Travis Thrasher's Blog, page 5

November 3

            I stare at the crack in the doorway letting morning leak out, wondering when it will happen. Wondering when the call will come. 

            I pass the yellows and reds of fall rushing by on my way to work, curious whether I’ll find some kind of detour that will finally start my story. 

            I enter the familiar building and see the same sights and feel the same sense of urgency, telling myself that maybe just maybe there will be something more and something else coming from this. 

            Maybe I’ll crack up too and decide to do a freebird and tear off my clothes and wander off. Maybe I need to do that to get something to happen. To find something interesting. To create some kind of change that will make that whole next-sort-of-thing-we’re-curious-about to happen. 

            I spot a page someone made a copy of (probably Casey who loves quotes) with a highlighted paragraph on it. I see it’s from Stephen King’s fabulous On Writing. Really that book could be titled On Writing and Living. I pick up the sheet and read the quote. 

            “Let’s get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn’t to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.”

            Yes they do. 

            Coming quite literally out of nowhere. 

            Two unrelated things coming together and making something new. 

            I glance at my hands, the freckles and the flecks of hair covering them, then I glance up and around and see a thousand of my friends watching and waiting like they do every day. Waiting to be noticed, waiting to be held, waiting to be opened, waiting to be read. Just like every single one of us. These friends keep me company and they speak to me yet they also sleep in a world of silence. I can hear them but I can never talk back. I can simply offer them to the rest of the world. 

            I want—I need—some unrelated thing coming out of nowhere. I feel like I’m in the hazy phase and I need something new under the sun. Or the moon—I’ll take whatever I can get. 

            I’m waiting and clicking in the moments of the day. Typing up the words in a report still doesn’t mean anything noteworthy is happening. I’m anxious and impatient. 

            I watch the cars through the window and I know something. 

            The Cubs won the World Series. So anything can happen, right? 

            I want to open the window and shout up to the sky and have someone hear me. To tell them to get me moving and to get this story going. We don’t have much time. We don’t, yet every day it seems like I’m wasting mine. 

            Every day. 

November 2

November 2

            The distant sound of scratching, of a muffled bark, of a collar clinging away in movement toward me. Then gone. 

 The distant sound of scratching, of a muffled bark, of a collar clinging away in movement toward me. Then gone. 

            I wake to hear a shout and laughter and rumbling feet and then open my eyes to see nothing. 

            I feel more tired today than yesterday. But as I go through morning motions before heading out to work, I notice a few things more clearly. I see a framed photograph on the table by my bed. I’m young and standing with my arm wrapped around a young woman. I don’t examine the picture nor think about who’s next to me. I don’t need to know that now. I don’t want to know that now. Obviously she’s someone and obviously she means something to me. Or at least she used to. 

            On the kitchen counter by my keys is another note, written with the same handwriting as the Edgar Allan Poe quote from yesterday. 

            Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly. ― Franz Kafka

            I can’t help laughing. 

            First Poe now Kafka? 

            Whoever’s giving me these notes sure has a dark streak going on inside of them. 

            But how am I getting them? Did I see this last night? Did someone sneak into my apartment last night to leave me a quote from Kafka? 

            I slip the quote on the index card in my pocket and then head out. 

**

            The day is pretty much boring except for the fact that everybody’s thinking about and talking about the Cubs. Which is cool even though I’m not the biggest fan. Actually, I never watch them and never watch baseball, but I’m excited. I’ll be going to a bar tonight to watch the last game in the series. I’m thinking they’re going to win. I have this hunch. 

            During the day, I get a phone call from someone muffling on the other line. I ask him what he’s talking about and he just mumbles some kind of number and then hangs up. I think it might be a prank and maybe it has something to do with the Cubs game tonight or maybe he’s just been at the bar too long holding down a precious seat in Wrigley field while getting schnockered. 

            I’ll admit it—I don’t have much time to watch baseball. Or sports in general. When you’re deep in debt and trying to do everything possible to get out of it, spending hours rooting for a team doesn’t do it. At least for me. 

            Casey reminds me of my current woes when she shows up to work around noon. 

            “We sold one book yesterday,” Casey says. 

            She’s twenty-four and vibrant and pretty and not deep in debt and has no clue how a flighty and flippant comment like this might feel to someone like me. But she can’t know and honestly, I hope she never knows. 

            “Well, at least we sold one, right?” I say, trying to give an appearance of optimism. 

            “It was Fifty Shades of Grey.”

            I wince. Casey knows I would. 

            “We don’t carry any of those books,” I tell her. 

            The good thing about running an indie store that belongs to you is that you get to determine what goes on the shelves and what doesn’t. People have asked me about those books and I refer them to good ole’ Amazon. 

            “I sold her my copy. For the store, of course.”

            I shake my head at Casey. “Keep the money. You deserve it.”

            Sometimes I get to HH and think it’s gotta be made up. This isn’t the era of You’ve Got Mail where you have competing bookstores being part of a plot. I occasionally go into Barnes & Noble to browse and it’s nothing like the B&N I used to know and love. A quarter of their store is now full of toys and products for kids, ones that aren’t books. Their CD & DVD collections are just plain sad. They still carry the same old same old but I see a lot of people browsing and sipping coffee and killing time and checking out things they’ll eventually order on Amazon. 

            Why in God’s green earth did I open a bookstore? 

            And how the hell did I just come up with that corny cliche? 

            I never say God’s green earth so where’d that come from? 

            “Oh, and hey—Mark—that editor—he came in yesterday looking for you,” Casey tells me before I head back into the office. 

            “Oh, yeah? Any reason why?”

            “Said he had a good story to tell you,” she says with a grin. “He said he’ll stop by today.”

            “Hope he does,” I tell her. 

