Amazing Grace – Chapter 11

This is the latest chapter of an ongoing serialized novel that I’m working on and posting up here in rough draft form. To read other chapters, CLICK HERE

11

The police station was full when I walked in behind the sheriff. Deputy Jeff was standing behind the small wooden counter that served to separate the small area with four desks where he, Ava the Dispatcher, and Victor, the other deputy, sat. Half a dozen people were milling around the counter, every one of them trying to talk to Jeff at one time.

Silence fell over the room when we entered, then it exploded into mayhem as everybody turned to Dunleavy all at once. I staggered back at the ruckus, almost walking right through Jenny. The girl was waiting in the truck for me when I walked out of Sharky’s, and rode to the station without a word. I reckon she was trying to process Shelly’s death, and trying to figure out why she was lingering while her friend moved on without her.

Sheriff Dunleavy held up his hands for quiet, and after a few seconds, the room settled down. “Now I know all y’all want to help, and I know everybody is anxious to share any information they have that might aid the investigation. But we ain’t but a couple of people here, so we are going to have to follow some kind of order here.

“I am going in to my office to consult with Ms. Carter here on some research she is doing for me on these investigations. I need all y’all to line up and give Jeff your information in an orderly fashion. Make sure he has your phone written on the statement, and we will follow up with y’all as we move forward. Thank you all for coming out, I appreciate your assistance and patience in this trying time.”

Sheriff Dunleavy put his hands down and bulled through the packed people. I followed along in his wake like a girl waterskiing behind a boat, and a minute later we were sitting in his office with the door closed. The noise from the front was down to a dull roar, so I reckoned Jeff had it under control.

“Now what was so damned important that you had to pry me away from some very important drinking and haul me back here?” Sheriff Dunleaby asked as he took a seat behind his desk.

“I was over at the Miller house—“

“What?” he interrupted.

“I was asking Jenny’s father some questions, and—“

“You were what?” he interrupted me again, and I turned my best Sunday School Teacher scowl on him.

“I was asking Jenny’s daddy if he had any idea who would want to hurt his daughter. Then her mama…” I stopped, because Sheriff Dunleavy’s face was getting some kind of red, and I was a little scared he was going to blow a gasket. “Are you okay, Sheriff?”

“No, Ms. Carter, I am not okay. You mean to tell me you went to talk to the parents of the victim in what has recently been determined to be a murder investigation without my permission, without any official authority, and without any accompaniment?”

“Well, when you put it like that, I reckon it sounds pretty awful. But yes, that’s what I did. He told me about a boy at school that may have had a grudge against Shelly for doing something nasty with his phone—“

“Ian Vernon,” the sheriff said. “I had Victor interview him this morning.”

“Oh, you knew about him? Good. Well, he also mentioned that we might want to talk to girls that—“

“—Didn’t make the cheerleading squad,” he finished my sentence for me. “We have interviews scheduled with all of them for tomorrow at school. Of course, in light of today’s events, we might have to postpone those.”

“If you know everything I’m going to say, why are having me say it?” I asked. I was a little perturbed at his attitude.

“Because I’m trying to come up with a good reason not to charge you with interfering with a police investigation, obstruction of justice, and impersonating a police officer.”

I stood up and put my hands on his desk. “What in the hell are you talking about, Sheriff? I was just trying to help you! All I did was talk to that poor man.”

“That, and get his wife so riled up she called over here and told me that if anybody from my department set foot on her property again without somebody calling 911, that she’d sue us so hard we’d be writing tickets out of the back of a used Chevette.” There was a little vein pulsing in his forehead, and his face was so red it was almost purple.

I sat back down, feeling like somebody had just let all the air out my sails. “Well…I’m sorry?”

Sheriff Dunleavy sat down and let out a huge breath. “You’re sorry?”

“Yes, I’m sorry.”

“That’s all you’ve got?”

“What more would you like me to say? That it was a mistake? Well, obviously it was. That I’m sorry I upset the Millers? Well, I certainly am. That I won’t do it again? I don’t know that I’m going to say that, Sheriff.”

“Oh, I reckon you are going to say that, Ms. Carter. You are going to say that, and you are going to mean that, and you are going to stay the hell away from this investigation. You are going to leave the police work to the police, and you are going to go home and prune your tomatoes, or whatever you do in the afternoons.”

“You don’t prune tomatoes, Sheriff,” I said with a smile.

