Steven Harper's Blog, page 23
October 8, 2022
Resurrection Men: A Short Look
"Extremely engaging and swiftly paced. Nicely balances macabre history with heartwarming relationships. " --David Nelson
"Arthur and Jesse are compelling characters and the romance feels legit. Lots of fun and a little dark Michigan history trivia to boot. Highly recommend!" --Christian Klaver
"Impeccably researched with engaging characters and a captivating plot, this one’s a must read." --Sarah Zettel
"The pacing of this historical novel is perfectly balanced, from desperate action to the sweet, slowing unfolding of a deep connection between the two men. Historical details create a vivid setting that heightens the stakes, drawing the reader ever deeper into this compelling story." --Deborah J. Ross
How about an excerpt?
CHAPTER ONE [image error]
A resurrection man watched the funeral, and his expression was hungry. He stood behind the huddle of funeral-goers clustered around the grave and didn't speak with anyone, which was how Jesse spotted him. A dead giveaway, so to say. Jesse stared at him from the corner of one dark eye. The resurrection man wasn't yet twenty. Brown as a dead tree. Straight brown hair under a frayed brown cap, long nose, sharp jaw, long brown coat mended twice, worn brown shoes that were nonetheless carefully polished. Someone who was used to hiding who he was.
The resurrection man met Jesse's eye for a flick. He had good eyes, that one—clear and blue and strong—and Jesse touched his cap in salute. Jesse had a gravedigger's build, wiry and a little short, able to throw an eight-pound shovelful of dirt six feet toward heaven, and he could hold his own in a fight against two men half again his height. The resurrection man was taller, whipcord, and Jesse bet he wore gloves to keep his hands clean when he robbed night-time graves. No one who saw him by day would know what he did at night.
When their eyes met, blue on brown, it created something interesting and indefinable, like that boundary moment when water touches a burning coal, or warm ocean air brushes a chilly shore. The resurrection man looked away. Jesse clicked his tongue in mischief—and the chance to make some money.
The coffin rested on a pair of beams set across the grave Jesse had dug only that morning. Jesse always put a scattering of sawdust and a few pine branches in the bottom of his graves so the coffin wouldn't rest on dirt. It made no difference to the deceased, mind you, but it made the family feel better. Two solemn boys pulled the beams away, and the pallbearers lowered the coffin with ropes braced around their necks like pulleys while the preacher said his final bit. While all this was going on, the resurrection man slipped away, confirming Jesse's suspicions that the man was a grave robber who knew the best time to leave was when the family was occupied.
As the family drifted off, Jesse barely overheard a man and a woman in conversation. The woman murmured, "He won't get up and come after us, do you? He's stubborn enough to try."
"Jesus, I hope not," the man muttered back. "That copper-plated sumbitch was bad enough when he was alive. I can't think what he'd be like, lurching around, dead."
Death brought out the truth among the living. Jesse looked in the direction the resurrection man had taken and gave himself a private nod. It was going to be an interesting evening.
Jesse finished filling the grave of Mr. Elmer Pitt (b. 1803, d. 1889), then went home to the little shack he occupied at the edge of Highland Cemetery, made himself a pot of strong coffee on his bachelor stove, dropped a slug of Irish in it, and waited until sunset. When the early autumn night slid in cozy among the gravestones, Jesse put his shovel back over his shoulder and strolled toward the grave of Elmer Pitt. There was time to enjoy the walk and think about how to spend the money he would shake out of the resurrection man. It had been a while since he'd passed a good night's drinking and fighting at a pool hall. Or maybe he'd buy a new pair of boots.
The trek was easy. Didn't matter that it was dark. Jesse had dug plenty of graves in Highland Cemetery and knew the place like the end of his shovel. He even had a map of the place tacked to the wall of his shack, with every grave picked out in careful precision. People thought that graveyards laid out the dead in neat, cornfield rows, but Highland's graves made a swirling mosaic that twisted around the hills and trees, creating stars and flowers and teardrops that only God and Jesse's map could see. Jesse had taken over as the main gravedigger in Ypsilanti from Mr. Suggs two years ago. Mr. Suggs himself currently rested in a grave well back from the road that Jesse himself had dug with extra care. Jesse didn't run the cemetery—that job belonged to the great and gloomy Frederick Huff, who issued daily orders from the caretaker's house and only emerged to complain at Billy Cake and the other fellows who worked the cemetery. But it was Jesse who dug the graves.
