Ada Maria Soto's Blog, page 13

Six Sentence Sunday (Eden Springs) 2

Presenting my weekly offering to Six Sentence Sunday. Here are few more lines from my western novella Eden Springs, a story of violence, sex, and astronomy in the old west. Coming soonish from Dreamspinner Press. (I just got the galley proofs.)

Here Aaron has told Professor Jonah Mann that after a week he still hadn’t caught all the bad men terrorizing the town.

“Mr. Byrne,” Jonah’s voice became clipped again. “I have a student who has not spoken a word in three weeks, and I’ve had to bury another two. I want to see these men disemboweled, drawn, quartered, and then I want the opportunity to get creative.”

Aaron was sure Jonah wasn’t exaggerating in the slightest. “Will you settle for a hanging?”

“I suppose I will have to.”

Thoughts of an Expat on Anzac Morning

Today is Anzac Day.

I am an American.

My mother’s family arrived in the 1680’s. I am a descendent of men who signed the Declaration of Independence and hammered out the details of our Constitution and Bill of Rights. My father’s family can point to tribes that were on the land thousands of years before that land became Mexico, then after some wars and deals, America. I am proud of my heritage and I am probably about as close to being genetically American as you are going to get.

And yet through a series snap decisions, manic moments, and economic shifts I find myself living in New Zealand. My partner is a New Zealander, True Blue as the say. My children who are planned for the next few years will be New Zealanders. They will have accents, probably eat Marmite, their head of state will be Queen Elizabeth II followed by King Charles, and if they ever go to the Olympics the odds are good that they’ll be wearing black and silver instead of red, white and blue. Though I would be very proud either way.

I do have plans to teach them about their ancestry. I will do my best to convey the importance of the men who were members of the Second Continental Congress, and who threw rocks in Boston, and did their best to stand against the Spanish then Americans despite guns and flu and alcohol. But my children’s ancestral home will be on the other side of a vast ocean from the little island country where they will almost certainly grow up. These things will be abstract to them compared to their father’s side of the family. They will be able to say they had family at the creation of two countries because their father had family at the signing of the treaty of Waitangi, and Waitangi will be a place that we drive by on family vacations. And when they tell their friends that their family was at Waitangi that will mean something to those friends.

Why am I thinking about all this?

It’s Anzac day. All over the country dawn services have just completed. At 6am they march out the veterans, the ones who can still march, medals pinned to their old suit jackets, followed by the young soldiers and sailors who look all of twelve in their crisp new uniforms. The Salvation Army Band plays hymns and a local children’s choir sings. Prayer are said and some public official of note recites They shall not grow old, and everyone watches the sun rise to remember April 25, 1915 when the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps landed on the Gallipoli Peninsula in an attempt to capture the Dardanelles. Almost one in every four New Zealander didn’t make it home from that. There are other wars they didn’t come home from either.

My family has seen its share of wars. From the Revolution to Vietnam to a cousin who was in the wrong part of the Pentagon on a September day in 2001. Despite that I can’t say I ever got up in the dark of night for a Memorial Day service.

But for Anzac day I did.

Here in Auckland, where I am able to see the Auckland War Memorial from my apartment, I am an immigrant, and no matter how much I acclimate or assimilate I will an American first and therefor always apart. I can’t say ‘this is my iwi’, or ‘those are the gum fields my great grandfather toiled in’. There was no three month sea voyage to get here. There was an 18 hour layover in Hong Kong because I bought my ticket with frequent flyer miles. My children will be able to say those things and feel a connection to their community but the best I can do pay two dollars for a red paper poppy and stand in the chill to remember people who served a country that will never be truly mine but has been pretty nice to me so far. It’s the same reason I stood in the rain for two hours after midnight to pay my respects to Sir Ed as he lay in the cathedral the night before his funeral. Or why I cringed at the fact that John Key couldn’t manage two words of Maori during the Rugby World Cup opening ceremonies. They are little tenuous threads of connection so I feel a little less like a woman lost from her home.

So those are just my random thoughts on this Anzac Day morning. I’ll leave you with the appropriate words for the day then I’m going back to bed. Everyone be well and safe and may your loved ones always come home.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning,

We will remember them.