He didn’t smile back. “I don’t care. Obviously what I’m saying is not getting through. You cannot be part of this investigation, Lila Grace. You are not a police officer, and I let myself get caught up in your…unconventional sources of information, and gave you an incorrect impression.”

“What impression is that, Sheriff?”

“That you are part of this investigation. Which you are not. You are not working with the police. You are a private citizen, and you are going to do what private citizens do, which is to stay out of the way and let the police do our job. Do you understand me?”

I felt my lips purse, and I took a deep breath before I spoke. When I did, there was not a hint of a tremor in my voice. “I understand perfectly, Sherif. I will stay out of your way from here on out. You have my word.” I stood up, looked down at him and asked, “Will there be anything else?”

“No, Ms. Carter,” he said. “You can go. I do appreciate the help you have given us to this point. It has been very valuable.”

“Thank you, Sheriff,” I said, and turned to the door. I walked out through the office, and pushed my way through the throng in the front of the office. I stepped out into the bright sunshine and got into my truck, pulling out into the street and driving home without taking any notice of anything around me. In almost a daze, I walked into my house, fixed myself a glass of sweet tea, and walked out onto my back porch. I sat down on the steps and looked out over the small vegetable garden I had coming up. Just half a dozen twenty-foot rows of tomatoes, beans, squash, and potatoes, with two pumpkin and three watermelon vines going wild at the end of the rows.

I sat there, sipping my tea and looking at my garden as I went over and over what the sheriff had said to me. I didn’t like his tone, but I couldn’t disagree with the facts as he presented them. I had overstepped. I never should have gone to the Miller house, and I certainly shouldn’t have talked to Mr. Miller alone.

Who was I kidding? I was no detective, no redneck Miss Marple solving mysteries and bringing killers to justice. I was just a half-cracked old lady with a little bit of a talent for hearing dead people.

I stood up and made to go inside when I caught sight of Sheriff Johnny standing on the other side of my screen door. Jenny was beside him, and both of them looked grim.

“What’s the matter, y’all?” I asked, pulling the door open and stepping inside. I set the empty glass down by the sink and turned to look at my visitors from Beyond.

“Please don’t quit, Ms. Lila Grace,” Jenny said. “I know the new sheriff was mean to you, and I heard what Mama said, but please.” The child’s voice took on a pleading tone. “There ain’t nobody else that can see me, or hear me, and I know that if you quit looking, ain’t nobody going to figure out who…who killed me, and now killed Shelly, too. I just know it!” The dishes rattled a little in the drying rack by the sink, testimony to the strength of the poor child’s upset. She was actually able to interact with the material world, which took either a ghost of tremendous power or one that was very upset. Jenny certainly seemed to fall into the latter category.

“I don’t know, darling,” I said. “Could be Sheriff Dunleavy’s right. I might be doing more harm than good, particularly where your parents are concerned. I had no right to go out there acting like some kind of TV detective and getting your daddy all upset.”

Sheriff Johnny stepped forward and held up a hand, like he was telling me to stop. His lips started to move, and I shook my head. “Johnny, we both know you can’t—“

He held up that hand again, and I closed my trap. He screwed up his face, like he was working really hard to think of something, then I heard it. His voice sounded like the wind whispering through a cemetery late at night, all kinds of rasp and hiss to it, but it was unmistakably his.

“You do good, Lila Grace,” he whispered, and I could see his image dim with the exertion. “You can’t stop. No one else will speak for usssss.” The last word trailed off into a long hiss, and he turned and walked through my back storm door. I watched him walk off, fading into invisibility as he did.

“I thought you said he couldn’t talk,” Jenny said.

“I didn’t think he could,” I said. I heard my own voice sound hollow, like it was coming from a long way away, or through a tunnel or something.

I stood there, leaning with my back against the sink for several minutes before I finally gave myself a little mental shake and walked into the living room. I picked up a little yellow notepad from the table beside my recliner and waved for Jenny to sit on the couch over to my left. I angled the chair a little bit so I was facing her more than the TV, even though it was off. That way I could look at her and not have to turn my head the whole time.

“Sit down, sweetie, and let’s get to work.” I said. “We got a murderer to catch.”

Evolution – Lilian Archer

Evolution – Lilian Archer

Why I write what I write by Lillian Archer

A hearty thank you to John Hartness for hosting me on his blog. Now go buy one of his books:)

I am Lillian Archer, purveyor of fine historical fantasy books. I started my publishing career with an agent, went through the process of trying to sell a book to traditional press and small press, and ultimately decided to self-publish instead of pursuing the traditional route.

