Saturday, December 26, 2015

My 2015 Reading Retrospective

Once again, I have compiled a list of the best books I read this past year. As usual, these books were not necessarily published in 2015, just ones I happened to read this year.

Of the 61 titles I read, here were my favorites:

Things Fall Apart by China Achebe - Yes, this book has become staple reading in high school and college classes. Yes, it exemplifies the theme of postcolonialism in literature. (It's the story of the encroachment of white European society on an Ibo village.) But it's so much more than that. Achebe taps into something ancient and universal with his depiction of a man struggling to stay true to his traditional way of life in the face of a shifting world.


Lighthead by Terrance Hayes - Hayes' poems are brilliant, beautifully-written, possessed of clarity and originality of phrase. But what really stuck with me after reading this book was the way in which he brings the reader into the African-American community. I got to experience that sense of heritage and solidarity, despite the color of my own skin. He made his story into our story-- a rare and impressive feat for any writer.


Disgrace JM Coetzee - Coetzee, a Pulitzer and Booker Prize winning author, is not known for writing chipper works, so be warned-- this book is a devastating look at race and gender politics in post-apartheid South Africa. This is not a long book, but it's dense, weighty, intense; it's also difficult to summarize, as there are so many small plots, character interactions and themes spinning through it. At its core is David, a university professor. After engaging in a series of risky affairs, he is fired from his job and retreats to his lesbian daughter's farm in the country where he takes a job cleaning up euthanized animals. A powerful meditation on the ways in which human beings hurt each other and other living creatures.


Perfume: Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind - I picked up this book after coming across the film with Ben Whishaw and Alan Rickman. At its heart, this book is a psychological horror novel centered around an intensely creepy, repugnant and yet fascinating serial killer, like Hannibal Lecter or Patrick Bateman. But this story brings some interesting new twists to the genre, blending magical realism and historical fiction into a heady concoction. Its killer is Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, an orphan born into 18th century France. Grenouille has a unique gift: the most sensitive nose in all of creation. Delightfully bizarre, morbidly funny, and gorgeously written-- don't miss it.


Blackbird House by Alice Hoffman - a collection of short stories, tracing the history of a particular house and its various inhabitants for 200 years. Flawless and sublime.


Alabama Moon by Watt Key - I'm a sucker for Southern-fried literature, as well as for tales about the Underdog Who Makes Good. This book satisfies on both fronts. It's the story of a ten-year-old boy named Moon, whose mentally-ill father raised him off the grid. Moon knows everything about how to survive in the wilderness, but virtually nothing about regular society. When Moon's father dies, Moon has to adapt fast when he encounters a series of law enforcement officials, boys' homes, foster care and all the treacheries associated therewith. I was so happy when Moon found his forever home-- you will be, too.


The Book of Nightmares by Galway Kinnell - One long poem drawing upon Kinnell's experiences protesting the Vietnam War and participating in the Civil Rights movement-- but, like all good poems and anti-war poems in particular, this book is really about life and death. It starts with the birth of Kennell's daughter, (one of the most beautiful descriptions of birth I've ever read), then traces his journey through the hellfires of modern life. "The Dead Shall Be Raised Incorruptible" is now one of my favorite pieces of writing.


Redeployment by Phil Klay - Oh my God, read this book. Seriously, just read it. A collection of short stories about American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, this book is immediate and important. It shows the war of now-- what war has become in the age of the Internet and constant media. Perhaps to underscore this, the book often feels more like documentary than storytelling, giving a comprehensive view of the soldiers' experiences—soldiers in the middle of the shit, frightened, exhilarated, lost, depressed, confused, dying, surviving. It shows them coming home on leave. It shows them years after the fact. It shows how people wear their wounds, both interior and exterior, how they deal with being both the recipient of death as well as the cause of it. The language is spare and brutal. One story, in particular, I liked because it was written almost entirely in acronyms, which of course, is how the military divorces its actions from reality and creates its own insular little world.

It should be noted, the misogyny in this book is a little hard to take. It's undoubtedly real, war being the most masculine of pastimes, so there's the machismo posturing one would expect from young enlistees, sorting women neatly into "hot or not" boxes. The female characters exist only on the peripheries: girlfriends back home, wives, prostitutes, only the occasional female soldier or contractor, Iraqi war widows.

It's been said that all war films are really pro-war. This is not the case with literature, and with Redployment in particular.


Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt - How did it take me so long to read this book? Seriously, HOW? I don't know, but I'm so glad that I finally did read it. It's a mark of how much I love a book when I follow my husband and friends around, reading passages aloud to them, to the point of being totally obnoxious. This was just such a book, now one of my all-time favorites.

For those who are unfamiliar with this book, it's McCourt's memoirs about his childhood in Ireland during the Great Depression. After I read it, I perused other readers' reviews on Goodreads, and so many of them were talking about how bleak this book is. Of course it is-- it's about poverty and disease. But am I the only one who found this book uproariously funny? I was raised Catholic, so I found pretty much any scene dealing with nuns or priests to be hilarious. Also, I'm Mexican, which, as a Colombian friend once pointed out to me, "You Mexicans are just like the Irish, except you have better food." While I didn't experience this level of poverty personally, I was partially raised by a large extended family of grandparents, aunts and uncles who were this poor, so McCourt's descriptions and some of the situations struck my funny bone in that painful, I'm-laughing-because-it's-so-true sort of way.

Also, the phrase, "as sure as God made little apples!" has become a permanent addition to my lexicon.


Sinners Welcome by Mary Karr - I was skeptical when I picked up this collection of poems by Karr, who is better known for her memoirs and essays. She converted to Catholicism later in life, and I thought, Really? What more can be said on that subject? I was pleasantly surprised. Karr's poems are searing, insightful, lyrical, expansive, honest, and yes, manage to bring a fresh perspective to Catholicism and Christianity in general. She has poems about the assumption of the virgin and the nativity which, when told from a 21st century mother, do take on new life.


The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker - This is the tale of a golem and a jinni who, through no fault of their own, immigrate to New York in 1899. There was nothing about this book I didn't love: magic, supernatural creatures, folklore, historical backdrops, and coming to America. Perfect.

Happy New Year, everyone! I can't wait to see what books and authors I'll meet in 2016.


If you liked this post, be sure to check out my reading retrospectives for 2014 and 2013.

I am now on Patreon. Be sure to check out my work there-- your support would be much appreciated!









Monday, November 16, 2015

Carcosa Cover Art and Release Date

So this was a much faster turnaround than I expected, but I am happy to announce that Carcosa, (Order of the Four Sons, Book II) will be released on Dec. 4. If you loved Book I, Book II has more guns, more monsters and more magic.

