Officially A Hybrid Author
/I'm ecstatic.
I'm ecstatic.
So I caught myself daydreaming the other day while I should've been editing a recent novella I wrote. I was pacing around the house thinking of ideas for an upcoming novel, how the scenes would play out, what the main character would have to endure, and how readers might react. Then I went on to think about how my novella might be received. Of course as writers we all hope that our work will be applauded and widely read but our doubts about our own abilities and imaginations keep us in check.
As I realized I wasn't working I chided myself and went back to the computer to sit down, but then realized I was being a bit harsh. I was stifling my daydreaming because of a self-imposed deadline. Normally I'd applaud myself for staying on task but this time I stopped and allowed myself to continue daydreaming because I realized that if you focus your dreams they become something else.
Visualization.
Visualization becomes planning. Planning gives birth to doing. Doing results in progress. Progress breeds momentum. Momentum feeds into accomplishments.
Accomplishments become realized dreams.
So the next time you find yourself daydreaming about something, don't cut yourself short. Allow your mind to wander. Visualize yourself receiving an award, getting that publishing contract, or simply finding readers that love your work.
Then connect the dots. With a little luck and persistence your daydreams will become your reality.
The endgame always starts somewhere.
Don't forget to see the forest beyond the trees.
So I have a new novel coming out this week, and as always, I'm very excited. For those of you who enjoyed my first novel, Lineage, The Waiting will be right up your alley. In fact, I think it might be the creepiest thing I've ever written. Anyhow, the release date is scheduled for Tuesday the 19th, and then you can be the judge. But for the meantime here's a sample from the beginning of the book. Hope you enjoy it!
Text copyright
©
2013 by Joe Hart
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission from the author.
This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
To the ghosts inside us all. You are our treasures and curses. Never go away.
Prologue
It’s coming.
The words chanted inside his head as he ran, his arthritic joints exploding with each painful step. Blood dripped from his fingertips, smeared on the screen door as he pushed through it into the warm night air. Stars hung above the lake, their cascade of pinpricks joined to one another like a dot-to-dot in the sky, their portrait reflected in the calm face of water beyond the shore. A soft breeze spoke in the pines and nudged Maggie’s chime into life. The jangle of the hollow steel spurred him on as his lungs began to burn.
He felt a twinge in his shoulder, and it lanced down the inside of his biceps and stabbed a shot of fire into the left side of his chest. Heart attack, finally. He knew it would take him one day, just like it took his grandfather, father, and son. He welcomed it, hoped it would drop him on the dewy grass. But the pain relented and vanished, a phantom of the nerves that came and went with his age.
He ran.
His socks were already soaked when he hit the water, but the chill that set into the lake each night still made him grimace. What did he care now, with Maggie gone? His insides shrunk with the renewed epiphany: he would never see his wife again. Unless ...
He stopped in the waist-deep water, the liquid darkness rippling with his movements. Tears rolled down his face, catching in the lines of his years. His family flitted through his mind’s eye—births, graduations, anniversaries.
His reverie was broken by a splash behind him, like something diving into the lake. His eyes widened as he craned his neck around, looking for movement but knowing it didn’t matter. He was done.
Curiosity killed the cat, and nothing in the world can bring him back.
He cried, tears dropping from his face like the blood from his fingers. Knowing it was his fault would be the last thought he would take with him.
He doubled over, his face inches from the water, and saw his blackened reflection. He was only shadow, an outline. Nothing more. He took a last breath, savoring the sweet taste of it on his tongue before exhaling as much as he could; he would need a lungful to do it right.
He made to push his face into the water, but two hands shot up from the depths, their fingers fish-belly white, and found the back of his neck.
A garbled scream of pure terror fell from his mouth and was cut off the moment his head slammed into the lake. His feet surfaced, two pale, thrashing things as he kicked, and then they were gone as well.
Concentric waves rolled away in ever-increasing circles, and soon they flattened, leaving the water unbroken and smooth like the silence of the night.
