Excerpt from Angels of Chaos

I thought I would share a brief snippet:

After about 20 minutes of what seemed like endless strafing, the Germans inexplicably called off the attack. Rollie poked his head out of the hole to see trucks on fire all around him. Ammunition popped as the crates overheated. Men ran every which way shouting for help. The fighters had released two or three bombs in addition to shooting the hell out of the trucks. Rollie heard a concentrated commotion and climbed off of Ed and Art to run to where there were men gathered. Sergeant Prather lay dead on the ground. A bomb had exploded near his foxhole and buried him alive.

As they looked over his body in semi-disbelief, Ed asked, “Is there anyone else missing?” The men glanced about nervously.

“Ren high tailed it over to your truck, Rollie,” Tex finally said. He motioned to it and the men’s eyes followed.

Although it was one of the few trucks not burning, shrapnel had shredded its tires and cut clean through the rear axle. It listed like a grounded ship. Rollie walked over to it as the men followed. He rounded the front end, looking beneath the chasses for signs of Private Ren. The nearby truck fires provided plenty of light. He reached below and pulled out Ren: first one piece, then another, then another. The shrapnel that had destroyed the undercarriage of the truck had cut him to pieces as it randomly ricocheted. He arranged Ren more or less in proper order for the grave registrar. Someone started chuckling and, within moments, they were all laughing.

Never, NEVER fall asleep under the truck, Rollie thought as he joined in. “Looks like we’re going to need a new truck, Ed,” he said. The men laughed some more.

Tomorrow would be a long day, and the fires were almost out. Rollie walked over to the foxhole that he had shared with two other men. He collapsed with one of Jones’s blankets. In a few minutes he was asleep.

Shortly before daybreak, there was an explosion. He felt earth rain down on him, but he was so done in that he didn’t care to get up to see what happened. He rolled over and slept until the sun hit his eyes.

700 Words a Day

I have been exhausted lately, working on end of year school stuff. We've been rolling in around 8 or 9 pm every night, and I can barely keep my eyes open long enough to read a few pages, much less get any writing done. After work the other day, however, I wrote 700 words in one hour (mainly dialogue between two main characters). Looking back over it, it's not perfect, but it's not bad either.

I was reminded about comments attributed to F. Scott Fitzgerald about his contemporary and fellow ex patriot, Earnest Hemingway. Even when he drank heavily, Hemingway could and would always write a few pages a day. Fitzgerald couldn't hold his liquor that well and, therefore, hated him for it.

If I could actually stick to 700 words a day, I would have a complete novel in 100 days. That's three novels per year, working only one hour per day.

26 stories, dreams, fantasies

Grading 26 student short stories has really gotten me thinking about dialog and what it takes to make a character seem and sound real. As a species we speak with so many idioms and with such poor grammar that I am pretty sure I am going to have to make some major revisions to the more intense dialog sections.

The other thing that struck me is how transparent my students (all 8th grade) are about their fantasies when they have an opportunity to write creatively. Aside from the true Freudian stuff (long, thick swords, for instance), I have delighted in reading about how they see their lives and adventures when they become true adults in an adult world. They range from sweet (getting pregnant with a loving husband) to violent (shooting up the neighborhood), to the hero's journey.

However, 25 out of 26 stories were at least not an embarrassment to the English language. A few of them show real promise, and make me wonder if I shouldn't sponsor a creative writing club next year.

Fun Little Story . . .

. . . I wrote it along with my eighth grade humanities class. Their's are all about murder, vampires, death, or some combination thereof. Mine is a little more sentimental (or perhaps just mental). Here're the link: https://sites.google.com/site/mydraftsbycbg/home/the-ride-of-his-life-short-story

"Coming Out" on Facebook

Yikes! So I posted my goal to Facebook setting a release date for my first novel (December 7). This is a scary proposition from the point of view that I will actually never be able to show my face on Facebook again if I miss this deadline!

Why December 7? All I can say right now is that there is an important story line in the book that takes place during World War II, and one very tragic event that illustrated the barbarity of the Nazi regime in the closing days of the war.

Seeing Facebook posts and hearing comments this week about the killing of Osama Bin Laden has also caused me to think through some interesting comparisons. No one on this side of the Rhine mourned the death of Hitler in the closing days of World War II and I hear no mourning today. However, I have friends struggling with the celebratory atmosphere over what many consider to be a simple revenge killing.

I'm not giddy about it or chanting "U-S-A" in front of the cameras, but I guess I throw my hat in with those who generally like it when the bad guy loses. There are enough situations in which the reverse is typically true.

17,450 Words . . .

. . . which means I'm about 25 percent done since most sources indicate a novel should be around 70,000 to 100,000 words. I doubt I will hit the upper end of the range.

When I was younger I would stop, edit, write, stop, edit, write. Now that I'm older I have adopted the attitude to just push on through with minor editing on the way. My editors Sarah and Lynn will rip it apart once they get their nails into it anyway.

My suggestion to anyone else going through this process is to do the same and get the story and the characters on paper first, then go back in and make improvements.