Bent Highway: Chapter Fourteen

Screech

“Well, look who woke up.” Harold jammed his hands into the Levis and rocked back on a pair of black boots that would have given Uncle Lester a hard-on. “That genetic mutation hyper-thyroid man give you some memory pills or what?”

“Who are you?”

“Hey, you’re the one that recognized me, Rumpelstiltskin.”

“But who are you?”

“You’re old buddy Harold, you remember. Drinking colds ones on the porch, watching the ladies go by, shooting the shit.”

“I don’t know you.”

“Well make up your fucking mind, M. Which one is it?”

Harold walked toward me, his hands still in his pockets, which gave him an odd gait, like a drunk that went from your best buddy to a swinging lunatic in a handful of steps. I had been standing in front of the poplar tree, and I figured I had two options. Let him come to me, or turn into the field and run like hell. I kinda wished I’d pick the chicken-shit option. 

I reached down and grabbed the crooked limb that I’d been eyeing since Harold pulled up. It was only about three inches round and a few feet long, but I wanted something in my hands. Harold’s hands flew out of his pockets, metal flashed and in a blurred motion, which slowed down for a half a second, tiny knives flew out of his palms.

Time bent.

A knife stuck into the tree branch and gave that circus thrower’s sound after they had just missed the girl tied to the wheel. I was not so lucky with the other blade. The pain didn’t come right away. I watched it plunge into the leg that Walt had not cut into all those years ago. Was it years? I grasped the grip of the throwing knife, slid it out of my leg, and flung it at Harold.

“Yeah, right,” he said as it flew by him.

And he was on me. I broke the branch across his back, but I had almost no room to swing. I don’t think it would have made a difference anyway. He backhanded me hard, sent me flying. My body bounced off the gravel. Another blur of motion, another snip taken out of the moment, and a black boot drove into my stomach. I gasped, trying to swallow air back into my body, pinpricks of light flashed in my peripheral. Harold grabbed my throat and lifted me off the ground.

“Hey, don’t pass out yet. You’ll miss it all.”

His thick fingers tightened around my neck. Red speckles dotted his white shirt. I realized it was my blood not his.

“You know... the part where the bad guy, that would be me, tells all to the dying hero. Now in those shitty movies, I always hate when the fucking cavalry would show up and save his ass. I mean c’mon, Hollywood, is that all you got? Except in the 70’s, you know they knew how to make ‘em them - some good existential nothing matters kind of shit. You a movie fan, M?”

The pricks of light were gone, and Harold’s shape blurred. There was another string of words that came out of him, but it didn’t sound like any language I knew. I thought I heard another hawk screeching, long and loud. A hot wind came up and blew against my face - I was barely aware of Harold’s tightening grip. Sorry Walt, I gave it a shot.

The screech got louder. It didn’t sound like a bird anymore - it was more machine-like. 

Then I fell.

It took a long time to hit the ground.

The screech stopped. I knew the sound - something from cop shows, when Starsky, Rockford, Banacek, or whoever the hell was going after the bad guy, that’s what it sounded like - tires burning around a corner.

The pain which had drifted to the edge of my mind flooded in. I coughed, spit up blood, and the yard came into focus. There was a flash of orange, a pair of boots that tugged at a recent memory. A shotgun blast reverberated through the air, echoing long after it should.

Always wanted one of those cars.

Someone shut off all the lights and I went out.

* * *

I awoke running across the yard. She ran at me, grabbing my shirt and ripping the collar. The flames were already several feet high.

“He’s inside, you have to get him. Please. Now!” She swung me around.

“It’s too late!” I yelled. Then softer, “It’s always too late.”

The flames engulfed the mobile home. This time I didn’t even make it to the door.

Behind me, Chalk Girl screamed.

* * *

I awoke on the ground. The scream had turned into a screech, and this time I saw the hawk, swooping down, grabbing something from the ground, and soaring into the air. I though I could hear the cries of whatever small rodent the hawk had grabbed, but I may have imagined it.

