Hello, all! After some consideration, I've decided not to blog here anymore. While I do like helping other writers, I've come to the point where I run the risk of having too much on my plate. There are too many other things that I want to do with both writing and art, and looking toward the future, I don't see myself giving this blog proper attention.
I've deleted the Twitter. If you would like to follow my account, I'm here @LeaRyan1
My writing blog is here http://Lea-Ryan.blogspot.com
I'm going to leave the blog intact out of respect for any writers who linked in.
Thank you to the authors who have appeared here and the readers, too. I wish you all well.
<3
-LR
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
excerpt: The Blasphemy Tour, by Jass Richards
Two
Canadian atheists go on a cross-country speaking tour of American Bible
Colleges, and oh god, they end up committing all sorts of blasphemies. Philosophy
meets Stand-up.
(In
The Road Trip Dialogues, the prequel, Rev and Dylan are charged with
blasphemy for adding “‘Blessed are they that taketh and dasheth thy little ones
against the stone.’ Psalms 137:9” to a Right-to-Life billboard just outside
Algonquin Park. As a result of a well-publicized court trial, the American
Atheist Consortium offers an all-expenses-paid speaking tour of American Bible
Colleges. The Blasphemy Tour tells the tale of that tour.)
Opening
Excerpt:
Rev
slowed as they approached the border at Fort Erie and chose a car lane that had
virtually no line-up. Carefully maneuvering into the narrow lane, which was
marked by concrete dividers on either side and a huge concrete pillar on the
driver’s side—whose function intrigued, and absolutely eluded, her—she pulled
up snug behind the car in front of her.
Almost instantly a voice boomed out over
the speaker. “BACK UP YOUR VEHICLE!!” Simultaneously, a border guard appeared
out of nowhere and walked briskly toward their car, making forceful ‘back up’
signs with his hands.
“BACK UP YOUR VEHICLE NOW!!” The voice
commanded.
“All right, all right,” she grumbled,
puzzled by their urgency, and put the car into reverse. She grabbed onto the
back of Dylan’s seat for leverage, turned to look behind, and started to back
up.
“Rev!” Dylan said almost immediately. But
too late.
She heard the clunk. Then the clatter. And
when she turned to face the front again, she saw that the rear view mirror on
her door was gone, clipped by the concrete pillar. So that’s what it was for.
She mumbled something as she opened her
door to retrieve it.
“REMAIN IN YOUR CAR!!”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” she ignored the
command. It was just a rear view mirror and it was sitting right there.
“DO NOT EXIT YOUR VEHICLE!!”
She exited the vehicle. More or less.
“Shit,” she muttered.
Dylan didn’t dare glance over—he was
staring straight ahead in disbelief, exclaiming with full Irish, “Bloody hell—”
Besides, he knew what had happened. “Please tell me you fell out, you’re on the
ground, and you’re going to stay there,” he managed to say.
“Yes, yes, and—” she tried to stretch her
legs, but apparently her knees were doing their very best imitation of
concrete—“don’t have any choice. I hate this growing old—” she growled.
“Yes, well, we can commiserate about the
tragedy of being over forty later. Perhaps when we turn sixty. Because at the
moment we’re surrounded by half a dozen border guards. All of whom are
seriously armed.”
“What?” she popped her head up.
“Men with guns!” Dylan shouted.
“Oh.” She ducked back down.
“PUT YOUR HANDS WHERE WE CAN SEE THEM!!”
Dylan raised his hands.
Rev also raised her hands. Her head hit
the pavement. “Shit!”
Dylan winced. “Are you—still conscious?”
“Yes. Unfortunately. I really—”
“—used to have abs. I know.”
“STEP OUT AND AWAY FROM THE VEHICLE.”
Dylan did as he was told.
“STEP AWAY FROM THE VEHICLE!” The voice
repeated.
“Just give her—” he looked over at her—“an
hour.”
“Oh shut up.”
Two of the three guards who had been
aiming at Dylan swivelled to Rev.
“She was talking to me,” Dylan said
quickly. “Rev?” He was afraid to look directly at her in case that looked like
they were colluding to—do something.
“M’AM, KEEP YOUR HANDS RAISED, STAND UP,
AND STEP AWAY FROM THE VEHICLE!!”
