Murder She Writes

I’m tired. Really, really tired. I just finished revising REDEMPTION. I have numerous commitments looming, National around the corner and another book to turn in by July 15th. I have only the rough draft complete. I have 6 contest entries to judge and turn in by August 6th. I have writer friends who need a little help from me right now.
I spent the day in Monterey yesterday and came home to over 200 emails, most of them personal, and needing attention. My youngest daughter got engaged earlier this week and just thinking about wedding plans and venues and, dear lord the expense has my cringing. Then there is my business.

I feel like I am being pulled in twelve different directions and am having difficulty prioritizing.

I know what I need to do. I need to write it all down, prioritize, then tackle each item one at a time. But I want to sleep for two days first. Can I make that my priority? Recently there has been a lot of talk on a few loops about writers and depression. While I’ve never suffered from depression I do get these jags of feeling completely overwhelmed. I deal with it, because I know if I don’t things will only get worse. And I have to admit, I work so much better under pressure. My efficiency rating skyrockets.

But still…I’d like to disappear for a few days. Whah, but I can’t! But I wanna…
Okay, so sorry for the whine, but I know we all feel like this at times. And I have probably asked this before, but what do you do when you feel the weight of the world on your shoulders and know you must forge onward?

Now, on a much lighter note, I wanted to let you all know a good friend of mine, Virna DePaul, a criminal prosecutor, will be guest blogging over at my place Monday. www.karintabke.com then click on the blog link.

Here’s a little bit about Virna, and she will be answering questions.

Virna has been a criminal appellate prosecutor with the California Attorney General’s Office since 1996. Before that, she spent a year in the trenches handling misdemeanor trials as a Deputy District Attorney. Her first romantic suspense manuscript, Trial By Fire, placed second in the 2007 Smokey Mountain Laurie’s single title category (w/a Nina Meyers) and landed Virna her dream agent, Kimberly Whalen. Virna’s current wip explores repressed memories, sexual fetishes, and crimes of passion. She juggles her job and pursuit of publication with the support of many friends and the four men in her life (ages 2 to 38). www.virnadepaul.com

Wow, what a busy lady! Stop by Monday and say hello. I’ve already read her blog and it’s fascinating and informative.

Virna will also be giving away a $10 Borders card to a lucky commenter.

And ps, thanks for letting me dump a little today.

K*

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First, I wanted to tell Deb that yes–I do think that other forces are at work sometimes! I have already ordered MORBID CURIOSITY because I am totally hooked by the premise. I’ve been doing some research on similar subjects. Kids today sometimes don’t realize what they’re getting into. The occult is dangerous, perhaps even more dangerous than online predators which right now are a huge threat to young people, emotionally or physically. You can’t “undo” the damage when a kid gets a sicko emailing them porn, or when a kid starts playing around with black magic. The experience will definitely impact their entire lives.

Okay, short stories. I wrote a few months back about how hard it was for me to write the short story for the Killer Year anthology I’m in. It’s 5,900 words and getting a full, complete story out in such a short amount of time was frustrating, but at the same time freeing–I did it, and I can do it again.

One of the problems was that I had too many characters. I was trying to take one of my traditional ideas and condensing it, and that simply doesn’t work. You need a complete story, with a beginning, middle and end, but it’s not a novel, or even a novella. It’s a snapshot of a single pivotal moment in a person’s life.

Stephen King is the master of short fiction. He said in his book ON WRITING that the “art of the short story” was lost, or we were on the verge of losing it. Maybe for others, but certainly not for him.

THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION is one of my all-time favorite movies, and one of my all-time favorite short stories. The adaption was so wonderful, and it’s a testament to King’s brilliance with depth of character, emotion, and a sparing use of words that a short story can be converted into a full-length two hour movie without filler. If you haven’t seen it, watch it. If you haven’t read it, pick it up. Like ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEXT, TSR is told from the point of view of a secondary character who is changed by the actions/beliefs/values of an individual who comes into the “prison,” someone who shouldn’t be there.

Last night I saw 1408 and once again, was impressed with the adaption. It was true Stephen King, without the insanity of Hollywood. Hollywood has screwed up so many adaptions that I’m always leery, but this one hit all the right cords. It was of the caliber of TSR, but that story is (or should be) a classic that will transcend time, like CATCHER IN THE RYE or TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. 1408 is what it is: the salvation of one man.