The yard was empty. The sky the colour of a tie-dyed 70’s t-shirt, swirls of pink and purple, and the last fading line of yellow. The mobile home still intact. I rubbed my neck, and stared at the tire tracks. A dust cloud rose up from the road. I waited to see what would emerge. Somehow I knew it wouldn’t be the green sedan, Harold was long gone. My truck’s headlights shone through the dust. 

She pulled into the yard and I got in.

She drove back out to the highway. Neither of said anything for the first twenty miles. 

Mile twenty-one I broke the silence. “You going to take me back there again?”

She stared straight ahead.

“Some things can’t change. You must know that now,” I said.

“Everything can change. We just have to enter at the right time,” she said.

“We have to learn to live with it.”

“You and Dr. Phil can fuck the right off.”

Another twenty miles went by.

“What do you know about the Charger?” I asked.

This time she turned to look at me. “What, the car? Walt talked about it, but I didn’t follow.”

“You’ve seen Walt?”

“He was the one that told me to go back and get you. He’s kinda pissed. What about the Charger?”

“It’s hard to put it together, but I think I saw it. I certainly heard it, and they just might have saved my life.”

“If he wanted you dead, you’d be dead.”

I knew she wasn’t saying his name on purpose. 

The edges of a town lifted out of the horizon - yellow lights from scattered house, and the white and red glow of a gas station appeared. The sky was a wash of deep black, the stars shone through like slits in fabric revealing a fiery light underneath.

“What did Walt say about the guys in the muscle car?”

“Only that he had misjudged them.”

“About what?”

“You can ask him yourself in a few minutes.”

“He’s here?” I asked as we entered the town. 

“In a bar.”

“Of course he is.”

Promo redux - How it went.

Off the top I have to admit my fondness for the word redux - I dunno, it's just so European or something.

Now, if you popped by the blog, or follow me on twitter (or even live near me, or work with me, or... you get the picture) you know I had Correction Line on its final promo event this weekend. I say final because the promotion achieved what I want - to gain some more readers for the book. Some sales have been trickling in, a definite bump, but nothing majorly substantial. Still, I am very pleased with how things went - and therefore, I don't feel the need to put the book up for free again.

Damn, I sound like an English Gran there - you know, it was all quite pleasant.

In actuality - It was fucking awesome!

Whew - good to get the true emotion out on the blog there.

I did a lot of legwork for this promo. Lest you think I pounded actual pavement like a good gumshoe - no, I just spent a lot of time on the internet. I have been gathering articles from people that have had successful promotions - just to see what they did. Twitter and facebook do play a significant part, as do being a part of a community like Goodreads. But, it seemed, that the overall success had to do with where the book got listed and promoted.

Some sites want to know about a promotion well in advance - Pixel of Ink wanted at least a month, others wanted a few weeks, some a few days - and then there were a few sites that would only promote the work if you contacted them the day the free day began.

Now, last time I hit 800 downloads in 24 hours. And I was delighted by this. So this time, obviously, I wanted more or I would be horribly depressed. (Hey, piss off, I am a writer! We're fickle and grumpy by nature). Last time I felt the downloads were mostly from social media, and some great retweets by known authors, or places with lots of followers, like Scrivener App. Add to that it was a new book, with (I think) a pretty decent cover and description, and bam, I went to 800. Oh, I should add the site snickslist was also a contributor to the success - downloads went up, as more people visited the snicklist site (which has a views counter next to the ad).

So this time, I extended the reach. I contacted about a dozen promotion sites - doesn't matter which ones, just google and you will find tons. Notably I sent info to Pixel of Ink, almost 30 days in advance. Note the almost. (They didn't list).

And e-reader news today got the info about 2 weeks ahead of time.

On Friday (the first day) sales started to pour in, but they seemed slower. I contacted snickslist again, and a couple more "day ofs". Tweeted some more (but not in a desperate way - no... really). But by the end of the day I was only at about 400. Half of what I had done on the first promo. Now, weird algorithm driven Amazon, still placed me in the top 25 by end of day for suspense, and I think the top 30 for literary. Never can figure out that pattern.

