Bad, Bad Argument
Well, I was going to write a review of a book I finished this week. But then Newt Gingrich owned CNN host John King and subsequently went on to dominate the South Caroline primary, and that prompted me to say a couple of things on Facebook about the man. What resulted was the typical time-suck debate which I usually feel like I win but which usually takes more effort than it should.
When I explain the logic of a math problem to my child, her eyes light up and she gets it. When I try to explain the illogic and hypocrisy behind Republican policies to certain friends, their eyes glaze over and they retreat to that corner of their minds where all the Limbaugh/Hannity/Coulter/Fox News/Boortz talking points reside. “But, but… Bill Clinton!” is one of my favorites. And don’t even get me started about this new “I don’t want to be held at gunpoint and forced to give my money to poor people” mantra that’s going around.
So the three arguments I got in defense of Newt Gingrich were:
1) But… but… Bill Clinton had an affair with that intern!
2) At least he (Newt) admitted to deceiving and cheating on his wives (note the plural). Herman Cain still hasn’t tacitly admitted it, and Bill Clinton didn’t even fess up under oath.
3) That’s all in the past.
OK. So first of all, if we’re talking about it all being in the past, then why bring up Clinton? That was in the past, too. Besides, Clinton reconciled with his wife and got on with his life - and I don’t recall him asking her for an open marriage and then kicking her to the curb when she said no. Add to that the fact that Clinton ISN’T currently running for President, and Gingrich is.
Also, and this is very important - just because one person does a thing, that doesn’t make it automatically excusable for another guy to do a thing. What Bill Clinton did was reprehensible, and I’ll even hang this on it: had Clinton NOT tainted his term as President with his purile indiscretion, Al Gore might have had a better legacy for his own Presidential bid, and might have won. Meaning that we WOULDN’T have had 8 years of Bush. Smoke THAT cigar, if you will.
Still, using Clinton’s screw-up as an reason to excuse Gingrich’s… how’s that work? It never worked for me when I was a kid.
“But Dad, Greg got caught playing with that girl’s boobies, too!”
Next - just because you admit to a thing doesn’t automatically excuse you either. I have a sneaking suspicion Gingrich didn’t just “own up” - that he got caught by both of his first wives and was more or less forced to come clean. Still, since we can’t prove that, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and say he DID go to them and admit his affair. So? He still divorced both wives and married his mistress. And so far he has shown ABSOLUTELY NO REMORSE for being an adulterer, a liar, and - if you consider that both ex-wives were seriously ill at the time - an unusually cruel and selfish human being.
Add to that his HYPOCRISY for gallantly decrying the reproachful behavior of President Clinton in 1998 WHILE he was simultaneously doing the same thing to then-wife #2.
Two key elements of atonement for your sin, as I understand it, are a certain level of remorse and a concerted effort not to repeat your offense. I don’t think that describes Newt, do you?
Finally, here’s the problem with the “that’s in the past” argument:
Yes. Yes it is. But here’s the thing - Newt already has a proven track record of being deceitful and hypocritical. Hell, just yesterday he admitted to spewing a bunch of bullshit during the previous debate. So… he admitted it! But he still DID it, without pause or remorse, and I’d be willing to bet he’d willingly do it again. Lie, that is. For his own profit and gain. He’s done it in the past, he’s a repeat offender, and yet….
And yet, people are still voting for him. When Clinton got elected in 1992, no one KNEW he was going to play hide the cigar with an intern and make blue dresses an object of scorn. When Cain rallied his initial group of supporters and seemed to be doing well in the Republican primaries, no one KNEW what possible skeletons were lurking in his closet. WE as voters and American citizens can be excused for making judgments regarding those two, because we didn’t know any better.
With Newt, we know better. And if we elect him, there is no excuse.
Why I’m Cool With the End of the World
As you may have heard, the world is once again scheduled to end, this time on December 21st of this year. I’m with the majority of you in hoping that this is not really the case – I’d like to go on living for a few more years, at least long enough to see my kids grow up. And if you actually WANT the world to end, I’m sorry: you’ve been inflicted with the crazy and you need to be bundled in a straight-jacket and dumped in cold water repeatedly. The world’s a cool place. Except for people like you.
