Archive for June, 2008
Thursday, June 26th, 2008
Hi Readers Expecting a Posting from Trey,
I’m the Web Guy for Trey and all-around go-to-guy. As you may have noticed, Trey’s website has gone through an overhaul. The main website has been redesigned with some cool design elements and a different look/feel.
Trey’s Online Journal has also gone through some changes as well. It is no longer at Live Journal, but is now directly part of Trey’s website. Some of the improvements can be seen on the side, with a listing of archived postings, categories, etc. Trey will have to play around with it for a little while to get the hang of things…so will I. I probably shouldn’t have mentioned that on a public blog…
A posting by me will not be a regular thing, this is probably my first and last posting…this is Trey’s blog after all. Just writing to let you know there were some changes and this is part of them.
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Thursday, June 26th, 2008
“Today the argument against sin and the means of losing it – the quest for the true spirit. This should be a good sharp section.”
- John Steinbeck, “Working Days,” Entry #4, June 2, 1938, Thursday
No giant moral arguments for me, at least not yet. Today’s work – tonight actually – is chapter 3. Jace at home after a long shift wherein an inmate has a problem in medical and we get foreshadowings of the underpinning of the book.
Chapter 3, then. Short, sharply delineated (I hope). She’s scared to sleep, scared of the dreams; leftovers from the psychological aftermath of Book One. Though the books are desert-set, this section should have the oppressive feel of the hot and humid, almost like being able to see the humidity hanging in the air. Should feel as oppressive as the Louisiana bayou. Hell, maybe I’ll just ask James Lee Burke to write it for me. Should have long sentences and long paragraphs, almost painful to read because of her fear of sleeping.
No Gramma and none of The Coots. This is all Jace. But short because I’ve already strung out the initiating murder too long. Too much navel-gazing already. But then, pacing never works for me until deep near the end. That’s the only time I can look back and see what’s what.
But like what became the middle part of “Grapes” chapter 4, this should be good and sharp. We’ll see.
And the quest for the true spirit? It may be corny, but there are no other quests. Everything dances to that particular rhumba.
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Tuesday, June 24th, 2008
“Get some Gold-Bond. It’s like air-conditioning for your balls.”
A fellow officer, giving his two cents worth on the chafing problem my crappy polyester pants give me during the hot, humid summer months.
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Tuesday, June 24th, 2008
“It seems to be necessary to write things down. Can’t stop it.”
John Steinbeck, “Working Days,” Entry #1, February 7, 1938, Monday.
It is a marvelous book, Steinbeck’s “Working Days.” It is not one of the novels – the short, kiss-in-the-dark sweetness of “Of Mice and Men,” nor the sprawling “East of Eden.” Neither is it one of the volume of letters like “Steinbeck: A Life in Letters,” or “Journal of a Novel, the East of Eden Letters.”
It is Steinbeck’s attempt to “map the actual working days and hours of this novel.”
It is a diary of his time spent writing “The Grapes of Wrath.”
And it is, quite simply, an amazing book.
I am very much into discovering and exploring the creative process. I want to see your painting, yes, but I also want to know why precisely that color in precisely that place. I want to see what you did with the lighting scheme for “Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern,” but I also want to know why that green at that moment.
“Working Days,” is an almost daily account of the writing of Grapes. The struggles as to tone and pace, the battles as to timbre and situation. But also, it allows the reader to see how in hell he got the book done given everything else that was going on in his life at that time.
I am not so bold.
But I am just cheeky enough to believe I could do something similar. My Working Daze, however, won’t be as disciplined or as regular. He wrote his as a daily warm up to writing. I, because of my work schedule, no longer write every day. Instead, I write every day I’m off. And my writing time is so limited that if I tried to keep Working Daze constantly up to date, I’d never work on the novel.
So my scope is much more limited than his.
I will try, as best I can, to put down what it’s like to write a novel. I will explore the artistic struggles of tone and timbre, pace and plot. In short, I will navel gaze with the intensity of someone who is self-involved to the nth degree when it comes to his writing.
I already know, to a degree, what’s coming. I’ve written books before and there will be days where I am nothing short of the single best writer what ever walked the planet. And there will be days where I want to throw the computer out the window and take up knitting.
Maybe it’ll fun and maybe it’ll suck, but I’m gonna give it a whirl and see what happens. The trick, of course, is to explore the writing of the book without giving the book away. Hell, if I put it all down in the journal, there would never be any reason for you to go plunk down $25 for it, would there?
The book, by the by, is the second in a brand new series centering on a female sheriff’s deputy. In book one, we see her at the beginning of her career. I mean the very beginning – day one – and we go from there. The first book is called “Slow Bleed” and you haven’t seen or heard of it yet because I only finished it a few months ago and am waiting for my agent to read it. After him, hopefully, publishers. After that, hopefully, enough sales to fund a two-month trip to St. Thomas.
Steinbeck said something else in that initial entry back in ‘38. He wrote, “I don’t know whether I could write a decent book now. That is the greatest fear of all. I am working at it but I can’t tell.”
It is the greatest fear of us all. So we’ll see what happens. And do, please, post your comments. I’d love to know how you do things, how you explore your creativity.
And what your favorite Steinbeck book is.
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Monday, June 23rd, 2008
“So what’s going on?”
His eyes darted side to side, up and down the empty, gravel road. “Uh…nothing. Just out walking, I do that a lot.”
