David R. Michael's Blog, page 42

Baptism (Part 3 of 3)

 
by David Michael
 
Read Part 1 of "Baptism" here.
Read Part 2 of "Baptism" here.
 
Autumn Solstice
 
Myra walked on a black road, the sun nearly overhead, looking down at her. The winds had not yet found her here and so only her footsteps disturbed the dust. She stepped between stalled and abandoned Citroens and Tuk Tuks and BMW's. She stepped over the occasional broken bicycle. She saw the corpses and skeletons of men and dogs and the dried grasses and faded flowers and brown palm trees that showed her that she had been this way before.
 
The signs beside the road sported Asian characters she couldn't read. She wondered where she was, and why she had come back here. She wondered what had changed. In her. In the world around her.
 
She had opened her eyes to the sunrise over mountains she didn't know. She hadn't remembered closing her eyes. In the time since she had come up out of the waters of the Caribbean Sea she had never even blinked. She had not slept. Yet a part of her seemed to wake at the sight of the sun.
 
The sun had always been there, the great fire of the sky, watching her, perhaps judging her, perhaps weeping hot, dry tears, but never interfering.
 
Myra had stepped toward the sun, and her foot had come down on this dusty, black road.
 
Did the sun want her to see what she done? She needed no reminders. The continent-spanning furies of the spring had ebbed. The hot anger of the summer had banked. She did not remember everything she had done, but she had not forgotten that she was the doer, the cause. The world had been reshaped by her hands. She did not know what she had become, but she knew she had not changed.
 
She walked along the road, expecting with each step to find herself somewhere new. Except she did not.
 
She smelled the pungent, warm-garbage stench of a durian before she saw the little girl eating the fruit.
 
The girl was about ten. She had sun-darkened skin and brown eyes and black hair that hung straight down her back. She wore a sleeveless white blouse and white shorts, both of them as dusty-dirty as the girl. The girl sat in the small puddle of shade created by a dead palm tree, the large durian fruit in her lap, cutting at it with a chef's knife that looked like a sword in her small hands.
 
The girl saw Myra and her big eyes became even bigger.
 
Myra and the girl looked at each other as the sun looked down at them. Neither said a word.
 
Finally, the little girl spoke. "Are you well, mother?"
 
The sounds of the little girl's words, the shapes her lips made as she spoke, were completely foreign to Myra. But she understood. Just as she had understood all of the curses and pleadings and prayers of everyone who had spoken to her since the day she had come up out of the water. Understood, and ignored.
 
Mother. The word made Myra blink. She felt the pull of the water. In the flesh of the fruit, and in the flesh of the girl. She turned to face the girl, but didn't step closer. She wanted to ask why the little girl had called her mother. Myra had never been a mother. She had never been pregnant. And until now, since she had taken Antonio's hand in hers, she had never hesitated to take even the smallest child into herself, their little bodies drying to dust even before she could press them to her heart.
 
Myra had never been a mother, and yet some part of her was. Or had been, or had been about to be, and was only now remembering.
 
"Do you want some of my fruit?" the little girl asked.
 
The girl put the knife down on the ground beside her, then got her feet, struggling some to lift the fruit. She held the fruit under her left arm and scooped some of the soft flesh of the durian with her right hand. She bowed at the waist and held out her hand, offering the portion to Myra. She tilted her head so she could look at Myra, her long hair hanging on either side of her face. "It's good, mother," she said.
 
Myra dropped her arms to her sides, palms in. The moisture of the offered fruit, the juices gleaming on the girl's chin, she wanted them. Her fingers twitched.
 
The little girl put the bit of fruit to her mouth and took a nibble. "See? It's really good." Then held it out to Myra again.
 
Myra opened her mouth to say, Thank you, no, but she closed it before the wrong words could come out. Instead, as if she couldn't speak, Myra put one hand up, palm out, to refuse the gift, and put the other over her mouth. She shook her head. Then she gestured for the little girl to continue.
 
The little girl didn't move her hand with the offering. "I can't eat it all, mother."
 
Myra squatted where she stood. She didn't trust herself to step any closer to the little girl. She didn't know why she hadn't already taken the girl's hand and her life and walked away leaving behind two dry, peeling husks. She gestured again for the little girl to continue.
 