I’m also one of those who doesn’t actually BELIEVE that the world will end any time soon. I find it ironic that Bible-thumping doomsayers like Harold “I Took Your Money You Gullible Chumps and I’m Not Giving It Back” Camping claim they know when the end will come. Especially when their hallowed book, The Bible, specifically says that the end’s gonna be a surprise. Now, if things came to a close on December 20TH, that would be a coup. I think God’s got a sense of humor, and that… well, that’d be something.
Ha. Ha.
Now like I said, I don’t WANT the end to be nigh. But if it were… I’d be okay with it.
Why? Well, for two solid reasons, and for one reason that depends on how the rest of this year goes.
Reason number one is that it’d confirm a lot of people’s faiths, including mine. You atheists have it easy – you can sit comfortably in your arrogance and intellect, absolutely sure that there’s nothing out there – no great divining force which exists eternally and exerts a powerful force of will on the comings and goings of the universe. Those of us who believe have it a little tougher. First, we have to put up with you dissing our intelligence because we choose to believe in something we can scarcely see or feel.
Worse though, is that we have to accept something that we can scarcely see or feel. But that’s why they call it faith.
Now, I personally think that sometimes we CAN feel or see God . To paraphrase a few people who said “it” better than I ever could, and who also happened to say it before I could: I hear God in certain pieces of non-autotuned music. I see God whenever one of my children smiles. And there’s GOT to be something to the Fibonacci sequence. There’s GOT to be.
If the world ended as predicted, chances are pretty good that God would have something to do with it. And so then us believers would have a few minutes of being able to say “Nah nah nah boo boo! We were right and YOU guys are the idiots!” A few minutes, that is, before we were all swept away in a maelstrom of holy fire and apocalyptic fury. But still. How satisfying would that be?
Reason number two is that I’m not as successful as I want to be. I’m not a failure by any stretch of the imagination – the sheer fact that you’re reading this is indicative of my relative success. Hell, I make a living as a writer. I’ve been published more than many, many people who are trying as hard as I am. I have a decent amount of followers on Twitter.
But I have yet to approach the level of success I think I deserve. And I recognize the distinct possibility that I never will.
If the world ended before I found huge success, I could blame the end of the world for everything. I could say, “I MIGHT have been the next Kurt Vonnegut or John Irving, except the motherfucking world ended.” If the world DOESN’T end, and I get old and have to start wearing diapers again without having found the success I deserve, then I can only blame myself – myself and an unjust world.
I’d rather blame Armageddon.
Finally, and I’m sorry to wax political at the end here, but it needs to be said – I’ll be even cooler with the end coming on December 21st should Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, or Rick Santorum somehow oust Barack Obama as President.
You see, I think the U.S.A. is holding on by a tenuous thread to its greatness as a nation. And while I don’t think Obama is our savior by any stretch of the imagination, I think he does represents a step back in the right direction, or at least a stop gap to keep us from sliding over the edge and into a shitstorm of trouble. If a Republican gets the Presidency in November, and we keep our awesomely Republican Congress, I think it’s only a matter of time before the U.S. becomes a hellhole, unrecognizable as the once great leader of the free world.
If the end of the world comes, we won’t have to see the U.S. relegated to crappyness. We can still potentially go out at the top of our game. Or at least close to it.
One thing that really would make me sad about the end, though, would be that my children would never become adults. Sure, they’re still innocents, and according to most believers, innocents pretty much get into Heaven. Still - and call me selfish if you want to, I don’t care - watching them grow and flourish (and smile) is something I’d like to continue doing. The end of the world would pretty much mean I couldn’t. And that would suck.
So when December 22nd comes around, I guess you’ll find me breathing a sigh of relief along with the rest of you.
Breathing a sigh of relief and waiting for the next apocalyptic doomsayer to make his appearance. Which - and I believe this prediction is much more reliable than predicting the end of the world - he will.
Two Games for 2012
Aha! If you come here often, you know that 12 days is a long time for me to go between posts. So why did I go that long?
Because I was at Atlanta Gamefest, playing the shit out of some games!