By mid-Saturday, I felt like the promo was a bust. Yes, I am that fickle. I had about 500 downloads by 4:00 in the afternoon. The promo ended at midnight PST on Saturday.

I tried to figure out what went wrong - I had put way more work into this promo. Searching through the internet I saw that the promo was not being mentioned, and in fact was not even on the sites that I had sent info to (it was on some of them, about half). Notably Pixel of Ink was a no show - ditto the e-reader news. 

I decided to lick my wounds by going to the lumber store with my wife. Hey, whatever works. While I was looking for some obscure screw for my bathroom, I checked the count. WTF? I jumped from 500 to 780 on the drive over. I went back to the hardware section, searched again on my iphone, and saw the count jump to 900. This was in minutes. My wife had wandered over to the seasonal displays (really, do we need more Xmas decorations? - we have more than the Vatican. I digress.)

I said to her, something is going on. She thought maybe in the grout aisle - but I said, no, with the book.

I didn't want to troll through the sites on my iphone to see what had happened. So, we just bought our stuff and went home. I thought to myself, somebody or some site posted it somewhere, and I figured it had to be one of the two big ones.

Sure enough (don't you sound southern when you use that expression?), e-reader news daily had put it up as one of their 5 book picks. I couldn't believe how one site had that much of an impact. But I guess, people know where to go for their free books. The downloads continued to soar. Interestingly, I didn't go up in the charts that much. Again, go figure the Amazon algorithm. And if you do, please send me a note.

By end of day - 2600 downloads. Most in North America, but a handful in the UK and Germany. 

Wow.

Yeah, fucking awesome. Like I said.

Now, if this was earlier this year, before Amazon changed how they count free downloads in their rankings, I think the impact would have been much greater. But still, I gained over 2000, hell, almost 3000, readers. Nothing to sneeze at. As well, sales after the prome have increased. Though, I do always wonder if some poor shmo hit the download button and thought it was free, and that's why they end up buying it. But even at this writing, the sales bump continues. Hey, I am not looking for that summer home in Provence just yet - but it is still nice to think that people actually want to drop the six buck (actually, 5.99 for you bargain shoppers!) on my book.

So the lesson of the day - get onto those big sites, and get on there early. Oh, and you should try to have a good cover. Oh, and better yet, write a good book. I think that's best.

Thanks to all that picked up Correction Line. I really look forward to ALL of the feedback/reviews. And, I do mean all.

Cheers.

Bent Highway: Chapter Thirteen

Fire-Water

I didn’t know what day it was, nor the time, or even month - for damn sure, not the year. The heat had been building since I was dropped off in front of the mobile home. Dropped off, right - more like kicked out on my ass. It had to be summer, but I couldn’t tell if it was just starting or ending. A wave of black birds swooped and crested into a boomerang shape, shifted into long line, and then dissipated across the wide expanse. I pictured her at the wheel of the truck. Waiting.

I’d sat here before, I knew that, though I couldn’t remember when. She knew I remembered, I saw it in her face before she drove away. Gaps in my memory filled in, my time in the white room had helped. Walt had been trying to show me what I’d forgotten.

I looked at the mobile home. I saw where the flames would bust out of the windows. A hawk soared high above, screeched, moved in for the kill. 

A sense of time filled me - I now understood that I’d been on the highway much longer than I thought. That day when I left the hardware store, the crappy little town, and the one who I thought was my friend, was a long time ago. I didn’t even want to think about how long. 

Again, I saw her white face in the truck. Waiting. Hoping that somehow something would change this time. She must have brought me back farther and farther each time – when she finally understood that being there when the fire had already started didn’t work. It wasn’t from lack of trying. I clenched both hands, feeling the heat of the metal door as I pulled it open, shirt up to my mouth and ducking low. It was no use, I was too late. Her screams, a long keening wail, filled the walls of my mind, and I shook my head to let them go.

