For the first time in my life, I’m in love. And I think she feels the same about me. That’s the good news. The bad news is that we may have to break up . . . sort of. Shit happens. Allow me to explain.
Her name is Jill; we met early on a Sunday morning. I was jogging along the beach at the water’s edge one minute and the next, I was splayed out in the sand. I had tripped over a woman’s recumbent body.
After the requisite apologies, we started talking. One thing led to another and we ended up having lunch together. That was eight months ago and we’ve barely been out of each other’s sight since.
Today is another Sunday much like the one when Jill and I met, but things are a little different now.
I’m an FBI agent assigned to the Miami Field Office. I was awakened at five o’clock this morning with an urgent phone call to report in immediately. There was a terrorist threat. Hell, this was the granddaddy of all threats. At 4:00 a.m., a local television station received a call stating that there was a nuclear bomb planted within the city, and at exactly 4:00 p.m., it would explode unless certain demands were met. The caller said there was a package sitting in the parking lot of the North Miami office of the FBI that would authenticate the threat.
It turned out to be a small nuclear bomb. An attached note informed us that they had three more just like it, not counting the one already planted. The note also said that if there was any effort to evacuate the populace, the bomb would be detonated the instant word hit the media.
Every law enforcement officer—city, state, and federal—was called in. We were given gadgets that register radiation and assigned grids. Each person would drive his or her grid. If the meter went off, a team would be dispatched with equipment to pinpoint the emanations. Then the eggheads would dismantle the bomb.
That was the plan.
We were ordered to tell no one of the threat, but there were many surreptitious phone calls made that morning, telling family members to drive to West Palm Beach for the day. I made my own call, telling Jill that I had planned a romantic day for the two of us and asked if she would meet me in Boca Raton. I gave her the name of the hotel where I had made a reservation before calling her and said I’d be there by noon. She readily agreed, and now I know that she is safe.
So here it is nearing four o’clock and we’ll soon see if it was a hoax or not. The clock on the dashboard reads 3:59 . . . 4:00 . . . 4:01. Nothing! I’ll be damned, the whole thing was a . . .
Still slaving away---as you can discern from the accompanying photo. The novel should be out by April, 2016.
An excerpt from RESOLUTION:
With the stove going great guns and the coffee almost ready, Huck opened the door to see what the outside world looked like. He beheld a sea of white—three feet deep with drifts twice as high, the sled, buried, nothing showing excepting the handlebars, abandoned buildings striving to reassert their supremacy over the landscape, but failing—a sea of white silence that stretched to the ends of the earth.
Jass hobbled up on his crutches. “Looks like we’ll have to take to the ice. We’ll never make miles if you have to break trail for the dogs. Maybe in a day or so, mushers going down to Dawson will have trampled the snow for us. But until then, we stay on the ice.”
A tale from my misbegotten youth. I'm sorry to say all the facts are true as stated.
It was Easter morning on Huntington Beach, California, 1969. I was nineteen years old. I had spent the night sleeping under a lifeguard stand. I only mention the locale because it is pertinent to the story—in a roundabout way.
I was in Huntington Beach that Easter morning because of food. Well, not good food, but food of any sort is good food when one is hungry. There was a storefront church right off the beach that every evening would serve us God and sandwiches. The way it worked was, they would go around during the day and collect day old sandwiches from stores in the vicinity to use as a lure to get the hungry into their place of worship. It worked pretty well, the joint was always packed. However, you had to have the God before they would give you a stale cheese sandwich. We also received miniature Bibles. Not the whole Bible, these little red books had a verse or two. I can remember them clearly. They were an inch high, an inch wide and about an eighth of an inch thick. And that cover, I will never forget that red cover. They come into the story later.
So, I’m tired of going hungry and sleeping on the beach, I'm thinking I’ll take a quick trip back east and visit the folks. You know . . . sleep in a bed for a change and eat a square meal once in a while. But before I left, at my last night at the Sandwich Church, I grabbed a handful of the little “Bibles” and stuffed them into my case. Back then I traveled with an old-fashioned suitcase. Three feet long, two feet high, and twelve inches wide; and solid, I could put it on its end and sit on it. That case must have done about 50,000 miles with me.
