Boris slides the phone back in his pocket. “That’s weird, he’s not answering. Wonder what Eric wanted.”

“It’s probably just a phantom call.” says Natasha.

“A what?”

“You know, one of those calls your cell makes on its own. It happens when you stuff your phone in your bag or pocket and all it takes is a little bitty bump and then it starts auto-dialing.”

Boris nods, noting with satisfaction Natasha’s face is almost back to normal size and hue. She’s sitting cross legged on her bed, hunched over a fistful of UNO cards, while Boris balances on a purple exercise ball at the foot, and Ethan and Liz flank on either side. Boris wishes Sarah could be here too, but she had a shift at the hospital. He wants Natasha and Sarah to be friends.

Liz tosses down a plus four card and Boris groans dramatically before waving his extra thick handful of cards at her. “Gee Liz, how many of those can one person have. I can barely hold the damned cards I have already.” He picks up the four cards and tosses down a green change direction card.

Liz laughs and throws down a blue change direction card. Boris wails “Argghhh” and counters with a yellow change direction card.

“No, no, not yellow!” squeals Liz.

“Mwah hahaha” chortles Boris. “Oh yeah… yelloooow rocks!”

Natasha asks Ethan, “Think we’ll ever get a chance to play again?”

“Eventually, when those two get tired of out-evilling each other.” Ethan frowns and gets up and goes to the window, leaning on the sill.

“What is it?” asks Natasha, suddenly pale.

“Sirens.”

The others crowd around, cards forgotten on the bed. Ethan steps back to cede Natasha the best view of the police cars coming up the road.

“What’s happening?” asks Natasha. Boris reaches over and squeezes her hand.

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Adam pulls into the parking lot, shaking his head as the engine continues to run on even after he pulls the key out. He sighs, hoping that it’ll hold together until he can afford to do something about it. He pats the dashboard and murmurs his ritual, “Hear me baby, hold together” with the tiniest glimmer of a smile.

Adam picks up his laptop case and gets out, locking the door, idly wondering why, since if someone stole this piece of junk maybe he’d get a better one out of the insurance.

No. He would undoubtedly end up with something worse. As Adam starts across the lot toward the mouth of the path he catches movement out of the corner of his eye.

Glancing over, Adam sees some guy leaning over Barbie’s car. He stops, and turns back. It certainly is not Barbie, but it is her car. He heads over, getting closer to the guy as he moves between the parked cars. The guy looks a bit familiar but Adam can’t place him. And he’s definitely trying to get into Barbie’s car. It’s now or never.

“Hey!” Adam calls out. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m just borrowing my friend’s car. Do you mind?” Jose answers back, then he turns holding up a keyring dangling with keys. Adam steps closer, and yes, he recognizes Barbie’s key ring from the night they went to the concert.

“Alright.” Adam nods with a sigh, but he keeps approaching. Must be another one of Barbie’s hordes of admirers. But what’s wrong with his face?

Adam narrows his eyes to try and make sense of the vertical lines on the guy’s cheeks.

Is it paint? No, it’s too regular, it looks kind of like blood. No, that does not make sense. The guy goes back to the door and finally gets the correct key in the door lock as Adam comes within a few feet.

He swings the door open and Adam extends a hand, “I’m Barbie’s friend Adam from the computer club.”

Ignoring his outstretched hand, the guy frowns, then says, “You’re the one put Linux on her laptop?”

Adam feels a momentary burst of pleasure – Barbie must have been talking about him. But then it dissolves as he realizes Barbie must like this man a lot to lend him her car. Adam says, “Yes.”

But then he looks at the man. He is a real mess. Adam squints a little, trying to figure out what’s wrong with his face without actually staring or anything.

“I gotta go pick some stuff up.” Jose stops and realizes that Adam is scrutinizing his face. He’s gotta get out of here before Dilbert gets the picture. He resists the urge to self consciously reach up and touch his face. Shit. “Look, pal, I don’t have a beef with you, so just back off, Okay?”

“What’s wrong with your face?”

“I got a rash. Barbie’s just lending me her car so I can, so I can go home and get cleaned up.”

Realizing he has just been lied to, Adam stops pretending nonchalance and just stares at the guy. “Is that blood?”

“Look, pal, just take off, and you won’t get hurt.”

“You stole Barbie’s keys?”

“I’m not a fucking thief. She gave me her keys so I could use her car.” Jose glowers. “Barbie’s lending me her car. She gave me her keys. She’s my girlfriend.”

But Adam remembers the guy with the fancy red car. That would be Barbie’s real boyfriend. Not this man. Another lie.

“I’ll ask Barbie, then.” Adam unclips the brand new cellphone on his belt and starts to punch in Barbie’s number.