I have two excerpts of Book II up here and here.

I didn't think it was possible for the cover art to be more beautiful than Book I. But somehow, our cover artist, Erin Kelso, managed to outdo herself:



Do you love Erin as much as I do? If so, you'll be ecstatic to know that our publisher, Kensington Gore, has poster versions of the cover art in the works, some of which will probably be prizes for some lucky readers. I know I can't wait for my walls to be adorned with all things O4S!

Look for Books III and IV to be released in 2016.

Once again, thank you to Graeme Parker at Kensington Gore for making this all possible. Thanks to Erin for bowling me over with the gorgeousness of your art.

And thanks to readers, old and new. Your support means the world to us.



Saturday, October 31, 2015

Carcosa: An Undeleted Scene

I've spent the past two weeks basically living and breathing O4S-- well, more than usual. The publisher had sent us the edits for Carcosa (The Order of the Four Sons, Book II) to look over and gave us the opportunity to make some more edits of our own. We're working with the illustrator on the cover art and it's coming along beautifully. (Hint: it has Bathory!) 

Last night, Coyote and I finished doing our hand-written edits (because we're old-school that way). I just got them all plugged into the Word doc and sent them back to the publisher. 

Hopefully, Book II will release sometime in December. 

To celebrate, I thought I'd share with you all an undeleted scene-- Coyote and I had written a lot more of Clayton and Alyssa's backstory for Book II and ended up cutting most of it. Here is a section we decided to put back in, as it becomes important later for Books V-VI. 

Enjoy, and Happy Halloween, everybody! 



New excerpt from Carcosa

The man was dressed sensibly for hiking: sturdy boots, layered clothing, a rain jacket. Black-haired, slim, and lithe, he moved with great purpose, his strides long and quick. Overhead, the autumn sky was pale gray. A sudden, sharp wind gusted some pebbles across the trail in front of him and he paused, frowning.

After a moment, he resumed. All around him, the grass and trees were almost fiercely vibrant against the leaden sky. The dampness of the air enhanced the pine scent of the forest, and along the trail, clumps of yellow and purple wildflowers remained. But the man was not here to take in the scenery. He quickened his pace, moving at a jog until he reached a valley. A stream had appeared to his left, snaking down at out of the mountains, running parallel to the path. The stream grew wide in the lower country, its banks lush and dark. Up ahead, he spotted a cluster of water birches. Their leaves had just started to turn gold, dappling the surface of the water.

The girl was sitting on the riverbank, her back to the trail. Nearby, her horse was nibbling at a patch of short grass. As the man drew near, he saw that she held a gold leaf by its stem, twirling it. Without turning around, she asked, “You don’t ride?”

“Not today.” He sat down on the ground beside her, legs crossed, palms resting on his knees.

She did not turn her head, but he could sense her regarding him, all the same. She tossed the leaf away. “You’re wasting your time.”

“We’ll see.” Taking a pack of cigarettes out of his breast pocket, he shook one out and offered it to her. She made no move to take it. “Go on. I know you smoke.”

“Not my brand.”

He took one for himself and lit up. “You know why I’m here-- to offer you a place in Starry Wisdom.” With a small flourish, a business card appeared in his hand. He passed it to her.

She examined it. “Uh-huh.”

“An apprenticeship.”

“Not interested.”

“You don’t belong with them.”

“You don’t know me.”

“I know there’s never been anyone like you before.”

She said nothing.

When he spoke again, his voice was low and emphatic. “You’ve never been given a choice. You don’t have to stay with the Order just because you were born into it. You’re a rare, precious thing, and all they’ve ever done is limit you. How long can you go on like this? You’re so strong. A fighter. You don’t wait for opportunities, you make them. In that, you’re like us. You have to see that.”

“I don’t want to talk to you. Go away.”

“I don’t think you really mean that. If you did, you wouldn’t be here.”

For the first time, she glanced at him. Blushing, she looked quickly away again.

He grinned, perfectly aware of how handsome he was. Just as she would be aware, whether anyone had ever told her or not, of the traditional relationship in Starry Wisdom between master and pupil. For a moment, he fingered the filter of his cigarette, letting his gaze roam over her form. She shrank from him further, huddled up in her jacket, which concealed from him her body but not that face, that hair and skin. Still grinning, he brought the filter to his lips and inhaled luxuriantly. “The Order talks a big game. Their traditions, their big ideals, Ma’at. But has that been your experience? Would you say they’ve treated you justly and compassionately? Of course not. They have no respect for you or your talents, except for how it benefits them.”

She wrapped her arms around her knees. “That’s not true.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Not all of them.”

“Oh, think you’ve found a good one? It can happen, I suppose. Still, they’ll never give you what I can give you-- freedom.”

“You’re asking me to turn traitor.”

“I’m asking you to be true to yourself. I’ve never been inside the Oracles’ sanitarium, but I’ve read reports on the conditions of the place. It’s disgusting. We’ve never treated Oracles that way. We’ve always recognized their value. If you stay with the Order, all they will do is use you, just as they’ve always used you. You will live and die as their servant.”

“But that’s not how it would be in Starry Wisdom.”

“With us, you would never be a servant. You would gain power for yourself, to use however you choose.”

Hugging herself even tighter, she rested her chin on her knees. “What if I say no?”

He shrugged. “Then you say no.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“You’re not gonna break out the chloroform and the tranquilizer darts? Bag me, tag me, drag me off?”

“No, but I can’t speak for the rest of my colleagues.”

“So, you’re, like, above it?”

“Just pragmatic. I’d much rather win you over, and I don’t think bagging you and tagging you is the way to go about it. But if someone else tries it, I have every confidence that they won’t succeed. I have faith in you. Can you honestly say the same about anyone here—your classmates? Your teachers? Your parents?”

“I have a new family.”

“The director? Or that professor of yours-- what’s his name? The Slav?” Her face darkened. The man pretended to search his memory. “Oh, yes-- Arcady Petrovic. He’s what, thirty? Having an affair with a fifteen-year-old student.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“What’s not to know? Here you are, a beautiful, vulnerable young girl. And here he is, an older man, an authority figure—”

“It’s not like that!”

“Of course it isn’t. Perhaps we should discuss your foster father instead.”

“I see what you’re doing. It’s not working.”

“What am I doing?”

“Trying to discredit them-- but you can’t. You don’t know them like I do.”

“If I had something on either of them, believe me, now would be the time to bring it up.”

“But you don’t.”