Six Sentence Sunday (Eden Springs)

Here is my weekly offering to Six Sentence Sunday. A few lines from my western novella Eden Springs coming in late May or June from Dreamspinner Press. A story of crime, violence and astronomy in the old west. This is part of a scene where Aaron, a tracker and scout, is hunting the bad guys with the local sheriff, and finds a child’s doll in a bush.

“That said I wouldn’t mention it to the Professor.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’ve known him for a few years now and if you strip away those nice clothes and dust all the stars out of his head he’s got a cold hard temper, same as any other man. And I know he wasn’t in the war but he doesn’t talk about his past and I’ve seen a look in his eyes… I’m sure he’s a good man, never seen anything to say otherwise, but let’s just say I wouldn’t want to be the one standing in front of him when he hears about that little doll.”

Aaron looked back down at the doll in his hand.

Six Sentence Sunday (Empty Nests)

This is being typed on my phone because I’ve lost all other net access.

This is from my almost finished first novel Empty Nests.

Dave pulled over a chair. “It’s just, my girlfriend’s pregnant.”

“Are you sure it’s yours?” He couldn’t picture anyone wanting to have sex with Dave. The chronic Cheetos stains should have been reasonably effective birth control right there.

Dave looked thoughtful.

Six Sentence Sunday (Through the Dark Clouds) 2

For Six Sentence Sunday another snippet from Through the Dark Clouds my contribution to the Dreamspinner Press 2011 Holiday Anthology. A story of love and hope on Christmas Eve 1940.

He pulled open the drawer of his bedside table wiggling it so it wouldn't stick. Without even looking he pulled out an envelope and a single photo. He drew his finger along the scalloped edges of the photo and turned it a little toward the light. In it Robert stood straight and tall in his RCAF uniform with a half dozen other men in front of a British bomber. It had still been summer when the picture was taken and Robert had only been gone a handful of months with promises to be home before the next school term started. After all the war couldn't last that long.

Six Sentence Sunday (Through the Dark Clouds)

For Six Sentence Sunday a snippet from Through the Dark Clouds my contribution to the Dreamspinner Press 2011 Holiday Anthology. A story of love and hope on Christmas Eve 1940.

John shut the door and balanced his dinner on the mess of papers covering his desk knowing the food would be ice cold in minutes. He also knew he wouldn't eat it. He dragged himself back to his bed and flicked on the small secondhand Bakelite radio that lived on his night stand. He watched it begin to glow. He carefully twisted the knobs, straining to hear voices woven into the static. If he was lucky and there was just the right kind of weather over the North Atlantic and not too much aurora activity, he could tune in the BBC.

Six Sentence Sunday (Dusty Sheep and Black Dresses)

This is part of a collection of yet to be publish short stories called Dusty Sheep and Black Dresses that I work on from time to time. This is from the story of Father Jacob who I love as a character, but I haven't really managed to find his place in the over story. He may get scrubbed from this and end up in something else.

He opened a small, dark box of tropical wood, lined with antique ivory. The vivid green of the powder inside seemed almost unnatural compared to the dusty yellow hue that permeated everything in this land.

He put a single scoop of the powder into the small pot.

He waited another minute for the water to cool to the right temperature.

He poured the water into the pot. He waited again marking the time by the stuttering tick of the yellowed plastic clock on the wall.

Six Sentence Sunday (The Science of Blood)

This is my first offering to Six Sentence Sunday. (or really, really, really early on Monday morning from where I'm sitting)

This is a segment from what I hope will be my third novel. I'm still having some problems with the second half of the second act (I trained as a script writer so my novels have three act structure). Yes it is a vampire novel but it has no teenagers, minimal angst, nothing sparkly, no one under the age of 35 and the primary vampire is an atheist so there's no whining about damned souls.

He drew the knife across his palm once again.

"Anyone else want a taste?" He flicked drops of blood into the dust at the feet of the crowd. "Keeping in mind the fact that I have exceedingly good mental discipline and know every word to the entire They Might Be Giants catalog. I can get Particle Man stuck in your head for a really long time."

The younger, or at least pop culture literate, of the vampires took three steps back.

Six Sentence Sunday

This is my first offering to Six Sentence Sunday. (or really, really, really early on Monday morning from where I'm sitting)

This is a segment from what I hope will be my third novel. I'm still having some problems with the second half of the second act (I trained as a script writer so my novels have three act structure). Yes it is a vampire novel but it has no teenagers, minimal angst, nothing sparkly, no one under the age of 35 and the primary vampire is an atheist so there's no whining about damned souls.

