![]() Publishing ain't easy. If you want to know what kind of uphill climb it is, an agent for Tony Hillerman didn’t like his first book and advised him to “rewrite it and get rid of all the Indian stuff.” Probably for the best that Hillerman didn't listen. When I shopped THE SINGLE TWIN a few years ago, I had an agent tell me she really liked my writing, and she really liked Abe & Duff, but no one would read a book about a couple of middle-aged schmoes from Chicago, and I should change them into a younger lesbian couple. Yeah...probably wouldn't have worked for me. I told her I write middle-aged schmoes because I am a middle-aged schmo. They're my people. Side note: The word "schmo" is kind of fun. Anyhow, I might not have Hillerman's readership, but I'm still trying to do my best. Dark Winds season 3 is due out soon, and I think Tony's legacy is firmly cemented in the annals of crime fiction. One hundred-and-two thousand words is a lot.
I've been slogging away on a sci-fi novel for many years. I finally finished the first volume of what I hope will be a trilogy, but we're going to see if anyone wants to publish it for me before I do it myself. Again. The final word count ended up being 102K. That's a bunch. Most of my books have hovered around 80K, so another 22K is a lot more words. But I love this book, love these characters, and really enjoyed writing it. I started writing it in 2015, but I don't think I finished the first draft until 2019. And now, I've done a full second draft, polished it up, and it's about where I want it, more or less. If I end up trying to do this thing myself, it'll take another full, read-aloud, line edit and another speed read-thru to make sure it makes sense. I haven't written a hard sci-fi novel, yet. This one is a space opera inspired by Firefly and Gareth L. Powell. I'll try to make sure it sees the light of day sometime, but until then, just hang tight. ![]() It's probably cheating if I just lazily Photoshop my own NYT announcement, right? Yeah, probably. But an unimportant independent writer can dream, you know. I've decided that I'm just going to make up my own newspaper title and declare myself one of that imaginary newspaper's best-sellers. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm proud to tell you that #BoughtTheFarm is now a West Des Moines Leader-Telegraph Best-Seller. I only bring this up because I see a lot of independent books touting "awards." When you do the research into these "awards" (and there's a reason I keep putting that word in quotes), you find out that most of these indie book "awards" aren't really awards as we traditionally think of them. They're paid awards. They link back to a website that lists them as a winner, but for $125 (or sometimes a whole lot more!), your book can get one of those awards, too. Even if they're not paid awards, they're the sort of award that costs a lot of money to submit the book to a "contest" where they're almost guaranteed to win some sort of award. Even if that award is an honorable mention, it will come with a fake little ribbon you can add to the cover of your book's future printing to give it an air of legitimacy. On the original cover for #WhereArtThou, I even included a little ribbon of my own that stated "Winner: of absolutely no literary awards. You can just put these medals anywhere you feel like. No one even tries to stop you from doing it." This was a cheap shot at the fake book "awards" industry. The only reason I bring this up is because this is an industry that preys upon every nobody writer's greatest need: to be recognized. There are so many predatory companies and individuals out there trying to take advantage of the fools like me desperate to prove to agents and publishers that we're as good, if not better, than a lot of the books that get published every year, so why not us? I've likened publishing to being a very exclusive club, and you can't get in unless you know the password. And no one will tell you the password until you get in. It's like that in a lot of creative fields. In Hollywood, you can't get the SAG card you need to get cast in things until you actually get cast in something, which you can't do without an SAG card. Nowadays, people talk about the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago in hushed and reverent tones because it's the theatre group that gave us John Malkovich, Laurie Metcalf, Gary Sinise, and Moira Evans. But people forget that Sinise and Terry Kinney started Steppenwolf because they were young and struggling actors who weren't getting cast in anything, and they needed to perform. They told the professional theaters, "Screw you. We'll make our own theater." And they did. Unlike most small-time writers, though, no one said they weren't "real" performers. Everyone is looking for legitimacy in their creative endeavors. The NYT Best-Seller list, for many, is the ultimate sign of legitimacy, but when you do the research on the list, you'll learn it has nothing to do with popularity or sales metrics. It's the choice of a couple of editors. A book can sell zero copies, and the editors can still pick it to put on the list if they so choose. An independent book is highly unlikely to make the list, regardless of how many copies it sells, until it's picked up by an agent and successfully pitched to a Big 5 publisher. So, is the NYTimes best-seller list any more or less rigged than the indie book "awards" that charge you for a ribbon to put on your book? I don't know. This is just me looking at a very confusing and difficult industry and trying to make sense of it. I see people talking about spending tens of thousands of dollars on advertising to sell a couple hundred books. I see people spending a lot of money buying tables at conferences and conventions to sell a half-dozen books over the course of a weekend. I saw a post on Reddit where a new indie author was so sure his debut self-published trilogy would be a major hit if people read it that he was trying to talk his wife into letting him spend $100,000 from their life savings on advertising. My dude: Please don't. Legitimacy is something every author craves, but most of us will never get to the point. We're not going on the Craig Johnson-style massive book tours where he gets to talk at 40 bookstores over two months. Netflix isn't paying seven figures to make our books into a series like they did with The Lincoln Lawyer (thanks to Amazon's massive success with Connelly's Bosch series). There will never be a bidding war for our stuff because it doesn't check the right boxes, whatever those boxes might be at the moment. But that doesn't mean that companies won't be willing to steal your money with the illusion of legitimacy in the shape of a fake award or the promise of putting your book on the desk of hundreds of agents and publishers "desperate" to publish it. Be wary out there. Too many vultures. #indieauthor #BookPublishing #bookawards #WriterBeware #indiebooks We are about eight-and-a-half days from the official launch of #WelcomeToMeskousing.
