Excerpt #5 from "The Roller Rink" (novel-in-progess)

It’s just one of those things. We get the sadness. It lands on us in the middle of a good time. It perches on our shoulder, whispers in our ear.

Sometimes it takes up residency, but most of the time it sits there a while, then flies off, and you feel the burden lift and all those good thoughts return.

That’s what happened to Trevor, cuz the things I said to him, they were just playful things. Not serious things.  Just good time things. It must have been the sadness that got him. For a little while.

Excerpt #4 from "The Roller Rink" novel-in-progess

You say that a lot, she said.

I do?

You ask a lot of rhetorical questions too. You waste time.

Well, I said, I’m not sure I agree with you on that count.

Like that. What you just said.

What about it? 

Excerpt #3 from "The Roller Rink"

I wasn’t going to actually do it. I was going to make it look that way. Fear and all. Establish the fear.

Excerpt #2 from "The Roller Rink" (novel in progress)

“What I need from y’all is a promise not to scream and holler. I got these headaches, and when y’all are screaming, I get so that I can’t see straight no more. When I get like that, I get dangerous, you hear? I might come over here one day and waste y’all.”

Excerpt #1 from The Roller Rink (novel in progress):

Do what they taught you--he said aloud--do the breathing thing. He raised his arms and flapped his arms and he inhaled sharply and released. He repeated this action three times, then he went into the kitchen and poured himself a bowl of Corn Pops with milk. The milk had soured, but he didn’t mind. He had eaten worse than soured milk. But the girl, if she became hungry, would require better. He would have to buy some fresh milk. His new friend was getting expensive. 

Playa #1

"The lake bed, as far out as she could see, had fissured and cracked, a bed of puckered mud, dried out like roofing shingles in the interminable sun.

"But there was water there, in the holes that dotted the bed close to shore. And in this water there was life. Brief fleeting life."

Character quote #1:

I may paint an idiot’s picture of my past, and for that I blame age.  I am older now, and less honest with myself.

What am I doing in this dust?

still thinking through this