Todd Keisling

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This is what it feels like.

More soon.

TK

Click to enlarge.

I’ve always typed in a single-space format. It makes double-spacing much more of a surprise at the end.

I’ll probably do this again when I hit 50k words (which, from the look and speed of things, shouldn’t take too long).

TK

Here’s a little something from chapter six.  Or, conversely, from ALT:

Donna is restless.  She can’t remember the conversation she had with Donovan that morning, but she’s certain they had one.  Everything else is a spotted mosaic in her head.  One moment he’s there, the next he isn’t, and her inability to reconcile these tacit differences in her own mind troubles her.

What she does remember is the huge argument they had earlier that week.  It was over money, and a vacation, and about the job which she knows is sucking the life out of her husband.  It is not what he is meant to do, but it puts food on their table and keeps a roof over their heads.  She is sad because of the rut in which he’s placed himself, and she is maddened by the way it makes him.  She considers divorce, but that isn’t right.  She loves him too much.

It breaks her heart to know he’s mad at her.  When she tries to talk to him, he ignores her, and sometimes it is as though he isn’t even there.  When she does engage him in conversation, a loud, humming drone shoots through her head, blocking out some of the words.  Sometimes she hears his voice, saying things that don’t make sense in context; and sometimes he seems to disappear from the room altogether, leaving her without recollection of seeing him leave.  It is, in her mind, like a movie with vital frames cut from the film.

So she decides to bake a cake.  She gets up, she walks to the kitchen, and she begins pulling the ingredients from the cupboard.  This will be her peace offering, she thinks, and sets about preparing a chocolate cake with peanut butter icing.  It is his favorite.  Maybe, just maybe, when he sees the trouble she went through to bake it, he’ll lighten up and talk to her.  She keeps this hope in her mind while she breaks the eggs.

It is a cake she will never get to finish.

There is a knock at the door.  She pauses, waits, listens.  A second knock follows.  Donna wipes the flour from her hands and approaches the door.  There is a man standing there.  He is grizzled and dirty.  The look in his eyes tells her something is wrong, but she scolds herself for judging him.  Still, she has to be cautious, and when she opens the door, she braces the side of her foot against it.  Just in case.

“Afternoon, miss.”

“Can I help you?” she asks, and smiles despite the stench rising off him.  It is acrid to the point of bringing tears to her eyes, but she is ever the polite one and resistant to the desire to retch.

“Are you Donna Candle?”

“Yes,” she says.  His eyes shift back and forth, as if he sees something behind her, and she feels her fingers tighten around the door knob.  She clears her throat and repeats her question, “Can I help you, mister?”

The man smiles and quickly shoves his weight against the door.  It catches against her foot with such force that she loses her balance.  The world spins, and for a moment she is falling.  The floor catches her.  Dazed, her head filled with sparkles of light, Donna turns back around to find the dirty man standing over her.  She sees him reach into his pockets and pull free two items.  One is a black cloth.  The other is a handgun.

She panics at sight of the weapon.  Her heart begins to race, and she reacts on instinct.  First, she spins onto her back.  She lifts one leg and kicks the intruder in the groin.  He yelps in pain and lurches over in agony.  She scrambles away from the door and back into the kitchen as he falls to his knees.

Donna’s next impulse is to get a weapon.  She thinks of taking his, but realizes she hasn’t the slightest idea of how to use a gun, and going for it would put her within his reach.  He could easily grab her, wrestle her to the ground, and choke her to death.  Instead she crawls to the kitchen.  Her foot screams when she tries to put her weight on it, and she thinks she may have twisted it when he pushed against the door.

Donna crawls to the cabinetry.  She reaches up, pulls open a drawer, and digs for a knife.  She doesn’t care what kind, so long as it has a blade, but before she can find one—

“You sneaky bitch.”

The man is behind her.  There is pain in his voice, but worse, there is anger.  She feels his hands on her legs, and she cries out when he squeezes her bad ankle.  Desperate, she clings to the drawer, and it gives way as he pulls her from the counter.  Its contents spill to the floor.  She spots a steak knife and strains to reach it, but the man is ahead of the game.  He kicks it away and forces her onto her back.

He’s going to rape me, she thinks. Then he’s going to kill me.  A dozen things flash before her in light of this epiphany.  They are dreams of things she always wanted to do.  She sees a baby she wants to have but never will.  She sees Donovan’s smiling face, and regrets that she will die with him angry at her.

The man pins her to the floor.  She continues to thrash and free herself, but he plants his knees on her arms.  His entire weight immobilizes her.  She watches his arm block out the light on the ceiling.  She sees his hand balled into a fist, and watches it come down in a swift arc.  She feels it connect with her temple, but there is no pain.  There are only stars, and lots of darkness.

