Randy Attwood's Blog, page 3

Too Much Fascination with Serial Killers?

Watching Hannibal, the TV series, made me realize I have rather a fascination with serial killers. And that made me do an inventory of my own fiction. Oh. Gosh. Perhaps rather too much of one. Here they are in order they were published.
First is Blow Up the Roses . Mr. Brown rents one side of the duplex that Mrs. Keene owns. Mr. Brown likes to take pictures and has created a sound-proof room in his basement where despicable things are being done to increasingly younger girls. But now he has an idea for a master project that surpasses any other.






Next was The Notebook . A professor who returns to his old college town for a seminar wonders if the notebook he left in the attic of the house where he rented a room might still be there. It is and what it reveals results in a story for which no reader yet has foretold the ending.







After that, Heart Chants , tells about a half-Navajo, half-White young man who needs to kill special Navajo women students so that he do the chant to open the gates once again to the Holy People in this second novel in the Phillip McGuire series.







Then The Fat Cat , which features Ellie who five years ago ran from her job as a TV newscaster in another city because two things. Now, managing a strip club, one of those things is happening again. Dancers are being found dead in dumpsters with their thumbs and little fingers cut off.







My most recent short story Drive, Chip, Putt, and Kill features a professional golfer who gets in some extra work while he's out on the tour. It will take a golfer to catch a golfer.








And last, Indigenous Clay, the third in that Phillip McGuire series--my current work in progress in which I am baffling stalled--has a character who has started killing the daughters of board members who run or ran the boy’s home where he was castrated.

Indigenous Clay: Chapter Two

Having received zero encouragement or comment after publishing the first chapter of "Indigenous Clay" I thought I would exhibit my masochist writer's ability for being ignored by publishing the second chapter.


