R.W. Krpoun's Blog, page 11

Normally I would call this the final phase, but having ventured into new genre (to me) territory, the first two phases uncovered a number of places where the plot and setting were threadbare, if not actually holed, so I have to do a bit of patching and stitching to make the novel whole.

In my spare time I still plot and peck away at other projects, but I have no major breakouts to report at the moment.

I did suffer a strange setback last week: my wife had a credit card application denied because of insufficient credit history.

I was flabbergasted: our vehicles and mortgage are paid off, we have no carry-over debt, suitable savings, and a healthy household income.

Which turns out to be the problem: the card company does not want to lend money to people who pay off debt quickly.

This flies in the face of my lifetime financial outlook: eliminate debt, amass savings.

It isn’t a big deal, but I found it both unsettling and also amusing.

December 21st, 2011 I wrote a start-up chapter for an an occult/horror novel, as is my custom. Over the years I picked up the project, wrote on it, stalled, and moved onto the greener fields. This is the same process that produced Grog, A Wastrel’s Tale, and Zerk. It may not be pretty, but it works. Benson has followed that pattern, weighing at 82,000 words of rough draft.

This will, when the proofing and editing is done, my 23rd novel. I don’t know if it will sell, not all my work does, but I write what the muse sends me. Lucky for me I don’t have to count on my royalties to live, or I would starve.

It isn’t my usual custom, but I’ll post the first couple pages here (remember, its rough draft):

The gaffer had spotted a fish stand across the square, a little one-man pushcart affair, and had immediately launched into a dissertation on the subject of fish, both in nature and as part of the diet of man. Me, I figure all the free lectures I’ve gotten I should have a stack of degrees to my name, but let me be the first to say that there’s nothing fair in this life and damned little justice.

Sleet was starting to mix with the drizzle coming out of the  lead-colored sky on the back of a stiff north wind, and if there was any rights in the world I would have been someplace warm getting around a pint of the good stuff and some bit of fluff giving me a saucy eye, but instead I was skirting a square that used to be an important part of the city a hundred years ago, hauling a case that managed to be heavy, awkward, and clumsy all at the same time, and lending an arm to the gaffer.

“This way,” he threw out a long arm to the left, interrupting his own explanation about nets.

I tossed my head to dump accumulated rain from my bowler, which was secured to my shaved pate with a red and black checked scarf, and studied the narrow passage. It didn’t look like much, but some things never do. “All right.”

It was dark in the alley, darker than the late afternoon had already gotten, but the gaffer made good speed nonetheless, pausing twice to pull a bit of brass-work out of his pocket and consult it; it looked like what you would get if you mated an abacus and a pocket watch and put a bit of mother-of-pearl as decoration.

Finally, he stopped, checked the brass again, and thrust a long finger at a soggy flight of stairs that clung to the side of a tenement out of force of habit. “There.”

“Beggin’ your pardon, master, but that’s what you would call a cold-water walk-up,” I advised, dumping my bowler-brim again. “An abode. A place someone poor lives.” Seeing that the point missed by a wide shot, I pressed on. “It’s an old building split all into rooms, see? Rented rooms, and like as not they’re thick as thieves in there, what with being poor together. A toff and his loyal but underpaid porter comes in amongst ‘em by the back way, now, that will elicit what you might call alarm and indignation.”

“I see,” he nodded calmly. I had bundled him into a heavy overcape, tweed hiking trousers, lined gloves, a long scarf, and a gray wool balaclava helmet under a hunter’s hat, so he looked a stork buried in expensive wool. All you could see was his long beak of a nose and two watery blue eyes.

I waited, but he didn’t elaborate. “All right,” I sighed. “Let me do the talking, Master. I know these types.”

“Each worker to his allotted task,” he observed cheerfully. “And each task to its craftsman set.”

“Right.” I surveyed the steps, and then heaved the case around to my left side on its broad leather strap.  Supporting the weight left-handed by the handle, I shrugged and shimmed until I had the lay of my old Navy pea coat settled just so. Untying my scarf, I stuffed it into my pocket and followed it with my mittens; underneath I wore stout leather workmen’s gloves with the fingers removed and neatly trimmed so the top two joints of my thumb and fingers were bare. “Here, you take my stick, keep the tip against the brickwork, and hold the strap of the case with your other hand. Stay close to the wall: I don’t think the supports have long for this world.”