Pre-order link here: https://www.amazon.com/Welcome-Meskousing.../dp/B0CW18Q49T This book started out about three years ago. It's one of the books I've worked on the longest. It went through several start-and-stop iterations where I couldn't figure out how to get the story to do what I wanted it to do. I wanted to write a story about a sheriff fighting a werewolf. It started as a short story, then became a novella, and then morphed into a novel, which is pretty typical for me. I don't write short pieces well. If I see a short story contest with a thousand-word limit, I don't even bother trying. I can't do it. Once I decided this thing was going to be a novel, I started with the main character, a half-Irish, half-Ojibwe woman I called Shelby Ree. I liked the name for its simplicity. Three syllables. A last name that was easy to type. A first name that was feminine but not common. After that, I couldn't figure out whether I should start the book with Shelby still on the force in Dane County, or whether she should be established in Meskousing County. And then I couldn't determine a tone for the story. I knew I wanted it to be more serious than Abe & Duff, but not so serious that it became a chore to read. All the while, I'm working on other things, and pushing this book to the back burner, wondering if I'm good enough to write from a woman's perspective. And don't get me started about the challenges there! I'm well aware of the mockery a lot of male writers get when they write female characters, especially female point-of-view characters, so I wanted to make sure I didn't make those mistakes,. It took a lot of work. Somewhere during the early days of writing #BoughtTheFarm, I figured out that I could introduce Shelby Ree as a character in that book, and then I would be able to just spin her off into her own story from there. When I was nearing the end of writing #BoughtTheFarm, I also realized I knew what I wanted #WelcomeToMeskousing to be: a combination of #NorthernExposure and #TheXFiles. Once I solidified that idea, the rest of the story fell into place. As always, whenever I have a book on the verge of being released into the wild, I'm filled with apprehension and worry. Will people like it? Will it be good enough? Did I do the ending justice? Will people want more of this? It's always a nerve-wracking feeling. I read this book a lot during the writing and editing process. Every time it got pushed to the back burner, I'd have to reread the whole thing up to the point where I left it to make sure I still knew the story. I like this book a lot. It was fun to write. I like the characters. And the setting is near and dear to me, as well. Meskousing County is a fictional setting, but if it were real, you'd find it lies in the hills and valleys between Viroqua and Reedsburg. At least, that's its general location. I've always said that most of the time when I write small towns, they tend to take after Mount Horeb. This one is no exception. I named the county seat of Meskousing County "Mount Bodd" after my beloved hometown. However, the physicality of Mount Bodd is probably more closely aligned with even smaller towns in that region, such as #Belleville or #Blanchardville. When I left Mount Horeb in 1992, it was around 4500 people. Now it's far beyond that. Mount Bodd is probably 2500 people. It's much smaller, so Blanchardville feels like a better physical representation of it. Still out here trying to represent Wisconsin in literature, though. If Craig Johnson can write about Buffalo/Durand Wyoming in the fictional setting of Absaroka County, I can do the same with Meskousing. Fun fact: "Meskousing" is an English spelling of a French spelling of a Miami Indian word for the Wisconsin River, which originally meant "river running through a red place." The word was warped and changed until it became "Wisconsin." There's some good websites out there that explain its history and changes over time, but I wanted a title that basically said "Welcome to Wisconsin," so this fit the bill. Some people have the physical copies already. I hope they're enjoying them. You can still get a personalized physical copy here: https://www.paypal.com/instantcomm.../checkout/XMXPWZW6CV7RY (But hurry, as I only have three left for the moment...) The physical book is available at Mystery to Me and Frankie’s Book Nook, as well. If I get off my own insecurities, maybe I'll get it into some other places, as well. As always, reviews and word-of-mouth is EXTREMELY important to any book's success. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, etc... Anywhere you can post a good review, please do. It helps immensely. Also, don't discount your own social media. Just letting your friends and relatives know about a book is big help. Let your local library and indie bookstore know, too. I have promo material, if you'd like it. As always, if you need someone to show up to speak to a book club or a library or whatever--I'm always around. Give me five minutes and a stage and I'll probably show up. Eight days and counting. I hope you enjoy Meskousing County. It's that time of the week again, so here's what's trending in my world this week.