She grunted. And cursed again.
“He called you ‘m’am’,” Dylan said out of
the side of his mouth. “That should give you—motivation.”
Smashwords
Smashwords
Friday, June 1, 2012
Virtual Book Tour of Vasant Dave, Author of Trade Winds to Meluhha
Navigating
through Controversies in writing Pre-Historic Fiction
In Trade winds to Meluhha, I have transformed
that unknown man into a more realistic character of Yotai, an ascetic. I have made him give a hint about what to
expect in the narrative. He had prophesied self annihilation of the Indus
Valley race by two deadly venoms – one the people would consume by craving, and
another they would contract by lust.
The language that the Indus Valley people spoke is as big an enigma as their script. One school of scholars believe that it was Sanskrit. On the other hand, research by Dr. Asko Parpola and Dr. Iravatham Mahadevan indicate that it was Proto-Dravidian from which four present South Indian languages viz. Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam and Telugu have descended. I accepted their reasoning and used Tamil lexicon to create characters' names and to tweak site names so that they sounded like those in Southern India.
In some cases, the author of fiction cannot avoid looking partial even if s/he tries hard to remain neutral. In case of doubt, s/he is forced to select one possibility and move on with the plot. At the end of the day, it is for the readers of fiction that he is writing, not for the academicians.
Amazon-Kindle http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006XNEH7U/
No other ancient culture is mired with multiple controversies as perhaps
the Indus Valley Civilization. Almost any aspect that you examine, there are
polar differences. For someone who writes fiction based on the ancient culture
of Indus Valley, these disputes carry a lethal potential of branding him. While
some authors and artists love stirring up controversies, or creating one where
none existed, I am among those timid writers who prefer to steer clear of
heated discussion.
After the Partition of 1947, the Archaeological Survey of India
rushed to find sites which it could call its own. They discovered innumerable
small sites along the dried-up bed of the mythical River Saraswati, now the
seasonal Ghaggar-Hakra. But ASI's biggest discoveries were Lothal which had a
port, and Dholavira which had two storm water channels. My protagonist Samasin,
a Mesopotamian youth on run, visits all these places in the novel.
Running almost neck-to-neck with it is an argument springing from
Religion and Mythology. The Hindus relate Indus Valley with their ancient
scriptures, the four Vedas. Amish
Tripathi, an author whose two books are selling like McDonald Pizza in India,
imagines Shiva not as God but a sort of Superman in the Indus Valley. His
approach is based on a seal discovered at Mohenjo-daro. It depicts a squatted
man surrounded by wild animals. The most familiar portrayal of Shiva is in a
similar yogic position, meditating.
One of His many names is Pashupati,
Master of Animals. So the person whose image is engraved on the Mohenjo-daro
seal fits in perfectly.
In Trade winds to Meluhha, I have transformed
that unknown man into a more realistic character of Yotai, an ascetic. I have made him give a hint about what to
expect in the narrative. He had prophesied self annihilation of the Indus
Valley race by two deadly venoms – one the people would consume by craving, and
another they would contract by lust.
A somewhat related with Religion
is the existence of domesticated horse in the Indus Valley. Carbon dating of
the earliest seals depicting a horse puts them later than 2000 BC. That
interferes with the periods of the Vedas
and the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata that the Hindus would like
to believe, because the horse is an integral part of all those scriptures. In
order to prove that the animal existed much earlier than 2000 BC, Jha and
Rajaram manipulated an image of a much older seal, turning a picture of a bull
on it into a horse. In response, Witzel and Farmer wrote an article entitled 'Horseplay
in Harappa' exposing the hoax! In my novel which is set in 2138-37 B.C., there
is no horse in Indus Valley till the character of Captain Paravar carries a
foal from Mesopotamia.
The language that the Indus Valley people spoke is as big an enigma as their script. One school of scholars believe that it was Sanskrit. On the other hand, research by Dr. Asko Parpola and Dr. Iravatham Mahadevan indicate that it was Proto-Dravidian from which four present South Indian languages viz. Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam and Telugu have descended. I accepted their reasoning and used Tamil lexicon to create characters' names and to tweak site names so that they sounded like those in Southern India.
