An Excerpt from my Finished and (Theoretically) Polished Novel

I'm not a huge fan of just slapping down a selection from the middle of a completed manuscript (this is from pages 313-318, in fact), but this is one of the main characters telling a story to another character. It is a very personal piece to me, and as such, it's hard for me to be objective. Please let me know what you think.

And while I'm in such a grateful mood, I'd like to thank everyone who reads and comments here. I'm very self-conscious in terms of sharing my writing, and I feel like I've finally found a place where constructive criticism reigns.

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On Wednesdays and Saturdays, Josh would drive to Boston with the distributor from Maine. His name was Dean, and he was originally from L.A. He took great pride in this, referring to “Cali” as often as possible. I often wonder how he managed to avoid detection as long as he did; Emerson is close enough to Massachusetts where he wouldn’t have been a complete freakshow, but he must have stuck out like a sore thumb in his small town in northern Maine. Dean was around Josh’s age, but there was a sensation to him that was like fingernails on metal. Fingernails on a chalkboard are annoying, but fingernails on metal … that’s frightening. Dean scared the crap out of me.

Every Tuesday and Friday nights, Dean would come down and spend the night on the living room couch. He and Josh would leave around the same time I left for the bus stop in the morning, always in Josh’s car, always with Josh driving. Josh had a police record, yeah, but there was humanity in his eyes where Dean’s were like black pits. If a cop pulled Dean over, he would likely get bad vibes and search the car. Josh always drove.

Because Dean gave me the creeps, I made myself scarce the nights he stayed. To give Josh credit, I don’t think he liked Dean any more than I did, but something had changed in my brother. He’d once been a ragtag kid dealing weed, small potatoes in the great scheme of things. He drank Pabst, wore his hair in dreadlocks, and slummed around in jeans, thermal tops under tie-dyed t-shirts, and sneakers. It was Dean who got Josh’s foot in the door, so to speak. After Dean came into the picture, Josh got a haircut and started wearing outfits that cost more than his entire weekly paycheck from Dunkin’ Donuts. With Dean came the Volkswagen Jetta and the spacious apartment. The exchange, of course, was Josh’s ability to transport huge quantities of drugs across state lines without getting caught. In his Gap ensembles and college-boy car, Josh looked perfectly innocuous. Dean was a biweekly irritation that Josh had to put up with to reap the benefits of the life he’d chosen.

One July night when I was thirteen, the door to my bedroom opened, awakening me. I didn’t think too much of it at first; although we never spoke of it, there were a lot of nights that Josh came into my room and crashed on the floor. I didn’t mention the tears I heard him cry on those nights, and he didn’t mention the vomit I cleaned off the floor the following mornings. The fact that the dribs and drabs of Josh’s nocturnal visits were now Glenlivet instead of cheap beer didn’t change their frequency, nor did it lessen the ferocity of the secret tears that he could only seem to cry near me.

When my single sheet was yanked away, I opened my mouth to cry out, but a hand mashed down over my lips and Dean’s voice said, “If you make a sound, I’ll kill you.”

Rape is just a word. It’s defined in the dictionary as The unlawful compelling of a woman through physical force or duress to have sexual intercourse and by Atticus Finch in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird as Carnal knowledge of a female without her consent. Boiling it down to that one word, that tiny little four-letter verb, cheapens what happened, almost makes light of it, takes away the physical agony, the emotional trauma, the ultimate horror of the situation.

But there it is. I was raped.

When he stood up after it was over, I saw blood that I knew was mine matting dark hair that he quickly pulled briefs over. I felt blood sticky on my thighs, and I felt a far more sinister wetness between my legs. The metallic taste and rush of saliva that precedes vomiting rose in my mouth, and I tried to stand but he pushed me back onto the bed. My stomach lurched and I dry-heaved, but nothing would come up, and he sat watching, laughing as I finally succeeded in regurgitating bile onto the front of the nightgown that he hadn’t bothered to remove.

“If you ever tell, I’ll kill you,” he said in a low voice. “You and your brother both.” He looked at me for a long time. “I’ll always own a part of you.” Then he left.