1. Jeff Beck's Blow by Blow: I am very late to the Jeff Beck train. I always knew he was great, and I always enjoyed his interviews when I saw him on TV, but after his untimely passing, I started seeing more and more of him popping up on my social media feeds or on YouTube. Eventually, I started watching the man play, and it's mesmerizing. I picked up Blow by Blow the other day in a used CD shop, and it's amazing. Just like he was. I need to seek out more of his records. He just always sort of hovered outside the edge of my musical sphere, but I guess it's better late than never. 2. Heartland Docs, DVM on Nat Geo Wild: Started watching this a few years ago with the kid because she loves veterinarian shows. Nine times out of ten, if I come home from work and she's home, she's watching Nat Geo Wild for whatever DVM is plying their trade at that hour. Drs. Ben and Erin Schroeder are a married couple who are both DVMs. They met in grad school at the University of Kansas. They live in Hartington, Neb. and run a practice servicing animals of the area. It's good, wholesome, family TV, and it's a solid entry in the pantheon of vet shows. Since the all five seasons are on Disney+, it makes it really easy to stick it on for background viewing. 3. Simplifying My Life: This isn't a thing, per se, but it's something I've done. I took the liberty of deleting all my social media apps off my phone the other week: Facebook, Bluesky, Threads, Twitter/X--pretty much everything but Instagram, but only because Instagram is used primarily in concert with my phone camera, so that one can stay. But I moved it to another page on my apps screens so I don't see it anymore. In doing this, I've limited myself to social media only when I'm at my computer, which is easier for me to limit to checking once a day, if at all. Frankly, it's eased some of my imposter syndrome, and it's made me stop getting raised blood pressure over nothing issues online which I had no control over anyhow. I'm not going to change the quagmire that politics has become in this country, and clearly people are ingrained in their ideologies to the point where common sense and proof will not change people's minds, so why am I angry about it? I've moved on. I'm not longer grasping at my phone while watching TV. I'm thinking more about my books instead of clever things to post. It's better overall. I highly recommend you give it a try. Anyhow, that's all for this week. Back with three more things next week. Thanks for reading. It's been a week, friends. I'm glad it's over. Here's three things I'm tracking this week:
1) The American Premier Hockey League: Something went south with the organizer of the Union Hockey League, because that dude took the money and ran. Apparently, from what I've gathered online, this guy is infamous for doing this. However, eleven of the twelve teams in the former Union Hockey League are sticking together and have declared themselves as the APHL. Hopefully this bodes well for the future of small town hockey, and I hope they can still do some expansion for next year, but I'm fairly certain the jump to a 48-team league is dead. 2) Elsbeth: I love a good mystery show, and CBS's new show Elsbeth takes after the Columbo mode where we know who did it at the beginning of the episode, but the fun comes from watching the quirky and silly detective (the titular character) put together the clues and get the suspect to admit his guilt. Carrie Preston is delightful in the title role, and the show has a secondary mystery that will provide the week-to-week thru-line to keep the episodes together. It has great promise. However, in a complete failure of the TV programming, CBS put out the first episode on February 29, but due to the State of the Union address and March Madness basketball games, the second episode will not air until April 4. What the hell, CBS? Way to throw a show under the bus before it even gets started. Why would you not just push the debut until April 4? 3) Three-Inch Teeth: CJ Box's Joe Pickett is back with another adventure. Joe's getting old, though. I'm currently reading Vicious Circle, which is the 17th book in the series. Three-Inch Teeth is the 24th book. In Vicious Circle, Joe and Marybeth are in their late 40s. Sheridan is out of college, April is in her second year at community college, and Lucy is a high school senior. I'm right in Joe and Marybeth's age range right now, approaching fifty...and y'all, I'm tired. Granted, I'm in terrible shape, but still--by the time Three-Inch Teeth starts, Joe is in his mid-50s. He's approaching retirement. He can't keep letting things get western at that age. Still, CJ writes a good story, and I'll look forward to reading it when I get there chronologically. Take care of yourselves. It's rough out there. It's been a week and a day since the release of WE STILL REMAIN.