In some cases, the author of fiction cannot avoid looking partial even if s/he tries hard to remain neutral. In case of doubt, s/he is forced to select one possibility and move on with the plot. At the end of the day, it is for the readers of fiction that he is writing, not for the academicians.
Trade winds to Meluhha by Vasant
Davé is available as e-Book in various formats from the following web-sites:
Amazon-Kindle http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006XNEH7U/
Sony
http://ebookstore.sony.com/ebook/vasant-dav%C3%A9/trade-winds-to-meluhha/_/R-400000000000000647002
Smashwords
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/123057
FaceBook
page of the novel at http://www.facebook.com/BronzeAgeNovel
Monday, May 7, 2012
interview: Bryan Lyze, author of The View
Crime
boss Red Cabon is arranging the killing of prosecution witnesses with the help
of his secret informant.
The
extroverted witness Maria Bozzella is in the protection program when she meets
and falls in love with Jack Moore.
Jack
is an innocent and Maria
must break it off, but it is too late. Jack is in the middle of a war, and
F.B.I. agents are dying quickly.
I don’t really know,
but the inspiration definitely comes first. With THE VIEW it was actually the
view from a cottage I was renting at the time and then about eight hours of
imagination. Afterwards I had the basic outline.
What genre do you
gravitate toward and why?
Romantic thrillers,
but I like trying different things. Each genre has it’s own challenge, and that
can be fun.
What are your work
habits like?
Awful and sporadic,
but even when I’m not writing I’m thinking about the story, and when I start
writing I lose all track of time.
What do you consider
your best work?
THE VIEW
Do you plot out your
novels in advance or do you write on the fly?
I put down as much as
possible as fast as I can and then flush out and fill in over the course of
refining my stories. I see the story in my mind visually and I usually know the
last line of the story almost as soon as I begin.
What experience do you
want for your readers?
First I want them to
enjoy the read. I try to keep it interesting and keep them guessing, but mostly
I hope they get lost in the story and characters.
Are any of your
character traits or settings based on real life?
Of course, but I take
a lot of literary license. THE VIEW is complete fiction.
What are your most
significant challenges when you write?
Having an idea that works in your head but not on paper or
for the current story and letting it go, that can be difficult.
What are you currently
working on?
A children’s book that
was an original poem.
Do you have any writing
advice you would like to share with aspiring authors?
The same advice we all
hear and know, keep writing.
Available now in paperback and e-book on Amazon
Saturday, May 5, 2012
interview: Mathias Freese, author of The i Tetralogy
This evening, we welcome Mathias Freese.
Mathias B. Freese is the
author of The i Tetralogy, a Holocaust novel, winner of the Allbooks Review
Editor’s Choice Award 2007, and Down to a Sunless Sea, a collection of short
fiction, Indie Excellence Finalist Book Awards, He is a psychotherapist and
teacher. Non-fiction articles have appeared in the New York Times, Voices: The
Art and Science of Psychotherapy, Pilgrimage and other journals. In 2005 the
Society of Southwestern Authors honored him with a first-place award for
personal essay/memoir. In November/December 2011 Mensa Bulletin published this
essay in revised form. His new collection of short stories is in progress, I
Truly Lament, Working Through the Holocaust. In 2011 ten stories from this
collection were published, the latest being “Slave,” Del Sol Review #18, 2011.
His writer’s blog is www.mathiasbfreese.com. This Möbius Strip of Ifs, a
collection of essays written over four decades, was published in February 2012.
Interview : Mathias B. Freese
by Vibha Sharma | on April 30th, 2012 | Literary Sojourn
Mathias B. Freese is a multifaceted personality who is a teacher, a psychotherapist and an author. I got a chance to read and review(here) one of his books – This Mobius Strip of Ifs and was quite impressed by his writing style and the sincere way in which he has shared his life with his readers.
It was a pleasure to conduct an e-interview with him for our readers here.
