Writing fiction is more fun than almost anything. You create a world and fill it with interesting people, then give them adventures. You defeat evil. If you wish, you mangle the bad guy in an original way and reward the good guy ditto. Selling the fiction you write is different, though.
My local coffee shop sells books written by self-publishing members of a writers' club. The shop sells very few. For a while, I read them because I belong to the club. I don't do that anymore; the books are their authors' pets, and by that I mean dogs. Their owners caress and curry their pets with the computer spell- and grammar-checker, pay expensive trainers to groom their format, prettify them with style and cover, and show them in contests. They seem to know nothing about their chosen breed; the genre.
Here's the good news: You can earn a good living from your fiction if you know the difference between fiction, film, journalism, history and memoir (which is not necessarily autobiography). You can learn the differences. You can get a great high from writing, which is free and neither illegal nor fattening.
Here's the bad news: Although not all successful fiction is literate, much less literature, you can't make money writing it unless you know the genre, and successful writers do. They have taken the classes, joined the critique groups and attended the conferences. An editor can tell within, say, three paragraphs; certainly within the first three pages, whether the work is professional-grade. A man-in-the-street reader may buy the first, but not the second, effort unless it satisfies his demands for believable characters, lucid description of place, scenes with a purpose, and tension inherent in the situation.
I'll say it again: believable characters, lucid description of place, scenes with a purpose, and tension inherent in the situation. And a story, but that's another topic.
Here's Chapter 15 of Dead on Dutcher's Mountain. It looks like the bad guy's going to score.
Fifteen
H illary was stuporous with fatigue and had nothing to do until time for the banquet. She wandered north, uphill from the mine. Game trails led the way. They hugged exposed shoulders of the grade and skirted clearings overhung by pines. Springs stained granite outcrops with emerald moss. Brown ferns; twiggy berry canes; white clover, still blooming on the southern slopes. She began to see blued distance across ranks of mountains. She saw the ocean’s afternoon fog. She came out at a large clearing paved with fallen, golden grass. A creek trickled at its farthest edge. Here she could rest, maybe sort out her confused feelings. She sat by a fallen tree, lowered herself until the bole became a pillow, dozed.She woke languorously, then, startled, whirled. She was not alone. It wasn’t Earl or Bri, protecting her. It was the yellow, club-headed dog, and it was Karl. He sat apart on her log, abstracted and staring. The stony completeness of it made her a voyeur.
He came to himself. “I apologize,” he said quietly. “Am I disturbing you?” Then briskly and louder, as if he were waking too, “Of course I am. I apologize again. Come, Lout.” The dog moved to its master’s feet and sat. He said, “In fact, I saw you wander from camp and was concerned. They say there are bears on this mountain.”
“You needn’t have bothered.” She sat up and rubbed her stiff neck. “Do you know what time it is?”
“Almost four.”
She stretched, eased her shoulders, stood and stretched again. He watched her move. It made her self-conscious; her belly, her breasts.
“Were there many people on today’s tour?” she asked, and felt like a dolt at the banality.
“All the weekend guests except for yourself.”
Which left her without a topic and still self-conscious. She fished into her jacket for an M & M. “How tall are you?”
He was amused. “I’m not sure. I stopped keeping track at--six feet, eight inches.”
“You’re taller than that.”
“Now, yes. And you?”
“Five-feet two.” The shadow of her head stretched level against his shoulder; a hypnotic image. Watching it she said, “You got to me this morning with your talk about personal power. A couple of times I wondered about my own motives.”
He nodded. “That’s interesting.” He produced a cigar and made a long ceremony of getting it cut and lit. “You carry yourself differently this afternoon.”
“I’m tired and alone. At any rate, I thought I was.”
“Do you hide so much from others?”
She shrugged and half-turned toward the fog bank. “I’m just lying low. I tire easily.”
“I saw your illness in your eyes. Is it a disease from Mexico?”
She nodded. “A specialty of the tropics. I suppose I may also be hiding from more commitment, but who knows?”
“I see.” He checked the tip of his cigar. “Incidentally, I delivered your film into the slot on the newspaper’s office door.”
“Thanks.”
“Does it give you a sense of destiny? Such talent with your camera?”
She shrugged. “It’s an option beyond writing. Why?”
“Casual talk.”
