I have been writing a novel that I would love to get a critique on. It is a young adult sci-fi thriller.
I quietly crawled over to the entrance of what Aiden called the Kiva trying desperately to not make a sound. The ground was rough and covered in sharp slivers of rock and minerals that were embedding themselves into my palms and knees.
I still couldn't understand how people were able to live in underground caves without sunlight.
I glanced back over to the corner where the supplies were wishing I had thought to bring the canteen with me. The dust and heat permiated my lungs drying out my mouth.
"Focus." I whispered to myself.
I finally reached the large double doors and saw that Aiden had left them slightly cracked.
It seemed strange that a guardian, especially Aiden who was always very careful, would make such a careless mistake.
Maybe he wanted me to hear them. He knew he could trust me, but he also knew that I did not like being left in the dark on matters that concerned me and ...well... the end of the world as we know it. He had to know that I would try and listen.
If Peter knew that Aiden did not follow his order of privacy Aiden would have to deal with severe consequences so he must have done it with good reason.
I peered through the crack to see the room glowing, almost sparkeling. I squinted to see where the beautiful light was coming from.
That's when I saw him, Peter, the Guardian to the Goddess. The light was illuminating from him, lighting the entire Kiva with beautiful calming warmth that radiated like the sun.
Aiden stood in front of Peter with his head down.
"But why? Why would the Goddess choose me to protect Lilly? I am not as strong as you, as fast as Travis, or as courageous as Shawn. I can not put aside my feelings for Lilly. How can I protect her and our way of life if I dont have the internal strength to refuse her?"
My heart was pounding so hard I was afraid they would turn any moment and realize I was there, hearing every heartbreaking word Aiden was saying.
Aiden raised his face to look at Peter. He looked defeated and tired as Peter placed his hand on Aidens shoulder.
"Aiden, if you were not all of those things you mentioned and much more you would not have been chosen by the Goddess to protect her most beloved daughter."
"I have to make a choice. I cannot keep up this charade of Code and honor when it comes to Lilly. She is why I still go on everyday. All of those years, waiting for her to rise again...I can not comprimise her getting hurt because of my emotions."
Aiden dropped to his knees pounding his chest in anger. "I am being ripped apart inside everytime I hear her voice, everytime she touches me, begs me to be more to her than I can. I don't know if I am strong enough." He stood up and punched through the cave wall, "Why did the Goddess curse me to such a hell? Why was I not 'gifted' with indifference towards Lilly? Isn't that how we are supposed to be?"
All became quiet.
Tears streamed down my face. How long had he been waiting for me? How long was I petrified in the earth?
The light that had been radiating from Peter began to flicker slowly. At first, I wasn't sure if it was my imagination or just the shadows, but he began to grow until he towered over Aiden and that's when I saw his shadow. It seemed to move seperately from him. The looming darkness on the cave wall was also beginning to glow and then, they appeared. Soft and beautiful with a majestic spread, Peters' wings stretched from his back to encompass the entire cave wall. They shone an iridescent black with gray. There were ragged edges showing the battles of the past, but majestic non-the less.
He no longer looked like one solid form, but like a shimmer you see in a crystal lake as a raindrop touches the middle and makes it ripple. He was frightening and beautiful.
His wings enveloped Aiden as he spoke.
"Aiden it is not the choices we make that should guide us but our destiny we need to accept. The Goddess would not have given you her heart, her Lilly, if she did not have a plan. Your destiny is preconceived and the path you have been granted should be followed. Sometimes a 'Code' is just that and nothing more. You will make the right decision . The Goddess has faith in you and so do I. Follow your destiny Aiden."
As his final words were spoken his shadow reverted back to the familiar human form it had been.
I turned away and quickly crawled back to the corner by the supplies where Aiden had left me. Sobbing from the pain of what Aiden was going through. Ripping myself apart inside for being so selfish in asking him to disobey the Guardian Code.
I knew what I had to do the question was, could I do what needed to be done in order to save the world.
How could I refuse my heart?
