Dearly Beloved-
As
I round the bend to finish this new *&^%%%$$ book, I thought I would post
an excerpt and explain a bit about the process. (First of all, this beast
has to be done on Sept 30,--my personal deadline--so I still have a lot o'
work to do.)
New Year's Revolution, as I reflect, is one whacked-out book. It traces
the story of a downtrodden Ohio woman, an even more depressed woman on a
Lake Erie island in the 1950's, and then the rebirth of a depressed woman
in LA. (But don't get me wrong, it's a laugh a minute.) At first I
thought...these are three separate stories, and they are too inconsistent
with each other to be cohesive. Then I says to myself, I says, "Self,
you're wrong." Because I WANTED distinct tones, and different types of
dialogue, and I wanted to show that this roller coaster of life is NOT
predictable with pretty segues. Peoples' lives can change in the blink of
an eye, and that's what makes life so fun and scary and bitter and
exhilarating. So I wanted my book to reflect that.
Also, I love sagas... sweeping stories that cover many lives and
perspectives.... like the grandfather's story in I Know This Much is
True; or the stories of the sisters in Fall on Your Knees--
even John Irving stuff. You readers know what I'm talking about. I
wanted this to be a big, big book.
You may ask: What's the deal with that bizarre middle story about
Chloe?
And I may answer: See the above reasons. I wanted a completely different
feel in the middle of the story to add depth and dimension, and besides, I
love those moody stories set in isolated lakeside houses with hot sailor
men. (You know. The 'Hot Sailor Man who visits deserted lake houses'
genre that is so popular these days.)
You may also ask: So Regan really ends up as a....?
Yep. Why not? Like I said, life isn't predictable. Anything can happen.
You never knew she had it in her, did you? And that, my friends, is
Falcon Awesome.
And now....read on, if you want to. Here's an exerpt from NYR.
(The setting is: This is Regan's first day on the job at the computer
repair shop, PC Choppers, where part of her job description is performing
at promotional events. Her boss, Wade McFinsky, is quite a nutcase.)
Rock On, Friends!
“So….” Wade smiled, studying me. “How’s about we take a look at
this Solaris system here. Some gent from Thifty Mart needs this back up
and running by Tuesday so he can process his orders. Can you create a
Solaris 8 flash archive boot disk?”
I sputtered something unintelligible, looking quickly around
the room as if the fairy godmother of Technology would appear somewhere,
perhaps back by the filing cabinets, and rescue me. It didn’t happen.
“Well, let me show you, compadre.” He booted up the
machine and sang, “#!/bin/csh…” (Which sounded like “Pound,
exclaimaaaa-tion point, slash-bin, slash seee, eeesshhhhhh, AAYYYYCH!”)
in a showy little tune.
I shadowed Wade McFinisky for four hours, willing myself to
absorb knowledge, watching his pudgy hands type different .exe commands
and listening to him chatter away. I was lost, and with a sense of
relief, I realized I didn’t care. When one’s life is as fucked up as I
felt mine was at that point, removing “Not Connected” devices from XP’s
device managers seemed utterly irrelevant. Still, I pretended to look
interested.
“Lunch?” he asked me happily at one o’clock.
“Sure,” I said, just hoping to sit down somewhere with a
fountain diet Pepsi, loaded with ice. Suddenly, I craved it. My
tongue felt like a leather shoe in my mouth. I would have married Wade
McFinsky at that moment, just to sit in peace with an icy Diet Pepsi. My
teeth crunched invisible ice in orgasmic release.
“Come with me….” He sing-songed, and raced towards the back of
the office. I followed him into a dark, closet-like space, dizzy with my
Diet Pepsi lust like a heroin addict. A lava lamp burned on a shelf, and
a Led Zeppelin “Houses of the Holy” black light poster was displayed
prominently. In a corner was a mini fridge, from whence Wade produced a
Styrofoam container and popped it into the microwave, humming “Immigrant
Song.” He sat at the little table which was covered with a gingham
tablecloth. I sat across from him, not sure what to do.
“Now,” he said, and opened the container, which displayed a
steaming pile of ribs and collard greens. “Ahhh. Hoggy’s leftovers. I
just LOVE Hoggy’s. Want some?”
“No, thanks.”
“Sure you do. Who doesn’t love ribs? EAT.” He flung a rib
across at me and energetically gnawed at his rib, happily licking his
fingers.
“No…really…that’s OK…do you have anything to drink?”