CHAPTER 2
I dropped Jian off for school the next day. She carried her gi in a bag. Mrs. Wu would pick her up after school and take her to the dojo. I entered the Bierstube and enjoyed again the smell of coffee brewing and I went into the kitchen to say hello to Mrs. Badir, who was preparing her own stronger, sweeter brew in a small pot on a burner.“Kristi called and said she had to be an hour late. Zoreh has to leave on time today,” Mrs. Badir told me as she wiped her hands on her apron.“I’ll fill in.”“Don’t you let that girl take advantage of you, Mr. McGuire.”“Yeah, this is the second time this week, isn’t it? Wonder what’s going on with her?”I got a mug of coffee and went out into the bar as Detective Berenson was walking in. He was a regular. Me, being a former reporter, liked to pump him for information. I let him load up his plate and served him coffee when he sat down.“Don’t even ask me about that weird murder out in the county.”“What weird murder out in the county?”“The one I’m not going to tell you about. You’ll read about it in the paper tomorrow morning.”“Anywhere near my place?”“Other side of the county. Oil drum in a ditch finally rusted open. Farmer drove by with his window open and got a good whiff, stopped to take a look, and then called us.”“Male victim? Female?”“Couldn’t tell. Autopsy today. I get to go watch that after I finish breakfast. Pretty slick way to dump a body. Put it in a 55-gallon barrel, ram down the lid and roll it out of the back of a pickup into a ditch.”“No muss, no fuss, except for you when it’s found.”“Yep. We didn’t release the oil drum information. Want to give our officers and the sheriff guys, and a couple of gals, time to check other ditches for any barrels.”“Have a pleasant day,” I said and left the table.“Phil,” he called me back. “Don’t tell anyone about the oil drum, okay.” He knew Jim, the paper’s crime reporter, often stopped in for a drink in the afternoons.“If Jim hears it, it won’t be from me. I promise.”Bernie Berenson was a good cop and Jim was a good reporter. And I was a good bartender who knew when to keep his mouth shut and when to leak.We had a busy breakfast crowd. At eight a.m. I took the deposit bag to the bank and stopped at a grocery story to pick up some items and was back to the bar by 10 a.m. when Zoreh needed to leave.“Sorry I couldn’t stay, today, Mr. McGuire. Bud wanted me to go with him today to pick up his guest lecturer at the airport.”“You’re not expected to stay past 10. It’s my responsibility if someone can’t show up. What do you think of Kristi?”She just looked at me. Zoreh was beautiful. She had an almond-shaped face with black eyes and black hair. She was a Bahai, which is a gentle religion persecuted terribly in the Ayatollah’s Iran, which is why Mrs. Badir had fled her country and lived in the house I owned behind the bar. They didn’t like to say anything bad about anyone.“Kristi has a good heart,” she said, didn’t add the “but” that I could still hear loud and clear.She gathered her tips off the bar and a couple of regulars said goodbye to her and I stepped in and quickly saw that nobody needed anything.Shortly after ten I was glad I had to fill in. A really interesting blonde came in. Slavic face. High cheekbones. Broad forehead. Right-sized jaw. She took a stool at the end of the bar and I walked to her.“What can I get you?”“I’m told the coffee’s really good here,” she said in a voice that if you heard it on the phone you’d swear was a man’s.“Coming right up.”Coffee delivered, she asked: “You’re Phillip McGuire?”“Yep.”“Brian told me you were a pretty good guy.”“We pretty good guys like to recommend each other.”Her smile was slow to come but when it did I liked it. There was a softness to it, making lips pliable that before had seemed hard set. And she had a great set of dimples.“How do you know Brian?” I asked her.“I bought the house next to theirs when I moved to town and found out he was a carpenter and had him do some work for me and, of course, I got to know Meiko. God, that was sad. They were so happy together,” she said.“Yep.“Did you know Meiko means flower bud in Japanese?”“No, I didn’t. How appropriate. Wow. And what is your name?”“Yanina. Finnish. Spelled J A N I N A. My parents worked at the UN when I was born. Yanina is Janice in English, so Jan is fine.”“And what does Yanina mean?”“Janice is Hebrew for God is gracious. Brian tells me he’s building a tea hut on your land.”“He is. I’m told he’s just finished the last wall. I still don’t understand how he’s going to roof it because he said he just wanted to use materials he could get from my land.”“Cedar shingles. He’ll cut down some of your cedar trees, which he says should be thinned anyway, cut the trunks into rectangular chunks and then use a blade called a froe to knock off shingles.”“You seem to know a lot about it.”“We talk. Brian likes to ramble and I’m a good listener. I told him about a project I want to do and he thinks your land would be the perfect place.”“Really?”“I came on faculty last year in the art department. I’m a ceramicist and I want my students to experience what it’s really like to use indigenous materials for ceramics. I studied in Bizen Japanwhere they make a certain kind of pottery using local clay. It’s a very hard unglazed ceramic fired at high temperature in a wood-fired kiln. The kiln is constructed on a hillside so the air flow goes up in a controlled manner. Brian said you’ve got the right slope of a hill for it. And we’ll search for any sources your land might have to make clay we can use.”“Well, sure, why not? Too bad tea bushes won’t grow in this climate. Then I’d have native tea to drink in a tea hut on my land made from the land’s materials and tea cups as well.”“God doesn’t give you everything,” she said.I was starting to like this woman.“And sometimes God takes it away from you. And not very graciously” I said and that got me a hard look from her. Had something been taken from her, too?She wanted to start right away, so I invited her out that afternoon to walk the land and pick a site. She was wearing jeans and as she walked out the door I had to admit she looked damn good in them. And I’d always been a sucker for a girl in a pony tail.Shortly after she left, one of those pop-up thunderstorms released a clap of thunder and then a short deluge that caught Kristi as she was walking from her car. She ran in the front door, water dripping from her brown hair and her soaked sweatshirt, which read I am the Viagra. She put her chest on the bar and announced: “Damn these things get heavy when they’re wet.”