Lumi Laura's Blog, page 3

Silent Scythe

These past two years that I’ve been with Drina, I’ve slept on a backpacker’s mat, a thin air mattress. I’ve had an old cloth sleeping bag that I crawled into. My Roma picked this stuff up for me. In the summer, we frequently slept out in the open. Mosquitoes were sometimes a problem, and then I slept inside her wagon even in spite of the heat. I made my boyfriend then, Dragos, buy me some underclothes, and I wouldn’t let him get me those stupid thong panties either. The Roma girls sometimes wear them, but not me. I wear pants and a blouse. Some would wear men’s shirts, but I didn’t do that either. Drina had me wear a Gypsy dress when we worked together telling fortunes, but on the road, I liked to distinguish myself from my clan.

Now, since I’ve been with David, things have changed. I’m trending toward stylish things. And I hate it. I’ve never been one for heels, but now I like a little elevation. Not too much, but a little height seems to fit me. I have more confidence, and I like looking down on people. I think I’m going to be a horrible person when I grow up. And I am feeling grown up, or more so. I want to tell people what to do, and David is my quickest mark. And the sucker does it. Whatever I ask. I hate him for it. You know? I do it to make him mad, but he just won’t take the bait. What good is a relationship if you can’t fight a little? I certainly didn’t have this problem with Dragos.

I send my father emails at the prison. He always writes back. I don’t tell him everything. He doesn’t have much computer time, but eventually he always answers. I haven’t told him about David. I keep thinking maybe I should. I’ll write a little about David, and then I delete it. How can a girl tell her father that she’s in love? That’s just gross, and he doesn’t even know the guy. He’d want me to bring David to Codlea so he could meet him. What could be wrong with that? Well, somehow it seems to have implications.

—————–

I recently found that I needed a new group of vampires, vampire warriors to be exact, to make one part of my story work. I’m not completely sure how I  found out that they existed, but this is what I remember of the process.

I had a scene where my heroine talks with her friends about a fight they are about to have with another group of vampires, one where a lot of them are going to die. I knew the fight would happen, but nothing I did made the way it was going to happen seem plausible. Plus I couldn’t make the scene as scary and dramatic as I knew it was. It was as if I hadn’t found the reality of the story yet. They were indoors, the sun had set, and it was raining outside, a real cloud burst. I knew they were afraid, but I didn’t know what of.

And then I heard a knock at the door, their door not mine. And then I knew who it was. It was help, only it wouldn’t be perceived as such at first, and it was first contact with a group of vampires called Silent Scythe. It took a lot of probing to learn that their name is Silent Scythe, but once I did, I realized that these are a secret society of vampires who patrol the edges of vampire existence policing and eliminating those who commit atrocities, either against other vampires or against the civilian population. They are neither police nor military, but they act somewhat like both.

I’ve created a website for Silent Scythe where I’ll be posting more information about the organization as I learn about it.

Vampires are immortal and really difficult to kill. Atrocities cannot go unpunished, and here we’re talking about the real extremes of bad behavior. Vampires are by their very nature not very good people. They are parasites. They feed off humans. So we’re talking extreme behavior patters that even vampires consider totally unacceptable. Silent Scythe eliminates them. They also confine some to fully understand who they are before they act, but generally they deal with only those where questions of guilt and whether they should be eliminated don’t arise. They don’t deal with borderline moral questions. They cull the worst of the worst. Plus, it’s not as if they aren’t already dead.

Anyway, this is the new group of vampires who come to my heroine. I also wondered why she hadn’t heard about them before, and then I realized that she had. She had stumbled onto two vampires having a conversation earlier on, but never found out who it was her friend was talking to. And I realized that that friend wasn’t who my heroin thought she was either. All very illuminating and exciting.

More and more I’m learning that writing fiction isn’t about making stuff up. It’s about discovery, allowing the story to spontaneously generate itself. Sure I plan ahead. I realize that the central conflict is what the story is about, but all I have to do is concentrate on it, hold it in my mind and watch the action take place. Discovery. It’s like walking into a dark room and bumping into things. You keep stumbling about, and pretty soon you know everything in there, including who might be hiding in a corner to jump you.

Another Update 22 Oct 2012

I wasn’t as close to being finished with my novel as I thought. Essentially, I have some missing scenes, and actually some missing characters. My David Kennedy, yes that’s his last name, Kennedy, has been asking questions about some scenes. They were obvious omissions, but somehow they’d escaped me. David is really good about not writing my novel for me. He just asks questions that any good reader would ask, and the deficiencies become obvious. Now I’m really excited about a couple of new scenes  I get to write, scenes that will bring my characters together and provide insight into their natures, who they are together. This is so exciting.