How could I refuse my destiny?
Footprints
And there, I saw, the great secular salvation. One set of footprints, followed by a trough in the sand. I had been told the old story of Jesus carrying the burdened soul through difficulties, but these were my feet. The trough had been cut by the misconceptions I had drug throughout my life. It wasn’t by grace that I would be saved, but by letting go; letting go of Christian dogma, letting go of the expectations of a world my mind had created.
Here, I leave the penance of self-sacrifice. Here, I leave the denial of self and identity for the construct of the husband and father. Here, I abandon the stones I had used to wall myself within a faith I had created. Here, I stand, naked and bathed in sunlight with the dawning of self-realization. It is within my own being to persevere; to save myself.
Blinking my eyes, I stretched as my room came into focus. The orange light slanted through the long awning window, illuminating an errant sock on the graying spruce floor.
The phone had been chirping below me, sounding through the open floorboards; only calling my attention with the final alarm and click of the answering machine, “Halo” my own voice called out in a fake Spanish accent, “Eef you are a friend or relative, please leeve your message now. If not, please rot in Hell, as I will not be talking to jou.
“Please hold” another recorded voice replied to mine, “ a representative will be with you shortly.”
“Christ” I moaned as I rolled sideways to stare vacantly at the clock. My amusement listening to two machines exchange small talk was replaced by disbelief that a company already intent on shaking me down for money would have the audacity to put me on hold to wait for the next available collections agent. There was a fumbling on the other end of the line, then a click. For a second before the disconnect, I thought I heard a woman’s voice. Running my hand across my jaw line, I felt the day-old scruff and tried to picture her. She was young, I decided; about twenty-two. She had long blonde hair that she kept pulled back. She wore a crisp blouse with khaki pants; casual yet professional. Her face was kind, yet determined, with the beautiful glow of youth upon it. She didn’t like her job, I thought. Who would? But, she was fresh out of college and this was the best paying gig she could land at the call center somewhere… Atlanta, I decided. There she sat. In a room full of cubicles, with my number randomly routed to her phone. I decided if I ever met her, I would tell her I was sorry. Sorry for all the mean things my machine told hers. Sorry my life was a disaster. Sorry that I had to make it her problem as well.
Getting up from my mattress, I examined the coil of sheets and blankets I had discarded sometime in the night. It was nice, I thought, not to have to worry about making the bed. First of all, I could argue that there was no sense in making the “bed” since the actual bed was a days journey south of here. Making a mattress on the floor would be as deluding as buying throw pillows for a camping pad. I shuffled through the covers and made a little bounce the six inches down to the floor with a muffled thump. The boards were warm on my feet as I stepped into the sunlight allowing the warmth to creep up my legs. Through the window, Breezes lifted apple leaves and made gentle tracks through the tall grass.
How many times had I looked out that window? How many seasons have I plaintively watched pass across it’s pane? The feeling rose in me that the scenes as they played out cared nothing about the presence of my eye to record them. The hands that had laid the foundation to this structure some eighty years prior were, undoubtedly stilled; resting across a skeletal breast in the cemetery over the next rise. The indifference of nature below my feet was comforting; like standing before the ocean, vast, ancient, and powerful.
Kneeling down on the floor, I pried my fingers under the boards that made the hatch to the ladder below. Eventually, I thought, I would tire of using a ladder to reach the loft above, but now that I was alone the ladder was like a youthful friend. This was my fort, my tree house, my club of one. I would have placed a big hand-painted sign saying ’no girls allowed’ if it were not already painfully obvious that there weren’t any girls trying to get in to begin with. Still, it had become a man’s playhouse. There were shelves made from hand-hewn logs in the kitchen and dining rooms. One corner of the dinning room floor was littered with various woodworking tools, relegated to their new home mid-project. On a beam high above the computer desk, hung a shotgun, and, peering out at visitors to my primitive abode, was the head of the first and only deer I had successfully shot.