1. When did you start writing your experiences in the book form ? How has been the writing experience so far?
I have been writing since 1968, although at age eighteen my high school yearbook published a poem by me which was so misunderstood and so savagely edited that I didn’t recognize it when it was in print. An English teacher got carried away and omitted the underlying theme of depression which I was experiencing when I wrote it. Unknowingly she compounded my resentment. It was the repressed Fifties, so what else is new? The next effort was ten years later in a short piece for an education journal which revealed or uncorked my disenchantment with teaching content in the classroom. After that my full-blown neurosis composed of despair, depression and rage revealed itself in 1974 when I had “Herbie” published, my first major short story. (See my first short story collection, Down to a Sunless Sea.) As you know the first essay in This Mobius Strip of Ifs , explores my serendipitous and synchronous adventure with that particular story. In any case after being listed with Mailer, Oates, Singer and other greats, I felt very encouraged and continued to write.
Rejections cooled my ardor but I never quit. Indeed, I promised myself that I would set out to write the best stories I could and at a later date have them published. This self-promise took thirty or so years. Characterologically this effort says so much more about me than as a writer. So as Spencer Tracy once said about Kathryn Hepburn in one of their collaborations, what there is of her is “cherce.” Consequently I don’t quit. I persevere. The only audience I write for is me and if you like what I have written, so be it.
My writing experience can be extracted in a sense from Kazantzakis’s epitaph: “I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.”
2. What has this literary journey taught you and enriched you with?
Vibha, this question is the equivalent, as I think about it, of assessing my very life which by the way is what I have done on a regular basis over the years and decades, in short, pungent, I hope, open and feeling essays. We are all born to be done away with. Again I go to an epitaph to help reflect, this time Epicurus: “I was not; I have been; I am not; I do not mind.” Much wisdom and therapy in that remark, for Epicurus, rightly so, believed that philosophy should be a kind of therapy.
But readers of this interview want something else, don’t they, Vibha? (Happy talk?) An aspect of myself is not to please others but that while I write I share my experience with you, with me first. I have enriched my literary journey, not the other way around. I give to my writing and I learn in that way to write better. Krishnamurti famously said in one of his dialogues, “The word is not the thing itself.” So all my writing is just an approximation of what turmoil, tumult and insight I have about my human condition. As we all should know, to cite Christopher Hitchens, we are only partially rational, animal, and often savage at that, and our human genome controls the robot that we are.
3. Which has been your most satisfying writing experience so far?
The i Tetralogy, my extensive take on the Holocaust, represented much of who I am as a Jew and human being, of my growing up Jewish in America. In that novel I put all the skills, imagination and heartfelt renderings I could about man. I have gone beyond Wiesel’s affirmation that indifference is not tolerable any longer. I have arrived at a different assessment based on my reading, psychotherapeutic experience, my atheism – free of religious conditioning, the bane of civilization, and I have gone into the unexplored country. Man is out of control, always has been, genetically so! In a few years we all will be reading about evolutionary psychology, the additional scientific work based on Darwin’s theories which have emerged in the 90s. Dawkins, Dennett, Ridley, Wright will become well-known names, and what they have to report based on immense scientific studies can be summed up in Richard Dawkins words: “We are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecule known as genes. This is a truth that still fills me with astonishment.” The Selfish Gene
Consequently writing about the Holocaust allowed me to examine the nature of man so genetically far beyond Hobbes’s “short, nasty and brutish” assessment.
This Mobius Strip of Ifs, I believe, has given me the most pleasure because I was freewheeling in my approach and many essays were written over four decades and reflected the thinking I had at different stages of my adult life. Upon reflection, the book is about the emergence of a self. It was an assessment of myself and now at 71 I see where I had trod and what lay before me. Ironically it was you or someone else who wrote that the book was a profound self help one which, I feel, is an oxymoron.
Nevertheless, this made me think and if it is so, that I have made others go back to my book, chew and digest it, that is a delightful gift to this writer’s life. My working hypothesis is that this book is from an inner directed person, and that is uncommon. Recently the American Psychiatric Association deleted Narcissism from its manual of disorders, DSM IV or V. That is, most Americans are now narcissistic and what was formerly a disorder is now the norm. All those learned interventions I had acquired for dealing with this disorder goes out the window. So when an American goes overseas and wants a house and insists that it have an American bathroom, that kitchentop counters be made of granite, that all appliances be stainless steel only testifies to our lunacy, not our so-called normalcy. By the way, the essential trait of a narcissist is his or her emptiness, the rest is all bluff.