On the home front. My father says he’s okay at Codlea, but I know that he must be hating himself for being back inside having once been out. Anyway, they have him on a work detail and he’s okay with that. The other thing is that now he actually has been assigned a lawyer that can sort through how he got released but was then re-incarcerated. He’s also been to see the brother of the man my father killed along with the sister, and it looks like they may be able to work out another release in the not too distant future. Still a few years, but not the decades he was in for before. They are also working with the prosecutor, the man who actually got my father convicted in the first place, and he seems to have changed his tune a little also.

Drina’s health is still failing. I worry about her. Yesterday, she didn’t need for me to work because she didn’t open her business. I asked her if I could do anything for her. If she needed anything. She had me go to the farmacie buy her some pain medication. She said she just wanted to sleep. I went to the voievod, the leader of her clan, and he said he would contact their doctor. They have one that comes around once every two weeks or so, but will come when needed.

David and I have started fighting. Yes, I knew it was going to happen, and I was dreading it, but now here it is. He does too much for me, and I find it condescending. I wanted to do the cooking last night, but he wanted to too. I told him no, that it was my turn. He said he had something special he wanted to fix for me, and I told him I didn’t want to eat it. We argued for a half hour. Finally, he looked at me and smiled.

“What’s that about?” I asked.

“We’re fighting,” he said.

“I know,” I said. “And now you’re laughing at me, and it’s horrible.”

“No! I’m laughing at us. We’re fighting, and I still love you,” he said.

“You’re being an asshole and a shithead.” I start the bad language thing when I get mad. I can’t help it.

“That’s not fair,” he said. “Name calling is off limits.”

“Then you’d have the advantage, cause that’s the way I express myself.”

“Okay, you can cook,” he said.

“But I don’t want to anymore. I might poison you.”

“I’ll watch you.” And the he took a step toward me. He was still smiling.

I felt so stupid, but I grabbed him and hugged him anyway.

One of my teachers the last year I went to school talked to us about different kinds of love. Parental love. Sexual love. Infatuation. But the one  that impressed me the most was something she called unconditional love. She said that parents generally have it for their children. I think my father felt that way about me, but I’m not so sure about my mother anymore. My teacher also said that it can occur in relationships but that it generally takes years to fully develop. I’ve been wondering if that’s what’s happening to David and me. Or is it infatuation?

That night after we fought when we were in bed together, I asked David about it. If he thought that we could ever care for each other that way. He didn’t answer. He just held me  close and buried his face in my hair. I’ve never had anyone hold me in their arms that long.

I’ve heard from other girls that talk like that too soon can end a relationship. I catch David watching me. And I watch him a lot when he’s not aware. I try to see him like he’s a wild animal just being his natural self. I wish I could have watched him before we came to know each other. Who is he? Why does a man from another country love me? Why am I so wrapped up in him?

Oh God no, not love!

Yes, I’ve been away for a long while, but now I’m back and with a lot of news. First, my father is still in Codlea Prison. He sends me an email every evening. He’s quite proficient now with a computer, but he still writes mostly about the crops he’s caring for. They’ve had fruit and vegetables all summer, and the field crops are ready for the harvest. They send most of it out for sale to the local community, but much of it is consumed there at the prison.

Now for the real news. David from Edinburgh has been here with me for the past month. I told him not to come, but he did anyway. When he first arrived, I didn’t know what to think of him. He was a stranger. After all, we’d only known each other for a couple of days while I was in Edinburgh visiting my mother. Yes, we’d exchanged emails and chatted from time to time, but someone staring you in the face is so totally different. But then we started warming toward each other and got cuddly a lot sooner than I expected.

I still spend several hours a day with Drina, but most of my time is spent with David. He’s rented a small flat in a small community here in the Carpathian Mountains, exactly where I can’t say because of my own situation with the authorities and also because my band of Roma have become increasingly suspicious of what is said about them online.

David and I spend most of our time translating and editing my vampire novel. I tell you, it’s like we’re married. I go off to work during the day and come home to him in the evenings, and he has a home-cooked meal ready for me. The guy is a saint. He’s reworked most of Dragos’ translation to make it sound more European. I don’t expect large sales, but I do want it to have a proper translation. David also talks to me about vampire mythology. The  backstory is at least as important as the novel. We’re also working a revision of my short stories. Most of the mythology  shows up in them. I’m also writing a new short story now and then. David and I have fallen into my vampire world, and it seems more real than do our own lives. We talk of my characters all the time, and when we’re out and about, we talk about which of my characters would like this or that, and how they would deal with simple life situations. We even took a trip up to Sinaia and walked the streets my characters walk. I’d already been to them on Google Maps Street View, but being there still made a big impression.