*I’ve got a laser beam that crosses my asphalt driveway where it meets the gravel road that leads to my place. It triggers a bong-bongdoorbell in the house. When I heard it I walked out of the front of the house to meet Jan.“Beautiful out here,” she said and walked to me to shake my hand.“I like it here. A lot,” the fingers on her hand were dry and cracked and I guessed that was from handling so much clay. “Shall we go get Brian and he can show us the slope he was talking about?”“Lead the way.”I would rather have followed her. She had a very nice backside.I took her down a path that led through a variety of trees dominated by a huge sycamore on the slope of the hill to the creek. The thunderstorm from the morning had moved on and left huge white clouds in the blue sky. When they passed in front of the sun, the woods darkened. The redbuds were starting to bloom, which meant morel mushrooms might soon be found. The sun came out in full when we reached the clearing and saw Brian on one end of a crosscut saw he was using on a fairly good-sized tree trunk. He stopped and stuck a big paw up to greet us.“Help you with that?” I said and took the other end of the saw and we made quick work of it.“For the roof beam and posts,” he said. “Black locust. I’ll use interlocking joinery. No nails, screws, or bolts.”The four earthen walls were eight feet tall with holes in them for a door and windows, the largest being the one that faced the creek. They looked as solid as cement. Jan was running her hands over one.“These are really cool,” she pronounced her aesthetic judgment.“Jan tells me you think you can make shingles from the cedar trees. How about flooring?”“You’ve got a pretty good-sized white oak that’s half dead. I’d like to take it down and see if there’s good planking in it.”I knew well that tree. Before I had bought the land I had taken a journalism student there for a picnic. Kind of a sacred spot for me and I didn’t like the idea of the tree being cut down.“Save the dead wood. Be good to use to fire the kiln,” Jan said.Farewell tree, I said to myself. Nothing’s permanent.‘Let’s go to the site I think will work,” Brian said and led the way.It wasn’t far from the tea hut under construction.“Looks perfect to me,” Jan announced. “Could I bring some students out tomorrow and we’ll get started.”“Sure. Fine with me. Feel free to come and go as you wish.”We returned to Brian’s construction site and walked through the doorway of the packed earth structure.“I’ll build a fire pit in the center and hang a chain from the beam for a pot to boil water,” he said.Brian seemed more like the old Brian, the one before he got his heart kicked out of him.“Oh, Brian, here,” Jan said and reached into the canvas bag on her shoulder and pulled out a picture.“Piece of cake,” Brian said look at the image of some sort of potter’s wheel.“Called a kick wheel,” Jan explained. “We’ll build a shed big enough for the kiln and also this thing and shelves for the stuff we make on it.”“I can help build that,” Brian offered.“And we’ll pay you. I’ve got school funds. It was part of the package I negotiated.”“Even better,” he said.“Take a break? Come up to the house for something to drink?” I offered.“Not me. You guys go ahead. I’ve got good sunlight left today.”I took us up another route that went by Mrs. Wu’s garden where Swiss chard had survived a mild winter along with sage and some other herbs. I explained who Mrs. Wu was and, using the same somewhat accurate explanation that I used on Jian about her. Jan just nodded her head.When we entered the house she stood and took it all in.“Very nice. She started walking around the open room and went to the wall where two scrolls were hanging. “Those are spectacular.”“Mrs. Wu’s husband was an art history professor who supported contemporary Chinese painters. What would you like? Being a bartender and owning a bar means I have just about anything you want and the knowledge of how to make it.”“Gin martini?”“What kind of gin?”“Bombay. The regular, not the Sapphire. I’m driving.”“I make a good martini. I’ll join you.”The secret to a good martini is the ice. Those little cubes that come from the typical ice machine or refrigerator are too small. Too much surface areas means watered down gin. I got an old fashioned plastic cube tray from the freezer and plopped the cubes into the shaker, added gin, touch of dry vermouth, wrapped a towel around it and said: “Going to get loud now.”I shook the hell out of the shaker. I could tell she was enjoying herself. I was enjoying myself.I poured the drinks into the martini glasses admiring the ice floes that formed on top and under which I slipped the lemon peels.“Cheers. To the success of your kiln.”“This is really good,” she said, having taken those pliant lips from the glass’s rim.“So, from where did KU snatch you?”“Amherst. I was an associate professor who just came back from a year in Japansupported by a grant. When I saw the opening here I put together a proposal to construct a Bizen-style kiln using student labor and that got me the job.”A bong-bong filled the room.“That’ll be Mrs. Wu and Jian,” I announced.Soon, Jian was running into the room and skidded to a full stop when she saw who was with me. Mrs. Wu soon followed.“Mrs. Wu, Jian, this is Jan. She teaches ceramics at KU and is going to build a kiln on the land.”Jian didn’t even bob her head as she normally would do. She said something in Chinese.Mrs. Wu started talking to her in a tone of voice that was sterner than I’d ever heard her use. It caused Jian to run out of the room and go down the stairs to the basement.“I don’t think she liked me,” Jan said.“You speak Chinese?”“I speak girl.”“I told Jian to grow up,” Mrs. Wu said. “Not to be so selfish. Father deserves to see women if he wishes.”“Mrs. Wu, we’re not seeing each other,” I set the record straight.“Not yet,” Mrs. Wu replied and smiled.And there was that smile on Jan’s face with those dimples I now so liked to see.Tic, tic, tic, tic sounds came from the basement and Jan looked at me.“Jian’s into Kung Fu. She hitting her Wing Chun, a sort of a wooden practice post that Brian built for her.”“Would Miss Jan like to stay for dinner?” Mrs. Wu asked, shocking the hell out of me.“Oh, no. Another time,” Jan said and smiled again. “I’ve really got to go. Nice meeting you, Mrs. Wu. And thanks, Phil. There will be five students with me tomorrow.”We listened to the car start up and then bong-bong as it left the driveway.“She’s a good one,” Mrs. Wu said.“Now how can you tell so soon?”“Mrs. Wu can tell.”