The list of games I managed to get under my belt between Thursday (the 5th) and Sunday (the 8th) is relatively short, because - as all of my gaming friends and acquaintances know and remind me incessantly - I prefer longer, deep strategic games. I would rather play one kick ass six-hour game than six one-hour ones. Besides, it seems to me that a lot of those shorter games are simply iterations of the same mechanics. So if you’re playing those, you’re playing the same game for six hours anyway. The way I do things, I don’t have to keep putting the game back into the box and then getting it out of another box.
So… here’s some of what I played: Sid Meier’s Civilization, Alien Frontiers, A Game of Thrones, Cash n’ Guns, Chaos In The Old World, 7 Wonders, Battlestar Galactica, Dominant Species, and Shogun. Not bad for four days of dice rolling, card counting, beer swilling, and smack talking.
All of those are excellent games, well worth trying if you want to play a board game besides Monopoly, Risk, Chess, or Sorry!, which is what sooo many people in America imagine when they hear the words board game. But what I’d like to focus on here are two of the “hot” games of the Fest, and how I feel about them.
First there’s Eclipse, the latest Euro-ized version of the epic ”space battle and exploration” game. Now, here’s the thing about Eclipse: I’ve heard many, many gamers saying in the past few weeks since Eclipse’s release (it was actually published in 2011) that FINALLY there’s a trimmed down version of Twilight Imperium, 3rd Edition - one that’s playable in three hours or less. Well, let me go on record as saying that Eclipse is, at its most distilled essence, NOTHING like Twilight Imperium. If you bought it hoping to get your TI:3 fix in half the time, you’re gonna be disappointed.
Sure, they both have hexagonal tile pieces for space systems, and plastic spaceships called Dreadnaughts and Cruisers. Sure, you have to explore and fight and advance your technology to better your society and naval capabilities. But as far as scope and mechanic, the games don’t compare at all.
Eclipse has a clever mechanic, and I REALLY like the modular way you can add on to your various starships to “beef them up”. I bought it and I played it and I like it enough to keep it, but it’s no Twilight Imperium. By sheer virtue of its streamlined mechanic, it simply lacks the variety and scope of TI:3. I imagine that after a few passionate plays, it’ll get shelved, and then only hit the table once every 3 months or so when me and my buddies get a hankering for that particular flavor of play.
The same thing happens with a lot of Euro games, as well as other games with slender but interesting “plots” - you play it, you figure out what works, you do that. And if you do anything else - anything outside of the “solid” strategies, you’ll probably lose, because the game’s dynamic can’t adequately support originality and diversity.
TI:3 and a lot of the games I play CAN support oddball strategies, and therefore they have high replayability factors. I’d play them every week if they weren’t so long (and like I said, length isn’t an issue for me, but it is for other people).
Gamers who know me associate me with Twilight Imperium, and if you haven’t guessed - it IS my favorite game. It may still be; I’m not sure, because it is exceedingly possible that Mage Knight might supplant it, if only for a while.
Here we go. Me on record again, saying that Vlaada Chvatil’s Mage Knight might possibly be the most brilliant fantasy adventure board game EVER. Practically every cool thing about the ancient game Magic Realm, without the overburdening minutiae. The conceptual ambition of Runebound and Talisman coupled with actual strategic depth. The variety of Magic: The Gathering without the need to always be buying new shit. And it scales well: you can play it by yourself - it’s that challenging and engaging. Or you can get a friend or three and take turns sweeping the countryside, killing orcs, leveling up, and bending the locals to your will. I can only imagine how HUGE this game will be once an expansion or two comes out.
It has only two problems as I see it. One is that if a player takes too long on his turns, the down time may seem exhorbitant. But you only get a few cards to play each turn, and I think once we all “get the hang of it” we’ll be zipping through turns like it’s second nature.
The other problem is length of play, which could run into 6 or 7 hours with certain scenarios. (Yeah - as if the game didn’t offer enough variety in its structure, there are about a dozen different SCENARIOS you can play.) For me, though, the time I spend playing isn’t really an issue. See what I said above.