John requested this series of posts to discuss why an author writes what they write. That is a very personal question, and one I am happy to explore today.

I write because my day job is one where humanity and empathy are discouraged, where cost and dollar amounts are the only currency of worth, and where being a woman is a shiny, glittering glass ceiling few shatter.

I write to express my empathy, my compassion, my love of dreamers, and empowerment of marginalized persons. I write to remind myself that my day job is not sucking the humanity from my marrow bones. I write to entertain, and hope my words bring a wee bit of joy to someone else’s day.

My first novel, Prodigal Spell, is set in Colonial Britain and the Caribbean.

I like using historical backdrops for my writing, taking the accepted social norms and mores of the time period and exploring those strengths and weaknesses. My main character is a female witch trapped by the expectations of society and how she blows those social constructs out of the water. Literally. (I love writing scenes where things blow up, because that is always an opportunity for delightfully awful things to happen to characters. Don’t read my work if you don’t like explosions.) My current work in progress’ main character is a female spy during the Cold War.

My work is not an “-ism”, nor is it a moral commentary on historical events. I write to provide a different perspective, and hope that is an enjoyable experience for my readers. And, I write to express  historically accurate pyrotechnic opportunities of the time period.

If you are interested in Prodigal Spell, or my work, here are the requisite links. I am also open to talking about traditional route vs self-publishing. Email, follow on twitter, or friend me on Facebook. I also share a group blog called The Million Words, and we chat about all sorts of writing topics over there. Come find me out in Internet Land!

Website and blog: https://www.lillianarcher.com

Twitter: @lilliansbooks

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100006923387669

Email- lily@lillianarcher.com

Prodigal Spell is available in ebook, print and audiobook on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/Prodigal-Spell-Nevis-Witches-Book-ebook/dp/B00KQ9LP7M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1491140510&sr=8-1&keywords=prodigal+spell

 

Also available in ebook on the iTunes store if you search for Prodigal Spell. If you love kobo, here is your link:

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/prodigal-spell

 

Writer’s Journey – Episode 5 – Margaret McGraw

Writer’s Journey – Episode 5 – Margaret McGraw

One last Mysticon episode! This time I talked with my friend Margaret McGraw about her website, her evolution as a writer, her journey to success, and upcoming projects like Lawless Lands, coming this summer from Falstaff Books. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or any of those other podcasty-type places, or you can click here to listen to it in your browser.

Amazing Grace – Chapter 10

This is the latest chapter of an ongoing serialized novel that I’m working on and posting up here in rough draft form. To read other chapters, CLICK HERE

10

I never made it to the sheriff’s office. I stopped at Sharky’s Pub, the one bar in town. Sheriff Dunleavy’s car was parked out front between a Harley-Davidson and a Hyundai SUV. I pulled my truck into the gravel parking lot at the end of a string of cars and walked into the pub.

“Pub” is by far the most generous word ever applied to Sharky’s. Most folks always called it “the beer joint,” since it was the only licensed drinking establishment in town. Some of the more religious referred to it as “that place,” but one thing nobody ever accused it of being, was high class.

The squat cinderblock building had four windows across the front, and every one of them was plugged with air conditioning units. It was painted a sickly shade of beige, kinda somewhere between  spoiled egg yolks and baby poop. The door was the only thing that ever looked fresh, on account of Sharky having to replace it about once a month when he put some drunk through it.

I stepped into the dim, smoky room, and Sharky looked up from the bar. “Hey there, Lila Grace,” he called out, and conversation slammed to a halt. I was not a regular, but this was certainly not my first time in the bar. When there’s only one place in town to get a cold beer that’s not your own refrigerator, everybody who likes a nip now and then will pass through the doors.

“Hello, Gene,” I called back. I think I was the only person in town that never called him Sharky. I just didn’t like the name. I didn’t think it fit. Gene was a trim man, slight of build and thin of mustache. He looked a lot more like a ferret than a shark, but he went away down to Florida to work construction one summer, and when he came back, he told us everybody down there called him Sharky. I doubt anybody ever called him Sharky a day in his life, but if it made him feel better, who was I to call him out on it? So after that, people called him Sharky.