“I’m sure they both mean well. One gets to enjoy seeing you in his bed, and then the director, who, besides filling a void in his personal life, has found himself one hell of a commodity. I’m sure you’re aware that since he took you out of the Dormitory, his security detail has increased. Security’s increased around here as well—arranging this conversation was certainly a challenge. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m sure his motivations were purely philanthropic. But once you were out… well, Director Grabowski is an intelligent man, and a tactician. He knows what he’s got. And so do I.”

She shook her head vehemently. “That’s not true. It isn’t.”

“I think we both know that it is.”

“Clayton adopted me.”

“Yes, he did. And now you feel indebted to him. So when he asks you to do something, as he eventually will, you won’t hesitate. Oh, I know what you’re going to say, and you’re right-- I’m sure he would never deliberately put you in harm’s way. But there will always be the greater good. That is a priority that will always take precedence for him—even over you.”

“And I’m sure your intentions are nothing but pure.”

“No, my intentions are quite selfish. At least I’m up front about it.”

“You’re saying Clayton isn’t honest?”

“I think there are points where Clayton isn’t honest with himself—”

“Director Grabowski, please,” she corrected. “I can call him Clayton. Not you.”

That caught the man off-guard. For a moment, he gaped at her. Then he threw back his head and laughed. “You sound like one of us.”

“I already told you, I’m not interested.”

“Fair enough. And when you’ve finish training here, what then?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“I just hope the choice remains yours.”

She did not reply.

“They’ll want you to be an assassin, of course. They won’t call it that. ‘Field work’ is a good catch-all phrase but make no mistake. Your training here will help you be as versatile in as many environments as possible-- stealth, infiltration, tactics, combat magic...” He paused. “What about the Terminus?”

She stiffened. “What about it?”

“The Order has never found a way to evade it.”

For the first time, she turned to face him completely. “And Starry Wisdom has?”

“The Order wouldn’t think it was important, but we would. And we have resources the Order does not.”

“So you haven’t found a way either.”

“There’s never been a case like yours before. A fully cognizant Oracle—”

“Blah, blah, blah,” she rested her chin on her knees again. “I’ve heard it all before.”

“No, you haven’t. I’m telling you, it’s possible. You’re an Oracle and a mage. You could undergo the rite.”

She sneered. “Who wants to live forever? Not me.”

“Is that how you really feel, or is that resignation I’m hearing?”

“Death is inevitable. You have a death in your future. Would you like to hear it? The date? The means?”

He waved his hand, still holding the cigarette. “Irrelevant. The future isn’t certain—not mine, not yours. And it’s one thing to say you don’t fear death now, at fifteen. It’s another to hear that tick-tock approaching. You say you don’t want to live forever, but you’ll be dead forever, and forever is a very long time.”

“I have your card.”

“You do.” He stood to go. Lightly, he touched her shoulder. “In all the world’s history, perhaps in any world’s history, there has never been anyone like you, Alyssa Calderon. Just remember, the Order views you in terms of how you benefit them. I view you in terms of how you could benefit yourself.”

She stared off into the distance, his card held loosely in her fingers. She did not turn to watch him leave, but his voice floated back to her, easy and unconcerned. “Don’t worry. Everyone says no at first.”

 

* * *

 

Afterwards, the only person she told about the man’s offer was Arcady. Arcady held her while she talked. He lent her his lighter so she could burn the business card.

Not that it mattered. Just knowing the man’s name, Kang Han, was sufficient. If she wanted to reach him, she could. And he would come. All the same, she watched the flames eat through the expensive stock, the embossed ink.

She was just starting to feel calm again when Arcady said she should tell Clayton.

They argued. It took a lot to convince Arcady not to pick up the phone and call the director’s office right then and there. Clayton had warned her about watching out for Starry Wisdom. He’d had security beefed up around the Academy—Kang had been right about that. (As he’d been right about so many things.) But if Clayton found out about this—at best, he’d pull her out of school. At worst, he might take it as a shot fired. As regional director, he had both the authority and the resources to start a war.

A war. Over her.

She wasn’t about to let that happen.



Friday, September 25, 2015

Book I is here!


It's finally here... er, again?

That's right, the re-release of The Order of the Four Sons, Book I through Kensington Gore Publishing is here! You can buy it on Amazon here.

Check out an excerpt here. If you buy a copy, please be kind and leave a review!


Over the past few weeks, we've been very busy with book promotions:

To read my interview with Jan Ruth - click here.

To Richard Foland's interview with both Coyote and me - click here.

To read, "The Monster Mash," a guest post I wrote for Steven Ramirez's blog - click here.

Coyote and I are open for other interviews, guest posts, book signings, and other promotional events. If you're interested, please give me a shout.


Thanks, as always, for reading. I'll be sure to keep you posted on any other O4S-related goodness!















Thursday, September 24, 2015

Better Living Through Chemistry?



I’d been meaning to write a blog post about some of our recent adventures with prescription drugs. This week's kerfuffle with Turing Pharmaceuticals has prompted me to finally write it.

In case you aren’t aware, Turing Pharmaceuticals, a privately held biotech company, acquired the drug Daraprim from Impax Laboratories. The drug has been on the market for over sixty years. It’s used chiefly to treat malaria and toxoplasmosis. The latter is a problem for AIDs patients and others with compromised immune systems. Turing hiked the price of this life-saving drug from $13.50 a tablet to $750.00.

Outcry ensued, and rightly so.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident.

Unfortunately, this is just another aspect of our broken healthcare system, of which Big Pharma is only a component.

I hate that it takes a case like this to get the situation the attention it deserves—though the cynical side of me wonders if even this would have received this kind of attention if it wasn’t campaign time. An even more cynical side of me looks at Turing’s almost cartoonishly eeeeevil CEO Martin Shkreli and wonders if the whole thing’s not a damn campaign stunt—notice how quickly Hillary Clinton charged in there like a white knight, saying she was going to find a way to end price gouging? In a matter of hours, Turing changed its tune and Shkreli has slinked off, locking down his Twitter account and presumably disappearing back into whatever muck that spawned him. Feels a little too pat, doesn’t it?

Not to be confused with Mr. Shkreli.

But I digress.

I want to say again how Big Pharma is not the only problem here. That our healthcare system is broken.

Did you hear that?

Big Pharma = only part of the problem.

The system = BROKEN.  

I say this as someone who lost their house and had to declare bankruptcy due to catastrophic illness.

I say this as someone who requires medication to stay functional. (Well, as functional as I get, anyway).

I say this as someone whose husband literally requires pharmaceuticals to live. He’s a transplant patient, which means he’s on immunosuppressants, which means toxoplasmosis is a real concern for us.


In the first year my husband experienced total renal failure, I had to take him to the emergency room at least a dozen times. (Honestly, I lost count after the eighth). Going into it, we had better circumstances than most-- we were DINKs with reasonably good health insurance. Even then, each ER visit carried a co-pay of $100. That was $1,200, right out of pocket.