Mage Knight was also published in 2011. Between it, Eclipse - which is solid even if it’s no TI:3 - and all the other awesome games published recently, 2011 was a great year for new titles.
Which I intend to play the shit out of in 2012.
Now That You Have an E-reader…
I haven’t heard the latest statistics regarding this holiday season’s Kindle, iPad, and Nook sales, but I’d be willing to bet that the number of people who own such a device increased last week, perhaps exponentially. I know for a fact that my family is one iPad to the plus: Eli’s digging Angry Birds on the “big screen.”
OK. So, did YOU get a Kindle or an iPad or a Nook? Or even one of the more generic or esoteric e-readers available? Cool. That’s a nice one.
Now that you have that awesome device, may I suggest that you purchase and download some short stories by an up-and-coming writer who’s busting his chops and trying to make inroads via electronic-only publishing? Looking at my site this week, I realized that I had been being demure about selling my new stories (and my old ones, too). I hadn’t yet posted a single post with ALL of the point of sale links for the stories, nor had I said “HEY!!! BUY THEM!!!”
You should, though. I’ve been told they’re pretty good.
Last time, when I self-published some stories, you only got 8000 words. Sure, they were only .99 cents, but still. This time, a small press has picked me up, and as an added bonus for you, this time around you get 20,000 words for the same low price.
Did I mention that you might enjoy them? In fact, if you do buy them and enjoy them, I’d LOVE for you to go to the site where you bought them and write a review of them. And if you’re a press or a zine or somebody in publishing, and you like what you see, well, hey - you know where to find me.
Now, here’s where you can find my latest works of fiction:
Amazon (Kindle)
Barnes & Noble (Nook)
iTunes/Apple (iPad, iPod)
Smashwords (RTF, Plain Text, HTML)
Diesel (Generic)
2011 Holiday Postcard
We get a lot of holiday cards every year, and we mostly suck at reciprocating. But I’ve found that doing THIS - using my site to give you guys a shitty snapshot of my kids framed in a holiday theme - suffices for a lot of people, and HA! It saves paper. And postage. And you can look at it in June and still feel the holiday spirit. Unlike all those holiday cards that get tossed, eh?
Anyway - I’ll save you the ALL the awful details of how scary this holiday season has been for my family. (You’re still gonna get some for context.) Suffice it to say that my wife’s grandmother died peacefully in her sleep last week, and while it was expected and anticipated, that hardly softens the blow. Granna was adored by everyone in the family, and she’s left a big hole.
Meanwhile, following shortly on the heels of all that, my mother got put in the hospital for pneumonia. Considering her cigarette habit and her poor respiratory health (she’s gone through bouts of emphysema, bronchitis, and pluerisy), and given the taste of death that Granna’s passing left us with, we’ve been a bit edgy these past few days.
But alas, Christmas Day is nigh, we’re otherwise if great spirits and reasonable health, and I can hear sleigh bells ringing even now.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone!
Why I Write
Over the Thanksgiving Break, I was in what Gawker calls the “Wikipedia Hole”, and I got to reading about the mental condition called hypergraphia. This is the unrelenting urge to write, and though it doesn’t necessarily impare a person, it MIGHT, and the condition is often related to certain manias and epilepsy - which CAN impare a person. Supposedly, Lewis Carroll, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and the prophet Ezekiel had hypergraphia.
Which explains why they, at least, had to write.
Considering how unprolific I’ve been since the beginning of November, I’m pretty sure I don’t have/suffer from hypergraphia.
Reading about the condition made me think, though, about why I DID write. I’m a pretty smart and capable guy, and I probably could have fallen into just about any career you can name. (With some exceptions, sure. I DID said “just about”. Smartass.) But somewhere along the line, I decided I wanted to be a journalist and a novelist and a poet. So that’s what I did.
When I was young, I had visions of best-selling novels like Stephen King’s and Dean Koontz’s. That’s what I aspired to, and that is - sad to say - why I wrote. That and to impress girls. As I got older, money and fame mattered less, and instead I aspired to writing something profound and world-changing, something canonical, like The Lord of the Rings or The Lord of the Flies.