The ladder creaked as I stepped down to begin my descent to the living room. Beneath the ladder, Sheba looked up hopefully; swishing a bushy tail lazily and stirring up thousands of sparkles of dust in the slant of morning light. Stopping at the bottom tread, I carefully reached down with my foot and smoothed the fur on top of her head. Lowering her head, her eyes closed; two long black lines as she drifted into a doggy sleep.
Crossing the floor, I felt every ridge in the worn pine. It had come from a pallet of barn sheathing that I thought would do the job for a temporary home. It was funny, I thought, how the things we take for temporary often become permanent; and the converse, although not as funny, was just as true. Pulling two Benadryl from a box on the computer desk, I popped them into my mouth and went to the sink for a cupped handful of water to wash them down. One capsule cocked sideways, gave in to the water, and eased it’s way down my throat. My allergies had lessened a bit by now, but I still kept my system primed with antihistamines. Taking down a small cast iron pan from a nail in the small doorway, I examined it briefly before setting it back in place with a thunk. I wasn’t hungry enough for my last egg and three strips of bacon.
Turning to examine the log shelf that spanned the six foot galley, I set my eyes on the planned meal of the day. By making an abbreviated electricity payment, I was able to buy a bottle of Jameson’s whiskey. The anniversary was approaching, and this was no time to skimp. I started the coffee and stepped into the shower
**********
The screen door creaked as Sheba slipped past me and around behind the house. The military surplus boots I had donned made a sound clunk on the porch. Standing there, finishing off my coffee, I examined the meadow. Starlings skated gracefully over the tops of the wheat-grass that strained toward the spring sky. Trees shook their fledgling leaves at the shifting air currents, while red squirrels raced through the rocking limbs. The morning air was clear and cool; not yet offering the promise of the oppressing heat a month’s time would bring. Below, a low drone alerted me to a wasp, drifting lazily by my boot. I watched him pass slowly by and towards the grass tops before gaining momentum and ascending in a quick arc, toward the woods.
Downing the last gulp of cooling coffee, I tromped heavily down the steps and into the meadow. I was quickly enveloped up to my knees in the fresh tide of grass. A crisp breeze playing off the apple branches touched my cheek before lifting a small aspen leaf, carried over from the harsh winter, to play with. The yellowed stubble of last year’s grass crunched beneath my boots. New life sprung from old. Soon my boots scuffed upon bits of charred wood, drawing my eyes to focus on a circle of scorched earth pierced throughout with new shoots of grass. I reached down and touched the blackened side of a log, remembering its specific placement the previous spring. This was the place.
**********
Garden rake in hand, I began my work in earnest; dredging up the thick under-matting of dead grass. Bundles were gathered and placed in the center of the scorched circle. With a sufficient haystack gathered, I leaned on my rake and stared out to the hillock where Sassafras lay buried. Green spruce boughs knelt before the spot as the horrific details flooded my mind. Bowing my head toward the grave, I entered the woods to gather the dead tree branches claimed by wind and snow. For the final step, I brought a double bit axe with me. As with all creatures, the winter brings death to the weak, so that the strong may go on. This winter had harvested about fifteen trees from the ranks of fir, cedar, and aspen. Of these, I sectioned and removed the closest to the pile. Once back at the pile, the logs were stacked teepee style with bits of broken pallets and scrap wood tucked between. Soaked with sweat, I inspected the pyre; some five feet tall and six feet at the base. The sun had already reached its apex and was beginning its long slant toward evening. Rivulets of sweat poured down my back and bathed my aching arms; washing, along the way, tracks of dirt and forest compost. Blackflies buzzed around my head, searching for a safe place to land and gorge themselves. The hay would be dry by tomorrow; proper tinder for the task at hand. It was a car-sized mass of potential energy; waiting, expectant. Perfect in form, it was a bomb, with a fuse, waiting for a spark to set into irrevocable motion, its complete destruction.