He titled his chair back and flicked the fridge door open. “I
have Stoli’s Vanilla and Corona. What’s your poison?”
“Ummm,” I pursed my lips thoughtfully, “Do you have a Diet?
Or water?”
“Diet!” he spat. “Comrade, that will give you brain tumors!
Grab some water from the tap.” He flung a paper cup at me.
Shaky with the disappointment of my unfulfilled fix, I sat
with a tepid cup of water and a small sparerib in front of me. It was
tiny and smeared with a red sticky gel that smudged onto the tablecloth
and looked a bit like a cat’s afterbirth. I sipped my water, uncertain of
everything. To keep my mind clear, I cheerfully began asking Wade
questions. “So…you’re probably in this office a lot, huh?”
Wade lowered his voice, even though there were just two of us,
and said, “This is my man-cave. I love this room. Doesn’t it have
atmosphere? Ambience? I just feel so peaceful here. I can be alone and
think about my music. Oh—you can play music in here if you wish, but the
cutoff date is 1979. Nothing past that is permitted.” He munched and
swallowed and then added: “It’s in the employee handbook. Once Kiss came
out with their disco song, ‘I was made for loving you’….well, that’s when
my cutoff was instituted.”
“A-ha.” I nodded.
“So to answer your question, yes. I’m here a lot. I love this
place. It’s my second home.”
“Are you married?” I asked.
He cast his eyes to the ceiling with just a hint of melodrama,
cleared his throat and said, “I had one love. Yes, at one point I could
have been in wedded bliss….ahhhh, Julie.”
I waited.
“I’ll never forget her.”
“Broken engagement?” I asked.
“Oh, I tried. Yes, I tried. It never got to that point…’twas
not to be. She rebuffed me. After four long years.”
“That’s so sad! Wasting four years! When did this happen?”
He replied solemnly, “Nineteen eighty through nineteen eighty
four.”
“Oh!” I squeaked. “Oh!”
“Yes. At fifteen, I met her. At nineteen, she moved away,
never to be seen again…she just up and left!” In anger, he emphasized the
words “up” and “left”, and as a type of edible exclamation point, he
slammed a whistling-clean rib bone on the table.
“She never told you she was leaving?”
He said, “I can’t discuss it. I simply can’t.”
“I’m sorry,” I said quickly.
“Oh, all right. If you must know. See, she never knew I loved
her.”
I raised my eyebrows, waiting for the explanation.
“I never really…spoke to her. I just…watched her from afar.”
“I see.”
“Love doesn’t need to be spoken!” he said defensively. “She
felt it! I know she did.”
“I’m sure,” I said, with a nervous chuckle.
Suddenly he smiled widely. “So! Now for something exciting.
Are you ready to learn your lyrics for our promotional mall tour?” He
looked so animated I had to nod. I felt like I was trapped on a roller
coaster in Insanity Land…a roller coaster that endlessly looped through
funhouse tunnels with "It's a Small World" constantly piped in.
He delved into a stack of papers in a shelf under the Led
Zeppelin poster and thumbed through them. “First draft…second draft…ahhh!
Final version. Ahemmm….” He cleared his voice, and sang (I recognized the
melody instantly as the tune of “Sweet Emotion”, but with a slower, almost
swing tempo):
“If your system is corrupt and your motherboard is smokin’,
Come to PC Choppers, we’ll start prodding and start pokin’,
Through your routers, through your hard drive…
You know we’re not jokin….
Peeeeee……ceee Chooopppppers….
Peeeeee…..ceee Choooopppers….
My system needs rebuilt cuz some spyware attacked
And my home page’s blank, I know I’m gonna get hacked
Oh I think my PC’s gonna need rewired
Well Good God, you know who I should hire?
Peeeee…..ceeee Choooopers.
Peeee…. ceeee Chooooppppers……”
He faded out and looked at me proudly. “Do you KNOW the kind of business
we could drive with that!”
“Wow. You… spent a lot of time on that,” I said.
“Naw. Ten minutes!” he boasted.
I wasn’t surprised at that.
“So, when do you think you can have that memorized? And wear
silver. It’s very techie.”
I could only ask: “Skirt or pants?”
“Ahhh, let’s show the gams, friend! A silver skirt. Yes. Do
you have any mesh?”
“Fraid not.” I said, shaking my head mock-sadly. It went
right over his head.
“Drat. Well, we’ll find something. Eastland is having an
outdoor Market Days event at the end of the month, so we’ll be there with
bells on. In the meantime, we have a firewall to modify. Let’s hit it!”