To a certain extent, I still have those dreams - I’d be a liar to say I didn’t - but I’ve learned to be satisfied for a while with simply managing to make a living.
Also, and in much smaller doses than what one would call “world-changing”, I’ve found myself having small effects on people. And THAT is - at the moment - why I write. As long as I can make a decent living, and occasionally hear things like this…
“It’s 5:45 a.m. and I just finished reading your stories. I had to sit here in deep thought for a moment or two. I hate to use overused adjectives to describe my feelings about them but that’s all my meager vocabulary can come up with. I truly enjoyed them. I’m very impressed with your talent.”
“I believe that in our mutual past, when it comes to writing criticism, I have always attempted to be brutally honest. Good or bad, I believe I strive to deliver an accurate assessment. I don’t offer empty praise out of some misguided sense of kindness. That being said, I want you to read carefully and accept what I am about to write. This was easily the greatest work of yours that I have read. This was a new level of Kenyon. I am seriously impressed. The tone, the language, the style…you nailed it.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever said this, but in spite of the lack of success in my writing career, I owe a lot to you. When I turned up at the writing group, you made me feel like I was a real writer.”
“While my examinations, at the time, were limited to passively reading and listening, Mr. Kenyon was, and had been for some time, busily engaged in creating his own output to add to the debate. From time to time he would share, an idea or even a finished product. There’s a little poem, based on Daniel’s dream of the statue, that still forces me to introspection whenever I read it.”
… I’ll be able to put pen to paper and churn out more stories and poems. And not because things like those above quotes serve to stroke my ego. (Although once again I’d be a liar to say that, as a writer, I didn’t have a BIG ego that needs periodic stroking. And yes, I noticed the sexual overtones of that statement. They’re unintentional and you need to stick to the point.)
No. I don’t keep those quotes around to boost my ego. Instead, I revel in situations like the ones those quotes imply because it means that my life has a purpose. When I die, I might not go down in literature books as someone who had a huge impact on the 21st century world, but I know that - to a handful of individuals at least - I left an indelible impression. Of the positive sort.
Now all I need to do is get to writing again, so that I have more stuff to put out there, so that maybe I can touch a couple more lives.
What I’m Thinking, 7th Edition
Think of these types of posts as my aggregation of all the things I ”Tweet” on Twitter during the previous months. I post these things because I know that not all of you are on Twitter, and that even if you’re on Twitter, there’s sometimes so much noise there that the things I say are easily buried in the tumult. So here you get to see all my random obsevations (at least those which aren’t links I’m sharing or sales pitches for my stories).
I’ve said this in an earlier post: I’m kind of proud of my Tweets because: A) I don’t use software to post for me when I’m not at the computer, B) I try not to be all spammy, and C) I don’t ever schedule what I’m going to say. The way I do it is much more organic and personal. These are really thoughts that cross my mind, which compel me to go to the computer and Tweet.
Some of them are stupid. Some are lame. Some are funny and brilliant and inspired. I don’t know which is which - I leave that to you.
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You’d think that someone would have made those birds take some anger management courses by now.
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Kenyon’s Law: If the cord, hose, net, or decoration you’re carrying can catch on some random immovable object, it will.
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I Was A Teenaged Teenager. SCARY.
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And I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free… to vote against my own self interests.
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Foursquare ain’t nothin’. Tell me when I can become the Burgermeister of something.
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If I were on Foursquare, I’d try to find Simpleton and check in there a lot.
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Ate a lot of asparagus today. Drank a Rock Star earlier. I just pissed out the Toxic Avenger.
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Without patience, an artist just becomes another person with talent.
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I like to paint things red. In fact, if I saw a red door, I’d probably just give it a fresh coat.
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I wish Eileen would just come on.
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Our problem is that the consequences of our actions are no longer immediate or apparent. There are, however, always consequences.
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Halloween 2011: there’s not just teenagers without costumes, there’s teenagers without costumes talking on the phone as they hold a bag out to you.
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I love when people say they’re gonna “take this country back”. From whom will you be taking it? Me?
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Just heard the phrase “fact-based journalism” on NPR. When I was in journalism school, that would have been a redundant statement.