            I need a little levity today. 

 **

            Mark arrives right when the rain begins to start coming down outside. He proceeds to start telling me the story even before I’ve said hello. I catch bits and pieces

            “—went beserk—craziest thing I’ve ever seen—ranting about spies and sorcery—“

            “Woah,” I tell him. “Slow down.”

            “Sorry.” Mark wipes the raindrops off his half-balding head. “It was messed up. All about this book he was reading.”

            “What was it?” 

            Mark looks around. Again, this sort of secret agent thing going on. I don’t get it. Nobody is in the bookstore anyway. 

            “The book is terrible,” he says. “Some attempt at horror. But really lame.”

            “It was so bad it drove your boss to lunacy.”

            Thunder cracks outside. Seriously. Right on cue like a vampire movie. 

            “Jack told me it was the manuscript,” Mark says in a grave voice and look. “But he said it was because the story was too similar to his own life. Like the writer knew him. Or worse—and this is the wacky bit he told me right before he started to yell and get loopy—Jack said the book was like reading a novel that had been written by himself. Sloppy and messy but completely and thoroughly auto-biographical.” 

            I laugh just to try to get rid of the sudden spooky vibe in the store. “Maybe the writer did his or her homework, you know? They wanted to appeal to Jack—who he is and what he’s like.”

            Mark’s face appears to darken even in the bright lights of the store. 

            “Jack looked me in the eye and said this—just like this—just like I’m saying it now—‘he knows the darkest things I’ve done—the things I’ve never told anybody’. Then he proceeded to go One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. “

            Now I’m really curious about the manuscript. “What happens in the story? Weird stuff?”

            Mark nods but doesn’t say anything. 

            “That weird?” 

            Again, he nods. 

            “I might have to check that out. Have any spare copies?” 

            “Again, it’s another bizarre thing,” Mark says. “The manuscript—all 450 printed pages—it’s gone. And Jack sure didn’t take it with him. He couldn’t have concealed a stick of gum.”

            In my mind, I hear Mark’s voice repeat Jack’s words in an epic sort of warning. 

            “He knows the darkest things I’ve done—the things I’ve never told anybody.”

            Maybe Jack had been reading Kafka and had embraced the whole “follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly” sort of thing. And his obsession included streaking. 

            The street outside looked as if someone had turned off the afternoon light switch. 

            “So, how ‘bout them Cubs?” I ask, trying to light a little candle of optimism. 

            “I hate baseball,” Mark said. 

**

            I have this dream later that night. After I’m standing for too long in a bar that’s too crowded drinking beer that’s too expensive and cheering on the game a little too much. Later, after I don’t remember being driven home or walking into my apartment or passing out on my bed, I dream a dream for me and the rest of Chicago. Really not for me but for Chicago and the rest of the world. 

            I imagine the fourth pitch being thrown to a Cubs player and being nailed. Popped and going and going and gone over the center field wall. Hit as if it’s a normal thing we do. Struck as if there’s no way I’m striking out. 

            Barely able to sit down and catch our breath and boom—it’s 1 to 0. 

            Then I picture a Cool Hand Luke at the plate, but this one not being the sure thing with the Indians but being our guy. 

            The dream scorches and burns as the Cubs suddenly get two more runs. Then one more. It’s 4-1. It’s 5-3 with the Cubs up but the momentum switching after the elder statesman catcher of the Cubs (which means at 39 he’s ancient) makes an error and gets punched in his mask with a wonky pitch that allows two runs to score. 

            Then the elder statesman David Ross steps up to hit his first home run in a World Series. 

            What a dream. 

            I don’t want to wake up. 

            If I could pick any player who resembled me and my life, it would be David Ross.  He’s someone who’s played on 21 different professional teams at varying levels. 

            6-3. It’s meant to be. 

            I know it’s a dream because these games don’t work out this way. This is the Cubs we’re talking about. And I must’ve gotten really drunk to be thinking this way. 

            It’s all going well and then the bottom of the 8th. The 8th. They’re talking about the controversy about this pitcher and that pitcher and yada yada yada and all you can see is the giant of a pitcher suddenly not doing so well. First a double allowing one run. Then a two-run homer. 

            The Cubs have their chance in the 9th and so do the Indians but this is a fever dream brought on by IPA beer and shots. 

            Then there’s a rain delay. And I think that’s when I realize it’s not a dream. A lot of people will reveal that’s when they fold in the towel because it’s too late and they have to work the next day. The truth I think is they just don’t believe. The rain—that same rain falling down on the store earlier this afternoon—has arrived. The clouds have covered the hope the Cubs faithful carried. 

            It’s been an 108-year drought. The Cubs are cursed. 

            I’m in my apartment watching the flatscreen TV when it happens. The 10th inning. The one everybody’s going to remember. The one where they go up by 2 and then narrowly win by 1. 

            I’m woozy and tired and already feel hungover even though the day isn’t finished. I wonder how I got here and when I did and who took me.         

            The last pitch and popup and out and then the celebration begins and the fireworks go off outside and the world seems like it’s about to end and then the door behind me opens and someone’s asking me if they won but it’s obvious. Except it’s not obvious because I’m dreaming again now, picturing a pretty face approaching, watching with eyes that just woke up. 

            I don’t think I picked her up in the bar. 

            The pictures you recognize her she haunts you she comes out on nights like this. 

            Redrum and Holy Cow. 

            Jack Torrance and Harey Carey. 

            I blink and this vision is gone. 

            I blink again and see the old-timer being interviewed. David Ross. This sage. The Ben Kenobi on the team. 

