K. R. Hill's Blog, page 9

How to Sell a Million--Cheat a Bit

Can I write a best seller? Can you?

No matter how great your story, if you don't package it in a satisfying way few will read it. That is where structure comes in. It is how the writer seduces the reader.

The three act novel is a time tested form. It has survived for so long because it is satisfying. I want my readers to be satisfied. I want them to come back and want my next book too. (Go to the Writer's Digest site and pull up an article about it). 

In fact, I want my new novel to be as easy to read and satisfying as possible. If you are seeking a career as a novelist, you should want the same thing.

I cheated. I took a novel in my genre that was highly successful and used it as my text book. You can and should do the same.

I even cut in into sections. Yes, you guessed it: I cut it into three act sections.  Then I took a highlighter pen and went to work.  How did the writer hook me, hold my interest, make me feel and care about the characters? 

I had to find out.  I highlighted the hooks, the words that hit the human chord of feeling. I worked that book until I knew the formula. 

It is a game. KEEP THE READER HOOKED.  Let me use a fishing analogy. I used to deep sea fish often. And just like the relationship between fisherman or woman and the fish, the writer 'plays' the reader.  Let me show you.

When the fish first takes the bait the fisherman sets the hook. Just like your fist page where something happens that grabs the reader and makes him/her want to read more to find out how it is resolved.

The primary rule when fishing? Don't give the fish any slack line. You have to keep the line taunt or the fish will spit out the hook.  Just like a fish, if your story goes slack, or stalls, the reader will escape.

How do you do that? By throwing in obstacles for your hero/heroine, protagonist. That is how the reader stays hooked.

Once you have recognized the tricks in your favorite writer's book and have them highlighted, you can form your story using the same techniques.  Keep the cut up novel beside you. Refer to it often while plotting and outlining.

I would add an important note: Readers want escapism. With that in mind, create a protagonist who helps the reader escape the mundane.

Writing is a craft, like building a house. You learn by study, practice, and by imitating the masters. Once you have sold a couple of titles, then you can write your The Sound and the Fury, where you experiment with structure and form. But right now, seduce the reader, give them the subtle smile of a book description, the cleaver line that makes them laugh and want more is your first page hook. You know the rest. Learn the craft, learn to seduce.

I am struggling with it. My coming book, Touching Spirits, will hopefully reveal whether I've been a good student. Can I do it?

The dream of being a successful novel has been my jealous mistress my entire life, calling to me, begging me to come to her.  The time is now.

Writing Around Life

I am driven. I lack a university degree. I don't have a famous writer mother or father to help me break into writing. But I have a burning desire to sell a million copies of my books.

What else do I have?

Experience. I traveled, hitch hiked around Europe, Africa, the Middle East, for ten years. That changes a person. I lived in an abandoned house beside the Caribbean. My memory is rich with experience.

But can I break into the ranks of the best sellers on Kindle? While working for $10 an hour at Home Depot? While living with a senile cat, driving a 1975 truck. I am sacrificing for my dream.

How am I going to achieve it? With ... hard work, study and determination.  I go to Barnes and Nobles twice a week and look around at all the books, and say to myself: "Every one of these books was someone's dream. I can do it."

Today I want to write about Claiming the dream. That means writing around life.

I have what I believe to be my break out novel (Touching Spirits). I published it a couple of weeks ago on Kindle, but one of my readers noticed some mistakes, so I pulled it in order to make it absolutely the best it could be. If I am going to sell a million copies I have to produce writing a high level.

I just got the manuscript back from three trusted readers. I'm on fire to sit down with my nineteen-year-old cat beside me, and reenter this world I created in my head, the world of a Caribbean I lived in so long ago. Scenes are rushing around in my head. I know the changes I need to make, the issues I need to resolve, but life is getting in the way.

It happens to every writer, right?  You want to sit and write, but you have to go to the insurance agency, or the kitchen drain is leaking.  In my case the toilet was leaking. The trick is to keep writing. Don't let the project take the entire day. Fight back.

Even though you have to do whatever, SIT DOWN AND WRITE, if only for an hour, or half an hour. You have to establish who is in charge. Don't give up a full day. It is of utmost importance.  By not giving up you take yourself seriously. You are saying: my writing is more important than this project.

I live in a house built in 1928. That means a lot of maintenance. Today it was the toilet. The pipes were put in almost 100 years ago. So, what did I do? I attacked the cast iron toilet drain, cut off the damaged piece, and installed a new one, after writing for an hour.
 
Despite the pressing obligations of life, I still carved out time to write. That is the most pressing thing in my life. I will reach my goal of selling a million copies, and by pushing back against the universe I am sending that message.

To all the writers struggling with jobs and projects and loved ones, remember what Shakespeare said: 'above all else, to thine own self be true.' Apply the butt glue and put your back side in a chair and stay there and write. And remember, it took Margaret Mitchell ten years to write Gone With The Wind. Did she first become 'a writer' upon publication? 

If you don't claim your time, fight for it, you won't write. There is no perfect time to write. There is only now. Do it.

Writing Goal: Sell 1,000,000 copies!

Today I am between projects. I recently finished a new action novel, Touching Spirits, and it is being read by one of my beta readers. One of my automotive books is being shipped for proofing from CreateSpace, so, I find myself without a writing project.

I could continue editing Falling Up, another action novel, but I've decided to take a day off. I won't study the craft of novel writing or even look at my books.  They will have to take care of themselves. One day a week is my play day.  Today is my day to let my mind run free and frolic.

Tomorrow I will again pick up the manuscripts for editing, the helpful blog posts, the books of my craft and all the other aspects of my life as an Indie author.  But today I PLAY.

Saving $ with www.fiverr.com

Today I want to speak about fiverr.com.
I had this cover changed ...
It is a great resource for writers on a budget.

If you are not familiar with this site, it is where you go when you need work done, whether that be formatting a manuscript for Kindle or CreateSpace, need an ebook cover made, or you want to hire someone to record a video for you, or even to sing a jingle. You can get it all done there ... for $5. Theoretically.

I was in heaven when I found fiverr. I'm a writer surviving by working at Home Depot, and that means buying new shoes is difficult. Fiverr allowed me to make changes to several of my books already on Kindle, bringing them up to a professional level.

... to this for $5 on fiverrBut I quickly learned the good and the bad about fiverr.  The bad is that the service is so inexpensive workers often refuse to make draft changes unless you tip them. There are good designers and formatters here, but it takes time and patience to find them. You have to suffer through many who do business like an emotional 15 year-old.

Here are my tips for working with designers on Fiverr:

1.  Hire only someone who is in your country.  Send them a note and carefully read their response. You want a native speaker of the language you are working in. Details are monumentally important and you don't want any lost due to poor language skills.

2.  Also for cultural reasons, hire a native of your country. There are huge cultural differences in how other countries do business. "Go with what you know."

3.  At the beginning ask your prospective worker if they communicate with clients during the work. You don't want to be left waiting for days without a word, only to find your worker has forgotten about you.  It happens.

4.  Workers here depend on written ratings.  So, if there is a dispute, if you get a 15 year-old who refuses to make changes and offers to cancel the 'gig,' (fiverr lingo for a job), don't do it. Once you mutually agree to cancel you can not rate their service. Cancelling works to their advantage.

5.  I have found fiverr customer service to be prompt and fair.

6.  Although a gig costs $5 on fiverr, several jobs cost more.  Take formatting, for example. I either spend a couple of days doing it myself, with a 300 page novel, or I pay $90 to have it professionally done at Polgarus Studios.

At fiverr I have found sargo2000 to be a reliable and professional worker. He formatted a fifty page automotive book for me, complete with twenty-two images, created a hyperlink table of contents, for five gigs or $25.  I was so happy with the product I tipped him $5.