1
“Evan, we’re going to have to let you go.”
Evan Tormer raised his face from his hand and let the words reverberate inside him. He stared across the corner office, the office that should have been his, at Christy Weathers sitting behind the desk. Her hair perched in a gravity-defying jumble of curls on top of her head, her mascaraed eyes watching him, cold, unblinking.
“Christy, look, we can talk about this, please.”
The man leaning against a desk near the panoramic window made a sound like a cough that could’ve been a laugh. Evan glared at him. Calling him a man was pushing it. Colt was a kid, at least seven years his junior. Evan took in his trendily hipster clothes—the too tight slacks, the vibrant clashing dress shirt, the oversized black-framed glasses—along with the sneering mouth beneath a poor attempt at a mustache.
“I’m sorry, Evan, there’s no wiggle room here, and you know it. Mr. Tillins is already aware of this, and the best I’ve been able to do is convince him not to press charges,” Christy said.
Evan swallowed. His throat was as dry as a streambed in a drought. Tears stung his eyes, and he forced them back down. He would not cry in front of these people.
“I paid everything back, every cent.” He searched Christy’s face for a semblance of compassion, a smile, something of the person he had worked with for four years before her
promotion
.
When she didn’t move a muscle, he continued: “Look, I was desperate, Elle was so sick and the treatments were more than we could handle.”
“Nontraditional treatments, is what I heard,” Colt said, taking his glasses off to polish them while gazing out at the afternoon sweep of Minneapolis.
Evan stared at the younger man until Colt returned his gaze. “What does that have to do with anything?” A cold flame lit in the bottom of his stomach.
Christy waved the question away like a buzzing fly. “Listen, Evan, I don’t want this any more than you do, you’re a vital part of the company. You do good work, you’re a team player, and your recent setbacks—”
“My wife died, that’s not really what I’d call a setback,” Evan said.
The tears were back, and they weren’t heeding his efforts. One slipped over the rim of his eyelid and traced down his cheek to his chin. Christy stiffened, her jaw tightening.
“Evan, we’re all very sorry about Elle, but the fact is, you took fifty thousand dollars from the company, and that can’t be overlooked.”
Christy paused and tipped her head to one side, a bundle of curls catching light from the setting sun. Evan wanted to tell her that her hair looked nice. In fact, he wanted to say he remembered the first time he saw her wear it like that, at the company Christmas party a year ago. He could still see that mop of blond curls bobbing at Tillins’s crotch while the man reclined in his office chair, oblivious to Evan retreating, the page of marketing reports still in his hand, and closing the CEO’s door without a sound.
Instead, he prepared to beg. “Christy, please, I won’t be able to afford Shaun’s medical bills without the health care.”
“My thoughts are, you should have contemplated that before stealing from the company, Evan,” Colt said, moving to the side of Christy’s desk.
Evan ignored him, focused on Christy. “Please, let me speak to Mr. Tillins, I’m sure he’ll understand.”
The curls shook. “No, Evan, this is final. Please pack your desk up. We’ll have your last check delivered to your house. Your health care will continue for the next two months, until the quarter ends.”
Evan’s jaw worked as though more pleas wanted to come out, but there was nothing left. The aching worry that had begun early in the morning with Christy’s email asking him for a meeting became a sour explosion of reality. They’d found out. He’d lost his job.
Colt come closer, and he stood, staring down at the kid’s snarky face. What kind of name was Colt anyway?
“If you have any further questions, direct them at the HR department,” Christy said, now looking at a stack of papers that her fingers shuffled through.
Evan turned toward the thick double doors and began to walk, hearing Colt’s footsteps a few inches behind his own.
“Well, on the bright side, now you have some extra time to spend with your retard,” Colt said, just above a whisper.
Evan moved without thought, oblivious to the static charge in his limbs as he spun. His elbow came up in a short arc and connected with Colt’s face. A sound like an aluminum can being crushed filled the office, and then there was blood—a lot of it.
