Novel input

[SLSduke82]

The discussion in the new picture post got me to thinking real quick...I could use a different crowd's input.

Aside from cars, skiing, and a 40-hour work week, I write fiction on the side. Been writing since high school, sold a few short stories, and within the past two years, have written three novels. The first two were really just practice, and I haven't pushed to sell them much. However, my third I'm actively trying to sell to a publisher, or at least pick up an agent. Someone w/ a large publishing house is interested, but I still need to work on the entire story.

I dunno how many read for fun here, but I assume most don't know about the publishing process. When trying to sell a novel, the first three chapters are what does it. Does the first chapter nab interest, etc. etc.

I belong to an online writing group, and they've helped a lot, and I've traded novels with a few other writers. However, a COMPLETELY different viewpoint, like here, might be of help.

So, what the hell...I'll post up the first chapter. If you're bored, give it a read. Does it nab your interest? If not, anything else you might look for in an opening chapter? I know I give most books one or two chapters to nab me. Otherwise, back it goes.

I write mostly horror/suspense/sci-fi genre, along the lines of Stephen King or Dean Koontz. The chapter I'll post here is from a 400 or so page novel that has a "Signs" the movie feel to it, but I go a completely different direction. Basically, it involves really-out-there-alien shit, but I try to make it interesting for any reader.

Have at it, if you're bored enough Running title is "Home by a Sea." If your a Genesis fan, you might recognize the title.

--Jon

________________________

Home by a Sea

Help us someone
Let us out here
Cause living here so long undisturbed
Dreaming of the time we were free
So many years ago
Before the time when we first heard
Welcome to the home by the sea

—Genesis

We can live beside the ocean
Leave the fire behind
Swim out past the breakers
Watch the world die

—Everclear


1:1 – Coming of the End

The gun tasted of oil, somehow sweet. Then the metallic tang overrode the remaining flavor of dinner. Adam recalled how the taste of crab, which he trapped himself, and white wine exploded over his tongue. His last meal, not of the day but of his life, had been a fine one.

Better than lead, without doubt.

He dabbled his tongue’s tip around the cold steel of the barrel. Tears, until yesterday inexhaustible, found their way over his chapped lips. Saltiness mixed with metal, tasting of blood.

Something specific stopped the tears the day before. For the first time since Veronica’s murder, he looked at her picture and did not, could not, cry. Icy pain still filled his heart, however, and he decided to end his life, a deed planned since that dark day long ago.

But there was more. The revelation came hours ago. Not from slow self-discovery or long discussions with a shrink. It was as if a light bulb flipped on, or a mental bullet passed across his gray matter. He realized why he needed the gun.

A vacuum almost thirteen years in the making rested at his core. Filling that void meant facing himself, his future, his past—the last the most hurtful of all. He didn’t desire to do that. He’d wasted those unlucky number of years, a baker’s dozen of them. Like his daughter, days departed couldn’t be resurrected.

Hence, self-slaughter.

His life did not flash across his mind’s eye. If it did, the trigger would prove too heavy. That was his single fear, the inability to complete the act. He did not fear God, Whom the gun and his hand would supersede. Hell arose almost thirteen years prior when God found it right and proper and just to pluck his daughter, sweet young Veronica, little Nica, from the world.

Not even the thought of eternal damnation would stop him.

Twitch of the eye; he paused. Though a cloudless night lay beyond the grimy windowpane across his bedroom, he saw the dead fern he’d bought months ago and forgotten to water below the sill, in shadow. Another near the closet door was wilting, as if stricken with cancer but not yet willing to die. Closer still, thirteen beer cans rested on the carpet, where they had for a week or more, crushed as his heart. Food-stained plates stayed where he left them on the bureau, dresser, around his bed. Flies hadn’t yet found the scraps, but his body would soon tease whatever it was that passed for their noses.

Of all things, a handful of dead batteries stood at attention on his bed stand. They’d been there since the last blackout, eight or nine months ago, when they gave up the last of their life to his flashlight.