That proved to be wrong: I saw the flash of fresh yellow lumber and shiny new carriage bolts mid-way up: someone had shored it up recently. It’s good to see a landlord taking an interest, I always say.

The door at the top of the stairs was an unlovely thing, just planks on a square frame; it might have even been the lid of a crate long ago, its lines blurred under many layers of yellowing whitewash. The handle was a loop of use-polished strap iron and a hole for a drawstring, but no string. I ran a hand over the flaking paint on the doorframe, feeling the spongy give of rotten wood and nodded to myself. Setting my feet in their hobnailed brogans, I gripped the handle and braced my other hand against the door. Lifting with my knees, I forced the center of the door up and in, quietly ripping the latch’s metal bar through the rotten wood, opening the door.

There was a small rectangle of a room on the other side, the walls whitewashed planks under years of grime and soot, over-warm from a stove fashioned from a ten-gallon can set into a pan of sand, the smoke carried out through sections of rain-gutter lashed together.

Most of the space was taken up by an iron bedstead supporting an old feather mattress and a slip of a girl, maybe sixteen, with fever-pinched features and hair black as a raven’s wing spread across the bare mattress and the cheap loose-weave blankets.

The room smelled of illness, coal-smoke seeping through the gutter-chimney, paint cooking off the sides of the can-stove, and something a bit off, rotten, as it were.

There was a fat old woman, a real slum-baggage, crouched over the girl when we came in, perhaps more ill-used than old, wrapped in layers of clothes that hadn’t been washed lately or often. She screeched at the sight of us, but at that point I had the gaffer inside and on solid footing and was busy moving the cunning brass catches that released and then locked walnut legs into place so the case stood on its own.  

“Right, missus,” I raised my bowler out of respect and to flick the last of the water into a corner. “Benson’s my name. We’ll be in and out like a shot, fear not. If I could trouble you for some boiling water, two old sheets, and a nice cuppa, there’s a dear.”

She stared at me for a long moment, lips working a like a fish out of water, then turned and dove through a doorway covered by a filthy sheet of cheap unhemmed green gingham.

“Bugger.” I turned to find that the gaffer had tried to take off his balaclava without getting the scarf first and had made a mess of it. I got the wool helmet, hat, scarf and gloves off him and turned to throwing the clasps on the case. “We might want to move with a will, master. Company imminent, and all that.”

Flipping back the hinged case lids, I leaned my stick against the wall and started unbuttoning my coat, turning to face the doorway the baggage had fled through. As I turned, I saw the girl was now reclining on the wall a yard above her bed, near to eye height, her hair spreading out in a half-circle around her head like seaweed on still water. Her eyes, bloodshot and yellow, regarded me calmly.

“Benson, is it?” Her voice was a bit too high and dry, I thought, but I can say that it half got the wind up me. There’s nothing like a girl with dead eyes defying gravity to get the ticker a shock, and that’s the truth.

“Right, you’ll be wanting the master,” I muttered a bit embarrassedly, avoiding her gaze. I’m not tall, but I’m broad, and I could have picked her up with one hand without thinking were she not lying on a wall like it was the floor. She was but a slip of a girl: I could have cupped her head in my palm, if it hadn’t meant her ripping my arm off.

Most days the gaffer stumbles through life like a good-natured, pedantic stork, all nose and legs and not an ounce of meat on a good bit over six feet of bone, clumsy as a frog on glass and his mind half-stuck elsewhere.

 But in these situations you see an entirely different man. He loomed, and despite having been bunched up under a cape and being worn over heavy trousers, his green and white vestments fell from his shoulders as if the silk worms had had him in mind when they spun their threads. His hands were steady and sure as they slipped a stole over his head and smoothed the purple bands flowing down his chest, and his blue eyes were calm, focused, and as hard as gun barrels.

“Shall we begin?” he smiled slightly as he plucked a gold censure from the open case.

Seeing the gaffer had the matter of the girl in hand, I turned my attention to the cloth-covered doorway; I doubted that the baggage was off brewing my tea.

Behind me the girl was spitting curses and the gaffer was reading aloud, the Latin rolling out like it was getting embroidered onto the air with burning gold needles; I could feel the power in the room, cold and foul gusts clashing with clean and warm waves.