Stephen King has always written compelling characters, flawed, not always lifed, but always real. Mike Enslin writes about haunted places, but he doesn’t believe in ghosts. Until he stays in room 1408.

Fabulous hook, fabulous premise. And frankly, I wasn’t sure John Cusack could pull off the role, but he was fantastic. Much of King’s work are “one-man shows”, where there may be minor secondary characters (often catalysts for change, mentors, or tricksters) but the story is about one man’s journey. Sometimes he is redeemed. Sometimes he’s not.

1408 is scary. My daughters wanted to see it and it’s PG-13. I didn’t have a problem taking them because we often watch scary shows, they love SUPERNATURAL, etc. But my 11 year old woke up with a nightmare and couldn’t get back to sleep for awhile, and I ended up putting a nightlight in their room. So go to it with that in mind.

But if you can handle scary, see it. It’s more psychologically scary than anything else: 1408 is “an evil room,” but it’s a devilishly fabulous story.

My sister is married to a preacher. He’s a nice enough guy, pretty down to earth, and has a fairly large and growing congregation. Their faith is a mixture of Baptist and Assembly of God. In other words, as some folks around my parts would say, they’re Holy-Rollers with a governor on the engine.

Anyway, due to the steady influence of ‘church folks,’ surrounding her, Sis has a tendency to blame every occurrence in life on either the devil or God. I keep trying to remind her that when she was a teen, she was the devil, but that sorta goes in one of her ears and out the other. That being said, though, the subject came up again when I was completing my last book, MORBID CURIOSITY.

I basically went through hell writing that book. Although I had the subject down pat, the outline in prime order, the characters clearly envisioned, every time I sat down to write it, something in my life would turn upside down and pull me away from the computer. And I’m not talking little annoyances, but major, life-altering crap. Although I did finish the manuscript, it was seriously late and got lost twice by Fed Ex when I attempted to send it to my agent, which delayed it even more. I finally had to send the manuscript through email to my editor. He received it all right—along with a virus that infected his computer.

Even weirder, when I gave a copy of the manuscript to the artist who draws scenes from my books for the literacy challenge, the guy damn near didn’t do the job. The way the process works is he’ll read the book, then we discuss what scenes I’d like drawn. That always worked well, until this book He must have called me forty times while reading the manuscript to say, “Deborah, I don’t know what you tapped into here, but it’s freaking me out. I can draw a scene about ‘this’ or ‘that’, but CAN’T draw one with that ‘thing’ in it because it feels too real.”

Well, while all this is going on, my sister calls, and I relay the events to her. She, of course, spent the next hour telling me that the weird events could be God’s way of telling me to use my talents for ‘Him’ instead of ‘wasting’ it on the weird stuff I do write. As usual, I rolled my eyes, set the phone on my shoulder, and did other stuff while she blabbered on. It was my fault. I should’ve known better than to tell her about the ‘strange’ things surrounding MC. But it did get me to thinking…

What if it wasn’t the Big Guy telling me not to write this stuff, but the horn-sprouting punk who lived wayyyy down south? You see, Morbid Curiosity revolves around a set of sixteen-year-old twin girls who get involved in Chaos Magic, something they know nothing about, think is the answer to all their problems, and it damn near kills them. The story is fiction, but Chaos is very real. It’s sort of a bastard-child and off-shoot of Aleister Crowley’s ‘work.’ Thousands of teens around the country ‘practice’ Chaos and wind up either seriously injuring themselves and others or dying. I happened upon this secret world by ‘accident’, while researching something completely different. I was so blown away by the number of kids practicing it and the extreme nature of the practice, I felt ‘compelled’ to write a story about it so the ‘truth’ about its dangers could be revealed.
So that’s exactly what I did, only the story damn near didn’t get told.

Could it be ‘someone’ or ‘something’ didn’t want that truth revealed?

Regardless, the deal’s done. The story’s out, and the book hits store shelves in a week. Funny thing is as soon as it hit the point of no return, i.e finally got to the printer, finally was sold to buyers, it’s like everything surrounding the book did a three-eighty. Preorder sales for the damn thing sky-rocketed, and I’ve had more interview requests regarding this book than I had for any other book I’ve written.