The big problem with having a massive opening day? The drop-off in sales to the next week is just as massive. Everyone who wanted a copy ordered one, and since then, it has died off to zero. That's the way it goes, though. I fully expected it to die off like that. It will take a while for older readers to find the book, and it will take even longer for newer readers to find it, as well. This silly publishing game is a marathon, not a sprint. And for nobody writers like me with no marketing budget, it is an ultramarathon. A book can take years to sell a few hundred copies. (And that's a good reminder that most books at this level will never sell more than 300 copies in their entire life.) The other day on Threads, I saw a dude lamenting the release of his first book. It was a novel he'd been working on for thirteen years, and it only sold a few copies in its first week. Judging from this guy's posts, he honestly believed the book was going to sell a hundred thousand copies out of the gate. He was counting money he never even had before the book came out. He said had been making plans to quit his day job to concentrate on writing full-time before he saw how sad his sales were. I wish that dude had sat in on one of the library presentations I'd done about the arduous journey that is minor-league publishing. It might have better prepared him for the reality of bookselling. The only advice I could give him was to remember that sales were largely out of his control. Marketing might work. And it might not. I've seen writers lose money over marketing. Their marketing campaign did not net them the return they needed, and they will forever operate from a massive hole for that book. It's all a crapshoot when it comes down to it, and you're far more likely to roll snake-eyes than not. I don't know if my advice helped the guy. He seemed pretty distraught. I was extremely fortunate to have the Survivor Journals take off as it did. It will take a long time for WE STILL REMAIN to find readers and get reviews. It will never make me quit-my-job money. The best I can hope for is that someone, somewhere, will see what I'm doing and like it enough to help take me to that next level (agent, traditional publishing, etc...), but I'm also fully aware that getting to that next level can be lottery odds, and I just don't feel like I have time to wait around for others to open gates for me. We only get so many spins on this rock. I'm very grateful that I have already gotten a few reviews, and more grateful that those reviews have been positive. Here's to hoping more come in over the next few months. I'll stop shilling this book for a while now. Got other books to finish. In the meantime, I'm still working on finishing up WELCOME TO MESKOUSING, which I hope will be out in a couple of months. And I have far too many ideas in my head and not enough time to write them all. Thanks for reading. -s PS: The Killer Bees play the Soo Nordiques on Saturday night at 7:00 PM. If you're looking to have some fun that day, c'mon out to the barn at Sun Prairie. I'll be there. The teenager will be home for spring break from college, so she'll likely be there, too. It's a great night of hockey for very little money, and I highly recommend it. Happy Friday, you glorious word nerds. Here are three things for this week:
1. My new book, WE STILL REMAIN, released on Tuesday, February 27. I had the largest first day sales of any book I've ever written. Not too bad for doing this silly publishing game for almost twenty years now. Still, it's a pretty pale first day compared to big books. I'm taking a lot of steps to try to move up a level this year, but I'm not sure if anything I'm doing will help. Still, WE STILL REMAIN is a spin-off from my Survivor Journals series that follows 17-year-old Benjamin Borntrager, a young man from an Amish community in Cashton, Wis. as he deal with the onset of the global primate-killing virus called The Flu. I wrote this book in about a month. I had been thinking about it for years, though. I wrote it as a surprise and a thank-you to everyone who kept asking for more Survivor Journals. If enough people demand a sequel for this, it might happen. 2. ELSBETH on CBS. Watched the pilot of a new mystery series called ELSBETH last night. Enjoyed it greatly. It's a spin-off of THE GOOD WIFE or some other similar show I never watched. Carrie Preston plays the protagonist, Elsbeth, who is a quirky middle-aged woman with a penchant for noticing clues and putting them together to solve crimes. The most direct correlation to this show is COLUMBO. It's not a whodunit. We know who the murderer is from the jump. The show's charm comes in seeing how Elsbeth corners the killer and makes them admit guilt. Much like Peter Falk's iconic detective, Elsbeth's quirk and silly personality allows the killers to get overconfident, and then she springs a trap on them in the end. It was an exceptionally strong pilot, and I'm looking forward to the next episode. 