Highland Cemetery had opened twenty-some years ago, a bit before Jesse was born, and it had stolen away all the business from Prospect Cemetery. Didn't seem to matter that Prospect was half a mile closer to downtown Ypsilanti, with its growing Normal School and expanding railroad system. Prospect still failed to prosper.
Problem was, Prospect had both proven too small, so the city had bought a big chunk of loamy hillside outside Ypsilanti and named it Highland Cemetery. The local Catholic community had been scandalized at the idea of sharing eternity with Protestants and even Lutherans, so they had bought a bit of land right across the road for their own dead, keeping Mr. Suggs, and now Jesse, busy digging graves for both. Meanwhile, the townsfolk stopped using Prospect Cemetery entirely, and no one seemed interested in paying Jesse Fair or Billy Cake to even trim its trees, so these days the verge ran wild. The inhabitants didn't complain.
It was a serpent night, with the chill breeze hissing in the leaves. Jesse wound through the stones until he came to the new grave of Elmer Pitt. The thin glow of a little lantern on the ground illuminated the markers from the bottom up, and the familiar quiet sound of a wooden shovel biting earth came to Jesse's ears. Resurrection men always used wooden shovels. They made less noise. Jesse crept closer.
The resurrection man had already made good headway and was knee-deep in the ground at the head of the grave. Two canvas drop cloths lay beside him, one to catch the dirt and the other to receive Elmer Pitt. Jesse noted the well-worn leather gloves covering the resurrection man's hands. The man also had a crowbar and a length of rope.
"So you're from the University Medical School," Jesse said in the dark.
To his credit, the resurrection man didn't drop his shovel or even shout. Instead, he turned and focused sky eyes on Jesse. Mud stained his trousers.
"You knew I'd be here," he said simply.
"Haven't seen your kind in a while," Jesse said. "They passed that law a few years back that says paupers and prisoners go to the anatomy lab, which means the dead poor and the poor dead get a free train ride to your dissecting table. Last I knew, there was no end of dead paupers, so what brings you down here to my cemetery?"
"We still run short of bodies now and again." The resurrection man went back to work. He was digging at the head, which was why he'd attended the service—he needed to know which way Mr. Pitt was pointed. "I saw the funeral notice in the paper and came on down."
"What's your name, friend?"
The resurrection man stopped his shovel again and sighed. "Are you going to call the constable, sir, or just empty my pockets?"
Jesse had been about to name a figure, one that would give him a delightful evening's entertainment and leave him with a fine morning's hangover, but something stopped his tongue. Something in the other man's posture, his face, his eyes. Jesse cocked his head, and a coyote grin crept across his face.
"Depends." Jesse stuck out a hand for the resurrection man to shake. "I'm Jesse Fair."
"Uh ... Arthur. Arthur Tor."
The coyote grin widened. "Does it bother you to dig up bodies for that fancy medical school over in Ann Arbor, Mr. Tor?"
"It does." Arthur's shovel bit the ground again. "I had to kill a dog to dissect during my first term, and I don't mind telling you, my hands were shaking for an hour afterward. Still, I did it. Now I'm doing this."
Jesse cocked his head. "Why?"
"We have to learn anatomy somehow." Arthur's voice was weary, the sound of someone who had explained this a hundred times. "We cut up the body of one person who died, and hundred other people get to live. And I have rent to pay. Why do you care, if you intend to turn me in?"
"Just wanted to see what you would say." Jesse stepped into the head of the grave with Arthur, close enough to smell cemetery sweat. "Move over, Mr. Tor, and I'll show you how a gravedigger digs."
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October 2, 2022
WSFA Award Winner: Me!
Check it!
This year, the committee got more than 260 stories for initial consideration. They whittled it down to ten finalists, including my story. The finalist list has some heavy-hitters in the SF writing community on it, and there were so many stories anyway, so I wasn't expecting to win. I had a "It would be great, but no need to get your hopes up" frame of mind. I was in the audience at the award ceremony in Washington DC, and when they announced my story had won, I was floored. I was so surprised, I couldn't do anything for a moment but stare at the announcer. Joshua Palmatier, one of the editors for the anthology, was sitting next to me, and I could see he was thrilled. In a fit of exuberance, I hugged him, then went up to the podium to get the award. I also gave a short speech. This is what I said:
Thank you, everyone! This is amazing!
This story means a lot to me. Not just because I wrote it, but because of what it means. The main character in "Eight Mile and the City" from When Worlds Collide is gay, but that's not what the story is about. The story is about a hardboiled detective trying to solve a kidnapping and uncovering his own past as well.