With my little Bibles and a cheese sandwich, I headed east. I had it down to a science back then. Three days from the California border to Miami or vice versa. At that time there was no Interstate Highway system. I made it as far as Louisiana. If you were going east to west, or west to east on the southern route, you took Highway 90. Going from west to east, highway 90 split at Baton Rouge. You could either go south into New Orleans or continue east toward Lake Pontchartrain. On this fateful trip, I did not go into New Orleans. I went straight ahead because the truck in which I was riding was going that way.
I was let off just outside a sleepy little town by the name of Denham Springs. I can still see the water tower with the town’s name emblazoned across it. Later, well into the 70’s, there was a cliché of a southern sheriff. He was fat, stupid, mean; he wore mirrored sunglasses and he was very, very dangerous. He was, after all, the law, the only law you were ever going to get in his town. If you were an outsider, and he didn’t need your vote to get re-elected, then chances were good that if your paths crossed, you, and not he, were going to be the worse for it. That cliché had to come from somewhere and I know where. It was based on the sheriff of Denham Springs, Louisiana, circa 1969.
As the truck stopped to let me out and I started to climb down from the cab, a note of warning I heard: “That town up ahead, Denham Springs, has the meanest son-of-a-bitch for a sheriff. Do not hitchhike through his town. Just walk through and start hitchin’ on the other side.” I took his words to heart; I did not hitch through Denham Springs, Louisiana.
I proceeded to walk through that godforsaken town like the good citizen I was pretending to be. I made it halfway when a police car pulled up beside me and the “officer,” who was fat, mean, and wore the prescribed mirrored shades, told me to get in the back of his car. When a cop puts you in the back seat, you’re going to jail. Or at least that's what I thought. Though it seems this joker was in no hurry to do anything. He just drove around town sayin’ hello to other troglodytes like himself. The whole time, I said not a word. Remember, I was just walking down the street minding my own business when I was accosted by this officer of the law. But as I’ve said, I kept my big mouth shut (for once) while he drove all over creation with me in the back seat of his police car. There were no handles on the inside of the doors, I was locked in.
Finally, after about an hour of that, I said, “Excuse me, sir, but what’s going on?”
His reply: “Shut up, boy, you’re under arrest.” No fooling, he actually called me, “boy”!
So I shut up, sat back, and tried to enjoy the ride. Shortly thereafter, we pulled up in front of the police station. This cliché of a cop got out, told me to grab my case and come with him. Only one thing though, he forgot that I could not open the door from the inside. He was halfway to the cop shop before he turned and saw his mistake. So he had to come back and open the door for me. I was tempted to take my time getting out and make him wait there, holding the door open like a valet parking attendant. But my better sense said: You might still make it out of here in one piece, so don’t piss the asshole off.
We made our way to his little kingdom and it was there that I met "Barney." Barney was not his real name; in fact, I never did learn his name. But he was the deputy to Fat Boy. He seemed like a nice enough fellow, but he was dependant on Fatso for his job, so he meekly went about carrying out the orders handed down by the sheriff. I called him Barney because he reminded me, in looks and manner, of the Don Knots’ character from the Andy Griffith Show, Barney Fife.
Then the inspection and interrogation began. My pal sat behind his desk, Barney standing off to his right, and me in the position of defendant before the bar. The first thing he does is open my suitcase and go through the contents. You never know, I might have been carrying explosives. Nope—no explosives found, but a ha! I was carrying little Bibles. That had to mean something. So I was questioned quite thoroughly, if someone with an IQ of 76 can be said to know what a question is, let alone ask one.
“What are these?”
“Little Bibles, sir.”
“What are you, some kind of Jesus freak?”
“No sir. I just believe in the word of the Lord.”
I thought if I played at being a Goodie Two-Shoes, I might get back on the road before too long. Boy, was I mistaken. My piety did not impress him, so I thought, What next? At that point, I figured I’d just play stupid and see what developed.
The next insidious thing found in my case was the infamous Carnation Instant Breakfast packages. There were about five or six of the damn things. Do you remember them? They were just a powder of some sort that one drank in the morning in lieu of a healthy breakfast. They were factory sealed, and when Fats asked me what they were, I just stared at him. I mean, it was printed on the packages he was holding what the stuff was. But Sherlock Holmes wasn’t going to be fooled by any snot-nosed kid. No sir, no way.