New Year's Resolution: Break Writer's Block

I don't do New Year's resolutions, but decided 2019 would be different. I'm going to break the block that is keeping me from moving "Indigenous Clay" forward. This will be the third novel in the Phillip McGuire series about a burnt-out foreign correspondent who returns to his college town to buy and run a bar. Adventures come his way.

The first, "Tortured Truths," introduces Phillip and explains how his left hand got mutilated after he was kidnapped by the Hezbollah in Lebanon and why he left journalism to run a bar. The second, "Heart Chants," opens with him being asked to house a Navajo student from the local Indian college because two Navajo women have gone missing.

The third, "Indigenous Clay," got off to a good start. I like the characters and the situations and dialogue and have a good idea about the plot, but I'm stuck someone. One of the characters is a potter that Phil soon takes a romantic interest in. There's some good stuff going on in this book and I need to force it along. So that's my resolution.

I thought to get me going I'd post what I have done here and hope for some response.



INDIGENOUS CLAY
CHAPTER 1
Extending my bad hand in front of me, I inched forward into the silent, dark space. If one of my hands were going to be hurt, it might as well be the bum one. The right was clenched, ready to strike. I didn’t turn on a light: if I couldn’t see the intruder, the intruder couldn’t see me. Living in the country—this evening’s sky moonless and cloudy so not even stars provided any hint of light—the blackness in my huge living room was total. I knew this space so well I could move and avoid furniture. The large windows were that way, to the west. The living room opened onto the kitchen behind me to the east where the compressor of the fridge had just kicked in. I knew the sofa was just in front of me and I slid a step along its back. Mostly I stayed still, hoping to hear the other person move, giving me some indication where they were.“Wo Zhuo ni!” I heard the Chinese and felt the small arm around my neck as its body leaped on my back.“Am I getting worse at this or are you getting better?”“Oh, Poopy, I can feel your energy field. It’s so easy.”“Why can’t I feel yours?”“Fortunately, I’m half Chinese. You’re all gwailo,” she said. I reached to a lamp I knew was nearby so there was light and I could see the small beautiful face and felt my heart swept by the same emotion I experienced every time I saw her: incredible love.She called me Poopy because I called her Poopy Pants when she was acquiring language and other skills. She appropriated it to apply back at me.Her name is Jian because that’s what her mother named her. Her last name is McGuire because I’m her father. It’s complicated.“Where’s Mrs. Wu?” she asked.“It’s the anniversary of her husband’s death. She likes to be by herself with her memory of him,” I told her.“I see. Tell me again about Mother.”God, how I hated that demand. I gave the standard answer.“Your mother was beautiful. She was a Chinese student here and we fell in love. But she went back to China to be part of the Democracy movement and got killed in Tiananmen Square. Before that, she gave birth to you in Hong Kongand I went and brought you here,” I said, sticking to the story I had first given to her when she was seven.Jian, the twelve-year-old, gave me the look that said “One day I’ll get it all out of you.” She’d never asked me why my left hand wasn’t normal. I wondered what I’d tell if she ever did.Her hair—a light brown when she was a baby now getting darker every year—was tied back into pigtails. She was wearing a gi.When I’d brought Jian back from Hong Kong, the CIA having been good to its word that all her documents would be in order, I knew I needed real help with a baby. I needed a nanny. I thought I’d had the good sense to try and find a Chinese woman. Jian should know Chinese, I reasoned. So I contacted Rick Kramer who knew everything going on in Lawrence’s small Chinese community and he said Professor Wu had recently died and his wife, though not needing a job, was depressed and Rick thought she needed something to help her out of it. Perhaps raising a baby was just the thing. So I met Mrs. Wu with Jian in my arms and she instantly took her into her own. When I told Mrs. Wu Jian’s mother had died in Tiananmen it sealed the deal. Their son had perished there, too. I moved her into the house.As soon as Jian could toddle, she started imitating Mrs. Wu doing her Tai Chi movements in the morning. It was really funny watching a kid who could barely stumble doing Tai Chi, but it meant that soon she wasn’t stumbling at all, moving with a grace I thought amazing. Ballet lessons, I considered. Mrs. Wu had another idea.I was sitting in the car, waiting for Jian to exit pre-school, when I spotted her pig tails. A boy, a head taller and twice her weight had his hands out, rushing to push her down. She made a slight turn and grabbed one of his outstretched arms to take him to the ground. Then she did an amazing thing. She reached out a hand for him to help him up. I told Mrs. Wu about it when we got home and she said, “She’s ready.”“Ready for what?”Sometimes Mrs. Wu decides not to answer. The next day when I got home from the bar Jian was wearing a gi with a white belt.“She had her first Kung Fu lesson today,” I was informed.Now, at 12, the gi is bigger and the belt is black.A coyote howled.“Bear,” she said.“How can you tell?”“How can you not?”She had soon learned to roam the woods around the house. I happened to be standing on the deck when, at age 8, she walked out of the tree line holding something in her arms. I thought it was a puppy. It was a puppy—a coyote puppy. I ran down the steps worried that mommy might be nearby and be none too happy.“I heard him crying. His name is Bear,” she informed me. “His mother died. We’ll have to take care of him.”“How do you know it’s a boy?”