Tonight I thought I'd offer you something different from the last snippet. This one is the beginning of the suspense I've been working on over the past couple years. It's written from start to finish, but I never edited it all the way through. Its temporary working name is Nano (short for Nanotechnology) and it's the book I've chosen to work on in this time between new projects.
I hope you enjoy it.
2/27/11: Sorry. I took it down because it needed a total rewrite - a fact I didn't realize until after I posted it here. When I get it fixed, I'll put it back up.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Excerpt - Blink of an I
Well, it's been about a year and a half since I posted anything over here. I totally meant to keep up with this, but life has a tendency to get in the way. This being the year of change for me, though, I think I'll try again. So, in honor of that, I'm posting the beginning of a book I finished a couple years ago.
To make the posting of this a little more poignant, the other day my teenage nephew asked if he could read one of my books. I offered my most recent, and asked him what he liked to read. His answer: "Anything, but I'm kinda picky about my literature." No pressure there, eh? Since my most recent finished project is more commercial, I sent him the manuscript I call "Blink of an I" - a dystopian that skirts the line between YA and adult. This is what I'm offering you today...
The twisted hulk stretched into the air above her like a man straining to grasp the hand of a loved one being pulled away. On the opposite side of the strait, Mary could almost make out another someone reaching through the fog.
Or maybe she was only remembering that it was there. Every chance she got, she trekked the many blocks to stand on this strip of land between the ocean and the bay to wait. Unsure of what she was waiting for, and yet still waiting. On sunny days, she could see across the thick belt of water where a twin husk reached toward the city. The two corroded towers between rose from the waves—silent guardians of a past she would never know.
Her fingers traced, yet again, the strange symbols rising off the brass plate at the base. They probably told what the expanse was for, but their meaning was lost to her. Below her the surf crashed against the rocks, and silently slithered back into the bay, whispering secrets in a language she wished to understand.
Turning her back to the mystery, she cast her eyes across the bay toward the hills and wondered if the upper castes who lived there knew what any of it meant. Surely someone up there had been taught these things. At some point someone thought this structure was important enough to build. It ought to be important enough for someone to remember, even after all the years that must’ve passed.
But if anyone still understood, she knew they would never tell someone like her. She was nothing to them.
Trailing her fingers through the rust, she tried to let go of the pain struggling against her station always brought. In this place, her caste level didn’t matter. The structure behind her didn’t care if she was a lowly Indigo or a lofty Red. After her years in the foundling home, she found structures were better company anyway. The wasted creation above never pointed and laughed at her questionable parentage. It never shunned her because her jumper was a coarser cloth or a poorer color. The warped and corroded metal simply stood, making her feel that maybe once upon a time people didn’t care about such things either. Clearly if men could build such mysterious monuments, they wouldn’t have had time to dwell on origins and castes.
Her gaze drifted partway along the coast and a few blocks in. Nestled inside the grid of streets was her other favorite place in the city. Nothing more than sandy brick and dusty windows, without any outstanding characteristics to draw anyone’s attention, the building—whatever was within—was still prominent amongst the surrounding derelicts surrounding. Like its brethren, it was worn with age. Unlike them, it wore age proudly. Though there was a cracked window pane here and a crumbling brick there, those minor details did nothing to associate the structure with the stolid sentinels around it. None of the others would ever rise to the grandeur it must’ve once been wrapped in.
She never saw a pair of bright eyes peek from between the heavy draperies, but each time she watched, she was sure they were there. Somehow she just knew there was a warm body tucked away, secure behind their folds. She couldn’t imagine it any other way.
Maybe tomorrow she would visit. Perhaps then she would summon the courage to quench her curiosity.
If there was time. Between work and sleep, there was never enough time.
I hope you enjoyed that. As always, feel free to comment, but this isn't posted for critique or review. It's just an offering for those who stop by. =o)
To make the posting of this a little more poignant, the other day my teenage nephew asked if he could read one of my books. I offered my most recent, and asked him what he liked to read. His answer: "Anything, but I'm kinda picky about my literature." No pressure there, eh? Since my most recent finished project is more commercial, I sent him the manuscript I call "Blink of an I" - a dystopian that skirts the line between YA and adult. This is what I'm offering you today...
The twisted hulk stretched into the air above her like a man straining to grasp the hand of a loved one being pulled away. On the opposite side of the strait, Mary could almost make out another someone reaching through the fog.
Or maybe she was only remembering that it was there. Every chance she got, she trekked the many blocks to stand on this strip of land between the ocean and the bay to wait. Unsure of what she was waiting for, and yet still waiting. On sunny days, she could see across the thick belt of water where a twin husk reached toward the city. The two corroded towers between rose from the waves—silent guardians of a past she would never know.
Her fingers traced, yet again, the strange symbols rising off the brass plate at the base. They probably told what the expanse was for, but their meaning was lost to her. Below her the surf crashed against the rocks, and silently slithered back into the bay, whispering secrets in a language she wished to understand.
Turning her back to the mystery, she cast her eyes across the bay toward the hills and wondered if the upper castes who lived there knew what any of it meant. Surely someone up there had been taught these things. At some point someone thought this structure was important enough to build. It ought to be important enough for someone to remember, even after all the years that must’ve passed.
But if anyone still understood, she knew they would never tell someone like her. She was nothing to them.
Trailing her fingers through the rust, she tried to let go of the pain struggling against her station always brought. In this place, her caste level didn’t matter. The structure behind her didn’t care if she was a lowly Indigo or a lofty Red. After her years in the foundling home, she found structures were better company anyway. The wasted creation above never pointed and laughed at her questionable parentage. It never shunned her because her jumper was a coarser cloth or a poorer color. The warped and corroded metal simply stood, making her feel that maybe once upon a time people didn’t care about such things either. Clearly if men could build such mysterious monuments, they wouldn’t have had time to dwell on origins and castes.
Her gaze drifted partway along the coast and a few blocks in. Nestled inside the grid of streets was her other favorite place in the city. Nothing more than sandy brick and dusty windows, without any outstanding characteristics to draw anyone’s attention, the building—whatever was within—was still prominent amongst the surrounding derelicts surrounding. Like its brethren, it was worn with age. Unlike them, it wore age proudly. Though there was a cracked window pane here and a crumbling brick there, those minor details did nothing to associate the structure with the stolid sentinels around it. None of the others would ever rise to the grandeur it must’ve once been wrapped in.
She never saw a pair of bright eyes peek from between the heavy draperies, but each time she watched, she was sure they were there. Somehow she just knew there was a warm body tucked away, secure behind their folds. She couldn’t imagine it any other way.
Maybe tomorrow she would visit. Perhaps then she would summon the courage to quench her curiosity.
If there was time. Between work and sleep, there was never enough time.
I hope you enjoyed that. As always, feel free to comment, but this isn't posted for critique or review. It's just an offering for those who stop by. =o)
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
To Prologue or Not to Prologue
Migrated from The Writing Spectacle - with comments. Originally posted on July 7th, 2007.
There seems to be something of a disagreement in the writing world about the dreaded prologue. From what I've read, prologues are a no-no. (Which is why I said 'dreaded'.) I've even had people tell me to drop the prologue from Caldera. But no real reason has been offered beyond the 'prologues are bad' argument. Oddly, one agent I queried loved the prologue and thought I should write a non-fiction piece based on the prologue. Unfortunately, he didn't like the premise of the novel itself. Ack. But I digress.
That's one side of the disagreement. On the other side, many of the books I've read lately have had... :drumroll: Prologues. Hmmm. Some of those books have been bestsellers. Now, you don't hear about those authors coming out in favor of prologues. They just write them.