I didn’t move all night. I could smell vomit and blood and sweat and pain and fear. I didn’t get up, even to go to the bathroom, until I heard the front door close. I stumbled to the window and watched the black Jetta move down the street, Dean in the passenger seat. Alone, I stood in the shower until it ran cold, washing every inch of my body, reducing an almost-new bar of soap down to a little nub.

I was bleeding, so I stuck a maxi pad in my underwear and tried to tell myself that it was just my period. I threw away the nightgown that I’d worn the night before and the sheets that were on my bed. I took an aspirin because it hurt terribly to walk. I wanted to sit on the couch and watch television and not think about anything, but of course the couch was where Dean had slept. I flipped the cushions over and sprayed the entire couch with Formula 409, not caring if it ruined the fabric. Twice I picked up the telephone to call the police, and twice I returned it to its cradle. Before I told the police, I needed to tell Josh. I didn’t care what Dean had threatened, I honestly believed that Josh would be so angry that he would literally kill Dean.

I hid in my room when they returned that evening. I’d managed to take a small nap, but every sound seemed to be the bedroom door opening again. I listened to their small talk, held my breath when Dean walked by my bedroom to get to the bathroom, then let it out in relief when he passed by without making his presence known in a more forthcoming way. When the sky was completely dark, they walked outside to quickly and efficiently carry in boxes, divide them, then carry Dean’s share out to his clichéd dusty Maine pickup truck, where they fit neatly behind the seat.

When Dean had been gone for over an hour, I finally ventured downstairs. Josh was on the couch in front of the television set, a bottle of Sam Adams in his hand. “Hey,” he said, muting the TV with the remote control. “Where you been?”

“Josh,” I said. “Dean raped me last night.”

His hand tightened around the bottle, but otherwise he showed no emotion. He said nothing.

“Did you hear what I said?” I asked.

He nodded slightly and turned the sound back on.

“Josh!”

He turned the television off completely and snapped his head around. “There’s not a goddamn thing I can do about it, Susy, okay?”

I sat down, stunned. “I thought … the police …”

He laughed bitterly. “The police? And you’re supposed to be so smart.”

Five minutes passed. I watched the minute hand circle the clock on the wall. I said nothing. Josh said nothing. We didn’t look at each other.

“So that’s it, then,” I finally said.

“Yeah,” he replied shortly, standing up and heading toward his bedroom. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

Josh wouldn’t go to the police because it would be the same as announcing, “Hey, guys, I’m a drug dealer.” Money and power were more important to him than me. I considered running away, but there was really nowhere to go. I finally came up with three courses of action that I followed grimly until my brother and several of his associates, including Dean, were busted and tried and sentenced to jail terms that basically took away their lives.

First, I went to the hardware store and bought a top-of-the-line deadbolt. The old man working behind the counter showed me how to install it. He was very friendly and made silly jokes about my little sister reading my diary. I didn’t bother to correct him, but I did thank him profusely for his assistance. If it wasn’t a deterrent, it was a message, to Josh as well as to Dean: you come into my space again, I’m calling the police.

One of the good things about Emerson is that there’s a pretty good public bus system, mostly because of the town’s proximity to the university in Durham. That made my next stop that much easier, especially since the clinic was less than a quarter mile from where the bus dropped me off; walking was still pretty painful. A nurse gave me a gown to change into, and soon enough a doctor, thankfully female, came in. I stared at the wall the entire time that she looked and poked and swabbed. She informed me that the swabs were for the purpose of testing for the presence of any STDs. She gave me a prescription for a powerful antibiotic, just in case, then sent me to the lab to get blood drawn for an HIV test. She told me to make sure I set up an appointment in three months for a repeat HIV test, again just in case. She asked about my last menstruation, but what thirteen-year-old keeps track of that? She did tell me to return for a pregnancy test if I wasn’t menstruating in a month. I refused their repeated requests that I speak with a rape counselor. I made the three-month lab appointment on the way out. My period started the next week, and all of the tests came back negative, including the three-month HIV test. That was that.