We were on a dirt road that winds along the north shore of the Illinois River where it bends from north-south to east west on its way to Chicago. It’s 10 miles of absolutely nothing. No homes, no business, nothing but river land and forest. I patrol down there lots and lots and lots, and usually, there is something going on. Booze or drugs or fights or whatever. I love it down there.
This particular night, one of the first patrols of my new assignment (nights, 6 p.m. to 6 a.m.), I had stumbled across a truck and a tall, lanky 17-year old kid.
At first, I thought it was illegally dumping garbage. Then I realized he had just cracked open a beer. And I mean JUST cracked it. In fact, the pull tab wasn’t even all the way open yet, he hasn’t had a single swig, and there I am, all Ramboed up and official.
“Yeah?” I asked. “Whose beer?”
“Uh…my friend’s.”
“Yeah? Where is he?”
“Uh…he took a walk.” The kid pointed vaguely behind him.
“Yeah? Cracked a beer and then took a walk? Didn’t even take his brew with him?”
The kid shrugged, but dutifully handed over his license.
“Okay, no sweat. Tell you what, I’m going to check your license, make sure you’re not a wanted hatchet murderer or anything, and why don’t you see if you can find your friend for me.”
He nodded and headed in the direction his friend had taken.
And I just watched. Sitting in the front seat of the cruiser, license check long since done, I just watched him. He made it about ten feet past his truck, didn’t even bother actually looking into the gathering darkness, shrugged, and came back to the truck.
I’m thinking: if you’re about to get arrested for illegal consumption, or at the very least illegal possession of alcohol, and said alcohol is your friends? Get your ass down the road and find him. Hang him up in the hoosegow, rather than yourself.
Ah, my friends are thinking now, a clue to Trey’s personality. Cut the friends loose and save himself.
Well…yeah. Momma didn’t raise no fool.
Anyway, the booze was his and I cut him a break. I took his beer and sent him on home. Actually, I felt sorry for him. First of all, how bad is life for a 17-year old when he’s drinking alone? That’s gotta suck.
But then, before he takes a drink, before he even gets the beer open, BOOM, here are the cops, giving him grief, taking his crap, and pouring it out right in front of him.
To be honest, there was a part of me that just wanted to hand the kid the open beer and say, “Kill it quick, lonely boy.”
I called this entry King Booze because that six pack wasn’t all I had that weekend. I found another last six out of a twelve pack at one of the canal locks. Just sitting there, no one around. I assume it was kids drinking and they didn’t want to take a chance on getting pulled over with beer in the car.
Then I had five teenagers at another canal lock with three cases of really cheap beer. When I got there, the beer was all in the water. No like in the water to stay cold, but more like “Heave! (splash!) What? I have no idea what you’re talking about, Officer.”
So in the course of three days, I found three cases of cheap beer. And let’s not forget the nearly finished fifth of Beam I found in the possession of a 16-year old.
Jim Beam? I almost arrested her for drinking crappy whiskey. If, at 16, you’re going to finish the better part of a fifth in less than a night, make it Jack Daniel’s.
King Booze, indeed.
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Tuesday, June 10th, 2008
So, in honor of completing my first year on the road, the Sheriff’s Office gave me…?
Another cow call.
That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, a bovine interception call. It wasn’t at 3:00 in the morning, like the first one a year ago was, nor was it cows wandering the roadway, as it had been then. (And yeah, I remember, with heart-stopping shock, the old man who we called to come get his cows. He walked up to one, stared it dead in the face, then turned to me and said, “Ain’t mine,” and promptly left.)
This was much better than wandering cows or cows hit by cars or trucks or cows stuck on a fence. This was cows…gone. Just gone. No fuss, no muss, no forwarding address.
“My babies are gone,” the lady said.
“They break through the fence?” I asked.
She showed me. No break.
“Someone let them out?” I asked.
Didn’t look like it.
“Checked with all the neighbors?”
“Absolutely,” she said.
“So, the Grays come get them?” I wanted to ask.
Now, I realize I don’t know anything about cows other than that they’re great with a slightly tangy but not too sweet, full-bodied red sauce after having been cooked over an open pit flame, but I wasn’t sure it was possible for 11 head of cattle to simply disappear. And this woman, poor thing, was absolutely bananas about them. She was in tears about her cows.
And it wasn’t just because we were talking about roughly $15,000. It was because her cows were gone. You know…like my dogs are gone…or my child got snatched. Her cows were GONE and what in the hell was the Sheriff’s Office, the State Police, the FBI, the ATF, ICE, and Homeland Security prepared to do about that?
She was CRAZED about it. Tears and drama and hyperventilation. I thought I was going to have to call an ambulance to give her some tranquilizer or something.
“You have to find them,” she said.
“I’ll do my best.”
At her demand, my best was going to include walking – slowly and with a crime scene kit – the entire fence line. All the way around her fifteen or twenty acres or whatever it was. I, on the other hand, offered to drive it and see what was what.
“How can you see trace evidence from your car?”
Apparently she didn’t want me, she wanted Gil Grissom. Grissom would catch them (because I was obviously an idiot and not up to the task) and she would cheerfully hang them herself at the courthouse square.
She actually used some language that I’d never heard, some colorful variations on curse words that made ME blush…and you know that’s going some.
I felt for her but at the same time, there was part of me, terrible though it is to say, that assumed the deputies at the office had set up a camera somewhere and were watching all this via monitor and laughing their asses off.
Then, as I’m really unsure what to do next, her son comes strolling over from next door.
“Mom,” he said. “They’re at Teddy’s.”
“What?”
“Teddy has them. They’re in his pen.”
“Oh.” So then she looked back at me and shrugged. “Never mind.”
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