While I'm sure people are out there writing prologues that do little more than give backstory or drag the beginning with unnecessary information, I don't think a wholesale ban on prologues is the right way to go about addressing the issue. Any more than a wholesale ban on slang or incomplete sentences would be appropriate. Just because some people use these devices improperly doesn't make them evil.
Having said that, however, I am considering dropping my prologue. Don't get me wrong. It's sets the whole book up rather nicely. It's only two pages, and I think it helps to be in there. How much it's helping, though, remains to be seen. And whether it's hurting Caldera's chances to be published remain to be seen as well. Right now, it's a coin toss. No one who has read the book in its entirety has had a problem with the prologue - or if they did, they never voiced their opinion about it.
So, I'm leaving it in the hands of my blog readers. The prologue is below. For those of you who haven't been reading along, the underlying plot of Caldera is about a scientist with a plan to control the impending eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano.
------------------------------------------------------
Prologue
It has happened before.
Six hundred thousand years ago, death and destruction rained from the Rocky Mountains to the Mississippi River, from the plains of Saskatchewan to the Gulf of Mexico. Seventy-five thousand years ago the sun disappeared beneath a haze of ash, killing the majority of the human race in the ensuing global winter. Fifteen hundred years ago, the most notorious of human eras—The Dark Ages—began in a shroud of gray volcanic dust.
Early in the 19th century, the center of a tiny island in the Dutch West Indies swelled and trembled and burst. Fiery boulders fell from the sky; ash blanketed both land and ocean for hundreds of miles as it spewed into the atmosphere. More than ninety thousand people died as the sky became clogged with soot—soot so thick that the year of 1816 was to become known as ‘The Year Without a Summer’.
Later in that same century, a mountain rising from the depths of the East Indies exploded and then collapsed. The sea rose twelve feet that day, pushed up suddenly as tons of rock dropped into its murky depths. Thundering walls of water swept toward Java, Sumatra, Bali; tens of thousands drown as the ocean broke over their homes and villages.
In each instance a caldera has erupted, and in each instance the world has born the brunt of its destruction.
So far, many of these types of events occurred before the ascension of man; so far, they have all occurred in sparsely populated areas. In the scheme of human disaster, these events remain insignificant. In perspective, the death toll has been minimal. But still, the tiny native children who shivered in fear as Tambora thundered down upon them thought it more than minimal. The tribal women who screamed their last breaths as Krakatau choked the sound away considered it from a different perspective. The peasants who endured The Dark Age’s endless years of starvation and suffering certainly thought it significant.
They all must have prayed for whatever god they knew to make it stop. They must have offered sacrifices and tributes to appease the wrath that cascaded upon them. But even amidst their fruitless prayers and hopeless offerings, they must have believed in their hearts that nothing could stop nature.
In the mountains of western Wyoming, a caldera lays in a fitful sleep—churning and gurgling and smoking like some great evil dragon—and mankind dances around it as if it has been caged for their amusement. The sparkling geysers and the boiling mud are merely an interesting diversion right now, but the dragon is bound by no man’s chains and it has overslept by twenty thousand years. When it awakens, no man will think it amusing, and no man with think of it as a mere diversion.
Pompeii was a firecracker. Mount Saint Helens, a birthday candle. When Yellowstone makes up its mind to blow, the people in its path will wish they’d been at Hiroshima instead.
Will they be praying on some sprawling ranch in Montana? Will they be screaming in some sparkling penthouse in Denver? Will they be choking under a layer of ash on the bustling streets of Houston?
Perhaps nothing can be done to stop nature. Or perhaps, just maybe, something can.
It has happened before. Perhaps it doesn’t have to happen again.
---------------------------------------
If it never gets published with the rest of Caldera, at least it's here. Barring any feelings about the writing style of the above excerpt, what are your thoughts on prologues? Do you use them when they're necessary, or do you shun them entirely?
Posted by B.E. Sanderson at 7:35 AM
Labels: excerpt, Writing
4 comments:
Anissa said...
I love this prologue of yours. It provides such great tension to kick off the novel. But I hear you on the industry's prejudice. I haven't used a prologue myself. Haven't really felt the need, and then with all I hear about NOT doing it, I just haven't. That's not to say I wouldn't if I felt it necessary. ;)
Maybe just query with chapter one. Then, if a full is requested, include it. Good luck!
July 7, 2007 10:59 AM
Tia Nevitt said...
I like it but I would consider making it much shorter. I think the Year Without A Winter example is one that you should keep. Also, in the first paragraph, it is not clear what you are talking about. Although I knew it was a volcano because I know something about your story, it almost sounded like a meteor strike.
Just my opinion . . .
July 7, 2007 6:09 PM
ERiCA said...
I admit, I'm usually one of those anti-prologue folks. But that's because I see so many prologues that are really just the first scene of chapter one separated as a prologue for no good reason, or that show a random chunk of backstory that's really unnecessary at that point in the plot.
In your case, it's different. At the very least, it explains what "Caldera" means and why the explosion would be so deadly. Seems important to me!
July 26, 2007 2:23 PM
Andrew said...
I like prologs. They are the underlying menace that keeps you reading through the character development.
Here's the first line of my prolog: Two of the most massive super-galaxies in the history of the Universe collided.
And from that one line I've written an entire novel. It's about the only place in your novel where you can explain without resorting to awkward "know-it-all" character soliloquies.
On top of that, I have a "quote" that even comes before my prolog, providing addition perspective on what you're about to read.
Unless someone dies in the first paragraph of the book, it's hard to generate that kind of tension without a prolog.
September 18, 2007 11:22 PM
There seems to be something of a disagreement in the writing world about the dreaded prologue. From what I've read, prologues are a no-no. (Which is why I said 'dreaded'.) I've even had people tell me to drop the prologue from Caldera. But no real reason has been offered beyond the 'prologues are bad' argument. Oddly, one agent I queried loved the prologue and thought I should write a non-fiction piece based on the prologue. Unfortunately, he didn't like the premise of the novel itself. Ack. But I digress.
That's one side of the disagreement. On the other side, many of the books I've read lately have had... :drumroll: Prologues. Hmmm. Some of those books have been bestsellers. Now, you don't hear about those authors coming out in favor of prologues. They just write them.
While I'm sure people are out there writing prologues that do little more than give backstory or drag the beginning with unnecessary information, I don't think a wholesale ban on prologues is the right way to go about addressing the issue. Any more than a wholesale ban on slang or incomplete sentences would be appropriate. Just because some people use these devices improperly doesn't make them evil.
Having said that, however, I am considering dropping my prologue. Don't get me wrong. It's sets the whole book up rather nicely. It's only two pages, and I think it helps to be in there. How much it's helping, though, remains to be seen. And whether it's hurting Caldera's chances to be published remain to be seen as well. Right now, it's a coin toss. No one who has read the book in its entirety has had a problem with the prologue - or if they did, they never voiced their opinion about it.
So, I'm leaving it in the hands of my blog readers. The prologue is below. For those of you who haven't been reading along, the underlying plot of Caldera is about a scientist with a plan to control the impending eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano.
------------------------------------------------------
Prologue
It has happened before.
Six hundred thousand years ago, death and destruction rained from the Rocky Mountains to the Mississippi River, from the plains of Saskatchewan to the Gulf of Mexico. Seventy-five thousand years ago the sun disappeared beneath a haze of ash, killing the majority of the human race in the ensuing global winter. Fifteen hundred years ago, the most notorious of human eras—The Dark Ages—began in a shroud of gray volcanic dust.