Standing beside the circle, I leaned my head back and filled my lungs from the passing breeze. The world around me penetrated my senses. The earthy smell of decay from the forest floor, still clinging to the back of the logs rested heavily upon my palate. The green shoots of the wheatgrass played lightly upon my nose before being washed clean by the warm smell of spruce all around me. There was a trickle down my arm, warmer than the sweat that covered me. I looked down to see a thin trail of blood running from my forearm, down along the curve of muscle and tendon, across my wrist, and down my little finger. I watched each slow drop swell, and fall to the grass below. Like the yellowed undergrowth I had raked earlier, each drop of expended life, fell to the earth to provide for nourishment.
The preparations had been made. There was nothing left to do but wait. The way I had waited then. But now, as in every year since, the outcome has already been written. Gone is the blissful ignorance I held that day. Gone, the hope; the belief in miracles, in rescue. There is only remembrance.
**********
I rose again to the slant of light. The call to work had already been made before my manager arrived. It was a call I had planned for a month now. I was as certain about having to feign illness as I was they would not have approved a day off. What excuse could I give them that would make sense to a civilized mind?
Making my way down the ladder, I paused at the bottom to examine a static sky through a single pane of glass. Randomly painted cirrus clouds clung to blue cellophane as a distant sun watched from above. The wheatgrass stood expectant in the field; unchanged by the prospect of a passing breeze. To the right hung the framed footprints. Touching them, as I had touched those very feet a decade ago, I remembered each detail of that day. A liturgy of despair: I was at work when I got an emergency call. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer. I arrived just as she was admitted. The contractions came. He was born, he died, I died too. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer. It was all her fault. Amen.
The words of condemnation toward her had still left me with no feeling of absolution. Closure was an illusion and payment would never be made for one soul thrown to the wind. This was a date that had passed each year without mention. The weight of the air bore testimony to the day that words would not do justice. Now, alone, I had resolved to bear the annual penance worthy of the crime committed. The day would no longer pass into obscurity without mention of the treason that had placed an infant in an unmarked grave; as if the body had to be destroyed and hidden to cover the shame.
“May God damn her to Hell,” I said aloud as I slowly pulled my hand back, allowing the words to hang in the air; to settle in the dust on the open rafters and be witnessed by the faces on the walls.
Drawing a match from the box on the pie safe, I struck it slowly, immersed in the moment when spark becomes flame. Sulfur curled around my nose as I lifted the flame to the wick of a candle beneath the framed footprints. The wick glowed orange before becoming a dancing flame, sending thin, black tendrils up to the beams above. Blowing out the match, I set the charred stick aside, and passed into the kitchen. Taking down the Jameson’s, I poured a full shot and returned to the pie safe to place it before the candle. For several minutes I stood there, my mind a flat lake, rapt in the vision of the flicking orange flame through the amber whiskey. I was an acolyte.
The next glass of whiskey was mine. I stepped out onto the porch, watching the sunlight play joylessly around the rim of the glass, casting sparks into the warm liquid below. Draining the glass, I retrieved a branch section from the previous day’s scavenging. Returning to the living room, I began tearing one of Shawn’s old shirts into strips and fastening them to one end of the branch. Layer upon layer. One from Shawn. One from Caitlin. One from Keagan; until the branch resembled a colorful novelty Q-tip. Dousing the end of the swab with lighter fluid, I carefully leaned it against the porch.
Once lit, the torch flared to life with surprising intensity; orange upon red, swirling around the top in ravenous layers. The torch held out to one side, I solemnly approached the wooded mound in the meadow. Thrusting deep, the flame broke off; quickly spreading through the tinder. Moving around the base, I ignited five fires along the perimeter before casting the torch to the top of the pile. From deep in the center, there was a rumble, then a gray cloud, out of which lashed fresh tongues of flame; eager for a taste of the larger kindling.
From below, flames grew; multiplied, and merged together to form a new life. The separate flames now became a fire, swallowing branches and enveloping logs. A log shifted, coughing a shower of sparks into the sky. Orange sprites danced and darted around me; filling my eyes with the glowing streaks of their courses and my nose with the spent life of the forest.