And, yes, I’m in love with David. I have difficulty dragging myself away from him in the mornings, and I’m so anxious to get back home to him in the evenings that I’m just his pitiful little puppy. I can’t help myself. On days I don’t have to work, we lounge around in bed for much of the day talking of books we’ve read or searching the internet together. We both have laptops, so we sit shoulder-to-shoulder and do our own thing but keep a close eye on what the other is doing. We read all the time we’re not writing. Mostly we pull books off Gutenberg, or we pull free books off Smashwords or some other website that has free books from self-published authors. We stay away from anything about vampires because we don’t want to contaminate my vampire world with ideas from other authors.

I’ve never known anyone who laughs as much as David. Everything is a joke to him, except that at the same time, he’s deadly serious. He says that life is much too important to take seriously. I worry all the time about what I’m going to do when he leaves. I cling to him like a lost puppy. He’s threatening not to  return to Edinburgh for his classes this fall. Or at least he was threatening. He actually did it. He’s here until Christmas now.

You’d think it’d make me happy with him staying, and I couldn’t bear to see him go, but when he said he was staying, I cried for an hour. Cried with my arms around his neck like a leach, clinging to him with a deathgrip. I’m not sure what was wrong with me, but I believe it was because my life is so wrapped up in him now that I can’t even begin to understand what I’ll be like by Christmas. I’ve never felt so vulnerable. I could make it again in the world without him, but my heart has given itself  up to him to such an extent that I don’t know who’d I’d be without him anymore.

The really scary thing is that he says he feels the same way about me. He says that, “It’s just you and me against the world, Babe.” It breaks my heart every time he says it because it’s so true. I’m wrapped up in his arms all night long or cuddled up against him. I have to be touching his him or him me every minute or I can’t bear it. It’s just disgusting, but that’s just the way it is.

Drina doesn’t much care for David, or at least she says she doesn’t, but David likes her a lot. He makes her laugh, and it’s like she hates him for it. Drina has never been much on laughing, and it’s like it cracks her soul and bleeds every time he makes her laugh. The other thing she doesn’t like is that he helps her. Sometimes he’ll go to work with me, and he pesters her nonstop. He’s always helping her, and having ideas for how he can setup her carriage so she can get around better with her bad leg. David worries about her. Says she’s not as well as she should be. I’ve never taken that much notice of her overall health. She’s like a force of nature, but I can see that he’s right. He’s got me worrying about her too. The main thing Drina doesn’t like about David is that he takes me away from her. I don’t spend nights with her anymore, and she’s lonely. She won’t say it, but she is. She’s afraid he’s going to take me away, far away back to Edinburgh with him. I break out in a cold sweat when she says that. I don’t know how much longer I can stand all this happiness. Love, a place to stay, food on the table. What’s life about when you don’t have to struggle?

The thing that allowed David to come to Romania and stay a while is that he has a job writing computer code for a software company in Edinburgh. They send him specifications, he writes the code and sends it too them. They check it out, troubleshoot it, and then they send him another project. He’s on conference calls with them online constantly. He makes amazing money doing that. He’s a natural coder, taught himself through free online classes and a couple courses he took at the University of Edinburgh. He’s even got me coding a little. Everything seems to come so easy with him, and yet he says that he’s not that smart. Sometimes I just sit and stare at him while he’s working. He’s so focused. He drops into his coding world, and as long as I’m  cuddled up against him, he can go at it for hours. He loses concentration if I’m not close. We’re a couple of strange people. Like I said, it’s disgusting.

So where am I with Carpathian Vampire? I was away from it for a while, which was good because it gave me a little perspective. I’m striving for consistency and fleshing out some scenes a little. I have more problems toward the end because they’ve not seen much revision. I’ve hacked away at the first chapters ever since I wrote them. I’m always coming up with things people say at certain times and finding better ways to stage a scene. Still, I’ve got to quit dorking with it, or I’ll never finish.

I hear Dragos has gone back to his old girlfriend. Good for him. He had a confrontation with David when he first arrived, and I had to separate them. I don’t need another man or two in my life behind bars. David could get deported. I believe we’re all cool now.

Gail back in Edinburgh says that my mother is having problems with her new husband. Seems they’ve been having legal problems. He’s been arrested a couple of times, but always manages to make bail. My mother can sure pick em.

Back to Codlea Prison

So….. they did take Papa back to Codlea Prison. He sent me an email telling me not to  divulge my location because he’d heard  they were looking for me too, some sort of an accessory thing. I’m wondering if he’s told me the whole story. What’s he done now?

As luck would have it, the Roma are on the road again, so I feel somewhat safe. It’s been raining off and on, and that’s the pits when traveling. At least the weather fits my mood. Drina is being nicer than usual. Guess she figures I’m with her for good. She’s been sick lately anyway. She’s particularly good at telling fortunes when she’s sick, something about the mind stepping aside and letting the future filter through.