How old am I?

Visiting myself – I don’t think I’d done that before. Maybe that’s why Walt picked me up all those years ago. He knew my memories were distant by choice. I didn’t think a lot about my growing up. He must have guessed that I would be hard to break into.

I travelled farther back into my memory, doorways that were closed opened up to me. That’s how I'd remembered it was Walt I’d met first, not the girl with blood stained lips.

“You need a ride?”

“What do you think?”

“Get in.”

“What about the dog?”

“You got a problem with animals?”

“Nope, just wondering.”

Even when I see myself on the side of the highway hitching, and then getting into the car with Walt and the wolf-dog, I question if that was the first time we met. For now, I had to believe it was – to contemplate further would strain my mind, possibly to the point of breaking.

In the car, Walt started to talk to me about how time was like a highway. There were straightaways, bends, exits, and parts that just seem to disappear into the horizon. I thought it was all pretty damn trippy. I didn’t care if the giant-like driver wanted to spout off about his weird view of the universe. I just wanted the ride.

“Where did you say you were headed?”

“Anywhere.”

“That seems a bit pointless.”

“Yeah, well it’s a pattern with me.”

That first drive with Walt lasted a long time, days turned into several months, maybe longer. We stopped in small towns, usually avoided the cities, ate in diners that started to look the same, in motels that were so alike that they could have been the same place, it was all the same, all of it. 

Then we hit a rip.

More like, Walt drove us right into one. I blacked out and came to in a bar, with an empty shotglass in front of me and a coffee can full of cigarette butts. Now, it wasn’t the first time this had happened - the difference here being the dirt floor, the long oak bar, the swinging doors - and oh yeah, the horses outside. There was a time in my life when I dropped acid, and I considered this was one of the longest, and oddest trips of my life. Walt pulled up a chair next to me. He wore a huge black Stetson, making him look even more like a giant, a cowboy giant.

“Now do you see what I mean?”

“Am I dreaming?”

“What do you think?”

A sharply dressed man with a bowtie came and refilled my shot glass with a dark liquid. He put down another for Walt and poured.

“Two bits.”

Walt flipped him a coin.

“I don’t usually go this far back, but I needed to know he wouldn’t follow.”

I sipped at the edge of my drink. It wasn’t quite as good as gasoline.

“Someone is following you?”

“Is this making sense?”

“As much as any of my life does. Or has.”

“Drink up.”

He slid his shotglass in front of me. I spent the next hour or so getting plastered. Damned if I didn’t start actually liking the fire-water. Walt kept talking. At one point, the dog wandered into the bar. Nobody said anything. Walt talked about needing my help. He had been trying to maintain some sort of control, but this other guy, the one he said was following him, kept pushing.

“So what’s this other guy want?” I slurred.

“Nothing but complete and utter chaos.”

“Sounds like my kinda guy.”

“Trust me. He is not.”

The look on Walt’s face told me things had just moved from serious into deadly, worth your life, serious.

“I need to tell you - you are going to forget a lot over the next while. You’ll forget this place, how we got here, you’ll forget the last few months, and you’ll forget me.”

“Well, I'm probably gonna have one mother of a hangover – but you’re kinda hard guy to forget.” The room started a slow spin under my feet.

“You are going to need to straddle a line. To be in different places, at the same time. I know he’ll find you, but if you keep moving you’ll be okay. I have someone that can help you.”

“Is she cute?”

Walt gave a rare smile. “How do you know it’s a she?”

“Sounds like I will—”

I stopped in mid sentence – too much in shock to scream out – and stared at the blade stuck deep into my leg. Walt released his grip on the handle.

“Night.”

 * * *

Under the poplar, I rubbed my leg where the knife had gone in. It wasn’t bleeding now, but I knew it would be again soon.

The long green nose of a sedan emerged from a dust cloud on the road. A line of blood appeared on my leg. Tires crunched and stones hit the metal underbelly, and everything got louder and louder. A cloud of blue followed the car, reminding of those first shot glasses Walt poured for me. The Pontiac pulled up beside the mobile home and shut off the engine. It backfired and chugged to a stop.