Not that long ago, this story would only have appeared in an anthology of gay fiction and "only"
gotten the attention of the Gaylactic Spectrum Award. This story appears in a fantastic anthology
of wonderful stories that are geared toward all SF readers. It's not a specialty. It's not an odd outlier. Instead, it's one of the family.
Coincidentally, this weekend marks the opening of Bros, the first R-Rated gay rom-com put out
by a major studio. It's gotten smash reviews and is expected to be a box office success. At last, we get to have a happy ending. We've come a long way since the doom and gloom of Brokeback Mountain.
We still have further to go, of course, but every step forward gets us one step closer to full inclusion and acceptance. I'm thrilled that my story has become one of those steps.
I do want to thank the committee members for choosing "Eight Mile and the City." It means so very much! I also need to thank the members of the Untitled Writers Group of Ann Arbor, Michigan--Sarah, MaryBeth, Jonathan, Christian, Diana, Cindy, Ted, Christine P-K, and Christine D--for commentary that improved every line of this story. I want to thank S.C. Butler and Joshua Palmatier for editing When Worlds Collide and buying my story. And I want to thank my husband Darwin McClary for the inspiration I needed to write this piece.
I'm back home now and coasting on euphoria!
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October 1, 2022
Release Day!
Amazon: [image error]https://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-Men.../dp/B0B8TSG8T6Kobo: [image error]https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/resurrection-men-10Smashwords: [image error]https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1159285Apple Books: [image error]https://books.apple.com/.../resurrection-men/id6443259554Google Books: [image error]https://play.google.com/store/books/details...
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September 24, 2022
Resurrection Men
Once the students were finished with a given body, it fell to them to rebury the remains. They rarely took them back to the original grave--too much risk of getting caught. Instead, they buried them in any remote place. In Ann Arbor, a favorite place was a track of woodland just past the then-boundary of the university. People sometimes noticed lights out there, and declared the area was haunted. It became known locally as Sleepy Hollow.
A couple hundred years later, the university bought the tract of land but let it lay fallow. A few years ago, however, the university decided to develop the spot. The workers were startled to uncover hundreds of human bones. Thinking it was perhaps the dumping ground for a serial killer, they called the police, who determined that the bones were far too old. It was then everyone realized the bones were the result of decades of reburials by early medical students.
Benjamin Franklin's house in Philadelphia was also the subject of some bemusement. Recently, researchers discovered a cache of human bones buried under his cellar. The most likely explanation was that he let college students or other researchers rebury dissected corpses there so they wouldn't have to risk hauling them through town.
Eventually, the law was changed. Bodies of prisoners, or people who died in poorhouses, or who went unclaimed at the town morgue became legal for medical examination. Then people were allowed to donate themselves to scientific study. There's no more need for resurrection men.
But the idea intrigued me. What would it be like to live that way? Did the job bother these men? What kind of relationship did you have with the local gravedigger?
I decided to find out. The result was Resurrection Men. It goes on sale October 1, and is available for pre-order. Have a look!
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September 18, 2022
Rico and Raul's Retirement
They've had some problems.
We have a couple of large area rugs with abstract patterns that include black squares. Raul's radar sees these squares as the edge of a staircase, or "cliff," as the Roomba company calls it. When the Roomba's IR sensor picks up a cliff, it backs away. Unfortunately, Raul reads the black squares as cliffs, but he doesn't just back away from them; he just gives up and stops. Then I get a text message from the app that says Rico is stranded. I have to go nudge him away from the fake cliff. And a few minutes later, it happens again.
Additionally, though, both of them are running down. Their motors are getting louder and making clicking noises. And they don't pick up debris like they used to.
Time to remand Rico and Raul to the Roomba retirement residence.
I've ordered a new pair. They should be here soon. And Rico and Raul can rest.
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The New Car
An electric car would have been ideal, but they're currently out of our price range, and the infrastructure for recharging up where I work is sketchy at best. A hybrid was the best choice.
Of course, this meant we were car shopping during the worst new car shortage in history, and at a time when EVERYONE wants a hybrid because gas prices have gone so high. (Side note: it continually amazes me that a drop in gas prices always leads to an increase in sales of full size trucks and SUVs. Do people really think that the low prices will last forever? Enjoy that $200 tank of gas!)
Really, I still wanted an Escape, and we learned there's a hybrid version. I contacted a number of Ford dealerships in the area and got the same answer: nothing in stock, but I could get put on the waiting list for the 2023 model, and might get one in January or February. Yeesh.
