I am always thinking of the next best story….but that thinking distracts me from the actual story I’m working on at that time….

I so often will get from anywhere three to eight pages into a story I’m working only to find myself having to put it down  (temporarily mind you)  to start on whole new idea.  I JUST have to start on it or else it will just leave my brain never to return…I have get into the idea for a few pages…I just have to…or else I’ll lose it…I just know it.

In the past few months,  I have been working on three stories and my novel…I love all four stories equally in their own way.

Needless to say ALL four have been suffering from lack of real attention….One of my characters has been sitting in  a deep dark hole and is bruised and battered  and very afraid and desperate to get out of his predicament (he doesn’t know how much trouble he’s really in…..he he)  Oh just you wait my dear friend .  He’s been lying there for a weeks waiting for his story to go forward.

I have a cast of characters in one story in various stages of their life waiting to accomplish deeds of heroism or not so  very not heroic acts…one guy has killed his wife…the other is a prisoner by small demons …and another is about to do something awful to himself at school and all their worlds are destined to collide….sounds interesting huh…I bet you wish you could read this one…me to… They’ve been in stasis for a few weeks as well.

I’ve got these other two characters and they’ve been moving….(in molasses but they have been moving,  and the story is oh so close to be finished..I can’t wait to show to you it on here….but I think they all are  really starting to hate me…I mean if I were them I would …..I’ve trapped them in limbo…I’ve got to get them out….I can hear them calling to me in my sleep when I dream..

Have you felt ever felt that way about your characters for not finishing their story fast enough? (or not at all!)

Well  I am regaining focus and I am going to finish all those damn stories by hook or  by crook (I’ve always loved that phrase)

Also here and below  is a small opener to my very first full length Novel entitled tentatively “The Thing Under the Bridge” that I plan on finishing by – cross your fingers –  the end of January 2013. It will be a Young Adult Category Novel in the Urban Fantasy Genre

Excerpt from “The Thing Under the Bridge”  Working Title –

I have always believed in magic. I don’t care what you say. You can doubt all you want. There is a hidden world which we cannot see sitting right in front of our faces, most everyone is too busy, too
blind, or too stupid to see it. I see it in the trees as the ethereal distance winds kiss the leaves as it flies through their branches. I spy it dancing in the fire amidst the embers at night; like little tiny sprites hopping from log to log amidst the flames playing a game of tag. I smell it in a wild rose in a crowded field of jostling weeds flinging its pheromones to attract the butterflies to alight on its silken petals. I hear it in the babbling brook as the water plays upon the rocks behind my home whispering to the frogs as it travels on downriver. I feel it in the rough stone I caress in the palm of my hand; an ancient power from ages past unearthed from the deep bowels of the earth from the crumbs of a mighty stone titan long dead. It is everywhere if you would only choose to see. The
magic speaks to me because I choose to listen and I almost understand what it
is saying…

Chapter 1 – Reality Sets In

I tasted the blood that trickled down to my upper lip from my nose. It had a sweet metallic taste. I liked the taste of my blood. I am not a weird person don’t get me wrong, I’m not into to that kind of stuff.  I just like to sometimes pretend that I’m Conan the Barbarian and I’m backed up against the wall and that I’m fighting an angry horde of ghoulish creatures hell-bent on gutting me like a fish and eating my entrails as I watch. I have my sword hacking and slashing and limbs are flying and I’m scratched all to hell and I’m bleeding from a dozen different wounds and I’m smiling insanely because this could be my last day alive so why not go out smiling like a true warrior would upon meeting his death well met in battle. Yeah, I like to have my mind go to places like that when I would be rather be anywhere than where I am right now.

“Hold him down dammit he’s a squirmer! Fucking idiot, you see what he did to Carlos? He’s crazy man!” Carlos had it coming, I told myself as I lay on the ground struggling under two other boys who each probably outweighed me by a hundred pounds.  They wouldn’t have caught me if one of the bystanders hadn’t tripped me while I was trying to get away. Trying to get away, that’s all I ever do, until now.

I am not a violent person but I will admit it felt pretty good to see the plastic lunch tray connect solidly against the side of Carlos’s head and watch him go down in a daze, not to mention the stunned looks of his buddies who were now holding me down who put him up to flipping my lunch tray to the ground as I had walked by. It was classic man, just classic.