Initially, one of the complications caused by renal failure was blood loss. Uremia, the build-up of toxins in the body, caused microbleeds along his digestive tract. The blood was passing through his stool and his body was unable to produce red blood cells fast enough to replace it. He required three transfusions, and then for about eight weeks after, he had to take an injection called Epogen to stimulate red blood cell production. Each Epogen shot was $700. The shots were weekly.

The insurance company refused to pay for them unless he was a) hospitalized, or b) his blood cell count had fallen to dangerous levels. If you’ve never seen someone with a low blood cell count, they’re paper-white and tend to pass out a lot, so there’s always a risk of falling and the trauma associated with falling.

Also, if you don’t have enough blood, you can-- y’know. Die.

So. Epogen shots for eight weeks: $5,600 price tag.

This is in addition to the $46,000 hospital I received for his first month-long hospital stay, and $60,000 for the second. 

This is in addition to the many drugs the doctors put him on, then took him off of, many of which carried hundreds of dollars in co-pays.

Then he went on dialysis. The dialysis machine was a $65,000 piece of equipment. The monthly supplies for his treatment were $12,000. Tubing, clamps, dialysate, needles, sanitizer, bandages, and I’m sure there’s other stuff I’m forgetting.  

This is in addition to the high monthly premiums we paid for health insurance in the first place, which failed us when we needed it most. A large portion of our healthcare bills were ultimately picked up by the American Kidney Foundation.

This is a capitalist society, which various politicians are always insisting we try to keep as laissez-faire as possible. The point of laissez-faire capitalism is to let the market sort itself out: inferior goods/services fail. Superior goods/services rise to the top.

So how is it possible that these companies exist, charging such outrageous prices for such shitty service? Services so shitty, in fact, that they require a nonprofit to step in to help mitigate their shittiness?


By the way-- wanna know the approximate cost for the first year of renal failure/dialysis?

Around $274,000.

That’s a conservative estimate because I don’t recall how much we paid for additional co-pays like all the specialists (nephrologist, cardiologist, gastroenterologist) and incidentals like x-rays, CT scans, colonoscopies, lab tests, etc., ad nauseum, forever and ever, amen. Also? We did home dialysis, which is cheaper than going to a clinic.

The year before, Patrick and I had made $44,000. (Slightly below our state’s median income-- and that was a good year.)

One year of healthcare = six years of income for two people.

It’s untenable.


Now that Patrick has a transplant, it doesn’t end. The new wrinkle with medication and insurance is mail order services. Earlier this year, we were informed that we could no longer use the pharmacy that we’ve been using for eight years, with pharmacists who’ve been with us every step of the way of our nightmarish medical journey. Our pharmacist knows our names and we know his. He knows our health conditions. He and his staff have done so much for us over the years—advising us on OTC medications, catching drug interactions the doctors don’t, calling us to let us know when there are manufacturer’s coupons available, and helping us navigate the maze of Medicare.

We can’t use them anymore. Our insurance company now refuses to pay for medications we take on an on-going basis from any pharmacy except their mail-order company. They tell us it’s supposed to be for our convenience, that we will save money.

So far, it has not been convenient, nor have we saved any money.

Not only do we pay more than we were paying at our old brick-and-mortar pharmacy, many of Patrick’s drugs can’t be put on auto-refill because the price fluctuates too much.

Twice, the mail-order company has failed to ship Patrick’s anti-rejection medication—the medication that we absolutely cannot fuck around with. If he does not have his medication twice a day, every day, on time, his body can begin the rejection process. Like Daraprim, this is a life-sustaining drug.

When it didn’t arrive on time, what did we do? We had to go back to our old pharmacist to get a partial fill while we waited for the mail order company to get its ass in gear.

One of Patrick’s other drugs, a phosphorus supplement, is so expensive through the mail order program, it’s actually cheaper for us to pay for it out of pocket at—you guessed it. Our old pharmacy.

On a much more minor note, the only migraine drug I’ve ever found that works on my headaches is Zomig. My doctor prescribes six pills a month, which is the maximum most insurance companies are willing to cover. My insurance only covers four.

Don’t you love that the insurance companies know better than my doctor what’s good for me? Or that they aren’t about to allow what’s good for me to get in the way of their bottom line?


The circle of blame doesn’t end there. Yes, the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies are neck-and-neck in the relay race of eeeeevil. They charge enormous sums for their goods and services. But the doctors and hospitals charge enormous sums as well.

Then there’s the role of our employers. Companies, like consumers, are saddled with an immense burden when it comes to healthcare costs. For some companies, presumably, this is more of a hardship than others. (Just how much responsibility should they bear?) Over the course of my time in the workplace, the premiums keep going up while the benefits keep dwindling. The employers’ options are to either pass the cost onto their workers, or to cut benefits, or both.

In the case of having to use a mail order system—we found, upon further investigation, that that’s not the insurance company’s requirement, but the employer’s. They’re trying to save costs for their bottom line.


So who’s benefiting from all the savings?

Not us.


It’s an old joke to say that if you’ve got your health, you’ve got everything. But it’s really difficult to convey how true that is to people who’ve never been sick.

The healthcare industry has a unique and uniquely awesome responsibility to their consumer base. Their business is not just a business of dollars and cents. It’s a business of blood and organs, of spirit, of ensuring families get to keep their loved ones for as long as possible. It’s about life and quality of life.

But again, I don’t expect people who’ve never suffered a major illness, or watched a loved one suffer a major illness, to really get that.

So let me put this in terms you dollars-and-cents people can grasp: keep workers healthy. Healthy workers = healthy economy.

Because he who dies with the most stuff wins. And just count yourself lucky if you get to die with all your original parts.



Saturday, September 12, 2015

Order of the Four Sons Cover Art and Release Date

I’m so pleased to announce that our publisher, Kensington Gore, has slated The Order of the Four Sons, Book I to be released on Sept. 25. It will be available as an ebook and paperback through Amazon. 

Check out the gorgeous cover art by artist Erin Kelso:



No word on a release date for Carcosa yet, but at this point, I imagine it will be early 2016. We are already working with Erin on the cover art and couldn’t be more excited.

Thanks to Graeme Parker, the mastermind behind Kensington Gore for making this happen. Thanks to our friends and family for their unflagging support.

And thank YOU, dear readers! We hope you like the new look. As always, please feel free to hit us up with questions/comments.







Monday, September 7, 2015

Books = Joy. Or, at least, sanity.