            He’s a mirror, at least in my vain, idiotic mind. I want to believe that I can try, too, even if I’m 45. I want to believe a bank account doesn’t define me. I want to believe that despite all the errors that have happened to me—even ones I’ve done this morning and afternoon and night—I will still have the grace and the gumption to step up to the plate and try. 

            My bookstore. Good Lord. Every single hour there is trying. Day after day of trying. 

            Somewhere under a waterfall of spraying champagne, I fall asleep. 

            Surely the Cubs didn’t win the World Series. That would look ridiculous in a novel. Nobody would believe it. 

            I don’t. 

NOVEMBER 1

NOVEMBER 

By Travis Thrasher

“If you want a world where love is real, you must allow each person the freedom to choose.”–John Eldredge

November 1

            These nauseating Halloween fun-filled families all decked out in their festive themed outfits camera-ready for Facebook. I don’t have to be drunk to despise them. But I am and I do. 

            I’m tired and it’s ten minutes after midnight and I have no idea why I’m checking online for people I know and don’t know but maybe I’m looking for her and for them and wondering that maybe just maybe I’ll see what they look like even if I’ve been blocked. Because maybe there’s a chance that she’ll unblock me and show me what the kids look like all dressed up in those costumes I never used to help put on. 

            Shit.

            Anything after midnight for me is angry time and I’m still up which is no good. Not good at all. But still I’m waiting to get a knock on the door and to open it and to see them. Maybe, right? Just maybe? 

            But no. 

            She knows me too well. 

            She left me because she knows me. 

            I’m tired. And I might just doze off a bit with the laptop on the place it’s named after. 

            I’m tired but I’ve been this way for a long damn time and I know I’ll wake up and know nothing more and know no better but that’s okay I guess. Maybe I’ll just stay here on this couch sleeping with the light on and the wine glass empty and the sound of the hamster spinning its wheel and partying in its cage oh so nearby. 

            God to be a hamster without any worries or fears stuck in his little sanctuary. 

            In some ways we’re all hamsters. 

**

            Where am I? 

            The buzzing synth begins and gets louder. Humming that familiar song. The Radiohead song I use as an alarm does its job. 

            “Everything,” Thom Yorke tells me thirty seconds in while I sit at the edge of the bed. 

            I look around. Tiny room I don’t recognize. Muted light. A twin bed. No pictures.

            “Everything in its right place.” 

            But I have no idea if this is the right place to be. 

            I don’t even have to ask, of course. The thick coating in my mouth, the jigsaw pieces in my head, the hovering motion of being on a stormy sea. 

            I shut off the alarm and then go to the nearest door to find the bathroom. I turn on the light and squint and then look at myself in the mirror. 

            Oh, yeah. That guy. I know that guy. 

            Nolan. I know that. I can’t come up with the last name, but I’m foggy from some kind of Halloween party I vaguely remember. 

            Nolan sounds like a last name, right? That director you like. Doesn’t sound like a first name for a guy born in 1971. 

            That guy I’m examining looks like some famous actor. Perhaps the twin brother of the actor. But I’d be the less attractive twin. The actor used to be heart-throb in his twenties and even thirties. Lately he’s been looking a bit rough around the edges. Even more rough than me. 

            Honestly, I have no idea where the hell I am. 

            There are clothes of mine in a suitcase. I take a shower to clear the cobwebs then check my emails while wrapped in a towel try to drip myself dry. 

            Nolan Stewart. 

            Yeah, that’s me. 

            I see the questions about books. Books sold and books ordered and books on hold and books. 

            I own and manage a bookstore. 

            Oh, crap. That’s right. 

            An indie called HH. I tried to do something cool, something the millennials might like, a place where we sell an experience over retail services. An actual brick and mortar store in 2016. Yeah, it’s a bookstore but I don’t call it that. What does “HH” stand for? Even that I want to be a riddle. If someone really has to know, however, I tell them. 

            “Hemingway’s Hideout.” 

            I think that’s a nice name. I had been told I might be sued or at least be forced to change my name since I’m no relation to Hemingway. I’m in the Chicago suburbs, however, further west than the writer’s Oak Park home where he great up. 

            It’s sevenish. The bookstore opens at nine. It’s in Appleton, a quirky suburb that’s been notable lately with the deaths of a couple of students and the school shooting at the high school. Bizarre stuff. A student at the school turned out to be a hero and averted a tragedy. 

            HH has been more quiet lately. But it’s probably my fault. I haven’t exactly been the star retailer of the year. 

            I remember I’ve been in this apartment for a year. 

            What the hell’s with this amnesia? Seriously. 

            I’m not married. No girlfriend. Parents living not too far away. 

            After getting dressed, I walk into the kitchen to find a whole lotta nothing. I’ll get coffee at the store. We’re not competing with the coffee shop in town, but we do have some brew for those who like to come in and camp out. Those business people who don’t want to rent an office but also don’t want to work from home. Those writers dreaming of being the next Hemingway and haven’t figured out those glory days of being a writer have passed. Even the glory days of publishing have dissipated, the ones in the late 90’s and early oughts with the Barnes & Nobles and the Borders and the wonderful hardcovers faceout everywhere and the browsing and the $25 bestseller that’s actually on sale. Yeah, a different era. 

            I see the note on the counter.

            All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.—Edgar Allan Poe

            It’s written in cursive that I couldn’t begin to try to emulate. I wonder if I got it from someone at the bookstore. 

            A dream within a dream. 

            I look around the kitchen. Then the small living room with an ugly couch and a flatscreen TV on the wall. An empty wine bottle is on the coffee table.

            Something feels . . . off.

            Something feels like it should be happening but isn’t. I’m missing something. 

            Radiohead is wrong. Everything’s not in its right place. At least not with Nolan Stewart. 

            I head out the door and to downtown Appleton. 