Alive now, it rose before me; it’s back hunched as it clawed and tore at the fallen timber; a beast of consumption, conjured before me at the end of a torch. I approached it’s heat; arms stretched, feeling each wave as my skin tightened against my face. I confronted the beast now, in it’s frenzy, eyes closed. I wondered. Would it feed indiscriminately? Would it accept all that was offered it? Would it devour my pain, my loneliness? Would it accept my guilt; my penance? How long could such a thing live off those parts, so invisible, yet so tangible they can paralyze?
I stood there, in the heat, every nerve in my skin now tingling with the searing energy before me. It was drawing me in. It was feeding.
**********
Evening fell with the darkness I had come to know so well in the meadow. Sitting on a section of log spared from the fire, I rested my feet in the charred circle and gazed into the mollified blaze. Putting the exhausted bottle of Jameson’s to my lips, I took a long draw, hardly noticing the warmth as it moved down into my gut. My body had become leaden. My feet were embedded in the ash, my backside pressed into the log, and my very soul felt poured out. Glancing at my hand, I could see a patchwork of soot in the flickering light. It followed up my arm and I presumed to be covered in it; a perverse ashen camouflage.
Lifting myself from the dying fire’s gaze, I made my way back to the porch. Closing the door behind me with an uneven thunk, dim light of the candle sent out a jumpy flicker of disapproval. Again, I paused before the footprints, watching now as pale yellow light crept at the heels. Lifting the whiskey I had set there, I bent, blew out the candle, “Happy birthday, Justin.”.
Mick Halpin returns with another great Irish crime fiction author interview!
Born in Sligo, Ireland, in 1969, Declan Burke is the author of The Big O (2007) and Eightball Boogie (2003). The Big O has just been published in the U.S. by Harcourt, with its sequel due in 2009. He blogs at Crime Always Pays, a site devoted to Irish crime fiction.
A freelance writer, Declan is a regular contributor to The Sunday Times, The Irish Times, The Sunday Business Post, and "The Last Word" programme on Today FM. He is married to Aileen; the couple has have a beautiful baby daughter, Lily. He lives in Wicklow, Ireland, and is not allowed to own a cat.
Please join guest host Mick Halpin and Declan Burke as they explore:
Interviewee: Declan Burke
Host: Mick Halpin
Date: October 26, 2008
Running time: 42:55
File size: 21 megabytes
Rating: G
Declan Burke's Web site: Crime Always Pays
To Scully,
You are my four-legged Angel. I should have named you patience, my beautiful golden girl! Gentle, and kin
This is my first try at a virtual book tour, and I hope everything is set up for visitors' convenience.
VIRTUAL BOOK TOUR SET:
Remember, this is just like a book signing in a bookstore, only much easier. You can sit at home, as can I, saving gas and lots of energy in this warm weather.
Copy and paste the schedule in your computer. Each day link to the blog that is hosting that day, enjoy the post, then leave a comment. Why leave a comment? Because at the end of the tour the name of everyone who leaves a thoughtful comment will be placed in a drawing. Four winners will each get an autographed copy of the book of their choice from the two I'm promoting. One lucky winner of the four will also receive a silver and turquoise ring from New Mexico. So don't forget to read and comment each day beginning July 21 through July 31. We'll hold the drawing August 4 and the winners will be posted on my blog. Winners will have to contact me with their snail mail address so I can send their book . . . and don't forget that beautiful silver and turquoise ring.
Here's the schedule:
July 21 -- http://emilybryan.wordpress.com An Interview with the author
July 22 -- http://suzannewoodsfisher.blogspot.com History of photography
July 23 -- http://marshaward.blogspot.com Writing the Historical fiction/nonfiction
July 24 -- http://gwynramsey.blogspot.com History of Women in Photography
July 25 -- http://reihlife.blogspot.com A photo array of New Mexico
July 26 -- http://vbrotherton.blogspot.com Where Do Ideas Come From?
