Mentors, animals, and ghosts #Newbook

Welcome to another post about “Once Upon a Time in the Swamp.” These are promotional in nature, but I want to make each of them unique. Today, we’re going to talk about mentors, animals, and ghosts.

Mari and her husband were tobacco farmers before the first chapter. It was a good life and they were making something for themselves and their young son. At one time she and her husband needed draft animals to help with the work.

Mari’s husband told her all a farm needs is sunshine and dirt. When they sold their crop, they went to the auction, but could not afford all the horses and mules. They wound up with a pair of young steers that would become oxen when they completed their second year. They named the pair Sunshine and Dirt.

Poor Sunshine is one of the tragedies in the first chapter, Leaving Mari with Dirt. Dirt was the “off” oxen of the pair and never was as level-headed as Sunshine. If anything, he’s downright dangerous. This cantankerous animal becomes Mari’s primary source of travel. He’s a ton of hooves, horns, and snot with a bad attitude to be wary of.

There is another fun animal in the tale named Worthless. She is a gangly pup of a Black & Tan Coonhound. Worthless is as sweet as she can be and provides something for Mari to hang on to. She becomes like a second child, and offers some bright spots to a dismal situation.

Mari needs to acquire a few skills to pull off her mission. This comes in the form of some veterans of the previous war. One is a female recluse who saves Mari’s life after yet another tragedy. Kelilah was a scout, and her regimental badge is a huge knife known as an Arkansas Toothpick. She trains Mari in its use and gives her one from her personal collection.

She also comes across a trader named Vance Dunham. His store has many handguns and longer weapons, but Mari is priced out of that market. He consents to sell her an older revolver and more importantly trains her in how to use it. The deck is stacked against her when all her enemies have semi-automatic weapons, but it’s the best she can do.

If you’re getting the idea I was unkind to Mari, you’re right. This character has to face some huge obstacles along the way. She doesn’t always fare well, and this has an effect upon her. She’s haunted by some creepy and crazy dreams. These are filled with dead people, a skeleton, and one creepy rattlesnake she refers to as La Serpiente, who talks to her.

Towards the end, Mari is on her last nerve. There isn’t much left but her drive to avenge her family.

If this sounds like a story you’d like to dive into, I would appreciate the opportunity. Tell your friends, share the post on social media, tell your enemies if they’ll drop a couple of bucks on a copy.

Blurb: Mari and her husband opted for a simple life as farmers. It’s been decades since the world tore itself apart, pitting neighbor against neighbor and family against each other. They were happy in this re-emerging world, until disaster struck.

Mari sets out on a solo quest to avenge the deaths of her family and loss of everything she holds dear. She’s ill equipped for the task, but seems to have time on her hands. Time alone in the wilderness to deal with her personal demons along the way.

She is helped by a few sympathetic elders and a couple of animal companions with lessons Mari can use if she pays attention. Can Mari find justice for her family?

Set in a post apocalyptic, Gulf Coast world, this is a story for fans of the old Spaghetti Westerns.

Get your copy right here https://mybook.to/OnceUponTimeSwamp

My new normal

I started kind of late today. I wanted to write and had a fun scene in mind. It required me to have Mari do something nice for a kid, then make it dark and dismal right after.

I’ve probably been under a rock somewhere, but recently saw the term PTSD dreams. These sound kind of like what Mari is going through, but I won’t use that term in the story. If I don’t have it absolutely right, I could inadvertently offend someone going through this issue.

Mari will continue to have her dreams, but I’m not putting a name on them. This time it got weirder than they have previously, and her dead son made an appearance.

I’ve put her in a strange position of discovering some good in the world, but getting sucked down by her own past at the same time.

Her life now involves one gigantic ox, who she doesn’t exactly love, but has grown to respect. There’s also a coonhound pup at that gangly stage where she’s all legs and enthusiasm, and Mari loves her dearly.

I need to milk this for some emotion between her own suicidal quest and concern for her animals after she’s gone. Must remember to do that.

As far as the word metrics go, it came to 2000 words today. That sounds wonderful until you realize it’s also 2000 words for the week.

I no longer have a flex day I can dedicate to writing, so this is my new normal. Things will slow down, but I can still push out something every year.

My Pinterest boards have been getting some wonderful comments, so I’m going to keep sharing them. Today, I’m going to share one that is a subset of locations. I call it “Decay.” https://pin.it/E5d3QUa

News and vignette

I got up late today and procrastinated with various forms of social media. I always flip through them before starting a writing day, but I lingered long enough to know I was goofing off. I still managed about 2800 words of The Yak Guy Project.