“Just leave it alone. Go away.”

Jose steps forward and knocks Adam’s cellphone out of his hand. The phone flies through the air and then bounces twice on the asphalt before shattering. Adam stares at his new phone in horror. He just got it programmed. And only used it once.

Jose turns back toward Barbie’s car and Adam swings his computer bag at him. It hits Jose in the back, making him stagger into the car door. Only grabbing onto the handle keeps him from falling down but it makes the door slam shut again. Jose doesn’t care, he is just too angry at this stupid nerd.

Turning back to Adam he says. “What the hell did you do that for?”

“First you broke my cellphone and now you are attempting to steal Barbie’s car.”

“Piss off, I’m just borrowing her car. Besides, why should you care, she was only ever nice to you so you’d fix her computer for free. She was just using you, you loser. So just bug the hell off.”

“Why should I believe you? Why would I believe anything a car thief says, Mister Loser?”

Jose just flips him the bird and reaches for the door handle again.

Adam steps in even closer, crowding him. “No. This is not your car.”

Jose tries to elbow Adam, but somehow finds himself sitting in the dirt. His bloody balance must be off after the ruckus with Barbie. He scrambles to his feet and takes a swing at the guy and misses again.

This is getting annoying. especially since he can hear sirens. Goddamn, are they coming for him already? He can’t even get off the bloody campus because of this crazy geek. He looks over at the scrawny little guy in a tie. A fuckin’ tie for god’s sake. “What is your problem?”

“You can’t just go around breaking people’s phones and pushing them around. I am just so sick of bullies.”

Jose launches himself at Adam who easily sidesteps. Jose ends up skidding and sliding onto his knees on the asphalt.

“Who the fuck do you think you are, Batman?”

“No, just a geek who thought martial arts training might help me deal with neanderthals like you. Have you had enough?”

Jose starts picking himself up. This is so ridiculous. This 98 pound weakling – wearing a tie for gods sake – is stopping him from getting away.

That’s it, no more mister nice guy.

With a mighty roar Jose lunges at Adam with all the force he can muster. This time Adam does not step away but rather steps in, grasping Jose’s wrist and somehow transforming the attack into a kind of ballet, altering the direction of movement and somehow sending Jose face first into the side door of the hummer parked in the adjacent parking spot.

Blinding pain.

God that hurt. For a second it’s like a hot needle in his nose, then Jose realizes his nose is broken, as blood spurts out his left nostril and the swelling starts. Shit. It fucking hurts.

Jose slides to the ground. His whole face is throbbing. This is not good. He rolls over and lays on his back, looking up at the clouds. He can taste blood in the back of his throat. His head is ringing. He’s so tired. It’s just not his day.

Hearing the sirens getting closer he thinks, WTF.

Reaching inside his jacket he pulls out a joint and puts it in his mouth. Fumbling in his other pocket for the lighter he fires it up, and the first drag is heaven.

As the sweet smoke slides in, he sucks it deep into his lungs, where he holds it a moment to let the calm envelop him. Letting it out in a rush, he watches stray wisps of smoke float away, up into the sky.

 

 

The End

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My debut novel, Inconstant Moon is complete. The entire story is told, and it has all been posted here, serialization style, one day at a time.

That’s why it says ‘The End‘ at the bottom of Chapter 140 which was published yesterday.

I’m very proud of the fact that I was able to accomplish this, and I’m learning a lot about self publishing. The idea is that I’ll share what I have learned/am learning about self publishing in the new Libreleft Books blog.

[Since I’ve no intention of stopping self publishing any time soon, it seemed clever to spring for the Libreleft.com domain name.) Right now the new Libreleft site is a place holder; I expect to have it up and running properly before November 1st.]

special features

Over the next while I’ll be building on the special features already begun here.

Still to come are special character pages for the whole cast, articles about the setting, the writing, the illustrations and so on. I will link or reprint any reviews on the BUZZ page, and answer any questions. If you’ve read Inconstant Moon and want to write a review I’ll be happy to publish it here as well.

There are also bits of a book trailer floating around in my head… we’ll see how it goes.

I plan to publish a new special feature page every Thursday until I’m finished.

If you wish to be notified when the new pages are posted, you can subscribe to this blog or watch for my announcements on Identica &tc.

At this point I don’t intend to write a sequel. This book is not part of a series, although I will not rule out the possibility of any of the characters appearing in future books.

I hope to get the first draft of my second novel, which is a lot more noir, ‘The Girl In The Blue Flame Cafe‘ out to beta readers, again, before November, because I plan on beginning to write my third novel as part of NaNoWriMo 2011. If you’re interested in Beta reading, drop me a line at laurel.l@russwurm.org.

reading the novel

Meanwhile, this blog isn’t going anywhere. Anyone can start at the beginning and read Inconstant Moon online here at any time.