**

            The call comes halfway during my drive to HH. I’m listening to Foals’ “What Went Down” which has been in my cd player for the last . . . what? Year? Year and a half? It’s been the cd of the last couple of years. I look down and recognize the number and don’t want to pick it up since I’m getting called every hour from all those bill collectors who may or may not be computed-generated. The thing about this call is that it’s coming from Carol Stream, not too far from Appleton. I decide I better pick it up. 

            “Hey, Nolan, are we still on for lunch?”

            It’s Betty, one of my publishing contacts. We get together perhaps quarterly to talk about books and the industry and the fact that neither of us can sell the books we need to sell. 

            “Definitely,” I tell her. “Remind me where and when again?” 

            We talk for a few moments, then before she goes her tone turns a bit ominous. 

            “I need to warn you—I’ve got some news you’re going to freak out about,” Betty says. 

            We often share crazy and funny and baffling stories with each other about writers or readers or the book business. But nothing which sounds like some deep and dark secret. 

            “What sort of news?” I ask. “That sounds scary.”

            “I’ll tell you in person. But it’s about Jack. That . . . that’s just all I can say.”

            I chuckle just out of nervousness. 

            “Okay. I’ll see you soon.”

            Jack is the publisher who’s run Spotlight Books for as long as I can remember. He reminds me of The Most Interesting Man In The World from those Dos Equis beer commercials.  Always tanned and debonair with his slicked back gray hair and perfectly coifed beard and his endless wisdom and pontification. He’s been in HH quite a few times, trying to sell me on something or trying to get one of his authors into my store. I oblige and go along with the Most Interesting Man In The World because I have to admit I’m not that interesting. He looks like he just got back from Bolivia meeting with some famous literary writer he’ll be translating into English while I look like I’m some middle-aged stressed out suburban father stuck in some kind of boring Groundhog Day sort of story. 

            Wonder what Jack’s up to. 

            I’m sure a story about Jack from Betty will be interesting. 

            I arrive to main street and find my usual parking spot up the hill from the store. Before I shut off the car, I listen to the Foals’ song play. 

“It’s a new day just in time for me to say I’m sorry

For all the things I said I didn’t mean

It’s a new time, so why must I wait in line for what is mine?

It’s a new day, why must it be the same?”

            The song, “Lonely Hunter”, is one of my favorites. I listen to it as I stare out at the bright blue sky hovering over with the sun starting to raise its hand. Lately, however, it seems like it’s just been giving me a bright middle finger. Reminding me of a store I’m declaring bankruptcy on soon and a life that seems so sad that I wake up with amnesia wondering where I happen to be. 

            “Why must I wait in line for what is mine?” the singer sings. 

            Maybe that’s why I like these words. Because I keep questioning why I have to keep waiting, day after day, for something I assume is truly mine. 

            The question I need to ask is along the same lines as that Edgar Allan Poe quote. 

            Are our lives ever truly ours to begin with? And do we get any say in helping to write them? 

**

            It only takes Betty a few moments before she starts to whisper at the booth of the Chinese restaurant we’re sitting in. 

            “Jack lost his mind,” she says. 

            I laugh. “That’s not news.”

            “Nolan—seriously, he went batty.”

            “How so?” 

            Betty looks around the dining room to see if there are Russian spies or something like that listening in. 

            “He locked himself in his office, then came barging out of it. Completely naked.” 

            The look on Betty’s face shows me she’s not kidding. Her wide eyes, the look of WTF that I’ve seen before when we’ve shared funny publishing-related stories. Those are boring compared to this. 

            “Why? Was he drunk or taking drugs?” 

            “Nobody knows,” she whispers, her face completely perplexed. “He had his phone and keys in his hand and bolted out of the building and in his car.”

            “Naked?” I said, laughing. 

            “Buck naked,” she says

            “When’d this happen?” 

            “Yesterday. The department just flipped out. We haven’t heard anything. The only thing that was unusual was the manuscript that he’d just printed out to read. He had been speaking to Mark, one of our fiction editors. They’d received a manuscript from a new author—a novel of some kind. Jack told Mark the first few chapters were the scariest he’d ever written. That was before he freaked out.”

            “What’s the book? Who’s the writer?”

            “I don’t know,” Betty says. “But what—did some book make him lose his mind?” 

            “I’ve been around some authors who’ve made me lose mine,” I say. 

            An inside joke about one of writers Betty got to come do a signing and talk at my store. A nightmare. Beyond a nightmare.          

            “We still have no idea where Jack is. None.”

            It’s a funny, bewildering story. Unexpected. Of course, these days, anything is expected. 

            The Cubs will be playing in game six of the world series. We either have a criminal or a creep who’ll be elected president. In one week. 

            Perhaps the pressure of everything made Jack snap. And streak. Sometimes I feel like doing it. I’m just not the world’s most interesting man. It’s not really exciting to see me naked. 

            When I say goodbye to Betty, telling her to keep me posted on Jack, I make a note on my phone to ask Mark to fill in any missing details. Mark comes to HH all the time, mostly to read and check out what’s new and exciting and recently been released. He likes and trusts my taste in books, so we spend a lot of time talking about the literary world. 

            I can’t wait to ask him what Jack was reading. Maybe the most interesting man in the world was reading the most terrifying tale ever told. 

**

            The Cubs win. 

            I’m at my apartment and still feeling like something’s off. I’ve had a few beers but I’m not bombed. I’m just a bit bored. 

            It’s like there’s a fuse waiting to be sparked and set alive. 

            I think of Jack rushing out of his corner office with all those windows. Running past the employees without an ounce of clothing on. I wish I could have seen their faces. I wish I could know why in the world Jack would do something like that. 

            Then again, everything feels odd these days. 