3. SHOGUN on FX/Hulu. I enjoy James Clavell's prose. And I am old enough to remember the hype when ABC made the original SHOGUN miniseries on summer in like 1980 or so. Richard Chamberlain starred in that one, and it was must-watch TV for the summer it was on. I watched the first episode and found it to be lush, lavish, and intriguing. It's solid television. Plus, Nestor Carbonell is in it, and he's great. (If you haven't seen him as Bat Manuel in THE TICK, you're missing out.) So, there you go: Three things for a new week. Carry on. The following is Chapter One from my new book WE STILL REMAIN, which comes out at 12:01 AM on 2/27/24. Get it here: https://www.amazon.com/We-Still-Remain.../dp/B0CVZJ1G18 FATHER RETURNED FROM CASHTON AN hour before I thought he would. Trips to town for him were rare and only done when he had business to conduct, but whenever he went, he made it worth his time. Usually, he liked to stop into the feed store and catch up with some of the fellows who worked there, maybe stop into the little grocery store on the main drag and get some staples. He would often return shortly before evening chores if the gossip and politics talk was good. Instead, he came back early. This was odd because he had not been to town since mid-April, and it was already mid-May. I would have thought he would have had lots to discuss and debate with the men there. Father drove the black hack into the yard and stepped out of it before the horse even stopped. I wondered if I should ask why he was back so early, but he was my father, and it was not my place to question his actions. If he wanted me to know, he would tell me. I watched him fly into the house like Mother’s life depended on it. Father almost never hurried like that, not even at harvest time. The horse, well-trained and inordinately lazy, stopped himself and waited for someone to undo all the harness straps so he could go to the paddock for the remainder of the day. The buggy horses knew their work was over when they returned to the yard. My brother, Zeke, came out of the barn to tend to the horse. Zeke was three years older than I was. He was a man now, just past twenty. He wore no beard because he was unmarried, but if his situation with Penny Shrock kept progressing, and if the families agreed upon it, I would be willing to bet he’d greet the New Year as a married man. I turned to the clothesline in the corner of the yard farthest from the barn. My sisters, Faith and Charity, were hanging the day’s washing. The winds were cold for early May, but it was well above freezing and the clothes would dry just fine. Faith and I exchanged a puzzled look. She glanced toward the house, and then looked back at me. In the unspoken language of looks and gestures siblings share, her message was clear: What was that about? I shrugged. I turned my attention back to the pair of draught horses in front of me. They were waiting patiently for the command to begin the next row of plowing. I anchored the big tooth of the plow into the soil and slapped the reins lightly on the horses’ rumps. The pair leaned into the leather collars and strained. The big steel tooth overturned the stubborn sod in a big, wide strip, and we were off and running down another long length of field. The dirt in the field was turning over in swaths and filled the air with the rich scent of wet loam. I loved that smell. It smelled like the end of a long, cold winter. It smelled of future promise. I thought nothing else of Father’s strange return. I had the plowing to take up the majority of space in my mind. The coming spring filled the rest of it. There were still some patches of snow in the woods north of our fields, but it was rapidly receding. I was hoping for some warm weather soon. I liked the cool part of spring just fine, but when the needle climbed on the thermometer by the barn, that was when it really felt like summer was coming. Summer was always grander than winter. It meant chores intensified, what with the fields and the farming needing constant attention, but it was a long sight better than the middling tasks we were bound to in the wintertimes. I know the Amish life isn’t for everyone, and many think it’s madness to eschew modern conveniences. To be honest, I harbor a lot of those same thoughts myself, although I would never voice them to Mother or Father, or even Zeke, who returned from his rumspringa with a newly dedicated devotion to our community and a newly refurbished distrust of the English. Faith had spoken to me about her dislike of our ways, but only in low tones when she knew no one else could hear. Charity was still young enough where she had really no opinions one way or the other, or at least nothing she bothered to bring up among us. Those of us who felt as Faith and I did rarely broached the subject amongst mixed company. It was better to smile and play along with the faithful rather than make people upset or speak to the wrong person who might blab your feelings to the bishop which would mean re-dedication sessions. I spent the afternoon plowing fields. I managed to clear the spring weeds from several acres, making them ready for planting as soon as the weather was warm enough, probably in the next two weeks, although Wisconsin’s spring could often be unpredictable. Father and Zeke had been watching the thermometer carefully, and Father had been