Tag: indie author

Posted on

“Pushing the River” excerpt introduces Auggie and Bess

7840886610_48886faefb_c

“Now, exactly what is our role here, Madeline?”  Auggie was barely able to contain his delight.  “What do you need from us?”

            After the walk with Ellie, Madeline’s renewed burst of enthusiasm for the prospect of Living in the Moment manifest in the form of shooting off a text to Dan: “Hey, no idea what you’re up to this evening, but having some friends over for dinner.  Join us later if you’re free.  I made pie.”  He had texted back that he’d love to come by, but didn’t want to infringe on her time with good friends.  He suggested he stop by around eight.

            “Auggie, you’re being weird,” Madeline said.

            “No, no.  I’m serious.  We want to be there for you. We just need to know what our role is.”  Auggie radiated a decidedly boyish quality, in the best sense.  And in his unbridled enthusiasm for the task at hand, he was adorable.  Bess nearly always found him adorable, and made this obvious in frequent, glowingly loving glances at him.  Across the dinner table from Madeline, the two of them radiated exuberance, good will and love.  It delighted Madeline, and made her misty, and wistful, and, as her son would have said when he was a little boy, sickenated.

            Auggie continued: “I mean, are we chaperones here?  Do you want us to stick around until after he leaves?  We would love to do that for you.”  He put his arm around Bess, and pulled her head over to lean against his own.  “Wouldn’t we, babe?  Chaperones!”  He caught Bess mid-sip with her wine, and as she gurgled an assent into her glass, he said, “Or wait.  Do I have the wrong idea here?  Maybe you want us to leave right away!  Maybe you’re dying to be alone with him! Maybe the whole ‘why don’t you come over while I have friends here thing’ is just a ruse to make it seem innocent.”  Bess could barely get her wine glass safely onto the table, she was laughing so hard.

            “Auggie, seriously, don’t do anything one bit differently than if Dan wasn’t here.  Really.  Stay as long as you want to stay.   Leave when you want to leave!  Like always!! ”

            “What about a sign?  Maybe we should come up with a sign – two signs – one if you think it’s going well, and you want us to leave so the two of you can be alone; one if it’s not going so well, and you want us to stay.”

            “It really doesn’t matter what I say, does it?  You’re deep into your own thing here.”

            “F I N E,” Auggie said.  “Mission aborted.”

            “More pie, Auggie?”

            “You betcha.”

Posted on

“Pushing the River” — new chapter snippet

Well, I did warn everyone that, despite my prior resolutions, I am writing this book out of sequence.  I am also writing, um, several chapters at the same time — yet another thing I resolved not to do, once upon some hypothetical time.  At the worst times, it does feel quite scattered and schizophrenic.  But, I have found that, to my surprise, this “strategy” also creates a deep sense of closeness to the characters, and the story, and deepens the way that this lives inside of me as I plod along.

Based on feedback (yeah, blogging!  yeah, feedback!!) , posting these chapter snippets has been really successful in creating a lot of interest in “Pushing the River,” while generating total bewilderment about where this is all going.  Mission Accomplished!

Without further ado, here is a new snippet:

The first time my Lady ever saw Sierra, she was plunked in her sister’s lap at the one and only performance of the Boy’s music group.  Marie sat on the floor in the middle of the open room as the musicians set up, both arms bear-hugging Sierra as she rocked the little girl back and forth in exaggerated swings.  And she was a little girl, too.  Ten years old back then, and small for her age.  She was all eyes – immense pools of deep blue that flashed out from behind chin-length brown hair that gave the very strong impression it wasn’t going to follow anyone’s orders no matter how hard they might try to maneuver it into place.

            She exuded scrappiness, just like her mother and her sister; and whether this was a learned, shared response to all that life had thrown at them, or a trait embedded in the strands of their DNA, it was most certainly there.  She looked like she should be a literary character in a series of books that generations of children would adore, or the star of some adventurous, clever, educational TV show.

            My lady didn’t see her again until the next summer, when the Boy married Marie.  Sierra was not much taller, but still managed to show the signs of gangly, awkward early adolescence, her arms and legs getting in her way all the time, and little, high-up breasts poking out from her T-shirt.  Once in a while she could be caught with a far-off look on her face, as if she were gazing way, way into the future.  Other times, she was a little girl; one of those legs would get in her way and she’d take a tumble and need her mama to carry her around for a while.