And that was really my third course of action. I’d been raped. That was that. I hadn’t suffered any permanent physical damage, I hadn’t contracted any diseases, and I wasn’t pregnant.

That was that.

The Five Best Books I've Ever Read

I realize that this is a very subjective list, and I'd be lying if I said that my list doesn't move around a bit. Or that there aren't some serious exceptions (putting Stephen King's entire body of work into one spot, for example) that might be playing it fair exactly.

But here they are, with brief explanations ... and in no particular order (since, again, it changes so much).

1. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Perhaps I just hold it a bit dear because I'm an insufferable tomboy and my father is a lawyer that tried in his way to stand up to some pretty horrific things, but there's no doubt that this is one of the most powerful books ever written. Plus, it managed to (briefly!) make me want to go to Alabama, just to see what it was like. Then there's the added bonus of Lee's portrayal of Truman Capote as a boy (embodied, if you didn't know, by Dill Harris). Makes me laugh, makes me cry, and I've read it over two hundred times.

2. The Dark Tower by Stephen King
When I get my Ph.D., it will focus on Stephen King--I'm a freaking aficionado like very few people are. With that established, I'm going to sneak in that not only are there seven books in the DT series, my argument is that every single book, short story, and laundry list King ever wrote falls under the DT umbrella.

3. The Godfather by Mario Puzo
It's very rare for a book about people who go around killing each other in a family feud that is of Montague/Capulet proportions to allow you to actually care about the characters. When Sonny Corleone was brutally shot down by a hundred bullets after being set up by his brother-in-law, I cried ... even though I'm aware of the death and destruction Sonny rained down on countless others. Puzo's masterpiece also gives secondary characters a far richer role than most authors afford them. It makes a difference. A huge difference.

4. The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough
I've never been a fan of the "they all lived happily ever after" brand of love story. I mean, that's just not the way real life goes. McCullough's Meggie Cleary and Ralph de Bricassart love each other with more passion and feeling than any sappy hero and heroine from the supermarket bodice-rippers, yet their love is forbidden in many and varied ways. That their love endures (well, kind of) despite these obstacles makes it seem real ... and all the more heart-wrenching for that. It's also a very interesting statement on the role humans play in their own destiny, on whether we have a choice at all, and whether we can walk away from that which seems to be eternally waiting for us.

5. The Cider House Rules by John Irving
This was a tough one, considering that I adore many of Irving's books (notably Garp, Owen Meany, and Hotel New Hampshire), but I really liked the way Irving was able to take a polarizing issue like abortion and present both sides in a rational yet sympathetic manner. I don't think anybody going in supporting choice changed their mind, nor do I think the pro-life contingency suddenly had a change of heart, but I think it was an eye-opener--a small one, but still an eye-opener. And if you've seen the movie, it doesn't count. READ THE BOOK.

It's Never too Late to Come to Terms with Nightmares

I've spent the past couple of days pretty much immersed in the blogs of other people. The entertainment factor has been high, but I've also noticed an unfortunate trend in people being bogged down by horrible things happening to them. I wonder sometimes if there's a correlation between indescribable pain and the need--almost compulsion--to write. I think that's definitely the case for me.

Anyway, I haven't slept well tonight (it's 4:30 in the morning now) in large part because I've been contemplating posting my own traumatic sent-me-into-a-tailspin moment here to make the point that it's never too late to come to terms with horrible, unspeakable things that happen to you. I carried this horrible pain around with me for ten years before I was finally able to deal with it, and I have pretty much become a different person since that time. So ... I think I will share. But please bear in mind, names, places, and events have been changed. But what happened to me has not. It never will.

My relationship with Andy was among the most intense I've experienced in my life. No, he was not my boyfriend. Ever. He was not even in the "friends with benefits" category. What we had was somehow more, if that makes any sense. I know that most of my friends and family thought Andy and I had a physical relationship, that the unhealthily close bond between us was connected to some sort of bizarre sexual need. Nothing could be further from the truth, although I'm still not sure, even now, what that bond was.