talking with the other men in the community. All I had to do was wait for Father to tell me to start the planting. In the meantime, I just had to prepare the land for seeds. MOTHER RANG THE OLD IRON bell hanging by the back door of the house when it was time for supper. Zeke and I were in the barn doing chores. Dinner would wait until chores were done. Chores always came first. What was surprising was Father was not there. After an hour in the house alone with Mother, he went walking over the hill to where the Schrocks lived. Then later, I saw him and Augustus Schrock walking toward the Stoltzfuss house. Peter Stoltzfuss was our bishop, and he usually presided over our church services on Sundays. No one in the community made any big decisions without hearing Peter Stoltzfuss’s thoughts on the matter, first. Zeke finished milking the last cow, stripping the final drops of milk from her udder by hand. He carried the steel pail to the larger milk can and poured it in. I was finishing feeding the calves. The greedy black-and-white Holsteins always reveled in the liquid calf feed from the bottle and the attention they got during the hand feeding. I loved feeding the calves, even though I knew enough not to get too attached to them. Faith did it once when she was younger, even though Father had warned her repeatedly not to. When the poor creature’s time came, the little bull calf she’d treated like a pet was butchered as we all knew it would be. Faith cried in her room the whole day and refused to eat beef until she knew for sure none of the beef we were eating was from the little bull calf. She never let herself get attached to the calves again. Zeke waited in the doorway of the barn for me to finish. He leaned back against the frame and stuck his hands in his coat pockets. It was too cold for straw hats, so he wore a knitted cap Faith had made from wool we took off our own sheep. We had a very small herd of sheep, so there was only enough wool to make good outerwear like hats and mittens. Zeke and I both wore black boots we had gotten from the Farm & Fleet in La Crosse last fall when our neighbor, Jack Worthy, had driven us there to get the essentials. Mother made our shirts and overalls from fabric she bought at the fabric store in La Crosse, but our underwear, boots, and socks were all boughten. Our winter outerwear was boughten, too. Simple, practical coats which protected us from the cold without being ostentatious. Some Amish orders did not allow for worldly coats, and they made their own, but thankfully we were not that regressive. My black Carhartt coat kept the wind at bay during the winter far better than Mother’s modest handmade coats we wore in the late spring, summer, and early fall. Zeke was a handsome man, I guess. He had a square jaw, like Father. He had Mother’s striking blue eyes that crackled like fire when he got the devil in him about something. I was his opposite. I had Mother’s dumpy chin and Father’s brown eyes which failed to spark or show much reaction, no matter how angry I was about something. Zeke had blond hair like Mother, too. I had Father’s dark brown hair. It was no wonder I saw the teenage girls huddle whispering and giggling when Zeke walked past them during community gatherings, and it was no wonder they largely ignored me. “Did you see Father today?” Zeke shrugged and looked toward the house. “A little.” “Why did he come back so early from town?” Zeke shrugged again. “Who knows?” “Seems weird he and Augustus went to Peter’s house, doesn’t it?” If those men had been in front of us, I would have had to call them by their formal names, Mr. Shrock and Mr. Stoltzfuss, because I wasn’t eighteen, yet. “Maybe he’s talking to them about your upcoming rumspringa. You and Elden Stoltzfuss are about the same age.” I supposed it made sense, but why would he take Augustus Shrock with him, then? “Maybe Father and Augustus Shrock spoke of you and Penny. That would mean a visit to the bishop to inquire about marriage, wouldn’t it?” Zeke’s eyes flashed with a crackle of lightning, and his cheeks lit up with a red blush. “Shut up, stupid.” He gave me a shove toward the house, but it was more playful than mean. The house smelled like roast chicken, the air fragrant with thyme and rosemary. A large, browned bird was resting in the roasting pan on top of the potbellied wood cook-stove. A smaller pot held a pile of mashed potatoes, and an even smaller pot held a steaming bath of green beans and onions. My sisters bustled around preparing the long wooden table where my family took their meals. Faith was a little copy of Mother. She looked like Mother probably did when she was Faith’s age, blond and blue-eyed. Faith wore a black kapp on the back of her head to signify she was unmarried, while Mother’s kapp was gossamer white. Charity was the anomaly in the family. She had brown hair so dark it was almost black and green eyes which listed toward hazel in the right light. Charity had not yet taken up wearing the bonnet indoors, although she should have by now, but as the baby, she was allowed to get away with it longer than she should have. Outdoors, Charity wore the slat bonnet most young girls