David has written again. Still thinking of coming to see me. I keep telling him. You’d think he’d never kissed a girl before. He wants to read the rest of Carpathian Vampire now that I’ve finished it. I keep saying that it’s just a rough draft. And I keep thinking of Edinburgh. I’m missing my mother now that my father’s back in prison.

Finished! Well… just the first draft, actually.

Yes, it’s been a while since my last post, but several things have happened. First the bad news. My father found a part-time job. Well, that’s not the bad part. It was a good job in an office, something a little different for him, and he was really excited about it. But then two days ago, the police came to see him. The brother of the man he killed had been to see them over Papa being released and claimed that his sister, who had testified for my father to get him released, was mentally incompetent. Apparently she had had some problems a few years ago and been institutionalized for a short while. Anyway, it was enough for them to come get Papa and put him behind bars again. For now, he’s still in Bucharest, but there’s talk of shipping him off to Codlea. Codlea doesn’t want him because they have too many prisoners anyway, so Papa’s staying upbeat. He told me even if they do send him back, it won’t be so bad. He’d missed the gardening he did while in there before, and it’s planting season right now. He sounded convincing, but I know he’s brokenhearted. I cried all night when I found out, and I hated my mother for being off in Scotland with a new husband and not here to help him. I got a lot of sympathy from the Roma, particularly Drina. The Roma, they know about the police and prison thing.

Time for feeling good, but still no time for celebration, not yet. I finally finished the first draft of Carpathian Vampire. Yea!! It ended  much differently than I thought because I realized that the last two chapters are actually the first two chapters of Volume Two. I have  been through the novel again editing it on my computer, but then, on the advice of my publisher, I printed it out, and now I’m going through it again, ink pen in hand. Amazing how different editing on paper is as opposed to editing on a computer screen. Now I’m bogged down in a couple of areas that don’t seem quite right. Have some work to do. I had to get over the “this is all crap” syndrome, but my publisher had warned me about that. I haven’t plotted Volume Two yet. I just have a good beginning with ominous implications, but no ideas where it’s going. I have inklings of my character’s future from the short stories I published in Tales of the Carpathian Vampire, but it’ll just have to ferment so that I can find where it wants to go. And it does seem to have a direction of its own. That’s the way with this story, it seems to have a life of its own, and I just have to search to find it. It’s not as if I have to make it up. I hate to see trauma in my characters’ lives, but it’s their story, I’m just telling it.

I took my last few chapters to Dragos, my translator, and he’s all pissed off about me writing in English now. He says it works best when I write in Romanian and let him worry the English, that my sentences are more complex, but I’m developing my own preferences for the way to say things. It was David in Edinburgh who gave me the confidence. I spent a couple of nights with Dragos while we worked on the translation, but I can feel us growing apart. He’s still jealous of David and has a tendency to sulk. Get over it, I tell him.

I have been communicating with David a little more. He’s thinking of coming to see me, but I keep telling him that he doesn’t know what he’s up against. It’s not as if I have my own home and car or anything. He keeps saying that he’s self-sufficient. Men. What they won’t do to see a girl.

Spring is here, summer is coming, and the Roma are on the move. We’re packing up and getting ready to leave this communal house we’ve been wintering in here in Bucharest. Can’t happen soon enough for me. Landlord’s complaining about more people here than he rented to, so he wants us all out. I’ve been trying to talk them into going north to Sinaia where Carpathian Vampire is set. Would be nice to see the place again. Might lose a little of its mystique though. Lots of tourists for the Roma to scrounge for coins, maybe a little folding money, and whatever else might find its way into their possession. I could use a new computer.

Always have Papa in the back of my mind. And here I am feeling like a fugitive again myself.

Struggling

Yes, I’ve had difficulty writing lately. My father being released from prison has sent me for a loop, like I’m in downtown Sinaia and can’t get off the circle. It’s changed my emotional landscape from feeling free to again feeling dependent and guilty about not being with him. He writes me an email every evening, and I answer. I feel guilty for living with the Roma now. I never felt that before because it was my life, and I could do whatever I wanted with it.

I’ve finished another chapter of Carpathian Vampire. I’m going to have a couple more chapters than I thought, not because I’ve added anything, but because some scenes have become chapters themselves. I’ll have 42 chapters, maybe more. I may actually split some of my earlier chapters into two. I’ve tried to maintain chapters because of my game plan, but I feel that I can only go so far in trying to maintain the structure I initially intended. The story has to be what it is, eventually. And now that I’m getting close to the end, it’s having its way with me. So be it.

