Effing Feline asks ‘What the heck is a purple cow?’ #wewriwa
I, Effing Feline, have been told to pass along a message from Ed. But I’m a cat. He knows I’m a cat. He should darn well know that cats don’t like to be told what to do. Therefore, I’m not going to tell you the message until after this word from my brand new sponsor — Never Saw a Perfect Cow. So there!
This unpublished sci fi book is waiting for Ed to make up his @&^%^$# mind what to do with it. Because of its length (132K) and serious content, he considered venturing back into traditional publishing, which he hasn’t done since 2005. However, after garnering the book’s first rejection a couple weeks ago, he realized he doesn’t have the stomach for the New York game. How did he ever stomach it enough to get his first six books trad published?
Purple Cow explores the relationship between creativity and madness. It’s near-future sci fi with elements of romance and more sex than is usual in Ed’s work, though there’s none in this snippet. To set the scene —
Janet Davis, a beautiful 44-year old suburbanite, abandons her husband, her luxurious LA home, even her country to risk madness and death on a quarantined island in the northern wilderness.
Why?
“There’s your tomb, Lady,” said the Indian.
The words slowly penetrated Janet Davis’s regrets, creeping with the insidious stealth of fog slipping around a corner. With a mental pop that seemed more real than reality, she recalled where she was.
On a grimy, reeking gillnetter, alone with this man. Crossing the River Styx to the land of the dead . . . so to speak.
She had to force a deep breath before she could answer: “Pardon me?”
“There it is,” the First Nations boat driver said slowly, as though dealing with an idiot child. He jabbed at the window to Janet’s right without taking his eyes from grey seas that were indistinguishable from the grey blanket of clouds and grey hills covered with evergreens whose color had been sucked dry like a bloodless corpse. He shook his head and made a disgusted clucking sound. “Your tomb.”
Effing Feline here again. Ed’s message, banal as it is — he and all his family are fine and he hopes you are, too. So far he doesn’t know anyone who’s contracted Covid19. Do you?
As messages go, that wasn’t worth waiting for, was it?
Be sure to visit the other great writers in Weekend Writing Warriors and Snippet Sunday.
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Never Saw a Purple Cow
Purple Cow: someone who not only doesn’t fit in, they stand out like a . . . well like a purple cow in a dairy herd.
Grade-A example: beautiful middle-aged suburbanite Janet Davis choosing to live among the creative but insane quarantinees of remote Gilford Island.
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Grape flavored milk, anyone?