wore, but she was of the age where she should transition to the kapp. Faith was hustling pots to the table and Charity was setting places with a practiced hand. Mother was standing at the counter slicing a fresh loaf of bread with the large, serrated knife. She was the only one of us who needed glasses all the time and they perched precariously on the end of her nose while she worked. “Wash up before you sit down.” Mother’s voice was sharper than normal. Something was bothering her. Faith and I exchanged another glance. In our silent language her look said plainly, She’s been like that all day. Zeke and I went into the bathroom down the hall from the kitchen and washed our hands and faces. Unlike many Amish orders, our community thankfully did not eschew indoor plumbing. Our water came from our local well, not the larger community supply, and we had a solar well pump for refilling our toilet and running the water. We did not, however, have a hot water heater, so basic washing was always done with cold water. Bathing was done with pails of hot water heated on the stove. It was the little things like this which made me really question the tenents of our religion. If we could have a solar well pump, then why not more solar power? Why couldn’t we have electricity if it came from solar panels? If one large solar panel for running water was not breaking our faith, then why would several for electric heat and light do so? It didn’t make sense to me, but I said nothing. Mother and the girls were waiting at their seats when Zeke and I emerged from the bathroom. Father sat at the head of the table, of course. Mother at the foot. Zeke and I sat on either side of Father. Faith and Charity sat on either side of Mother. Zeke was always at Father’s right side to symbolize his position as Father’s first son. Father’s plate and utensils had been set for him, even though he was not expected to join us. It was to show respect for his position as head of the household. Mother bowed her head and clasped her hands beneath her chin. We all followed her lead. Mother asked Zeke to lead the family in prayer. Zeke took a deep breath and spoke the words simply. “For the bounty laid before us, may the Lord make us thankful, and ever mindful of the needs of others. Amen.” We rose from our prayerful positions, and Mother began ladling the food onto our plates. The first serving went to Zeke, since Father was gone. The next, to me. Then she served herself, then Faith, and finally Charity was served her plate. Charity used to complain about being served last until I reminded her it meant her food was the hottest, and she seemed to like that. Zeke and I tucked large cloth napkins into our collars. The girls were wearing aprons over their dresses. We ate in silence. Usually, our dinner conversations were led by Father, mostly about what chores needed doing beyond the usual daily tasks, and sometimes he spoke about community plans like who was going to marry who and when there was a possibility work with one of our English neighbors which might get us some good money. Without Father, it was Mother’s place to begin the conversations, but she looked like she was elsewhere in her mind. She ate lightly, picking at her chicken thigh and beans. Zeke and I, both hungry from a full day of chores, ate heartily. We finished our plates, accepted a second plateful from Mother, and eventually we split the remains of Mother’s plate, too. After dinner, Mother excused herself to her bedroom. Faith and Charity began the dishes and preparing for the next morning’s breakfast. Zeke and I retired to the large living room. We had a nice boughten couch, two large recliners we’d gotten in trade for helping a neighbor, and a nice love seat Father bought at an estate sale not long ago. We had no modern amenities most people would have had like a television or a computer, of course. We had lanterns hanging from the ceiling for general light, and if one wanted to read the Bible, there were lamps on end tables. Other than that, we usually busied ourselves with tasks like sharpening knives or fixing cracked leather until it was bedtime. I was working on restoring an old harness Father had gotten for free from an English neighbor. It had been in a barn for years, but once I got the leather reconditioned, it would be useful again. Father came home shortly before the old grandfather clock in the hall struck eight. He looked grim. Mother emerged from the bedroom when he did. She was wearing her nightgown and had her hair tucked up in her sleeping bonnet. She hurried into the kitchen to fix Father a plate of food, but he waved her off. “I’m fine; Laura Stoltzfuss insisted on feeding us.” “Well, that was nice of her.” Mother started putting things back in the icebox. “How was it?” Zeke and I got up from our chairs and wandered down the hall to the kitchen. We waited in the dark of the hall near the doorway, knowing it was not really our place to intrude on our parents’ conversation. Charity had already gone to bed, and Faith was knitting in the living room, but I could see her leaning toward the kitchen, her ear cocked to listen. “It went well enough, I suppose.” Father sat