Kinda makes you wonder doesn’t it? Is the stuff we write only a product of our imagination or is our imagination really a conduit for something/someone bigger?

The sad case of missing Ohio woman Jessie Davis, played out the way many of the regulars here at MSWs thought it would. Her body was found about 25 miles from her home, in a remote national park. It was in an advanced stage of decomposition, which means she was most likely killed in her home, possibly in front of her young son.

Arrested and held on a $5 million dollar bond is her boyfriend, Bobby Cutts, Jr., a police officer. Also arrested and charged with obstruction of justice is an old high school friend of Cutts’s, Myisha Ferrell.

Authorities are still holding back many of the details, but it ended like most of these cases do. The boyfriend appears to be the suspect (I’ll say allegedly), and the motive, as of yet, is unknown, but likely involved money (my guess, she wanted support for the new baby).

The baby who was found on a doorstep, about 40 miles from Davis’s home, turned out to be a coincidence. If one can call an abandoned newborn a coincidence.

And now, I am left to explore this. How can a man brutally and callously kill a woman? Even worse, how can he kill a woman knowing she is due to give birth to HIS CHILD. Any day. That baby could have survived outside the womb, which means that Cutts is also facing charges for murdering the baby, as Ohio law allows.

Even more, that WOMAN is the mother of one of his LIVING children. A child that is now motherless, and basically–if he is found guilty–parentless, all because of his actions.

Apparently, Cutts does have a record of domestic violence, although details of that are sketchy at this point.

So what do you think motivated Cutts? Why did he kill Davis? Why did he callously disregard the lives of his own children?

The other day on the news I heard that a study had been done on the relationship between alcohol consumption and cases of Rheumatoid Arthritis. The conclusion? People who consume three or more drinks a day are less likely to get RA.

Umm. Hello? If I consumed three or more drinks a day, everyday…I wouldn’t CARE that I have RA! I’d be drunk enough to not FEEL the joint pain, and of course, I’d be dealing with a pickled liver.

Seriously—who dreams up this stuff?

People who want grant money, that’s who.

Sheesh. Over the years of coming downstairs in the morning, getting my coffee and turning on the news, I have heard so many randomly stupid studies—meaning either that they were pointless or that I could have answered the question with a simple ninety-cent phone call instead of the million dollar study, that I have decided I am missing the boat.

It’s time for me to get off my ever-growing duff (and yes, they’ve done a study—women do gain weight in middle age….grrrrr….no shit, Sherlock!)

So…I’m going to apply for a grant to do my own study! It sounds like easy money, right? But of course, I must come up with a burning question that society will pay to answer. I’ve given this some serious thought:

1) How do writers waste the most time? (Duh, whining and Internet.)
2) Whose idea was it to package PMS medicines in containers that are impossible to open? (MEN.)
3) Do kids really give their parents gray hair? (Do you KNOW how much I spend to cover my gray? I have three sons! I spend A LOT!)
4) Where does the missing sock in the dryer go? (Answer: Only women know.)
5) Why do we believe our kids won’t do what we did when we were kids? (Child birth obviously causes parental brain damage)

But here’s the REAL question: What is the REAL reason a person will slave for years writing book after book? It’s hard to write a book; to take an idea, develop it and follow it through until the end is (metaphorically) back-breaking, sweat-popping, headache-inducing, sleep-destroying work. Then to keep doing it over and over, for not all that much money, and people often end up criticizing the author instead of the book. Why? What makes us keep doing it over and over and over? We could be out there with REAL jobs, making money and contributing to society. But no…we choose to spend the bulk of our time with pretend people that we talk to as if they were real.

Is that even sane?

I don’t know, but I bet I could do a study to find out!

So if you could grab some of that grant money for yourself, what would you study?

Okay, so I had this really good blog written titled Easy come Easy go, and some Tough Love. It was a strong, direct blog (okay, and a little snarky) targeting people who see a train coming, and instead of jumping off the tracks to safety they lay down and get cut in half. But, after I read it, I thought it may be a little too strong and too direct for some people. So after I polled my goils here at MSW and some other trusty goils the consensus was: “Yep, it’s strong and be prepared for fall out.”

Needless to say, I’m not in the mood right now for any battles. I’m up to my armpits in revisions. So, I’m going to acquiesce to that crappy PC monster, and write a blog about Little Bunny Foo-Foo hopping through the forest.

