches its banal conclusion.

“I think I’ll just go ask him out for you.  We’ll know for sure, then.”  Laura’s response comes out all happy and helpful.  It’s enough of a shock that no one moves to stop her in the second it takes her to get out of her seat and walk away from the table.  Greg’s mouth opens.  Closes.  Everyone but the trio holds back laughter.

The guitarist looks up as Laura approaches.  She smiles at him.  He smiles back.  The likelihood of his homosexuality seems slim.  Then Laura is whispering into his ear, and I – like everyone else – am wondering if this was a bluff by Laura, or an object lesson for anyone interested in staging a coup before this year’s musical.  Music-guy laughs.  Just a little.  Karen squeezes Greg’s hand.

“Uh, hey everyone.  I just got asked a question by uh…what’s your name?”  The music-guy asks the question like he’s about to ask her out.  I hate him and his generic music.

Laura answers quietly, so only music-man can hear him.

“Laura.  Nice to meet you, Laura.  I’m Ridley.”  He laughs a little and turns back to the crowd.  “Anyway it was a well timed question, because I’m about to take a break anyway and introduce you to someone special.  While I get some coffee, you get to be the first to hear the best new musician in the city.  Uh, Celeste?  Wanna stand up?”

At a table between me and Ridley, a small blonde thing stands.  All I see is the back of a white tank top, a calf-length, blue and green skirt and short hair.  She turns to look at the crowd, but shyly, so no one really gets a look at her at all.

“This is Celeste, and no, I’m not just lucky enough to have someone as talented as her to play while I’m on break.  I’m lucky enough to be dating someone as talented as her.”  Not gay, but not available.  Perfect.  He turns to our table.  “So, sorry Greg, I’m taken.  You seem like a nice guy, though.”

Rippling laughter moves across the crowd.  If the redness in Greg’s cheeks is embarrassment or anger I’m not sure.  Advantage, Laura.  She won’t be flirting with a hot guitarist tonight, but public humiliation will be enough to keep the trio from bringing that fact up.  Her work done, Laura gives a little wave to Ridley and walks back to the table.  If it had been me, I’d be still awkwardly standing there, making a fool out of myself.  Laura knows how and when to make an exit.  Ridley even waves back before continuing.

“Anyway, enjoy the show.  I’ll be back on for another set in a while.”  Celeste, the small blonde thing, walks up to the stage.  Ridley touches her hand,  kisses her cheek, and heads straight to the counter to order something trendy.

Laura returns to the table and gives the trio a look.  Remember your place, it says.  Then she looks at me.  At me.  Triumphantly.  I try to return the look, and fail miserably, I’m sure.  Before I feel awkward, I look away.

Celeste sits down, pulls out a guitar and gives the crowd a nervous smile.  I can see her face, and despite the close presence of Laura, I can barely take my eyes off her.  At the moment, I’m not even sure why.  “Just give me a second,” she says barely loud enough for me to understand.  Begins tuning her guitar.

My eyes are still on her when I get the guts to speak.  “I wonder if she’s any good.”

“Eh,” Laura says, and that’s all.  A good actress knows her competition, she told me one day in English class.

With the trio silenced, and Laura stewing over her hot musician target being taken, the others at the table realize they’re able to speak.   Francie, who’s been wanting to say something all night, makes her move.  “What do you think about the new director?”  Ms. Holtmeyer, the theater teacher, is no longer directing our productions.  An outsider has been brought in to direct, to give her more time to concentrate on her classes.  A subtle way of saying parents have been complaining.

Like she’s been prepped for this conversation before Francie spoke, Nina responds.  “It’s totally unfair to Ms. H.”

Paula answers as she always does.  Monosyllabically.  “Yeah.”

“Holt was a crap director.  Anyone would be better.”  Laura’s words are dismissive, almost  bitter.  I’d try to say something – anything – to support her, except somehow Celeste’s guitar tuning is the most entrancing thing I’ve ever seen.

I see Sally nod out of the corner of my eye.  Holtmeyer never cast her, but she doesn’t want to sound like Laura’s shadow.  A silent response is her most political choice.

Celeste is almost finished tuning, but it’s taking her too long.  She’s losing the crowd.  She offers everyone a placating smile.  I’m awed by how cute she is.  Not beautiful.  Cute.  That might sound like an insult, but note that I’m still staring at her.

“I guess he seems fine,” Janet Haller says from behind me.  She got a bigger role than she expected in the play.  “But I’ll miss Holt.”

Nina tries again.  “I just don’t think it was fair.”

“Well, that’s theater.  Get used to it if you want to have a career.”  If I was paying more attention I might find Laura’s cattiness a turn off.

Only Celeste is starting to play.  In ten minutes, the night has changed meaning for me entirely.  I know, somewhere in the back of my head, that I’ll be back to following Laura around tomorrow.  I know I’ll be building sets and moving lights just so I can get five minutes with her to say nothing at all.  That’s tomorrow.  Now, my eyes watch a pale hand caress the fret board of a guitar, readying itself.  Now, I’m smitten by someone small, blonde and even less available to me than Laura.

 ”You don’t have to be such a bitch about it, Laura,” Greg says in an attempt to regain the upper hand.  “It’s not like it matters who’s directing.  You’re the lead no matter what.”

Laura’s voice rises at the wrong moment.  Celeste’s right hand is raised just above the strings.  No pick.  Finger picking only.  I want to hear this more than anything, but instead I hear, “I’ve earned every role I’ve gotten.  That’s more than you three can say.”

The opening chord is delicate, and it’s ruined by the argument.  I hear the next three, and Celeste’s music just makes her more entrancing.  This is different than Ridley.  Not just because she looks good, I swear.  The argument continues, blasting away the song again.  “Can we not do this tonight?”  Sally’s attempt to be forceful fails.

“We audition the same as you,” Karen says, leaning across the table, “we just don’t suck up as well, apparently.”

I almost say that she’s gotten it all backwards, but arguing with actors is the last thing I want to do, even if it means sticking up for Laura.  Celeste’s mouth is opening, and all I want is to hear her voice.

I’d say my heart skipped a beat, or my breath caught in my throat, except that would sound really, incredibly stupid.  Everything does stop for a moment, though, when she sings.  Almost like the world around me just blinked.  I’m convinced the theater argument has continued and gotten worse, but I can no longer hear it.  I thought Celeste would be, at best, pretty good.  Cute girl singing songs, worth paying attention to, but not much more.  Instead, she’s incredible.  No microphone, but every word is clear and resonant.  Lyrics that aren’t just lyrics.  They’re poetry.  Really, freaking good poetry.

I only joined theater because of Laura.  I’m sitting in a coffee shop I don’t belong in so I might have the chance to say two or three things to her and stare at her the rest of the time.  So why can’t I even focus on what she’s shouting next to me?

Because of the small blonde girl singing on stage.

Apparently I’m the only one able to ignore the battle erupting around me.  Ridley, hot music guy, is standing at our table as soon as Celeste’s song ends.  He smiles, directly at Laura, and politely asks if we wouldn’t mind keeping it down while his girlfriend plays her set.  I’m barely aware of the seething quiet that descends on Laura, or of the smug satisfaction on the trio’s face in seeing Laura humiliated by Ridley.  After all, Celeste just started a new song.

Chapter 2, Thanks, Babe has been published here.