Early in the 19th century, the center of a tiny island in the Dutch West Indies swelled and trembled and burst. Fiery boulders fell from the sky; ash blanketed both land and ocean for hundreds of miles as it spewed into the atmosphere. More than ninety thousand people died as the sky became clogged with soot—soot so thick that the year of 1816 was to become known as ‘The Year Without a Summer’.
Later in that same century, a mountain rising from the depths of the East Indies exploded and then collapsed. The sea rose twelve feet that day, pushed up suddenly as tons of rock dropped into its murky depths. Thundering walls of water swept toward Java, Sumatra, Bali; tens of thousands drown as the ocean broke over their homes and villages.
In each instance a caldera has erupted, and in each instance the world has born the brunt of its destruction.
So far, many of these types of events occurred before the ascension of man; so far, they have all occurred in sparsely populated areas. In the scheme of human disaster, these events remain insignificant. In perspective, the death toll has been minimal. But still, the tiny native children who shivered in fear as Tambora thundered down upon them thought it more than minimal. The tribal women who screamed their last breaths as Krakatau choked the sound away considered it from a different perspective. The peasants who endured The Dark Age’s endless years of starvation and suffering certainly thought it significant.
They all must have prayed for whatever god they knew to make it stop. They must have offered sacrifices and tributes to appease the wrath that cascaded upon them. But even amidst their fruitless prayers and hopeless offerings, they must have believed in their hearts that nothing could stop nature.
In the mountains of western Wyoming, a caldera lays in a fitful sleep—churning and gurgling and smoking like some great evil dragon—and mankind dances around it as if it has been caged for their amusement. The sparkling geysers and the boiling mud are merely an interesting diversion right now, but the dragon is bound by no man’s chains and it has overslept by twenty thousand years. When it awakens, no man will think it amusing, and no man with think of it as a mere diversion.
Pompeii was a firecracker. Mount Saint Helens, a birthday candle. When Yellowstone makes up its mind to blow, the people in its path will wish they’d been at Hiroshima instead.
Will they be praying on some sprawling ranch in Montana? Will they be screaming in some sparkling penthouse in Denver? Will they be choking under a layer of ash on the bustling streets of Houston?
Perhaps nothing can be done to stop nature. Or perhaps, just maybe, something can.
It has happened before. Perhaps it doesn’t have to happen again.
---------------------------------------
If it never gets published with the rest of Caldera, at least it's here. Barring any feelings about the writing style of the above excerpt, what are your thoughts on prologues? Do you use them when they're necessary, or do you shun them entirely?
Posted by B.E. Sanderson at 7:35 AM
Labels: excerpt, Writing
4 comments:
Anissa said...
I love this prologue of yours. It provides such great tension to kick off the novel. But I hear you on the industry's prejudice. I haven't used a prologue myself. Haven't really felt the need, and then with all I hear about NOT doing it, I just haven't. That's not to say I wouldn't if I felt it necessary. ;)
Maybe just query with chapter one. Then, if a full is requested, include it. Good luck!
July 7, 2007 10:59 AM
Tia Nevitt said...
I like it but I would consider making it much shorter. I think the Year Without A Winter example is one that you should keep. Also, in the first paragraph, it is not clear what you are talking about. Although I knew it was a volcano because I know something about your story, it almost sounded like a meteor strike.
Just my opinion . . .
July 7, 2007 6:09 PM
ERiCA said...
I admit, I'm usually one of those anti-prologue folks. But that's because I see so many prologues that are really just the first scene of chapter one separated as a prologue for no good reason, or that show a random chunk of backstory that's really unnecessary at that point in the plot.
In your case, it's different. At the very least, it explains what "Caldera" means and why the explosion would be so deadly. Seems important to me!
July 26, 2007 2:23 PM
Andrew said...
I like prologs. They are the underlying menace that keeps you reading through the character development.
Here's the first line of my prolog: Two of the most massive super-galaxies in the history of the Universe collided.
And from that one line I've written an entire novel. It's about the only place in your novel where you can explain without resorting to awkward "know-it-all" character soliloquies.
On top of that, I have a "quote" that even comes before my prolog, providing addition perspective on what you're about to read.
Unless someone dies in the first paragraph of the book, it's hard to generate that kind of tension without a prolog.
September 18, 2007 11:22 PM
Caldera Excerpt
Migrated from The Writing Spectacle. Originally posted January 7th, 2007.
As an example of how memories can be woven into your fiction, below is an excerpt--based loosely on my own experience--from my second novel, "Caldera". The movie mentioned below really does exist somewhere in the dark recesses of some elementary school vault.
-------------------------------
Growing up in the countryside with neither siblings nor neighbors, Myke had spent many solitary days outdoors, running through the fields and woods that surrounded her home. Free to discover the world without gaining a fear of it, hers had been a dreamlike existence. She made friends with the squirrels, and the birds, and the rabbits; she grew to love every rock and shrub and tree. Looking back, she knew it was that sincere childlike wonder about nature that had made her such an easy target.
She’d heard whisperings about man’s destruction of nature throughout grade school. They came in seemingly harmless storybooks, and on various children’s television programs, and in snippets of the news that she would catch as she played in the living room each evening. Still, as she looked back over her life, she’d come to the realization that her real indoctrination came in earnest during her third grade year.
Many times since, Myke recalled that incident and realized that in any other country if she had been exposed to information of that nature in that form, it would have been denounced as propaganda. That it came to her in an American public classroom in the form of a short film made it education. Looking back, she could only think of it as repulsive.
The movie had seemed innocuous enough, clicking along on its rickety projector as all such films did. It could have easily been about Nanook of the North, or about the Grand Canyon for all the notice her classmates took of it. For them, movies were just another form of recess; for her, they were another means of gaining knowledge. She loved them all, but movies about the outdoors were her favorites. Though she never could have known it, it had been her downfall. Sadly, at eight years old, she had been ripe for the picking.
By that age, she’d already been subjected to many such films about the beauty of untouched nature. This one seemed to be no different. At first the film showed a great sweeping primeval forest with a gentle meadow in the forefront; a babbling stream and marsh grasses filled with birds, alongside. She could remember leaning forward onto her elbows in rapt attention at the splendor of it all. When suddenly the camera panned in closer to show men standing in the field, she had felt a rush of disappointment. Men had no place there, in her mind, and she had resented their intrusion.
The men seemed to be making plans of some sort. They were wearing hardhats and pointing from blueprints they were holding to the landscape around them. The voice-over had reflected Myke’s own thoughts as it spoke of the men and her own indignation had been apparent in the script. When the scene shifted to show bulldozers pulling down trees and plowing through the meadows, she had only nodded her head.
At barely eight, she’d already understood that it was a bad thing for man to use nature to suit his own purposes and that man was bad because of it. The next scene, though, had sealed the lid on her perception of mankind as wanton destructor. The scene showed men starting a fire to burn off the marsh grass, and in a very graphic display, that had made little Myke feel lightheaded and that haunted her adult self still, the camera showed nests full of baby birds being burned alive.
On that day, Myke learned to hate mankind.
------------(End Excerpt)--------------
May the makers of that movie rot in hell for what they did to hundreds, if not thousands, of impressionable 8 year olds.
As an example of how memories can be woven into your fiction, below is an excerpt--based loosely on my own experience--from my second novel, "Caldera". The movie mentioned below really does exist somewhere in the dark recesses of some elementary school vault.