I’ve seen Dragos again. Gave him the new chapter for translation, although to be honest, I’ve come to trust my English a lot more than I could in the past, and I don’t trust him as much. My little trip to Edinburgh lit a fire under me about English, and now I have more confidence in it. I’ve started arguing with Dragos about phrasing. It’s funny the way we argue. It’s as if we’re an old married couple growing tired of each other. I still enjoy being with him, and he’s seriously jealous about David. But this loss of freedom thing has started to weigh on me, and caused me to feel remote from Dragos and my novel.

I’m having difficulty getting into my novel the way I used to. For a while, I thought I was losing interest in it, but now I really believe sharing it with Gail and David has partially taken my story out of the fictional world. Sharing it with them, I can feel their intrusion. David has asked to see more, and I don’t want to show it to him. I know he reads post here on this blog, so perhaps he’ll understand. Perhaps when I’m finished. This is my story, and I don’t want anyone to get their hands on it until I’m finished. Everyone has an opinion. I want my vampire girl all to myself. I’m practically lez for her, I love her so much. Dragos has never been interested in my novel. He translates but doesn’t try to tell me where to take the story. He has no interest in my characters. That’s the way it’s always been.

My father doesn’t have a job yet. He’s staying with friends that he used to work with. He worries about me. Family is so sticky. Except for my mother. I ask Gail about her now and then, but she works all the time. Little Roger is growing and doing cute things, and I miss seeing him. Funny how little people get under your skin. He’s really sticky. I remember his little kisses.

I’ve been listening to this new music that’s sweeping Europe now, a girl named Lana Del Rey. She kicked Adele out of number one while I was there in Edinburgh. I can’t get her music out of my head. Some of her lyrics scare me though, “We were born to die.” Some of the relationships she talks about remind me of mine. She’s reading my heart.

I have a Facebook page, but Roma are funny about pictures, or can be. Particularly Drina. I feel like that too. I want to be incognito. Twitter is also a little touchy for me. You talk to people, and then you have a connection. Even on twitter, I’m always looking for ways to disconnect.

Now back to my next chapter.

A Homecoming

It’s been a while since I posted, again. I’ve not been feeling right since I got back from Edinburgh. So much has happened that I don’t know if I can remember everything, much less tell it. That and I’ve been worried about my father. I’ve not been writing either. My novel is suffering something terrible. But now things have changed, and I’m not sure if for the better or worse. My father is out of prison. I’d given him my email address when I saw him last, never suspecting he’d use it because he can’t, or couldn’t, use a computer, but he found someone there at the prison who emailed me that he’d be getting out. The pastor and nun had a big impact on my father’s prison term, probably more the nun than the pastor. She went to the prison in Codlea took the sister of the man my father killed with her. The authorities were looking for any excuse possible to let people out of prison because it costs a lot of money to keep someone behind bars. He’s been paroled. His murder conviction was reduced to manslaughter, and his prison term reduced to time served, so now he’s a free man. It just doesn’t seem possible.

Is it wrong to fear your own father? I’ve been on my own for several years now, and the thought of being back with him sounded amazingly good, but the actuality of it is frightening.

I worry about losing my freedom.

I met Papa at the train station. My Roma clan goes there almost every day, so I didn’t have any trouble getting there. I was so excited, I didn’t know what to do. Roma spend a lot of time at train stations, so I knew my way around. I couldn’t wait to see him, all free in the outside world. I had visions of our family being together, of Mama coming back home, and somehow it just being the three of us, as it used to be. I knew that wasn’t a possibility, at least I knew it somewhere deep inside, but I had my fantasies.

And then he stepped off the train. He was dressed in nice street clothes, cheap suit and tie, but they’d set him up for the outside world. When he saw me, he smiled through sadness. And my dreams of us being together, of us being a family shattered like was seeing him through a glass window. The illusion vanished. He hugged me and we cried together for a while. He wanted us to get a taxi and go to a place where we could rent an apartment, but I took him into the coffee shop, and we set down opposite each other. And then I told him what had to be. I told him about Mama being off in Edinburgh, her new husband and baby. I could see the devastation start to sink in, and then I wondered if I should have waited to tell him. But I realized that I had to start this off based on reality, not the illusion of what we wanted it to be. I’d learned a lot about people and the ways of the world in the years since he went off to prison and I ran away away from my mother. He said that he’d suspected something like that had happened because when she quit writing. He’d told her to find someone else, that he’d messed up his life, and that she should find another one for herself. Life takes a turn, and there’s no going back, he said.

He hated it when I told him that I was staying with the Roma, and that I knew how to make my way in the world, and that he didn’t need me to be hanging around his neck like an albatross. I told him that he’d be free to make his own way without worrying about me. Perhaps later, after he had a job and a place to live, we could talk the situation over again.