“What the hell are you smiling about you sick bastard. I am so gonna you end, just wait. I always knew you were a weird little fucker. That’s why you don’t have any friends.”

Aah, Jake the jerk off, as I like to call him, a man, or boy better yet, of not many words. I guess his Dad couldn’t buy him vocabulary to stuff inside that brain of his. I’m thinking his Dads more the type that likely bought’em a good weight set and a big box of protein bars cuz he was crushing the hell out of my left shoulder with his knees as I lay there on the ground.

“Get the fuck off me!” I yelled at them while my face was being pressed firmly into the dirt. I might as well been yelling at the moon for all the good it did.  I was a punching bag to them. A distraction out of their boring day of the life they called school. I provided a service to them I guess. They needed a reason to feel special while they were here.  Everyone wants to feel special.

“Hey watch this Neil.” Jake said to the other kid that was holding me. It was amazing but Neil was actually more stupid than Jake was. I’m thinking the Smithsonian would have been really pleased to know a Neanderthal was still walking the earth. Neil had a prominent forehead, squashed face which held a dull look and knuckles that dragged the ground as he walked almost upright. He would have look great stuffed and mounted. It was a wonder he could tie his own shoes.  Oh wait, was that Velcro for laces instead? I had a pretty good view at his feet at this particular time so I had a moment to check them out.

“Whut?” Said Neil responding dumbly to him bent over next to my ear. Then I heard it, the long drawing in sound of phlegm back into the throat.

It landed with a splat on the top of my forehead and traveled like a river down into my right eye blinding me and causing me to lose it entirely. I thrashed and heaved and went into what I like to call my insane berserker barbarian rage. This had little effect but it did cause Jake to fall off from kneeling on my back which eased some of the pain I was feeling. I’ll take what I can get.

I realized in that instance, that the audiences that come to fighting events come to watch entirely for selfish reasons.  It is not to support the fighter; they want something out of it for all the money they plunked down. Apparently being stuck at school was the payment enough for all the other students just standing around watching my shame to unfold. They wanted to be entertained by my pain in some sick way, like the involuntary morbid thrill you get in watching a horror movie unfold knowing you feel bad for the victim, but not really because but what can you do?  They convinced themselves they are just a spectator to it all, that they are allowed to be insulated from it, please don’t ask for me to lend a hand they say, your crazy. I was just another pathetic soap opera to be talked about between their friends and family, to be kept at a distance and to not bog their day down. Their hand was on the dimmer switch that controlled the light of my life into theirs and they could choose to let in however much they thought they could take. Right now all those hands on all those switches were set to full off. I think I hated them more in that instance than the ones who picked on me on a daily basis.

“Break it up! Break it up!”  A loud high screeching of a woman’s voice cut through the chaos that was my crazed mind and through the crowd of onlookers as well. Mrs. Kitchen, a teacher and woman of enormous proportions waddled over her way through the ring of kids surrounding us to see what had caught everyone’s attention. I heard her gasp out aloud so theatrically when she came upon the scene that I almost laughed out loud.

Jake and Neil quickly let me go to show her they weren’t just trying to shove my head into the dirt and make me eat it.  I saw the crowd starting to disperse around me, the bloodshed was over; be about your way miscreants.

I slowly got up from the ground and wiped the spit and grass clippings from my face with the sleeve of my shirt.

“Would someone like to tell me what’s going on? I found Carlos back there picking himself off the ground and now I find Calvin doing pretty the same thing over here. What’s going on?” Her voice went to a higher octave on the shrill level factor if that was possible and she put her hands on her very wide hips, tapping her foot impatiently expecting an answer. Yep, she was your typical stereotype, they do exist.

“He hit Carlos for no reason.” Neil said pointing at me like he was fingering me like some criminal in a line up.  Neil just kept quiet.

“Is this true Calvin?”  She asked.

“Yes and no,” I said, “Yes, I hit him, but I wouldn’t say it was for no reason. He had it coming, they like to provoke me.” I said and be damned with the consequences I was done caring anymore.

“Let’s see what Mr. Granderson has to say about all this. Let’s go.” She marched us into the schools office area where we sat and waited while all the parents were called.

More to come…