How to become a mechanic, whether you want to or not.

If you've been a reader here for any length of time, then you've heard me rant a bit about the summers here in Houston and their poor manners. They give you plenty of notice that they're coming, true. But they show up at exactly the worst time possible, bring uninvited friends like humidity and bugs, and often stay a lot longer than they were supposed to. When they finally leave, it's with a sincere promise to be back next year.

Just the right time for a surprise issue with a car, right?

While driving around town yesterday, Claudia noticed the battery light come on. We headed for home, and crossed our fingers. Then we muttered under our breath as the gauges and displays started shutting off and turning back on. Finally we both cursed loud and long when the engine died, at a red light. When the light turned green, the honking began.

I hopped out and tried to wave cars past so we didn't end up receiving a rear-end collision, while calling a number for a twenty-four hour towing service. I got a recording saying they weren't open, and started wondering how long I could stand there waving my arms before somebody paid more attention to their cell phone than to me and sandwiched me between two automobiles. By luck, a guy drove by who was a mechanic, and who had a tow chain in his van. He hooked up, and while Claudia rode with him and gave directions, I stayed in out car and tried to brake at the right times, (you have to keep the chain tight, or it can get chewed up from dragging on asphalt) remembering why I hate trying to steer any vehicle that has no power. If you've never done it, don't. It's like wrestling with a tree.

One trip to Auto Zone later, I spent a long, miserable time figuring out everything that needed to be done to hook up my new battery. I've done it before with the vehicles that I drove in the Corps, but that was a few years ago. When everything was put back together, the car seemed to be working. Until I drove it today, that is. The battery light came on again and I drove back as fast as I could, imagining having to push the car a mile or so by myself in the same heat. So now I have an early trip to our mechanic planned, first thing in the morning.

Well, if worst comes to worst, I can always use the experience in a story, once I get the situation fixed in real life. Oh, bit of irony? I have royalties coming, but they're in such a small amount that I asked to just receive a copy of the book so I can hand it out or use it for a display at a convention. Which book? Why, 'Hard Luck', of course.

Enough miserating. Time to get back to writing.

Playing Whack-a-Mole

That's really what it feels like. Every time I think I'm coming to the end of the rewrite of In The Dark, I notice three or four more places where I've started to say one thing and then finished some completely different sentence. What if you had to take an existing house of cards, and go through them to make sure all the faces were oriented the same way, without just knocking the whole thing down and starting over. Oh, and when you get halfway done, you realize it looks better with them facing the other way. Yeah.

A bit late posting this. Claudia was vending at San Japan over the weekend and just got home. I wasn't able to get the time off to go with her, so I got this weekend to myself. Nice, but I'm glad to have her back.

Next part may get a bit self-indulgent. Be warned.

I'm also getting to that point where I'm doubting every single thing about the book, from the title, through the opening line, and all the way to the part where nothing look the last sentence that I was thinking 'Damn this is good' when I first typed it. I've read and reread the same lines over and over again, and am nearly at the point where I want to pull up the file and just click 'Delete.' My thoughts keep coming back to something I saw back when I regularly watched TV. I don't know if it was a one-shot show or part of a series, but at some point a few years ago I saw a documentary about the struggles of a salvage crew as they tried to float a ship that had run aground somewhere on the coast of Alaska. They planned out their tactics in good detail, had enough experience to know what they were doing, and were ready with a backup plan if something went wrong. They went in there ready to take charge and kick some butt.

With a set up like that, you know what happened. Everything, and I mean everything, went wrong. The ship was deeper in the sand than they had thought it was, equipment failed, and the weather turned against them. After trying everything they could, the captain had no choice but to cut his losses and head for home. Before he did, he said, “Right now I'd just like to take this thing out to the middle of the ocean and blow some holes in it.” I keep seeing an image of what the captain's face would look like at that exact moment. The troublesome ship is floating in the water a safe distance away, his crew have planted the explosives and are back on board to stand with him, and the detonator is in his hand. He takes a long, deep breath to savor the moment, then he pushes the button. Flash, boom. Sound and fury. How long would a big ship take to go down into that cold, black nothingness? I have no idea, but I know what expression would be on the captains face while he watched, and I have an idea that it would last for quite a while.

Click, select 'Delete,' click. Close my eyes and breathe a long, contented sigh. I am free.

Yeah. Then spend every remaining second of my life regretting that one click. I know myself that well, at least.

Now let me get back to rewriting.

Getting in touch with our inner ghost

I mentioned 'The Woman In Black' in my last post, and if I hadn't been distracted by the thought of Christmas I would have gone on about ghosts themselves. Funny creatures, those unquiet spirits.

The basic idea is this: We live here, in the sunshine, the summer, and the morning dew, then we die. Our family puts us in a box, cries and huddles around it for a while, then it goes into the ground. Our grave gets flowers put on it once in a while, and people tell stories either about how nice we were, or what a mean fill-in-the-blank we were. The living move on.

We, on the other hand, don't. Not in this case. Our house feels cold, no matter how much wood gets put on the fire. Silence hangs in the air, strangling laughter. People get up suddenly to look behind them, and then can't explain why. Conversation is hushed, just because.

The reason is us, of course. We're still there, haunting the house or the churchyard, or the where-ever. But our behavior isn't what it used to be. These days the phrase 'unfinished business' gets used a lot, and there's the concept of a spook hanging around to point our hero or heroine to all the obvious clues which show just who helped us unwillingly shuffle off our mortal coil. But those are more convenient plot points than anything else, and ghosts like that don't seem to truly terrify us.

It's the other sort that we're talking about here. The kind that can also be neatly summed up in a sentence or two, but who are a lot harder to portray effectively. This is the more dangerous kind, because they don't give a damn.

What can the word haunted mean? In a B-movie or a B-grade book it means sharing a house with someone who walks through walls, clanks a really long set of chains, and wears clothing that went out of style two or more generations ago. But we also use it to describe someone who has had Death pay them a recent visit, someone who has lost some person in their life that they loved so dearly that they took all the meaning of life with them when they died. Someone left alone only in the sad ways.

That's the human part of the equation: pain, loss, fear. Not the normal sort that is everyone's portion in life, but the sort of gut-wrenching injustice that kills a person's soul. In a lot of the classic stories, our heroes and heroines are halfway dead, bringing their own ghosts with them into the story. With that door already open, what else can come through?

Why would it come? Why would it have never left in the first place? Anger. Blind, mad, rage. The sort of virulent soup that you get when you mix hate, loss, regret, and fear together, and then boil. Not very sensible, is it? To stay here where people weep and get hurt, when we have a ticket to a better place? Seems a bit petulant, doesn't it?

That's why I said part, and only part of us stays. That's why we feel ghosts before we see or hear them. That's why our belief in them is stored down in our gut and in our spine, while our head is full of reasons to not believe in them. Could non-believers, say atheists, be afraid of them without believing in them or in any of their related bumpers in the night? Oh hell yes. That's how people's heads work.

Ghosts like this live in our ID, where we whine rather than ask, scream instead of explain. They're what's left of a person when you strip away reason, and then strip away every flavor of love. Imagine a spoiled child that no one can control, and that no one can stop. Ever sat in a restaurant, a bus, or on a plane with an infant that did nothing but howl? Perfect. That infant is now somewhere in your house, waiting for you to relax. Pleasant dreams.

As you can see, my thoughts tend to ramble a bit when I explore a concept. Maybe I'll do it again.

Still writing.