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Stories are easier to edit than children. I guess that’s why I have more of them.
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A good portion of writing is taking your frustration at EVERYTHING and channeling it into a positive activity.
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I wish I had the inventor of autotune RIGHT HERE.
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It seems to me you can’t beat liars with the truth anymore. Nor can you turn the tides of brutality with pacifism. This makes me sad.
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Helping my daughter with her homework will get me sainted eventually.
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My daughter will be in 5th grade next year. In 5th grade, I learned what sex was, but I still believed in Santa Claus.
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A summer haiku: Ah, yellowjackets / No playing outside just yet / Sometimes nature stings
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It’s cool when one of your friends makes a literary reference - to one of your stories.
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Sad that to some Americans, patriotism means hating on other Americans who happen to be different than them.
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Ostensibly, I don’t dislike politicians, salesmen, or cops. What I dislike are predators of any ilk.
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My daughter has never really watched a movie on network TV. She was just complaining about the commercials. “There’s so many of them!”
What The Hell Are You Doing?! That’s Not Writing!
Man, I have so many ideas kicking around in my head right now, it’s not funny. Not long after I finished the heretofore unpublished novel The Talented Boys back in March, I started ANOTHER novel, as well as a couple of short stories. The short stories have been slow to find a finish (although the finishes are solid and getting nearer), and the novel…. Well, it’s a novel - it’s supposed to take a long time.
Recently, though, right after the edits for all those short stories that got published in May and October wrapped up, I also started yet ANOTHER novel (without finishing the older one) AND a graphic novel script. And a poem - my first real poem in over a year.
But ask me if I’m working on any of that stuff right now. Go ahead. Ask.
(Hey, Will, are you working on any of that stuff right now?)
No.
Instead, I’ve fallen into a sort of gig painting boat miniatures for a game called Dreadfleet. Some people seem to believe I have some level of acumen when it comes to rendering miniatures in vibrant, detailed color - enough so that perhaps I might make a few dollars painting the miniatures for a popular new game. Also, I LIKE painting game pieces - it’s relaxing and satisfying, and I enjoy the compliments I get when my minis hit the game table.
Thing is, I’m a slow painter. Apparently, painting minis is a cottage industry to some guys, and they can churn out whole armies of detailed monsters and vehicles and machines of war in a matter of days, or at the most, weeks.
Ten ships and some terrain bits has taken me almost two months - and that’s painting 10-20 hours a week. And I’m still not done, although my tentative deadline for finishing a set for sale is December 1st. I’m NOT gonna make it, and in the meantime, all that shit I’ve been kicking around, thinking about writing is not getting written.
But I’m not complaining. Like I said, I ENJOY painting. And I’m getting better and faster. And right now, I get to share a few of my finished pieces with you.
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- Grimnir's Hammer
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- The Heldenhammer
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- The Flaming Scimitar
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- The Shadewraith
Novel Podcast: A War Between States, Part 33
You may recall last time I posted a novel podcast that I said I’d figured a few things out about where this story was going to go. Well, as of now I have an outline for 14 more chapters, which ought to bring the whole thing to a conclusion. If you’ve been following this story, that’s good news. You’ll still have to be patient, because I have to actually WRITE the chapters. Then I have to edit them (although this story’s probably one of the roughest ones I’ve let see the public eye, I do still edit it a little). Then I have to prepare and post each podcast.
Hopefully, the whole thing will get finished, for good or for ill, by late next summer. At the latest.
In the meantime, here’s some more. And yeah, there’s a big car crash.
A War Between States Part 32:
Chapter 17: Skirmish: Tommy, Part Two
“Make a call,” Fran said, her eyes on the road, her knuckles whitening as she gripped the steering wheel, her hands at ten and two. “Anybody. Get a local officer on the scene of that accident back there, and get somebody to come at the Mustang from the other side.”
“You think the cops in the next county?” Tommy asked. “The county line’s only a few miles away. Hell, Alabama’s right over there.” He waved off to the right.
“Call whoever’s left in this county first,” Fran said. “Even if it’s Boyd. They all gotta know this is happening - they just need someone to tell them where it is exactly.”