I felt that I should do more for him. I’d planned to. I had all these plans about me searching the internet and finding a job for him, but as soon as I saw him, I realized he was a man far beyond my puny teenage capabilities. My Papa is not an idiot. He’d always provided for us, and he’d even made it in prison. Never in any trouble. Before we parted, he told me that he had to get me away from those Roma. Sit tight, ChaCha, he said. I’ll come for you when I get established. I wrote down my email address for him. He’d learned a lot about the internet in prison since I saw him not long ago, and he gave me his new email address. But he had friends that he’d already contacted, and he had a place to stay that night. It wasn’t such a sad goodbye. We’d be in constant contact.

When I got back to the Roma, Drina was shocked to see me. First I’d ever seen her smile.

“You back to stay, girl?” she asked.

“For a while,” I told her.

“Humph,” she said.

I’m the most reliable person she’s ever had stay with her, regardless of my excursions with Dragos. That’d be another thing if I stayed with Papa. No more Dragos. Didn’t even tell him.

Which reminds me. I’d not been writing with all this going on. Plus, I was sick for a while, but now I’m back. I’m on Chapter 34. It’s going slow. I’ve had to backtrack to clear up some inconsistencies in the storyline, but I’m charging ahead. My vampires are quite different from what anyone has read about before. Immortal and one of them partially divine, it’s really a mess to get worked out. I’ve just got to get this rough draft all down in my computer, and then I can start polishing it. I have this vampire dreamscape I’m dealing with. Didn’t realize how much trouble I was creating when I envisioned what went on inside the psyche of a vampire and how it might be different from that of a human. I get these visions of what it’s like for them. Don’t know where that’s coming from, but it’s become more interesting than I though it would. Working a lot with the vampire soul and what happens to it, and how it’s different for my protagonist because my little girl vampire is different from all the others. She has a touch of the divine. A divine vampire. Now that’s an oxymoron if there ever was one. I have this vampire story cooking all the time in the back of my mind no matter what I do. Particularly at night, I fantasize my story  before I go to sleep and if I wake during the night. That’s where I get my real creativity, at night. It’s as if I’m part vampire. Plus, how can I know so much about a fantasy world? It seems more than made up, as if it’s always existed, and I just discovered it. At times it seems more real than the real world.

Anyway, I’ve gotten a lot of the real world worries behind me now, and I’m back to writing. Hopefully I can finish this rough draft and get started editing. I’m hoping to be at the end of the story in another two months. Only have six chapters to go.

Stay with me. I can’t wait for all of you to read it.

A Talk with a Pastor and a Nun

When I got back from Edinburgh, I talked to one of the boys who knows how to drive into taking me to a church here in Bucharest. The sister of the man my father killed goes there. I told the Roma boy not to wait on me. I waited out front in the snow until the congregation let out, and there she was coming out the church door. When she stopped to greet the pastor, I confronted her.

"Why are you here?" she asked.

"You know why," I said. "My father." I said that right in front of the pastor. She walked off and wouldn't talk to me, but then I talked to her pastor. I told him that she lied at  my father's trial. "She's in your congregation, and she lied and sent an innocent man to prison for life. Her lie is now your problem too."

"No, it's not," he said.

"You're in charge of her soul. That makes her your problem."

Can't say he liked it much, but he got in his car and went to talk to the woman. I waited four hours for him. I stood in the snow for two hours, and then a nun come out and asked me if I'd like some tea, so I went inside. She took me into a back room. The sound of a church with no one in it is so quiet. I felt like falling on my knees right there and asking God to help my father. The nun had a hotplate and some tea bags. A little goat milk. She received a call from the pastor, and he told her about me is the reason she brought me inside. I told her that the woman had lied abut my father. "Killing a man is a bad thing, even if it's a accident," she said. I started crying. I don't cry a lot these days, but my mother is gone. I know I shouldn't have run away from home, but I was mad at the world. Four years is a long time to be mad. But visiting my father in Codlea Prison, and then seeing how my mother had abandoned him changed me. It just hurt a lot seeing my mother with a new life and a new family.  After the nun and I talked a while, then she gave me a book to reed. She said she had to fill out a financial report.

Finally the priest returned. He asked me if I had seen what happened. I said no, but my father's not a liar. As a matter of fact he's probably too honest. He knew he was as much to blame as the other man. What I heard was that the other man tried to use a shovel on my father, but my father took it away from him, but the man wouldn't leave him alone. My father hit him with it. He felt bad about it, but there was nothing he could do.

The priest didn't seem very impressed with my story. He said he'd s talk to the woman again. I told the priest that life is a long time to spend in prison for an accident.