The guy who stepped out was a lot thinner than I remembered. He had a five o’clock shadow, a bolo tie over a crisp white shirt tucked into a pair of skinny black Levi’s. His body was divided into white and black. Somehow that made sense. His skin had also cleared up. If not for the goofy grin he gave while walking toward me, I might have mistaken him for someone else. But I knew it was him. I’d been waiting.

“Do I know you?”

“Yeah. I think you do. Harold.”

Correction Line - redux

I have decided to put my novel Correction Line up for a free promotion again - well, actually I decided this about a month ago.

It is still part of the KDP select plan, so I thought I'd do it one last time. I wrote about what happened last time (How did that free thing go), and honestly, I have no idea how this one will go. I've learned in the last few months a lot about Amazon, notably its pesky algorithms (and how they have changed). But ultimately, I am simply looking to introduce more readers to the work. If you have been following along with Bent Highway, you will see some similarities in Correction Line - though, no time travel. And quite a different sort of road.

Correction Line has attracted some very interesting reviews since its release in July. I think a writer often waits to hear in the reviews not just if the reader like it, but who they thought it sounded like. I am always curious to see if my influences, without being named, show up in the reader's minds. As an illustrator I know that style does not come out of nothing - sorry for the double negative - maybe better to quote Picasso about art. "Amateurs borrow, Professionals steal." I am never sure if he actually said that, but he should have.

Various reviews of the book have mentioned Marquez (yep, most definitely an influence) and Elmore Leonard (again, yep. Though I haven't read a lot of his work.) then James Lee Burke shows up, which is an influence after the fact. Correction Line was almost finished (for the first time) long before I got into Burke, notably Black Cherry Blues. Clive Barker is mentioned, though I have never read a book of his, and Philip K. Dick - who I loved as a teen, but mostly grew out of by the time I began to write. That being said, I can certainly feel Dick's influence in Bent Highway.

If you read the blog, you know how I feel about Richard Ford, and for me, he is one of the strongest influences on my writing - though, maybe only I see that. There are even certain scenes in the book when I am channelling some Don DeLillo, another of my all-time favorites.

Cross-genre much?

Yes.

I think this range of styles, okay, stew-pot full of style creates an interesting literary soup (or as one reviews said, a literary smorg.) This can be off-putting for the reader, I accept that. It was off-putting for some of the Big 6 Publishers that read it. "Is this a literary, mystery, or slipstream book?"

Yes.

They say you should write the kind of book you like to read. And I did. It may be why I love the movies of Quentin Tarantino so much - he crammed everything he loved about the movies into Pulp Fiction. 

And this post would be remiss if I didn't mention Joe R. Lansdale. I also came to his work after the first draft of Correction Line was finished. This was a quite a few years ago. And yes, I have been working on this book a long time. Someone was reading some of my work and said, hey, you kinda write like Lansdale. Um... Who?

Many books later, I discovered who. And I saw the resemblance - even in two of my characters having some similarities with Hap and Leonard, though only a glancing one. Now Joe writes about East Texas, and my fiction happens in a much colder and flatter locale - the Canadian Prairies. Though, it could be anywhere. If you haven't read any Lansdale, I suggest you start with Hap and Leonard (Rumble Tumble or Two-Bear Mambo are wonderful), and make your way to The Bottoms, still my favorite. Along the way there are other gems like Sunset and Sawdust and Lost Echoes. Just go and get one. You'll see what I mean.

I have written a lot of stories, and one other full length novel since Correction Line. I believe the style is being honed, and becoming more its own. Not to say that Correction Line isn't unique.

As Kay Sexton said in her review,

"...Craig Terlson’s Correction Line fell neatly into the basket of uncatogorisable but good fiction: it’s inclined to the noir end of the spectrum but balances its deadpan violence and lowlife characters with a skewed surrealist palette of unlikely but linked events, and unlovely but compelling individuals."