The chase had started northeast of town, and now they were headed due south on a smooth but twisting two-lane that ran roughly parallel to the Alabama state line. Tommy was calling in when the Mustang ran up on a slower southbound vehicle - a metallic blue Toyota Sienna going about sixty-five. The Mustang swerved around it despite a blind hill, and shot off ahead. The county police car had to hesitate to let a northbound pick-up truck pass by. Fran and Tommy had to wait as well, and Fran let Tommy know how she felt about the Sienna and the truck with a stream of profanity.
Once the truck passed, all the police cars blasted past the Sienna, including Stan and John in the vehicle behind Fran and Tommy. They began to close the distance on the the Mustang. Tommy tried to radio the county dispatch, to find out who was in the county sedan. After a series of connects and disconnects, he was talking to Deputy Barry Soames.
“What happened at that mobile home, Deputy Soames?” Tommy asked after they all verified who was who.
“There was an exchange of gunfire. One of those guys in the Mustang shot Sheriff Boyd.”
“Holy fuck,” Fran said when she heard that. Tommy himself was speechless.
“I called in an ambulance when I was there,” Soames said. “They just radioed back.”
“Is Boyd all right?” Fran asked.
The Mustang caught up with another slow-moving car, this one a Kia Rio, and its driver once again passed it. Soames pulled his car into the oncoming lane to follow.
“I dunno,” he said over the radio, “They said they couldn’t find him. They said he was gone.”
Tommy heard what Soames said, but never got time to process it, because in that instant a northbound log truck crested the rise that Soames was on.
“Shitfuckcock,” they heard him say. Then they watched as Soames tried to turn away from the log truck to avoid a head-on collision. He couldn’t veer back into the proper lane, because the Kia was still there, still in his way. Instead, he pointed the nose of his cruiser toward the tree-lined side of the road, trying to go around the truck on the shoulder. Unfortunately, the log truck driver had a similar idea, and he shifted onto the shoulder as well. Soames turned his car sideways, and the log truck jackknifed, and both them skidded toward each other at a terrible, dangerous speed.
Fran braked hard to avoid joining the collision, turning their car into a tailspin. She screamed something that sounded to Tommy like a battle cry as she threw her whole body into the steering wheel, holding onto it desperately, trying to maintain control of the car. Tommy tasted vomit swelling in the back of his throat.
The restraints on the jackknifed log truck snapped, and now a pile of heavy pine logs tumbled off of it, scattering with a thunderous crash onto the dusty shoulder of the road. A couple of logs hit the road itself. Both of them bounced - one flipping end over end right into the rear of the Kia, the other careening toward Fran and Tommy. Just as Fran managed to get her car under control and bring them to a dead stop, the log smashed into the front, crushing it. The sound it made was the loudest thing Tommy had ever heard.
Then came another, smaller crash, and Tommy felt his passenger side car door cave in toward him, the blow knocking loose his grip on the door’s safety handle. It was like someone had shoved him from the side, really hard. He looked over, and there was John and Stan in the other GBI car, staring wide-eyed back at him. John had been driving, and he’d turned their car sideways, skidding to halt beside Tommy and Fran rather than hitting them headlong. At they speed they’d all been going, that probably would have killed Tommy, or at least sent him to the hospital.
Tommy swallowed his vomit, shook his head, and looked down at the huge dent poking at him through the car door. The plastic lining was cracked, and his door handle had popped free and was sitting in his lap.
Fran was scrambling out of the car. When she was on her feet, she turned back and checked on Tommy.
“You all right?” she asked, her voice shaking hard enough to register on the Richter scale.
Tommy closed his eyes and did a body check. He was okay, but he knew he couldn’t speak himself, not without whimpering. So he just nodded.
“Good. Get out.” And then Fran was gone, stomping unsteadily across the black top.
Tommy did as he was told, unfastening his seatbelt and clambering over the center console to exit out the driver’s side. He pulled himself out, made sure his legs would hold him, then took in the scene.
Fran was already beside the Kia Rio, which was pulled over on the opposite shoulder. John and the log trucker were standing, facing each other, John’s hand on the big, burly man’s shoulder, the man nodding in answer to John’s questions. Stan was coming around the two GBI cars toward Tommy.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah. You?”