7.  The less expensive gigs tend to take lower priority. I believe the reason for that is that the designer has to do so many that a few slip through the cracks.  Also, I believe that many of the 'designers' are students with limited skill, working on a lap top.

I have had good ones that I have worked with repeatedly suddenly flake out and stop communicating. So read ratings from other clients and send them a note prior to hiring them for your gig.  You want to hire one who has ratings and comments posted from clients mentioning the specific work you are interested in.

Let me know your experiences.  Kevin

My white Irish ass.

I'm going to post a photo of myself face down in a hot spring. All those who come and read and vanish without leaving a note or +1 or even a 'boo,' can kiss my white Irish backside.

Another Step Toward my Goal

I want to sell a million copies. How am I going to do that? 

*By writing excellent books. How do I do that?
  1. By becoming an A student of my craft.
    A. I am studying elements of fiction daily, reading, practicing.
    B. I keep Writer's Digest issues handy for quick reference while writing.
        1.  The issues are marked so I can quickly find articles on structure, plot, characterization, pacing, conflict, suspense, etc.  When I am in doubt I grab one and read to find direction.
    C.  I am taking courses: Novel writing, digital marketing, grammar (Lord help me get through fifteen pages of ... pronouns, yes, Fifteen pages of rules and explanations!)
    D.  I reevaluated my Kindle books and pulled the ones I thought not up to a professional level.  These I am rewriting.
    E.  I guess the biggest change I've made is getting beta readers.  They help a lot. I send each the manuscript before publication and they go through it and make suggestions and find mistakes.  They are invaluable. It is one more step to producing a quality product.
    F.  I stopped formatting myself. Remember how my formatting allowed (I weep) 10,000 copies of a novel to go out with vertical print?  No more. I now use Polgarus Studio to do my formatting. They are located in Tasmania, Australia, and do excellent work. Check their site. They boast having several best selling clients. It is worth it.
    E.  I am developing a following on Goodreads. They are massive. If you want a career in writing/selling books, cultivate a following on Goodreads. Open an author page. Chat on the forums. Organize a giveaway for any new book.  It is another step toward the promised land.

As I mentioned in the previous post, I have gotten serious about the writing.
Changes I made to my Kindle books:
  1. I used fiverr to redesign covers that I thought non professional. (Those I made myself).
  2. I again used fiverr to change my author name on certain covers so I have one name. I previously used Kevin Robert Hill on some books, and Kevin R. Hill on others.
  3.  I studied other author's book descriptions.  I think this crucial to sales. This is the first thing a prospective reader sees by you.  Plot it. Rewrite it. Make it kick ass. If you can't hook a reader here, you have no chance of selling your book.
     A.  In James Scott Bell's book, Self-Publishing Attack, he has a good section on your book description.  It is all important.

Are these changes going to make a difference? Will they increase my sales?  We shall see and I'll keep you updated.


My next post will detail my promotion for my coming book, Touching Spirits.  I'll tell you what I am doing, which sites will be carrying a giveaway, and soon afterward I'll post the results.

I wanted to mention something funny. I work on an old truck I have to relax me. It is a 1975 Ford F250. The reason I mention it is because I was between writing projects and decided to spend a couple of weeks writing a carburetor how-to book, with photos and whole bit. I popped it out in two weeks! 

That little book has become the train that could. It is on Kindle and just keeps trucking along, a sale here and there, even when my novels seem belly up in the water.  It cracks me up. This past week I had 34 people buy it!  Now that is not gang buster sales, but for a niche market it is really good. Because of that book and the short writing time required, I'm going to be writing a few more automotive books.  I've also put the carburetor book, The Quadrajet MPG Secret, on CreateSpace, and print editions should soon be available.

I'm going with the flow.  Hopefully the auto books will drive traffic to my fiction.

I want to close by mentioning a great article in Writer's Digest that has helped me: Goodreads, step by step: The Best Way To Grow Your Career, in the February 2015 edition,  by Michael J. Sullivan.

Do you want to sell your books?

Are you a writer? I have a goal of selling a million copies of my novels. Let me tell you how I plan to achieve it. I want to live from my royalties in a tropical village. It is my life goal that I am daily working to obtain.It was a book by James Scott Bell, The Self-Publishing Attack, that made me get serious and professional with my writing. (I forgive him for writing zombie novels). Yes, I had some titles on Kindle, had sold travel articles in several countries, even some automotive how-to articles to a national magazine, yet my career was going nowhere. Sales were nearly non-existent. Should I let go of my dream, I wondered.But then I read Mr. Bell’s book. It was a wakeup call. Writing is a business. Why was I playing at it? I was dabbling without commitment. Why didn’t I set goals, time goals, and approach the writing as a job?  The Self-Publishing Attack was great to read because it aroused desire. I want to sell a million copies! And by taking calculated steps to reach that goal, by daily working at my craft, reading books about novel writing, by creating new books on schedule, books that captivate and amuse, that grab the reader and shake them, I could achieve my goal. I’ve known it since I wrote that first short story at eight-years-old, lived inside the story and couldn’t write it fast enough, stayed after class, hanging off the side of my desk, a writing storm flowing from my pencil. If I was going to SELL my books it was going to take work. It was going to take a daily routine of writing, studying, reading, and promoting. I had made some embarrassing blunders along my writing path. The worst was giving away 10,000 copies of my novel, Falling Up that had vertical text. It was beyond horrible. Would readers ever trust me again?  When I discovered the problem I pulled the book out of publication, changed the cover and title, waited six months and republished. Ultimately the book fell flat. Four years’ work was gone. Depression followed.To start writing again was very difficult. How could I sit day after day for years without knowing that something would come of it. All I wanted was to make people laugh and sad that the book was coming to an end. Was that too much to ask? The only way that I could write again was to record the happiest time of my life. So I went in the writing to when I had sold everything and moved to an abandoned house on the Caribbean. I set my novel there, in that turtle shell of a house, without windows, a frog living in the toilet tank, sleeping on a hammock, the sound of the surf filling my dreams. I set my new novel, Touching Spirits, there. Beginning to write again came during a major life change. When the economy crashed I was a contractor making good money and flying to Mexico and Europe a couple of times a year. After the crash I had to take a job as a sales person at Home Depot for $10 an hour, working twenty hours a week. I couldn’t afford shoes.But still I sat down daily and wrote my heart out. Something kept telling me to write love. After Mr. Bell’s book I made several changes.  I now keep a copy of Writer’s Digest magazine near me when I write. Their articles are amazing for a working writer. If I need help with structure, or point of view, or characterization, they have an article about it. And they are short and to the point. It has made a great difference in my writing. Another step I took was to buy a Kindle. When I publish a new book to Kindle I immediately buy it and check it on my kindle.  It is a tool that insures no more faulty formatting will leave my computer.I also found Fiverr dot com. For $5 I had non profession ecovers remade.  I also had them change my author name to Kevin R. Hill on all my books. I had used Kevin Robert Hill on some and that confused even Amazon.  I didn’t want readers to think I was two people. These changes were about making my product as professional looking as possible, and making it easy for readers to find me. Some of the Fiverr workers are flakey. They don’t respond to your notes, or go over schedule on your project.  My advice is this: find a designer in your country, who is a native speaker of your language. That is very important. You don’t want details lost in translation. After much trial and error I have found two people I work with on Fiverr.  Those changes have invigorated my writing. I again believe I can make my dream a reality, can live in my tropical village, hear the surf in my dreams.You can do it too. I am now standing with a new action novel ready for release. Do you want me to tell you how I plan to promote it? Should I write about the sites I will be using to get the word out about my book? Should I tell you what the result was?