After a minute, the little girl shrugged and sat back down. She ate the portion she had been offering to Myra. When her mouth was no longer full, the little girl asked, "What is your name, mother?"
 
Myra only smiled and shook her head.
 
The little girl looked confused, then shrugged again. She did a little bow from her seated position. "My name is Suprija Sumalee," she said.
 
Myra nodded her head in acknowledgment. She watched as Sumalee continued to eat. She could not remember the last time she had eaten. Or the last time she had felt hungry.
 
After the little girl had scooped out and eaten three more handfuls, she picked up the fruit in both her hands and extended it to Myra again.
 
"I cannot eat any more right now, mother," Sumalee said. "Are you certain you do not wish to have some?"
 
Myra shook her head, surprised that she meant it. She stood up. She felt the sun upon her hair and her skin and looked up. Was this what he had wanted her to see? The sun, as always, only shone down.
 
She turned to continue her journey, to wherever it took her. She didn't know how she could leave the little girl. How she had not already taken Sumalee's life and beauty. Why she was taking such satisfaction in thwarting what had become the core of her existence. She expected she would come back soon and finish the job she had left undone. For now, though, for once, she wanted to walk away and not leave a corpse behind her.
 
Her step took her only a step away.
 
"Wait, mother," Sumalee said. "I will come with you."
 
Myra stopped and looked back over her shoulder. She watched Sumalee plunge the knife into the remainder of the fruit and pick it up. She carried the fruit in both hands as she walked to catch up with Myra.
When Sumalee was still several paces behind her, Myra took her next step, uncertain if she were running away. From a little girl.
 
In the sudden darkness, lit only by the stars above, Myra saw that Sumalee was indeed there. Part of her wondered at how that could have happened. Another part of her seemed to say –It is too late. But no longer with the same conviction.
 
The leftover durian Sumalee carried was eagerly eaten by the little boy, Imarogbe, that they found there, crying in the dark.
 
Winter Solstice
 
Myra turned around so she faced the children, her back to the empty air over the barren, empty bay.
 
Sumalee stood nearest, her face averted in a near-bow, but with her eyes focused on Myra, meeting her gaze. Behind Sumalee the other children huddled in groups of five and six. Sumalee was the oldest and the tallest. The youngest, Fatima, was a toddler who could barely walk. She peeked out from behind Imarogbe's legs.
 
She didn't remember when she had started sparing the children. With Sumalee's help, though, Myra had gathered these last survivors of humanity.
 
But this was the end. There was no more help she could offer them. She couldn't comfort them. She couldn't even touch them.
 
–It is–
 
"It is not too late," Myra said, refusing to complete the thought. "It. Is. Not." There was one more thing she–Myra–could do. She didn't know how she knew, but she knew. What her children needed was what she had taken from them. That other part of herself, the part that had come into her when she drowned, became silent.
 
"Holy Mother?"
 
She struggled with the words. She knew too much now. Words seemed so small and insignificant and devoid of meaning. "I am life," she said at last. "I am–I will watch over you." And she stepped backward, into the emptiness.
 
"Mother!"
 
Myra spread her arms as she fell. The winds became alert, wakened from their self-pity and wrapped themselves around her.
 
She looked up. She saw the children–her children–at the edge of the bridge looking down at her with fear and confusion. She saw the sun also looking down. She couldn't see if he smiled. She didn't know if he understood or approved. But she knew that he saw.
 
The winds bore her to the ground.
 
She did not die when she hit the rocky bottom of the bay. She was already dead. She couldn't die again.
 
Instead, she broke, like a vessel of clay, and the waters that she held within her rushed out and covered her.
 
More than water gushed forth. Because she was more than just water. She was life. Schools of fish fountained out of her with the waters of the oceans, and dolphins, and whales, and sharks.
 
She felt herself rising and she came out of the water, breaking through the surface like a geyser.
 
The winds blew through her now intangible form and carried off the clouds and the rains and the birds in swirling flocks of gray and white and blue and red and green.
 
She saw her children standing on the bridge. Some of them still looked down where she had fallen, watching with confusion and sadness as the waters bubbled up and washed away the dust. The youngest ones, though, laughed and danced in the mists and the new rains, faces raised, mouths open.
 