Basically, I met Andy at a New Years party; I was leaving as he was arriving in a carful of guys. I was pretty messed up, and he came up to me as I was staggering out to my car. "Are you all set to drive home?" he asked me. I wasn't really, but I told him I was and somehow got back to my parents' house without incident.

The next night, I was back at my college apartment when one of my friends called and asked if I remembered meeting a guy when I was leaving the party. I replied, "Vaguely," and she told me the guy was her friend Andy and he wanted to know if it was okay for her to give him my phone number. "Is he cute?" I asked (I was such a shallow idiot).

To make a long story short, Andy came up the very next night. Yeah, he was cute. Like, beyond cute, actually. However, we got talking, listening to music, talking some more, playing cards, and the casual hookup I think we'd both sort of expected never happened. We liked each other too much. We stayed up all night just hanging out, and it was the first time that anyone had seemed that interested in what I had to say.

I was nineteen on that night. For the next three years, Andy and I were tight. In terms of anything beyond friendship, it was kind of strange. I'd start to think of him as more than a friend when he was involved with someone else. When he was free and hinting, I'd be occupied with someone else. And sometimes a few months would go by when we'd fall out of touch, but when we reconnected, it was like we'd just had one of our marathon all-night conversation the night before.

I'm not going to pretend that Andy was a perfect person. He wasn't, and most of the stupid things I did in my life originated with him. He was not dependable and had a hard time holding down a job. He became, in many ways, the guiding voice in my life, and this is never healthy.

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if things had continued on the collision course they were on. Fortunately (as I'm well aware of now), destiny stepped in. One night, Andy and I got extremely messed up, went to a concert at the ski resort where we continued to imbibe heavily, went sledding illegally on a ski trail, got caught and verbally reprimanded, then went back to the condo and--the oldest story in the world--had sex. The fact that it was the worst sex I've ever had in my life was distressing enough--I mean, I'd started to think this guy was my soul mate. What happened next, though, was even worse.

The next morning, I asked Andy, "Do you remember what happened last night?"

"Yeah," he said. No elaboration.

"So I take it that happened because we were drunk?" I asked it lightly, expecting him to make a joke about it. Such was the nature of our relationship, and we both knew that similar things had happened to both of us before.

He was very quiet for a long time, then he said, "No. Being drunk had nothing to do with it."

And that was that. I got no answer, then or ever. We spent the day in Portland, but it was a quiet day for us. We bought a new Phish CD and listened to it instead of the never-ending chatter that was usually going on between us. That night, we slept in the same bad we'd been sharing for years now when I was at the condo. We smoked cigarettes on the balcony and threw them into the snow below. He wouldn't talk to me about what had happened, wouldn't laugh it off, wouldn't even say, "Damn, you were such a lousy lay that I'm never going there again." And so you can imagine what this did to me--instead of taking one of the many outs he'd been given (we were drunk, it was stupid, it was late, let's make sure we never do that again), he allowed me to blame myself for the sudden change in our relationship.

A couple of weeks later, things got even worse. I was up at Andy's condo with Andy, his good friend Steve, and a bunch of Steve's buddies so we could go snowmobiling. When we got back to the condo, Andy had one of the other guys, Tom, sleep in the fold-out bed with me and he went upstairs with the others. I was, as usual, pretty passed out, but I sort of remember Tom kissing me, and then it's all a blur. When I woke up, there was blood all over the bed, and the source of the blood was obviously me. I had been abused in ways that no one ever should be by this guy, who wisely left before anyone else came up. I saw Andy's eyes when he saw me naked in those bloody sheets, unable to move without hemorrhaging more blood out, and I saw whatever might have been between us die. Although it was insane for Andy to think I brought this on myself, he obviously did. We did not speak again for a long time, and then only sporadically (you say hi when you bump into someone at Wal-Mart, for example).

It was the words that were never spoken, both by him and by me, that played the death knell to the intense relationship between Andy and me. We were in our early twenties, and life seemed very big and overwhelming.

If I couldn't talk about some stupid drunk roll in the hay with my best friend, I thought ...