Nevertheless, this made me think and if it is so, that I have made others go back to my book, chew and digest it, that is a delightful gift to this writer’s life. My working hypothesis is that this book is from an inner directed person, and that is uncommon. Recently the American Psychiatric Association deleted Narcissism from its manual of disorders, DSM IV or V. That is, most Americans are now narcissistic and what was formerly a disorder is now the norm. All those learned interventions I had acquired for dealing with this disorder goes out the window. So when an American goes overseas and wants a house and insists that it have an American bathroom, that kitchentop counters be made of granite, that all appliances be stainless steel only testifies to our lunacy, not our so-called normalcy. By the way, the essential trait of a narcissist is his or her emptiness, the rest is all bluff.
4. Are all the essays in This Mobius Strip of Ifs taken truthfully from your own life or do they have some fictional elements too? How comfortable do you feel opening your feelings in front of the world?
Easy to answer. My life is non-fiction. I will not play shrink here, but I gather individuals are uncomfortable with my openness. An English Academic, who I have 50 years on, cited this difference between English and American writers. Americans are into Whitman, Thoreau, Ginsburg and British writers, except for Hitchens and a few others, are constipated, to be blunt. Brits, unlike Ginsburg, cannot howl. I can’t think of an English equivalent to Hart Crane. To make my point, this academic was displeased with my plumage. Oh I couldn’t care less because she cannot see through her own conditioning.
Having spent years in treatment and working on myself by reading Krishnamurti, I have no qualms about expressing my feelings openly, not disguised as in novels and short stories. The personal essay fits my personality and I use it as best I can. Think about this: the real task of a good shrink is to make the unconscious conscious and human beings have a terrible time arriving at revealing themselves. We really do not communicate well as a species. We are gelatinous vats of suppressed and repressed feelings and awarenesses. When you can break through, you are free.
I struggle to be psychologically free. I can say that all my writing is about my need to be psychologically free, of myself, especially you, and of the world which conditions 24/7. And the worst felon in all this is the monolithic and mammoth conditioning of religion which is the dragon at the gate. Freud argued (The Future of an Illusion) that to become free of this conditioning brings you into full adult maturity as a human being. Religion is man -made. (Pause.) Consequently it is corruptive.
5. What do you intend to write next? When is it expected to be published?
The next book is already finished and I am thinking of how to go about getting it published. I have submitted it to several online magazine contests, but most likely I will have to self-publish it myself.I will not engage agents on this because it is so time intensive to acquire one I’d rather go the other alternative routes. After all, I do not have a vast readership nor do I devote many hours to promoting the book. I try to do what I can but I refuse to be sucked into rampaging capitalism which is all the rage across the internet, the hustling, self-promoting, the slobber at some writers’ mouths as they urge you to read this or that. So here is a synopsis of my next book. No one who encounters the Holocaust seriously is ever done with it.
I Truly Lament, is a varied collection of stories, inmates in death camps, survivors of these camps, disenchanted Golems complaining about their tasks, Holocaust deniers and their ravings, and collectors of Hitler curiosa (only recently a few linens from Hitler’s bedroom suite went up for sale!) as well as an imagined interview with Eva Braun during her last days in the bunker. The intent is to perceive the Holocaust from several points of view.
An astute historian of the Holocaust has observed that it is much like a train wreck, survivors wandering about in a daze, sense and understanding, for the moment, absent. No comprehensive rational order in sight.
In my award-winning Holocaust novel, The i Tetralogy, considered by some an important contribution to Holocaust literature as well as a work of “undying artistic integrity” (Arizona Daily Sun) I could not imagine it all, and this book of stories completes my personal struggle. Within the past year 10 stories have been published online and in print from this collection, the most recent “Slave” published in Del Sol Review in December 2011. I will promote my present book and by year’s end publish the new one.
6. What were your thoughts when you started writing The i Tetralogy ? What unique thing did you want to convey on the Holocaust that has not been done before?
Allow me to depart a little from the question and express my thoughts in this fashion To have survived the Holocaust is to have been gutted as a human being. The inner self is ravished. Whether or not one recovers from that is beyond comprehension.
