Seeing your beginning gives me the incentive to just dive into my own. Having not written a book, only short stories and poems, I always wonder exactly how to start even though I pretty much know the entire story in my head.

I'll just have to put pen to paper and hope for the best.

okay I added some

this could be kinda cool. Ya'll get to witness the evolution and get to give advice and critique as it unfolds

only problem is that mingle squashes the print together and removes the paragraph indents and removes the white space

I think the white space is just as important to the flow as the print

so it's a bit hard to read

please point out any typos to me. I dont type very well so I get a LOT of typos and miss quite a few in the re reading

any way here is the rest of chapter one...

hahahaha I forgot that mingle would filter some of the language




continued from last post


Bill Woodman wasn’t really Clay’s uncle by blood. But he and Clay’s dad, Henry, had grown up together. Best friends since the third grade. Hell, their fathers had even been best friends too, up to the day they died exactly one month apart.

Clay’s reverie was interrupted as the first of his electricians pulled into the parking lot. It was Juan Diaz, his very best hand, driving the brand new service truck that Clay had bought. Short and wide with a pachuko mustache and soul patch on his chin, wearing a “La Raza” ballcap and leather jacket, Juan looked like the scary Mexican biker that you would hate to meet in a dark alley. He would have been the manager of Kroft Electric if Clay only had the budget to pay him more. As it was, Juan still half ran the company for him. An exceptionally talented electrician despite his biker image, Juan had earned an Associates degree in electronics from the community college in Odessa. He enjoyed acting the role of the dangerous Mexican biker but in reality was one of the most intelligent and educated people Clay had ever met. He always had complete confidence in Juan’s ability to diagnose and repair the most difficult of trouble calls.
Clay saw that Dimitry was in the passenger seat of Juan’s service truck. His personal truck must have broken down again. Dimitry was a good kid, always cheerful and enthusiastically helpful. And he was engaged to Clay’s daughter Karen. That was really the only reason Clay had hired him to be Juan’s helper. Dimitry knew nothing about electricity. Or really even the first thing about the oilfield. He tried, he tried really hard, but Dimitry was, well, there was no way to say it nice. Dimitry was a fook up. Sometimes Clay had to struggle to keep the kid from seeing him laugh at him. But he was engaged to Karen, and she obviously was head over heels in love with the kid. Clay was forever after him to get a haircut. Not that he had anything against long hair. Clay’s own salt and pepper hair was braided into a ponytail that reached to the hollow between his shoulder blades. But Dimitry let his hair grow so that most of the time his bangs obscured his vision. He just looked, well, sloppy. And his appearance just added to the impression of being a fook up.
As Juan and Dimitry got out of the service truck Clay repressed a twinge of irritation. It was still pretty cold outside and the howling wind had a sharp arctic bite to it. He wasn’t really quite ready to get out. He grunted in amusement at himself and zipped his tan Carhart work jacket up as tight to his throat as he could. He opened the door of his truck and the wind immediately grabbed it and tried to rip it out of his hands spilling the remnants of his coffee in a spray that was instantly dispersed by the wind.
Clay waved to Juan and pulled his bundle of keys to unlock the door to the building. Too many keys to comfortably put in his pocket, Clay attached them all to a carabiner that he clipped to his belt loop. It was a convenient arrangement except that sooner or later the weight of the keys would tear his belt loop and he would have a panicky couple of hours until he found wherever they had dropped. So far he had always managed to find them.
He held the glass door against the ever persistent wind to let Juan through.
Juan just mumbled with a heavy Spanish accent, “Coffee” as he ducked through the door and headed straight for the small spare kitchen cum break room that was really just a foyer for the bathroom.
The two other service trucks with their electricians were pulling into the parking lot as Clay pulled the door tight against the wind. Right behind them were the other two helpers and his three man line crew all in their personal vehicles. Only the electricians were allowed to drive their service trucks home. A perk that Clay hoped would give the others the incentive to study and pass the Journeyman electrician test. It didn’t really work though. Most of the helpers and linemen were content to remain just as they were. And really that was fine with Clay. They were all good, intelligent, and hardworking hands. It was just a balance. A trade off between responsibility and pay and they were satisfied with the level that they were at. All in their twenties, his boys were still at that stage where all they really wanted to do was get fooked up and get laid. Clay knew that when they finally grew up most of them would take more interest in professional development. In the meantime he was content to allow them to be the same wild hard working hard partying kids that he himself was when he was their age
As everyone trooped in, fighting the wind to keep the door from ripping off its hinges, they all shuffled, heads down, straight for the coffee pot. Clay sighed and shook his head and laughed a little inside without showing it. They were all terribly hung over. He reckoned it was going to be a slow start to this Monday.
As they stood in a small semi circle around the coffee pot, feet shuffling and mumbling good mornings to each other, Juan looked around and said, “Where the fook is Dimitry?”
The crew all looked around vaguely and made half audible mumbly noises and shrugged. They were all going to be useless for another hour or so.
Juan walked over and looked out the front door and chuckled, “You’ll have to see this for yourself boss.”