            Sierra didn’t make her annual trip to visit her mama the following year, so the next time she came for the summer, she was thirteen years old.  If she stood up straight as a die, she would still not reach 5 feet; but in that two years, everything had changed.  Instead of being all eyes and a hank of hair, she was all eyes…and absolutely enormous breasts.  In an effort not to look like some cruel joke had situated a little girl’s head atop a very-much grown woman’s body, she had begun wearing makeup and coloring her long, still-wild hair.

            No one knew quite what to make of her when she first arrived that summer – whether they should talk to her just the same as always or treat her like the entirely different creature that she looked to be.  But other than spending sizeable amounts of time trying to straighten out and generally tame her long mane, she proved very much the same.

            At least that’s what everybody thought at first.

–>

Posted on

Exerpt from upcoming novel “Pushing the River”

The minute she walked into the blue-light-pulsating, music-thumping, eardrum-shattering, sad sad sad “neighborhood bar,” which is what the online City Guide had called it, she knew she had made a hideous mistake.

            “Pick some place where a yuppie or hipster type would never dare set foot,” he had said.  “Some dive.  A real neighborhood place.”

            “Are you kidding?” she had responded.  “We are very groovy up here.  We’re talking brick walls and industrial chic lighting in places where millions of dollars have been sunk to make the joint look like the basement of a factory, where you will be gouged with exorbitant prices for a PBR because it’s all ironic.”

            “Consider it a challenge,” he had said.

            Ah fuck, she thought, a challenge.

            It was certainly not her first foray into the parallel universe of online dating.  Sadly, it was quite far from it.  My lady had been divorced for more than ten years by this time, and had watched a string of relationships move from interest, to the first tingle of excitement, to the exhilaration of genuine possibility, to the frightening, heady, joyful moment when the roller coaster passes the peak of its climb and in that split second, there is no going back: momentum takes over; it is utterly and completely out of anyone’s control, because at this moment, there is love.  There is real love.

            And then there isn’t.

            After a time, she would be back online, poring over profiles, scrutinizing descriptions, gathering courage.

            There were less than a handful of people in the “neighborhood bar,” each one sitting at a measured distance from the others, making the throbbing lights and disco music seem thoroughly pathetic.  Even the bartender looked as if she would rather be somewhere else.  Anywhere else.

            A first glance around the room didn’t turn up anybody she thought resembled his online picture.  Certainly nobody came close to what her daughter-in-law Marie had called The Underwear Model upon seeing his online photo. “Oh!  My!  God!  He’s an underwear model!”

            “Do you know if there’s anybody here waiting for somebody?  A guy?”  she screamed at the bartender, leaning as far as she possibly could over the bar in order to be heard.

            “Are you kidding?”  The bartender retorted,  “Everybody here is waiting for somebody.”  She gestured with her arm, waving her hand around the room in a need-I-say-more sort of way.

            “I mean, not that I know of.  You’re just gonna have to look.”

            “Yeah.  Thanks.”

            And then she saw him.  QuantamLeap.  Standing in a dark shadow, pressed against the back wall as if pinned there, minutely nodding his head in time to the music in a good-soldier effort to not look as thoroughly uncomfortable as he clearly was.  Off-white, baggy, mid-calf length shorts that could have passed for gangsta, could have passed for j. crew.  Collared shirt.  (“Collared shirt?” she thought. “I did not see that coming.”)  She had pictured: T-shirt.  Definitely.  Very faded.  Possibly with the name of an early punk band, but more likely touting some esoteric, but highly left-leaning thing.  Noam Chomsky, maybe.  But nope, collared shirt it was.  And striped.  (Striped?)

            “Dan?”  she yelled.

            He was tall.  6’3”, maybe even 6’4”, so had to lean way, way over to get his ear in the general vicinity of her mouth.  He nodded, minimally, in time to the music, as if he were not sure he wanted to acknowledge his identity to the person who had chosen this particular bar.

            “Let’s get out of here,” she said.   Knowing full well that he couldn’t hear a word, she made exaggerated pointing gestures toward the door.

            With the last beam of blue light evaporating across his arm, Dan emphatically pushed the bar door closed behind them.  The instant the door was closed, they stood unmoving, still on the stoop, as an exhilaration of relief – to be outside, out of the blue light, out of the inescapable throb of long-forgotten music, out of the scene of utter desolate encroaching loneliness —  washed over them.

Exit mobile version
%%footer%%