“As good as I can be. God, what a mess.”
Fran had left the Kia and was heading back toward them.
“Stan, you and John are in charge of this scene. Check on Soames, report in, call another goddamned ambulance. Do you think your car will move?”
“Yeah,” Stan said, already moving toward the deputy’s car. “The side’s dented is all. If you can get it pulled off of your car, you should be good to go.”
“Okay. Tommy, with me.”
Tommy bit his lip. “Really?” he said. “We’re gonna stay in pursuit?”
Fran sneered at him as she circled Stan and John’s car. “Yes, Krinshaw. I’m gonna get those little fuckwads and put an end to this.”
The Cast
- Tommy Krinshaw - Bret Wood
- Fran - Aida Kenyon
- Stan - Chris Bulloch
- Narrator/Deputy Soames - Will Kenyon
Where You Can Find Me Now
Right now, physically, I’m in my house, perched at the end of my dining room table, hovering over my laptop. (My wife wishes I’d take it upstairs to my office, but my desk is all messy and I’d have to move stuff off of it to make room.) Mentally, I’m INSIDE my laptop, writing this post. I’m also in downtown Atlanta, where a scene from a new story is unfolding in the back of my mind.
Here on the Internet, though? Well, I’m in a lot of places. More and more, in fact. You can Google me and see that, I think….
I’ve had this site now for a couple of years, and its readership has been steady and growing the whole time. You’re here now, and that’s what I’m talking about.
I’ve also been on Twitter for a while, although I’m not as prolific as some Tweeters, because I don’t use software to post for me when I’m not at the computer, I try not to be all spammy, and I don’t ever schedule what I’m going to say. The way I do it is much more organic and personal. What you see me post is really what I’m thinking about or doing. Right at that moment. If you’re interested, follow me @williamkenyon.
I also have a number of Facebook friends, and I still use Facebook even with all the recent frustrating updates. The difference for me there is that currently my Facebook friends are people I ACTUALLY KNOW. That may change in the future, especially if I get a big enough head to set up a fan page. In the meantime, if you know me and we’re not friends on Facebook, and you’re interested in hearing from me daily, then friend me.
I also recently joined Google+ to see what that’s like, and it put me in touch with a few friends of mine who aren’t on Facebook. It also put me in a position to know what Wil Wheaton was doing ever second of the day. Otherwise, though, I use it the same as Facebook.
In the wake of my recent publications, I’m trying out some other social media outlets. If you’re interested and/or if you’re on them already, then please hook up with me there.
First, I’m now officially a Goodreads author. That’s www.goodreads.com. On Goodreads, you can rate pretty much every book you’ve ever read (including my stories), see how other people rate those same books, get recommendations for things you might want to read, and actually have discussions about books. The site is a Godsend for people who like fiction. And I knew I was right at home when I saw how universally despised Silas Marner was. What were the curriculum people thinking when they made that required reading for any class?
Also, I’ve joined the Kindleboards at http://www.kindleboards.com/. All I’ve done there is introduce myself, and there’s A LOT going on there - a lot to process, sieve, and sort out. I think it’s going to be a struggle to rise above the noise there, but I have a few ideas…. And if YOU’RE there checking out what I post and say, we can keep my posts at the top of the heap. So, if you have a Kindle, let’s hook up.
And finally, as of right now, I’m occupying space on a couple of other people’s sites. At http://badgrrls.com/blog/?p=111&fb_source=message, there’s not much about me or by me that you can’t get here at willkenyon.com or by buying my stories. But since the people behind that site and I are like-minded, you might be interested in some of their stuff.
Over at http://collinkelley.blogspot.com/2011/11/five-questions-for-will-kenyon.html, Collin took some time to pick my brain, finding out the why and wherefore of what I do/what I did/what I’m doing. We had to pare it down because I rambled, but there’s a lot there. And beyond that, Collin himself has a lot to say and offer. You might be interested in that.
So that’s me. For now. I’m still perched at the end of the dining room table, but the refrigerator’s only about seven feet away. And there’s some beer inside….