Clay walked over to the door and looked out and couldn’t help snorting. He just shook his head. Dimitry had gotten his jacket sleeve caught in the door when he closed it. And the door was locked so Dimitry was stuck standing by the service truck with the wind buffeting him. He had his head ducked to his chest to avoid the worst of the wind and at the moment they spied him he was in the act of trying to slip his jacket over his head without unbuttoning it.
Juan elbowed Clay in the ribs, pointed and said, “Look there.”
Rolling across the parking lot driven by the wind was one of the biggest tumbleweeds Clay had seen. Probably six feet around and as tall as a man. And it was headed straight for Dimitry, who couldn’t see it coming because his jacket was still half pulled over his head.
Juan was starting to giggle like a little kid and said, “This is going to be good.” Clay tried to contain his laughter as the tumbleweed rolled across the parking lot on a beeline straight at Dimitry. It smacked right into him. It would have knocked him off his feet and carried him away if his sleeve, caught in the pickup door, hadn’t held him up. Clay just shook his head in wonderment. He found himself doing that a lot where Dimitry was concerned.
If you’ve never encountered tumble weeds you probably don’t know that they are prickly. Not really quite thorny but sharp and just prickly. And so dry that the least tension or force causes them to break apart into little sticks and mini tumbleweeds. And each little stick is prickly and sticky and snares itself into any material soft enough for it to get a hold.
As Dimitry stood trapped by the truck door with his jacket still half over his head, he tried kicking the tumbleweed loose but he only succeeded in breaking it into smaller pieces that clung to his jacket and hair. The diminished tumbleweed pieces and clones finally took off to continue their wind born journey to eventually join their brothers on some fence some where.
Clay told Juan, “You better go save your helper before he blows away too”
Juan was giggling as he said, “This kid. If he didn’t have bad luck he wouldn’t have any luck at all. It’s a laugh a minute working with him. A regular three ring circus.”
Clay said, “Well don’t jack with him too much. He is my daughter’s fiancé. I don’t want to scare him off. She would never forgive me”
Juan laughed and said, “Nahh, he’s a good kid. I like him. Just, if there is a wrong place and a wrong time, you can be sure that Dimitry will be there.
He leaned halfway out the door of the shop holding it tight against the wind with one hand as he as he toggled the keychain fob that unlocked the door. Chirp-chirp. Dimitry pulled himself free of the door and ran for the shop pulling his jacket back into place and pulling shreds of tumbleweed out of his hair.
Juan was holding the door for him and laughing “Hey mijo! You plannin’ to come to work sometime today?”
Dimitry swung a punch at Juan’s shoulder as he came through the door but of course Juan ducked under and Dimitry smacked his fist into the aluminum frame of the door. Sucking on his knuckle and shaking his hand he headed for the kitchen and the now empty coffee pot.
“Jeez, any of you guys know how to refill a coffee pot”
The only reply was a bunch of “yeah, yeah, yeah’s” and assorted mumbles.
Clay thought, Christ this whole day might be a waste. These guys must have really gotten messed up last night. How do you get so drunk on a Sunday night? He wondered. There’s no bars open on Sunday night in small town Baptist world. He was mildly irritated with them but said nothing. Once they had some coffee and woke up they really were an excellent crew. Not a slacker or a trouble maker among them. So he cut them a little bit of slack. A really little bit.
As everybody shuffled into the conference room to get their job assignments and trouble tickets, Clay pulled Juan aside,
“You’re going to be helperless today. I need to borrow Dimitry.”
“Ah la verga, you pay me too much to do that kind of work.”
“I know, but you’ll have a light day because of it. Just hand off your trouble calls to the other guys. You can spend the day supervising. I’m having lunch in Alpine today with my dad and I figure it’s time Dimitry got to meet his future grandfather in law. Or really, maybe it’s the other way around”
Juan laughed, “Does he know that he is going to meet the famous Jefe Kroft today?”
Clay winked, “Not yet but he’s fixing to”
As everybody settled in to the battered mismatched folding chairs around the big scarred steel work table that they had moved into the conference room, Clay grinned wickedly at Juan and picked up a big four pound sledge hammer. He casually walked up and smacked the steel table top as hard as he could with the hammer. BAM!
To a man, the whole crew jumped and moaned and grabbed their heads in pain. No mercy for hangovers. Clay accepted it as a part of doing business in the oilfield but he would allow no tolerance for a hangover to impair a man’s ability to work. If you had to work and puke you just did and kept going. It better not slow you down
He looked over the group and said “Ya’ll awake now? Anybody feel like they need a little time for a nap maybe?”
Everyone knew better than to answer that
“Jeez what a motley crew. All right. Let’s sort out assignments.”
He looked over his line crew. “Pete, you and your guys have ten spans of primary and a transformer bank to build over by Coyanosa. Load up your poles and a couple of spools of three and ought ASCR and hardware. I left your transformers by the garage doors. Take the bucket truck. I don’t want anyone trying to climb poles in this wind. Oh. And we’re charging by the hour on this one so don’t get in a hurry. The rest of you guys pick up Juan’s trouble tickets. He’s playing boss man today. I have to be in Alpine for lunch.”
“And Dimitry, you’ll be coming with me”
Dimitry’s eyebrows shot up. His eyes got big and round. He dropped his head in his hand and said, “Oh no. You’re making me meet Sheriff Kroft today? And I’m wearing old greasy, torn, blue jeans? You could have told me so I could dress better.”
Clay replied, “Don’t worry about that. We’ll swing by your place so you can change.”
“Everybody else, let’s get a move on. We’re burning daylight.”