This guy was way too sharp for the likes of me. Thinking there were hidden drugs concealed in those factory-sealed packages, he tears one open, wets the tip of his finger and sticks it into the package. He pulls out the fat finger with Carnation Instant Breakfast (chocolate flavor) stuck to it. He brings it up to his mouth and was about to lick his finger with the “drugs” sticking to it. But no, wait, this guy is sharp. He stops before tongue touches finger. He turns to Barney and holds up said finger. The unspoken command: Hey you, Idiot, come over here and lick this poison off my finger. You got to hand it to ol’ Barney, he did his duty. I don’t know who was more surprised that he did not keel over dead after ingesting the “poison,” Barney or Fatso. After a few minutes, when it was evident that my Carnation Instant Breakfast was not laced with LSD, the interrogation stalled.
It was at that point I thought I’d try my second gambit. The Holy Roller act hadn’t work, so let’s try motherhood. I was going to try to outsmart my captors.
“Sir, may I make a phone call?”
“Why? Do you think you deserve one?”
“No sir. It’s just that my mother is dying back in Florida, and I was on my way back to see her, and if I’m not going to get back there any time soon, I’d just like to say good-bye to her over the phone.”
I have to admit, I almost had him. I had Barney, no problem. I think I even saw a single tear trickle down his cheek. But at the last second, Fats says, “You know, we had a hippie in here last week. Shaved his head and sent him out to the work gang. He’s now helpin’ build us a nice new road over on the north side of town. How’d ya like to join him?”
Okay, I thought, you got me, but I’m keeping my eyes wide open for you to make the littlest mistake, then it’s swish . . . I’m outta here.
Without further ado, he told me that in the morning I would have my hair shaved off and then sent out to the work gang for six months. No trial . . . no habeas corpus . . . no lawyer . . . no nothing!
It was now time to put me away for the night. At first, I thought Fats was going to have Barney do the honors all by himself. But no, Fats was enjoying himself too much, he wanted in on all the fun until the last possible moment.
It was as they were leading me up the stairs to the cell block that an idea came to me. As I walked slowly up those dark, dank stairs, I prayed for just one good break. That was all I needed, only one.
We reached the landing, housing the three cells that comprised the Denham Springs’ Correctional System. The door to the nearest cell was standing wide open and there didn’t seem to be any other inhabitants about. Things were looking up.
My plan was simple. I just had to antagonize Fats into physical violence. That shouldn’t be too hard. All afternoon I could see he was just itchin’ to give me a good one, right across the mouth. So, let’s see what you’re made of, Fatso! When we stepped in front of the opened door of the cell, he grabbed my left arm at the bicep and walked me inside. Great, thought I, this is the moment of truth. I yanked my arm from his grip, spun around and spit in his face. Well, that wasn’t so hard. He turned beet-red and let a haymaker go in the general direction of my jaw. Of course, I was expecting it, so I went with the flow. As soon as his fist connected, I went in the same direction in which his arm was moving; his punch had very little effect on me. But that’s not how I played it.
But a moment to digress. When I saw the cell door open, and neither Fats nor Barney with a key between them, that’s when I knew I had a fighting chance. No key, that was my ace in the hole. You see, it had been my experience that one needed a key to open jail cell doors, but not to lock them. They locked automatically with some sort of spring mechanism. At least that’s the way it worked way back in 1969.
Okay, back to the drama. When I feigned taking his best blow, I grabbed my chest in the area of my heart, and said, “My heart.” (What else?) I fell to the floor, did a spasm or two, coupled with a little shaking, and pretended to pass out. As I lay there with my eyes closed, I couldn’t tell what was going through Fats’ mind, but I heard Barney exclaim, “Great, now you killed him!”
Fats was already in the cell, but my plan depended on both of them being in there with me. So, as Fats shook me, trying to elicit a response, I bided my time until I heard Barney enter. When I was sure he was far enough through the door, I jumped up and pushed them into one another. As one, they crashed to the floor and I ran out of that damn cell, clanging the door shut behind me.
Now Fats still had his gun, so even though he was entwined with Barney, I didn’t stick around to enjoy my victory. I bolted down the stairs, grabbed my case, and was out of the door before either one of them got to his feet.
Two blocks away, I hit it lucky and got a ride with a Peterbilt going all the way to Tallahassee.
Well, that’s about it folks. The only other thing of interest is that about eight months later, I was hitchin’ through to the west coast and once again, I was let out near Denham Springs, Louisiana. And you know what the guy said as I left his car?