-------------------------------
Growing up in the countryside with neither siblings nor neighbors, Myke had spent many solitary days outdoors, running through the fields and woods that surrounded her home. Free to discover the world without gaining a fear of it, hers had been a dreamlike existence. She made friends with the squirrels, and the birds, and the rabbits; she grew to love every rock and shrub and tree. Looking back, she knew it was that sincere childlike wonder about nature that had made her such an easy target.
She’d heard whisperings about man’s destruction of nature throughout grade school. They came in seemingly harmless storybooks, and on various children’s television programs, and in snippets of the news that she would catch as she played in the living room each evening. Still, as she looked back over her life, she’d come to the realization that her real indoctrination came in earnest during her third grade year.
Many times since, Myke recalled that incident and realized that in any other country if she had been exposed to information of that nature in that form, it would have been denounced as propaganda. That it came to her in an American public classroom in the form of a short film made it education. Looking back, she could only think of it as repulsive.
The movie had seemed innocuous enough, clicking along on its rickety projector as all such films did. It could have easily been about Nanook of the North, or about the Grand Canyon for all the notice her classmates took of it. For them, movies were just another form of recess; for her, they were another means of gaining knowledge. She loved them all, but movies about the outdoors were her favorites. Though she never could have known it, it had been her downfall. Sadly, at eight years old, she had been ripe for the picking.
By that age, she’d already been subjected to many such films about the beauty of untouched nature. This one seemed to be no different. At first the film showed a great sweeping primeval forest with a gentle meadow in the forefront; a babbling stream and marsh grasses filled with birds, alongside. She could remember leaning forward onto her elbows in rapt attention at the splendor of it all. When suddenly the camera panned in closer to show men standing in the field, she had felt a rush of disappointment. Men had no place there, in her mind, and she had resented their intrusion.
The men seemed to be making plans of some sort. They were wearing hardhats and pointing from blueprints they were holding to the landscape around them. The voice-over had reflected Myke’s own thoughts as it spoke of the men and her own indignation had been apparent in the script. When the scene shifted to show bulldozers pulling down trees and plowing through the meadows, she had only nodded her head.
At barely eight, she’d already understood that it was a bad thing for man to use nature to suit his own purposes and that man was bad because of it. The next scene, though, had sealed the lid on her perception of mankind as wanton destructor. The scene showed men starting a fire to burn off the marsh grass, and in a very graphic display, that had made little Myke feel lightheaded and that haunted her adult self still, the camera showed nests full of baby birds being burned alive.
On that day, Myke learned to hate mankind.
------------(End Excerpt)--------------
May the makers of that movie rot in hell for what they did to hundreds, if not thousands, of impressionable 8 year olds.
Spectacle Excerpt
Migrated from The Writing Spectacle. Originally posted December 14th, 2006.
This excerpt from my first novel dovetails nicely into what I have been blogging, so I thought I would share it. Enjoy.
-----------------------------------
“From what I understand, many of you have been waiting for a long time and what you have been waiting for has not been forthcoming. No, I am not simply referring to the comet. What you have been waiting for, and waiting much longer than I’m sure even you realize, is to be told the truth.”
“You have heard what you might call one man’s version of the truth, but what you have never been told is that the truth has no versions. There is only the truth; all else is falsehood.”
“You have been told truth is relative; that truth is dependant on who you are and on what you perceive, but the men who taught you that had reason to keep the truth from you, to keep you from recognizing the truth when you saw it. Those men thought they could bend the truth to suit their purposes and to fit the occasion. What they didn’t tell you and what they never wanted you to find out is the truth once bent is no longer the truth. Truth is not elastic and it is not flexible. It simply is what it is.”
“Throughout your lives and the lives of those before you, you trusted that someone somewhere would tell you the truth. This is perhaps your only mistake, but it was the worst mistake you could have ever made. You made the mistake of giving up your ability to recognize the truth and by doing so gave that responsibility into the hands of someone else, someone you thought knew better than you and would therefore be honest enough to tell you what was true. You made the mistake of thinking those people would have enough respect for the truth, and enough respect for you, to give you the glimpse of reality you no longer wished to discover for yourselves.”
“The instant you ask someone else what he thinks, not as an exchange of ideas but as a way to avoid having to judge for yourself, you have given up your responsibility to recognize the truth. Do it enough times and you give up your ability to know the truth. Once you lose your ability to know the truth, any charlatan has you in their grasp. You only have to look around at the world right now to see the results of that.”
This excerpt from my first novel dovetails nicely into what I have been blogging, so I thought I would share it. Enjoy.
-----------------------------------
“From what I understand, many of you have been waiting for a long time and what you have been waiting for has not been forthcoming. No, I am not simply referring to the comet. What you have been waiting for, and waiting much longer than I’m sure even you realize, is to be told the truth.”
“You have heard what you might call one man’s version of the truth, but what you have never been told is that the truth has no versions. There is only the truth; all else is falsehood.”
“You have been told truth is relative; that truth is dependant on who you are and on what you perceive, but the men who taught you that had reason to keep the truth from you, to keep you from recognizing the truth when you saw it. Those men thought they could bend the truth to suit their purposes and to fit the occasion. What they didn’t tell you and what they never wanted you to find out is the truth once bent is no longer the truth. Truth is not elastic and it is not flexible. It simply is what it is.”
“Throughout your lives and the lives of those before you, you trusted that someone somewhere would tell you the truth. This is perhaps your only mistake, but it was the worst mistake you could have ever made. You made the mistake of giving up your ability to recognize the truth and by doing so gave that responsibility into the hands of someone else, someone you thought knew better than you and would therefore be honest enough to tell you what was true. You made the mistake of thinking those people would have enough respect for the truth, and enough respect for you, to give you the glimpse of reality you no longer wished to discover for yourselves.”
“The instant you ask someone else what he thinks, not as an exchange of ideas but as a way to avoid having to judge for yourself, you have given up your responsibility to recognize the truth. Do it enough times and you give up your ability to know the truth. Once you lose your ability to know the truth, any charlatan has you in their grasp. You only have to look around at the world right now to see the results of that.”
Monday, August 25, 2008
Fire
Fire
Ni awoke.
The tiny hut was dark, but the shadows were beginning to retreat in the purple light of the coming day. Soft scratching sounds came from a corner of the single room. Another rat sneaking in to escape the daylight predators. If the day’s hunting went poorly, he would kill it later and they would not go hungry.
Beside him, his mate slept. He traced her form with his thick fingers, hovering for a moment over her ripe belly. It rippled beneath his hand. Ni grinned at the strength of his unborn child. Before long, his son would see the world outside Ta’s sheltering body.
His son kicked again, reminding Ni of the need to start his day. Ta could sleep until the sun was above the horizon, but he had work to do. His son would need fur to stay warm in the coming snows; his mate would need meat to stay strong for the coming birth.
It was his job to provide these things.
Creeping as carefully as the stalking cat, he moved from the mat of woven grasses. Ta stirred slightly and then slept once more.
Through the tattered pelt doorway, Ni could see the sky brightening and strode forward. Soon, the animals would be stirring from their sleeping grounds, and he had to be hiding along the path before they passed. If he missed his chance, the remainder of the day’s hunting would be long and hard, requiring more energy than he could spare.
Near the entry was the thick stick he’d sharpened to a deadly point, and he grasped it firmly as he pushed the pelt aside. It was a good weapon—much better than the rocks his old clan had used—and it had helped him bring down many animals. It took too many men to bring down a single meal with rocks and Ni hunted alone. He had needed something more, and the stick had made his work so much easier. Hardly a hunt left them in bed at night with an empty belly. Soon those barren hunts must never come. His son could not live if he did not bring home food each day.