Okay, I lied. This is going to be a brief blog today. It’s focus? Listening to your gut. That little voice in you that screams, No don’t do it! It’s too good to be true. Or when your conscious debates the intuition by saying, “Well I know that happened to so and so, but that won’t happen to me!”

Trust me, it will happen to you.

Now I’m going to boil it down even further. If you are agent hunting and one requests a retainer as a stipulation to taking you on as a client, report them to Predators and Editors and tell everyone you know. Or if they insist on you shipping your story off to the ‘book doctor’ they recommend. Don’t. If they refuse to give you a client list? End the conversation. If they ask for more than a hundred bucks in postage and copy fees per year, keep walking. If they ask for anything in perpetuity, walk on. Make sure they have sales in YOUR GENRE. RECENT SALES. If they tie you down to anything other than a 30 day release clause. Think long and hard before you commit. If none of the above apply but your gut, your intuition, that little voice in your head is waving a big red flag? Acknowledge it, respect it, and move on.

Same applies with any publisher. Read the fine print. If you don’t have an agent, fork over the 200 or so bucks to have a literary contract attorney look over it before you sign. If it’s a start-up pub or one that has had negative whispers swirling about it, do your research. Ask for a financial. Why take their word for it they’re solvent? Is it worth losing your story? If you get resistance, if they refuse to offer legitimate information then they have something to hide. Keep walking. If one pub wanted your story another will.

As women we have a tendency to think we are not entitled to not only ask questions but get answers. That’s bullshit. Publishing is a business. And there are good and bad business people on all three ends of publishing. Publisher, agent and author. As a business, we the author, expect a certain return for our product. It all must be established up front and in writing. No, I thoughts, or they said. Get it in writing. If they won’t give it to you, what does that tell you? It tells me they have no intention of following through.

I believe it is imperative to have an agent as an author’s advocate. And not just any agent. An agent who had been in the business. A reputable one. One who understands the business and one who has contacts. Not one who decides one day out of college they want to be an agent and has no practical experience. Sorry, but I don’t want to learn as my agent does. Maybe after she’s had a few years to cure, but not out of the chute. Not with my career.

Again, in my opinion the best business sense we have is what we posses inside of us. Our gut. Don’t try and talk yourself out of what it’s telling you. Go with it, and you can’t lose.

So, if anyone is in the mood, do you have a gut story to share? Either the time you listened to it, and were damn glad you did, or the time you didn’t, and damn pissed you hadn’t.

Last weekend I spoke to the local Sisters In Crime chapter and sat between two unpublished writers. The first has been revising endlessly the same book. Over and over and over. Especially the first few chapters. The second has written seventeen complete manuscript and has yet to send one out to an agent or editor. Seventeen!

This week I’m going to talk about killing your manuscript, so it’s addressed more to the first writer. Next week I’ll talk about fear of failure and fear of success.

Right now, I’m revising KILLING FEAR, my February 08 release. This is Will Hooper’s story (Carina’s partner from SPEAK NO EVIL.) This is my process from beginning to end:

* I write the book. I edit as I go, so my book is pretty well done by the time I type THE END. I’ve been known to rewrite the beginning two or three times (for me that’s the first 100-150 pages), but I do that before I continue with the book.

* IF I have time (which I did with my novella), I’ll read the entire manuscript and line edit it, fix any problems, but mostly make every scene clearer and cut fat. I didn’t have time to do this with KILLING FEAR.

* I send my book to my editor–if you’re unpublished, I’d suggest finding a critique group or someone you trust to read your manuscript for the following: Character, Story and Pacing. They are the three most important things and without characters that grab you, a story that is intriguing, and good pacing, it’ll be a tough sell. Avoid crit groups who mess with your voice or tell you what will sell or won’t sell.

* My editor reads the manuscript and makes notes in the margin. Things like, “Abrupt transition” or “Too slow” or “I don’t understand the purpose of this scene, is it necessary?” or “Draw this scene out.” At the end of chapters she’ll write more notes like, “I still don’t have a grasp on the backstory.” In her revision letter she’ll make her general comments. For KILLING FEAR the key problem was that I didn’t make it clear early on about the murders seven years ago which are important to the current story. I drew out the story of the past, feeding the reader details about a crime that everyone involved knew about. The other problem was similar–Will and Robin had a past together, and my editor didn’t feel like the reader had a clear understand of how they got together in the first place, though their break up was spectacular I skim through all my editor comments and read the revision letter two or three times so I can internalize the problems. I also talk to my editor and she expands on her feelings about the book, the strengths and weaknesses, and that also helps immensely.