The kid’s hands cupped his shattered nose as his broken glasses slid, now in two pieces, off his head. Colt stumbled back, clutching at his face with delicate piano-player fingers.
Christy sat stock-still in her chair, her eyes saucer plates dabbed with blue at their centers.
“Uhhh! Uhhh! He fucking hit me!” Colt yelled.
He tripped over a chair and fell to his ass, the impact jolting a fresh gout of blood through his shaking fingers.
Evan stared, his jaw loosened. So much blood. The sound of the phone on Christy’s desk being picked up pulled his eyes from the bleeding office worker.
“Don’t!” Evan said, pointing at Christy, her finger hovering over the button that would bring the two security guards from the lobby rushing toward the office. “Or I’ll call Tillins’s wife.”
Christy’s mouth formed words that died in her throat. She set the phone back into the cradle.
“Get out.”
Evan looked one last time at Colt and wondered if the hipster would bleed to death right there on the floor, then turned and hurried through the double doors.
Evan walked as calmly as he could down the hallway, saying hello to several people who passed him by. His legs moved on their own accord, propelling him forward as his slamming heart threatened to burst from his chest. He rounded a corner and saw the sign for the bathroom. In a few seconds he was inside the farthest stall, with barely a pause to see if anyone else was present. He fell to his knees and vomited into the toilet, the light salad he’d had for lunch an unrecognizable mess before him. Evan clutched the handicap bar to his left and heaved again, and again.
He was unemployed. He’d broken Colt’s nose, threatened Christy with blackmail. What the hell was he doing? And more importantly, what the hell was he going to do? The stall spun, and he closed his eyes, spitting acid into the water.
When he managed to make it to the sink—the bathroom still blessedly empty—his reflection met him, but he avoided it entirely. He didn’t care to see what waited there for him. Instead, he bent and splashed cold water over his face until his skin stung.
He left the bathroom and walked to a set of doors at the far end of the corridor, opting to take the stairs rather than risk bumping into someone in the elevator who might ask a question he didn’t want to answer. After six flights of steps, he swung a door open, stepped out on the ground floor, and made his way to his office at the rear of the building.
Office. It wasn’t more than a glorified broom closet, just wide enough for a small desk, no window, and two file cabinets. He’d attempted to make it nicer several years before everything fell apart, by hanging photos of Elle and Shaun on the walls. He removed them, pausing to take in his wife’s and son’s features.
They both had a fair complexion and light, wispy hair. Elle’s smile radiated from the picture and struck a bell in the center of Evan, as it had when she was alive. Shaun’s arms were wrapped around his mother’s neck, his face partially buried in her hair. The white scar on the side of his small head was all but invisible in the picture unless you knew what you were looking for, and Evan couldn’t help seeing it each time he gazed at the photo.
He swallowed and turned in a slow circle to survey his office, searching for anything else to take, but other than a warm can of Coke inside his desk drawer, his favorite pen, and his jacket, there was nothing.
He stood in the doorway to the office in which he’d toiled for eight years writing promotions, ads, and marketing strategies. He remembered all the time spent in the little room, away from his family. And what did it mean now? All his effort culminated at this point—alone, with nothing but his pictures beneath his arm to show for it. He snapped the light off and shut the door behind him, listening to the hollow
thunk
as it closed. The end of his career.
Before he could take a step, his cell phone sprang to life in his pocket, trilling and vibrating against his thigh. When he saw the name and number on the display, he almost hit the ignore button, but the thought of having to call his best friend later and tell him what had happened wasn’t appealing either. He answered the phone as he walked toward the lobby, slinging his jacket around his shoulders as he went.
“Hey, man.”
“Wow, you sound like complete shit. Do me a favor next time I call and don’t answer if you’re having a bad day,” Jason said.
Evan sighed. “I almost didn’t.”
“Well fuck you too.”
Evan heard the tap of a keyboard in the background. “Yeah.”
A long pause from Jason’s end. “Ev, what’s wrong?”
Evan nodded to a security guard near the front desk in the lobby, marveling that it was the last time he would do so, and pushed into the crisp spring air of the city.
