I am still in the writing process, which is actually the shortest process - editing takes the most time and formatting isn't a breeze, so I don't have an expected publishing date. I'd love to publish around Christmas but I'm thinking it will take longer, some time next year...sorry folks! I have a full plate aside from writing/editing/formatting/publishing.
Nonetheless, would you like to read an excerpt from my second novel? Here it is! (It will likely change a little as I edit, so if you buy my second book you may see a few changes.)
My first substantial memory was of the clanking of tin and sweltering heat. I can also vividly remember spider-like green vines tickling me as I spun the globe. I was ecstatic. It was finally my turn to spin-and-choose and my heart was beating fast.
I must have subconsciously recalled seeing the globe spin before. Spinning of the globe was something we’d end up doing for many more years, chasing the globe for something I could never put my finger on. I’m not even certain where we lived before this time, other than I can surmise it was somewhere foreign, given my dad’s remark about not needing to learn a new language in Illinois. I guess I should ask, but it never occurred to me to do so. All I knew is I was born in Florida according to my birth certificate, visited Harry in the desert Southwest, and ended up in Illinois and then some.
I was barely old enough to hop the threshold from Aunty Harry’s trailer to her lopsided tin-and-plastic greenhouse, but I was adamant upon making it over by myself. I was big enough to spin the globe, so I had to be big enough to cross over. The heat and stale smell assaulted my senses as I hopped inside. My dad placed the Bible atop the torn naugahyde stool, giving me just enough height to reach the table and globe. “Go on, Karen,” coaxed my dad. I closed my eyes and said a quick prayer. I licked my lips twice for good luck and touched my hands to the bumpy-smooth surface of the globe, wiggling my elbow out and back in to whirl the globe. My finger trailed in zigzags as the revolutions slowed to a stop.
Dad peered over my shoulder. “Presto Change-oh, we’re…well, no need to learn a new language, but an adventure is an adventure right? Illinois is it, I think Illinois is right there.” He squinted at the globe and nodded. “Well, Karen, it is what it is and meant to be, God willing. We will leave tomorrow, Harry. Thanks for having us.”
Harry’s place was our family epicenter, a place we always returned to, a place as close to what someone might call “home”, a foreign concept to me at that age. Harry had married young and sudden, one of those love at first sight things. He took her for all she had and ended up in prison for fraud, a family story no one spoke of, and now Harry lived where she did, too prideful to dip into the family trust. She was a proud “desert rat aristocrat” who owned “ten acres of luxuriously dead dirt” and a little pond she siphoned illegally off the aqueduct. Dad said Harry was much more “normal” as a child, but never wanted to flaunt the family name or wealth even then. Somehow, something set her “off the deep end, forever”. Perhaps it was her dad’s death or the divorce from her prisoner husband, who knew, as it all happened before I came about. In retrospect, her batty ways were probably just a life-long rebellion against her upbringing.
I don’t know what dad did for a job, he never told us and still refuses to; I imagined as a child that he was a clandestine secret agent, but as a teen I decided he simply lived off the family trust while working such embarrassing jobs as panty liner manufacturer, or stool softener tester. Whatever it is that he did, only he knows, but either his career or trust fund and inheritance allowed him to work from anywhere, doing odd jobs not much more regal than a stool softener tester. However, I did find out what dad did when I overheard a conversation I shouldn’t have, but without and proof, I can still assuredly state I haven’t a clue what dad did aside from odd jobs. While we didn’t live a posh life, his odd jobs couldn’t possibly have supported us the way they did, and like Harry, he refused to dip into the family trust.
Why am I thinking, now, about that silly globe? Well, I too would end up following in my dad’s footsteps, circumnavigating the world in search of something, what I didn’t know, but it was something I’d found and lost before.
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