            I look at my phone and click on the photos and don’t find any there. This isn’t a new phone. I know that simply by feeling the slight scratches on the front surface. Yet it feels empty. Like it hasn’t been lived in for very long. 

            When I’m finally in my bed ready for sleep, it doesn’t come for quite some time. I stay awake, awash in my thoughts. Wondering what drives a successful businessman to do something so rash and irresponsible. 

            Before I’m out, I find myself picturing a couple running along a beach. Naked and free. Dancing, dashing over the water. But it’s not an episode of The Bachelor I’m imagining. It’s me. The woman—I can’t quite make her out. But I know her. And I love her. And somehow in someway I lost her. 

            I just can’t remember why. And I can’t remember why I can’t. 

            And the circle keeps going around and around and around. 

Bloodline Preface

PREFACE

            I run through the dark tunnel.

            And I see her tears. 

            A puddle sprays over my pants. Echoes of footsteps—mine and the others—bounce off the concrete walls and ceiling. I can feel ties of the train tracks underneath my shoes. I’m drenched from sweat, covered with blood from the gashes on my eye and cheek. 

            I hear her sobs. 

            I’m sprinting underground, in another hidden and shadowy passageway leading to God knows where. It doesn’t feel like I’m in Chicago. It doesn’t feel like I’m in college.

            Nothing feels right. Nothing’s ever felt right since I stepped foot in that godforsaken little town I thought I left behind. Three years and I’m still running in the dark. 

            The Devil is chasing you for a reason, she tried to explain. You can’t escape on your own. 

            I feel her arms wrapped around me, her body quivering, just before they take her. Her screams will always be buried in my mind. 

            She warned me about this, but I still find myself in denial, believing I can finish this, telling myself I just need to end things once and for all. 

            I want to look at my iPhone, but I don’t dare. 

            Every moment matters. Even the seconds count. 

            Streaks of hazy light seem to melt off the shaft walls, telling me I’m getting closer. The air I gasp for seems full of chalk, full of grit. 

            Three years ago, I fell for her. 

            Three years ago, I realized I loved her. 

            Three months ago, I broke up with her. 

            As I run, I know this: I’m an idiot, once again. 

            I’m nineteen and know better than this, yet I’ve willingly given everthing away, including her. Especially her. 

            “God, please.” 

            But I’ve been a stranger from God for some time. 

            I remember her words.

            “Let it go.” 

            But I can’t. I still don’t think I’ll ever be able to let this go. 

            More light ahead glimmers as I round a corner, the steps still sounding from behind me. 

            I’m close, but so are the men chasing me. 

            The pocket knife used on me is closed and in my jeans. 

            I’ll use it. I’ve used one before. 

            All I care about is getting to her. 

            The lack of wind, of any air, makes this more difficult. I feel I’m suffocating in some sort of rectangular box. 

            I know the forces at work here. They suck out the light and the oxygen and the hope in this world. 

            I also know this now: There is evil inside my mind.

            And in my heart. 

            The tunnel opens up into a large, cavernous terminal of sorts, abandoned many years ago. Scattered safety lights tower above me on the stone walls, glowing like lit-up blood bags. 

            I don’t slow down. 

            I’m almost to the lone freight train box car sitting in the center of the terminal. 
            I’ve already killed. 

            I’ve already been left for dead. 

            I’m ready to rescue her. Again. 

            Sprinting over the railroad ties, I’m fifty yards from the box car when a blast of light consumes the space, blinding me for a few moments, making me squint and blink. 

            And then I see Kelsey. 

49 Reasons Why

So this is what I know. Or don’t know. 

Age is a relative thing. Twenty years ago I saw guys my age losing their hair. I wake up with a tornado on my head. Some people we graduated high school with have kids in college. We have girls in 7th grade and 3rd grade. I recently had to prove my age to a group of buddies I was hanging out who didn’t believe my age. You know what? I don’t believe it, either. 

It’s all relative. Right? I don’t know. Maybe that’s just one of those trite sayings that pass along you in life like a Nike ad telling you to JUST DO IT. But you don’t, do you? You don’t always just do it. Sometimes you sit back and let others do it, and you watch, right? 

Every day I have to stifle my words. God knows I want to comment. I want to be snarky and cynical. I grew really darkly shittily pessimistic back in 2007. Yeah, I just made up a curse word as an adjective. That’s okay. It fits. I got rid of those cynical poisons. But others have seeped back into my soul. I’m not proud of it. Joy is a stranger I don’t know if I’d recognize. Sometimes frustration wakes up with me, and bitterness taps on my window around midday. Usually I let him in. 

Twelve and a half years of doing this thing. This thing. The Thing, directed by John Carpenter. Where a group of men are in the cold wildnerness and one by one they are killed by some strange, alien entity. Soon there are only a couple left, wondering in the frigid temperatures who’s telling the truth. What’s real and what’s fake? Shivering as they hold out and wait to see what dark fates await them. 

Yeah. A nice little film to compare with writing fulltime. 

This is why I don’t share things online. Because I’m often feeling like tar in the swimming pool. A smudge on someone’s new white tennis shoes. A fog hovering over a beach. I can get dark, and when I start to write I get even darker. And the reality is . . . who cares? I’ve got it easy compared to so many others, so why should I whine? 

But I’m just letting it all out tonight. I’m giving myself some grace since it’s my birthday. I shut myself up and out most days, but I’m just rambling on tonight. It’s late. But in this quarantine, this Covid-19 shutdown shut-your-mouth madness, I sometimes forget the time and the day. And I forget how old I might be. 27 doesn’t seem so long ago, and 16 doesn’t either. Yet I look out and have 49 reasons to call myself a failure. To tell myself I had 49 chances to do better, yet I didn’t. I can look up and see 49 losses. 49 catastrophes. 49 ways I’ve veered off to oblivion. 