“I don’t want to get into it on the phone.”
“Shit. Okay. Meet me at Aran’s after work.”
A light mist fell as he strode across the parking lot, the mid-afternoon sounds of traffic and smells of wet concrete invading his senses.
“I’m leaving work now.”
Another pause. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“Jason, no, I’m going home—”
“Aran’s, ten.”
The call ended, and Evan stared at the screen as he stood beside his minivan. “Shit,” he said to the deserted parking lot, and climbed inside the vehicle.
Woo! Hoo! Happy Halloween! Or would Boo! Hoo! be more appropriate? No, that sounds like I'm crying. Whatever.
Anyways, today's the last day of my month long flash fiction journey. It's been super fun and I've gotten great feedback and kind words from a lot of people about the stories. Thanks to everyone who stopped by or helped me promote the posts.
Since today's special I decided to pull out the stops and wrote a longer flash fiction piece. All the others were around a hundred words. This one's closer to a thousand.
Hope you enjoy it!
Chrysalis
“Look at my new friend, mommy, he’s funny.”
Janet stopped weeding the row of strawberries she was working on to look at her daughter who thrust out her chubby palm, holding it only inches from the tip of her mother’s nose. A large, violently green and black caterpillar sat in middle of Lana’s hand. The black markings striped its puffy body in swathes like miniature, grinning mouths. Its head (if that’s what she was looking at) had one of the stripes running across its front so that it appeared to be smiling.
“Whoa, well he’s very colorful,” Janet said, guiding Lana’s hand to a comfortable distance. “Where’d you find him?”
“Over there in the bushes,” Lana said, pointing to the edge of their spacious yard where the grass grew higher, giving way to a thicket which became the forest of pine trees that surrounded their home.
“Hmm, he’s different isn’t he?” Janet said.
“Yeah! He’s my friend, I heard him calling and when I picked him up he said we could be best friends.”
“He did?”
“Yep, and I asked him if he was going to be a beautiful butterfly and he said he was going to be something even better.”
“Well, that’s nice, honey.”
“Can I keep him?”
“Sure, just be careful not to squish him,” Janet said, returning to her work. “He looks like he’s full of goo.”
“Mo’om!”
“I’m just saying,” Janet laughed.
“I’ll be careful. He’s my friend.”
“Did you brush your teeth, young lady?” Janet called up the stairs as she wiped her hands dry on the towel near the sink.
“Not yet!”
“Well do it, it’s time for bed!” Janet said, walking past the dark living room windows to the cartoon that played without an audience on the TV. She snapped the set off and then made her way up the wooden steps to Lana’s room.
She found Lana kneeling beside her bed, gazing into the small, plastic cage filled with grass clippings and wilting leaves that sat on her bedside table. Even from across the room, Janet could see the trundling movement of the fluorescent caterpillar as it climbed the side of its plastic prison.
“Okay, let’s get going, it’s past bedtime and we still need to read a story.”
Lana stared at the cage and didn’t move.
“Lana, did you hear me?”
Lana turned, her eyes glazed. “What?”
“I said, go brush your teeth.”
“Okay. I was just talking to him. He’s saying funny things.” Lana moved past Janet, her small feet padding down the hall in little steps before turning into the bathroom. Janet watched her go.
“Kid’s asleep on her feet.” Janet said to herself as she picked up a discarded gum wrapper and a rumpled t-shirt from the floor. The water ran in the bathroom and the sound of Lana singing something in muted tones floated down the hall. Janet threw the wrapper in the wastebasket near the closet and was about to put the t-shirt in the laundry bin when she heard a short hiss.
She stopped, mid-stride and turned, her brow drawn down as she came closer to Lana’s bed. The clock-radio blinked the red numeral 12 over and over, not having been reset from last night’s power outage. Janet bent over and began to fumble with the clock, sure that the hiss had come from the un-tuned radio. Movement drew her eyes to the right where the caterpillar waved, hanging by its back legs on the side of the cage.