A short walk brought him to the trail, and he was happy to see no fresh tracks upon the ground. He was not too late; the animals were still bedded down. Tonight his mate would have a large beast to fill her belly, and his son would grow to be strong.
Settling into the crotch of a towering tree, Ni waited.
And he thought.
He made a vow when Ta first told him of the coming child. His son would not know the hungers he had known. Even in the clan, many hunts had been fruitless. Great bands of men would set out in the morning, boasting of their prowess. Humbled bands of men would return with the setting sun, boastful no more.
Ni had watched his father lead those bands. Quiet and careful, the man had been. Strong and wise, his father had fought for his right to lead those bands. At night, Ni would listen to his father grunt in the caves, talking of those most boastful men and how none of them had the skill to track or to kill. Ni had seen the hateful glares of those men, after his father had gone to his furs for the night.
And Ni had heard the whispering.
One day, the men went out and the worst among them were very quiet. At night, they returned empty handed and leaderless. To hear them tell the tale, his father had been gored during the hunt, but Ni knew in his heart what the truth of it was.
A new leader stepped forward the next day, unchallenged. He stepped into the place Ni’s father had held in the clan, and he stepped into the place the old leader had held in Ni’s home.
Like so many other predators, when a new leader stepped forward, the offspring of the old leader were set upon—to be killed or driven away. So it had been with Ni.
He had only seen ten summers when the men of the clan came at him, beating him with sticks while the women shrieked and jeered—his own mother among them. He was a stout and sturdy boy, not far from joining the hunt even at that tender age, and he warded off their blows as best he could.
So many summers had passed since that wicked day, when he’d been forced out of the caves and into the world beyond. So many winters, when he’d barely lived through the cold and the damp, had come and gone.
After many summers, he had found Ta. Living with a band of wanderers and outcasts, she had never known the comforts of the caves, nor the warmth of a dozen bodies piled together in sleep. She had been hardened by the wind and browned by the sun.
Near a gentle stream, he had hidden and watched her trying to hunt the creatures beneath the waters. One rock and then another went into the cold clear depths, until finally she had reached down and pulled a flopping meal from beneath her feet.
He had loved her in an instant.
When he had stepped forward to show himself, she had growled her fear at him and turned to run away. He’d called to her, but his grunts had meant nothing to this wild thing. She’d screamed back at him as she leapt through the tall grasses, and the chase has been on.
Hunting her like any other of his prey, he had used more brains than brawn. Soon, she hadn’t been able to see him behind her, and she’d assumed he had gone away. It was then that he’d been upon her. She’d snarled, and he’d growled; she’d bit and he’d shaken her teeth away, laughing. She had been perfect.
She still was.
On the path below his tree, Ni could hear the approach of a beast making its way to the feeding grounds. He bared his teeth in pleasure. It was a large male, already fat for the coming winter, and lazy without the urgent need for food.
When the buck was beneath him, he sprang from the tree and on top on the animal, driving his stick into the beast’s side. He pushed and the beast bucked. It jumped and he held tight to its neck. He squeezed the place where the breath of life flowed through it and it thrashed, trying to gore him. Its sharp antlers ripped through the flesh of his arm, and his weapon gouged deeper into the flesh of its flank. He shoved until the stick was driven into the beast and the beast squealed its death cry.
Afterwards, Ni lay panting on top of the animal. The battle had been harder than he’d expected, and his torn arm burned with pain. If he could just rest a moment, the burden of dragging the animal home would be so much easier.
But a growl from the bushes ceased all thought of the task ahead being easy. Ni slowly rose to his feet, standing over the carcass of his hard-won prize. Nearby was the cat or the wolf, and either would not hesitate to take both him and his meal.
Ni gathered what little strength he had, and slowly began dragging his prey home. He had no choice. If the hunting creatures caught him here, in the open, and weakened from his fight, he would lose. If they followed, he could fight them better from his own lair and with the help of Ta. Even round with his child, she was as fierce as the day they had met.
He pulled, stumbling a few steps at a time. He dragged, gaining so few feet of ground he felt like he was standing still. Still, the growling beast never showed itself, and after a while, the growling faded into the morning mist.
The sun was high above him when the hut came into view. He stopped. Ta would come to help him move the beast closer to their home. She would help him skin the beast and ready it for eating.
He called for his mate.
When Ta stepped out into the sunshine, his breath caught. As tired as he was, he could still admire how valuable his mate was to him. She was strong and sturdy, like a deer after the long and bountiful summer. Standing there with her belly rounded by the weight of his son, he could remember exactly what had drawn him to her that day by the river. She was a good mate, and she would be a good mother. She could not be otherwise.
He barked out a command, and she lifted her head in laughter before she obeyed. Na had never ruled this one, and he never would. His own deep laughter joined her own as they labored beneath the weight of his prey.
The skinning took little time, and each of them picked the choicest meats to eat immediately, before the heat of the sun soured their flavor. Ta grunted to him, indicating the beast was too big and the bounty would soon be no more than offal. He shrugged, waving aside her concerns. If too much meat existed for them to eat, he would hunt again when this carcass went bad. Hunting was nothing to him.
She rubbed her precious belly lovingly. Her hand drifted to the clotted line along his arm—too much closer and it would have been his chest, not his arm, pierced and bloody. He knew she meant for him to think about the days and weeks to come. With his son soon to be born, he must think before he risked himself on too big a prize, especially one that would not last long enough to warrant the danger. She needed him now, but she would need him even more once the birthing was close upon her.
He must no longer take the chances like he took today.
Looking down at the bounty before him, he wished for a better way. The meat, if kept from rotting, would last them days. When the snows fell, it would last longer, but it would be too hard to eat without staying in the warmth of the hut, and then the problem of rot returned.
He would think on it another day.
Every morning, Ni hunted while Ta gathered water from the stream and bounty from the fields. Some nights, he would come home empty-handed and they would chew the grains and roots to quiet their bellies. Some nights, he would come home dragging a beast for them to share. Never again did he try for the biggest beasts, but never again would his hunt last them more than one day’s meals.
The cold wind blew through their tiny hut, and each day Ta would add some mud here or grasses there to keep the chill from their sleeping furs. It never seemed enough.
One morning, long before the winter sun had reached above the earth’s line, Ni sat in his hunting tree waiting for a stout beast to take home. His mate was nearly bursting with the son he’d planted there, and she could no longer fetch the water for their home. Already the streams were thickening with ice and the plants were readying for their long sleep. Soon, the hunt would be all they could expect for sustenance, and soon he would be unable to hunt too far from their shelter for fear Ta would need him.
He had to catch something big today, and he had to find a way to make the meat last until the birthing was over.
The wind blew harder, stiffening his thick fingers. He rubbed them together and he blew his hot breath over them to keep them warm.
He stopped. A kernel of thought drifted through his brain. He rubbed his hands together, and they stayed warm.
Grasping two of the dead branches from around his hiding place, he rubbed them together. Nothing happened. He rubbed them together faster, as with his hands on the most blustery of days. They felt warm to his cold fingers. He rubbed them together as fast as he could, and the warmth spread through the wood in his fingers.
If he could take that warmth home, Ta would not need to worry about the chill of the hut. She would be warm as she gave birth, and their son would not be born into the cold world after all. Ni rubbed the sticks together with such ferocity the sound startled a beast wandering up the path toward the hunting spot. As it ran away, Ni saw his first white puff of air.
When the storms came and the jagged white light from the sky landed on the trees, the light would spread and this white air plumed upwards from the spot. He sniffed the air cautiously. It smelled the same. He shuddered. The light from the sky spread in great living tongues of unbearable heat, and the clansmen believed it was a warning from the gods. No one would dare go near the light as it spread over the ground, eating everything in its path.