“I know.”I worried Mrs. Wu was teaching her some Chinese psychic stuff.So Bear joined the household. When he matured, he avoided me, tolerated Mrs. Wu, adored Jian. They explored the woods together. Coyote urges would have him gone for days at a time. We’d hear a pack howl at night and Jian claimed she knew which one was Bear. They all sounded the same to me.“He’s hurt,” she said and went running to the stairs that led outside. I switched on the outside lights and followed her. Mrs. Wu came out of her room in the walk-out basement.“What’s wrong?”“Jian says Bear is hurt.”Outside, we saw Jian running to Bear who was hobbling toward her with blood on his right haunch.“I’ll get some towels and antiseptic,” Mrs. Wu said.I knew Bear wouldn’t hurt Jian, but wounded he sure as hell might hurt me. Mrs. Wu, who was soon rushing past me, could judge for herself. Bear let her examine and clean his wound as Jian held his head in her hands talking to him in Chinese.“Fight?” I asked.“He says you should see the other guy,” Jian said.I worried about her sometimes, thinking she could talk to a coyote.“Bear will be okay,” Mrs. Wu said as she passed by me, bloody towels in hand. I moved back inside as Jian brought him to the area next to the house under the first floor balcony. He snarled at me like he did anytime I got close.“I don’t think he likes me,” I had commented to Jian the first time it happened.“It’s because you’re male. He doesn’t like any competition for me.”“Then I feel sorry for any boy who ever tries to date you.”She replied in Chinese, which she did whenever she didn’t want me to know what she was saying.I often felt I was in the middle of a feminist plot when Mrs. Wu and Jian conversed in Chinese, especially when they would look at me and giggle or, worse, when they would look at me and not giggle. I complained about it one time to Mrs. Wu, who had this reply:“Learn Chinese.”Maybe I would—on the sly. Become a spy in their very midst.Jian and Mrs. Wu got Bear to lie down: Jian petting his head, Mrs. Wu running her hand over his back. Damned if the coyote didn’t stretch his tongue out to lick Jian’s hand.“I’m going upstairs and have a Scotch,” I announced.
I had this house built 13 years ago. My bar business was good enough that I had the money to buy land in the country and design the house the way I wanted. The first floor was basically one room. A large kitchen with its island counter opened to a space that led to floor-to-ceiling windows looking out to the east at the sloped hills. The second floor rooms were arranged along a kind of balcony so when you walked out of the rooms up there you looked down into the living room. Outside, the tinted stucco never needed painting and went great with the Spanish tiles.I went behind the bar I built on one side of the room and reached for the Glenlivet. Got a glass, put ice in it, poured the Scotch, set it on the bar. And remembered Jian’s mother and how much she would have loved Jian and what she was becoming.Soon I heard their steps coming up and when I saw them I knew Mrs. Wu would be wondering about dinner for Jian.“I took a pizza out to thaw. I didn’t think you’d want to cook tonight, Mrs. Wu,” I said.Jian chimed in. “It’s a special day. You’re remembering your husband. Pizza’s fine for me, too.”“Not fine for Mrs. Wu,” she said and went to the kitchen.‘Jian, you want a juice or something? I want to talk to you about Bear.”“Talk does not cook rice. I’ll help Mrs. Wu.”Mrs. Wu had extracted her wok from its keeping place then went to the refrigerator and started choosing vegetables while Jian got out a cutting board and knife to cut them.They started talking in Chinese and it seemed pretty serious. This time Jian was nice enough to explain.“She’s cooking one of her husband’s favorite meals. A simple stir-fried pork dish.”I sipped at my Scotch and ruminated.I liked living in the country, the closest neighbor 10 acres away. I liked the silence, the sounds of nature in that silence, and the weather.My bar, the Bierstube, was doing a good, steady, reliable business. It had matured into the place I had envisioned. Mrs. Badir was the first to arrive to make coffee the Swedish way I had taught her. Then she started the simple breakfast we offered buffet style: scrambled eggs, fried potatoes, sausage. We opened at 7 and her daughter Zoreh came to help her and tend bar for the drinkers who got off work from their night shifts. The day bartender came in at 10 when the first of the day drinkers arrived. Kristi, the new bartender, was working out pretty good. She had a mouth on her, but guys kinda like that. I got there after I dropped Jian off at school. I made the deposits to the bank, did the ordering, but used an accountant so I didn’t mess that stuff up. The night shift was strong, which Roger had even improved when he took over from Mike, getting a crowd that was more art-related than the sports types Mike had cultivated. Mike had worked for me for five years when he suggested we open a second location and make it a sports bar with lots of TVs and he’d manage it. I had plenty of time on my hands so agreed. I found space to lease in the growing area of West Lawrence. A strip mall was being built and that’s where we opened the Bierstube West. That bar had become my worry. It was doing pretty well, good enough that I thought I should be seeing more profits and wondering if some skimming was going on. I knew I should spend more time there, but the truth was I didn’t like the place. Worse, I didn’t like the clientele.“Come on, Poopy, dinner’s ready,” Jian called out.“Brain’s got the last wall completed,” Jian announced as we ate.Brain is really Brian, my carpenter friend who quickly became Jian’s best buddy. He’d sweep her up in his huge, powerful arms and swing her around until she cried “Stop, Brain! Stop, Brain!” I tried to teach her to say “Brian,” but he and she seemed to prefer “Brain.”Four months ago he had come into the bar and I set his brand of beer in front of him and asked: “How you doin?”It wasn’t a casual hello. A month previous he had lost his wife to a particularly vicious and quick pancreatic cancer. He’d met her when he went to Japan to study and work with a Japanese carpenter. They got married and moved back to Lawrence. Meiko was happy in her new environment and that environment found out she was extraordinary at flower arranging. People wanted to learn from her and offered to pay and she refused. A growing group developed around her sharing their arrangements. Brian would bring some by the bar.It had been bliss for a year. And then she died. So my question “How you doin?” was seriously asked.