Kleenex were scattered on the stand, bed, carpet, little snowdrifts in his bedroom’s shadowy corners, filled with God only knew what. Tears, snot, sweat.

Oh, hon. He teased the trigger. Oh.

His daughter, forever seven and a photo in a frame, smiled at him from the nightstand. He looked away.

Clouds must have passed before the moon, for his bedroom darkened.

He pushed the gun deeper. The open sight scraped the roof of his mouth. Veronica, now bones and dust, looked at him, through him, from the photo in which she grinned and exposed two missing teeth the Tooth Fairy took for two shiny quarters.

The mattress was soft and springy under his backside. He took in a breath around the gun and screamed. Then he stopped.

The surf crashed. In the distance, a neighbor’s dog barked. Another, more remote, answered with a howl. Strange, he never before heard them.

He withdrew the gun. A thin streamer of saliva stretched from his mouth to the barrel, broke, trailed down his chin. Snot and tears ran.

My face, how she loved it.

Forty-five years and gravity had been kind. He didn’t want Evelyn, that bitch, that forgetful, irresponsible bitch he once called his wife, to see his face made up like a doll at the funeral home. If she came, that was. He, being dead, couldn’t stop her and didn’t mind if she attended the memorial service. Let one more death she caused, their daughter’s accidental and his indirectly, weigh her down.

Closed casket it is.

A third dog bellowed.

[SLSduke82]

The plates scattered around his room began to rattle in place. One of the batteries tipped over and rolled past the picture of Nica. It fell to the floor.

He hardly noticed the tremors as he placed the .357 against his temple. Brains, bone, blood, and his face would scatter in a single crimson burst. He turned on his bed so the gore wouldn’t touch Veronica’s picture—one of hundreds in the house—and glanced around the room. No pictures on these walls. Powder-blue carpet covered with crumbs and filth. The moon’s ashen glow pouring through the wide window. Shadows and light fought for attention inside and out, made harsh, nightmarish angles.

Over the obscure bumps of the dunes, across a short stretch of beach looking frozen in the night, the Atlantic spanned left and right. The sea caught and wavered the moon’s reflection and blended with the night sky, clear aside from the carpet of stars. The billions of stars once offered distant, exotic worlds in his mind, but now mocked his insignificance.

Despite closed windows, the ocean’s teary smell overwhelmed him. He’d shut his house’s windows because he didn’t want any random beachcomber, surfer, or jogger to catch a sweet and sour whiff of rot. In death, as in almost a third of his life, he wanted seclusion. More aromas clawed up his nose. The mellow odor of sand and seaweed, things below the water decayed, but those smells muted by the vast stretch of water concealing unknown creatures and separating worlds, nations.

His daughter’s face remained in his mind. The ocean’s perfume grew stronger. Its gentle drone played for his ears.

His hand trembled. The gun shook. His teeth chattered. Nervousness caused the shivering, as did something apart from his body, outside.

No time for that now. Time to stop time.

As one, the dogs’ barking ceased. He prepared for his end. His house shuddered as if an earthquake raged. A plate and fork tumbled from the bureau to the floor, as did the other batteries.

The digital clock on the dresser blinked out. Then it snapped back on, flashing in day-glo red numerals: 88:88, 88:88, 88:88.

The world exploded once, from outside his home. Windows quivered in their frames. Pictures in other rooms crashed to the floor. Glassware shattered in the kitchen. A cacophony of things broken.

The explosion startled him. He flinched. The gun jerked up. He pulled the trigger.

The gun fired.

The thudding concussion knocked his teeth together, squeezed his head in a vice, and deafened him. The kick tore the pistol from his clammy hand. It fell to the carpet and came to rest beside a beer can.

Pain enveloped him, but—

“I’m alive.”

He glanced out of the window and over the Atlantic. His ears rang, filled with a hive of angry wasps.