Happy post, right? I bet you’re feeling better about life, right? 

Oh, come on. Artists are tempermental and dramatic and ridiculous, right? Full of it. So full and so confused and constantly pouring these emotional things out of their pores. Sentiments. Stories. Soul-scarred poetry. Sensational. Tortured. Laborious. LAME. 

I don’t like myself. I’ll just let you know that if you’re still with me. I’m just beginning. 

I’ve written over 50 books in the last decade. Do you realize how utterly psychotic that happens to be? That’s not right. It’s not just a matter of let’s see—that’s five books a year—that seems okay. No, it’s not okay. It’s not healthy. A book is a high-rise building. It requires a year’s worth of attention. You build it brick by brick and block by block. You don’t do it too quickly. You need to spend lots of time on it. Five a year? Seriously? No. 50 in ten years? Are you high? 

I should be Breaking Bad, making meth. But no. I’m just writing. And writing. And writing. I have to. Chase Bank still has me in its crosshairs.  

So what’s on my palette these days? Oh, wow—such brilliant, beautiful colors. Too bright for this gray, colorblind soul like me.

I finished a biography on Bono. I’m waiting to hear from my editor. He said we might talk last week, and we didn’t, so I’m thinking he might not love the book, and I’m worried. I’m anxious because I bled out this work and I know the manuscript is solid. No, not just solid, but spectacular. But in my career, I usually get a big, resounding thud of “so this is where you went wrong.” 

Wow. I’m really cynical, right? Good thing nobody is reading this. 

But the Bono bio is great. It’s different. I’ve done stuff that no rock biographer has done. And seriously….since when did I become a rock biographer? What the hell.

So while I await the verdict on that book, I’m working on other books. 

Dude Perfect. Nobody’s heard of them. A group of guys on YouTube. Maybe in time their videos will become popular. I’m working on a cool tricks and tips book for them. They’re fun and upbeat and full of joy. Wait . . . Did I just say that word? Joy? Well, I think these young men  have potential. I don’t know. Maybe their videos will finally catch on. 

Johnnyswim. A cool group but wish they could write more heartfelt songs. Wish they were better looking. Wish they were more cool, more sincere. More awesome. I mean, I see their stuff and I’m not that impressed. It’s not like I see the stuff they do and feel insecure about my life. It’s not like I want to borrow some Abner-cool-alpha-male-cologne to sprinkle over my not-so-cool life. No. They’re really unimpressive. The fact that Chip and Joanna Gaines love them—I don’t know why. No, they’re really not that fascinating. It’s just another book project. 

Abner Ramirez of Johnnyswim and Kylie Thrasher of Thrashergirls

Oh, and there’s the book with the successful businesswoman who took a $10K investment and made over $40 million. But her heart is in overseas ministries, in helping those in impoverished countries. The book is the juxtaposition of these two lives she’s led. 

And there’s the baker, the guy with the big heart whose wife passed away at such a young age . . . . 

Yeah. So there’s all that. 

Here are a few other things for the two of you still reading. 

I finished Midnight and plan to publish it in the next year. It’s a sibling to Sky Blue and 40. It’s depressing as hell but it’s also got some of the best writing I’ve ever done. It’s poetry. It’s the blues. It’s a fitting addition to a trilogy of heartache and soul-searching. I love it. 

I have this idea to do a story online over the next year. A story about a man’s journey from 49 to 50. To share this weekly on my blog. But I don’t know. Life’s so busy. My daughters wage their daily wars and need rations and ammunition. Okay….I don’t fully know what that means. It’s 1:18 a.m. and I’m just typing and I’m tired but still. They are little generals on the battlefield, and I feel like some dumb private sent to deliver some stupid message. 

I just started working with an agent. And I just let him go. So there’s that. Long story. Wait. Actually, it’s a short story. In the vein of Edgar Allan Poe. 

I have ten dollars in my bank accounts. My primary checking is negative 900. I’ve been waiting for a check since March. Ever since Covid-19 has hit, I feel it’s struck my bank accounts. I have a book due next month and they still haven’t finalized a contract. Wonder why I sometimes feel bitter? 

Oh, but wait . . . I have a few spectacular book ideas. I haven’t given up on fiction. I love stories. I have several that are pure gold. I need the time to write them, but I’m working my way to doing that. 

I haven’t given up on the dream of writing fiction. It’s just hard, especially when you write a little bit of everything. 

I’m seriously awesome even if you don’t know it!

If you’re still reading, and if you’re a fan, please continue to be patient. I believe the best is yet to come. I believe that one day you’re going to read something by me and finish it and wonder how in the world I wrote that. You’re not going to believe how much I’ve improved. Your loyalty has paid off. Okay, maybe not. I mean, it’s not like you’re winning an award for remaining a fan of mine so long. But inside, you’ll know what I’ve always known . . . 

Travis Thrasher is really a cool, amazing writer that others really should discover. 

Okay, I don’t really know that. I half believe that. 

I’m trying. I’m working. And I’m struggling. Just like you probably are. I’ve worked with and continue to work with some amazing people. Individuals full of talent and joy and attitudes beyond belief. And I help tell their stories and I start to feel insecure about my own. 

But some days, I step back and hear some kind comments about my birth date, and I realize that I’m a blessed man. So many out there who love me. And so many who continue to fuel the fire. 

I’ve got a lot of hair on my head, and I’ve got a lot more book ideas. Just wait. They’re going to come out and they’re going to see the light of day. Some might be pretty amazing. Just like me. I’m amazing. I’m awesome and handsome and patient and loving and I write fiction. 

Damnit. I wish everything I just wrote could be true. Especially the loving and patient part. 

