Premeditating Writer

Jamie was just about to set the plate in front of Moldoun when she stopped suddenly; just at that moment, getting off a motorcycle, there was the woman with jet-black hair. Jamie’s skin prickled all over.

“Sometimes I see things I want to see all the time,” Jamie blurted. She watched the woman take off her helmet and shake her long hair free. The entire restaurant grew hushed. Dishes stopped clinking; the hum of conversations drew far into the background. A deep excitement settled on Jamie as she watched the woman inspect her reflection in the side mirror of the motorcycle.

The young woman walked in with a slight sway to her hips and sat at the table by the door, Jamie could see hidden smiles and trailing looks. At that moment, Jamie wished she didn’t look and feel so tired and that her hair wasn’t in such disarray.

After taking a few other orders, Jamie walked over to the table where the black-haired beauty was sitting. She stacked the cup on top of the plate that had been left there by a previous patron, and wiped the surface of the table. The young woman’s hands rested on her lap, and Jamie watched them, with their thin, blue veins. On her left hand she wore a silver ring etched with an intricate design. Her nails were ragged and half-eaten, the skin around them uneven.

Jamie caught the young woman studying her. She became acutely aware that she was taking in her pink uniform, her army boots, and her black bandana wrapped around her left wrist. Jamie shifted uneasily in her confining uniform. She felt ridiculous.

The young woman spoke. “You’re new here, aren’t you?” Her voice was throaty. It came up from somewhere deep inside her chest. Jamie noticed that she was braless, and the gauzy fabric emphasized her nipples.


“Not that new. Ten days old,” said Jamie, smiling.

The young woman ran a small red tongue over her upper lip. “You’re tall.”

Jamie sent her a look from under her long bangs, which nearly covered her eyes.

“And muscular.”

“I like your bike,” Jamie said.

“You do? Really?”

“Really.” It pleased Jamie to see how eagerly she had sought her approval.

“It makes me feel powerful and free. You know, being out in the open with nothing between you and the air.”

Jamie wanted to hear her voice a little longer. “A car can do that too.”

“Not the same. I like the attention I get from riding it.”

“It’s a Suzuki TC 100, right?

The girl’s face lit up. “How do you know?”

“I know a good deal about motorcycles," Jamie said. "Had one when I lived in LA, a Kawasaki. It was a real beauty. I used to take long rides to Laguna Beach, sometimes all the way to San Francisco. Fact is, I’m thinking of buying another one.”

“Really? I know this guy, Jed, he rides a Kawasaki. It’s totally cool looking. Orange with lots of chrome.”

“Cool.”

The girl threw a glance at Jamie. “I love my bike, but it runs bad when I put the carburetor cover back on.”

“Could be a restricted air flow to the carb.”

He had done it half a dozen times before, and had messed up. This time would be a success. Finally, there was a way he could impress Rachel. He looked over at Gordy, slumped against the passenger’s door snoring blissfully. Rex—a stiff smile on his face, his fingers on the dashboard—drumming, didn’t bother to slow down for bumps and ruts in the road, until the truck bounced over a ditch. He slammed on the brakes as they pitched forward and landed with a thump against an embankment on the side of the road. A bundle flew over the cabin of the pickup and landed smack on the ground in front of them. “Damn,” Rex screamed. He swung the door open, stumbled out of the seat and walked around the truck to survey the damage. Then he went back to the front of the truck, looked down at the bundle. A pair of incandescent eyes gleamed out at him, wide and lifeless. Reluctantly, he picked it up and tossed it back into the bed of the pickup.

When he came back, Rex focused his eyes on Gordy, and made a face. “They’re all shit if you ask me.”

“I never asked. Who’s shit?”

“Women.”

“What?”

Rex gave a short laugh. “Never mind, just remember stay in the truck when we get to Rachel’s apartment.”