Around them the green grasses and fruit trees grew, exploding into life again, pushing aside the broken bits and pieces of what had been. The field mice and the spotted deer and the brown bears and more woke and looked around at the new world.
 
She had been angry, but now she smiled a rainbow across the chaos of the newborn sky.
 
It was also thus with her children. She could never stay angry at them.
 
THE END

Inspired by the painting, "Baptism", by Don Michael, Jr.
 

"Baptism"
 







Drunk on mojitos, high on love, and smelling of sex just consummated on the beach, Myra Acevedo went swimming for the last time. When she came out of the clear water of the Yucatan peninsula, she was no longer just Myra. She had become the end of the world.
 




"Baptism" Edition


Price




Kindle edition (Amazon)


$0.99




Ebook (Smashwords)


$0.99








 

Writing Progress Report

 
Writing progress report for the week starting Monday, November 15, 2010.
 








Writing Project


Words




Monday


Nano


2014




Tuesday


Nano


2011




Wednesday


Nano


1971




Thursday


Edited Gunwitch chapter 1 & 2.







Friday


Edited Gunwitch chapter 3, 4, 5.







Saturday


Edited Gunwitch chapter 6, 7, 8.







Sunday


Edited Gunwitch chapter 9, 10 (incomplete chapter).

















Total








 








Marketing/Submission




Monday


Posted "Baptism" Part 2 to the blog. Updated promo threads on KB and MR.
Fixed POD book interior for Horse Girl.
Created a Horse Girl core ebook Word doc.




Tuesday


Ordered proof copies of updated Horse Girl.




Wednesday





Thursday





Friday





Saturday





Sunday





 
Reading List

Salem's Lot by Stephen King.

 

Featured at Smashwords Books Reviewed

 
Featured Author: David Michael
 
I talk about The Summoning Fire (of course) and writing and stuff like that.
 
Check me out!
 
-David
 

Featured at Smashwords Books Review

 
Featured Author: David Michael
 
I talk about The Summoning Fire (of course) and writing and stuff like that.
 
Check me out!
 
-David
 

Nano Day 18 – A Crisis of Fiction

 
I have to stop launching into novels without proper preparation. That is, "proper" as defined by me, for me. Your "proper" preparation could be (and probably is) very different.
 
When I look at the (still incomplete) outline of the book I've been working on, what I've already written as well as what I have yet to write, all I can see are flaws. Flaws in the character concepts. Flaws in plotting. Flaws flaws flaws.
 
And yet: I like a lot of what I've written. Most of it, even.
 
So I'm pretty sure that what I'm suffering from here is a crisis of fiction. I can salvage what I have and move on. Maybe.
 
What I need, I think, is a bit of separation. I need to get my mind off this project for a bit. Then, when I'm not so close to the prose and the outline, I can look at it again with fresh eyes and (maybe) see how I can move forward on it. Or fix it (somehow) and then move forward on it.
 
To that end, I'm going to put this project on a backburner. I will now turn my attention to a (too long) incomplete project and see if I can achieve something useful there. Coincidentally, this long neglected project I'm picking back up is the novel I started for Nanowrimo 2007. That year I did write 50K words (and "won" Nano), but after the month was over I was less than halfway through the novel. I now wish I hadn't, but at the time it seemed the best idea to abandon the novel and focus on my "day job". I always liked the central idea (and characters and setting) of the novel. Now we'll see if I can pick up where I left off nearly 3 years ago.
 
This might hammer my participation in Nanowrimo, since I don't know that I'll be over the crisis before the end of November. If I do end up working on the incomlete book past a few days editing and reorganizing (both what I've written and the still-to-be-written parts of the outline), then I won't be back to this project until after the new year. I'm OK with that, though.
 
So…I don't know if there will be any more Nano 2010 updates after this one.
 
Let's see what happens, shall we???
 
-David
 

It's Simple Math

 
Imagine, as a thought experiment, that you are a company who sells ebooks, and has a proprietary ebook reader, both of which you want to promote.
 
You have, at this point, already established that you can sell most ebooks for a minimum of $.99, with enough margin to support giving the author of the ebook 35% of the gross ($.35 out of $.99).
 