* Now, I go through the book starting at the beginning. Here I do my own edits–I tweak virtually every sentence, find better words, tighten where I can, and address my editor’s comments which are usually right on the money. I’m a linear writer–I can’t jump around. I start at page one and go straight through to page four hundred and something. If I’m hung up on something, I can’t push through it until I get that scene the way I want it.

* At this point in KILLING FEAR, I’ve only gone through three chapters and the prologue. About 35 pages. What I’ve done is expand the prologue which is now the longest I’ve written, but I think my editor was right and it was a great scene that needed more explanation. So we get to meet the main characters through the eyes of the killer during his trial. Then I cut the first six pages of chapter one and expanded on the second scene. Then chapter two is almost unchanged, just my own tweaks. Chapter three is where I got stuck. The scene was good, necessary, but the pacing was off. Ironically, my editor didn’t make any comments on it, but I knew the scene could be so much more powerful. Also, I addressed one of her overall concerns which was that my past timeline (previous murders) was confusing. Here is where I fixed that by having a task force meeting and the detective in charge (my hero) given a technical run down on the murders, the who, what, why, where, when–through photographs of the victim and the crime scene and a general explanation of the investigation. I didn’t go into everything because there are some bigger issues, but I did at least hint at one of the key problems in the investigation. That chapter took me longer to edit and fix than everything up to that point.

* Once I’m done with my revisions, I’ll send them back to my editor. Revisions can take a couple days to a couple weeks. I asked for three weeks for these because I have the time and it’s summer, which means there are a lot of family things going on and I didn’t want to promise something too fast and then be stressed.

Okay, that’s MY process. Every process is different. Sometimes it’s trial and error. Before I sold, my process was different. On my first trilogy it was different still. It wasn’t until I wrote SPEAK NO EVIL that this system clicked and seems to work for me (the novella totally screwed up my system, but that was it.) Before I sold, I would revise the book once on the computer, print it out and line edit it on hard copy, and then as I was making those changes electronically I would inevitably make more changes to the book on the computer. THE PREY I had a critique group for and edited as I went, then I re-read the whole manuscript before sending it out to agents. Then I did another round of revisions with my agent before sending it out to publishers. When it sold, I did ANOTHER round of revisions.

The thing to remember here is that no matter how well you write, you don’t see everything. Why? Because you’re too close to the manuscript.

Which brings me to killing your book.

I know several people who edit their book to death. It’s possible. I think the key problem with over-editing is that you know the story so well that you see what is not on the page. You may have had it in the original draft, but now it’s gone–and you still see it. You also get bored with the story and tired of the characters and start changing the story because of that boredom. You’ve already told the story you wanted to tell, so now you’re creating new stories and plotlines and what you end up with is a mess.

You stress over individual words. Pour over a thesaurus. Question every sentence you write.

There are three things to look for as you revise your manuscript:

1) Are your characters compelling? Sympathetic? Are you emotionally invested in what happens to them? Do you care?
2) Is your story compelling? Interesting? The conflict real and not contrived? Does the combination of the story and the characters make you want to keep turning pages?
3) Is your pacing tight? Too much exposition? Too much introspection? Too much narrative? Or just enough?

I can’t tell you HOW to do this. Some people read their manuscript in stages and will first edit for conflict, then plot holes, then description, then line edit, then a final read through. I can’t do that. I see the story as a cohesive whole, that you can’t have story without character, or description without story, or character without conflict. But everyone is unique.

What I CAN tell you is that I’ve heard too many horror stories of people who spend years editing a book, or worse the first three or four chapters. They edit and edit and edit and constantly question themselves and end up editing the life out of a manuscript. I’ve seen this in too many contests to count: an entry that is technically perfect–not a punctuation mark out of place or a dangling participle in view, but no spark. I just don’t care about the characters or what happens to them.