Suddenly, Ni was very afraid of what he held in his hand. If the clansmen were right, the gods would rain their fury down upon him for touching what was theirs. It was for the gods to create, not Ni. Still, one thought of his son, shivering in the drafts of their hut, and Ni renewed his fury upon the wood.
The gods be damned. His son would be warm. He would make their light, and he would hold it in his hand. Then he would bring it to his mate, as a gift.
Ni rubbed at the pieces of wood until his muscles ached with the motion. Never could he manage more than the tiny white puff of air, and the warming of the wood as it turned to a brownish black. His hands ached with the motion, and his skin became raw with the rubbing. It wasn’t working.
Leaping to the ground and sitting with his back against the tree, he focused all his energy on rubbing at the wood in his hands. Near to giving up, he set his latest attempt down upon the ground beside him, and laid his head in his hands. The sun was dropping low in the sky, far from where it had started its journey, and still he had no meal to bring home for Ta. Shuddering, he thought of another night spent with no food in their bellies, and the cold winds blowing all around their sleeping furs.
A soft crackle, like the step of a mouse through dried leaves, brought his attention to the sticks beside him. The tiny puff of white air from his work had grown, and the hunger of it was beginning to consume the twigs around it. He watched in amazement as first one dry, crumpled leaf caught with a red light and then was gone, followed by another and another.
He picked up a larger stick and set it amongst the hungry puffs. The red light caught hold of the stick and began eating it, too. Setting the stick down, he rose from his hiding spot and scanned the earth for a larger branch to feed the light he’d created.
Just as he spied the perfect food for this new thing, he felt a curious prickling along his foot. He shouted and jumped. The thing had tried to feast upon his own flesh. He kicked at the dirt around it, until it was once again a small thing, and under his control. Grasping the large stick, he thrust it up against the hungry light and it licked along the wood.
Once the stick was glowing with the tongues of red hunger, he kicked the dirt again, killing the last of the light he’d created. The child of it would live on the branch he held until he could get it home, and then it would live as he chose to let it live.
It was only fitting that the child of his creation would serve his own child.
Thus, Ni’s son was born into a warm hut while the snow swirled outside, and while the child’s cries mixed with the snarl of the winter wind, the wind touched him not. While Ta slept, Ni wrapped the squirming boy in the best of his furs, and carried him closer to the fire. This was my greatest creation, Ni thought looking at his son, and now it shall serve you who have taken its honored place.
In the weeks that passed, the snow fell thick and buried the ground beneath it. The tracking of the animals became easier, and their hut was filled with the smells of cooking meat.
And their son, Ka, grew as fat and round as a bear cub.
Every day, Ni would leave for the hunt, slogging through the mounds of snow, while his mate and son remained nestled in the warmth and safety of the hut. Every afternoon he would return, pulling his prize over the drifts.
One morning, as he was on his way to his hunting spot, though, he noticed a track of the sort he hadn’t seen in many years. It was the long flat track of another man. Ni growled his displeasure. This was his territory to hunt. He had claimed it with his blood and his sweat; he would not have another man taking what was rightfully his.
Sniffing the wind, he could just catch the scent the other human, and somewhere in his mind, the smell was familiar. He hissed. This other must be stopped even if it meant returning home empty handed. At the hut, there was enough meat to miss a day’s hunting. He followed the track.
It lead him far away from the trail where he hunted every day. It lead him even farther away from his hut and his family. The track seemed to have no purpose, leading first one way and then another, but always, always, away from his home. Ni paid no attention to the distance he was covering; he only knew he must stop the other one. When the sun was high above his head, Ni could almost smell the man around the next bend, and he quickened his pace.
The memories had faded to a dim gray, but the pain of his beating and the death of his father were still fresh in Ni’s mind. Behind a tree stood the one human for which Ni would kill himself, if only to see the other die. Before him stood the murderous leader of his former clan.
Ni screamed his fury, and leapt toward the hated thing. He would kill it, and like every other beast before, he would drag it home as a prize for his mate and son.
The man laughed and crouched to take Ni, expecting to face the child he’d nearly killed so many winters before. He did not expect to face Ni’s sharpened stick.
Ni stabbed, and found his mark. The crude leader howled in pain and fury, bringing his hands up to protect his remaining eye. Like a wild thing, Ni stabbed again and again while the man beneath him squirmed to get away. Ni would have nothing of it. Each thrust of his weapon a punishment for the death of his father; each drip of blood a small return for the drops of his own blood shed on the day he was driven from the caves.
When finally, the old leader of the clan shuddered once and fell away into the snow, Ni was covered in the thick red retribution he had not known he wanted. Now that it was over, and Ni looked at the old man he had beaten, he was ashamed he had killed so old and frail a thing. It was not a prize to take proudly home to his mate.
He left the crumpled thing lying in the snow and trudged home.
The sky was washed in the blood of his kill by the time he stepped back into the clearing. Ni was tired; more tired than he had ever been from the hunt. All he wished was to wipe away the remnants of his foe, and fall into the arms of his beautiful Ta.
He didn’t notice the stillness of the clearing, but his nose caught the smell he never thought he’d find around his own home.
He shrieked for his mate.
Ta did not come.
He looked toward the shelter where Ta should be cooking, but no smoke drifted forth from the hut. Frozen with fear, he strained to hear the sounds of Ka’s robust cries. The only sound was the whistle of the wind. Racing across the clearing, he hoped for the best, but feared the worst.
His fears were not unfounded.
His fears were not unfounded.
The hut was dark and cool inside. Nothing had changed since he left for his hunting trip. Even the rat was still scratching at its hole in the corner. Ni’s brow furrowed. If some horror had taken his family, some sign of it should be present, but his eyes weren’t seeing it. Eyes that had served all his life to track the beasts he hunted, were now failing him in the most important task of his life.
He called to his mate again. No one answered. His eyes darted to the sleeping mat, and the furs piled high there. Jumping toward the pile, his hands went forward to the lump curled within them.
The furs were piled, but nothing was wrapped within them.
He ran outside, and called for Ta—louder and longer. Turning to face in each direction, he bellowed his frustration and anxiety to the winds, praying to the gods that his mate would answer. Only the wind rustling through the trees called back.
Running into the hut once more, he focused his careful hunting eyes to the walls and the floors. No signs of battle were visible within the hut. Racing outside, he scanned the ground looking for traces of the answer in the snow. In his fear, he had trampled over the strange footprints, but they were there. Many, many men had come, crushing the snow beneath their fur-covered feet.
The exhaustion slipped away from Ni, and the terror clouding his vision disappeared. His mind became clear and the events that had occurred in his absence were suddenly obvious.
The exhaustion slipped away from Ni, and the terror clouding his vision disappeared. His mind became clear and the events that had occurred in his absence were suddenly obvious.
Ni became the hunter once more. His nose caught the scent of a dozen men; his sight fell on the myriad of tracks. Kneeling to the ground, he brushed his fingertips along the curve of a footprint and felt the snow. Not long after he’d left for the hunt, the outsiders had snuck into his camp.
He searched for more clues. The hut was empty, but so were their stores of meat. The fire he’d worked so carefully to build had grown cold. The tiny bed they’d made for their son… His face grew hot with the thought of the outsiders and his son. His blood began to burn again, and he began to lose sight of his tasks.
He cried out in the darkness of his empty hut. If they’d harmed one inch of skin on his son, he would kill them all.