The bar was about what you’d expect from a small town joint in South Carolina. There were half a dozen stools with cracked pleather seats in front of a bar that had four beer taps on it. Sharky’s served Budweiser, Bud Light, Miller Lite, and Coors on draft, and a couple more selections than that in the bottle. Corona was the sole nod to an import beer, but I knew Gene kept a six-pack or two of Red Stripe in the cooler for his personal use. There were two rows of bottles on the glass shelves behind the bar. The selections topped out at Jack Daniels and Jim Beam. Anything fancier than that or Grey Goose, and you were going to have to either drink it at home or drive to another town. Sharky also kept a few jars of Uncle Dargin’s Apple Pie moonshine tucked away, and he’d bring that out on special occasions or for special customers.

Today must have been pretty special, because there was a Ball jar sitting on the bar with the top off, and a shot glass in front of the Sheriff and its brother in front of Gene. “Y’all having a little taste?” I asked, pulling out a stool to sit next to the sheriff.

“Just a little bit, Lila Grace. Y’all want some?” Gene asked. I nodded, and he pulled me up a shot glass from under the counter. He wiped it down with a rag, and I honestly wasn’t convinced that took any germs or dirt off the glass. It looked like the rag started life a whole lot dirtier than the glass, but I wasn’t too concerned. Uncle Dargin made his ‘shine stout, and I figured it’d kill just about anything in the glass before it got my lips.

I took the offered drink from Gene and raised it to my lips. “May we be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows we’re dead,” I said, and took a long sip of the moonshine. Apple pie ain’t shooting ‘shine, it’s sipping liquor, and this batch was as smooth as any I’d ever had.

“That’s good stuff, Gene,” I said, putting the glass down. “Tell Dargin I said so.”

“I’ll do it, Lila Grace,” Gene said.

“Go see if Jerry needs a refill, Sharky,” Sheriff Dunleavy said.

“Jerry, passed slap out, Sheriff,” Gene replied, not getting it. He had that problem in school, too. It caused him to repeat fifth grade a couple of times, and by the time he finally got through eighth grade, ol’ Gene was through with schooling.

“Go check on him, Sharky.” The growl in Dunleavy’s voice left no question as to whether or not he was asking this time. Gene started, like he was surprised at something, then walked over to sit at a small table in the corner where Jerry Gardner was laying face down on the faux wood surface.

“What can I do for you, Ms. Carter?” the sheriff asked.

“I reckon I was going to ask you the same thing, Sheriff. You sitting in here all alone day drinking, I thought maybe you was in need of something.”

“I am,” he said. “I am in need of a drink. Then that drink might put me in need of another drink. I might even require a few more to follow that second one. I am almost certain by the time I get to five or six drinks I’ll be just about right, but I’m liable to have two more after that just to make sure.”

From the sounds of him, he’d already had more than one drink, but it wasn’t my place to judge. I just sat there and sipped my apple pie. “You talked to Shelly’s parents, I reckon.”

“I did.”

“That the first time you’ve had to notify parents their child has passed?”

“It was.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me too.”

The sheriff sat there for a minute, then poured himself another shot. I knocked back the last of my moonshine and held out my glass. Dunleavy looked at me sideways for a second, then topped it off.

“Don’t go giving me the side-eye, Sheriff,” I said. “I been drinking Dargin’s home-brew since I was a teenager fooling around in the back seat of Bobby Joe Latham’s Chevrolet.”

“I wouldn’t have pegged you for a drinker, Ms. Carter,” he said.

“Well, I ain’t a professional at it, like you seem to be, but I can hold my own if I need to.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He turned to me like he wanted to say something else, but stopped.

“Which part?” I asked.

“That crack about me being a professional drinker. What did you mean by that?”

“I meant you’ve got two dead girls, no real leads, and instead of being out there trying to find out who killed them, you’re in here drinking moonshine in the middle of the afternoon because somebody’s mama or daddy hurt your feelings while you was doing your job. Well, I got news for you, Sheriff Dunleavy, you put on the badge, you strapped on that pistol, that means you get to take the bad days with the good ones. Most days, sheriffing in Lockhart ain’t nothing but overnight drunk tank visits, spray paint from teenagers, and speeding tickets, but right now we need a real damn lawman, not some damn stereotype of a Sam Spade movie sitting in a bar like a moody little bitch.”

I allowed as how calling the sheriff a bitch might have been excessive, but finding him hiding in a bar instead of out looking for a murderer riled me up a little.