More importantly I could hear hasty muttering and the clank of metal beyond the cloth. Reaching into my coat I detached my shotgun from the harness that suspended it under my left arm. Using a mitten as a pot-holder I grabbed the can-stove and heaved it through the doorway, getting enough height on it so that it took down the cloth as it went.

Beyond the doorway was a hallway which served cloth-covered doorways on either side, the interior walls mostly thin partitions of plastered lath added after the building was gutted in order to turn it into the cheapest sort of housing. Light trickled through a couple of the doorways and the greasy gingham was catching fire, giving me enough illumination to see a humanoid figure trudging down the hallway towards me, a length of rusty chain ending in a cargo hook hanging from one hand. Behind it, movement indicated that it was but the first.

I whistled to alert the gaffer of impending gunfire, not wanting to disturb his concentration, but it was habit rather than need: when he was focused the gaffer’s mind was about as easily diverted as an avalanche.

Much drama in Texas, with freezing weather, electric grid fails, and lack of water service. The cold is old new to me, but power outages, although sparse out where I live, have been troublesome. We didn’t lose water service, but due to breaks in the lines we are under a ‘boil first’ requirement at the moment.

This has disrupted my writing a bit, but I’ve continued to search for inspiration, slowly but steadily solving plot issues in existing books and working on project start-ups whenm nothing eldse suits. Dark Journeys, book 6 of the Phantom Badgers, has reached 32k words, but is badly stalled. Benson is still stalled at 75k, but I feel close to pushing that to completion.

So bad weather or not, I’m still plugging away.

I got a great phone call from an old friend who just finished The Zone, and it lifted my creative spirits to considerably.

21-21! Anyway, too a hit on Dark Obligations, review-wise, but so it goes. Admittedly, that was my second book, and I believe I’ve gotten better.

Benson, my current project, is still stalled at 73k words. The final plot arc is ssllooowwly piecing together, so I have not officially declared it blocked and returned to the File of Hope.

I started a zombie novel and have 19k words in three days; if I could keep this pace up, I could write a novel in ten days!

I’ve begun prep for for the sixth book in the Phantom Badgers series, but plot issues remain, so not promises there.

My current project remained deadlocked throughout the week, but today I got a flash of inspiration that just may break it. In the meantime I did a quick editorial review of Dark Tide, hunting typos and the like, while trimming away about two thousand redundant words.

Got an excellent review on a respected site here, which was gratifying to say the least.

Struggling with the final act of my current project, which is giving me fits; it has reached 73,000 words, but it is fighting me every step of the way. But every time I think it has stalled for good and I need to move on, a spark alights and I push on.

Touched bases with another local author, which helped. I will forge on.

65,000 words of rough draft. The plot still remains complicated, but I am not giving up.

Hope 2021 is starting well for everyone. It snowed here, and stores sold out in hours, despite the fact that the snow melted in less than 24 hours. Texans can handle anything except snow.

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Despite a constant struggle for inspiration I’ve reached 61,000 words of rough draft, but this plot is still fighting me, and I dare not admit the project’s name.

Still, it was at 18,0000 words a month ago, so I am not at all unhappy; if it stalls, I will finish it someday. But so far, it has not stalled.

I’ve recently divested myself of satellite service in favor of steaming, and acquired a Amazon Prime video account with HBO, which has allowed me to re-watch the first, and best, season of True Detective, a truly great miniseries.

Here’s hoping everyone has a safe and happy New Year’s!

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and holiday wishes to all!

The current project has hit several serious snags, but I am at 54,000 words of rough draft, and I have a plot outline that ought to see me through, so I have not yet given up hope.

Here’s hoping the rest of 2020 is kind and happy to you and yours!

So last week I swung by the police department. I’ve kept in touch, and been to the range to re-qualify, but this was the first time I went in past the lobby. The building itself stirred no strong feelings, but spending time with old friends was wonderful. I hung out for a couple hours, and while I was there one of my former troops presented me with my initial ID photos; he was on light duty due to an injury, and going through old files ensuring that no criminal histories had been left in the files.

Until a few years ago it was legal to leave hard copies of criminal histories, or the document confirming the absence, in PD files, but that has since changed, and like every agency in Texas we are manually purging thousands of investigative files and personnel records.

Anyway, this is me, September 1992, age 32, starting out in my third, and final, law enforcement agency.