“Terrible. Awful. I wake up in the morning and still cry.”I wanted to tell him it would get better. Balls.“I want to build her a tea hut on your land.”“Okay. Sure. Why not?”“I want to use materials I can just get off your land.”“Okay. Sure.”“I won’t use any electrical help. All hand tools.”“Fine.”“Can I start right away?”“Sure.”And he had.Jian and I had gone walking with him to pick a site.“This would be perfect,” he said when we stood in a stand of saplings near the small creek.“Might flood,” I noted.“Poopy, nothing is permanent,” Jian said and Brian started, looked at Jian, and then reached down to take her up in his arms and give her the biggest hug she’d ever received.I watched the tears wet his big red face as he kept Jian squeezed against him.“You still need to build this thing?” I asked.“Oh, yes. It’ll be my gift to Jian.”So a tea hut was being constructed on my land. Jian and I—sometimes Mrs. Wu coming along—would go down to watch him work. The saplings he took down to make room for the structure he used for forms into which he put dirt and packed it down. It was an ancient Chinese construction method, he explained. He had made a tamper out of an iron plate and iron rod. I could barely lift it, but he’d pull it up and slam it down, compacting the dirt, adding more, and compacting that until a wall started to appear. So now the walls were done.“Walls are good,” Mrs. Wu spoke. “Wall in Chinese also means city, civilization. Walls bring order. Good for Brian. His mind needs order. I’ll buy special tea for when he finishes. Brian is a good man.”Jian listened with rapt attention like she always did when Mrs. Wu spoke for such a long time. When I expressed an opinion they sort of tolerated it. I wondered if Mrs. Wu thought I was a good guy. I wondered if I thought I was.“Any new plans for the garden this year, Mrs. Wu?” I asked.“Fence for the melon area.”“Told you I’d be happy to fence in the whole area.”“Bear kills rabbits. I don’t mind sharing with the deer, but they get greedy,” she said.Last year she had planted melon seeds sent to her from China. They did great. She had come back from the garden one evening last summer smiling, something you didn’t often see. “Can pick melons tomorrow,” she declared.The deer got ‘em all that night.Her garden was a joy to me, not just because of the vegetables she grew there. The garden was the rare instance when I put one over on her. It was hard to get anything past her and it had been a gamble. Shortly after she moved in Mrs. Wu asked if she could put in a vegetable garden and if so, where?“Sure, why not. But let’s find a spot where I can have a water well drilled for it.”So we went outside behind the house and I picked up a y-shaped tree branch and started walking around, the Y ends of the stick in each hand. When I got to the place where I remembered the Navajo elder had pitched his tent and told me water could be found there I manipulated the branch so the free end of the stick pointed downward and glanced up at Mrs. Wu, who had a quizzical look on her face.“Water is here,” I proclaimed.And indeed that’s where the driller found it. That Navajo healer, a singer, an hataathlii had known whereof he spoke.Mrs. Wu still hadn’t figured out how I did that. Guess they didn’t have dowsers in China. As the driller was going to work she told me the Chinese were the first to do deep drilling. It was one of many Chinese brags she made. When Jian was little and a snow came I mentioned that no two snow flakes were alike and Mrs. Wu had said: “Chinese discovered snowflake crystals more than a thousand years before Europeans.”“Just put some stakes at the corners where you want that deer fence and I’ll have it put up. Chain link is pretty cheap and I know a guy,” I told her. Good think about having a bar is you get to know a lot of guys who can do a lot of things.“Chain link is ugly, but I can grow cucumbers on it,” Mrs. Wu said.“And morning glories,” Jian added.“Jian, help me clean up and we’ll do calligraphy and then you finish your homework,” Mrs. Wu dictated.“I’ll wash up. You two go on,” I said.Yen Li would have been very proud of her daughter. She got top marks in school and I had Mrs. Wu to thank for that. And she hadn’t just taught Jian to speak Chinese, she was writing it as well and practicing calligraphy also gave her an artistic outlet.They went up the stairs to Jian’s room. I washed, dried, and put away the dishes then got myself another scotch.Jian was having another growth spurt. I couldn’t believe she’d soon be a teenager. The decade of my 40s had whizzed by as she grew and Mrs. Wu and I raised her. Mrs. Wu didn’t seem to age other than a white streak in her hair over her forehead. Me? My half century mark was coming up. I had to face the fact that in just a few years Jian could leave me to go to school somewhere if she didn’t want to attend KU and have to hang with her gwailo Dad. I was going to be alone with Mrs. Wu, if she stayed.
I didn’t go out with anyone after I had brought Jian home. I concentrated on helping Mrs. Wu raise a baby. Then when Jian began school I just didn’t feel right bringing a woman home with me. Mrs. Wu was understanding when I’d tell her I’d be pretty late. She knew I was probably going to visit “some woman,” but I never stayed the night with them because I wanted to be home in the morning for when Jian had breakfast. And I never introduced them to Jian. Those “some women” soon found all that pretty unacceptable. I hadn’t told Mrs. Wu I’d be pretty late for a long time.