If you want to sell commercial fiction, you’re going to have to find a faster system. I’m not saying DON’T edit, because no one is perfect. But overediting is just as bad as underediting. You’re going to have to learn how to say good-bye and send your baby out to agents or editors. And you’re going to have to start another book.

Below are some common traits often used to portray a stereotypical, modern day Southerner:

· Drawl in their speech
· Not having a full set of teeth, and the missing ones are usually in the front.
· Being slow on the uptake, meaning they don’t quite ‘get’ things as quickly as other folks.
· Their love of country music.
· Their dress—typically anything Walmart has on sale.
· To summarize most of the above—Dumb Hick

Now although I’m from the South, I’m not a Southerner. I’m a Cajun, and we have our own public perceptions to bear and overcome. That being said, I understand why Southerners get a little rankled sometimes when they see themselves portrayed in books and movies. Although we (we being those stereotyped) know some of what we’re reading or seeing is true, it’s not true about all of us, and some of us resent the implication that it is. Because of that, writers are often told to stay away from the stereotypical traits and focus more on the person. Okay, so you can throw in a missing tooth or two, maybe even a few, “Thank Youuuuuu,s” to add flavor, but that’s it. The rest should be kept neutral. Well, that’s all fine and dandy, but what happens when all you see in a particular culture are stereotypical traits? Do you then have to ‘create’ neutral?

Here’s an example….

Last Sunday I was in Alabama when the transmission on my Pathfinder blew. Fortunately I was able to nudge the car off the Interstate before she froze up and refused to move another inch. There I was, stuck on the side of the road in a small, northern Alabama town—it was Sunday—and it was Father’s Day. Not a winning combination by any stretch of the imagination.

I called AAA, first time I’ve ever had to use them, and told the dispatcher what was going on. After asking me a dozen questions, she then tells me I’ve contacted the main dispatch center, which is in Missouri, and that she’ll have the Alabama office contact me on my cell asap. Fine.

Forty minutes later, I’m thinking our definition of asap is different so I call back, this time insisting that I’ll hold until someone from the Alabama office picks up. After huffing and puffing about it not being protocol, she finally agrees, and I’m put on hold while she contacts the other office.

Ten minutes later, a woman with a heavy Alabama accent picks up the phone, and due to drawl alone it takes her six more minutes to say, “My name is Carol Ann, with AAA in Birmingham, Alabama, how may I help you?”

Frustrated that the first woman hadn’t even bothered to give her the myriad of details I’d already relayed, I went through my story again….

“My name is Deborah LeBlanc, and my Pathfinder broke down just outside Huntsville. I’m near a convenience store right off exit—”

“Your name is Deborah what?”

“LeBlanc.” I spelled it before she asked.

“And what kind of car are you in?”

I swear to everything in the universe and beyond, I was on the phone for another forty minutes repeating the same information a million times. She was either writing with a broken ink pen or was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s.

Finally, she says she’ll have a tow truck heading my way soon. I ask how soon. She says she doesn’t know, but soon, then proceeds to give me the name of the towing company I should expect.

TWO hours later, I see a tow truck with that name plastered all over it fly past me. I wave. He doesn’t stop. Doesn’t even look my way. I see him make a U-Turn two blocks down and keep my fingers crossed. Maybe he did see me waving. . . .
Nope, he takes off down a side street that leads to the on-ramp of the Interstate.

I call AAA again. Twenty minutes later, I’m talking to the Alabama office again. I tell her about the wayward tow truck driver, and she spends another fifteen minutes telling me that she can’t understand why he didn’t stop and ain’t that about a shame. While she’s yammering, the tow truck suddenly appears again, and I all but run out into the middle of the road, arms waving, and yelling, ‘Over here!” He waves back, signaling that he sees me. All the while, the woman on the phone is still working on finishing her last sentence. Knowing I’d be stuck on the phone with her another hour if I told her he’d finally arrived, I simply hung up.

Okay, so far I know this could be tied to AAA and not be considered Alabama specific, but bear with me….

When the driver gets out of the tow truck, the first thing he does is spit out a wade of tobacco juice, then wipes his mouth with the back of a hand. His walk is slow and his talk slower, and the combination of the two means another two hours go by before the SUV is loaded on the truck.

Sitting in the passenger seat of that tow truck now, it takes me another hour to finally get the information I need to make a decision. The bottom line was nothing was open—no repair shops, no rental car companies, no dealerships. The only option I had was to have the car towed to the towing company’s yard, where it could be kept in a gated area over night. Fine.