Then I got hold of one dealer who said that just an hour ago, he'd gotten an email from a woman who had ordered a 2022 Escape Titanium hybrid (the exact model I wanted) in January and now in July, she had gotten tired of waiting for it. Was I interested?
Yes. Yes, I was.
We didn't mess around. Darwin and I rushed down to the dealership and put down a deposit that same day. (Another side note: the dealership had NO cars on the lot. Zero. Nada. Zilch.) The dealer said the car would likely arrive in mid-August. Then it was late August. Then it was early September. Then it was, "The car is on a train and heading our way." Then it was, "The car is at a dealer one town over, and we're trying to get it here."
At last I got the call: the Escape has landed.
We got insanely lucky. If I hadn't called the dealer just when I had, someone else would have. A few minutes probably made the difference!
Darwin and I drove my nice little Escape to the dealer for the last time and I said good-bye. We found the new hybrid waiting for us.
The written description we had called it "metallic blue," so I thought it would be similar to my old Escape's bright blue. But, no. The new car is a kind of blue-black. In some lights, it takes on a green hue. I liked it.
We took the car for a test drive. Many upgrades to the onboard gadgetry. Good handling. SUN ROOF!
Darwin said he didn't like the old Escape because you could feel it shift gears. Darwin already has a hybrid, you see, and hybrids don't shift the same way as gas-only engines. You can't feel it. I thought my old Escape's shifting was perfectly smooth, but Darwin was used to no shift at all, and it's why he almost never drove the Escape. The new Escape also has seamless shifting, so Darwin is happy.
We returned to the dealership and said we wanted the car. Many signatures later, we had the keys. Or key fobs, anyway.
We took the long way home, stopped for supper at a restaurant, and drove a little more. I like this car very much, and I'm sure I'll like the gas savings even more!
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The New Commute
I've had it before.
When I was hired in Wherever in 1993, I lived in Ann Arbor, then in Ypsilanti. I got used to a 45-minute commute. Then I moved up to Wherever and then to nearby Waterford, and I got used to a much shorter commute. It was heaven, really. Not only was my commute extremely short, it meant I could run over to the school building if I needed something I'd forgotten or to take part in an extra-curricular event.
But now I'm back down in Ypsilanti, and I have the new/old commute.
It's not as bad as I'd feared, but there's some adjustment going on. I persuaded the school to give me sixth hour prep, which means I can flee the building a few minutes before the daily student traffic jam, which gets me home half an hour earlier, though it means I have to take more work home with me, since I'm not staying after school to do it. I'm also not a morning person, and getting up in time to drive 50 minutes and be at work by seven is difficult. Back when I first lived in Ypsilanti, I hit on the trick of making a breakfast sandwich the night before and eating it in the car or at my desk during first hour. That saves me a lot of morning time! I also shower and pack everything for work before bed, so when I get up, all I have to do is get dressed and leave.
When I lived in Waterford, I got up at 5:50 AM. I ate a regular breakfast, not a car sandwich. Now, I get up 5:45, only five minutes earlier. Yay!
Additionally, I don't have kids at home. When I lived in Ypsilanti and the boys were young, I had to drive to Wherever and back, then go pick them up from school (no bus), which was another 40 minutes of driving. Then it was overseeing homework and supper and spending family time, as well as trying to keep a writing career afloat. It was exhausting, and The Commute made it worse. Now? It's just Darwin and me, and he's low maintenance. I get home at 3:00 and don't have responsibilities to anyone but myself. That makes the drive a LOT easier.
The nasty part of the commute is the construction. I have to use highway 275, and it's being completely redone. Miles and miles of the entire southbound side are being torn up down to the foundations and being completely replaced. All traffic is shunted over to the northbound side, which is now two lanes through Jersey barriers in both directions for a good ten miles of my driving.
I'm actually lucky, as these things go. I leave the house at 6:00, well before rush hour. Also, most people who live in the northern suburbs like Novi and Wherever work in Detroit, and they're all going south in the morning when I'm going north. In the afternoon, this reverses itself. So I never get caught in rush hour. Still, it's unnerving and a little stressful to drive miles and miles on narrow lanes set off by concrete walls, competing for space with huge trucks.
The construction is projected to last TWO MORE YEARS. This year, they're supposed to finish the southbound side. In the spring, they'll work on the northbound side, which will again leave two lanes of barrier-divided traffic in both directions. At least the pavement will be new.
I love living in Ypsilanti and I love our house, though, and it makes The Commute way worth it!