You decide, as part of your marketing efforts, that you might get more support for your ebook reader if you appeal directly to the authors. The goal being to get more authors to create more ebooks for your ebook reader, thereby giving you even more market share. What's the fastest way to an author's heart? Yes, that's right: a bigger royalty.
 
So, you decide to double the royalty to 70%. You still need to clear at least $.64 per transaction ($.99-$.35 = $.64). So that means you have to set a minimum price for the 70% commission. It can't be $.99 any more. In other words, you need to solve this equation:
 
$.64 = 30% of X
 
Here's the solution:
 
X = $2.14
 
As any marketer will tell you, $2.14 is a silly minimum price. You need something like $1.99 or $2.99. $1.99 is too low. You can't make your margins at that price. $2.99, though, makes perfect sense. You clear your costs and you graciously offer more to the authors.
 
Voilá!
 
You set your minimum price for the 70% royalty to $2.99.
 
And, then, because some of the people on your board of directors are dicks who see an opportunity (and never liked artsy fartsy artist-author-types anyway), you pass off the cost of download to the author, eroding the 70% by a few pennies.
 
And you're done.
 
NOTE: This is just me thinking like a businessman. Some large, aggregator Web site that sells books and stuff–and a proprietary ereader–might have come to the $2.99 minimum price point for a 70% royalty by a different set of priorities. But if I was in charge, this is how it would've gone down.
 
-David
 

The Summoning Fire Now Available for the Nook!

The Summoning Fire for the Nook @ Barnes & Noble!
 
All Reese Howard has left is pain. Pain and a pump-action shotgun. The Old Man killed Reese's lover right in front of her, a blood sacrifice for whatever twisted powerplay he has in mind. She hopes the Old Man made a mistake, leaving her alive and armed. But she doubts it. He knows she's coming. Bastard has to know. Whatever. Reese plans to make him pay. And she plans to die trying.
 
-David
 

Nano Day 17

Today's Words: 1971
Month to Date: 26037
 
I didn't want to write today. At all. But I did.
 
The funny-peculiar-notable part of it was that even feeling less than rah-rah-write, and starting out doing just a word here, a phrase there, hardly trickling forth verbally, I clocked my 2K-ish words in about the same time I have all month (2-3 hours).
 
Was it a good day of writing? Or a bad day? I don't know.
 
In the financial industry there's a concept/strategy called "dollar cost averaging". If you're not familiar with the concept, here's the definition from Wikipedia:
 
Dollar cost averaging (DCA) is an investment strategy … [that] takes the form of investing equal monetary amounts regularly and periodically over specific time periods (such as $100 monthly) in a particular investment or portfolio. By doing so, more shares are purchased when prices are low and fewer shares are purchased when prices are high. The point of this is to lower the total average cost per share of the investment, giving the investor a lower overall cost for the shares purchased over time.
 
I think of myself as practicing "prose quality averaging". That is, so long as I write every day (or nearly every day), I'll be producing good (or better) prose at least as often as I produce low (or worse) quality prose. With the result that my "average prose quality" will be somewhere between the two extremes–and trending upwards. Or, to put it another way, my good days will offset my bad days, and (maybe) I'm getting better over time.
 
Which is why, even on days when I don't want to write, if I'm supposed to be writing, I at least give it a shot.
 
-David
 

Almost an Interview at Murphy's Library

Murphy Wants to Know: David Michael
 
I answer the questions:

Do you have writers block?
Where did the inspiration for the Old Man come from?
Trick or Treats?
And more!

 
-David
 

Nano Day 15

Today's Words: 2014
Month to Date: 22055
 
Back to writing today. I lost 4 days to my stall-and-reconsider, but I'm OK with that. I'll be back ahead of the Nanowrimo suggested daily totals before the end of the week. More importantly, because of the time spent not writing, I have much clearer vision of what the completed novel will look like. I like to know where I'm going, even if I'm not always entirely sure how I'm going to get there.
 
In other, semi-related news, I pulled this novel project back into The Journal. I like StoryBox OK, and it has some features I'd still like to use, but after so many years writing in The Journal (2 nonfiction books, 3 novels, 1 novella, and over 150 short stories) it's hard to use anything else. StoryBox is still improving, though, and I expect I'll give it another shot on a future project.
 
-David