New Book Blues!!!

    

This is a post concerning the woes of releasing a new book. I'm about to release Touching Spirits.  Imagine a police action novel with supernatural elements. 

Letting go of this book is difficult.  I have worked on it daily for three years and now it is going to go out into the world without my protection.  It is making a life of its' own.  I can't even defend it against nasty reviewers. Ultimately, a writer creates a product and has to let it go. But the closer it is to his/her heart, the more intimate the relationship the writer has with the material. I guess that is why I feel such a bond with Touching Spirits. 

In the blog you will find a post with the title of Caribbean House. That is where the majority of the novel is set. This novel allowed me to revisit a wonderful little village on the Yucatan peninsula that I love. But now I am sharing that special, simple place with the world, and hope readers love it as I do. 

Touching Spirits, Chapter 2

This is Chapter 2 of Touching Spirits, my new novel that will soon be released.  I hope you like and enjoy it.



                                                CHAPTER 2       When I was a boy my bed shook at night.  I thought everyone’s bed shook so I didn’t mention it.  Often I found myself trapped between sleep and waking, a strange animal perched on my chest.  I stroked its wiry hair and watched it suck in my breath as strands of smoke.      But life was full of things to keep my mind off that which couldn’t be explained.  I discovered girls, and then travel.  My penis became the compass of my life, pointing the direction I should go.  It guided me through dozens of countries and into the arms of countless women.  For years I was a playboy with a back pack, enjoying women in Spain, France and Germany.  Even then I was running from the things that came to me at night. Michelle changed my life and I moved to Amsterdam. Having her beside me kept the touching away.  Her energy changed my own.  I wanted to build a future for us, a life together, and joined the police academy.        The airport shuttle let me out at the curb.  Huge umbrella trees made a tunnel of the street, blanketed lawns and gutters with purple seed pods that crunched under my feet.  Every few steps one popped under my shoe like a tiny balloon.      Maybe it was me being paranoid and fresh out of police work, but I noticed a foreign coupe coast to a stop at the far end of the street.  As I rounded up my bags and paid the shuttle driver while chatting, the guy in the coupe did not get out.  He sat and stared as though on duty.       A wave of painful memories washed over me when I picked up my bags and turned toward the suburban house.  Inside was Grandma’s world.  She became my single parent when an auto accident took my mother and father.  This house still contained my childhood.     If I could choose one object as the house logo, to sum up what it was like inside, it would be her rusty, yellowed gas refrigerator that I saw in a 1938 Cary Grant film.  Food had to be placed in one corner of the refrigerator to get cold.  The handle hung down as if it was about to fall off.  While cooking Grandma often rushed to the rusty old thing, wiping her hands on a homemade print dress, and stood wiggling the handle, trying to get it to latch into place and open.      As a child, when no one was around, I’d shake the handle and repeat her words: “Shit fire, piss ass dung,” as though they were part of the magic ceremony that opened the refrigerator.      If I mentioned buying a new refrigerator she pointed out that running on gas saved money,  and that was the mega rule.  Everything she did, from lining drawers with newspaper, to using yogurt tops as coasters, tossing the dish scrubber to the concrete outside the back door to dry in the sun, to washing tuna cans and putting them under her bed posts to protect the wooden floor, shouted depression.     I wanted to run but needed answers and Granny was the keeper of family history.  If anyone knew what was happening it was her.  My plan was to get the information I needed and get out.  I didn’t want her involved.  If I was going insane I didn’t want her to worry or change her life to care for me.  My fears of returning home popped like the seed pods in the street when she hugged me and I smelled the vinegar rinse in her hair, felt her soft belly pressing against me,.  She was a wave of warm love that washed over me.       Memories of glorious summer days with shaggy, sun-bleached hair, sore spots worn into my feet by the plaster of my favorite swimming pool, and sun-warmed nectarines tossed from tree to pool, brought laughter.       While we hugged Grandma spoke with a beautiful Southern accent resurrected for such moments.  On and on she went about the neighbor and the vegetable garden and the lack of rain as she carried a bag through the front door.      The room she put me in was illuminated with a 25 watt bulb.  It was depression era lighting and I felt my spirit, my joy for life, dwindle to the same low wattage.       I set down my bags and remembered the guy watching the house and searched through the closet for my old .38.  I found my baby in the cigar box where I left her, beneath a pair of hiking boots.  This old school revolver certainly wasn’t my nine millimeter service weapon, but it still felt good in my hand.  I didn’t know what I brought with me from Amsterdam, but the revolver would supply home protection to keep whatever it was away from Granny.        It took several days to sort out the financial details with the Amsterdam Police Department and my new bank so my disability checks would find me.  Between calls I tortured myself by imagining a man and woman using my favorite sex toys on Michelle.  Each time images of that three-some came into my mind I silently said: ‘I love you and forgive you and release you,’ and went about my day. I mentioned the boredom to Charley, my police department shrink, during a Skype session.  He suggested I write a blog about the shooting, about being a cop, the changes I was going through, how it felt to shift from one country to another, to be pulled sexually to a woman on the other side of the world.       I called the blog ‘Into the Light,’ and described the blood and the pain of the shooting, how something had protected me, surrounded me, and how the light, the love in that nurse’s eyes called me back.  I wrote for hours while Grandma slept.  There was so much I needed to shout about.  My words came out in Dutch, without punctuation.  All that time, that part of my life, the pain and my service on the Amsterdam police department, was filed in my mind in a Dutch file.  Pulling it out of my mind was physical labor.  My hands shook.  I was typing as fast as I ever had.  Sentences erupted in heaps, bursts of thought and emotion, all the pain I felt during that time, the isolation and endless questions from department superiors.  It leapt out of me.  Charley had been right.  I clicked publish, added a few Dutch journalists to my online circles, and went to bed.      The next day I started washing windows and mopping floors.  The last thing I needed was to sit and think about Michelle being slutty, or why the marriage crumbled, or why I was a loser, or my ever present chubby.  The divorce made me look at myself and realize there were things inside me, aspects of my personality I needed to change. Again and again I released that energy to the Light.  A few days later I visited the blog and was surprised to find 614 comments from people around the world. Many were from angry church members who quoted scripture and called my experience a lie. An attractive Dutch reporter posted a video of her broadcast about my case, and left a note saying she wanted an interview.       In the evenings I tried to get close to Grandma, hoping to get answers.  I sat on the old sofa beside her, afraid to touch the soiled arm rests, listening to stories, the ‘who was out to get who’ of family history.  She thrived on the old hatreds and plots and gnashed her teeth and pushed her pink glasses up by crunching her nose, and drank mountain burgundy as she narrated, her voice changing with the start of each tale, as if she were walking onto a stage.  A trail of spilt wine and cracker crumbs stretched from her feet, across the dirty oak living room floor, to the kitchen counter where she often refilled her glass and grabbed crackers from the box.  Every so often a crumbs flew from her mouth as she spoke, and when her glass was empty she’d mark the level she needed it filled to by pointing with a finger.  And dropping out of her stage voice, she’d say, “If you don’t mind, darling.”     Weeks later she told me about her breakdown.  Tears came to Grandma’s wrinkled cheeks as she remembered jumping from a third story window with flames at her back.  Her voice changed to one of reverence as she described how she heard a voice and felt hands supporting and lowering her, protecting her.  From a tattered plastic bag in the bottom of her closet she dug out newspaper clipping that detailed how she fell through a tree and onto the hood of a car and received only scratches.       She went on about how she fought to control her mind; hands touching her while she slept.  I didn’t probe too much because I knew about her being institutionalized.  I would never make her return to that place in memory where demons screamed her name as they climbed up from Hell to take her.       Something had touched her too.  I was getting close.      Days later she turned as we sat at the kitchen table, crookneck squash on crumpled newspaper by our plates, gnats circling ripe nectarines, and said:  “I don’t know what it means, Cody, but it’s passed to you.  