A long sentence

A long sentence isn't necessarily a better sentence. Often times, it's just a long sentence.

Word.

Thanks for reading. Now get back to writing.

The ending

Last week, I wrote about the beginning of a novel or short story. Or more specifically, I wrote about the sentence that comes AFTER the first sentence, the second sentence, which must also be a grabber and keep grabbing.

Today, I want to skip past the beginning, over the middle, and go straight to the ending. Because it is the ending that the reader will most likely remember first.

A couple of weeks ago, I was talking to a fan of my short story Miss Hattie Mae's Secret. She loved the beginning and, I admit, I do, too. Of all my published and unpublished fiction, it is perhaps my favorite opening. (As I posted last Aug. 1, in this blog, the first two paragraphs have a total of only five words. ["Miss Hattie Mae Farted. Often."] It is minimalist to say the least.) But the reader, who enjoyed the story, was upset with the ending. She wondered what happened next. And, in not knowing, was somewhat vexed.

(For those of you who haven't read the entire story, it ends with the county sheriff coming to visit Miss Hattie Mae to discuss the newly unearthed secret that she has kept for eight decades.)

One of the goals in writing, particularly in genre fiction such as mysteries which I write, is to tie up loose ends. Miss Hattie Mae's Secret started and ended with her, all 95 years of age, on the porch and farting. I originally planned to write more but when I got to that point I stopped because I thought I said all that needed to be said. Anything further I left to the reader.

In all stories, real and fictional, something happens before the point where the writer begins the story and something happens after the story ends. Fictional life, as in real life, is part of a continuum and the writer, almost arbitrarily, begins and ends the telling wherever they choose.

But as a writer, you do want to leave the reader satisfied at the end. Otherwise, they may feel like they wasted their time. You don't want to do that. Case in point, my favorite book from last year. The Martian. I loved the story and enjoyed the book. And, having read it several times, do not think I wasted my time. But I wasn't thrilled with the ending, which was just after Mark Watney is rescued and is beginning his seven-month journey home. The movie, I think, did it better. It ends with Mark back on earth and training new NASA recruits on survival.

I think I approach an ending in fiction the way I always did as a daily journalist. When I got to the end, I stopped writing. When you have said it all, just stop.

And so it is with this.

Thanks for reading.

The end.





   

 

After the opening line, what comes next?

So, what's the next line?

From writers to editors, from agents to teachers and writing coaches, from publishers to Internet bloggers, everyone in the writing and publishing industry stresses the importance of a good opening line. It's almost as if you don't nail the opening line, you might as well give up and go home. While I doubt readers care as much about this as writers do, I don't doubt its importance, which is why I -- like so many writers -- sweat that first line.

Oddly, we don't tend to get as insane with what comes next -- the second line. And why not?

That question came to mind thanks to a friend and former colleague.

The venerable sage Joe Boyce was a Chicago cop back in the late 1960s -- sit back and contemplate that for a second. A black cop in Chicago in the late 60s -- before getting the journalism bug. He spent time at the Chicago Tribune before heading off to Time magazine, and then finally to the Wall Street Journal before retiring. He's a musician now and enjoying retirement.

Last month, on his Facebook page, he started posting a one-sentence prompt -- the opening sentence -- and asked his friends to write the next line. But one line only.

Some people wrote an interesting sentence, full of thought, full of promise. But frankly, some people wrote unimaginative, boring stuff. They seemed to give it no thought at all. And other people failed to read his instructions fully and wrote more than one sentence.

But I took it seriously. And I followed Joe's  instructions.

Regardless of the prompt, I tried to write something as compelling as the first sentence. Because it's the next sentence and the next sentence and the next that makes for good, consistent writing and storytelling. I knew that, of course, but Joe just reminded me of it. Your writing can lose a reader at any point. Therefore, the next sentence is always important.

So, Joseph, thank you, as always, for keeping it real.

And to everyone else, thanks for reading. And keep writing.

Kendall Hunter

I'm in love. Deeply. Passionately. Completely.

I often get a thrill just thinking about The Woman.

Her name is Kendall. Kendall Hunter. And she is currently the love of my life. Well, kinda.

Now, this would be more than a bit adulterous, except in this context. (It still might be, even in this context, but I don't think so.) That's because Kendall is fictional. Created from whole cloth from my brain. (Am I sounding messianic?) That's not to say I didn't have some inspiration for the character from a friend, a muse who has proven to be very helpful as I develop Kendall. But all that Kendall is comes from me. I just don't know yet what's going to happen to her.

