Monday Mouthful - Short Story Challenge

For my writing class last week, we had the challenge to write a short story no more than 400 words in length. This is not easy for me, I love words. It was a lesson in word economy and I like my end result. I hope you do as well.

Like a Moth on Pavement

“What the hell is wrong with the doors?” Jace tossed his usual Marlboro Menthols on the register belt and stared, interrupting my Friday night penance at the express register.  Most nights Jace left me alone, and I ignored that he watched me from the office’s one-way glass. 

His green eyes flicked over me, settling on my name tag. “I’m calling maintenance, but hell if I am waiting around. Neither are you.”

The stifling air seeped into the temperature controlled purgatory, making the automatic doors stick. I was melting; from the humid air or the heat radiating from his gaze I couldn’t be sure. The overnight cashier arrived, sauntering over to Jace. She leaned into his ear, and whispered. He stepped back and gave her a curt nod.

 We stepped outside after shift. The parking lot was covered with moths. Their powder white wings were stuck to the hot asphalt. I was a moth, drawn to Jace’s heat. He laced his fingers in mine as we watched another wave answering the blacktop’s siren song.

 “She’s not my girlfriend if you’re wondering.”

I shot him a look. “Who’s to say I was?”

 “Who’s to say you weren’t?”

“You don’t know me well enough to assume what I’d be thinking,” I scoffed.

“True,” he inched closer, “But, I’d like to get to know you.” He flashed a wicked grin.

His smile seemed to confirm those rumors; women dropped their panties for him on command. Tonight, I was one of those women. Impetuously I leaned in, pressing my lips against his. Jace kissed me as if he had done it a thousand times; as if I belonged to him.

“Colleen,” he whispered, touching his forehead to mine, “you aren’t anything like I expected.”

I spoke against his mouth, “You aren’t either.”

Jace’s rough cheek brushed against mine, “Aren’t moths attracted to light, not blacktop?” He breathed into my ear, “I guess they aren’t what they seem.”

I awoke to the feel of sandpaper against my cheek. “Knight! Damn it, stop licking my face!” I pushed my black kitten away, returning to dream where the moths broke routine and so did I. 

COVER REVEAL - Going Home Again by Abby Cavenaugh

 Here is the brand new cover of Going Home Again, the debut novel from my Swoon Sister, Abby Cavenaugh. Going Home Again is an adult contemporary romance set to release from Swoon Romance on August 27th. Make sure to check her out on Twitter or Facebook and give her some love. What an amazing cover! 

 

 

 

In high school, it was doubtful Michael Day knew Alyssa Jones existed.  Twenty years later, when the now-famous pop star returns home to coastal North Carolina, Alyssa gets a second chance to make a first impression on Michael.
On sabbatical from his failing marriage, Michael agrees to an interview with Alyssa, a journalist for the local tourist magazine.
When the chemistry between them ignites, Alyssa and Michael are hit with the harsh reality that he isn’t yet free to love her.
With Michael’s wife and son still very much in the picture, can Alyssa hold out until he ends his marriage for good? Or will she risk it all for a second chance with the one who got away?

 

 

Abby on Twitter: https://twitter.com/abswrites

Abby on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AbbyCavenaughAuthor

Publisher Website: www.myswoonromance.com

Going Home Again on Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18242120-going-home-again

Novel Inspiration for Tuesday

A few days ago I shared my inspiration for the male lead character in my WIP, today I am sharing a picture that inspired me for my female lead.

Thought-Filled Tuesday - Do Authors Really Matter?

In the Humanities class I am taking this semester, we are studying Postmodernism. I chose a work by Lawrence Weiner of words on a wall, A Rubber Ball Thrown on the Sea. Weiner didn't care what font or size or color was used to create this, he believed that the production of art didn't matter as much as the concept.

In a similar vein, there was a postmodern philosopher, Roland Barthes who wrote a paper entitled, The Death of the Author. Barthes’s essay summarizes itself in its final paragraph: “Thus is revealed the total existence of writing: a text is made of multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations of dialogue, parody, contestation, but there is one place where this multiplicity is focused and that place is the reader, not, as was hitherto said, the author. The reader is the space on which all the quotations that make up a writing are inscribed without any of them being lost; a text’s unity lies not in its origin but in its destination” (189).

Not a shocking conclusion for an article entitled “The Death of the Author,” really, but truly radical idea in and of itself: that the Author, long the focus of literary study, is not in fact all that important – it is the reader that matters. To get to this point, Barthes begins with the observation that “The image of literature to be found in ordinary culture is tyrannically centered on the author… [and that the] explanation of a work is always sought in the man or woman who produced it, as if it were always in the end, through the more or less transparent allegory of the fiction, the voice of a single person, the author ‘confiding’ in us” (186).

Barthes conceives the author as chef, the text as food, and the reader as ingesting and digesting that which the chef has prepared. In Barthes’s opinion, only in entering the reader’s mouth does the food take on any flavor, and only in his stomach does it release any energy. Moreover, Barthes relentlessly reminds us that the author did not create (in the sense of bringing into existence) any of the ingredients in his dishes, and that the chef would cease to have any real purpose without his patrons, that it wouldn’t really do him much good to prepare meals that would merely sit on a table until they rotted away.


Do our lives as authors not matter? In Barthes vision of what an author should be they don't. Is skillful selection and combination of ingredients in ext to be completely ignored? And, is not the Author almost undoubtedly also a reader himself? What do you think? Do our lives, our backstories affect our work and make us important to the work or are we less important than the destination?