He drew the knife across his palm once again.

"Anyone else want a taste?" He flicked drops of blood into the dust at the feet of the crowd. "Keeping in mind the fact that I have exceedingly good mental discipline and know every word to the entire They Might Be Giants catalog. I can get Particle Man stuck in your head for a really long time."

The younger, or at least pop culture literate, of the vampires took three steps back.

Why the US Needs a Cricket Team. Seriously.

I know to most of my fellow Americans the game of cricket is the punch line of a joke. It's played by people dressed in white, the rules are incomprehensible, takes five days, there are tea breaks, and at the end of five days half the time it's a draw.

Well, yes and no. Test cricket can take five days, and there are tea breaks, though I don't think they actually drink much tea anymore. There is also One Day cricket which starts mid-morning and runs until someone wins. It take about a day. Then there is 20/20 cricket. Practically invented for TV it takes less time than a baseball game and is all about whacking the ball into the stands, if not right out into the parking lot.

People drink at 20/20 games. Sometimes a lot. The first one I went to was New Zealand vs. the West Indies and there were four and a half streakers (one didn't get his shorts down before getting tackled by security). Not only is 20/20 a fun game to watch with lots of 6s (home runs) but it's big business. Last year the Indian Primer League, which has only been operating since 2008, was worth 4.13 billion US dollars and last year's entire season was only about six weeks long. Top players globally wiggle out of their other contracts to play in the IPL. The really top end player can make a half million with bonuses for bowled wickets (strike outs) and hitting 6's. A few teams even have cheerleaders. Cricket is not just guys jogging around a green field wearing white. It's a major sport.

Now what does all this do with the US needing a cricket team? In large chucks of Central Asia cricket is basically a religion. I've heard more than one person say that the reason India and Pakistan haven't nuked each other yet is because it would really fuck up the cricket season. A few years back there was a clip on the news of the president of Pakistan giving some sort of speech. The cricket scores were superimposed in the top corner. Now try to imagine football scores getting superimposed over the President of the United States giving a speech. People would throw fits and the White House would certainly never stand for it.

So, right now, for good or ill, the US has managed to get itself pretty solidly entrenched in the area and is a little short on local support. This is where the cricket team comes in. It takes eleven guys who know most of the rules and can hit a ball with a stick to turn us from over armed, heathen, cowboys, to people who, well, play cricket.

And there will be a certain amount of local support, even for us Americans.

I saw this at the recent Rugby World Cup down in New Zealand. Rugby is New Zealand's national sport. Think about the way a Texan feels about football and you might get close to the way a serious Kiwi feels about rugby. The US sent the USA Eagles. Ranked 17th in the world. We played four games and lost three. And the New Zealanders came out and cheered for us. People who protest our nuclear policies, environmental policies, foreign policies and shake their heads over our health care and education systems came out and cheered because we were willing to send 20 guys to play their national sport and give it their all. Now as I stated we lost three of four games. We beat Russia who'd never been in a world cup before. But we threw ourselves at every game. We were willing to get bloodied, broken, and in the game against Australia, when we got a try after 25 phases without a penalty, even the Australians cheered (they were kicking our asses at the time, they could afford to be generous). For the 320 minutes of rugby the Eagles played people were willing to put aside any issues they had with the US and just watch us play.

Will we get the same kind of reaction sending a cricket team into central Asia? Probably not that big, there's a lot of baggage right now, but there will be some good will from it and considering the way things are heading some isn't that bad. Some can grow into more and enough with a little tending. We are so desperate to win hearts and minds over there we're exporting Sesame Street. It wouldn't hurt to try something people are going to be predisposed to enjoy.

Putting together a team wouldn't be that difficult. We have the Compton Cricket Club who are starting to get good and are already touring a little, and plenty of expats who grew up with the game. A competitive, if not necessarily top ranked team, could be put together in a year with a little funding.

And who should pay for this? How about the State Department? It's the State Department's job to try to keep the US on good terms with everyone else. Cricket is one of the largest sports in the world and we don't play it. At a time when pretty much everyone is in desperate need of common ground maybe we try stepping onto a cricket ground. If for no other reason than to let the rest of the world know that we are at least willing to try to understand something they truly love.