All literary depictions of the Holocaust end as failures, perhaps revealing shards of understanding. And is understanding ever enough? Writing about the Holocaust is a ghastly grandiosity.The enduring mystery of the Holocaust is that memory must metabolize it endlessly and so we must try to describe it, for it goes beyond all imaginable boundaries. One soon realizes the fundamental understanding that the species is wildly damaged, for only a damaged species could have committed the Holocaust. No great piece of art, no technological achievement or other historical creation of mankind can ever expunge the Holocaust.
Human beings are so much less than we give them credit for. If we begin here perhaps books can be written about the Holocaust – without blinders or eyelids, although by definition they will fail. Every artist who struggles with the Holocaust must begin with an acceptance of failure and that must be worked through before art begins.
I have come up short here. I must say what I have to say as a man, as a Jew, and be done with it. I feel deeply the flaw within as part of this species. I am ashamed.
By name and nomenclature, the Holocaust is but an approximation of what happened. The species cannot grasp its nature. The artist will only succeed marginally if he or she manages to drive that home.
The eternal perseveration of the species has become the Holocaust. We will never be done with it. We will never work it through.
7. You are a teacher and a psychotherapist – which of these two vocations excite you more or is more satisfying, other than writing. While working in the capacity of a psychotherapist, which do you think are the most common human frailties and strengths?
As a psychotherapist I can engage human beings, at times, at very profound levels, not in the classroom. Most schools condition human beings, that is their real task – to indoctrinate, to be an American or to be French. By working with my fellow human beings I began to grow as well, and as you know, Vibha, in This Mobius Strip of Ifs I write about the telling consequences of being a client and a practitioner. For me treatment helped this soul to become much more free, more open, more expressive, although I still work on those potholes we all have.
I am not an expert on human happiness, frailties and strengths. No one is an expert. As I age I realize I know shit. Perhaps other than techniques, therapists should keep that in mind, all “professionals.” Look at the world about – it is in chaos, those in charge are not in charge themselves, think of Clinton’s errant penis, Cheney’s need to devour human beings by sending them off to war, Sarah Palin who did not know that there was a North Korea and a South Korea.
I’d pose your question another way. What can I do to become aware, and what can I do to decondition myself so that I can see clearly? In that is hope.
8. Could you please give suggestions to budding authors on how to make their writing more effective and meaningful?
Advice sucks. Whatever advice I have received I had to process through my own machinery. So if you want to lick at the waters of advice-givers, make sure that your machinery is working real well and that you can discern good from bad.
Let me specify. It is an old cliché to writers that they should write between 500 to 1000 words a day over years. And what if you cannot? Well, I had to work and feed the family. I wrote in study halls while I taught; I wrote late into the night when I could. I fought off despair all those years through sheer grit and bullheadedness. I just wanted to write to exorcise my dybbuks. I never thought of myself as a writer. I was an auto-didact. What I have concluded is that you do your best, learn what you can, use what seems useful and forget all the bullshit – you know, 10 ways to have your book reviewed, how to write a query letter to a blogger, how to get an editor, and how to promote you work before you even write it (book as package). I don’t know about you but I am fatigued. We do all this fussing as each day we move closer to our end. Ecce Homo.
------------------
Release date: February, 2012
Formats: Paperback, Kindle
Publisher: Wheatmark
ISBN: 9781604947236
Price: $10.95 paperback. $9.95 Kindle
Availability: Amazon (paperback), Kindle, Barnes and Noble and Wheatmark.com
Formats: Paperback, Kindle
Publisher: Wheatmark
ISBN: 9781604947236
Price: $10.95 paperback. $9.95 Kindle
Availability: Amazon (paperback), Kindle, Barnes and Noble and Wheatmark.com
Interview reposted with permission from Mathias Freese. Content located at http://www.mathiasbfreese.com/ and http://literarysojourn.blogspot.in/2012/04/interview-mathias-b-freese.html
Thursday, May 3, 2012
excerpt: What Happened to Tom, by Christopher Taffen
Christopher Taffen
Excerpt:
When Tom next woke, he tried to reach for the glass of ice chips, but
it was, apparently, an impossible task. When he tried to lift his arm,
it felt like dead weight. He couldn’t believe how weak, how lethargic,
he was…
**
A few minutes later, or maybe it was hours, Dr. Anders entered
briskly. She wore a clean and freshly pressed white lab coat. Her
movements were efficient. She was cool, competent, and dispassionate.