Gathering his furs, and his hunting sticks, he strode from the dwelling Ta had always kept so well. He would find his family, or die trying. And if he must die, he would take the clan with him into hell.
Tracking the band was easy. They had stampeded through the forest like a herd of injured beasts. While his eyes stayed focused on the trail, looking for some sign of his mate, his mind drifted back over the morning. The old leader had been the trap to lure him away from his home. Of that, he was certain. If he’d hunted in his usual spot, he would have heard the commotion, and the old leader had drawn him further away so he could not defend his family.
He sneered at the ways of his former clan. They had behaved like stupid old women, and now they were without a leader. Instead of facing him like men, they had snuck in like rats, stealing from him those things they could never achieve on their own, and now they would die.
It would not be hard to kill them. The stupidest of beasts was always the easiest to kill.
In the gathering darkness, the trail became harder to follow. The clouds, present all day, covered the light of the moon, and he cursed his gods for aiding the thieves. Still, he pressed on. If he could not follow their trail, he at least knew the way to the caves, and they would have no other place to hide.
He sniffed the wind. From somewhere beside the trail, a sickening smell drifted to his nostrils. It was the smell of blood—human blood. Fearing to leave the trail and lose precious time, yet afraid of not knowing the source of the smell, he tentatively followed his nose. His brain screamed that he must not go; the smell was too familiar. One foot and then the other ignored the screaming voice.
He found her just beyond the trail. The dark lump of her furs stood stark against the whiteness of the snow; the dark stain of her life’s blood spread out in a pool around her soft hair.
Falling to his knees beside her broken body, he scooped Ta into his arms, and held her close against his chest. She was cold, but the stiffness hadn’t crept into her limbs yet. He smoothed the sticky mass of hair away from her face, and softly kissed her cheeks. A single perfect teardrop fell across her pale lips.
He howled into the night.
Laying her gently upon the ground once more, he walked slowly back to the trail of his enemies. Hardened to the grief, he put one foot in front of the other. Slowly at first, and then each step quickened his pace until he was running. His mate was gone, but they still had his son. He must save Ka.
And then he must kill the clan.
The darkness was nothing. The snow was nothing. He ran like a devil through the forest, and nothing stood between him and his anger. Before the dawn broke, he came within sight of the caves, made bright and brilliant by the gift of his fire; a gift he would never have given them.
He had another gift they could take, and his fingers tightened around the weapon in his grasp.
He could hear the gleeful cackling of the crones, and the strident cries of his son. He ached to run to Ka, but the coolness had retaken his heated brain. If he ran to his son now, he would surely fail, and he would not fail in this.
As he crept toward the caves, Ka’s screams grew louder, and then fell to silence. Failure or not, Ni broke into a run, and was within the caves before any of the clansmen could move.
He stabbed the first moving thing he saw, and felt the blood spurt along his hand. He kicked at another body and heard the crunch of ribs beneath his heel. Like the devils of their nightmares, Ni was everywhere and the clansmen were afraid. He struck at them, and they cowered before him.
Ka! He could not see Ka. As he attacked the objects of his anger, his eyes searched for a glimpse of the tiny bundle; his ears strained for the hearty shriek of his son. Nothing.
Recovering from their shock, the clansmen returned the attack, leaping at him from every direction. He fended off their blows with his sharpened stick, gouging and rending the bodies that fell within his reach. Like a great cat—blood-crazed after the hunt—he flung himself among them, a high-pitched mewl upon his lips. Like frightened birds, they flew away from his bloody grasp.
In the light of the fire, with the blood of their clan dripping from his hands, he appeared to be some avenging god. First one, and then another, fell prostrate before him, whispering prayers. He laughed at them. Stooping, he picked up a brand from the fire they had stolen and brandished it in their faces.
He called for his child. The people of his childhood family cowered further, sweeping the cave floor with their dirty, matted hair. He bellowed for the child to be brought to him, and they trembled in fright.
He raised his fiery weapon above his head. He would burn them all with the gift they had taken, if they did not give him his child.
An old and scraggily woman crawled forth from the mass of whimpering bodies. Clutched to her chest was a furry package. She held it forth, and from within the folds of animal hide, a single tiny hand pushed forward.
Setting down the fire, he scooped the child away from the crone’s twisted fingers. The babe was safe. He raised a single, meaty fist to crush the female who had kept his son from him, and saw a look of recognition in her eyes.
Staying his blow, he cradled Ti within the folds of his own furs, and turned away. His anger spent, he could not muster enough of his fury to strike down the woman who had taken his son, because she was also the one who had given him life.
Quietly cooing to his greatest achievement, Ni kicked dirt over the fire, snuffing it into embers and then grinding the embers into cold black soot beneath his heel. It was his to create and his to destroy.
As the first pink of the morning sun chased away the darkness, Ni took his child and walked away. The people he once knew lay crying in the darkness of their cave, whining for him to bring back the treasure they had stolen from him.
The fire was dead in the cave, and it was dead in his home, but he knew the secret to creating it again. It was a secret not one of those other creatures would ever discover. As his steps lead down the trail and away from the caves, he whispered the secret of fire to his son.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Tom Sheldon
Hi. It's been a while since I posted anything here, so I thought I would leave another couple of snippets cut from Fear Itself. Below is what basically amounts to a character study of network executive Tom Sheldon. I love this, and maybe it will make it back into the book should it ever get published, but for now, it's snipped.
I hope you enjoy it.
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Tom Sheldon was a self-made millionaire who’d been born into money. As the son of an industrialist who’d had to work to pull himself out of the gutter, Tom wanted for nothing but earned everything he had. While working to rise above his background, his father had also worked to instill that same ethic in his only son.
At the age of fourteen, Tom used an alias and applied for the job of day laborer at his father’s largest factory. He spent his summer sweeping metal shavings from beneath the feet of lathe operators and from between the cracks of large machinery whose purpose he could only guess at. At the end of the summer, his means of giving notice was walking into the plant manager’s office and telling him what he thought was wrong with the way the plant was run. Tom was dead right on every point and he knew it, but he was fired immediately. He could still hear the loud ranting of his former boss as he punched out for the last time and headed for home.
That night he strode into his father’s study and laid the entirety of his summer earnings on his father’s lap. “I’ve been working at the Rouge plant since I left school. That’s the money I earned, minus a bit I spent on myself. Consider it a down payment on the rent.” Unsurprised, his father gathered the money and nodded. Tom finished with, “From here on out, I pay my own way,” and walked from the room. His father slowly tucked the money into his pocket and went back to reading the newspaper.
Tom never told his father of his means of resignation, but word spread quickly from the plant floor into the executive office. Given two weeks to comply with the younger Sheldon’s plans or face the consequences, the plant manager chose the latter and was easily replaced. No man ever went against a business plan of Tom’s again.
Never once did he shirk his self-imposed rent, despite his mother’s protestations. She insisted he needn’t work and he needn’t pay his parents for his keep. Once, in the study after dinner, she went so far as to say everything they had was his without asking. His father silenced her with a single look and the subject was never broached again.
Upon graduation, his father presented him with a check for $50,000. He indignantly refused the perceived handout, but his father assured him it wasn’t a gift. His father then explained how he had taken every penny of rent Tom had ever paid and invested it. The check was strictly the profits from the investments. His father assured him he had kept the rent plus a minor broker’s fee, which suited Tom just fine.
His grandfather offered to pay his way through college, but Tom refused that as well. Irreverently, he laughed at the old man and his thought of higher education. Tom knew there was more to be learned in the world than one could learn in a lifetime of classes. Then, sensing he had somehow deeply offended his mother’s father, he apologized. He noted then something was deeply wrong with a man who would offer another money and then be offended when it was refused. That was the last time he spoke to his grandfather, and it was the last time he apologized to anyone for his own integrity.