Earlier in the evening, Rex was sitting in a reclining chair, his mouth twisted and unsmiling. For a while he had lain in bed, wakeful. He had been sleeping, but his brain didn’t shut down. It had been two weeks since the fight with James and the confrontation with Rachel, yet Rex still felt the sting of anger and hurt pride. He kept going over in his mind what had happened there, as if by doing so he could erase the event of the fight and save face. He had a bad case of heartburn to boot. So rather than lie there, he’d decided to get up and go to the kitchen and uncap a bottle of beer.

Once settled in the living room at his favorite chair, Rex put a cigarette between his lips and nimbly struck a match with one hand. Maybe he should try to call Rachel again. It was awful she ran out on him after all he had done for her. He expelled a gust of smoke. His heartburn was beginning to turn from a dull, but persistent burn, to an acute blazing glow. He thought he was in love with Rachel. She was still in high school when they met at Beer and Wine. She was seventeen and he was twenty-eight. She had run away from home and he was going to be her savior. She had moved in with her possessions. He even bought more pieces of furniture to fill in the gaps.

Like everybody else he knew, she couldn’t be trusted. He’d given her everything she’d ever wanted, mostly clothes and money. All she’d had to do was be there whenever he needed her, clean the place, and look what she’d gone and done.

He thought he spied a mouse skittering among the pile of garbage in the kitchen. The mobile home was gloomy and neglected. The steps leading to it were broken. It had rotting window sills, the faucet never stopped dripping, and the odor of Chinese food always hung in the air. Since Rachel left, there was no one around to take the garbage out, so it piled up in all the corners of the house; no one to wash the dishes, so they balanced precariously in all kinds of formations in the kitchen sink, on the counter. His place needed a woman’s touch. According to Rex, women were there to please men. Besides, Rachel was a good lay; he smiled to himself.

Despite the disarray around him, his life was fixed—as were the buck’s head, fishing lures, and rifle mounted on the walls of his living room. He lived within the limits of his habits, of knowing where he was going and coming back from, and twice a week—after a nap and a meal—he’d drive over to Mable’s Beauties clapboard house that stood behind concealing bushes in the industrial part of town. He had a job within a few miles of the trailer park where his mobile home stood—a good paying job as a mechanic at Two and a Half Corners Body Shop.

He leaned back in his chair, and felt the caress of the breeze from the open window against his hairy chest. Closing his eyes, he thought again about the fight, replaying it back. He had confronted James, the moron, about swiping his girl away from him. In a state of elevated testosterone, words escalated to a show of drunken blows at which point Rex had been smacked square between his eyes by one of James’ fortuitous jabs. He had taken a nasty spill in front of his beloved Rachel. The shame of it all. Just thinking about the fight fanned his heartburn. He screamed invectives, then, and threats that should have made James’ blood run cold. Instead, James just stood over him and laughed.

Gradually, he began to sense an anger growing inside his body, anger directed at all women. She was foolish, taking up with that James, the moron. Maybe he’ll win her heart with flowers and more phone calls. Maybe after a while she would stop hanging up on him. Lord knows he tried. But he was short, pudgy, and hairy; James was tall, blond, and handsome. He had a reputation with the ladies. They flocked to him like flies, and it irritated Rex to no end.

A dog barked. Damn dog. Rex roused from his reverie, rubbed his hands over his unshaven face, then he took a long swig of the beer, nearly draining the bottle and belched sourly.

As he smoked his cigarette down to the nub while contemplating ways of easing his discomfort, he took it into his head that there might be another way to regain his favor in Rachel’s eyes, make her forget all the beating she endured from him. He meant no harm. It was all her fault anyway. Now, he was trying to squint into the future in the vain hope of coming up with a plan that might impress Rachel.

It was after consuming several more drinks, and while cracking the joints of his fingers until they hurt, that Rex knew he wanted to drive to Mable’s Beauties. His tongue flicked across his lips. He’d call Gordy and the two of them would make a night out of it. The thought sent an excitement that crept up his thighs to his groin in anticipation.