In other words, words the common man might use, she was a bitch.
She glanced at Tom’s sleeping body, checked the bag of clear fluid
hanging on an IV stand, then began to read the various monitors,
making notes on the clipboard she was carrying. Tom woke.
“Where am I?” he asked then, his voice scratchy. “Who are you?”
“You’re in a—health clinic. I’m Dr. Anders. You—”
“What happ—” he broke off when he managed to focus on her. He
recognized her. “I remember you! Last night…”
**
He had watched her approach from across the room. She was trim,
pretty, confident.
“Hi,” she had said to him. “Mind if I join you?”
“No, not at all,” he replied, charmed. And charming.
She sat on the empty stool beside him at the bar.
“What’ll you have?” Tom signaled to Ty, the bartender. He was a neat
man, a clean towel always over his shoulder.
“A cosmopolitan, please.”
Ty nodded, and a moment later put the rubied concoction in front of her.
“So,” Tom started the old dance, “you work around here?”
**
“Wait a minute,” he said, continuing to struggle as his memory
returned in bits and pieces. “You said you were a nurse—”
“No,” she spoke carefully, “I said I worked at a clinic. You assumed I
was a nurse. Do you know why?” she added, an edge in her voice.
But he didn’t really hear the question.
“Did we—?” He frowned. No, that wouldn’t explain why he was there.
“We had a drink,” he tried again, grappling with his inability to
remember, and then with the implications of his inability to remember.
To remember even a thought he’d had a few hours, or was it days, ago.
“Did you put—” He tried, again, to wrap his head around the
possibility of having been slipped the so-called date rape drug and—
“Did you—”
“No,” she said. Then added, “Not exactly.”
Her amendment didn’t register.
“How did I get here?” he asked. Then corrected, “How did you get me here?”
“Oh, don’t sound so surprised,” she said, with a little disdain. “Do
you think it’s so impossible?”
He had a confused flash then, of leaning heavily on her and being
helped into a car.
“You drugged me!”
Again, such surprise. She didn’t respond.
His realized then that his side hurt. “What did you—”
But he couldn’t even raise his hand to lift the covers and look. Had
they taken a kidney? Was she part of some illegal organ transplant
operation? He looked in vain at his body, completely covered by the
bedding, then tried to take an internal inventory.
“What did you take from me?” he asked, his anxiety turning to panic.
“Calm down,” she said. “We didn’t take anything. On the contrary, we gave you—”
He struggled to raise himself from the bed, and only then realized
that his wrists were cuffed to the bedrails. He freaked. As anyone
would upon discovering they’re a prisoner, held hostage.
He had no idea.
“What the hell—why am I— What the hell are you doing to me?” he screamed.
“Just relax, Tom,” Dr. Anders calmly injected a sedative into his IV
line. He slumped into unconsciousness once again. “It’ll be okay,” she
added, the barest suggestion of sarcasm in her voice.
**
When Tom woke again, he was more quickly aware of his situation.
“Nurse! Someone!!” He struggled against the cuffs. “Help!!” He could
see they were just Velcro straps, but he wrestled with them in vain.
He leaned forward then, thinking maybe he could grab one of the ends
with his teeth. Oh, shit, big mistake. Hurt like hell. He fell back
against the pillows. What in god’s name had they done to him?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
An allegorical horror story.
A psychological/philosophical thriller.
A must-read for every man.
On Smashwords
On Amazon
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
hiatus
Hello! ok. I've been absent from this blog for a while, mostly because I'm elbow-deep in not one but two book projects. I apologize if you emailed me and I haven't gotten back to you. I checked the inbox for a while, but then neglected it for a longer period of time.
I do plan to return. I do plan to answer emails. There may be some changes as far as content. I need to streamline this whole blogging process. Some of the posts were taking too long to put together (links, pictures, etc), which is why I went on hiatus in the first place.
Let me think on this thing for a minute. We'll see where we land.
smooches!
- LR
I do plan to return. I do plan to answer emails. There may be some changes as far as content. I need to streamline this whole blogging process. Some of the posts were taking too long to put together (links, pictures, etc), which is why I went on hiatus in the first place.
Let me think on this thing for a minute. We'll see where we land.
smooches!
- LR
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