Shit fire.”       She stepped to the counter and wiped it with a rag.      I saw the counter was dry.     “How did you—“     “You didn’t need to tell me, child.  I can see it in your eyes.”        “What do you know about it?”     “I’ll tell you what my mama told me:  As far back as she could remember there’s been something calling, touching family members.  They tried to fight and some were stout country men, but it pulled them into madness.  My brother Milton took a butcher knife to the family dog.”     It wasn’t the information I was hoping for.  I wanted to fix something, take it apart with tools and replace a broken part.      Grandma’s stories were about fighting and losing.  I too wanted to fight.  I wanted to smash whatever the hell it was that was touching me.  But there was nothing to grab, and that was the frustrating part.  But then I realized something:  Every family member had tried to fight the touching.  Was Grandma’s fall into insanity caused by resistance?  Was that the key?     I didn’t want to be strapped to a bed and pumped full of drugs until I couldn’t fight.  I thought about what helped me in Amsterdam:  The White Light.  My books all spoke of surrender and faith, and that reminded me of a trick I learned as a boy while body surfing.  Once in a while, as I treaded water in the surf, waiting for the next wave to arrive, a riptide pulled me from shore.  The trick was to relax.  If a swimmer panicked and fought they soon became exhausted and could no longer tread water.  So when a riptide grabbed me and I found myself drifting from shore I just stretched out on my back happy as could be, floating with the current until it dissipated. When it released me I’d swim to shore. That was what I’d do with the touching. The next time something came I’d be ready.     I didn’t learn what was touching me, but I had a plan of how to deal with it and that was why I came.  Now I could go on with my life.  It was time to move out.  But the thought of leaving Grandma troubled me.  She was my halfway house, my refuge between cultures and countries, between married life and a life of finding a job and starting over.  I spoke with the Light about it after my morning meditation.       Every time I asked for direction projects around the house came to mind.  I wondered if seeing new projects was a message.  Was I supposed to stay longer?  Was there something I needed to learn?       Two or three times a week I walked around the block and searched for someone watching the house.  If I was under surveillance I needed to know if Grandma was in danger.  So I’d do little tricks like pull Granny’s shopping cart around the corner as though I was on my way to the market, and as soon as I got around the corner I’d stash it in the bushes and jog around the block, hoping to sneak up behind the guy in the car.       But they were too good.  I never got close.  As soon as they saw me coming their car rolled away and accelerated out of reach.  All I ever saw to identify the vehicle was a dirty spot where the license plate had once hung.  I was left in the street searching for a tossed cigarette butt or a bottle top or some sign they had been there.  But there was nothing.  They were clean and careful and that meant professional.  Was it the same guy who followed me in Amsterdam?     After repairing the kitchen drawers, gluing and screwing them back together, I tackled the front yard, thinking the neighbors probably didn’t care for Granny’s lawn of opium poppies.  On a suburban street in California, where the houses were cookie cutter copies, Grandma’s stood out with a flair only she could pull off.  She loved plants so much she couldn’t pull weeds, thinking, ‘oh, the poor little plant has fought so hard to push through the pavement I just don’t have the heart to pull it.’ She loved Asian poppies and it didn’t matter they were illegal and produced opium.  They also created beautiful blooms and she wanted them in her yard.  When the sprinklers stopped working and the grass died, she sprinkled poppy seeds over the lawn, squirted water on the ground, and lo and behold, in a couple of months she had a four foot high field of poppies any drug lord would envy.  As I cut them down I wondered if the old woman was harvesting a bit for herself.       When I finished her front yard with an automated sprinkler system so she wouldn’t have to risk journeying into the real world to turn them on, I started rebuilding the back fence, setting posts in concrete.       I needed these projects.  While working I didn’t have time to think about how to begin my life anew, about Michelle’s perverted couple, how long my disability checks would continue or whether to go into police work again.  I was in Grandma’s bubble of love and wanted it to last forever.  That night I was sitting on the floor of my bedroom, slowing down my breaths with my eyes closed, sinking into meditation when I heard a noise at the window.  Through the one inch opening I saw a tiny red light.  That meant one thing:  a camera.       The shock jump started the cop in me.  I was so pissed I didn’t even think about grabbing the .38.  I was going to tear the intruder apart with my hands.  I would not allow anything to touch Grandma.  I ran to the back door.  Pebbles on the asphalt driveway hurt my feet as I ran.  I turned the corner of the garage and saw a man climb over the neighbor’s fence like it was nothing. He was light and nimble as a cat.  As I walked back to the house I thought it had to be the guy in the car.  They had violated sacred ground by intruding on family. The game they were playing just got serious.          While I drank coffee the following morning I understood that a camera meant documentation, evidence to present.  It had to be related to a case in Amsterdam but I couldn’t be certain without access to department files.  The only thing I did know was that I was putting Grandma in danger.  I had to finish the work and leave as quickly as possible.  After breakfast I walked into the yard and continued repairing the back fence, mixing concrete for the posts.      During the work Granny stayed in the back bedroom with classical music blocking the noise, sitting at her easel, mixing acrylics on an old palette, dropping bits of paint on the hardwood floor to be tracked around the house.  She was living her dream.  In her mind she was on the other side of the world.  All her life she wanted to be a painter, to roam the left bank of Paris and paint, pouring out the love reserved for plants.  She was living that dream without having to travel.  I hoped it was being lived without opium.       She spent hours in that room and came out exhausted, set her canvas against the bookshelf in the living room and stumbled into the kitchen wearing a paint-stained smock, tracking paint through the house, adding color to her wine-and-cracker trail.       I don’t think she saw the filthy floor, the knife scars making an artistic pattern in the kitchen counter top.  No, she’d pull open the door of the rusting fridge, after throwing out her finest curse words, grab a chunk of smoked salmon, plop it onto a cracker, pour herself a whopping glass of burgundy and walk to the sofa.  From there she’d eat and stare at the new painting as though it were speaking, leaning her head to the side to better hear.  She loved the dirty house, the dust balls rolling around the floor, the old yogurt containers that I called clutter buckets, filled with pens and keys and paper clips and rubber bands.  The squalor made her feel good, took her back to Texas where she grew up.  That was where she felt most comfortable so she had recreated it.      It was a lesson.  Using her life as a starting point I began looking at my own.     As weeks passed Charley and I skyped often and progressed from superficiality to him stirring up the muck of my childhood, as he called it.       “If you want to change your life you have to change the four-year-old who controls you.  That’s how you make life better.  I can teach you.”     “Look Charley, teach me how to stop the night visits.  Something comes and touches me at night.  Teach me how to stop that.”      “This has been haunting you since you were a boy.  You tried to escape it with sex and women and travel—for how many years? You buried something that is causing all this.  My guess is that if you go inside and make changes this haunting will stop.  Your assignment is to create a master list of the things you want to change about yourself.”     “This is crap.”     “We all have a four-year-old driving the car of our life.”     “Do I have to do this?”     “Do you want to keep getting checks?”     “Yes.”     “Then have that list the next time we speak.  I’ll teach you hypnosis so you can go back to your four-year-old and make changes.  Oh, by the way, your story is all over the news.  I’ve seen your blog quoted three times on--”      I turned off the computer.     The next morning I entered the kitchen and stepped in water.  That woke me fully.  A quick look around revealed water dripping from the ceiling.  I tore a hole in the drywall and found the problem.  The old galvanized pipes were clogged with mineral deposits.  The joints were crusty and sweating.  It was time to change the pipes.  As soon as I mentioned the problem Grandma told me she had to fill a yogurt container and pour it over herself to take a shower.  I thought about how it probably reminded her of farm life in Texas or a student apartment on the left bank of Paris.       The Light had given me a new project.  For the next couple of weeks I tore open walls and cut out old pipes, forcing my body into tight spaces in the attic while installing new copper pipes.       After Granny went to sleep and I turned out the lights, I changed into black clothes and slipped out the back door.  With my back against the gritty stucco wall I squatted on my haunches as my eyes adjusted, then trotted through the yard and hopped the neighbor’s fence and came out onto the sidewalk on the other side of the block.  I had to know who was watching the house.  If they were insurance investigators it’d make a good story for the blog.  But if it was related to a case I had to protect Granny.  Retribution against a cop’s family was never pretty.  It wasn’t going to happen here.      