“I don’t appreciate your tone, Lila Grace,” the sheriff said. He didn’t look at me, that’s how I knew he knew I was right.

“I don’t give a good goddamn, Sheriff,” I replied.

“Willis,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“My name. It’s Willis. I reckon if I’m gonna call you Lila Grace, and we’ve got to the point where you’re comfortable enough to read me out in a bar, we might as well be on a first name basis. So you can call me Willis. Unless we’re out in public doing something official. Then I’m still ‘Sheriff.’” He stood up, tossed two twenties on the bar, and put his hat on.

“We’re leaving, Sharky. I’m confiscating the rest of this jar of pie, though.”

“Aw, come on, Sheriff,” Gene whined. “That’s my last jar!”

“I left you forty bucks for it, Shark. I know you don’t pay Dargin but fifteen, so shut your cake hole.” He walked out the front door.

I followed, nodding farewell to Sharky as I passed him. “Gene,” I said.

“Bye, Lila Grace. Y’all come back now, y’hear?”

Like there was a single other option for a place to get a beer in this town.

Evolution – JD Jordan

Evolution – JD Jordan

My buddy and Falstaff Books author Darin Kennedy hooked me up with JD, and since we will both be at JordanCon next weekend, I thought this might be a very good time to feature him on this blog post. If you get a chance and you’re anywhere near Atlanta, come visit us! 

Calamity Jane and a goddamn spaceman?

I was sitting on the steps of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce after a party, waiting for the valet, when the ideas for two historical scifi books popped into my head. One of those became the novella Seeing the Elephant that ultimately grew into the novel Calamity. I remember bouncing ideas off my friends and it took a while for the story—as you read it—to take shape. But it was always about growth and coming of age in the West, in the aftermath of the Civil War, on the frontier of American civilization. At the time, I was deep into both HBO’s Deadwood and Fox’s Firefly and their influences are unmistakable in Calamity. If you don’t know what I mean, go watch the first few episodes of Deadwood, especially “Here Was a Man” and “The Trial of Jack McCall”—Robin Weigert’s was the first Calamity Jane I ever really knew—and the Firefly episodes “Out of Gas” and “Objects in Space”—hints of the scifi-west and the Green Man can be found there. I was so intrigued by Calamity Jane as a historical figure—an iconic woman in a man’s world—and as a transformative character. I fell in love with the potential of her right away.

I’ve had a number of readers comment about how well-written they think Jane is as a teenager and as a woman—especially when they know she was written by a man. I even had an agent express surprise on meeting me because she assumed I’d be a woman based on what she’d read of chapter one. Such amazing compliments! I like to tell people I was neither a teenage girl nor very successful with them when I was young, so I reckon I’m just as surprised as that agent was. But I think I was able to write her as well as I was not because I was tapping into anything uniquely female (my wife disagrees on this point) but because I was able to tap into Jane’s frustration, her feelings of abandonment and ostracization, her loneliness, and—of course—her anger. I was in a lonely and angry place when I wrote her—though I didn’t appreciate it at the time—and writing her always felt more like commiseration than pretending. I think to some degree, we’ve all been Martha wanting to become Jane. I sure was.

Of course, I wasn’t into westerns so the idea to combine western and scifi ended was as much the challenge as the story and the heroine. A fancy literary explanation might go: A lot of the appeal for this kind of mash-up comes from the fact that these are both fundamentally American and fundamentally modern genres. Westerns are the product of America colonization of the continent—and all the good and the bad that goes with ideas of frontier and Manifest Destiny and conquest in that history. Scifi, on the other hand, turns many of these themes around, looking forward while always metaphorically looking back. Where settlers drove out the natives in the 1800s, so will we—the beneficiaries of that conquest—face threats of extermination in the future. The settlers have become the first peoples in jeopardy and the idea of the Green Men and the Gray Men as Others who can menace the West in this way is an interesting one. And one that preys on our fears of annihilation.

But the more basic answer is that Jane and the Green Man insisted on these genres. A prospective agent once asked me to remove the Green Man from the story and I just couldn’t see how it would work. It suddenly wasn’t anything I wanted to read. The Green Man is Jane’s magic feather. He’s her Man with No Name. His alienness is so integral to her view of the world—even when he’s not around or when he’s the only scifi thing in the story—that the western part of the novel would’ve been diminished without the science fiction.