More soon.

TK

I know I write a lot about the act of writing here, with enough miscellaneous stuff here and there to break up the monotony, and you folks know I don’t post nearly enough as I probably should.  When I started this blog it was to provide a window into the writing process because I felt as though it’s something not really communicated to readers.  All readers see is the finished product.  There’s not much discussion on what went into it.  So, that’s the niche I hoped to fill.

Today I’m not going to write about the great things I love about writing.  Contrary to the title, I love writing.  I love it, I live for it, sometimes it keeps me sane (and equally insane).

But while I love the act and art of writing, I fucking hate being a writer.  In recent years I’ve come to understand that I was meant to do this, that I’ve always been a writer, even if I didn’t know it, and that working with words as a medium is far more satisfying to me than, say, graphite or clay.  When I was younger, I used to draw pictures and make up stories.  Later that interest turned to comics and animation.  At one point I wanted to work for Disney; at another I wanted to work for DC Comics; and eventually I dabbled in film.  This all led to my first book, and I’ve been on this path ever since.

So, I could’ve been “Todd the animator” or “Todd the illustrator” or “Todd the director.” But instead I ended up here as “Todd the writer.”

And, well, being a writer sucks. Take note I didn’t say I hate the act of writing itself, but the act of being a writer.  Like most artists, I struggle with second-guesses and doubts about my work, about its perceived worth, about its presentation, and so on.

Like most artists, I scrape together a living month to month working a job that has nothing to do with my interests, and it’s only in the last couple of years that I found a job with which I’m comfortable.  It’s simply a means to an end–that is, it keeps a roof over my head, the lights on, and food on my table.  It isn’t glamorous and it isn’t abnormal by any stretch of the imagination.  A lot of people end up in jobs and careers they did not want.  While it is a fair living, it is also a reminder of what I should be doing during the daily hours.  It’s a reminder that I essentially wasted a lot of money and four whole years earning a degree I can’t use.

Okay, I take that back. I can (and do) use that degree every single day I put pen to paper, but it’s not something with which I can easily make a living.  You don’t see many help wanted ads for writers in the newspaper.

So, I hate being a writer for the job prospects.

I also hate being a writer because of story pressure.  If you’re a writer and you’re reading this, you probably know that sense of restlessness when you have a story brewing in your head.  I think of it as a pressure-cooker that slowly builds up over time as a story begins to develop.  Soon you have no choice but to write it down, or express it some other way, so long as you get it out of your brain and on to some form of physical media.  When you can’t write, be it because of your job or real life commitments, it begins to back up.  Think of it as “literary constipation.” You know you should be writing, but there are other things that also have equal importance. So, you have to choose, and sometimes writing doesn’t always come out in the end. “I’ll make up the time,” you tell yourself. Only, when you sit down to actually write, you find the mood has passed.  Again, the story remains untold, the words unwritten, and they linger in your head, simmering and building up pressure until another creative spark.  If this goes on long enough, you eventually convince yourself the story you wanted to tell wasn’t worth telling, and you move on to something else.  Or, you convince yourself the idea you have isn’t the best one, so you think of ways to re-tell the same idea.  You could call this a precursor to the dreaded “writer’s block.” I call it a pain in the ass and a major inconvenience. The worst part is, it’s all self-imposed, and sometimes it’s unavoidable.

Finally, I hate being a writer because, well, a lot of writers are assholes. I do not exclude myself from this, nor do I mean to offend anyone.  It’s just a personal opinion and observation.  A lot of writers I’ve seen often break off, form their own little cliques, heavily criticizing outsiders while elevating themselves as far as their egos will take them. Unfortunately this carries over into the world of publishing, on a much larger scale, and I like to think of it as the “great literary circle-jerk.” The issue of the ego is a whole other blog post on its own and, in a nutshell, I will say it probably stems from the classification of “the artist.”  “Writers: We’re eccentric, weird, and quirky.  Don’t piss us off or we’ll write very bad things about you.” This should be on a T-shirt.  I’d wear it.

Sorry.  I had to get this off my chest, as it’s been bugging me for a while now. I was due for a rant, anyway.  Again, this is all my opinionated observation.  No harm is intended.  Keep that in mind if you want to troll or flame me.

So there you have it. Some reasons why I hate being a writer. I hate it, and yet I love writing.  It makes enduring some of the bullshit well worth the trouble.

And now back to your regularly scheduled blogging (or lack thereof).

Until next time,

TK

A woman in a large, thick winter coat emerged from the opening.  She stepped out onto the top step, lifted a handkerchief, and hacked into it for a good minute.  The coat she wore was tattered and dirty, covered in some sort of gray sludge that looked dark and wet.  Mud was his first impression, but it could have been concrete as well.  The woman surveyed the empty the street, squinting against the morning light, then turned and coughed into her hand again.  She wiped her nose and spat.