     Grandma came through the plumbing like a trooper.  I don’t think she noticed.  As long as she had plenty of wine all was good and I was buying it by the case.  For a hundred bucks I rented a plastic outhouse, and in the evening I’d take her to a local gym where I bought a cheap membership so we could shower.  It was good and I was happy.  I was staying so busy I didn’t have time to be bothered by my perpetual chubby.  Is it possible I didn’t miss sex?      One night after our trip to the gym to shower I found I was out of bottled water and walked to the market to get some.  As I walked in front of shops I saw a car pull into a parking space across the lot and a guy got out.  That was their first mistake.  Maybe he didn’t expect me to be watching, but when he stood up the guy looked across the lot and made eye contact with me.  It wasn’t such a big deal, but it caught him off guard and he walked into the market ahead of me.       I smiled because it was time to play.  They had gotten too close to family and by doing so had violated the boundaries of decency.  As I walked I undid my belt and wrapped it tightly around the knuckles of my right hand, the buckle tight to the heel like brass knuckles.      In the market I walked up and down several aisles as music played.  I was just a shopper ambling along.  When I knew the guy from the parking lot was coming I turned and walked into the next aisle and waited.  I didn’t know if he had a weapon or if there was more than one guy.  I had one shot and had to make it count.      As he came around the corner I hit him with a right jab.  That buckle on the chin staggered him and before he could respond I hit him again.  He dropped and I pulled him by the lapels across the floor and out of the main aisle.  Now he was mine.       I went through his pockets and wallet and found only cash, no credit cards, no identification.        He looked up and smiled.     “My family’s from Texas.  Never mess with a Texan’s family.”  I wrapped the belt around his neck and jerked it tight and was about to drag him around the supermarket.  “You got one chance.  Who do you work for?”     “We are helping you.”  He turned his head and spit blood onto the shiny floor and swore in Spanish.        “No identification, that means you’re not a journalist or insurance investigator.”  I jerked the belt and pulled him across the floor, swinging him from side to side as he choked and fought.       “Who sent you?” I shouted.      Before I had gone more than a few yards a woman screamed.  I thought that my cue and dropped the belt and walked out of the market.     You can tell a lot from cursing.  When a person is pissed off they revert to their mother tongue, because in that language they can effortlessly sling the filth.  And this guy cursed in Spanish.  I didn’t know if he’d still be following me, but I got the water and hurried across the parking lot and into side streets.  If he was there, or had called in back up, I was going to pick where the confrontation would take place.  These were my streets.  I had been a teenage boy here.  No one knew this neighborhood better than I did.     At my teenage cigarette stop, where me and the boys used to meet during our morning walk to school, a grassy strip between two garages, I slipped out of sight and picked up a trash can and dug a brick out of the dirt, pulled it from the strands of Bermuda grass that surrounded it.  I needed answers.  This was going to stop here.  With my back to the wall I waited and let the car get close.       Yes, he was coming.  ‘Let it come a bit closer,’ I told myself, peaking around the corner of the garage.       Just as it was about to pass I ran out and hurled the trash can.  It hit the grill and blocked the alley and the car screeched to a stop.  I ran to the driver’s window and smashed it with the brick and tried to pull the driver from the vehicle.       As he fought he managed to shove the stick into reverse and smoked the tires down the alley.  The car bounced from the alley onto the street and drove away.       My hands shook as I picked up the water bottles.       Walking gave me time to think.  They weren’t cops, nor investigators.  The lack of identification meant military or a criminal organization.  I knew it wasn’t military, so it had to be a case from Amsterdam.  I noted the make and model of the car.  I did the same for the driver, remembered his race, age, hair and eye color.  And then something came to mind.  He wore a collar pen that seemed familiar.  I tried to remember where I had seen it.  As I turned up the walk to Grandma’s door, I thought over past cases, convicts who had called me out, defendants who rushed at me across a crowded courtroom, and the silent, effeminate child killer with the demented smile. Then I remembered the pen.  The guy who followed me to the park in Amsterdam had something on his collar.  A man on my flight wore a gold pen on his lapel.  All three were Latinos.       As the plumbing continued I found myself climbing into the attic, into positions that even a yogi would find uncomfortable.  Working in the baking heat of the attic, and going up and down a ladder for every little thing made progress stall.  I needed help.  After a few days of getting nowhere I decided to hire a helper from the home improvement center’s parking lot. We spoke for about five minutes before I agreed to his pay rate.  It was not his words I was listening to.  I watched how he moved his eyes, how he held himself. That told me more than his words.  There was nothing hidden or secretive about him.  I felt he was a good man.      When I saw how much work Gustavo completed the first day I knew my decision to hire him had been the correct one.  For more than a week we cut copper pipe, cleaned the ends and applied flux so the solder would hold the joints together.  My hands ached with a web of tiny cuts from the sharp pipe ends.       As days passed Gustavo told stories of his home in Yucatan.  I learned about the jungle and the Caribbean, and his stories aroused my curiosity.  I was being led.  Inwardly I smiled and thanked the Light.     The tales made me barrow books and I began reading about ‘Mexico’s troublesome little brother,’ as one of the books described the region.  I felt a longing to be there, to walk among the Mayan pyramids, to wear sandals and shorts all day, to laugh about a region called ‘I do not understand.’  For that is what the word Yucatan means. When the Spanish arrived and asked the name of the place, the indigenous people did not understand their language, and answered, ‘Yucatan,’ which means: I do not understand.  The more I read about Yucatan, and prayed about going abroad to meditate and make peace with the touching, the more peace I felt.      To free myself of the unseen, whatever was touching me at night, free myself of the visitations, to search for sanity, I was going to do something that made everyone think I was crazy.  I was going to move to Yucatan and meditate and pray.  I had been running from this my entire life.  I needed to identify and heal it.  Using techniques from my spiritual books and incorporating them with Charley’s hypnosis, I was going to go into my past and change it.  How could I put that on a resume?      Before I left Amsterdam I recognized signs that preceded a visitation.  Headaches became common.  Usually they were accompanied by a ringing in my ears.  On the final day of the plumbing work the ringing began, as though my brain did not know how to process what it was hearing.  That night it came.     When I felt something sit on my bed and take hold of my arm, I was ready.  I was so full of love and happiness from prayers that I sat up without opening my eyes, and in my mind’s eye saw a light of love surrounding me, protecting me, my own private bubble of light.  When fear rushed through my mind I surrendered and loved it, loved everything as if it were my own sweet child, as Jesus did on the cross.  And then I was pulled into a place of only light and my inward vision, my thought, shattered into a million fragments of joyous color, like an orgasm of the mind.   
     Grandma woke me the next morning.       “Sweet Lord Jesus!” She plopped down onto the bed, steam rising from her cup of tea. “Child, something happened last night.  I felt it coming like before, but there was a light that blocked out everything and covered me.”       That old woman wept, tears flowing down her face as she placed a hand on my leg. “It’s happening to you what happened to Uncle Milton and me.  But somehow you’re shining through it like a sunny day that hurts your eyes.”      I felt the pain in her voice and imagined the horrors she had gone through trying to fight something no one thought real.  At that moment our roles reversed.  I became the adult comforting a crying, frightened child of eighty years. The visitations were affecting her and I couldn’t let that happen.  It was time to leave.