If she can't understand why the sight of her naked in a bloody bed with another guy less than a month after what happened between us, he must have thought ...

And so I carried this around with me. Its weight pushed down my shoulders and gave me nightmares for many, many years. Finally, with the advent of social networking groups, I started talking to Andy on Facebook a little bit. I finally realized that I needed to get this dealt with or it was going to drive me crazy one of these days, so I asked Andy if we could get together for a drink at some point, which he readily agreed to.

Although I was scared to death and unsure if I'd be able to tell him, or even if he thought I was ridiculous for not just telling him in the first place or still thinking it was such a big deal after all these years, it could not have gone any better. It's like a huge weight has been lifted; I don't know how to put it any better than that.

It's kind of funny, we went to three places that night, and the evening sort of got divided into three parts. The natural order that the world divides itself into just blows my mind sometimes.

Anyway, we started out at Applebee's and kind of chatted about our kids and what's new and my hatred for Sarah Palin (and how he's dating a girl that looks something like Sarah Palin) and such. Although we had a couple of beers, we pretty much agreed that eating at Applebee's is not exactly fine dining.

Stop number two was this amazing restaurant downtown that somehow manages to specialize in both Italian food and a sushi bar (successfully). We started getting silly, reminiscing about things like the time I did numerous shots of Bacardi 151 and then literally threw up all over the bar, all the way out to the car, all over myself, all inside the car, and everywhere else you can imagine and the time we went to Mohegan Sun and gambled away all our money, leaving us with not enough gas to get home. Jesus, we were stupid. Anyway, then I finally just told him, just spit it out, "Andy, that guy Tom, he raped me". Like, one second we were laughing like idiots, the next I was crying, then he was crying, and we had the whole "Why didn't you tell me?"/"Because you were being a non-communnicative douchetard and I was afraid of how you'd react" conversation. It was a very serious half hour or so, then we got silly again (and had more beer).

Anyway, part of getting silly involved Andy mentioning this dive of a bar that was within walking distance. He said he'd been there once and some lady got hit in the head, and the staff just carried her outside and left her bleeding in the parking lot. I realized that I read an article a few years ago about a murder occurring there. Walking there seemed like a really good idea, for some reason. Yeah. You kind of had to be there.

Anyway, it was absolutely the cheesiest, trashiest bar I've ever been in. However, there were pool tables, so I got my ass handed to me at multiple games of pool, had more beer, and made fun of the bar and its patrons as surreptitiously as possible (the old man that appeared to be masturbating in a corner, the porno video game, the fact that the felt of the pool tables was so dirty that it was repulsive, the steps going into the bathroom that I managed to trip up every time I had to pee, the multiple entrances and exits, et cetera). And rocked out to bad techno music. Haha, good times. I haven't laughed that hard in years.

The thing is, Andy was the only person that could give me any sort of absolution for a pain that I've held inside for eleven years.

And he did. He listened. He apologized. He cried.

And now, with that heavy weight gone, I can move forward.

I share this story--somewhat reluctantly, because it is incredibly painful--because I want you to know that keeping the pain inside is worse. Coming to terms with the things that happen to us, the good, the bad, and the ugly, is the only way we can stand up tall without that terrible oppressive weight on our shoulders.

I'm weak ... it took me eleven years. But it was worth it.

Yard Sale-ing is Evidently a Verb

I'm curious to know what your thoughts are on yard sales.

My neighborhood has an annual yard sale, and some years we participate and some years we don't. This year we did, in large part because Addie had gone through a monster growth spurt and designer duds from Hollister, Abercrombie, and Aeropostale were overflowing the house. What bothered me, though, was that the people that came in droves (and once word of the teenage girl clothes sitting in piles on a table in my driveway broke, the droves were intense) did not appear to be people that couldn't afford to shop at those insufferable stores.

However, the article from my local news station linked above made me think about it a little bit differently. Maybe the people that shop at yard sales are the smart ones--they're able to make it look like they went to the "right" stores (and I don't just mean the teenage apparel stores, although I'm moderately appalled that I've raised a material girl) without spending the requisite money.