July 27 -- Sunday Take the day off
July 28 -- http://marynidasmith.blogspot.com Dance at the Sagebrush Inn, Taos
July 29 -- http://lindacapple.blogspot.com Edna's story/Fly With The Mourning Dove
July 30 -- http://westernhistoricalhappenings.blogspot.com John Dunn Entrepreneur of New Mexico
July 31 -- http://communityoftheland.blogspot.com Interview with the author
There will be links aplenty and both historical and contemporary photos illustrating scenes in the books, so join me next week. And anyone with questions can ask them. I'll show up late in the afternoon to peruse comments.
At the end of the tour, four names will be drawn from the comments. Each will win an autographed copy of my book and one of the four will also be the lucky winner of a silver and turquoise ring from New Mexico. This is an exciting and new promotional idea for me. A good place to learn more about blog book tours is at blogbooktours@yahoogroups.com
Fort Ord
Army Hospital
near beautiful Big Sur, California was where I first fell
in love. My young naïve heart took a hard fall for
my GI patients. I was but a few years older than the teenage patients in my care. They were men. They survived the
horrors of combat.
Army Hospitals relegated night shifts to lowly second Lieutenants. I qualified.
Ours was a mutual admiration society, as my patients were quite concerned
knowing their girl soldier-nurse would soon be leaving them to serve in the same combat
zone which their night dreams would not give them peace. Lights were on or off
on the ward with two long rows of beds, feet facing each other in bland
dormitory fashion. A listening ear was the key to opening the grief and fear
locked in their hearts. Listening to their stories, fresh open-heart wounds,
in quietness of late night hours offered an ever so slight opening into the
windows of the souls of my wounded warriors. They talked and I listened,
grateful for the dim lit ward hiding tears slipping down my face. Listening is
hard work.
Fast-forward thirty-five years
I
do not recall names of the many men whose lives touched mine. I am not crass or
indifferent, just the opposite, as my soldier patients, though I do not know
their names left indelible footprints on my heart. Perhaps this is the better way.
However when making a painful trek to a black granite wall sunk deep in the
grassy on the lawn on the Washington
National Mall; in response to near overwhelming grief of lives lost, my fingers
tips instinctively brushed names engraved on the cold smooth stone, as would a person
listening in Braille. Was I listening for the voices and last heartbeats of thousands
who gave their lives during the time I was a nurse in Vietnam? I mumbled a prayer, “Oh
that we could have saved more of you! You must know that each one of you
trampled, on my heart with your mangled combat boots and I have never been the
same.”
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Cheers and a big Thanks to Mike for starting this group and encouraging us to write! His altruism is an amazing inspiration to even the most reclusive of writers. Thanks for his unwavering support of all genres of writing!
Entirely too reticent to share much with Mike's yahoo group, I've spent most of my time observing, and so apprehensive that I couldn't even dip my toe into the writing waters. Mike makes writing fun. His multiple informative sources seem limitless. He's provided interviews, advice, videos, specialized forums, writing job sites, workshops and more. Mike recently earned Writer's Digest 101 Top Sites and has a big beautiful golden emblem on his site now! Way to go Mike. More people should be thanking him for all he's done to connect writers in a safe, profitable, creative and friendly environement.
I've broken through my shyness about sharing my writing with others! It took a while for me to get up the courage, but I did it. I went to Mike's Blog spot and proclaimed myself to the online public as Dober. I now write a daily blog called Dober's Dog Daze at: http://dobersdogdaze.blogspot.com
If you've read my previous blog about 'buttons' you'll already know why I'm at Mike's blog spot. I normallly write for about 6 hours and fill notebooks to overflowing. I used to write a yahoo blog for about 6 months, but I stopped. Mike's site has given me a renewed confidence in my writing. Starting today, my blogs will prolific and hopefully, enjoyable to my potential readers.
Thanks again Mike!
Now I'm jumping back into the public mainstream with my blogging. I called it Dober's Dog Daze, because that's usually my mental state 90% of the time. Here on Mike's site, do you see the light blue writing at the top, about blogs? Click on it and write write write!