Kendall Hunter is the main character in my upcoming short story, Callipygian, which will be published this October by the Speed City chapter of Sisters in Crime in their anthology, "The Fine Art of Murder." Closer to the publication date, I'll drop an excerpt. But for now, I'll just say it's the story of an FBI criminal profiler (Kendall) who, while she is on vacation in Indianapolis visiting family, is drawn into the investigation into the theft of three valuable paintings, including one called Callipygian. The plot thickens, as they say, when the main suspect is found murdered.

(Callipygian. I also love that word. I was listening to an interview by Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air about two years ago and her guest used the word. Terry, who is smart, well-educated and well-prepared in interviews, didn't appear to know the word, which I didn't either. When I looked it up, I decided then and there to somehow use it. So I built this short story around it.)

While this will be my first published story with this character, it isn't the first time I have written this character. The first story is called Black on Black in Black. White folks may not get that but it should ring a bell with black folks. In that story, Kendall is called in to profile a serial killer.

Kendall is a tall, beautiful, single black woman, who is smart and clever. Very clever, in fact. Work is her focus, and she does it extremely well, but she needs to get a personal life. And she harbors a deep secret from her past that could turn her life around. It's what I'm trying to explore in each new story -- there are four in total, including my current short story WIP (work in progress). Discovering who she is is why I'm so in love with her. She's interesting and fun, occasionally funny, brainy, well-dressed and has a killer body. (I like big butts and I cannot lie. What else can I say?)

But like I said earlier, I don't know yet what's going to happen to her. I can't keep her forever, even as I start publishing her stories. It'll be sad when it's over.

But I know it will come to an end, even if she doesn't. I am a fickle lover and I know in time I will fall madly in love with another fictional characters. Those I have loved in the past have just let it go and moved on. I only hope Kendall Hunter will do the same and not become  a jealous lover, willing to do anything to hold on to me. Because that WOULD be scary.

I'm having fun with her now. And after the story is published, I hope you will enjoy her, too.

Thanks for reading and keep on writing.

An excerpt of Miss Hattie Mae's Secret, published in Decades of Dirt (2015).

Hello, everyone. Many of you have 'liked' my author page on Facebook (Look for author MB Dabney, on Facebook, and like me if you haven't already.) and months ago read on excerpt from my story, Miss Hattie Mae's Secret in the anthology, Decades of Dirt. My story is the last one of 15 stories of murder, mystery and mayhem in the book, which is still available on Amazon for $9.99. And you can also get an e-book version for $2.99.
So please, if you can and haven't yet, get a copy of Decades of Dirt. And enjoy all the wonderful stories you will find there.
And for a taste, here is an excerpt from the beginning of Miss Hattie Mae's Secret by MB Dabney.
_____  

Miss Hattie Mae farted...

Often.

When anyone mentioned the flatulence, she’d blame it on the dog. She blamed most things on the dog. Only problem was, Miss Hattie Mae didn’t have a dog, hadn’t for years.

What Miss Hattie Mae did have was a secret – one that spanned decades. The secret was like a respectful traveling companion: generally silent but always present. She was one month shy of 96 and the secret had come to define her life for more than eight decades.

Her small, five-room dwelling had a distinctive, although not all together unpleasant, aroma from all the years Miss Hattie Mae had lived, cooked and farted in the house. She was born there, lived there most of her life (even after she married), and raised her children under its leaky roof.

Hattie Mae’s father Ezra Reeves built the house right after he moved to the area with his new bride Ruth the year before Hattie Mae was born. At the time, the house sat at one end of their land, which stretched 40 acres. Over time, and with hard work and careful buying, Ezra’s property grew to more than 200 acres on which his extended family farmed cotton and soybeans. A small portion of land, the part closest to the house, also held apple and peach trees. Her mother’s apple pies were legendary in the small black community outside of Clarksville, Tennessee. When she wasn’t forced to work in the fields when she was growing up, Hattie Mae liked to play along a line of oak trees visible at the other end of their property.

The house, now sitting on a small parcel of land, was all the property she had left, though it wasn’t her only financial asset. In truth, Miss Hattie Mae was a millionaire, a recent development she cared little about.

Last year, the federal government used eminent domain to take most of her land – and paid her handsomely for it, which explained her wealth. Plans were for the expansion of a four-lane highway for traffic heading to and from Clarksville. Large land movers arrived last week to start tearing down those oak trees and reworking the property in preparation for the highway construction.

 But the land held secrets; long buried secrets that were about to be exposed for the first time in decades.

Miss Hattie Mae’s eyesight was poor, but she could still distinguish the flashing lights atop the police cars among the land movers at the edge of the line of oak trees.

“Boy,” she said, her tongue licking her lips, “Betta go tel-ah-phone yo pappy.”

____

Thanks for reading.

Challenges at the end of 2015, and beginning of 2016

I was away from this blog for most of last year, so I didn't post a series of challenges I faced at the end of the year that extended into the beginning of 2016.