Throughout my life, writing has saved my sanity-- and quite possibly my life. In times of extreme stress, hardship, physical and mental anguish, or when it just flat seemed like nothing would ever go right again, I always knew my keyboard and notebooks would be waiting. I could pour my heart out into a journal or a Word document and at least get some of the poison out.

Writing, of course, was also a way to escape reality. I could invent demons that could actually be slayed, battles that could actually be won, entire worlds where things happen the way I want them to.

If you’re a writer, I’m probably not telling you anything you don’t already know. I’m happy to say that, for the most part, my life is not one that requires a lot of venting or escapism these days. Which is okay, because that leaves writing as a time of simple, unbridled happiness.

But if you’re a writer, then your first love was probably the same as mine-- reading. Books. The places and characters we can visit time and again. (I know I do.) Mid-World, Hogwarts, Watership Down-- too many places to name, too many friends to count. All escapist destinations of the first order.

I mentioned in a previous blog post I’ve gone back to a traditional job, and I like it. But I don’t like the commute. I hate driving—always have, always will. And while I know some people commute much farther than I do, (my commute is only 40-60 minutes long depending on traffic), it’s longer than I’ve ever driven before, and it was causing me a great deal of anxiety. I would arrive either at the office or back at home every day, sweaty, shaky, teary-eyed, on the verge of a full-blown panic attack.

A friend very sensibly pointed out that I should listen to books on tape. So I got an Audible account.

You guys. It. Is. Awesome.

Browsing the Audible site, I was immediately beguiled. Reese Witherspoon reading Go Set a Watchman? Colin Firth reading The End of the Affair? Alan Cumming reading Hamlet? Yes, please.

It’s funny, I never thought I would enjoy listening to audio books. I like to read, I like the action of reading. Listening to books is a very different experience. It's engaging different parts of my brain. I feel like it’s making me a better listener, and I'm giving books I would not have otherwise read more of a chance.

My first book is Neil Gaiman’s new collection of short stories, Trigger Warning, read in the man himself’s silky tones. Where I used to dread getting into my car, now I look forward to it.

So I don't know why I'm so surprised that once again, literature has enriched my life in such a big way. I guess it's just nice to find that something you've loved for so long can still surprise you.





Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Who are you, writer, and what do you know?


I was hanging out with a group of poets recently and someone brought up this article they’d read in Harper’s Magazine by Sam Sacks. The article discusses how the Iowa Writers’ Workshop gained prominence following World War II and how working with returning veterans shaped what has become the standard for writing programs in academia—primarily, the workshop model itself. 

This has been something of a mixed blessing. So much good literature has come from war and soldiers, from The Iliad to Hemingway, to Kurt Vonnegut, Phil Klay and far too many others to mention. The idea that war has shaped the teaching of the craft absolutely makes sense. 

If you’re a writer, you know the drill (pun certainly intended): the workshop method consists of a circle of writers who share their work and give each other feedback (fostering camaraderie similar to a military unit). Write regularly, meet regularly, set deadlines (apply military discipline to your work). All good so far—if there’s one thing the military knows how to do, it’s train people on how to do stuff, right?
 
Also found within this model are the origins of the conventional writing wisdom find your voice and write what you know. They seem so basic to us now, it’s hard to believe this was ever a concept that needed to be introduced via a college writing program.
 
The thing is, according to Sacks, these old chestnuts were deliberately embedded in the workshop model by administrators who were not only themselves ex-military, but courting donations from entities like the State Department and the CIA. A really good way to get all them rich, pro-military folks to write some big checks was to point out how writing programs helped America. Specifically, how writing programs helped fight communism, fascism, and, presumably, any other –isms that would bring the wolves of the House Un-American Activities Committee to your door. By teaching writing students to find their voice and write what they know, they were encouraging American values like rugged individualism and realism, (y’know, the good –isms).
 
The article goes on to discuss how this, of course, led to a generation of young male writers returning from war to write war memoirs, and how this idea of your writing being firmly rooted in your identity has affected literary culture as a whole.
 
My esteemed fellow poets were fretting that this was a government/military/corporate conspiracy to limit creativity. “They’re trying to silence us, man! Trying to keep poets down! Trying to put us in a box!”
 
Maybe. I myself have never enrolled in a program like the one in Iowa and I have no interest in pursuing an MFA. It took me thirteen years to get my bachelor’s, working my way off and on through community college, stringing together six credits here, nine there, before transferring to a four-year university and finally finishing out at age thirty-one. Maybe since I was always a working adult as I attended classes, my identity as a writer wasn’t quite so malleable as that of younger students. I’ve been an obsessive reader and writer for as far back as I can remember so I’ve pretty much always had my own ideas about what constitutes good literature. 

So I guess what I’m trying to say is—if you let a college workshop completely inform your writing and your approach to writing, maybe you’re doing it wrong. 

I’m not saying that the workshop model and college writing programs aren’t useful because I believe they are. And I do believe that finding your voice IS important. Neil Gaiman said, “Start telling the stories that only you can tell, because there’ll always be better writers than you and there’ll always be smarter writers than you. There will always be people who are much better at doing this or doing that-- but you are the only you.”

Likewise, write what you know is important—it’s usually the best starting point, especially for beginning writers. You are an expert on your experiences, so it allows you to write something with authority. 

But a writer’s craft should never be shaped by any one thing—not their education, not even their personal experiences. I think a real writer must be continuously forming their own ideas, pursuing their own methods. And I know I’m biased when I say a writer should be trying to imagine lives as different from their own as possible. For me, it’s kinda the whole point—writing allows me to be so many other things than just a poor kid from Kansas City. It’s like Whitman said, “I am large. I contain multitudes.” A writer should contain multitudes. Art is about exploring possibilities, and yes, pushing boundaries. 

Sacks does criticize the idea that all works have to be semi-autobiographical in order to be taken seriously—an unfortunate bias in literature that has led to several instances of fabricated memoirs (see James Frey, Margaret Seltzer, et. al). The postwar days led to a lack of diversity in the writing being produced, and not just for memoirists returning from war, either. Sacks writes, “Story after story concerned an individual’s attempts to overcome adversity, to pass through the pain and isolation of his circumstances and arrive at some universal understanding.” 

This reminded me of a remark a writer friend of mine made. She has been attending a local writer’s workshop that meets up every week. The participants are almost entirely twentysomething white Midwesterners, and she has bemoaned, on more than one occasion, how tired she is of reading short stories and plays about the trials and tribulations of young twentysomethings adrift in flyover country. 

