30. January 2011 by admin.

Enjoy this excerpt from a novel in progress.

“Mama, Jim’s here,” Winnie called as they stepped into the big room. Jim looked at the wall, noticing that Homer had not taken down the 1908 Peters Cartridge Co. calendar. The current year’s monthly flip sheets hung right beside it, the hunters of 1909 in the colorful artwork aiming their guns in static resentment at the sportsmen on the defunct calendar. Jim was about to make a jest about that when Mrs. Daniel came out to greet them.

“Hello, Jim,” she said warmly. Her whitening blonde hair was barely contained by the large bun seated on the back of her head. “I’m so glad you were able to help Homer with the barn.” She stepped in close and placed a motherly hand on his shoulder as she whispered in his ear. “Don’t let him know I said so, but he isn’t that good with carpentry.” Mrs. Daniel stepped back with a wink. “But you’ll always be around to help him, won’t you dear?”

“Mama, really,” Winnie laughed. “Watch out, Jim. She’ll sew you to the rug so you can’t leave if you’re not careful.” Sometimes Winnie felt her mother was more enthusiastic about Jim as a potential son-in-law than she was over Jim as a husband.

Caroline Daniel waved her daughter’s warning away as she untied her apron. Its pockets bulged with spools of thread and carefully trimmed geometric scraps of colorful fabric. “I bet you want some cornbread,” she suggested.

“No, no, don’t go to that trouble. I just came in to get a look at the quilt you’re working on,” Jim said, causing Caroline to eye him for a moment as if this was one of the young man’s many jokes. She stared him down for a sufficient time to verify that there was no jape in his request.

“Why of course, Jim. You come right with me.” She turned and led them to the much smaller chamber that adjoined the Daniel’s big room. Among dress fabrics by-the-bolt and baskets of needle-studded pin cushions was a wooden frame. A section comprised of eight large squares was stretched within the rectangle. Just as Jim suspected, Caroline’s quilt reflected the pattern he had seen in his vision. “If that ain’t odd, he said. “I was telling Winnie and Homer that I seen this pattern today.”

“Jim rode the man who’s taking over the newspaper into town,” Winnie added for her mother’s benefit. “Something about him stirred Jim’s sight.”

Caroline looked worried. “Lordy, Jim. Why on earth . . . ”

Jim folded his arms and squinted at the stars within the frame, trying to coax another vision out. Nothing came. It was useless to try anyway, without Gem and Gravy to interpret. The mules had told him the flash didn’t signify anything important, but he still felt the need to puzzle it out. He confessed the same to Mrs. Daniel. “Don’t worry, ma’am. I’m sure it’s nothing bad. I have it on the best authority that it just means you and . . . Browning, that’s his name, will have some dealings. Probably be friendly ones. Maybe he’ll join up with that group of yours.”

“Wouldn’t that be grand, Winnie, if Mr. Browning wanted to be in our postcard club? He’s a traveling man of letters already.”

“I bet he writes better than he talks, too,” Jim smirked. Mrs. Daniel and Winnie didn’t seem to notice the comment as the conversation turned to their hobby.

“Jim can introduce us and then we can invite him,” Winnie proposed. “Maybe Mr. Browning could help us put an ad in the newspaper to find more pen pals.”

“Don’t see why not. There ain’t enough interesting things to fill up a newspaper about Utopea as it is,” Jim opined. “Well, I need to scoot. I’m supposed to ride Launy home with me for dinner.”

“You tell your sister I’ll have her dress finished as soon as the grocery gets that ribbon she wanted,” Caroline said.

“I will,” Jim promised. “Walk out with me Win?”

“All right,” she smiled. When they came back outside, Homer was playing checkers with a smoke man. Jim and Winnie stepped carefully around the game so as not to churn the air overmuch. The checkerboard seemed precariously balanced atop the milk can, but the touch of the smoke man was so light that his moves caused not the slightest wobble. The arrangement of the pieces indicated it was a competitive game, and Homer was completely absorbed by the need to carefully plan and execute his moves while keeping his partner conjured. A tendril of smoke from the tobacco pipe clenched between Homer’s teeth stretched into the phantom’s chest, preventing his gray partner from escaping. Homer’s farewell to Jim was a preoccupied grunt.

“He ever win?” Jim asked, taking Winnie’s hand as they walked back out to the barn where Gem was waiting.

“You can’t beat a smoke man,” Winnie shrugged. “But it don’t stop him from trying.”

Posted in excerpts | Comments Off

30. January 2011 by admin.

Enjoy this sneak peek at another of my upcoming novels.

Gaius was struck by his instant transition from adolescent pupil to newly-minted man. Somehow he’d expected a more remarkable life event than his tutor being let go to usher in his adulthood. Argus had taught him many things. Some topics were not ones the teacher had intended to instruct, such as the art of flirting with kitchen maids or the way to make insincere flattery of one’s betters sound convincing. Gaius felt momentarily bereft, fearing there were far too many topics left unexamined to leave him fully prepared to be the proverbial Roman man his father decided he was ready to become.

 ”No religion, no law.” Argus mused as he wrote. “Those are unfortunate interests to be lacking, if you ask me, which no one has. Best pray you don’t get Pavo sued over some mistake. I’m not sure which god grants protection from lawsuits these days.” He looked up from his parchment with skepticism evident on his face. “Perhaps you should just walk backwards dropping beans for your first few years with the company to keep the jinx off.” Gaius snorted at the suggestion, but then gave his tutor an openly eager look. Could he ask him about what he’d experienced the previous night without giving away the horrid details? He wondered what Argus might know about ghosts, about the afterlife, about distancing oneself as far as possible from anything to do with them. This could be his last chance to find out.

“Jinxes, hexes, ghosts,” Gaius began, taking a seat on another garden bench and adopting a lazy pose. “What should a man believe about such things? Half the houses in town were boarded up last night to keep the manes out.”

“Traditions are worth following for the sake of society. Whether they are worth believing in is another thing entirely. Do you think that nailing dolls and garlic heads to a door keeps death at bay?”

Gaius frowned. Argus was still speaking to him like a tutor, not an equal. “Just tell me if you believe in spirits.” Gaius thought he saw a glimmer of approval for his direct question in his former teacher’s eye.

“I do,” Argus said. He was silent for a few moments as he stroked a few more sentences into the letter. “I saw one on the road to Pisae near a traveling stop. It seemed real, at first, like any other man. But then it saw me looking and it dropped into the earth.”

“Dropped?”

“Like a stone into water. It was quite unsettling. The wagon master said it had been haunting that part of the road for years, and that hundreds of people had seen it besides me,” Argus said as he went back to his writing.

If not for placing him at the scene of Marcus’s death, Gaius would have soundly wished that someone else would have observed what he had seen. “So it was haunting the place,” he said, emphasizing the last word. “At least it couldn’t follow after you.” He was careful to make his next few words sound skeptical. “I don’t suppose ghosts can do that anyway.”

“If not, why was there a festival last night?” Argus countered. “Why the rituals to keep the ghosts away?”

“Because people will believe anything and festivals are good for business,” Gaius said, in a fine imitation of his father. “Perhaps I’ll become a merchant. What should I sell to keep people safe from the manes?”

“You sound like banker Ambrosius now. Are you sure you won’t embark upon manhood as his apprentice?” Finished with the letter to Pavo, Argus put his writing tools away. “Insurance is always the best game. Losses must be proven to get compensation. Think of the premiums you’d collect versus the difficulty of anyone actually proving that they were being haunted! By Jupiter, I may suggest that scheme to Quintus Ambrosius myself.”

Posted in excerpts | Comments Off