“Don’t go through Denham Springs, they got them a real mean sheriff there.”
My answer to his kind advice: “Yes, I’ve heard of him.”
Needless to say, I went through New Orleans that time around.
An excerpt from RESOLUTION, a work in progress by Andrew Joyce
“We’ve been hearing a lot about you, Mister Carmack. Is it true that you have found the Bonanza Gold?”
In way of an answer, Carmack reached inside his coat and pulled out a leather pouch—a rather large leather pouch. He delicately untied the strings, and then with a dazzling smile that would have given the midnight sun a run for its money, George Carmack emptied the contents onto the table.
I took John's six-shooter out of its holster and shot the son-of-a-bitch in his right knee,blowing the kneecap all to hell and back. That wiped that snake smile from his face.
He fell out of the chair, shrieking in agony. It was music to my ears. As he lay on the floor holding his bloody knee and making all sorts of noise, I collected the cash from the desk and slowly, very slowly, counted it. Yep, it was $10,000.00 alright. By the time I finished counting, he had quieted down just enough to hear what I had to say.
With the cash in one hand and the six-shooter in the other, I left Larimer with these words: "My name is Molly Lee and I want you to remember it for the rest of your miserable life as you hobble about on your crutches. That's M-O-L-L-Y L-E-E! And Molly Lee can take care of herself!"
Description:
Molly is about to set off on the adventure of a lifetime . . . of two lifetimes.
It's 1861 and the Civil War has just started. Molly is an eighteen-year-old girl living on her family's farm in Virginia when two deserters from the Southern Cause enter her life. One of them--a twenty-four-year-old Huck Finn--ends up saving her virtue, if not her life.
Molly is so enamored with Huck, she wants to run away with him. But Huck has other plans and is gone the next morning before she awakens. Thus starts a sequence of events that leads Molly into adventure after adventure; most of them not so nice. She starts off as a naive young girl. Over time, she develops into a strong, independent woman. The change is gradual. Her strengths come from the adversities she encounters along the road that is her life.
We follow the travails of Molly Lee, starting when she is eighteen and ending when she is fifty-six. Even then Life has one more surprise in store for her.
Today I am going to be doing something very exciting, my first ever author interview! I have been wanting to do this for a while now but was looking for just the right person, after Andrew contacted me and I could see his passion for his writing, I knew I wanted to interview him. Andrew has currently published three books and tends to write within the genre of Historical Fiction. This is definitely a genre I would like to delve into, so without further ado, let's get on with the interview.
Thank you for coming onto my blog!
You’re welcome. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Start off by telling us a little bit about your latest book, Molly Lee.
Molly is about to set off on the adventure of a lifetime . . . of two lifetimes.
It’s 1861 and the Civil War has just started. Molly is an eighteen-year-old girl living on her family’s farm in Virginia when two deserters from the Southern Cause enter her life. One of them—a twenty-four-year-old Huck Finn—ends up saving her virtue, if not her life.
Molly is so enamored with Huck, she wants to run away with him. But Huck has other plans and is gone the next morning before she awakens. Thus starts a sequence of events that leads Molly into adventure after adventure; most of them not so nice.
We follow the travails of Molly Lee, starting when she is eighteen and ending when she is fifty-six. Even then Life has one more surprise in store for her.
What inspired you to write Molly Lee?
I was not inspired to write MOLLY LEE. I was cajoled into writing it by Molly and my agent.
This is the backstory to Molly:
My first book was a 164,000-word historical novel. And in the publishing world, anything over 80,000 words for a first-time author is heresy. Or so I was told time and time again when I approached an agent for representation. After two years of research and writing, and a year of trying to secure the services of an agent, I got angry. To be told that my efforts were meaningless was somewhat demoralizing to say the least. I mean, those rejections were coming from people who had never even read my book.
“So you want an 80,000-word novel?” I said to no one in particular, unless you count my dog, because he was the only one around at the time. Consequently, I decided to show them City Slickers that I could write an 80,000-word novel.
I had just finished reading Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn for the third time, and I started thinking about what ever happened to those boys, Tom and Huck. They must have grown up, but then what? So I sat down at my computer and banged out REDEMPTION: The Further Adventures of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer in two months; then I sent out query letters to agents.