Again, as writers, we should be opening ourselves up to being something other than our personal circumstances. Something else that I find problematic about this whole subject is how it pretty much dismisses genre material altogether—where would we be without science-fiction and fantasy? Without horror? Without fairy tales? Without mysteries? What if someone had told Jules Verne he should stick to writing what he knew? It has long been an attitude of academia and the literary establishment that genre books are not “serious” literature. Thankfully, I think that attitude is changing. 

Throughout my lifetime, we have also been in a paradigm shift involving diversity—young men returning from war are no longer the dominant force in college classrooms. The Internet and self-publishing have given a voice to so many writers who at any other time in history would have been voiceless. 

It will be interesting to see how these changes will affect not only writing itself, but the teaching of writing. 

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

“Everybody’s got plans until they get punched in the mouth.”

So I haven’t posted since June. Around that time, I remember thinking I could use a brief hiatus from blogging-- our publisher had sent us the new and improved Order of the Four Sons manuscript to look over and I was looking for a new job.

That brief hiatus turned into almost two months. I’ve always been a big believer that life is like that Mike Tyson quote-- you step into the ring, you think you know what you’re doing, and then pow. Right in the kisser. 

Things are calming down now, and I’m pleased to share that after many delays and revisions, The Order of the Four Sons, Volume 1 is now finalized. This week, our publisher put us in touch with a cover artist who will be designing the covers for all six books. She’s an illustrator in Manhattan, KS, so she’s practically my neighbor. I’m a great admirer of her work and I can’t tell you how exciting -- and how fun! -- this part of the process is. I’m hoping I’ll be able to do a cover release in the next few weeks. 

And I did find a job. After a year of freelancing, I’m back at a desk. I learned a lot in the past year and I don’t regret the experience one bit, but man, am I glad to have set hours and a steady paycheck again. 

I’m keeping it part-time so I can still work on various creative projects. I’ve already been there a little over a month. It’s giving me the opportunity to do some technical writing, the one kind of writing I have never done before, so that thrills my little word-nerd heart. (I have a vocab list with all the fancy new technical terms I’m learnin’!) 

So the new plan: back from hiatus. Back to blogging. Back to writing. 

And keep your hands up. That right hook’s a bitch.


Wednesday, June 3, 2015

It goes to show you never can tell.


As I am still thoroughly enmeshed in Order of the Four Sons edits, I'm keeping it short this week.

I wanted to share a pleasant discovery with fellow my authors. The lesson is this: you just never can tell what people will want. 

Back in April, I did a book sale/signing at the Writers Place here in Kansas City. To my surprise, my most popular books were my children's books, particularly a little story I wrote five or six years ago called The Ice Dragon. I wrote it partly as a Christmas gift to my co-author, Coyote, and his children, who were still young enough to enjoy fairy tales. But, mainly, I wrote it as a joke. I know I've shared this story on this blog before, but I'll go ahead and share it again.

Way, way back when Coyote and I first sat down to start writing the O4S series, we had a good-natured argument. Coyote, as an old-school fantasy geek, wanted dragons somewhere in the story. I didn't. I thought it was too cliche. Anything but dragons, I said. The argument went something like this:

Coyote: Dragons?
Me: No. No dragons.
Coyote: Just one dragon?
Me: NO! NO. DRAGONS. EVER!

We've stuck to the No Dragon rule in O4S-- zombies, fairies, mermaids, chimeras, undead psychopaths, yes. But no dragons. 

When I wrote The Ice Dragon, I was basically saying, "Here. Here's your damn dragon." Because if you can't give your BFF crap every now and then, I mean, what's the point?

The years went by. I threw The Ice Dragon up on Amazon and Smashwords because-- why not? But I didn't really promote it except at Christmastime because I didn't think anyone would be interested in it outside of the holidays. 

Well, I was wrong. 

There was its popularity at the Writers Place. Then someone bought a whole bunch of hard copies from Createspace-- I assume a bookstore or a library. So I thought, maybe-- maybe people would be interested in this story year-round? 

Last month, I started promoting it regularly, along with my other titles. Imagine my surprise when I got a big response. I sold a bunch of copies-- more than I think I've ever sold in a given month. 

And not only did it sell-- I've gotten some new five-star reviews:

"Absolutely enchanting . . . My 10 year old student absolutely loves this book."

"Brilliantly woven and heartrending, a thoroughly enjoyable expedition. I'm not going to compare it to other books, the style was unique to me. Do buy this book, it's not only good, I dare to say it's important."

I just . . . I can't get over it.

I wanted to share this experience with other writers-- guys, put yourself out there. It will amaze you what people might respond to, what they might connect with, what might touch their hearts. 

As for me, apparently I need to write more children's books. I may even throw in another dragon or two.



In the meantime, it's Fantasy Month over at the Inspired Writers site. I'm one of the featured authors. If you haven't checked it out already, swing by there. You can grab an additional excerpt of The Winter Prince and enter for a chance to win an autographed copy.



Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Short Story: Astronomical Events


Sam Riley acquired the telescope just six weeks shy of his twenty-second wedding anniversary.  It was Jolene’s second marriage and Sam’s third.  When people asked how many children they had, Sam always said, “We have four, two girls and two boys.”  Jo always said, “I have two girls and Sam has two boys.”  Sam didn’t take offense at this.  He was ten years older than his wife.  When they’d gotten married, his boys, David and Brian, were teenagers.  In fact, Dave had already started college at Rolla.  Jo didn’t have a hand in raising them.  Her girls, on the other hand, had still been small: Audrey had been nine and little Jess, only five.  Their dad had been mostly out of the picture, so Sam had stepped in.  He’d been glad to do it, bandaging up boo-boos, attending parent-teacher nights, cheering them on at softball games and even washing their hair in the kitchen sink nights because he didn’t think it was proper for him to see them naked in the tub. 
Now the kids were all grown and gone, and in Sam’s estimation, they were all in fine shape.  He loved to tell people, “Not a bum in the lot.”  And it was true.  They’d all gone to college except for Jess, who was happy as a clam doing her business from home, selling her handmade knickknacks on the Internet and making a tidy living at it. 
But it was Dave who brought him the telescope.  Dave was the only one who had stayed close to home.  He taught at the junior high where he was real popular with the kids.  Besides teaching science, he coached basketball and track and ran several academic clubs. 
The old junior high building had been built in the 1920s.  A new wing had been added sometime in the 60s, but it still lacked air conditioning.  The furnace was notoriously temperamental, too.  Many times over the course of the winter, it would conk out entirely.  When it did, teachers resignedly informed their charges to go to their lockers and get their coats before resuming the lesson. 
Since Dave had started teaching there, extensive renovations had begun.  The principal was a man named Greg Meier, who Sam remembered seeing often hanging around the house when the boys had been growing up, slurping RC Colas and playing video games on the old Commodore 64.  Now, Greg was overseeing a clean-up project at the school, starting with the storage spaces.  There was a large attic in the old wing that nobody’d hardly been in since Ford was in office.   
That’s where they’d found it, fully assembled under a drop cloth: an orange-bodied Celestron with an 8” lens. 
   