An Experiment My Newspaper Columns

 In 16 years working for two newspapers I wrote a lot of columns. I had thought to publish selected ones in a book, but never did so. But I did assemble and retype the ones I wanted to use and had them edited. And they have languished all this time. Thought I'd see what scans of those sheets would look like online. What think ye?

How I Came to Write the Lovecraftian Tale: "The Strange Case of James Kirkland Pilley"

Edward Hawthorne had no premonition of the at first disturbing and later horrifying consequences that would result from his joining the Friends of Pilley Park Garden Society.

Thus begins The Strange Case of James Kirkland Pilley , which one reviewer said out-Lovecraft. Thought I'd tell the back story of how I came to write

Shortly after we moved into our house south of The Plaza here in Kansas City, they started draining the pond at Loose Park, one of KC's most beloved walking spots.
In one of the stately mansions that faced Loose Parkoccurred an horrific murder. A brother and sister lived in the house and one night the brother beat the sister to the proverbial pulp. I followed the story in the newspaper. At first appearance the brother sat in his bench banging his head against it. The next day the newspaper reported the man had died in his cell. A few days later the autopsy report said the man had died of "total system collapse," a cause of death I had never seen before nor since.
Loose Park was also the site of a major Civil War battle in Kansas City.
Something clicked. I had been a fan of H.P. Lovecraft since high school. I had just finished a writing project and I wanted to do something in a completely different style. TheStrange Case of James Kirkland Pilley .
Here's what an early reviewer thought of it:
"Back in college when everyone seemed to be reading Tolkien, I was entranced by the stories of H.P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft was one of the writers from an earlier era who depended more on a creeping feeling of unease instead of over-the-top gross-out effects that seems to be favored by modern writers.
"Now Lovecraft has been reborn for a new generation in Randy Attwood's The Strange Case of James Kirkland Pilley . The story has no vampires or werewolves that seem to proliferate in modern thrillers. Instead, it follows the path laid out by Lovecraft. There's the modern every-man who slowly descends into increasingly weird situations. There's the "bad guy" who may not be really bad, just a bit toys-in-the-attic crazy. Then there's the setting ... in this case, as in some many of Lovecraft's stories, a passage that goes further and further into the earth toward ... well, to say more would spoil the story. (I always wonder what Freud would say of Lovecraft's frequent use of damp, dark underground settings, but I digress.)
"Amping up the creepiness factor are a Civil War backstory, hordes of workers who seem kin to zombies and the dry rattle of bones coming from cells along the passages of this underworld. Together is makes for top-notch story telling. This isn't the type of horror that makes you gag on grossness. Instead, it's the kind of story that's the literary equivalent of a shudder caused be a cold hand brushing against you in the dark."

Collection of Stories Set in Kansas

I decided to collect all of my shorter works set in Kansas and publish them. The title is pretty trite: Kansas Stories and the cover is a sunflower, but it’s a nice big sunflower picture taken by Kansas City photographer Roy Inman.

There are eight stories in the collection, although one of them, Hospital Days is made up of 10 short-short works. The longest is around 30,000 words.
I guess I would classify the genre of each story as “literary.” Hope that doesn’t scare you off. The ebook version is here. The paperback version is here:
(A thank you to my friend Rob McKnight for suggesting this collection.)
Below are the titles and a link to the individual story if you’d rather just read just that one:
The Saltness of Time A Kansas snowstorm forces a car of college students returning home for the holidays to take refuge in the hotel of a small town where they encounter a fellow traveler who also seeks shelter and has a story to tell about the consequences of another snow storm decades before when a hideous truth is revealed about an old woman, stuck in her own time slot.
One More Victim
Reviewer: “It’s no small feat to write such a richly-layered story that spans several decades in a scant 62 pages, but Randy Atwood has managed to pull it off. One More Victim is a coming-of-age story, a love story and a story about extraordinary secrets hidden by outwardly ordinary people. Most of all, it’s a story about how war can leave victims in its wake long after it has officially ended.”
Blue Kansas Sky
Opening: There really is a Kansas sky, wide as the land is flat. On fall mornings it seems as if the stratosphere drops down just before dawn to touch the trees, make crisp the leaves of brown and red and yellow, rise again to paint the sky a deep blue, and leave the air as clean and as fresh as a newly-cut lemon.
This Saturday the crystals of the first light frost melt on the buffalo grass and wet my shoes as I go to catch a ride to town on the bus for the insane.
The Notebook
No reader yet has foretold the ending to this story.
Reviewer: “Loved it! The ending came too soon, being so captivated by their story. This is a story I would recommend to my reader friends. This is also an author I will be following and waiting for more amazing stories. So much was told in a short time...it leaves you wanting for more…”
Downswing
Reviewer: “An absolutely gorgeous story, voluptuous descriptions that just beg for someone to paint the scenes in oils. Who thought that a short story about golf could be so intense, so vivid and so engaging - I literally walked out to the mailbox with my Kindle in my hand, reading. You don't want to miss this latest from Randy Attwood - go get it, and his other works while you're at it. You really won't regret it.”
Hospital Days (ten shorts)
Reviewer: “This is a different type of read. It takes the reader into the life behind the scenes of a hospital. It is not like a TV show with heroics and handsome doctors getting all the attention. This is the grittier side of life with a true feel to the happenings as the reader is shown the life of a candy striper at first would like to be a doctor, but after what he sees in the real raw world a change of occupation might be in order.”
Innocent Passage  
A tale of innocence lost, as two adventurous boys discover tragic hidden secrets and their own true nature.
Bless Me, Father, forI am Sinning
Two teen boys take on the Roman Catholic Church.

Read the Original Version of SPILL

The original version of SPILL is now available as an ebook. One day before my publisher was scheduled to publish the book they got cold feet because I used Bob Dole and Dan Aykyroyd in cameo appearances, which was really hilarious. I would have had to pay a significant amount of money to buy the book back from them so I knuckled under and made changes and the scene still works pretty well. But not as well as the original. The rights have now reverted to me so I've published my version. Fred Underwood (Yes, I used the Underwood name well before House of Cards) is a failed and fired English teacher who makes his living as a small package contract delivery guy. One day he gets an idea how he can scam the political system and it works: he gets the girl, the money and a really cool skateboard video game. SPILL is a damn fun read. Take that, Big Oil! $3.99

Two New Special Readers for Crazy About You

Crazy About You continues to find new readers and I learn about it in the most unusual and delightful ways. One reader, Sandi Roper, asked to be my Facebook friend, and when I visited her page I found this:


"Just began reading Crazy About You   by Randy Atwood. The more I read, the story became eerily familiar. I took another look at the book's setting, synopsis and author and then I knew why. Mr. Atwood was telling MY story as well as his own. I also lived in Larned KS, and graduated four years after him. My dad was a minister, and part of the revolving clergy sent into the asylum to try and comfort its miserable inmates. I often accompanied him and came to know many of the higher functioning patients. They were my friends, but to my shame, I told as many sensational horror stories as anybody else about the big brick compound which swallowed up our little town. My first job was at the drugstore Atwood described the druggist's wife, it was surreal, because he described her spot-on! I later went to work for the old "Tiller & Toiler" he mentioned. Ironically, I later bought that old drugstore building and opened a gift shop there. After this remarkable trip through my memories, I will buy and read every book Atwood puts out. He is a remarkable writer and every Larned-native is sure to enjoy this book. I will now be "following " him on FB, and am anxious to read the rest of his books. Hope to become a friend on FB.

"And all you (Larned) natives, pick up this book . It's good a great read!"

And then the other day came this pleasure jolt.

We get a yearly termite exam and the guy who came today I recognized from the past. He greeted me and said "I really enjoyed your book" and I remembered from last year he had seen my books in a box in the basement and asked if I was a writer. Ended up selling him a novel. So I asked him what book he had read " Crazy About You . I couldn't put it down." How neat is that? This time around he bought SPILL .

Like Novels That Creep You Out?

From time to time I pick one of my novels to promote. Decided I'd spend some time on Blow Up the Roses . I have to admit I was surprised when the small press Curiosity Quills accepted it for publication. I believe it was one of their first choices. It's a very dark work, but the CQ founder thought it also the kind of gem a small press could discover.

Here's what one reviewer had to say:

Blow Up the Roses is a very dark story about murder, kidnapping, rape, pedophilias, and a variety of other human conditions of the most debase, debauch, perverted and deplorable nature. While this story is very, very disturbing . . . it is no more so than many movies that touch on the same themes. So, a reader should be aware of what you are getting into before you take up this book. Yet, Mr. Attwood is a master storyteller and his characters are genuine and authentic, even when they are monstrous. But, within this hellish, perhaps even demonic cast of characters, love literally blooms, and a story of hope, comfort, renewal and healing emerges in the midst of a nightmare. The story takes the reader to places you cannot begin to imagine and leads to an outcome that is terrifying, yet satisfying, too.

I have never known the end of a book when I start it. I always felt knowing the end was a fraud upon the reader. The characters should discover their own ends. In Blow Up the Roses , I didn't know why Mr. Keene deserted Mrs. Keene. I didn't know the horrible truth about Mr. Brown, who rented the other side of the duplex from the Keenes. I didn't know why Mr. Califano had this recurring nightmare of a rose garden blowing up around him. I didn't know why I didn't trust Mr. Griswald and his Amway sales program.

When I found out, I almost stopped writing the book. But sometimes characters demand their lives be put on paper. And sometimes it is far easier to create characters than destroy them -- until they destroy themselves.

Four Novels Discounting to 99 Cents

Over the next four days a different title will be discounted to 99 cents for a week. The commonality of the novels is that they were all published by the small press Curiosity Quills.
First up July 18 will be Tortured Truths , the first in the Phillip McGuire series that I was inspired to write because of my admiration of John D. MacDonald and his Travis McGee series. You read that mystery/thriller series not so much for the story but because you wanted to hang out with Travis again. I was hoping to create that kind of character. Mine is a burnt out foreign correspondent who returns to his college town to buy and run a bar. Adventures come his way. In this first series we learn how his hand got mangled and how he coping with a mangled psyche. It’s not often you get to meet the person who tortured you, but Phil gets that opportunity.


On July 19 the second in the series, Heart Chants , goes to 99 cents. Two Navajo girls have gone missing from the local Indian college and Phil is asked to harbor a Navajo girl. He’s also met an interesting woman from China and the plot interweaves the two. Heart Chants contains, I believe, the best, most complete retelling of the Navajo creation story available in a work of fiction. Several Tony Hillerman fans have said they like my book better than Hillerman’s works, and that high praise.
(I’m at work on the third in the series and it’s off to a good start. I hope to complete it this fall.)

Next up will be SPILL on July 20. SPILL is a riot to read. Fired English teacher who has failed at about everything comes up with a scheme to run for his state legislature in his rock solid red city as a Democrat. He gets his enticing bartender to also run so there will be a primary. He runs as an atheist, anti-gun guy also calling for the nationalization of Big Oil. He theorizes that Big Oil and the NRA will donate to his opponent and they can split the money. Works better than he could have imagined. This was great fun to write and many readers have found it great fun to read.



Blow Up the Roses is the first book of mine Curiosity Quills published. It’s a very dark read and between SPILL and Roses you get a feel of the range of my fiction. Mrs. Keene lives on a cul d’sac where many terrible things are happening, including the disappearance of her own husband. But what her renter is doing in the basement of his side of the duplex is chilling. Several readers said they almost stopped reading, but felt compelled to continue. Goes to 99 cents on July 21 for seven days.