Less than a month later, the chairman of one of the biggest agencies in New York City emailed me that he loved the story. We signed a contract and it was off to the races, or so I thought. But then the real fun began: the serious editing. Seven months later, I gave birth to Huck and Tom as adults. And just for the record, the final word count is 79,914. The book went on to reach #1 status on Amazon twice, and the rest, as they say, is history.
But not quite.
My agent then wanted me to write a sequel, but I had other plans. I was in the middle of editing down my first novel (that had been rejected by 1,876,324 agents . . . or so it seemed) from 164,000 words to the present 142,000. However, he was insistent, so I started to think about it. Now, one thing you have to understand is that I had tied up all the loose ends at the end of REDEMPTION, so there was no way I could write a sequel. And that is when Molly came to me and asked that I tell her story. Molly was a character that we met briefly in the first chapter of REDEMPTION, and then she is not heard from again. At least not until her book came out.
Did you have to do a lot of research to get the history authentic in the story?
Everything in MOLLY LEE is historically correct from the languages of the Indians to the descriptions of the way people dressed, spoke, and lived. I spend as much time on research as I do writing my stories. Sometimes more.
Going back to the beginning, what is it that got you into writing?
One morning, about five years ago, I went crazy. I got out of bed, went downstairs, and threw my TV out the window. Then I sat down at the computer and wrote my first short story. It was soon published in a print magazine (remember them?). I’ve been writing ever since.
Do you always have a full story mapped out from beginning to end before you start writing?
I usually sit down to write a book with no idea where my characters will lead me. I start out with (I hope) a killer first sentence and the last paragraph of the book. Then I set out to fill the in-between space with 100,000 words. I find that the easy part. Sometimes I will bring my characters to a certain place, only to have them rebel when we get there. They tell me they want to go somewhere else and take off on their own. I have no choice but to follow.
Tell us a little bit about your writing process.
I prefer to write in the early morning hours when things are quiet. I usually get up around 2:00 a.m. and go to work. The commute is not long . . . only a few steps to my computer.
Do you ever base your characters in your books off real people? If so, when have you done this?
In some respects all my characters are based on real people. I read a lot non-fiction (history) and biographies and I’ll incorporate aspects of the people I read about into my characters
What type of books do you like to read yourself?
My favorite author is John Steinbeck. I also love to read Lee Child and David Baldacci. Actually, the list is too long for this venue.
If you had to pick three books that were the only ones you could ever read again, what would you pick?
The Grapes of Wrath, The Collected Plays of William Shakespeare, and The Jacket (Star Rover) by Jack London.
Where do you find out about books to read?
Nowadays, mostly by accident.
Do you have any hobbies? Or anything you like to do in your spare time?
I like to emulate Hemingway, London, and Fitzgerald . . . I drink a lot, mostly vodka. I also like watching old movie from the ’30s and ’40s.
Have you got any advice for those budding writers out there?
Read, read . . . and then read some more. Read everything you can get your hands on! Reading to a writer is as medical school is to a doctor, as training is to an athlete, as breathing is to life.
Thank you very much for coming onto my blog! Anything else you'd like to add?
Thank you for having me. I can only append that I have very much enjoyed your mild inquisition.
June is gay—cool and warm, wet and shouting with growth and reproduction of the sweet and the noxious, the builder and the spoiler. The girls in the body-form slacks wander High Street with locked hands while small transistor radios sit on their shoulders and whine love songs in their ears. The young boys, bleeding with sap, sit on the stools of Tanger’s Drugstore ingesting future pimples through straws. They watch the girls with level goat-eyes and make disparaging remarks to one another while their insides whimper with longing. -- John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent
My name is Andrew Joyce and I write books for a living. You can check me out on Google (Andrew Joyce Author). My point is that is all I do, write books. I do not make money in any other way. Another thing that I must say is that on the whole, I don’t like communing with people very much.
I only tell you this because I ran into some very nice people the other day; not only nice, but honest. I found them on the Internet, they run a book blogging tour company and I didn’t know them from Adam.
They did right by me and when I wanted to buy more of their services, I was advised that they would love to take my money, but if I wanted to sell more books I would be better served elsewhere. Then they showed me where I could be “better served.” They were right. Their name is Good Tales Book Tours. Here’s a link:http://goodtalesbooktours.com/