He drained the last drop of beer from the second bottle, tossed the butt of his cigarette into an empty can of baked beans. Then he picked up the phone and dialed Gordy’s number.







It was four a.m.; Rex and Gordy were leaning against the wall in the alley behind Mable’s Beauties.

“What are we going to do now? I’m hungry,” said Gordy, rubbing his hands together. Gordy was Rex’s closest and only friend since childhood. What united them was their distrust for people. Like Rex, Gordy routinely ended most days with vomiting in the alley of bars. The fact that he was married and had two kids didn’t mean much when it came to carousing with Rex.

Rex was staring accusingly at Gordy under the dim light from the moon. “You’re always hungry, man.”

Rex searched for his car keys, a search that involved an extensive body check and turning his pockets inside out and finally remembered that he had left them in the ignition of his Chevy. They walked swaying unsteadily through the dusty parking lot of Mable’s Beauties. Rex stumbled. His hand shot out to steady himself, but he lost his footing, scraping his hands and elbows in the fall. Gordy knelt over him, trying to balance himself. His pants slid down, exposing soft flesh that hung around his fat middle.

“Rex, you aw’right, man?”

“Goddamnit, help me up. Of course I’m not okay. Look at me, I must be bleeding.”

“I can’t see, buddy.” Gordy bent down further, lost his footing and collapsed next to Rex.

Rex’s head ached, and the world around him looped at an unpleasant pace. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. After a few minutes, he rose slowly, brushed his jeans, picked up an empty bottle of beer, emptied it of its last drop and threw it toward the wall of Mable’s Beauties, but somehow it landed on Gordy, instead. He looked at Gordy’s limp body, nudged him with his boot. Gordy blinked a few times, rolled over, stood up and swayed on tremulous legs. “I’m hungry,” he said. Rex fished into his pockets and came up with a pack of chewing gum. “Here, take one. We gotta get back. I need to call Rachel.”

As they approached Rex’s truck, they came up against a bony dog and Rex recoiled in disgust. A deep, guttural growling rumbled in the dog’s throat and Rex was convinced he would be pinned to the ground with the animal’s teeth tunneled in his flesh. Fear of dogs was one of the things that he and Rachel shared. Having been attacked by a German Sheppard when she was a little girl, she still had the scar above her upper lip to show for it.

Rex felt his knife pressing suggestively against his body, the metal bleeding coolness into his skin. He reached into his pocket, and caressed the handle of his knife. The knife was folded in half, but he could imagine running his finger over the sharp blade with complete pleasure.

A thought began to bud in his foggy mind, cultivating quickly into a plan. He stood there for a second relishing the brilliant idea. It was thrashing around in his head with promising possibilities. He stood perfectly still and placing a finger over his lips, he motioned for Gordy to do the same. No one ever cared for the fate of stray dogs. With his eyes fastened on the dog, he slowly pulled out the knife, slipped his hand behind his back, and pressed the release on the handle. It sprang forward quietly.

“C’mere, doggie. Here, here,” Rex chanted in a mellifluous tone.

The dog—bony and grey, mud crusted into its matted coat of short hair—stayed where it was, slowly wagging his tail, but didn’t move.

Gordy extended his left hand for the dog to smell. “Here, here, good doggie.”

The dog fixed its watery eyes on Rex, its head sharply cocked. It made no move to come to him.

With his left hand, Rex pulled out the chewing gum from his pocket and extended it as far as he could.

Salivating, the dog took one tentative step forward, then another, until he was almost within reach of Rex’s left arm. He sniffed the air and ambled even closer. In one swift motion, Rex shot his leg forward and thrust his boot in the dog’s body. The dog yelped, stumbled, fell and struggled to rise again. Rex ran forward and plunged the knife in the dog’s body. The dog let out a piercing squeal, and collapsed in its own gushing blood, his legs twitching convulsively.

“What the hell you do that for, man?”