When Sam was a boy, his great-grandma, who everybody called Sweetie Pie, used to joke it was a good thing he was the spittin’ image of his daddy, otherwise people might think he’d been left on the doorstep by Gypsies; he was such a natural tinker.  Even as a boy, he’d been a patient, meticulous sort, intrigued with the inner workings of things.  His prized possessions in those days had been the collection of tools and spare parts he’d scavenged from old sheds and trash heaps.  His room had been a magpie nest of nuts and bolts, shoeboxes overflowing with bits of wire, erector sets, airplane models and old vacuum tubes.  He kept Sweetie Pie’s ancient (even in those distant chrome-and-frosted-aqua days of 1959) floor model Victrola running.  At fourteen, he built his own ham radio.  At eighteen, he’d joined the army and served in the Signal Corps.  He did a tour in Viet Nam, then went to college on the GI Bill to study electrical engineering.  After ten years in broadcasting, he went to work for an electronics company where he stayed for twenty-seven years.  During his first two marriages, he’d held a part-time job as a repairman at an appliance store.  Long after he quit, people in town continued to bring him things that wanted fixing: telephones, radios, clocks, cameras, watches, televisions, computers, which he happily did at no charge.  He made house calls to work on major appliances or to hook up someone’s surround sound system.  When he’d retired, several people, including Dave, had suggested he teach technical courses, or even go into consulting.  Sam always shook his head and said, “I just wouldn’t have the patience for that kind of thing.”  But the truth was, at sixty-four years, Sam couldn’t credit the idea of starting over.  Besides, he liked puttering around his own shop, dozing in front of Bonanza reruns and playing with the grandkids. 

The day Dave brought the telescope over, Jess was visiting her mother in the kitchen.  When Dave came in, they ignored him and he ignored them.  The relationship between Jo, her daughters and Sam’s sons had always been a bit frosty for Sam’s liking.  For the life of him, he didn’t understand why the five of them didn’t get along better.  It seemed that things had only gotten worse in recent years.  Sam suspected it had something to do with Jo and the girls not caring much for Dave’s wife, Shannon, who, admittedly, thought a lot of herself.  Then there was the fact that Dave and Shannon had started attending the mega-church some years ago and had tried to convince the rest of the family to do likewise.  The place packed in almost four thousand people on the weekends, which, in Sam’s opinion, seemed more like a stadium event than a house of worship, but to each his own.  He was just grateful everybody kept relations civil, especially on the holidays.    
As for him and Jo—well.  In some ways, they were very compatible.  They were both hard-working, both loners.  They were both thrifty and liked a tidy house.  But Jo had always been an unhappy woman.  She’d met her ex, an Air Force man, when he was stationed in Wichita.  She’d married him to get away from Middle of Nowhere, Kansas, (a map might list it as “Walton”—which was the closest town, at any rate), where she’d grown up.  Her mom had been a real good-time gal, dumping her off in the country like a dog for her grandparents to raise.  As a result, Jo hated the country, hated everything to do with the country.  She wouldn’t even go camping.  Sam had inherited his grandfather’s old farm about ten miles northeast of town and had once nursed dreams of building a house out there in his retirement.  But of course, Jo wouldn’t even consider it. 
In school, young Jo-Jo had gotten good grades, but had never had the money to go to college, something she’d always regretted.  Audrey had remarked a few times that there wasn’t anything preventing her from taking classes now, but for some reason, Jo never did it.  The community college brochures Audrey brought over sat untouched on the kitchen counter until Sam threw them away.  Jo didn’t really have any hobbies to speak of either.  She gardened some—if you could call keeping some African violets on the window sill, popping petunias out of a plastic container and dropping them into a terra cotta urn in the springtime ‘gardening.’  Jo had said one time that she might like to learn to knit, so on her birthday, the girls presented her with a course they’d paid for—just a little four-week thing offered up at the community center.  Jo went to one session, but said it was too hard on account of her being left-handed.  She was a fine cook and would have spent more time in the kitchen trying out exotic recipes, but Sam, a diehard meat-and-potato man, didn’t have the palate for anything more refined than Heinz 57. 
Jo had always complained about how they never did anything fun.  But if Sam suggested they go see a movie, she sniffed and said there wasn’t anything worth paying ten dollars to see.  If he suggested they go out for an ice cream cone, she got all huffy and said no, that he just didn’t understand.  She wanted to go out and do something.  How come they never traveled?  “Well, now,” he’d said.  “Traveling is a big expense.  We’ll have to do our research.”
And research Sam had.  That was the way he did everything.  Purchasing a new pair of shoes took him a few weeks.  A ladder had taken him six months.  A new car, a year.  He had to try things out, investigate all the options.  The way he looked at it, every purchase was an investment.  A vacation was no different, really.  There was the matter of airfare, lodging, rental car.  Their food and entertainment budget would have to be planned. 
“Where do you want to go?” Jo had asked.
“Where?” he’d frowned.  “Well, how about . . . Galveston?”
“You know damn well I hate Texas.”
“Galveston’s not at all like Fort Worth.  And anyhow, I don’t think it’s fair for you to say you hate a place you haven’t been to in over thirty years.”
“How about Vegas?”
“What would we do in Vegas?”
“Go to the casinos, see the shows, go dancing--”
“The casinos?  Why not just throw all our money away and cut out the middle man?”
They’d argued for days about where to go before finally settling on checking out the cruise lines.  That was over a year ago, and Sam still insisted he was comparing deals. 
In the meantime, he understood that Jo needed something in her life.  When the girls were at home, none of this had been a problem.  In those days, there was no such thing as free time.  Even as the girls got older, it seemed there was always something going on—back-to-school shopping, math homework, doctor’s appointments.  Both Sam and Jo worked full-time.  They had their commutes; they had a house and vehicles to maintain, coupons to clip, casseroles to make, check books to balance.  Twice, Jo had to go through lengthy and acrimonious child support proceedings.  Sometimes, it had felt like they barely had time to speak two words to each other before collapsing into bed at night. 
Now, the bills were all automated and there was no need to cook every day, or even every other day.  In fact, several times a week they ordered dinner off the senior menu at Perkin’s, pot roast for him, Cobb salad for her.  The house and yard were always immaculate.  And yet, they still barely spoke two words to each other, unless it was to snap.  Just the other day, Sam had gone into the kitchen to let her know he was going to the hardware store. 
She’d had her back to him, bent over the sink washing the breakfast dishes.  Just as he leaned over to give her a kiss good-bye, she said, “So, go.  No one’s stopping you.”