One beautiful lady and three little ladies love me in their own way. They’re not book critics (thank God) and they’re not easily impressed. But I make them laugh, and I see their love, and I know they need me just like I need them. Forget the prose and poetry and pendatics and other things starting with “p”. I’m a husband and a father trying to figure out life. 

Happy day to me and happy day to you. I’m trying. I’m writing. Thanks for sticking with me. 

Zest

“The Lord is my light and my salvation—
    so why should I be afraid?
The Lord is my fortress, protecting me from danger,
    so why should I tremble?”

I know Psalm 27:1 well, and maybe I should just post that with a little hopeful picture of sunset or set it into a colorful meme. But that’s not quite the snapshot of my soul these days.

That’s why I don’t post a lot online. I want to be honest, and so many of my daily thoughts tend to be sarcastic or cynical or worried or frustrated. Who wants to read that? Why should I spread those negative feelings to the rest of the world?  

Afraid? Anxious? Yeah, I am. I believe the words of the psalmist when he says the Lord is my fortress and protects me from danger. But my faith still has a long ways to go. I always seem to be standing on the precipice of uncertainty. I’ve been that way my whole life. That’s what made me a writer. 

Last week I had lots of story ideas. I woke up in the middle of the night with a plot about half the country quarantined and in military lockdown with an out-of-control deadly virus. The Western United States. And a man from the Midwest has to journey to the Pacific coast to bring something there. I don’t know what he brings, but it’s something important. 

Maybe I’ll write a portion of this story every day. Blog it. To do something creative and give people at home something to read. 

I quickly shot this idea down. My work hasn’t decreased. I write from home, so my projects still exist, and my ability to write is still there. I have a few more distractions now—three young girls to be more specific—but other than that I’m still super busy. 

I started to think about why I really would want to write some sort of story like that. To dwell on the issue of a virus impacting the country and people suffering and being in quarantine. Do I hate myself that much to want to add anxiety to my soul? But I realized anxiety is the very reason I want to tell that sort of story. 

To let it go. 

This is why I’ve always written, and why I continue to write. To take stuff inside of me and in some way exorcise them on the page. To state them out loud, to own up to them, and to try to deal with them in some sort of way. 

Perhaps one of the most obvious and intense examples of this is The Solitary Tales, the ode to my teen years. A combination of high school love mixed with a demonic town. Ah, yes. It’s a great series. And I think it was my way of trying to grapple with the four high schools I attended. 

Near the end of the series, the main character, Chris Buckley, thinks this: 

“We ache and we long and we worry and we fear and we laugh and we soar and we fall and get up again. 

We all hurt. 

It’s what we do with it that counts. It’s how we move on in life with it.”

I still believe that now almost a decade after writing those words. And I still know that writing is a way of trying to figure out what’s deep inside of me, what I’m afraid of, what I’m hoping for. They are offerings to God.

Bono of U2 says that songs can be prayers. So can stories and poems and blogs and journal entries. 

The Psalms are full of lots of prayers consisting of hope and joy and anger and fear. I believe in Psalm 27:1 in these unsettling times. I like how The Message recites this passage: 

“Light, space, zest—
    that’s God!
So, with him on my side I’m fearless,
    afraid of no one and nothing.”

Zest. Now that’s the word I’m looking for this week. I hope today and the coming days, you see God’s zest in your own life and heart. 

Like A Whisper

Hey, if God will send his angels
And if God will send a sign
And if God will send his angels
Would everything be alright?

–“If God Would Send His Angels” by U2

The world watches and waits but doesn’t hold its breath to remain silent. Instead, it roars out loud about everything. Voices filled with blame and fear and hysteria and conspiracy. 

I always wake up with a thousand thoughts—many worries and wanderings—and end the day with ten thousand more. I seldom if ever share them online. Lately, however, I haven’t fully been able to make sense of anything with the world suddenly being put on pause with the coronavirus. 

God is in control. I believe that now as strongly as I’ve ever believed it. And I very much believe in this quote Bono gave in U2 by U2:

“It’s a world of wild and unexpected winds, earthquakes, and tsunamis where accidents can happen. I don’t blame God for them. I think this is what happened when we threw God out of the garden, which is my own interpretation of what happened in Eden!”

I’ve been journeying with Bono the past year as I’ve been working on a biography of him. It’s been an incredible and honestly intense project that has been inspiring and also exhausting. With so much talk and talk and talk going on about the world we live in and life in general, I thought of this story Bono shared with his school friend, Neil McCormick. This was in 1981 when Bono was 21 years old and U2 was taking off. He shared this story with Neil, someone he knew didn’t share the same faith he believed in. 

“D’you know the story of Elijah going up to a cave where he has been told he will hear the voice of God? It’s in the Bible. Elijah gets to the cave and goes in but there’s nothing there, so he waits and eventually he hears a roll of thunder. He thinks ‘ah yes the voice of God!’ and goes to the entrance of the cave . . . But the thunder rolls again and he doesn’t hear God. So he goes back in the cave and waits. Then he sees a bolt of lightning flash across the sky and he thinks ‘ah, of course, the voice of God.’ Goes back to the entrance of the cave and waits . . . But God says nothing. And he starts to think maybe he’s been misled—maybe there is no God, whatever is going through his mind. Then a small puff of wind blows into the cave and he hears it, like a whisper, the voice of God . . .”

Bono pauses for dramatic effect. 

“I always liked the idea that God is in the small things. And when it gets too noisy and fucking crazy, and I’m running around like a madman, I have to quiet myself down to get in touch with God.” 

This is one of the thousands of ways I can identify with Bono. No . . . make that one of ten thousand ways. I get it. These days feel noisy and crazy and I feel like my mind and heart are running around like a madman, more than they usually are. 