There was some good, of course. The anthology I co-edited, Decades of Dirt, was published in the late summer. Throughout the fall, we had several wonderful book signings and book presentations. One of my favorites was in Greenwood, Indiana, on Oct. 17. I think there were six of us on a panel in which we discussed writing, the anthology and our stories. We had a nice crowd that afternoon and I was well-pleased as I drove the roughly 20 miles home.

That is, I was pleased until I was about two miles from the house. It was at that point when the driver in another car failed to yield  the right-of-way and inexplicably turned left into my path. It was totally unexpected and we collided nearly head-on with me going about 40 miles per hour.

 

Both air bags in front went off, smoke filled the car, I couldn't open my car door (and thus was trapped inside) and I was nearly in shock. But when they arrived 8 minutes later, rescue workers determined I didn't break my neck or my back, and they were able to lift me into the passenger seat to get me out, and rush me to the hospital. My neck was killing me but, as I said, wasn't broken. However, I broke a bone in my left hand -- which made it difficult for me to type for weeks -- and I spent the night in the hospital as they monitored me for possible damage to my heart, which could have resulted in a heart attack.

Needless to say, the car was totaled. The impact bent the frame of the car from the front to the back on the driver side. Which meant, of course, my body absorbed energy strong enough to bend metal.

But I recovered after several weeks.

In December, just a week before Christmas, our furnace failed at the beginning of a cold winter. Two nights later, as we were considering our furnace options, we had a small electrical fire in the outlet next to my desk. We had to spend two nights out of the house and EVERYTHING in my guestroom/office was removed and cleaned.

In early January, we finally replaced the car that was totaled but by then I was having to mentally and emotionally prepare for surgery.

In the late summer last year, doctors determined that, once again, I had prostate cancer. Since I had radiation for cancer over the winter in 2009-10 -- it was my Winter Project that year -- I couldn't have radiation again. Surgery was the best of two poor options.

The surgery was the day after Valentine's Day and went wonderfully well. The surgeon, a tall man by the name of Dr. Large, was very pleased. Spent three days in the hospital, mostly because it took me that long to pass gas, but had a urinary catheter for FOUR WEEKS. (You can't tell it from the picture below but the catheter is why I was wearing a skirt.) Having a tube coming out of my penis for that long is beyond tiring.

Anyway, I still have challenges from the prostate surgery but I'm feeling much better. And the good thing is my PSA is zero and I can still write. But I was so consumed with the fall car accident, the furnace, the house fire and the surgery, I couldn't focus on a book outline about the Indianapolis 500 that I promised a local publisher. An opportunity lost but, as I am still among the quick, I will just have to grab another opportunity.

But life does get in the way sometimes.

So that's a little of what's happened lately. Thanks for reading and keep writing.

I'm back -- again

For the life of me, I have no idea why I can't keep up with my blog postings. I try but then, I fall behind and let it go.

But I'm back -- yet again. And will try yet again to keep up with this.

Since I was last with you, my Sisters in Crime chapter published an anthology which I co-edited with Barb Miller, a Muncie, Indiana, school teacher. The anthology is called Decades of Dirt, includes 15 stories of death and mayhem, and was published last October. All the stories have an historical aspect to them, though not all involve murders. (Most do.) Reviews have been good and sales have been okay up until this point.

Though it was the chapter's fourth anthology, it was the first -- and currently, the only -- independently published work. The chapter wanted to give its members a taste of self-publishing, with all its pros and cons.

You can get a print copy of Decades of Dirt on Amazon for $9.99, while an e-copy is only $2.99. I have both, of course. I'm very proud of the effort. And it's the first book on which my name appears on the cover.

I have a story in the book. My story closes on the book, in fact. the story is called Miss Hattie Mae's Secret. I am particularly proud of the story and in the near future will post an excerpt.

The chapter decided to return to our previous publisher (Blue River Press) for our next anthology, which is called, The Fine Art of Murder. It's currently being edited. I can't remember how many stories there are but it's around 15, give or take. All the stories involve some aspect of fine art -- and, if the title is correct -- murder.

I also have a story in the anthology and it's called Callipygian. (I'll wait while you go look that up.) It's about an FBI criminal profiler named Kendall Hunter who, while on vacation in Indianapolis, is drawn into the investigation of an art theft, and the murder of the chief suspect. I enjoy the story and I particularly like the main character. She's an interesting character to write because I love discovering who she is.

While this is the fourth story I have written with her, it is the first to be published. When we get closer to the October publication date, or thereafter, I will post an excerpt. Perhaps even a video blog posting.

More health news but that will have to wait until next time.

That's it. Thanks for reading and keep writing.