Janet leaned closer to the plastic box and caught a whiff of something foul, there and gone like the breath of a corpse. The caterpillar stopped waving and curled toward her, its head seeming to peer out through the transparent wall.
“You might be what’s stinking,” Janet said. “I’ll have to get rid of you when Lana’s not around.
The black stripe on its head split, revealing a glimmer of needled ivory teeth.
Janet sat back, blinking, her hand coming to her mouth.
“Mama?”
Janet pressed her palm hard to her lips, stifling the scream that wanted to spill out. Lana stood in the doorway, her pink nightshirt hanging just below her knees. When she looked back at the caterpillar it was working its way back down the cage’s side, its movement familiar, perfectly normal.
“Yeah honey?” Janet said, trying to shake away what she’d seen. What she thought she’d seen.
“Are you making friends with him?”
Janet smiled, her heart settling back into a normal rhythm. “Sure am, honey, now get in bed.”
“Mama!”
Janet woke all at once, flying up from the depths of sleep to break its surface, a high diver in reverse.
“Mama!” Lana’s voice shrill, coming from down the hall.
“Coming!” Janet called, and swung her feet out of bed, not bothering with the fluffy slippers waiting on the floor.
When she entered Lana’s room, her daughter was sitting on the edge of her bed, tears streaming down her face.
“What’s wrong, honey?”
“I’m sick and my friend’s gone.”
Janet crossed the room and sat on the bed beside her daughter, putting an arm around her shoulders. “What do you mean, you’re sick?”
“My tummy hurts.”
“Oh, do you need to go potty?”
“No, I woke up and it hurt.”
“Let’s lie down again, okay?” Janet said, glancing at the plastic cage on the table.
Its lid was open a fraction of an inch, the caterpillar nowhere in sight.
“He got out somehow,” Lana said, clutching her blankets tight over her chest. “My friend ran away.”
“I’m sure we’ll find him, honey. He’s got really short legs, he couldn’t have gotten far,” Janet said, silently thankful Lana hadn’t been careful with locking the lid the night before. Now she wouldn’t have to dispose of the worm herself.
Lana smiled and a little giggle escaped her mouth. “You’re right, he’s probably close by.”
“That’s right. Okay, you rest a little bit and you’ll feel better. I’ll go get you a glass of water.”
Janet made it to the door before Lana’s voice stopped her again.
“Mom, can I be a butterfly when I grow up?”
Janet smiled. “Sure honey, you can be whatever you want.”
Almost to the end, people. Almost.
:-)
Enjoy.
Only a couple more days before Halloween, and I've got a little extra something planned for everyone on the big day...
Won't say more than that.
Enjoy.
Hanging Tree
It stands out in the yard beneath an autumnal light glowing gold like its leaves.
That’s its camouflage and its attraction.
What child is able to resist the swaying seat of the swing hanging from its drooping branches? What child would not want to feel the air rush past their face, the exhilaration of the glide before plummeting back to Earth only to arc up again?
But they don’t know it’s alive in a way that other trees aren’t.
It doesn’t seek rain, but something else. Something more savage.
Many have come to the tree and none have left its embrace.
For the bristling leaves and reaching branches are its arms.
And the swing is its wagging tongue.
Hey everyone! Just a quick note- a writer friend of mine (and social media roommate) Julie Hutchings asked me to write a flash fiction piece for her site and she posted it today! So hop on over to Deadly Ever After and check it out!
Okay, onward and forward. This one's a little more sentimental but I like it. Hope you do too.
Hope everyone's having a great October!
I know I'm having fun writing these little tidbits.
Happy Monday!
I know, shut up, right? ;-)
It's snowing here.
Yuck. But hey, a little cold weather never killed anyone! Well, maybe it has, but anyways- enjoy today's story!
Happy Friday, everyone! Hope your week was great!
Two weeks until Halloween!
That is all.
Enjoy.
About halfway through the month, hope everyone's still enjoying the stories!
Official Webpage of author Joe Hart.
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