Yak Guy is the one where I’m trying to use the Major Arcana of the tarot as my story structure. I’ve had to meld some characters, and take a few out of order. Several things go on at once, and it doesn’t make sense to take them one at a time. For instance, the Empress character is also one of The Lovers. This overlaps the training of the Heirophont. I already had some of The Lovers, so I kind of moved faster on this section. It’s time for Strength, The Hermit, and the Wheel of Fortune. I may take some of these out of order, because it makes more sense to my story. I kind of want The Hanged Man before the Wheel. Right now I need to dwell on it some.

In other news, I woke up with a character and setting again. I don’t particularly want to dwell on her for weeks, and sometimes writing a vignette will get them out of my head. Here goes nothing, and remember I’m free writing this one:

Barbi Baronski awoke with a ringing in her ears. It was dark and dusty, and every muscle in her body ached. She stretched and her hands touched concrete overhead.

She’d driven into the city to model a new line of fitness wear, but couldn’t remember if she was going to the shoot or driving home. Daylight was visible if she looked along the ground above her head. She tried to rollover and crawl, but it was too tight in here. She slid along on her back using a kind of frog kick with her legs.

The ringing faded a bit, and Siri’s voice asked, “What can I help you with? What can I help you… What can I… What?, What?, What?…” Barbi kept sliding. Her back became a slow motion road rash of cuts and dirt.

Fresh air seemed like a wonderful thought, but it was dust, smoke, and grime. The sky above was brilliant blue, but there were no contrails, birds, or even trees. She pulled herself out of the rubble and sat upright.

The remains of her tattered top fell on her lap. Her $200 jeans were mostly threads, but clung together by some miracle. The entire world was silent except for the ringing in her ears. She covered herself with her right arm and stood up tentatively. There was nobody around. The place looked like a gravel pit, except for a twisted streetlight that snaked through the rubble.

She always drove home on 76, and thought she recognized some of its outline. Thank God her trainers survived. She walked for miles through the rubble. Pieces of automobiles dotted the landscape, and tiny bits of building foundations started appearing. The farther she walked, the more the rubble started to look like something. She stopped covering herself, because nobody was around at all.

By mid afternoon, her stomach reminded her that she was starving. She spotted a few walls and veered off her path to investigate. It turned out to be a family restaurant of some kind. A shard of mirror showed her that nearly six inches of her brunette hair had been singed away. A copper pipe produced a small blue flame at the end. The gas lines were still on out here.

She dug through the rubble and found a single can of refried beans, a tiny frying pan, and a bent chef’s knife. She used the heel of the knife to chop the can open enough to get it in the pan, then held it over the open flame until it smelled edible.

She kicked through the rubble and turned over a small table. A piece of concrete served as a chair. She managed to bend the tines of an old fork into a relatively useful position and ate in silence. Hardly health food, but it was food and that’s all that mattered now.

Across from her on a piece of remaining wall were three huge frames. Two were missing everything, but the third one appeared to be the dinner menu. It read:

• Meatloaf $6
• Prime Rib $13
• Rack of Ribs $11
• Sides…

The rest was torn away and it appeared to be cloth of some kind. Threads dangled in the breeze. She finished her beans, and used the bent knife to cut away most of her fancy jeans. $200 custom cutoffs? She split the pants legs and used some electrical wire to make them into a purse of sorts. She placed the pan and the old fork inside.

 

A rock smashed the remaining glass from the menu and she removed the cloth, cut a hole for her head and used more wire to stitch the sides closed. She looked down at her new shirt which now read:

 

Prime

Rack

 

Barbi tucked the bent knife into her belt and headed into the setting sun. Home was important, but if it wasn’t there any longer, she would head west until she found a new place to call home.

 

***

I have no idea what caused the disaster, aliens, war, the refried bean festival. I also have no intention of finishing Barbi’s story, but something may come to me in the future. These vignettes are a way of retiring some of the ideas I get. Sometimes it works, and sometimes I have to revisit them even years later.

There was more too it, like a dried up river, and talking to a snake. The snake represented an ancient survivor, and Barbi drew a parallel to herself as a survivor. I figured the post was long enough, and maybe Barbi could go on her adventure without me.

How about it you writers? Do you ever wake up having been visited by the muse? Do you make notes, forget about it, start another project? I can’t write all of mine. Barbi could be a good character, she’s obviously strong. Maybe she can be a side character one day, or maybe her story will come to me later.

It appears my muse is getting back into shape. Back to the paycheck job tomorrow.