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The Garanteed, Never-Fail, Totally True, No-Fun Way To Lose Weight
These meds are replete with side-effects, though, and I'm starting to wonder if the side-effects are worse than what they're treating. Three meds I'm on can cause dry mouth, and at least one of them does. Two others can cause dizziness, and they do. When I'm going a good clip on my treadmill and stop suddenly, I sometimes get dizzy and my vision dims. It never lasts more than few moments, but it's unnerving and definitely no fun.
And one medication causes nausea and loss of appetite. That's supposed to wear off in a week or two as the body adjusts. It hasn't for me. I have this continual, low-grade nausea, and I only rarely actually feel hungry. Often just the thought of food makes me grimace.
I don't feel up to eating breakfast most days. I bring a bagel sandwich to work, in case I suddenly feel like eating, and I always still have it by the end of the school day. For lunch, my habit is to bring a frozen microwavable meal, and I brought one on the first day of school, but I had no interest in it by the time lunch came around. A couple days later, I finally put it in the work room freezer, where it can stay until I feel like eating it. Most days, I make myself eat some sandwich crackers.
After work, I sometimes feel a bit hungry, and I'll nibble the bagel sandwich. Sometimes I can eat the whole thing, but often I can only stand half of it. Evenings I do get more hungry, but never so much that I feel like cooking. I make small, easy meals, and I eat maybe half of what I normally do.
The foods I can stomach most easily are simple carbs (which is the polar opposite of what diabetics are supposed to eat). Sugary kid cereals sound good, so I eat them for a snack, and make myself drink all the milk.
I still run, and I still have physical therapy. The latter has become more strength-based instead of movement-based, and my smart watch tells me that I get about a half hour of aerobic exercise, so on PT days, I cut my run down from three miles to two.
All this means that I'm losing weight. Since going on this drug, I've lost seven pounds. This morning, I weighed myself and saw I'd lost another half pound. I now weigh 180. I was at 187 when I started the medication. (At my heaviest, I was at 215.)
This is good and bad. The weight loss is good. While I'm outwardly happy in the mid-180s and have sworn never to get above 190 again, my inner "it would be nice, but don't kill yourself for it" goal is the mid-170s. That looks within easy reach now.
The food part is bad. I worry that I'll lose too much weight! I also don't LIKE this new relationship with food. I love to cook, but not when I'm nauseated. I've basically lost interest in what's been a major hobby for a big part of my life.
Today, for example, I managed a bowl of cereal for breakfast and a banana for lunch. I ate half the banana, put it down, and forgot about it. When I realized what I'd done, I made myself eat the rest. I checked my blood sugar. It was 87. And I'm not at all hungry.
I have an appointment with my endocrinologist next week, and I think we need to talk alternatives to this drug. I'm also going to make appointments with my other doctors about the other side-effects.
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The End of Canned Food
And then there was Friday.
(What follows is a little icky. You have been warned.)
When I went downstairs to work out, I found five lumpy puddles of cat diarrhea scattered about the carpet. Apparently, the cats had both gotten sick and had decided the litter box was the wrong place to handle it. Ohhhh, I was upset. We have an entire main floor with wood flooring, and they can't do it there. No, they have to choose the one area of the house that's completely carpeted. It took Darwin and me considerable time to clean it up.
Clearly, something in the wet food got to them. I don't know if it was one can, an entire batch, or something in their physiology changed, but it ultimately doesn't matter. No more canned food for the cats, ever again. And they have been banished from the basement entirely. Once cats have decided that another spot in the house is a good alternative to the litter box, it's almost impossible to break them of the idea. They'll have to be content with the main floor.
Of course, we have no way of explaining any of this to the cats, and I knew what was coming. Yesterday, they started the food demands. They don't actually yowl and prance around. Instead, they both get all lovey-dovey, like they're trying to flatter me into feeding them. ("You're so great. We can't help adoring you. Yes, you! So how about some food?") I responded with an immediate squirt from the water bottle. They retreated. A bit later, they were back at it. Another squirt, another retreat.
I expected this to last all day, but by four o'clock, they'd clearly given up. I handed out catnip as a recompense, and they were happy with that. Today, they haven't bugged me for canned food at all, though Dinah firmly pointed out that the hard food dish was empty. I refilled it.
I wonder if they themselves figured out that the canned food made them sick, and they don't want it anymore as a result.
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September 12, 2022
Dear Abby and Dreams
This got me thinking. I very rarely dream about people I know in real life. My dreams are often populated with people, and in the dream I know them, but they don't exist for real. I dream about Darwin McClary or the boys or other family or my friends only very rarely. I've always wondered why this is. Just a quirk of my brain, I suppose.
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