The Mayan Secret, Chapter 2

This is Chapter 2 of The Mayan Secret, my new novel that will soon be released.  I hope you like and enjoy it.



CHAPTER 2  When I was a boy my bed shook at night.  I thought everyone’s bed shook so I didn’t mention it.  Often I found myself trapped between sleep and waking, a strange animal perched on my chest.  I stroked its wiry hair and watched it suck in my breath as strands of smoke. But life was full of things to keep my mind off that which couldn’t be explained.  I discovered girls, and then travel.  My penis became the compass of my life, pointing the direction I should go.  It guided me through dozens of countries and into the arms of countless women.  For years I was a playboy with a back pack, enjoying women in Spain, France and Germany.  Even then I was running from the things that came to me at night.Michelle changed my life and I moved to Amsterdam.  Having her beside me kept the touching away.  Her energy changed my own.  I wanted to build a future for us, a life together, and joined the police academy.   The airport shuttle let me out at the curb.  Huge umbrella trees made a tunnel of the street, blanketed lawns and gutters with purple seed pods that crunched under my feet.  Every few steps one popped under my shoe like a tiny balloon. Maybe it was me being paranoid and fresh out of police work, but I noticed a foreign coupe coast to a stop at the far end of the street.  As I rounded up my bags and paid the shuttle driver while chatting, the guy in the coupe did not get out.  He sat and stared as though on duty.  A wave of painful memories washed over me when I picked up my bags and turned toward the suburban house.  Inside was Grandma’s world.  She became my single parent when an auto accident took my mother and father.  This house still contained my childhood.If I could choose one object as the house logo, to sum up what it was like inside, it would be her rusty, yellowed gas refrigerator that I saw in a 1938 Cary Grant film.  Food had to be placed in one corner of the refrigerator to get cold.  The handle hung down as if it was about to fall off.  While cooking Grandma often rushed to the rusty old thing, wiping her hands on a homemade print dress, and stood wiggling the handle, trying to get it to latch into place and open. As a child, when no one was around, I’d shake the handle and repeat her words: “Shit fire, piss ass dung,” as though they were part of the magic ceremony that opened the refrigerator. If I mentioned buying a new refrigerator she pointed out that running on gas saved money,  and that was the mega rule.  Everything she did, from lining drawers with newspaper, to using yogurt tops as coasters, tossing the dish scrubber to the concrete outside the back door to dry in the sun, to washing tuna cans and putting them under her bed posts to protect the wooden floor, shouted depression.I wanted to run but needed answers and Granny was the keeper of family history.  If anyone knew what was happening it was her.  My plan was to get the information I needed and get out.  I didn’t want her involved.  If I was going insane I didn’t want her to worry or change her life to care for me.  My fears of returning home popped like the seed pods in the street when she hugged me and I smelled the vinegar rinse in her hair, felt her soft belly pressing against me,.  She was a wave of warm love that washed over me.  Memories of glorious summer days with shaggy, sun-bleached hair, sore spots worn into my feet by the plaster of my favorite swimming pool, and sun-warmed nectarines tossed from tree to pool, brought laughter.  While we hugged Grandma spoke with a beautiful Southern accent resurrected for such moments.  On and on she went about the neighbor and the vegetable garden and the lack of rain as she carried a bag through the front door. The room she put me in was illuminated with a 25 watt bulb.  It was depression era lighting and I felt my spirit, my joy for life, dwindle to the same low wattage.  I set down my bags and remembered the guy watching the house and searched through the closet for my old .38.  I found my baby in the cigar box where I left her, beneath a pair of hiking boots.  This old school revolver certainly wasn’t my nine millimeter service weapon, but it still felt good in my hand.  I didn’t know what I brought with me from Amsterdam, but the revolver would supply home protection to keep whatever it was away from Granny.   It took several days to sort out the financial details with the Amsterdam Police Department and my new bank so my disability checks would find me.  Between calls I tortured myself by imagining a man and woman using my favorite sex toys on Michelle.  Each time images of that three-some came into my mind I silently said: ‘I love you and forgive you and release you,’ and went about my day. I mentioned the boredom to Charley, my police department shrink, during a skype session.  He suggested I write a blog about the shooting, about being a cop, the changes I was going through, how it felt to shift from one country to another, to be pulled sexually to a woman on the other side of the world.  I called the blog ‘Into the Light,’ and described the blood and the pain of the shooting, how something had protected me, surrounded me, and how the light, the love in that nurse’s eyes called me back.  I wrote for hours while Grandma slept.  There was so much I needed to shout about.  My words came out in Dutch, without punctuation.  All that time, that part of my life, the pain and my service on the Amsterdam police department, was filed in my mind in a Dutch file.  Pulling it out of my mind was physical labor.  My hands shook.  I was typing as fast as I ever had.  Sentences erupted in heaps, bursts of thought and emotion, all the pain I felt during that time, the isolation and endless questions from department superiors.  It leapt out of me.  Charley had been right.  I clicked publish, added a few Dutch journalists to my online circles, and went to bed. The next day I started washing windows and mopping floors.  The last thing I needed was to sit and think about Michelle being slutty, or why the marriage crumbled, or why I was a loser, or my ever present chubby.  The divorce made me look at myself and realize there were things inside me, aspects of my personality I needed to change. Again and again I released that energy to the Light.  A few days later I visited the blog and was surprised to find 614 comments from people around the world. Many were from angry church members who quoted scripture and called my experience a lie. An attractive Dutch reporter posted a video of her broadcast about my case, and left a note saying she wanted an interview.  In the evenings I tried to get close to Grandma, hoping to get answers.  I sat on the old sofa beside her, afraid to touch the soiled arm rests, listening to stories, the ‘who was out to get who’ of family history.  She thrived on the old hatreds and plots and gnashed her teeth and pushed her pink glasses up by crunching her nose, and drank mountain burgundy as she narrated, her voice changing with the start of each tale, as if she were walking onto a stage.  A trail of spilt wine and cracker crumbs stretched from her feet, across the dirty oak living room floor, to the kitchen counter where she often refilled her glass and grabbed crackers from the box.  Every so often a crumbs flew from her mouth as she spoke, and when her glass was empty she’d mark the level she needed it filled to by pointing with a finger.  And dropping out of her stage voice, she’d say, “If you don’t mind, darling.”Weeks later she told me about her breakdown.  Tears came to Grandma’s wrinkled cheeks as she remembered jumping from a third story window with flames at her back.  Her voice changed to one of reverence as she described how she heard a voice and felt hands supporting and lowering her, protecting her.  From a tattered plastic bag in the bottom of her closet she dug out newspaper clipping that detailed how she fell through a tree and onto the hood of a car and received only scratches.  She went on about how she fought to control her mind; hands touching her while she slept.  I didn’t probe too much because I knew about her being institutionalized.  I would never make her return to that place in memory where demons screamed her name as they climbed up from Hell to take her.  Something had touched her too.  I was getting close. Days later she turned as we sat at the kitchen table, crookneck squash on crumpled newspaper by our plates, gnats circling ripe nectarines, and said:  “I don’t know what it means, Cody, but it’s passed to you.  Shit fire.”  She stepped to the counter and wiped it with a rag. I saw the counter was dry.“How did you—““You didn’t need to tell me, child.  I can see it in your eyes.”   “What do you know about it?”“I’ll tell you what my mama told me:  As far back as she could remember there’s been something calling, touching family members.  They tried to fight and some were stout country men, but it pulled them into madness.  My brother Milton took a butcher knife to the family dog.”It wasn’t the information I was hoping for.  