Novel Inspiration

Four chapters into my current work in progress and I am sharing the inspiration for the lead male character. There is just something about tattoos...

Memories - The Dance

And now, I'm glad I didn't know
the way it all would end, the way it all would go.
Our lives are better left to chance;
I could have missed the pain,
but I'd have had to miss the dance

.- The Dance by Garth Brooks

 

The florescent lights of the high school hallway give her a halo-like glow as I adjust the ruffles of her recital tutu. My five-year-old only daughter looks like a beautiful angel surrounded by the light and the hushed baby blue, pink, and lilac of her costume. She is an angel. She is a miracle. It’s a miracle to be here with her enjoying the excitement before she goes on stage to dance. 

The combination of the lights and the cold concrete walls of the hallway where we wait don’t return me to my high school years. This isn’t my high school, and I have no memories lingering in these rooms waiting to seep back into my soul. Instead, they bring me back to the longest wait of my life four years earlier. 

The quiet stillness of rushing her to a nearby town echoes in the spaces of my mind. We travel in the first hours of the morning on the coldest day of the year where the only warmth comes from a restaurant fire we can see as we drive hurriedly on the unwelcoming, cold and cracked asphalt. The air is cold, chilling, sucking the very breath out of our bodies as we rush through the automatic doors. The icy intake of air into my lungs makes my chest ache. My body seems to be freezing, dying from the inside out. Yet, I ignore it. I am not actually dying. Our daughter is dying. Her face is ashen, and her eyes glazed, she clings to me bundled in her soft blue, lilac, and pink blanket with what energy she seems to have left. She is in pain, yet too weak to cry. 

My thoughts interrupted as my beautiful miracle calls to me, “Mommy, watch me twirl, Mommy watch me dance.”  I swallow my tears and smile as I watch her lift her graceful arms and twirl happily about the hallway with her friends. The school floor is as slick as ice making her feet fly faster. The incandescence catches the sequins on her costume and her blue eyes sparkle with delight.

The glow pulls me back in again, back to the now noisy hospital room. The lights are blinding. It’s filled with all sorts of medical technicians and nurses, and I can’t get near her. I see her beautiful graceful arms, but the medical staff has them held down, stretched out to her sides. She is screaming, terrified of what they are doing. They have to restrain her. She looks as though she is being held in place waiting to be crucified. Sharp needles pierce her everywhere; her arms, her hands, her feet to draw blood, but they cannot find a decent vein. They finally place some rubber tubing tightly around her head and try to draw blood from her tiny scalp. I fight my way to her, and the nurses part so I can get closer. I feel myself crying out to God, but no words escape my lips. I hold her hand and beg silently for God’s mercy to end her pain. 

      She was leaving this earth as though she was never meant to be here; as though she was always meant to be an angel, gracefully dancing in the heavens. But God changed His mind; He brought her into our lives and decided she would be a miracle instead. Four years later, my beautiful miraculous daughter continues to step out on the stage of life and dance.    

Memories - Summer School History Lessons

We never went in the front entrance to the school. In all the years we had been going there we always went up a grouping of five or six crumbling cement steps and through the service door entrance. We passed through the janitors’ area and into the hallway. The hallway floors were always shiny, almost like glass. Alternate squares of muted maroon and white created a checker board pattern throughout the school. My brother and I would play a game trying to make it to the classroom by just stepping on the maroon colored squares with their flecks of pink and darker red. We wandered the mostly deserted halls maneuvering like checker pieces and day dreamed about the history the building held.

Once we made it to the classroom, it was heaven. It smelled of new books. The kind with heavy bright white pages. When we unpacked them from their cellophane prisons they released the most pleasant fragrance of glued paper and ink. When we fanned open the pages, it felt like spring. New and full of potential. We would stack these in the cupboard in Mom’s classroom and surreptitiously place some of the foil stars she kept to put on student’s papers into our pockets. Those little treasures in gold, silver, red, blue, and green metallic thrilled us.

Our next task would be the bulletin board.  The large rectangular announcement area to the right of the shorter chalkboard would call to our imaginations all summer tempting us with any number of ideas. Armed with open staplers we would stab its cork skin and adorn it with thick green construction paper. Green is one of my mother’s favorites. Then we cut out beautiful purple orbs and carefully tattooed them in black ink with students’ names. We would attach them to the paper arranged in a bunch like grapes and put up letters that read “Welcome to the Bunch”.

My brother would draw complex cities of chalk on the large black board, while I helped Mom organize more things. One thing she wouldn't let us touch was her desk. It was a massive, carefully organized bunch of disorganization. The large desk calendar that anchored everything was covered in doodles, mainly of bunnies. I liked to sit in her chair and pretend I was a teacher like she was.  The drawers were miniature time capsules, full of things she confiscated off her mischievous students from year to year like jacks, a set of old maid cards, several Hot Wheels cars, and some lip gloss.

We spent our last week of summer vacation each year not at the pool, the playground, or the trail on the mountains behind our home, but soaking up the history of those school halls and building our own family stories. History seeped from every pore in that school building. History of students past.Trophies in cases from long ago victories. Fading pictures of sports teams and drama clubs. Indelible marks of nation’s past on the arm of the school superintendent who served in World War II and spent time in a German prison camp. Our parents’ working lives were there. Our lives were there.

Heartbreak Ranch Playlist

Music is such a part of Colt and Graysen's story, so here is the playlist for Heartbreak Ranch.