A New Noir

It was a Tuesday, 11:06 pm. The night was as dark as something really dark and not well lit. I stared at a computer screen as empty as something empty with nothing in it.

Evelyn had just called to tell me I was a bastard. She had legs like something long and sexy, but after two highballs she was as crazy as something really crazy. She drove me nuts. Both ways.

She wasn’t the first to call me that and she wouldn’t be the last. I got that all too familiar feeling in the pit of my stomach like a bad feeling you get in the pit of your stomach at times like this.

But I needed to put Evelyn behind me. I took another shot of my bourbon and went to work.

I had just scored a new gig. A writing gig. The kind of gig you dream about when you’re new to the writing game but always seems just beyond your grasp. But I wasn’t new any more. I wasn’t young. I felt like something old trying to do something young people should do.

I had just four weeks to do character sketches, plot outlines and put together an outline. Then the real race would begin. Fifty Big Ones. And I had to pull it together in just 30 days. Fifty thou in 30 days is like something hard. Something really, really hard.

So I stared at the blank screen the way some animal stares into something.

I had heard on the street some rouge writers were having a secret meeting tonight over at Nanowrimo—a seedy website on the outskirts of the internet. Only the locals knew about it and they weren’t talking—not to me, not to the cops and not to publishers.

I reached for the mouse. It felt like a mouse-like thing in my hand. My nimble index finger clicked the left button, placing the cursor into the address bar like a cursor-like thing blinking in an address-bar like thing.

I was in faster than a fast thing.

I went over to the genre I was going to pile 50K of words into. Mystery. Suspense. It’s a tough genre, gritty like gritty stuff, but it has the edge I need. Sub-genre: Noir.

I saw a couple tomatoes at the bar along with a couple toughs. The toughs looked like tough people—people who know how to be tough. I took my place at the bar to the right of a juicy fruit, placing her between me and the tougher looking tough guy.

The Lolita stopped writing in her notebook and turned her face toward me and gave me the look of someone who knew how to write. She had been around a pen and paper before.

“Buy you a pen beautiful?”

“Sure” the word slipped out of her mouth slowly, like a slow thing coming out of a mouth-like thing.

[ To Be Continued… ]

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Art found here.

Non-Fiction Book Ideas on Marriage/Sex

I am in the process of starting a new commercial site on marriage and I have found in the past the best way to write a book is to outline a book with a killer premise then outline each chapter and sub-chapter, then make each sub-chapter an article (or blog post.)

So I am again asking you, my blog friends, to help me choose the most compelling book themes from the ones below. In your comments list the numbers of the top 2 title choices you like as well as any ideas to improve them.

Thanks in advance:

1. Charisma - How to be the person everyone wants to know (By the way, I know this doesn’t have lots to do with marriage, but it’s a book I’ve been pondering for some time…)
2. Mutual Fulfillment: How to Have the Marriage of Your Dreams for Life
3. Full Tilt Marriage: How to Have the Marriage of Your Dreams for Life
4. Your Next Honeymoon: How to Have the Most Romantic, Sexually Fulfilling Vacation of Your Life on Any Budget
5. Sexual Intimacy: How to Have Mutually Fulfilling Sex for the Rest of Your Lives
6. Hot Marriage: How to Have Mutually Fulfilling, Explosive Sex for the Rest of Your Lives
7. Peaceful Intimacy: How to Stop Arguing and Start Enjoying Your Marriage
8. Partners: How to Stop Arguing and Start Enjoying Your Marriage Partnership
9. Finding Peace: Understanding and Living with the Angry Spouse

Again, thanks in advance for your input.

Nation Novel Writing Month: Wanna Join In?

Each November since 100 BCE there has been a collective effort for us procrastinating fiction writers to create a book–a complete 50,000 word manuscript–in just one month.

This year I think I want to give it a try.

If you want to join me or if you just want to find out more, visit their website by clicking here.

(If you want to make a comment below saying you’re interested in giving it a try, that’s cool too. I’ll post much closer to the start as I prepare in Sept and Oct.)

Another Resource for Writers

Mary June Brown has a cool page of resources for writers. Lots of cool links that will help you.

Click here to check it out.