7 days without a post??

Have all our writer's gotten so involved with their work that they have forgotten about this thread??? lol

Anyone attempting to write their first book, and if so, will you publish it anytime soon?

I'm writing my first book e-book..it's hard work

I'm back

my laptop bit the dust and all my work is inaccesible. I got out the old desktop but dont have word or word perfect loaded in it. as soon as I can get some kinda word processing software loaded I can continue the story I was working on

I'll post periodic updates so ya'll can proof read and give advice

still havent figured out where to introduce the zombies yet though

Good deal, Lex. Good to see another one from you finished.

I have discouragement setting in.

I haven't been able to make any progress over the last few weeks.

I know what the problem is. I just don't have any ideas on how to get past it.

I have that sometimes, too.

And what I do, is I just step away from it for awhile. Inevitably, out of nowhere, something will occur to me. "What if so-and-so suddenly ran into this other thing....?" and it just goes from there.

I don't push it, though. It happens when it's ready to happen. Like yesterday -- I've been having a problem figuring out how to get from Point X to Point Z in this last story. So I just sat down and started writing some fill-in stuff, in-between stuff, and then it just started flowing. Next thing I know, I've got 30 pages done, and the story, too.

Congrats Lex! To getting it done, always a good thing... 3 cheers.

Thank you! I spent a few hours today tinkering with the cover -- there's a trick to how wide the spine has to be to accommodate the page count, and this book has only about 2/3 the number of pages that the last one had....and I had to work on the PDFs for the publisher....

Hold on now...you mean there's more to writing a book than actually putting words to paper? Now ya tell me!

I'm thinking this is gonna be much harder than I imagined. I'm also thinking the regurgitation of the story from my brain might end up being the easy part. The rest is unchartered territory. Guess I'll cross that expanse when I get there. If I get there.

I have that sometimes, too.

And what I do, is I just step away from it for awhile. Inevitably, out of nowhere, something will occur to me. "What if so-and-so suddenly ran into this other thing....?" and it just goes from there.

I don't push it, though. It happens when it's ready to happen. Like yesterday -- I've been having a problem figuring out how to get from Point X to Point Z in this last story. So I just sat down and started writing some fill-in stuff, in-between stuff, and then it just started flowing. Next thing I know, I've got 30 pages done, and the story, too.