Shut up, Travis. Be quiet and listen. 

Advice from a man who calls himself a mouthy Irishman. I’ll take it. 

Hey, if God will send his angels
I sure could use them here right now
Well, if God will send his angels…

Where do we go?
Where do we go

True Love Waits

“True Love Waits”

(A chapter from Midnight)

You can be alive but not living. Breathing without feeling breathless. Stuck in constant motion. Waiting and wanting and waiting and wanting for that mythical true love.

Does true love wait? Does it?

Are you the one to finally find that ghost in your attic, only discovering you’ve been tagged and now you’re it? To hear the voices through the ceiling below, laughing and living and loving, all while you’re longing simply to come out of hiding?

You once said, “Don’t leave.” Or did she? You once said this isn’t a life worth living. Or were those her words?

A heart has to work despite the thumbtacks stuck inside it.

To bring home those lollipops with the dry cleaning. To hear the simultaneous interruptions and distractions and confusion. To see a trio waiting by the window, appearing by the door, rumbling with you in the hallway.

True love has always waited for you, Spencer. You’ve just bought the false lie saying it hasn’t and never will.

It waits. There, just below, just through this drywall, just beyond this barrier.

Tiny hands and crazy kitten smiles. 

Waiting for your love. 

Waiting and wanting. 

Light

Joy can’t be conjured, and it can’t be contrived. It can appear out of nowhere, spontaneously. A spark turning into a light turning into a diamond. 

Joy is a glow. Give it context and it can become a sun. 

Joy knows a late-night opportunity, an invitation to something unexpected. A chance to get away, to laugh and let go. To watch and wait, then to witness something spectacular. 

Shine your light over me. 

Joy is laughter, and the best is unexpected, unrehearsed. Unbridled. 

Joy shares a toast, tastes a pickle-back, and listens to the following stories. 

All of my fears are gone. 

Joy lets go and remembers. It listens and allows a name to be mentioned, to be celebrated, to never be forgotten. To be rejoiced and to be laughed with. Joy embraces the reminiscing. It’s brave enough to bear it. 

I had to lose to understand. 

Loss is a shadow impossible to escape. But on this rainy night, Miles beyond the clouds, a life is celebrated, and joy is remembered. 

You’re light to me. My only sun. You’ll always shine for me.

Joy waits on your order and follows your footsteps and sits next to you watching the road through a rainy windshield. 

Then Joy sings you a song. Melancholy but hopeful. Dark with sparks. Bright and buoyant. 

The Lord said to me. Time is a healer. 

Joy sheds its tears and you drive, wondering how it can somehow survive. How can it exist, much less thrive? 

Joy expands the playlist, offering another song. A beloved producer mixed with a brilliant singer. 

A singer’s best trait is expressing joy in the songs. A song can be the healing salve you need. 

Time is a healer. Love is the answer. I’m on my way. 

Joy proves its power. 

Truth is the answer. I’m on the way. 

Joy helps you carry on. 

Joy gives you peace of mind. 

Joy helps me carry on. 

Time is a healer.

And the joy in the faces of those broken and bruised inspire me to wake up with more joy, to wake up knowing love is the answer. 

If they can carry on then so can I. 

Maybe I’m on my way, too. God, I hope so. 

Shine Your light over me. 

 Joy can’t be conjured, and it can’t be contrived. But on a dark, rainy Monday night, it can be clarified in the most simple way. Through laughter. Through smiles. Through joy. And through looking back for a brief moment. To pause and remember someone who will never be forgotten. Then to be allowed to move on and let go and wonder what joy awaits us tomorrow. 

The Bono Bio

The idea comes first. Sometimes in sleep. Sometimes in midsentence. The moment always arrives with two words. “What if?” 

A year ago today I met with a publisher to talk about two of these what if’s. Ideas that had some potential. Two very different books that would be exciting to work on. I had sent them synopses for both, so the meeting was a chance to explore both projects in a little more detail. It’s not every day you have the opportunity to meet with the publisher and two acquisitions editors at a major publishing house, so I valued their time and input.

After the meeting, my editor emailed me to share their excitement over one of the ideas and to give me some suggestions on moving ahead with it. The nugget of the idea had come the previous year in 2018 during another meeting I had with the publisher. He had talked about a book idea that he summed up as “The Faith of Bono.” I told him I’d love to work on a book like that. This idea had grown into the discussion of doing a full-fledged biography on U2’s singer. 

I’ve been journeying with Bono for the past year. After that meeting on January 24, 2019 with Zondervan, I dove into work on a detailed proposal for a biography on the Dublin singer. It took two months to complete this. Proposals like this take a lot of time since you’re figuring out the structure and overview of the book along with pitching it to the publisher. I included a couple of chapters in the proposal as well, meaning I had already started working on a project that hadn’t yet gotten officially approved. 

Thankfully the proposal was well-received, and on May 23 of last year I got an official offer from the publisher. I was now fully immersed in the work on this biography, so I’m not sure what I would have done if an offer hadn’t come. I was beginning to realize the monumental task ahead of me, so every moment counted. 

It’s been an exhilarating and time-consuming project that I honestly could never have imagined. I’m creating a biography that is truly unique in the way it’s told. No sentence is imagined; everything is researched. So to do something that’s both creatively different and meticulously documented is quite the feat. 

Right now the book is scheduled to be released a little over a year from now in February, 2021. I can’t wait to see how everything unfolds—the book itself, the package, the release, and especially the response. It’s a really special project unlike any other I’ve been involved with. 

Fiction will always be my true love and passion, so don’t think I’m suddenly going to only be doing nonfiction and collaborations. It’s a new decade. Exciting things are ahead. Please stay tuned.