I wanted to fix something, take it apart with tools and replace a broken part. Grandma’s stories were about fighting and losing.  I too wanted to fight.  I wanted to smash whatever the hell it was that was touching me.  But there was nothing to grab, and that was the frustrating part.  But then I realized something:  Every family member had tried to fight the touching.  Was Grandma’s fall into insanity caused by resistance?  Was that the key?I didn’t want to be strapped to a bed and pumped full of drugs until I couldn’t fight.  I thought about what helped me in Amsterdam:  The White Light.  My books all spoke of surrender and faith, and that reminded me of a trick I learned as a boy while body surfing.  Once in a while, as I treaded water in the surf, waiting for the next wave to arrive, a riptide pulled me from shore.  The trick was to relax.  If a swimmer panicked and fought they soon became exhausted and could no longer tread water.  So when a riptide grabbed me and I found myself drifting from shore I just stretched out on my back happy as could be, floating with the current until it dissipated. When it released me I’d swim to shore. That was what I’d do with the touching. The next time something came I’d be ready.I didn’t learn what was touching me, but I had a plan of how to deal with it and that was why I came.  Now I could go on with my life.  It was time to move out.  But the thought of leaving Grandma troubled me.  She was my halfway house, my refuge between cultures and countries, between married life and a life of finding a job and starting over.  I spoke with the Light about it after my morning meditation.  Every time I asked for direction projects around the house came to mind.  I wondered if seeing new projects was a message.  Was I supposed to stay longer?  Was there something I needed to learn?  Two or three times a week I walked around the block and searched for someone watching the house.  If I was under surveillance I needed to know if Grandma was in danger.  So I’d do little tricks like pull Granny’s shopping cart around the corner as though I was on my way to the market, and as soon as I got around the corner I’d stash it in the bushes and jog around the block, hoping to sneak up behind the guy in the car.  But they were too good.  I never got close.  As soon as they saw me coming their car rolled away and accelerated out of reach.  All I ever saw to identify the vehicle was a dirty spot where the license plate had once hung.  I was left in the street searching for a tossed cigarette butt or a bottle top or some sign they had been there.  But there was nothing.  They were clean and careful and that meant professional.  Was it the same guy who followed me in Amsterdam?After repairing the kitchen drawers, gluing and screwing them back together, I tackled the front yard, thinking the neighbors probably didn’t care for Granny’s lawn of opium poppies.  On a suburban street in California, where the houses were cookie cutter copies, Grandma’s stood out with a flair only she could pull off.  She loved plants so much she couldn’t pull weeds, thinking, ‘oh, the poor little plant has fought so hard to push through the pavement I just don’t have the heart to pull it.’ She loved Asian poppies and it didn’t matter they were illegal and produced opium.  They also created beautiful blooms and she wanted them in her yard.  When the sprinklers stopped working and the grass died, she sprinkled poppy seeds over the lawn, squirted water on the ground, and lo and behold, in a couple of months she had a four foot high field of poppies any drug lord would envy.  As I cut them down I wondered if the old woman was harvesting a bit for herself.  When I finished her front yard with an automated sprinkler system so she wouldn’t have to risk journeying into the real world to turn them on, I started rebuilding the back fence, setting posts in concrete.  I needed these projects.  While working I didn’t have time to think about how to begin my life anew, about Michelle’s perverted couple, how long my disability checks would continue or whether to go into police work again.  I was in Grandma’s bubble of love and wanted it to last forever.  That night I was sitting on the floor of my bedroom, slowing down my breaths with my eyes closed, sinking into meditation when I heard a noise at the window.  Through the one inch opening I saw a tiny red light.  That meant one thing:  a camera.  The shock jump started the cop in me.  I was so pissed I didn’t even think about grabbing the .38.  I was going to tear the intruder apart with my hands.  I would not allow anything to touch Grandma.  I ran to the back door.  Pebbles on the asphalt driveway hurt my feet as I ran.  I turned the corner of the garage and saw a man climb over the neighbor’s fence like it was nothing. He was light and nimble as a cat.  As I walked back to the house I thought it had to be the guy in the car.  They had violated sacred ground by intruding on family. The game they were playing just got serious.     While I drank coffee the following morning I understood that a camera meant documentation, evidence to present.  It had to be related to a case in Amsterdam but I couldn’t be certain without access to department files.  The only thing I did know was that I was putting Grandma in danger.  I had to finish the work and leave as quickly as possible.  After breakfast I walked into the yard and continued repairing the back fence, mixing concrete for the posts. During the work Granny stayed in the back bedroom with classical music blocking the noise, sitting at her easel, mixing acrylics on an old palette, dropping bits of paint on the hardwood floor to be tracked around the house.  She was living her dream.  In her mind she was on the other side of the world.  All her life she wanted to be a painter, to roam the left bank of Paris and paint, pouring out the love reserved for plants.  She was living that dream without having to travel.  I hoped it was being lived without opium.  She spent hours in that room and came out exhausted, set her canvas against the bookshelf in the living room and stumbled into the kitchen wearing a paint-stained smock, tracking paint through the house, adding color to her wine-and-cracker trail.  I don’t think she saw the filthy floor, the knife scars making an artistic pattern in the kitchen counter top.  No, she’d pull open the door of the rusting fridge, after throwing out her finest curse words, grab a chunk of smoked salmon, plop it onto a cracker, pour herself a whopping glass of burgundy and walk to the sofa.  From there she’d eat and stare at the new painting as though it were speaking, leaning her head to the side to better hear.  She loved the dirty house, the dust balls rolling around the floor, the old yogurt containers that I called clutter buckets, filled with pens and keys and paper clips and rubber bands.  The squalor made her feel good, took her back to Texas where she grew up.  That was where she felt most comfortable so she had recreated it. It was a lesson.  Using her life as a starting point I began looking at my own.As weeks passed Charley and I skyped often and progressed from superficiality to him stirring up the muck of my childhood, as he called it.  “If you want to change your life you have to change the four-year-old who controls you.  That’s how you make life better.  I can teach you.”“Look Charley, teach me how to stop the night visits.  Something comes and touches me at night.  Teach me how to stop that.” “This has been haunting you since you were a boy.  You tried to escape it with sex and women and travel—for how many years? You buried something that is causing all this.  My guess is that if you go inside and make changes this haunting will stop.  Your assignment is to create a master list of the things you want to change about yourself.”“This is crap.”“We all have a four-year-old driving the car of our life.”“Do I have to do this?”“Do you want to keep getting checks?”“Yes.”“Then have that list the next time we speak.  I’ll teach you hypnosis so you can go back to your four-year-old and make changes.  Oh, by the way, your story is all over the news.  I’ve seen your blog quoted three times on--”      I turned off the computer.The next morning I entered the kitchen and stepped in water.  That woke me fully.  A quick look around revealed water dripping from the ceiling.  I tore a hole in the drywall and found the problem.  The old galvanized pipes were clogged with mineral deposits.  The joints were crusty and sweating.  It was time to change the pipes.  As soon as I mentioned the problem Grandma told me she had to fill a yogurt container and pour it over herself to take a shower.  I thought about how it probably reminded her of farm life in Texas or a student apartment on the left bank of Paris.  The Light had given me a new project.  For the next couple of weeks I tore open walls and cut out old pipes, forcing my body into tight spaces in the attic while installing new copper pipes.  After Granny went to sleep and I turned out the lights, I changed into black clothes and slipped out the back door.  With my back against the gritty stucco wall I squatted on my haunches as my eyes adjusted, then trotted through the yard and hopped the neighbor’s fence and came out onto the sidewalk on the other side of the block.  I had to know who was watching the house.  If they were insurance investigators it’d make a good story for the blog.  But if it was related to a case I had to protect Granny.  Retribution against a cop’s family was never pretty.  It wasn’t going to happen here.