The nun drove me to the Roma camp. She asked me why I stayed with a Godless people.

I told her because no Christians would take me, and I had to live somehow. We'd come to Bucharest a couple of years before from a town in the northeast corner of Romania. I hadn't seen any of our family in years. Many of them had been killed under Communism. Wiped out almost our entire village.

It was getting dark when I arrived back at the house. Drina wouldn't speak to me for a few minutes. I believe she doesn't much want my father out of jail because that would mean that I'd leave her, and she'd have to find help somewhere else. I don't hold out hope for anything happening. I just write my vampire novel, and let the world keep turning. I care more about my main character than I do about my own life. She's a sweet innocent girl who has a lot on her plate too. I'm well into Chapter 34.

Home (?) Again

Sorry again for the long delay in posting. I've been a little depressed, and it's hard for me to write anything in that state of mind.

On the train back from Edinburgh, I could feel myself changing. Perhaps I had changed while there and just noticed the difference as I got closer to home. I'm less attached to life in Romania. I feel more of an outsider here with the Roma. As expected, Drina was angry with me for being a few days late in returning, but then she was mad about me going in the first place. She needs me, my help with so many things, and my being gone so long cost her money that she's going to withhold from the little she gives me in addition to my food and sleeping space.

My father is even more of a concern. I think of him all the time now. It's been snowing here and really cold.  This is not good. We've "rented" a large home on the outskirts of Bucharest. Five families live in it. The home must have been abandoned before we moved in. Really poor heating, but at least we have a little. The snow would be beautiful, if we weren't so cold.

Most of the Roma speak a little English. Since returning from Edinburgh, I won't speak anything else. I'm converting my identity. I no longer want to be Romanian. I make the Roma talk to me in English. Drina speaks English like an English woman, but she doesn't like to speak it. Sometimes she won't answer my English questions even in Roma, if I don't speak in Roma.

These are the lean months for the Roma, at least for our little band. Not so many tourists outside of the ski resorts. And we're not going there. They turn to stealing. For food they they get old discards from markets. The merchants know how desperate they are and try to sell it to them at high prices. We know one merchant who sets our his produce for us for free. There are a few good people in the world.

My concentration on English has improved my writing, even in this short time. I've always written in a combination of English and Romanian, but now I write just in English. Came back with a couple of English composition books Gail gave me. I have some questions when I next see Dragos. I've seen him a couple of times already since I've been back, but just overnight. He's not too pleased with me. He was a little jealous of David in Edinburgh.

I finished some more chapters for my vampire novel. I'm on Chapter 32 now. Eight more to go. I wrote them all in English. Dragos was a little disappointed, I believe. "What do you need me for," he asked. He's not been possessive until now. He's had some tough times too. I've patterned my character Mikhail after him. Except that I'm in love with my character and not Dragos. Mikhail is Russian. Dragos will never forgive me for saying that, but he knows it's the truth. I believe Dragos has had another girlfriend besides me, and I think maybe she ran out on him. I think he really loved her, and now he's afraid he's going to lose me too. He won't talk about it. Men are so funny.

I hear from Gail all the time now. She keeps me up to date on my mother, more than I'd like even. Hope she doesn't read this. As David said, it's the post-modern world. Or perhaps the post-post-modern world. David is ever on my mind.

A Day with David

So much for Christmas. I got a few presents, some badly needed clothes, and got eyed all over by my mother's husband, again. My mother said goodbye to me on the front porch, didn't even walk me to the car, and had Gail take me to the train station. So Gail and I didn't go to the train station. She took me to her family home where she stays with her mother, father, and five brothers and sisters. She has her own bedroom but usually sleeps with one of her sisters, has a big double bed. So I slept with her. Made for an interesting night. Mostly we talked and read to each other. She told me about an idea she has for a novel, and we talked about how to plot it. She's a lot smarter than I thought. Catches on really quick. She's read a lot more than I have, mostly trashy romances, but I got her interested in serious literature, if you can call anything about vampires and the paranormal serious. Still, I believe you can put some pretty heavy ideas in any novel regardless of the genre.

Gail took me to the city underneath Edinburgh. The biggest part is gated, locked and off limits without a guide. We went to a place that's not so well known. We got two boys she knows to go with us. Not a safe place for two girls alone. Mostly just a bunch of tunnels. Hardly enough room to turn around in. Dark is the word. Lots of homeless people. Talk about Roma smelling bad. And sick people, although it wasn't as cold as I thought it would be. Some really scary places. Tunnels that just go off in the dark into nowhere. No one seems to know how big the subterranean city is. No longer inhabited, but you can tell that at one time it flourished.

