The book

Tonight’s Theme is “Broken” by Seether with Amy Lee


It’s been a long time since I’ve written on here. I’ve been working on a book. It’s been an interesting ride. I guess the story has been around in my mind for a long time, it’s just finally starting to evolve into something beyond sketches and pieces.

In a way it’s cathartic, finding a mental resolution for things in print that I will never find in reality. The main character greatly resembles me, as I was told back in college, write what you know, write what you understand and when you write, the story will come to life. I’m not sure if it’s something I’ll actually bother to ever try to publish or if it’s more or something I’ll keep on a CD I’ll put in the CD case for all time, I haven’t decided yet. Like most things I do of this nature I’m doing it more for my own amusement than anything else. It keeps me busy, keeps my mind focused and active, and I need that.

Lately I haven’t written much for that either, I’m working 7 days a week and after a 12 hour day most days I come home, sit down to catch up on whatever needs to be done and fall asleep in my chair staring at the computer screen until Matt slides me to the couch.

I ripped my Achilles’ tendon a few weeks ago, which made the entire process of lifting, carrying and wrestling with dogs much trickier than I imagined. The doctor told me to take a few weeks off, I patted his shoulder nodded and said, “How about a few hours doc? I have a 12 hour a day weekend that starts tomorrow. I have seven dogs coming in and three hours to groom them in, so…I will take some time off, but not til January.” He went on about pain and all that and started to write me a prescription, I told him to save the paper, and I had Ibuprofen at home thanks. I still don’t understand why they want to fill everyone with pain killers so badly. It’s pain, eventually it’ll pass, yes, it sucks, but if you never experience pain of any kind, how will you ever get through it when you do?

I ditched the crutches about 4 days after I got them, well actually the next day but never bothered to pick them up again by day four. I found I was a danger to myself and others on them, so it was safer to put them aside.

The past few months have been odd for me. There’s a lot of good, a lot of bad, and I’m just trying to stay afloat in all of it. Sooner or later I’ll be swimming instead of treading water. Work is going well, almost too well for my body to handle. Money wise this is good, but exhaustion wise not as good.

I got to spend some time with my brother, and that was wonderful. He came up to help us do some things with the house. I don’t see him nearly enough and yet whenever were together it feels like we’ve never really been apart. I wish he would find happiness in his life, his mantra of “It is what it is.” just doesn’t cut it for me. There’s so much more to life than that, I just wish he could see it. I told him that, and he said you can’t wish for anyone else’s happiness. I disagreed. Ever the one to whip out the Socratic method, I asked him if he never wished happiness for his little sister. *Insert puppy dog eyes here* He immediately said of course he had, my reply was only a smile, and he rolled his eyes. I got him again. I then asked what the difference was. He just scowled at me and went on cooking the chicken, so I hugged him and reminded him that we think far too much alike for him to argue with me over something he knows himself isn’t right. I know, since I can’t argue with him over anything I know isn’t right either. It’s impossible to argue with yourself, and we may as well be when arguing with each other.

The weather is getting colder, and that means if I had free time I’d be spending it indoors, and that kind of bums me out. I miss Summer already. We are putting in a woodstove, which I am excited about, but the idea that we’ll soon have feet of snow does not thrill me at all. I am living in the wrong part of the country.

Anyway, back to the book thing… The entire concept is based off the fact each person’s DNA has a luminosity. Seriously, it actually does. That luminosity is simply a reflection of the energy their body creates. So that Jacob’s Ladder in each of our bodies has a different and unique signature, yes Mark, that includes identical twins. :) When seen under proper conditions, each person has a radiance they give off. So taking that into consideration as a scientific fact, I kind of stretched the idea some.

Much of the book holds a great deal of symbolism, so it’s a story within a story if you know how to read it right. Symbolism is a lost language though so likely few will even see the story there, but then again it’s highly unlikely more than a handful of people will ever read it to begin with. I like the double statements though in words and images, I suppose that’s always been my nature though, to say one thing that really means two things at once if the person bothers to listen. Few do, and I’m ok with that, if I wanted everyone to truly understand I wouldn’t have bothered to say it that way to begin with. I dunno maybe it’s always been that most folks I know can only handle so much reality or so much truth at a time, and if their mind is willing to look deeper they’ll get it, if not there’s no sense in forcing them.

Much of the theme is based upon when Matt and I first met, largely fictionalized for the most part, a clever twist to situations or possibilities that could have arisen. Of course, the villain in the book is the main character’s mother. I’m a fan of the line from the Knight’s Tale where Chaucer is unable to physically fight back, so he swears he shall vilify them in fiction. I haven’t quite figured out exactly how it will all end. It’s taken me to places I hadn’t expected when I first sat down and began writing, and it’s changed a lot as it’s matured and been revised. I think I have as many excerpt pieces that I’ve cut as I do actual pieces I’ve kept in the book itself. It’s easier to work out something to let your mind take it wherever it wishes to go and then once that’s done wrap it all neatly in a bow, removing the unneeded parts that brought you to that place.

It’s set in Massachusetts, locally, since that is the area aside from Pennsylvania which is the secondary setting that I know intimately. The setting plays such a huge part in it, that any place largely unfamiliar would be too difficult to write. The details of small things are important, on a submersed level, but they are, so it would be far too difficult to write about another area I do not know as well.

Honestly I’m not sure if it’s even worth reading for anyone aside from me. I don’t think anyone has actually read it yet. It’s a love story mostly, of course there is the hero, the black knight with the white hat, based of course on Matt, the main character, her brother and the evil villain. At the most basic level it’s the Cinderella story retold in a different way. Although there’s more to it, that’s the gist, minus the step mother, step siblings, fairy godmother and singing mice. Well it’s missing a lot more than that, but after all most stories come down to that basic tenant on some level if you really think about it, this one does too. Girl, baddie, girl wins with help, the end.

At some point I’ll have it in revised and edited format, currently it’s being edited every time I reread it, as I find things that need tweaking, fixing or are simply a typo. I still have a bad case of typosis, I knew I should have taken that typing class instead of Latin 4. Although it would have killed my GPA and I would have actually had to pay attention in typing class. Maybe Latin 4 was the better choice after all. I’ve only got about ten chapters written, and it’s somewhere roughly in the three hundred page zone, though print and text size vary that length a great deal. I like Times Roman size 12, it’s easy on tired eyes. So in that it’s around 330 or so pages and rolling onward. When it’s done it’ll be roughly 550 or so maybe more depending upon where the story takes itself. At this point it largely has a life of its own, so I'll just have to wait and see where it decides to go.