Rex squinted at Gordy as if it was a trick question. When he was young, his killing spree began with kicks to get the dogs or cats out of the way, and then he discovered the pleasure that went along with it. But Rex wasn’t interested in conversation. As the dog whirled in his blood; with one long stroke, he sliced open the dog’s body.

“Let’s get outta here, man.”

“Wait a minute,” Rex ordered. As quickly as he could in his drunken state, he went to the back of his truck, rummaged through some boxes containing hunting and fishing paraphernalia, and found what he was looking for: a dirty blanket. He went back to where the dog was lying and wrapped the blanket around it.

“What’re you doing, buddy?’

Rex looked at the covered body of the dead dog. “Shut your trap. I’ll tell you later,” he said. “C’mon, hurry up. We gotta go.”

Rex dragged the soaking wet blanket, panting from the exertion. “Shit,” he said. “My hands are all bloody now.” He hoisted the dead dog onto the back of the truck, and searched for a rag. Then he had to go back, steady Gordy, and help him into the passenger seat of his truck.

“Thanks buddy,” Gordy said, slouching down on his seat.

Rex landed hard on the gas pedal, gravel spewing out from under the truck. He laughed gleefully.







Panting from the exertion, the blood-soaked animal lay heavy in his arms, but everything was looking brighter. Rex put the bundle down and rang the doorbell. No answer. He rang again, and then pounded the door with his fist.

“Honey…James, is that you? You came back?” The door flew wide open. Roused from sleep, Rachel’s freezy hair was flattened on the left side of her head. Rex walked toward her and didn’t stop until he was standing directly in front of her.

She recoiled. “Back up,” Rachel shrieked.

Rex slapped her hard, and then stepped back. “This is for you,” he said and folded back the blood-soaked blanket.

Pudgy hand on her cheek, Rachel looked down at the stiff dog, then looked up at Rex. “Oh, honey, you did that for me?”

Rex shook his head, and she flew into his arms.

The warehouse was set on a one-way street, across from an empty parking lot. The area was deserted, a spray-painted district of businesses with two story homes in between them. The homes had pitched roofs and small patches of bare land, gated and locked.


Just beyond the gate of the warehouse, she stopped for a moment and tried to orient herself. The building, a large gray structure, squat and broad and defined by a sense of fortification was surrounded by a tall fence and cameras angled from three different spots, one above the door. The building bore the name of the proprietor, Albini, in faded lettering. Lizzie stated the job order to a black-haired woman in a booth and drove in once the gate had lifted.

The dock was to the left. She swung the truck around, shifted into reverse and began backing into the indoor dock – it was like backing into a black hole. But she was good at it. She has always considered herself a good driver, and her clean record and winning competitions confirmed it. She had won two Truck Driving Championships in the Five Axle Sleeper Berth Division and placed second three times. Heck, she could both back a trailer into a hole with one hand and apply her makeup with the other. Often she had seen truckers back up too fast, use too much throttle, until they slammed into the yellow pole.

Now she was even with the indoor dock.

She took a deep breath and tried to clear her mind. But when she caught her reflection in the mirror, the fear returned; the fear of strangers. Damn it, it was in the headache she was developing, in the cramping stomach. Lizzie opened the door and jumped out of the cabin. A gusty wind pushed against her, pulled strands of springy brown hair, gathered into a short ponytail, and whipped them around her face. She moved toward the door of the warehouse at a quick pace, trying to look casual. She was dressed in nondescript clothes similar to most truck drivers – sweats, a hoodie, and sneakers. By normal standards, Lizzie was not what anyone would expect a truck driver to look like. She stood five feet tall. If anyone happened to look at her closely, they would notice the scars, the large mournful eyes, the paleness of her skin – but most of all, the scars.