He’d hoped grandchildren would help, but Jo didn’t regard his grandchildren as hers.  In fact, she seemed to resent the amount of time he spent with them.  Nine times out of ten, Jo found some reason not to go to their baseball games and ballet recitals.  She’d hinted once that Blake and Taylor were spoiled.  That had led to such a nasty exchange, Sam stopped asking her to accompany him altogether. 
But if she disapproved of his spending time with the grandkids, she hated that he fixed stuff for free, and made no bones about it. 

So when Dave brought over the telescope, they snuck it in through the garage. 
Sam’s shop was a far cry from his cluttered childhood bedroom.  He had two main work areas in the house’s sub-basement, one for woodworking and one for electronics.  The electronics area had a wide bench with a heavy-duty magnifier lamp.  Shelves and peg boards lined the walls.  All his tools, equipment, spare parts and hardware were sorted and labeled. 
As Sam flipped on the lights, Dave was saying, “Greg called and asked me if the science faculty might have any use for it.  I told him, ‘Oh, heck, yeah.  I’d love to do an astronomy unit.  And the science club would just love it.’”
Sam grunted.  “Well, let’s have a gander.” 
Dave and Greg had managed to dig up the telescope’s original carrying case, dusty, slightly scuffed, but none the worse for wear.  Sam popped it open to reveal the telescope nestled within, the body unscrewed from the tripod, all the individual pieces matched up to their foam rubber compartments. 
“I took it home and cleaned it,” Dave said.  “Blake and I took it out last night, but we couldn’t get it to focus.”
Sam examined the parts one by one, laid them neatly out on his workbench: tripod, finderscope, sun shade, altitude adjustment.  He saved the body of the telescope itself for last, turning it thoughtfully over in his hands.
“Think you can fix it?”
“Sure.  For a fee.”
Dave laughed a trifle disbelievingly.  “Fee?”
Sam nodded, tapping a finger against the orange tube.  “If I fix it, I get to keep it for a few weeks.” 
“Is that all?” Still laughing, Dave clasped his father’s shoulder.  “Sure, that seems fair to me.”
Dave stayed and visited for a little while, but declined Sam’s offer to stay for supper.  As soon as Dave left, Sam got to work. 

Generally, Jo didn’t come down to the basement.  If she wanted something, there was a return vent in the kitchen floor she could holler through.  So she didn’t even know about the telescope until a replacement part arrived a week later.
“What’s this?” Jo asked when she found the small, flat parcel in their mailbox.
“That must be the lens I ordered,” Sam replied.
“For what?”
“Telescope.” 
“Telescope?  What telescope?”
“They found it up at the school.  Asked me to take a look.” 
“Doing it for free?”
“Well, there wasn’t hardly anything to it.  The screws that held the focuser in place came off, so the mechanism fell down into the shaft.  All I had to do was get it out.  Took me all of five minutes.”
“But you ordered a lens.”
“Old one was scratched.”
“How much did that cost us?”
“Thirty-one ninety-five.  I found it on eBay.”
“Are they going to compensate us for that?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“What does that mean?”
“I told Dave I wouldn’t charge if I could borrow it for a while.”  As soon as Sam finished that sentence, he braced himself for the haranguing that was sure to follow. 
To his surprise, Jo didn’t say anything for a few moments.  Then she said, “Can I see it?”
Then it was his turn to pause.  “Sure.  Come on down.”
She went with him to the shop and watched as he opened the package and screwed in the new lens.  “There,” he pantomimed dusting his hands off.  “That’s that.”
Jo bent to look into the eyepiece.  She moved the telescope around, adjusted the focus.  “You know, my grandpa got me a telescope when I was ten or eleven.  We used to go up on the roof and look at the constellations.”
“Did he?” Sam tried to recall if she’d ever told him that before.  He didn’t think so.  “Well, I figured we’d take it out tonight.  You know.  Give it a spin.”
“What’s the moon phase tonight?”
“Waning crescent.  It’ll be a new moon in a few nights.  Then we’ll really be able to see some things.”
“Did you look that up?”
He nodded.  “I been checking out some astronomy sites.  You want to see?”
The two of them sat down in front of his computer, where they remained for the better part of the afternoon.  Just before dusk, Jo fixed them up some sandwiches while Sam took the telescope out to the backyard.  He set out a pair of aluminum folding chairs next to it, lit some citronella candles to keep the bloodsuckers off.
Jo brought the plates outside and they settled down together, sipping iced tea and watching the sky darken.  The cicadas gave way to lightning bugs.  The lightning bugs gave way to crickets.  When Sam and Jo finished eating, they wiped the potato chip grease off their hands and stood up. 
Sam started to take the eyepiece, then paused and offered it to Jo. 
She shook her head.  “After you.  You fixed it.”
So Sam put his eye to the lens.  After some adjusting, he beheld the moon. 
They’d mostly stuck to the beginner astronomy websites, and it had felt kind of elementary to be reading about Orion’s Belt and Cassiopeia—who didn’t know about them?  But seeing them like this made him glad they did.  Why had they ever taken the moon for granted?  Then there were the Pleiades.  There was Perseus.  Jupiter with its tan girdle and its red spot.  Its four moons, Io, Europa, Callisto and Ganymede.  There were nebulae and galaxies.  And of course, all the bright stars, alone or in clusters. 
Sam and Jo passed the eyepiece back and forth, rotating the telescope in slow circles so they could see all that they could see. 
“I found a list of astronomical events the other day,” Sam said.  “We’ll get to see a meteor shower in October.”
“Won’t the telescope have to go back by then?”
“I was thinking we might get one of our own.”
She nodded.  “I think that’s a good idea.”
“I was also thinking we could visit some of the observatories.  There’s one up at William Jewell.  UMKC, too.”
“And Louisburg.”
“We could visit all of them.”
“We could.”
They didn’t even realize how quickly time was passing, the fairy circle of candles turning into puddles of wax around them, a foraging possum trundling its way across the yard to sniff at their discarded Lay’s bag. 
  It was after 2 a.m. when they finally decided to turn in.  Sam broke down the telescope while Jo gathered up their plates and crumpled-up napkins.  As they walked together back towards the house, Jo said, “You know, I’ve always wanted to go to Cape Canaveral.  That’d be a nice anniversary gift to ourselves, wouldn’t it?”
He smiled.  “I hear Florida’s nice this time of year.”


 
 
Enjoy this short story? Please take a moment to let me know in the comments. In the meantime, check out other short stories here.