Kay goes onto say,

"It’s road trip meets flashback, with a touch of paranoid conspiracy and more than a touch of dark dystopian fantasy."

Hmmm, maybe more Philip K. than I thought.

It can be a challenging book - I know that. And like any book, it is not for everyone. But I sure had a helluva lot of fun writing it over the years. And I have had Roy, Lucy, Lawrence, Curtis and Dave in my head for at least a decade. I'd love to put them in your head.

This weekend (Friday, Oct. 12, and Sat. Oct. 13) Correction Line is free at Amazon.

I hope you pick it up. 

(A bonus this time: I fixed a lot of the pesky indentation problems from the first edition)

Last word to Kay,

"Sometimes brutal, often demanding and always complex, this novel will repay the reader who likes their assumptions challenged and is happy to walk away from a book with minor questions unanswered but the big ones definitely dealt with! It’s likely to satisfy those who enjoy Hammet and/or Philip K Dick and who like their fiction very noir indeed."

Kay Sexton's Full Review

Joe R. Lansdale Site

Responding to reviews - the kids behind the fence

I have been thinking a lot about reviews lately. Well, check that, I always think about reviews - probably too much. And I am guessing that writers who do not think about them are either:

1. Much more nobler (and mature) than I.

Or 2. Lying.

Now with the advent of this new fangled thing called the internet, writers have the opportunity to connect directly with their readers. Sure, they had it before if they were the types who went on book tour, and signed books and gladhanded their fans - or one of those writers that stands at an empty table hoping to catch your eye. The longing look of an author at a vacant table in a bookstore can only be matched by the expression on my dog's face when he realizes I am eating a cheese sandwich... and I will not be sharing.

In short - it's damn sad.

But if you are one of the writers lucky enough to be on tour, and to have actual readers, then sure you can connect with them. Ditto on the fan mail - I am talking old school here, lick the stamp, pony express, telegraph style. Even if some reader sent a nasty letter -

Dear Mr. Twain, regarding your writing of the young rapscallions, Thomas Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, I want to put forth an opposing opinion regarding their...zzzzzzzz

Sorry, I dozed off writing that. But the digression is to say, the distant contact is tempered by, well... distance.

Enter that new contraption referred to early, the interweb - and zap! You hate someone's work, tell them quicker than instant porridge and twice as goopy. Hey, don't just tell them, tell Amazon, or Goodreads, or post a nasty blog, or ugly tweet, or pull a face on fbook. (okay, I am stretching here).

Now, there is a different kind of distance here. It reminds me of growing up in a small town. I used to ride by a group of kids that were behind this big wire fence - in my memory it was 8 feet high (in truth, probably a lot shorter). They would shout insults at me behind the barrier. 

"Hey, nice bike LOSER!"

"Hey, who buys your shoes, Your mommy? LOSER!"

"Hey, LOSER!"

(there was a pattern)

I could have rode the long way around and got in behind the fence, but then what? They were smaller than me, and I guess I could have done some damage. But more likely they would run away, or try to gang up, or some sort of ugly scene would ensue. So I just kept riding.

When writers stop to try and engage their (bad) reviewers, there is the strong possibility that the same thing will happen: an ugly scene.

I got thinking about this because of a couple blog posts - 

Think Before You Answer Your Critics

 - an article on what not to do. And the crap that ensues when you do it anway.

And this one by John Warner (referenced in the other article). This is Not a George Plimpton Interview

 - a fascinating exchange between writer and reviewer.

Lastly, I was lucky enough to receive a review for Correction Line that I really wanted to respond to. Kay Sexton, a writer from the UK, wrote about my novel in a way that brought insight into the work that I had never read before. She explained the book better than I ever could. Correction Line has always been a difficult book to describe, one of its downfalls, actually.

I will blog about this another time, but for now, here is that review at her blog:

Writing Neuroses... mine our rare, yours may be legion.

I need to do the long ride around the fence and thank Kay. So I think I will.