Scott Bell's Blog, page 8

Spring is Coming. Don’t Look

Moderate temperatures outside make me think of Spring, which makes me think of jumping into my grand plan for the masterpiece of an outdoor living experience I intend to create.  That’s what they call it now: an outdoor living experience.  We used to call it a backyard.

Thinking about my backyard—sorry BLE—starts me down the road of planning the rock-walled, paved patio I intend to build, complete with brick BBQ pit, waterfall, and wading pool.  Well, okay, maybe not a wading pool…unless you have exceptionally small feet.

This kind of dreaming requires a trip to Home Depot.

Yes, I can use that rock, and that pump, and that $4,000 concrete mixer, and if I use some of those PVC pipes and re-route the home’s plumbing system, I can get the fountain to spray sixty feet into the air, and wouldn’t some colored lights look good with that?

Plan achieved, parts list written, I return home and map out the new BLE, my mind’s eye blocking out the cracked concrete patio and picturing instead a natural flagstone foot paradise.  Yes, this will be the ultimate backyard.  I will crush the neighbors’ puny efforts at BLE’s and they will bow down to me!

First I have to build a shed to get all my stuff off the patio in preparation for demolition.  To build a shed, I need to fix the Leaning Fence of Decayed Wood.  So, fence first, followed by shed second, and then it’s on to the crushing the neighbors.

Another trip to Home Depot.

Reality sinks in and I find I can’t pay the Midas-fortune in gold required to procure steel and lumber to fix the fence.  All BLE plans are suspended pending fencing fixes.

If I can’t work on the fence, what can I do instead?

Plants!  I can kill some plants!  What can I kill this year?  Last year I killed an Oleander, and some dianthus.  I tried to kill some no-name flowers, but they hung grimly on through the summer, not dying, but not blooming either.  I killed a few potted plants, and—accidentally—a weed that I thought was a plant.

I sit back and mentally picture the hours of digging, planting, feeding, watering, and nurturing that will be required to kill plants in the upcoming months.  Why, I could commit plant genocide beginning in March if I really wanted.  In fact, I could go see what plants are ready to die right now.

Sounds like a trip to Home Depot!

I love Spring.

Self-Publishing, or How to Ruin Fiction One Book at a Time

Everyone knows how to write, ergo everyone is a writer.  The craft of creative fiction is easy; you have a story in your head, you write it down and presto! it is a masterpiece of dramatic fiction.  Punctuation and those pesky grammar rules merely get in the way of the muse, stifling creativity.

It was once called “vanity publication,” and patronized by people who wanted to write a book about their life, meant for their family and a few forgiving friends.  Today, self-publishing services, the rise of ebooks and Print-on-Demand services has created a cottage industry allowing anyone with a PC to publish their manuscript.  No longer does one need to pursue the elusive agent, or stalk the publishing house editor with gifts of wine and roses.  Dash off a few thousand words, hit SUBMIT, and your novel is up for sale on Amazon.

The ability to publish has morphed into a mandate to publish.  I can, therefore I should.

We now have the pleasure of reading such literary giants as Double-Stuffed by the Dragons (…graphic descriptions of explicit sexual acts, including: a girl being taken by two dragons, oral sex with a forked tongue…).  No, I’m not kidding.

Would you buy a painting from a person who sat at the easel for their very first time and daubed a landscape in purple and blue?  A lopsided ashtray crafted by a neophyte sculptor?  A song from a tone-deaf composer?  Why then are people buying books from self-published authors who have never learned how to write?  And giving them four- and five-star reviews?  Have our own educational standards fallen so far that we can’t recognize weak and uninspiring prose?

Self-published books are another step down the slippery slope of low standards and lower expectations.  Acceptance of marginal effort leads to further lack of effort.  Entropy beckons.  To forestall this trend, self-published novels should have a warning label, much like tobacco, foods containing nuts and wheat, and alcoholic beverages.  It should read: 

Warning:  Written by an amateur.  Published without editing, creativity, or any clue regarding pace, narrative, exposition, Point-of-View, symbolism, filtering, tension, or the proper use of commas versus semi-colons.  Reading this book will stunt your intellect and destroy irreplaceable brain cells.

Lucinda Madden

The following is a fictionalized account of a true story.  I first heard the story of the Edens-Madden Massacre from fellow writer Pat Haddock and I thought she was putting me on. I did some research and…turns out she was right.  This is my version of Lucy Madden’s story, a Texas pioneer woman and survivor of the Edens-Madden Massacre, San Pedro Creek, Houston County, Texas.

Survivor

~~~

October 28th, 1838

Frost rimed the banks of San Pedro Creek on that blackest of moonless nights.  Screams echoed through the forest of evergreen sentinels, shrouded with needles and indifferent to the blood soaking their roots.  Blazing pyres soared, illuminating the pines with a flickering orange glow, before subsiding to embers and returning the forest to darkness.

~ ~ ~

Stuffed in one room of drafty dogtrot cabin, fifteen women and kids slept.  Their menfolk had gone to answer President Lamar’s war cry.  Lucy, along with her sister-in-law, Nancy, moved to John Edens’ house to fort up with the other wives and children.  Four men, asleep on the opposite side of the dogtrot, protected them from the angry Kickapoo war parties.

Creak…

Lucy stiffened at the sound.  Her skin crawled as though covered in spiders.

~ ~ ~

Inkinishit’iti, so-called Little White Man because of his mixed parentage, detailed four men to guard the room where the white men slept.  Inkinishit’iti towered over his fellow Kiikaapoa warriors, his face hacked from mahogany and his eyes imbued with the spirit of Nenemehkia, Thunder Beings.

He commanded respect.

His remaining warriors gathered close, muscles flexing, weapons honed, teeth gleaming, breath quickened by the promise of blood.

A solid kick splintered the door, sending it crashing open to swing from broken hinges.

~ ~ ~

Mary Sadler died first.

“No,” Lucy screamed.  She scrambled from the floor, hands extended.  “Not my children!”

Women’s shrieks and Indian war cries battered her ears.  A tomahawk split Lucy’s collarbone and she collapsed.  Sarah Murchison implored her with dead eyes, her face in a pool of blood, her hair cut away.  Lucy tried to get up.  A blow to her back knocked her down again.

A devil from Hell, maybe Lucifer himself, loomed in the door, arms braced to the frame, legs spread.  He laughed while women’s screams called the tune and murder danced a jig.  Blood splattered the walls, soaked the floor.

Another powerful strike slammed the back of Lucy’s head, setting off an explosion of white light behind her eyes.  Sounds came and went, blurred scenes flashed through her eyes, but none of it penetrated the ringing in her head.  Mercifully, she didn’t hear or see the Kickapoo hacking apart her sons, Seldon and Robert, or witness the infant, Sophia Sadler, gutted with a butcher knife.

Like a wounded animal, Lucy crawled through the gap between the devil’s legs.  His booming laugh vibrated her nerve endings, more felt than heard.  If he saw her, Ol’ Scratch gave no indication.  Maybe he let her go, knowing her time was short.  Lucy made it outside, then to the fence, where she buckled.

Cold.  So very cold.

~ ~ ~

Lucinda Edens Madden survived that night and lived to the age of 77.  A broken collar bone, split ribs and a massive head wound caused severe blood loss, and it was likely Mrs. Madden passed out, but she was often heard saying she’d never had a better night’s sleep than after she crawled between the Devil’s legs and escaped from Hell.