She shrugged again, becoming uneasy, aware that he wanted something and not sure that she wouldn’t give it. “More casual talk about personal things,” she said. “What are you about, Karl? Are you ambitious? Do you have a secret passion? What was all that stuff you spouted over breakfast? What about women? Do you trust us? Do you like us? Are you married?”
Laughing, “No. Never married.”
“Do you like women?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“Not exactly.”
“Perhaps I am cautious. Many women want one’s power. That sort of woman does not interest me.”
“Your power?”
“Is my phrase awkward?”
“You mean charisma. Charisma is innate. It’s not transmittable.”
“Oh.”
She dug out another M & M. “Maybe you’re right.” She squinted unnecessarily toward the lowering sun. “I wonder if it’s cocktail time.”
Karl chuckled. “Yes.” He unfolded his height and produced a hip flask.
She sipped and tasted juniper. “Tangueray?”
“Yes.”
They moved off companionably, passing his flask and making their way through increasingly dense shrubs of browning azaleas. Lout scouted ahead.
“Why do you romance me, Karl?”
“I want you to want me. I want to bring you to the edge. To teach you...”
“Don’t tell me; ecstasy.”
“Even so, then. Ecstasy.”
“I’m already at the edge, but not of ecstasy. And for different reasons. You don’t know me. You misunderstand me.”
“I disagree.”
They walked, and Hillary’s head began a melodic buzz.
They were halted by shrubs and could go no farther. Voerst cast about, then lifted her like a child and set her down beyond the blockage. He stepped over it without comment, but Hillary’s ribs kept the feel of his long fingers on her back.
After a while he said, “You can’t have enjoyed her personally, your sister-in-law.”
“What makes you say that?”
“She was apparently content to keep house. For a banker, by his profession a convention-keeper.”
“I told you, Karl, you misunderstand me. The conventional banker is my brother. We’re cast from the same mold.”
“But not you and his wife.”
They walked on, entering the soft shadow of the mountain.
Karl said, “Incidentally, I give your brother credit. His participation package was quite original. He is made now. Did you know it?”
Hillary stopped, surprised. “How do you know that? You just got here.”
“Don’t underestimate my position within the corporation, Hillary.” He moved closer, his presence intimate and powerful. His body took up her field of vision. His low voice took all her attention. “Never underestimate me, Hillary. When I speak of power, or ecstasy, I know.”
She raised her eyes across the expanse of his tattersal shirt and up the column of his throat to his mouth and the contained expression of his eyes. His hair floated along his shoulders as gold as the grass in the meadow.
“You’re a curious animal, Karl. You’d take some getting used to.”
“It’s time you began.”
He lifted and held her close for a full, lazy kiss. It didn’t remain lazy. Amazed and confounded by her own intensity, Hillary wrapped her arms across his heavy shoulders so tightly that her breasts against him were a demand, her pelvis and thighs integral to his chest and belly. She moaned; she clung. She drew in the scent of his skin, the heavy structure of his bones, the warmth of his meat.
It took the impossible to part them; a car engine started as close as next door. Karl groaned, his eyes closed. His hands trailed up her thighs, then cupped her hips against his adamant crotch so that she hung avid against the only real thing, the only real act. She could not look him in the face. She could not push herself away. She could not breathe.
But Lout was mad, howling and throwing himself against impenetrable undergrowth, and there was simply nowhere within miles for a vehicle to drive.
They turned toward the sound. At the farther edge of a slope the ground fell steeply, revealing only the tips of very tall trees and the blue of a gulf between mountains. Bushes swayed. Hillary thought she saw a silver fender. By the time they arrived at the spot, the sound had died. They stood on the lip of the void, amazed and mute. There was nothing else; no sound, no movement. Their view reached to tomorrow’s sunrise, but did not include a road, or even a trail. Hillary began to focus. An eagle drifted below their feet.
“I want to tuck you under my arm and fly,” Voerst said. “To soar with that bird, Divina.”
“Like Superman?”
“Like Zarathustra, the übermensch.”
Hillary laughed and leaned against his warmth, hungry. They were silent.
“It’s time we dressed for dinner,” he finally said.
She felt the pulse of his heart against her cheek. “I’d rather go flying.”
They found the earlier trail and returned to the mine with Lout.
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