Donovan took a step toward her.  He reached into his pocket for Shelly’s photo.

“Excuse me,” he said. “Ma’am?”

The transient slowly turned her head.  It was a methodic, robotic turn that gave him a chill.  He stopped and held out the picture.

“Have you seen this girl?”

She curled back her lip into a toothless snarl.  She hissed at him, and then it turned into a hacking, crackling laugh.  Seeing her, hearing her, made him think of the coven of witches from Macbeth, only far more dangerous.

“I seen her,” hissed the crone. “Seen ‘er in Hell.”

He ignored her comment. “Her name is Shelly Hill.  She was found murdered near her.  I’m looking for answers.”

Looking for answers? The words seemed dumb in his own head.

“I seen ‘er,” she went on.

“Where?”

The woman waved her hand to the sky. “Some’ere.” She grinned that horrid, empty grin like a rotting jack-o-lantern. “Some’ere o’er the rainbow.” Donovan’s frown prompted her to let loose a wild cackle.  He realized his mental comparison to Macbeth was on the mark.

When he found the words, all he could say was, “It’s not funny.  She’s dead.”

The laughter ceased.  She took two, large strides toward him, and stopped so close he could smell the stench of urine rising from her body. “I know,” she said. “He knows.”

“Who?”

“The bird man.  Knows you.  Knows us all.  O’er the rainbow, under it, other side the dern thing where the colors don’t show.  He knows, and he knows you, and we all be seein’ you soon.”

Donovan stepped away from her.  He suddenly felt very vulnerable, and he realized all he had to defend himself was the flashlight.  A scenario flashed before him:  This filthy crone leading him into the depths of Winthorpe Station, where he would be cornered, robbed and brutalized at the hands of an army of homeless people.”

But they’re more than just homeless, said Joe Hopper. They’re lifeless and empty, hoss. They’re missing.

The crone cackled once more, and he recoiled from her acrid breath.  He watched as she did an odd dance back across the pavement toward the open door.  She sang “He sees you sees me sees you sees us all!” as she went, and when she was a good distance away he began to follow.  She stopped in the opening, and beyond it he saw what appeared to be stacks of televisions, what might have been an entire wall of them, all blank and gray and busy with static.

“He sees us all,” she finished, “and I be seein’ you soon.”

She closed the door.  Its hinges groaned.  Then she was gone, and he was alone on the steps of the station once again.  He realized that he was not ready to make that descent after all.

- – -

From chapter four of THE LIMINAL MAN.

More soon.

TK

Hello, folks.  Here we are on March 1st (or, I suppose, March 2nd depending on your locale), and I’m wondering where February went.  Perhaps it ran off to where January went, and December before it.  I suppose I’ll never know.

Right, anyway, what have I been up to these last few weeks?  Writing, of course.  Revisions are moving along well enough, considering I’m reworking the plot as I go along.  Today I’ll be hacking away at the middle of chapter four.  As expected, fewer changes are required as I go along.  I hope to begin part two this month.

February was not without its distractions.  Between the horrid weather, missed time at work, and Bioshock 2, I had plenty to keep me busy.  I read Joe Hill’s HORNS, which I highly recommend, especially if you liked HEART-SHAPED BOX.  I’m in the middle of reading the comic series THE WALKING DEAD, which is playing out as most zombie stories do, but with more humanity than most (even if it has a bit too much melodrama).  I’m enjoying it.

This past weekend as Gabe’s weekend.  The little spud turned seven on Friday, which makes me feel all sorts of old.  He was just a little over a year old when Erica and I started dating, and he’s grown up to be an inquisitive, intelligent kid.  He had a party on Saturday at the bowling alley with all his friends at school.  While the staff at Berks Lanes were lacking in their capacity for just about everything, the kids did have fun, and that’s the important part.  They had an hour of bumper bowling, and he even managed to score his first strike (if you were watching my Twitter feed on Saturday, you probably witnessed my excitement).  I just hope Gabe doesn’t want another party there next year.  Whoever thought it was a great idea to schedule four separate birthday parties in the same room is a moron.

Sunday was another party, but with family.   Gabe and I hid ourselves away in his room playing Banjo Kazooie.  He loves that game, and it’s fun to watch him play.  I’ve created a monster.   Overall the boy got a lot of gifts, from knights and dragons to go along with the castle he received at Christmas, to this cool microscope that connects to his TV.  When asked how it feels to be seven, he responded, “It feels great.”

Can’t argue with that.  Now I have to work on feeling great about being 27 in a month.

Well, time to step away from this thing.  I’ll be back shortly.

Until then,

TK