While preparing the serialization segments, I’ve been doing final-final proof reading of Inconstant Moon. This absolutely final version will be uploaded anew to CreateSpace, as soon as the good eBook versions are available. I’m also considering releasing Inconstant Moon in other print formats as well; we’ll see how it goes.

Right now my priority is mastering eBook formats so I can make it available in as many formats possible.

If anyone wishes to attempt a translation into any other language, let me know, and I’ll furnish you with the text in whatever format you like. I’ve just done a redesign of the ebook cover, since I’ve managed to take a better photograph of the moon.

the cost of free

A lot of people think that the best way to get people reading your novels is to charge them a low price for the ebook.

Even discounting the fact that eBooks should be inexpensive because digital copies are cheap*, when I look at how I became a reader, it was through reading things for free. If not gifts, books were borrowed from friends or libraries; the books I read were free. That’s how I learned what books and what writers I liked. As i got older, the other way I discover new books, or come to like new writers, has been through buying cheap print books on spec.

Book store remainder tables, used book stores, and fund raising book sales, and private yard sales, are all wonderful places to get books by a writer I’d not heard of or never read. You can take a flyer on a book if you like the cover art, or an interesting blurb on the dust jacket. I’ve paid anywhere from a few pennies to a few dollars to try out a book. But even trying a book on spec cheaply takes an investment of time.

Back when I was working in the film business I was always thrilled when free tickets to theatrical movies came my way. Yet I remember one film so incredibly awful that I not only walked out in the middle, to this day I resent the time I wasted sitting in the theatre — hoping for it to get better — more than twenty years later. And reading a book requires a greater investment of time than watching a film.

So my thinking is this; even if I only pay a couple of bucks for a book I’m not thrilled with, I’m unlikely to do so again. Even if there are good things about the book, even if it’s well written, if the story doesn’t engage me, or if I don’t connect with a character in that book, that couple of bucks is the only chance that writer gets at me. I probably won’t risk even that next time.

On the other hand, I’ll give a writer more than one chance if the book is free. And sometimes it takes more than one book to decide if you like the author, particularly if the first book you read is atypical of that author.

So. Read the novel here. If it’s not your kind of book, perhaps the next one will be. And you aren’t out a nickel, only as much time as you decided you were willing to invest. If you decide at some point that you like my work well enough to want me to continue, when you can afford it, you can purchase a copy of this or another of my books, for yourself or someone else. And if not, that’s okay too.

Please note: If you are considering purchasing Inconstant Moon as either a print book or eBook, I suggest waiting a few days until the final version is ready. I will announce it on Identica, Twitter, Facebook and here.

Inconstant Moon

I began thinking about this book in my head in the 1980’s. There were themes I very much wanted to explore, but they were like puzzle pieces; I had no idea how to put them together. The day after I decided — at the last minute — to participate in the 2009 NaNoWriMo, I woke up with the key to unlock the story. When I began outlining I decided it had to be comtemporary. Since the technological revolution which occurred since my own college days, setting it now added to the challenge.

Writing Inconstant Moon has been an adventure for me, as well as a valuable learning experience. I’ve learned an extraordinary amount, both about writing in novel form and self publishing. For me, the technical details of self publishing are by far the more difficult of the two. It doesn’t come at all naturally for me, but in today’s world, it is the only reasonable option. But I do know that the lessons I’ve learned on this one will make self publishing my next books easier.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this as much as I have enjoyed writing it; and I hope you’ll pass the link it on to someone else who may enjoy dropping in to visit the Christie Campus.

licensing

As I writer, my primary goal is to have people read my work. Although it would be fabulous if people were to buy the odd copy, that is a secondary consideration.

I’m afraid that copyright law harms creators rather than helping, particularly in Canada, which has some of the strongest copyright law in the world. I know will be blogging more about this in the days to come, particularly as the Canadian government is considering passing a so-called “modernization” of copyright law called Bill C11 (a revival of the unpassed Bill C-32) that could very easily be used to suppress independent self publishing. Naturally, I think this is a bad thing.

If anything, I think copyright terms should be shorter, and the public domain needs strengthening. Besides serializing Inconstant Moon here and for five years it will be licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada License.

At that time, I intend to change the license, to release the novel into the public domain in 2016.

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* “digital copies are cheap” — making a digital copy doesn’t cost more than making a copy of an email, or any file on your computer. Producing the book (or movie, music, software, art, etc.) can cost money, but the real cost of both producing the copies and disseminating them online is very nearly free. Printing and distribution of books is what made print books so expensive.

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