The guys who took us were really nice about it. Gail didn't say we'd be with them, you know, like on a date, but we were. The big one was sweet on her. And the little guy, named David, stuck close to me. He was a nice kid but didn't say much. When we went up one of the tunnels and into the dark, I moved in close to David, and he put his arm around me. We talked and chuckled together. Gail turned out her cellphone light, so we could listen to the sounds of the dark, and I let David kiss me. Encouraged him a little. Oh, to be hugged again! On the way out, we stayed cuddled.

I stayed a couple more days. Drina is not going to be happy with me. I feel bad about that. She needs my help. But David was after me. He takes classes at the University of Edinburgh. He grades weren't enough to get him admitted, but he can still take classes and hopes to get admitted for the fall. He took me for a walk around the University. He's into science stuff and maths. That would be the life. I could never go there, but my little vampire character could. I was thinking of sending her to Oxford, but Edinburgh is much more interesting. David told me that that's where Lord Byron's physician went. His name was Polidori and he wrote the first vampire novel, short story really. I've never met anyone as polite and considerate as David. Dragos takes anything he wants, and David is always careful to not touch me anywhere private. It's like Madonna said. I feel like a virgin when I'm around David. If he only knew, that'd be the end of that.

Before I left, Gail suggested that I stay and we get an apartment together. We can both find jobs, she said. We could write novels and chase boys. That almost took my my breath away. But in the end, I couldn't bear leaving my father in Codlea prison and me not somewhere in Romania. So I'm on the train back home, and I miss Gail, but I really miss David. I used to think that I was in love with Dragos, and I don't know that I'm in love with David, but when I leave Dragos, I don't think a lot about him, just getting away from the Roma for a while with him.

The morning after we descended into the underground city, David called. Gail and I had planned an afternoon of shopping, window shopping for me, to see some of the sights of Edinburgh. I had in the back of my mind that I was only a few miles from my mother, and that I wasn't with her. Sad. But then David called, and he wanted to show me something.

Gail said, "Go. He's a nice boy. You need this."

So I went with David, last name Kennedy, and he took me for a walk about the campus of the University of Edinburgh. He showed me his classrooms where he has some form of advanced maths that I know nothing about, and another where he has a class in quantum physics. He's such a normal boy, and he's no Einstein. He struggles, he says, but he makes it. He has to work to pay the bills, so he only goes part time. Turns out, he took the afternoon off work these last two days to be with me. Just an hour the first day, but a whole afternoon the second. Classes were out for the holidays, and the University was shutdown, but still a lot of students milling about. He told me about his work, just a small engineering firm where he does some filing and light computer work. The day before, I'd told him that I was writing a novel, and was a little ashamed that it was about vampires, but smiled and was interested. I told him about my Carpathian Vampire web blog, and over night, he'd gone there. He said that I have something different, that there's something different about me. He said that it has to do with the quality of my ideas. That's why he wanted to be with me. I'd thought he'd take me somewhere where we'd smooch a little and then he'd try to get into my pants, but he just wanted to be with me. He'd been to this blog also, of course, and read about my family, and even Dragos, which was really embarrassing. He said I should think about college, to not sell myself short. He told me about some literature classes he'd taken, and that he writes some too, but he doesn't have the courage to post it online. He's read the poetry of TS Eliot, Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney, Lord Byron.

David has never traveled. He asked me about Romania, as if it was an important place. He wanted to know more about the Roma. He even asked about my father. I don't know what to think about him anymore. Seems that I fell into a world that wants me to be a part of it, a world I can't have.

When I got back, Gail asked me what happened. "You look pale as a ghost," she said.

And now I'm on the train back to Romania and my little band of Roma. Dragos will see this that I've posted, and he'll have questions too, although he never asks me about other guys. My life is so scattered. I'm a mess. I told David that it was weird, him reading about me online and me posting about us. He mentioned something about the post-modern world, about us watching ourselves as we live our lives. We are the first generation to be in this position. He asked me why I don't have a Facebook page. I can't get David out of my mind. Bashful and sweet. Who would have thought I'd go for that? He came to the train station to see me off. Can you imagine? I told him to come see me in Romania. He smiled really big and laughed out loud. Brought tears to my eyes.

I'm asked sometimes why I don't put pictures on my blog. And I realize after talking to David Kennedy that I'm only interested in the narrative of my life. It seems to exist somewhere in the mythical world. To provide pictures would bring it out of that world into the real world, and I don't want that. My life is a myth, and in a sense, it exists only in cyberspace. Somehow, it's more real there and only in narrative form. My life exists only in my words about it. No. No pictures. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, words that are out of control. Who is Luminita Laura? She's a young woman novelist who only exists within her own words in cyberspace.

Sitting here on the train to nowhere, I got to thinking. My mother didn't give me her email address.