Creative Writing 101

Well, I got some (very little) feedback on my two pieces of creative writing–one short story beginning and one partial book chapter. They have some potential (though maybe I should say I have some potential–I can write fiction people may want to read.)

I’m going to ask for more reviews over at WhoreChurch, since I get far more traffic there. Maybe I’ll get more input and discover what will make my writing better before I get too much further.

I’m not sure if I want to finish each of these, though I will likely finish “Resurrection” since it’s 1/3 done and is just a short story.

I also think Dahlia has potential, though it needs MUCH work. I learned a lot doing it and putting it up for review, and I got a ton of helpful feedback. It helped me see the difference between writing things that ryhme and poetry. Big difference.

Right now I wonder if I want to write fiction. Is it fun? Beats me. When it’s easy, it’s fun. But if I want to write well enough to get it published that sounds like work. I’m not sure I want the work.

At some point I start asking “what’s in it for me”–will I enjoy it? Will the payoff equal the effort? Will it support my family? I’m very practical minded: Will it sell? Does it give me an immediate pay off? Blogging is fun because within minutes someone laughs. Writing fiction is less so–will there ever be a pay off?

Another thought it why write fiction when I make a good living writing non-fiction?

Just some rambling thoughts on writing non-fiction.

OK, tell me if either of these are worth it…

I just posted two pieces of writing–one if for a book project and one is the first part of a short story. I’m not good at judging these. Are either any good or are they amateurish? Do I need to take a class or something? I’m interested in any real and honest input, even if it’s negative.

Book Project - Chapter One

Resurrection, Act I

Book Project: Start of Chapter One

Chapter One: Death

You will likely say it was obvious the deaths were related. But you didn’t live there. Not then. For those of us in the middle of it all the obvious connection was obscured by proximity.

Proximity and shock.

Other than the cops I was one of the few people to view the scenes of both deaths. Not glossy black and white crime photos. Not a “True Crime” television show.

The stark reality of blood and gore.

As a minister I had seen lots of dead people, but I had always seen the “prettied up” dead. The suicide teenager whose wrists had been nicely sewn and hidden beneath a crisp white shirt and a suit coat purchased a day before by a grieving mother. The 87 year old patriarch whose sallow cheeks now carried undertaker’s rouge.

I’ve played my role in that game too. Ministers are the P.T. Barnums of Death. We turn Death into a show for all to see. We pick the pretty scriptures, say the pretty words, lower our voice or a give a knowing, consoling nod at all the right places. The Greatest Show on Earth.

But Death doesn’t come pretty; we just dress it up later for show. Death is raw. Death hits like a sledge hammer. It’s messy, revolting and final.

I know that now. It stopped being a show for me the instant I saw Death as it is. Before the split back suit coat. Before the makeup. Death in all its pornographic horror.

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Doris Faulkner had worked for the Gilead Baptist Association for 18 of her 47 years. A lifelong Southern Baptist she was proud to have her own little ministry—not the pastorate like her two brothers, but a ministry none the less.

“Dory” was happily single after her husband died in a car accident some 25 years ago. With no children she busied herself with “church work”—both professionally and as a layman at First Baptist—as well as spoiling her three nieces and two nephews.

Her work was always precise and orderly.

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I had been talking to the Most Reverend Ralph Jamison just a week before his death.

We had lunch at Ruby’s—the smoke-filled local café whose ceiling tiles had been painted tar-black years before, acknowledging unconditional surrender to the billowing smoke rising from the patrons. The thirty year old paneling didn’t need to be painted—it just faded to a deeper shade of brown.

We sat at my “usual” booth, in a cubbyhole of sorts created by the L-shaped checkout counter. It allowed two small town pastors to be out of the line of site of the other patrons as to avoid the obligatory “Well, fancy seeing you here” from every third person who entered the restaurant.

Sitting in my cloistered booth I could avoid making eye contact with patrons without appearing “uppity.” There is no more unforgivable sin in rural Kentucky. When some overly gregarious parishioner would come over to the table and interrupt me, I could always honestly say “Hi, I didn’t see you.”

Public privacy is always a tricky business but pastors quickly learn to master the art.

Ralph and I had been friends for 6 years. At 52 he was 14 years my senior, but we had much in common.

As we talked, I knew Ralph was struggling, I just didn’t realize how much.