Taking his own $50,000, he left home—principles intact.
... (several chapters later)...
When he left his father’s home all those years ago, it had been to fight the first battle of his war to the top. His father had unknowingly given him the key when he’d given him his stake—the key was the stock market. If Thomas Sheldon, Sr. could take the pittance his son paid in rent and turn it into fifty-thousand dollars, then surely Tom Sheldon, Jr. could use the same plan to make a much larger fortune. Heading east into New York with a plan in mind, he vowed to take the first job he could find, strictly to keep himself alive while he learned his trade.
Tom planned to hold his stake until he’d taught himself enough to trade and trade wisely. Working as a day laborer at a factory in New Jersey and as a night watchman at a high-rise in Manhattan, he scraped along quietly and was able to keep himself nicely, but it wasn’t enough. He discovered he missed the opulent lifestyle of his father’s home, and he buckled down to achieve it.
In the hours between his day job and his night job—working weekends when he could find the work—Tom took whatever work he could find. Soon he began pulling in more money than he’d ever earned. The increase in money allowed him to regain something of the lifestyle at his father’s home—a spacious apartment in a high rise, the best foods, and the best wines.
Unfortunately, his work schedule didn’t allow much time for studying the markets, and he could feel his stomach twist each time a penny stock jumped while he was busy grinding out a living. Taking the chance he knew he had to take to truly succeed, he quit his jobs and his nice apartment. With the last of his wages, he paid two months rent on a tenement in a somewhat seedier part of town and knuckled down to earn the skills needed to turn his small stake into his fortune.
Studying the markets hard, he looked for trends in the stocks. Diligently watching the news, he studied the behavior of corporate executives. Within a month, he found just the right stock in which to invest his money—all of his money. He’d never cared much for doing things by half measures.
He watched and he waited as the stock hovered, wavering slightly up one day and slightly down the next, always within mere cents of the price he’d paid for it. The company was on the verge of bankruptcy, the papers said. They said it was only a matter of time. If the company went bankrupt, his investment would be worthless and his money lost, but he was unafraid. He had an instinct about this, and he knew his instinct was born of knowledge. As the rent on his apartment was overdue for the second week in a row, and the landlord was threatening eviction, Tom’s knowledge was born out.
The company had been a small venture with a simple product—a venture too small for the company to rise without assistance and a product too brilliant to escape the notice of a bigger enterprise. When the little company was bought-out by a much larger conglomerate, Tom walked away with his first million. It was a lesson he never forgot: knowledge and hard work always wins.
I hope you enjoy it.
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Tom Sheldon
Tom Sheldon was a self-made millionaire who’d been born into money. As the son of an industrialist who’d had to work to pull himself out of the gutter, Tom wanted for nothing but earned everything he had. While working to rise above his background, his father had also worked to instill that same ethic in his only son.
At the age of fourteen, Tom used an alias and applied for the job of day laborer at his father’s largest factory. He spent his summer sweeping metal shavings from beneath the feet of lathe operators and from between the cracks of large machinery whose purpose he could only guess at. At the end of the summer, his means of giving notice was walking into the plant manager’s office and telling him what he thought was wrong with the way the plant was run. Tom was dead right on every point and he knew it, but he was fired immediately. He could still hear the loud ranting of his former boss as he punched out for the last time and headed for home.
That night he strode into his father’s study and laid the entirety of his summer earnings on his father’s lap. “I’ve been working at the Rouge plant since I left school. That’s the money I earned, minus a bit I spent on myself. Consider it a down payment on the rent.” Unsurprised, his father gathered the money and nodded. Tom finished with, “From here on out, I pay my own way,” and walked from the room. His father slowly tucked the money into his pocket and went back to reading the newspaper.
Tom never told his father of his means of resignation, but word spread quickly from the plant floor into the executive office. Given two weeks to comply with the younger Sheldon’s plans or face the consequences, the plant manager chose the latter and was easily replaced. No man ever went against a business plan of Tom’s again.
Never once did he shirk his self-imposed rent, despite his mother’s protestations. She insisted he needn’t work and he needn’t pay his parents for his keep. Once, in the study after dinner, she went so far as to say everything they had was his without asking. His father silenced her with a single look and the subject was never broached again.
Upon graduation, his father presented him with a check for $50,000. He indignantly refused the perceived handout, but his father assured him it wasn’t a gift. His father then explained how he had taken every penny of rent Tom had ever paid and invested it. The check was strictly the profits from the investments. His father assured him he had kept the rent plus a minor broker’s fee, which suited Tom just fine.
His grandfather offered to pay his way through college, but Tom refused that as well. Irreverently, he laughed at the old man and his thought of higher education. Tom knew there was more to be learned in the world than one could learn in a lifetime of classes. Then, sensing he had somehow deeply offended his mother’s father, he apologized. He noted then something was deeply wrong with a man who would offer another money and then be offended when it was refused. That was the last time he spoke to his grandfather, and it was the last time he apologized to anyone for his own integrity.
Taking his own $50,000, he left home—principles intact.
... (several chapters later)...
When he left his father’s home all those years ago, it had been to fight the first battle of his war to the top. His father had unknowingly given him the key when he’d given him his stake—the key was the stock market. If Thomas Sheldon, Sr. could take the pittance his son paid in rent and turn it into fifty-thousand dollars, then surely Tom Sheldon, Jr. could use the same plan to make a much larger fortune. Heading east into New York with a plan in mind, he vowed to take the first job he could find, strictly to keep himself alive while he learned his trade.
Tom planned to hold his stake until he’d taught himself enough to trade and trade wisely. Working as a day laborer at a factory in New Jersey and as a night watchman at a high-rise in Manhattan, he scraped along quietly and was able to keep himself nicely, but it wasn’t enough. He discovered he missed the opulent lifestyle of his father’s home, and he buckled down to achieve it.
In the hours between his day job and his night job—working weekends when he could find the work—Tom took whatever work he could find. Soon he began pulling in more money than he’d ever earned. The increase in money allowed him to regain something of the lifestyle at his father’s home—a spacious apartment in a high rise, the best foods, and the best wines.
Unfortunately, his work schedule didn’t allow much time for studying the markets, and he could feel his stomach twist each time a penny stock jumped while he was busy grinding out a living. Taking the chance he knew he had to take to truly succeed, he quit his jobs and his nice apartment. With the last of his wages, he paid two months rent on a tenement in a somewhat seedier part of town and knuckled down to earn the skills needed to turn his small stake into his fortune.
Studying the markets hard, he looked for trends in the stocks. Diligently watching the news, he studied the behavior of corporate executives. Within a month, he found just the right stock in which to invest his money—all of his money. He’d never cared much for doing things by half measures.
He watched and he waited as the stock hovered, wavering slightly up one day and slightly down the next, always within mere cents of the price he’d paid for it. The company was on the verge of bankruptcy, the papers said. They said it was only a matter of time. If the company went bankrupt, his investment would be worthless and his money lost, but he was unafraid. He had an instinct about this, and he knew his instinct was born of knowledge. As the rent on his apartment was overdue for the second week in a row, and the landlord was threatening eviction, Tom’s knowledge was born out.
The company had been a small venture with a simple product—a venture too small for the company to rise without assistance and a product too brilliant to escape the notice of a bigger enterprise. When the little company was bought-out by a much larger conglomerate, Tom walked away with his first million. It was a lesson he never forgot: knowledge and hard work always wins.
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