By the door of the warehouse, weeds sprouted from cracks in the concrete. Lizzie cast a gaze at her truck, as one would look at a departing lover. With the help of her father, she had searched for the right truck. It was the sort of a truck that people noticed, that gleamed in the light of day; she scarcely let the dirt and grime sit on its pink paint with the squiggly green, yellow, and purple lines drawn along the sides of the cab. It was a long-haul heavy truck with a seventy-two inch condo sleeper compartment, equipped with two bunk beds. The one on top she used as storage for clothes, newspapers and magazines, on either sides of the bed stood two-tiered twin cabinets. The one on the right held a microwave and a fridge, and on top of the cabinet to the left stood a small television. A drawer and a cabinet held her few clothes.

This had been her home for the last five years. The space was tight, but sufficient. She had enough room to move around and could stand up without hitting her head. From the tractor it took exactly one step to reach the bed. And she quickly accommodated herself to every peculiarity of living in such a small space. When she first bought her truck and took it on the road, she immediately begun to treat it as her home. Except from occasional nights at motels, her truck served as her bedroom, kitchen and sanctuary. No one could barge in the middle of the night to rape her.

The motto inscribed on the back of her Kenworth trailer said, Life Sucks If You Don’t Get It.

I regularly follow other writers and bloggers blogs. The following links will lead you to discover several interesting points that could help you discover a great deal. So pull a chair over, bring your cup of coffee with you and enjoy the learning ride...
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware, she discusses an article written by literary agent Betsy Lerner. "Should I Tweet?"
http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2010/11/tidbits.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AtLastWriterBewareBlogsAcCrispinAndVictoriaStraussRevealAll+%28Writer+Beware+Blogs%21%29

What makes readers have a hard time putting the book down at the end of each chapter? Novelist Randy Ingermanson writes about cliffhangers. Great tips here.
http://pattistafford.com/blog/2010/11/writing-cliffhangers/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FreelanceWriterMusiciansWife-PattiStafford+%28Stafford+Scribe%3A+Write+What+You+Love%29

In this blog Terry Burns, an agent with Hartline Literary, discusses when NOT to make inflated claims about your book. Self promotion is good, but make sure you work is totally polishede.
So here is  Agent Terry Burns On: When NOT To Stand Out From the Crowd
https://mail.google.com/mail/?nsr=1&shva=1#inbox/12c682cabdfd1db7

The following is an excerpt from my book: Blow Forward


Amid stamped his feet to the ground, and tried to think about anything else other than the chill that gnawed at his bones. He chose to forgo making the dawn Salat for fear that kneeling in the parking lot would draw unwanted attention. Instead, he opted to practice the Sunna; exempting him from bodily prayer when traveling far from home. He made it internally instead.

The world was subject to change, more precisely, to extinctions. It coincided with one of his basic beliefs that a man at all cost must keep a part of himself beyond life. But Amid was plagued by the suspicion that at any moment he would discover he had been wrong. He pushed away all the dark thoughts from his head, realizing he was ready to begin his Jihad. If he should cease believing, he would be cut off from the solid ground to which he had clung for so long. But there was another voice in his head, less confident.

Amid thought of his son, then. Soon, he would get the best care money could buy. His boy would need many surgeries to continue some kind of a normal life. There were no guarantees of course.

He’d grown up in a small town fifty-miles north of Islamabad, Pakistan, where donkeys and carts and people converged and surged in every which direction, where houses were small, patched together out of stone and metal, where dust was everywhere. The neighborhood he’d lived in his youth had disappeared in ashes and smoke, replaced by skeletons of homes where stray dogs roamed and where scary looking teenagers, with machine guns pointing in the air, made their home.

Reasonably fluent in four languages, prone to obsessive dedication, he was blessed with good looks. And there was his wife and children, his loyal wife who gave her blessings before he left. His family saw him off, but he said almost nothing. He was accustomed to leaving things behind. At the training camp he had to leave behind his identity, possessions, and even his name. It was yet another in a long series of good-byes, and he knew that this time he might not return, that what he had to do was necessary