Once we reach the yard, the driver leads me into the office so I can take care of the paperwork. Two people were in that office. A woman with a missing front tooth, wearing an “I Love Garth” t-shirt, and a guy with only four front teeth, wearing a stained “Get ‘er Done!” shirt and jeans. Both were watching a small television that was tucked just inside the front door. It takes quite some time for me to get their attention, and when I finally do, they look irritated that I’ve disrupted their viewing pleasure. In the meantime, I see the driver who brought me to this lovely establishment, now sitting at one of the desks, eating biscuits and gravy. So much for unloading my car…

I ask the toothy wonders, “Where is the nearest hotel?”

She looks at him, he looks at the TV, she looks back at me. “Don’t know.”

“Are you from here?”

She glances at the television. “Uh-huh.”

Figuring it was useless to ask how she could be from the area and NOT know if they had a hotel, I said, “Okay, what about cabs. Got any of those around here?”

Still looking at the television, she says, “Uh-huh.”

Mr. “Get ‘er Done!” suddenly guffaws and points at the television. “Did you see that?” he says without looking away from the twelve-inch screen. Evidently, I had never been a solid form in his peripheral vision.

“So there are cabs here?” I ask the woman again.

“Uh-huh.” This time she looks right at me but just stands there.

“Would you mind calling one for me?”

“Don’t know the number.” She looks over at ‘Get ‘er Done!”. “Hey, Earl, you know the number to that comp’ny’s got them yellow cabs?”

Earl frowns, but doesn’t take his eyes off the television. “Nope.”

She turns back to me and shrugs. “Earl don’t know the number neither.”

It takes me a moment to respond because I can’t believe this whole conversation is really taking place. “Maybe we could find the number for the cab service in the phone book?” I offered.

She looks at the television. “Yeah, we got a phone book. It’s back over there by Earl’s desk.”

Not knowing if she was implying that I should go get the book and look up the number myself, I ask, “Do you mind if I borrow the phone book?”

Again, I swear to all that’s in the universe and beyond that the conversation went back and forth like that seemingly forever.

I finally did get a cab—another two hours later…and, yes, the driver had a missing front tooth and talked like he was reading a primer and didn’t quite understand the words he was sounding out. We did locate a hotel, though. Days Inn circa 1958, and their ‘free’ Internet access was dial up that kept dropping the call every two minutes. So much for getting any work done.

This morning started off in much the same way. I got a phone call from the towing company at 6 A.M., asking me what repair shop I wanted my car towed to. I told them I didn’t have a clue since I wasn’t from the area. The person on the other end of the line remained silent. Every couple of seconds, I’d hear him sip on something.

“Well, can you recommend a repair shop?” I asked. Yeah, I was snippy, but damn I hadn’t even had coffee yet.

As you might suspect, that simple question got an even simpler answer. “Not really.”

And we were off to the races.

The short version of the ending is that I had to hunt up another cab, then orchestrate car to repair shop. When that was finally settled, I asked the owner if there was any chance my car would be fixed today. If not, I planned to rent a car to drive back to Louisiana.

The owner says, “Yeah, there’s a chance.”

“How good a chance?”

“We’ll probably get it done today.”

Finding that answer still too iffy, I batted it back to him a dozen different ways, trying to get a more concrete answer. It always came back the same. “There’s a chance.”

Well, shit. All I knew to do with that was wait. I figured I’d hold out until 4:30, a half hour before the rental car place closed, and if they hadn’t made progress on my car by then, I’d still have an option open.

So I waited in that repair shop ALLLLLL day. And, again, I swear to everything in the universe and beyond, that every person who walked through those shop doors was dentally challenged and had that slow, not-quite-gettin’-it drawl. I had quite the time watching and listening, jotting down notes on some brown paper towels I’d found in the bathroom.

I’m happy to say that the repair shop owner was true to his half/word, and my car was done by 5 P.M. As I drove away, though, I realized there was no way I’d ever be able to write a story using any of the characters I’d met over the last two days. If I stayed true to them, I’d get bashed for using stereotypes. In truth, I’d actually have to tone them down to make the characters believable. Now ain’t that about a shame?

What do you do when the truth is too ‘loud’ ?