A queer bronze glow stole through the dark of night, a sunrise out of the west. The vibrations ceased at once. An eerie, pre-thunderstorm hush descended. The copper creepers of light flashed into neon shades of reds and oranges. He squinted. Vibrant pin dots twirled behind his lids.

An odd mixture of sounds came to him then, drowning out his sobbing. A baritone humming vibrated his abused head and intertwined with an alto screeching, that caused him to groan.

An arching fireball, bright as a falling sun, appeared at the top of the window and rocketed toward the ocean from high above. As it grew distant, though no less dazzling, the sound receded. The fireball left a glowing tail and split the night sky in two.

It fell toward the horizon faster that any jet he’d seen. The bright prick of light was there one minute, gone the next as it slammed into the ocean.

No other explosion flashed like heat lightning. Night returned. Stars reappeared into view and hovered frozen against the infinite black dome.

Shaking now, tears no longer inexhaustible, sweat pouring and stinging his eyes, Adam stood and opened the window. A gentle breeze washed over him. The surf called out its enchanting lullaby.

He stood for what felt like hours and eventually drew a chair up to the window. He thought to call the authorities, but decided against it. The news hounds had visited him once before. Never again.

And had he actually seen it? Had something come and prolonged his end?

He could neither glance at the pistol on the floor nor explore his house for any damage. Too tired. Drained. Empty. Putting the gun back against his head would require mental effort he no longer had, but might find tomorrow.

Especially if he discovered his house in proper order. If insanity stopped by for a visit, he’d find the strength to lift the gun to his head once more.

But, his eyelids leaden, he shut and locked the window, retired to bed, and thought: it saved my life.

Something violent and fiery saved him from something equally fiery and violent.

As he slept, no one else seemed to notice the alien lightshow, or at least no one came knocking.

Then something came, scratching.


________

That's chapter 1. I like cliffhangers

[Horvat26]

Very impressive. Painted a perfect picture, and it makes me want to read chapter 2.

[SLSduke82]

Originally Posted by Horvat26

Very impressive. Painted a perfect picture, and it makes me want to read chapter 2.

First three chapters have seen three re-writes and numerous drafts. Rest of it I'm getting a second draft done.

Needed to get em cleaned up to submit to publishers. Glad you enjoyed

[XeroState]

*print screen, opens paint, paste, save as*

Yes, then when it becomes a best seller I'll my copy of this on eBay

oh and its very good.

[SLSduke82]

Originally Posted by XeroState

*print screen, opens paint, paste, save as*

Yes, then when it becomes a best seller I'll my copy of this on eBay

oh and its very good.

Haha...you got about 3 pages out of 400. Want me to sign my name in paint and paste it?

Thanks. Two made it through. More than I thought haha.

Too few readers left in this world

[XeroState]

I like stories..generally I like war stories, generally naval ones. But reading is something I use to do every night before bed, now I have...well, I won't go there.

[SLSduke82]

Originally Posted by XeroState

I like stories..generally I like war stories, generally naval ones. But reading is something I use to do every night before bed, now I have...well, I won't go there.

I used to read a good bit of Clancy. But as I read more and more over the years, and started to write myself, I realized he only has a story line, nothing else. Shitty prose. I like good prose, and the story can take a back seat. But most people aren't like that

So, writing this one I posted from, tried to make each chapter cliff hangerish. Was fun to write. Hopefully it works out and someone picks it up!

And yeah, I read before bed, too lol. Amazing how much I've accomplished after I turned the TV off about two years ago

[pclear9061]

Originally Posted by XeroState

I like stories..generally I like war stories, generally naval ones. But reading is something I use to do every night before bed, now I have...well, I won't go there.

sorry had to

but very good and i hate reading. this forum is the only thing i really every read anymore i dont like reading books

[SLSduke82]

Originally Posted by pclear9061

but very good and i hate reading. this forum is the only thing i really every read anymore i dont like reading books

You and like 90% of the population.

Which is why I try to write to appeal to those who normally wouldn't read. Ala what Dan Brown can do, Stephen King, etc. etc.

Take a whole lot of my time