Grandma came through the plumbing like a trooper.  I don’t think she noticed.  As long as she had plenty of wine all was good and I was buying it by the case.  For a hundred bucks I rented a plastic outhouse, and in the evening I’d take her to a local gym where I bought a cheap membership so we could shower.  It was good and I was happy.  I was staying so busy I didn’t have time to be bothered by my perpetual chubby.  Is it possible I didn’t miss sex?One night after our trip to the gym to shower I found I was out of bottled water and walked to the market to get some.  As I walked in front of shops I saw a car pull into a parking space across the lot and a guy got out.  That was their first mistake.  Maybe he didn’t expect me to be watching, but when he stood up the guy looked across the lot and made eye contact with me.  It wasn’t such a big deal, but it caught him off guard and he walked into the market ahead of me.  I smiled because it was time to play.  They had gotten too close to family and by doing so had violated the boundaries of decency.  As I walked I undid my belt and wrapped it tightly around the knuckles of my right hand, the buckle tight to the heel like brass knuckles. In the market I walked up and down several aisles as music played.  I was just a shopper ambling along.  When I knew the guy from the parking lot was coming I turned and walked into the next aisle and waited.  I didn’t know if he had a weapon or if there was more than one guy.  I had one shot and had to make it count. As he came around the corner I hit him with a right jab.  That buckle on the chin staggered him and before he could respond I hit him again.  He dropped and I pulled him by the lapels across the floor and out of the main aisle.  Now he was mine.  I went through his pockets and wallet and found only cash, no credit cards, no identification.   He looked up and smiled.“My family’s from Texas.  Never mess with a Texan’s family.”  I wrapped the belt around his neck and jerked it tight and was about to drag him around the supermarket.  “You got one chance.  Who do you work for?”“We are helping you.”  He turned his head and spit blood onto the shiny floor and swore in Spanish.   “No identification, that means you’re not a journalist or insurance investigator.”  I jerked the belt and pulled him across the floor, swinging him from side to side as he choked and fought.  “Who sent you?” I shouted. Before I had gone more than a few yards a woman screamed.  I thought that my cue and dropped the belt and walked out of the market.  You can tell a lot from cursing.  When a person is pissed off they revert to their mother tongue, because in that language they can effortlessly sling the filth.  And this guy cursed in Spanish.  I didn’t know if he’d still be following me, but I got the water and hurried across the parking lot and into side streets.  If he was there, or had called in back up, I was going to pick where the confrontation would take place.  These were my streets.  I had been a teenage boy here.  No one knew this neighborhood better than I did.At my teenage cigarette stop, where me and the boys used to meet during our morning walk to school, a grassy strip between two garages, I slipped out of sight and picked up a trash can and dug a brick out of the dirt, pulled it from the strands of Bermuda grass that surrounded it.  I needed answers.  This was going to stop here.  With my back to the wall I waited and let the car get close.  Yes, he was coming.  ‘Let it come a bit closer,’ I told myself, peaking around the corner of the garage.  Just as it was about to pass I ran out and hurled the trash can.  It hit the grill and blocked the alley and the car screeched to a stop.  I ran to the driver’s window and smashed it with the brick and tried to pull the driver from the vehicle.  As he fought he managed to shove the stick into reverse and smoked the tires down the alley.  The car bounced from the alley onto the street and drove away.  My hands shook as I picked up the water bottles.  Walking gave me time to think.  They weren’t cops, nor investigators.  The lack of identification meant military or a criminal organization.  I knew it wasn’t military, so it had to be a case from Amsterdam.  I noted the make and model of the car.  I did the same for the driver, remembered his race, age, hair and eye color.  And then something came to mind.  He wore a collar pen that seemed familiar.  I tried to remember where I had seen it.  As I turned up the walk to Grandma’s door, I thought over past cases, convicts who had called me out, defendants who rushed at me across a crowded courtroom, and the silent, effeminate child killer with the demented smile. Then I remembered the pen.  The guy who followed me to the park in Amsterdam had something on his collar.  A man on my flight wore a gold pen on his lapel.  All three were Latinos.  As the plumbing continued I found myself climbing into the attic, into positions that even a yogi would find uncomfortable.  Working in the baking heat of the attic, and going up and down a ladder for every little thing made progress stall.  I needed help.  After a few days of getting nowhere I decided to hire a helper from the home improvement center’s parking lot. We spoke for about five minutes before I agreed to his pay rate.  It was not his words I was listening to.  I watched how he moved his eyes, how he held himself. That told me more than his words.  There was nothing hidden or secretive about him.  I felt he was a good man. When I saw how much work Gustavo completed the first day I knew my decision to hire him had been the correct one.  For more than a week we cut copper pipe, cleaned the ends and applied flux so the solder would hold the joints together.  My hands ached with a web of tiny cuts from the sharp pipe ends.  As days passed Gustavo told stories of his home in Yucatan.  I learned about the jungle and the Caribbean, and his stories aroused my curiosity.  I was being led.  Inwardly I smiled and thanked the Light.The tales made me barrow books and I began reading about ‘Mexico’s troublesome little brother,’ as one of the books described the region.  I felt a longing to be there, to walk among the Mayan pyramids, to wear sandals and shorts all day, to laugh about a region called ‘I do not understand.’  For that is what the word Yucatan means. When the Spanish arrived and asked the name of the place, the indigenous people did not understand their language, and answered, ‘Yucatan,’ which means: I do not understand.  The more I read about Yucatan, and prayed about going abroad to meditate and make peace with the touching, the more peace I felt. To free myself of the unseen, whatever was touching me at night, free myself of the visitations, to search for sanity, I was going to do something that made everyone think I was crazy.  I was going to move to Yucatan and meditate and pray.  I had been running from this my entire life.  I needed to identify and heal it.  Using techniques from my spiritual books and incorporating them with Charley’s hypnosis, I was going to go into my past and change it.  How could I put that on a resume? Before I left Amsterdam I recognized signs that preceded a visitation.  Headaches became common.  Usually they were accompanied by a ringing in my ears.  On the final day of the plumbing work the ringing began, as though my brain did not know how to process what it was hearing.  That night it came.When I felt something sit on my bed and take hold of my arm, I was ready.  I was so full of love and happiness from prayers that I sat up without opening my eyes, and in my mind’s eye saw a light of love surrounding me, protecting me, my own private bubble of light.  When fear rushed through my mind I surrendered and loved it, loved everything as if it were my own sweet child, as Jesus did on the cross.  And then I was pulled into a place of only light and my inward vision, my thought, shattered into a million fragments of joyous color, like an orgasm of the mind.   
Grandma woke me the next morning.  “Sweet Lord Jesus!” She plopped down onto the bed, steam rising from her cup of tea. “Child, something happened last night.  I felt it coming like before, but there was a light that blocked out everything and covered me.”  That old woman wept, tears flowing down her face as she placed a hand on my leg. “It’s happening to you what happened to Uncle Milton and me.  But somehow you’re shining through it like a sunny day that hurts your eyes.” I felt the pain in her voice and imagined the horrors she had gone through trying to fight something no one thought real.  At that moment our roles reversed.  I became the adult comforting a crying, frightened child of eighty years. The visitations were affecting her and I couldn’t let that happen.  It was time to leave.