I was raised by a mother who thought shopping at a yard sale was akin to begging for change in the street. I've found that, despite steps I've taken to educate myself and open my mind, the values I was raised with are still there, albeit down pretty deep. Still, this report made me think.

Some of my friends "go yard sale-ing" for fun in the spring and fall. I might just join them this year ... after all, you never know what you might find.

I Got an Award ... I'm Ridiculously Excited : ) !!!!

So I'm very excited to have been given the Lemonade Stand Award by the amazing Eric over at Working My Muse. What this means is that people are reading this blog, which is of course my goal : ) I'm incredibly excited about this, and even more excited to pass the award on to my ten. Before I set up the links, though, here are the directions ...


# Post the award on your blog (Done : ))


# Let them know who gave it to you and link (All set ... thanks again, Eric :-) ... you made my day!)


# Nominate ten other blogs (Gotcha : ) )


# Let your nominees know that they've received the award (I can do that).

My nominations (in no particular order)

"Insert Witty Anecdote [Here]"
"Wuthering Life"
"Zelda Lily"
"A Blurred History"
"Well Honestly Now ..."
"Laura Says Stuff"
"Living in the Moment"
"Erinadequate Me"
"Sasha is a Monster"
"Crazy Whack Shiznit for your Brizzle"
"Dancing in the Moonlight"

The (Short) List of Movies that are Better than Books

If you're reading this blog, you've probably inferred that I much prefer books to movies. This is true ... and it is false. I love movies, and a blog post I just read that mentions one of my favorite movies ever, Major League, reminded me of my cinematic adoration.

In that vein, here's a list of cases where I believe the movie is better than the book. It's a short list, but that's because I truly don't believe it happens very often. Your thoughts are welcome, appreciated, and expected (since this tends to be a hot topic) : )

1. The Silence of the Lambs
2. Forrest Gump
3. The Lord of the Rings
4. The Wizard of Oz
5. The Neverending Story

And, of course, there has to be a tie. The book is on my top five. The movie is in my top two.

And that would be ... The Godfather, book by Mario Puzo, film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, and just an experience everyone should have.

Query that Went Out for Novel #1

Here's the Query I sent out for Novel #1. Yes, in case you're wondering, I'm cleaning out my hard drive and posting anything people might find interesting. Maybe. A little : )
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When two longtime friends are faced with different but equally devastating events, they eventually come to the same conclusion: only their tumultuous pasts can set them free.

Roy Pentinicci, son of an abusive gangster, experiences a childhood characterized by violence, dark secrets, and unspeakable shame. Roy's voyage to manhood is rockier than most, accentuated by his own struggles with his father's demons and the devastating loss of his cherished older sister. As a professional baseball player married to his childhood sweetheart, Roy convinces both himself and those around him that he's moved beyond his past. However, a startling revelation from his wife forces him to go back and face a past that has haunted his psyche all along.

Susy Heidelman survives an equally traumatic upbringing; after being abandoned by her father before she was born, Susy is raised by an emotionally absent and suicidal mother and a drug-abusing older brother. Nobody is more surprised than Susy when her Prince Charming shows up in the unlikeliest of places and whisks her away to a shockingly happy life that is suddenly ripped apart at the seams by a few thoughtless words from her adored son.

The bond between Roy and Susy carries them through happiness and devastation, crime and punishment, life and death as they, both apart and together, realize the truth of karma, the necessity of putting to death their past demons if they want the strength to face the future, and most importantly, the power of love.

I am an aspiring novelist and currently an English teacher in southern New Hampshire. I hold both a B.A. in English (cum laude) and an M.Ed. from the University of New Hampshire. I have used my own experiences with revision within my classroom, and it has been a great privilege to share Unbreakable with selected students along with friends and family members. All were happy to, as I requested, rip it to shreds with love. Now that I have finished polishing it, I am very enthusiastic about sharing Unbreakable with a literary agent.

Thank you for your time and attention to this query; it is very much appreciated. If you are interested in reading the beginning chapters or even the complete manuscript, I would be more than happy to send it right out.