at the table and rubbed his face with his hands. He looked exhausted. Father saw Zeke in the door and beckoned him to sit at the table, too. Zeke did as he was bid. I lingered in the doorway, leaning against the frame. “Zeke, do you wish to be married to Penny Shrock?” Father was never one to beat around the bush. Zeke blushed again. “I guess so. If it is Penny’s wish as well, that is. I am not twenty-one, yet. I thought we might have to wait until my birthday.” “Augustus and I spoke amongst ourselves today, and we spoke to Peter about it. We will have a wedding this summer, maybe sooner than later.” “Goodness, why the rush?” Zeke was dumbfounded. Mother went back to the bedroom for her robe, but she emerged tying the sash around her waist. Father looked down at the table, trying to form his thoughts cohesively. “There is something bad happening to the English.” “Bad, how?” I was confused. I was also confused about the division Father put between our community and the English, like we were somehow absolved from all evils of the English world with a magical Amish shield. If something was bad for the English, why wouldn’t it be bad for us, as well? Father waved his hand. “They have some sort of sickness going around. I just learned about it today in town. Apparently, scores of the men and women in Cashton have had it, and they died from it. Dozens upon dozens more also have it, and I’m told it does not look good for them.” “Oh, my.” Faith had crept up behind me. She held a hand to her mouth in shock. “That’s terrible.” Cashton was a town of barely 1200 people. The loss of even a dozen people would be a terrible devastation, let alone several dozen. Father continued. “The men in town say it’s really bad. They say tens of millions of people around the world have already died from this new virus, whatever it is, possibly hundreds of millions. Reports coming in are grim and unreliable. People just call it The Flu. They say it’s terrible. I rushed home as fast as I could to tell Augustus and Peter. We convened a council with several other men at Peter’s home tonight. We have decided, as of now, our community is no longer to associate with any of the English. We will turn them away at the bottom of the driveway if they come to trade or look for help with work. We are isolated to ourselves, and ourselves alone. No one from outside the community is allowed in until we know more about this sickness that is reaping the English.” Mother’s face was dark and worried. “If you feel it’s for the best, then so be it.” Father’s face matched Mother’s. “We think it is. Hopefully, this is just one of those things they are blowing out of proportion, and all will be well in a few weeks. Until then, we are a closed community. We went around to all the homes tonight and told them so. We will not even engage with other of our extended Amish communities at this time. If they are not part of our immediate community, they are verboten. Understood?” “Understood, Father.” Zeke spoke for all us children. We would not willingly disobey Father’s orders, especially for something with this sort of magnitude. There was a grave seriousness in his eyes which meant he was not joking. I had never seen my father this worried before. Not when there were storms or cold, not when the cows were sick with mastitis. Not when lambs were stillborn. His mouth was pressed into a thin line above his graying beard. “We will persevere.” Father stood. “We will pray, and we will persevere. Now, let’s all go to bed. Without the English, we will have to rely on ourselves and our farm even more than usual. This may be a long and difficult summer before us.” We went to our beds somberly. Zeke and I shared a room, as did Faith and Charity. Zeke and I climbed into our beds without speaking. It was not until Zeke turned down the wick on our bedside lantern and plunged the room into the ambient moonlight did he say anything. “The English are always ginning up some silly crisis or another. This won’t be any different.” I did not answer him, but I hoped Zeke was correct. Sadly, he was not. Here's three things that I've seen, done, or been thinking about this week:
1) WE STILL REMAIN: My next novel is coming out on Tuesday, Feb. 27. I'm excited for people to see it, but at the same time, I'm terrified that people will hate it. That's the double-edged sword of releasing a new book. You are excited that you have created, but you live in obstinate fear of having created and dread being subjected to ridicule. Anyhow, the link to the Kindle pre-order is in the hypertext of the title. 2) PORCUPINE TREE: Last weekend I stopped by Half-Price Books and found the double-live CD/DVD set of "Octane Twisted" by Porcupine Tree, a live concert of their enigmatic British progressive band. I've long enjoyed Porcupine Tree from afar due to their workings with Marillion over the years, but this is the first PT album I've owned. Gotta say, I really enjoy their stuff. It's much darker than Marillion, but Steven Wilson is a genius. Highly recommend. 3) Alan Tudyk in RESIDENT ALIEN: Give the guy an Emmy already. No one is doing better acting than Alan Tudyk in SyFy's brilliant Resident Alien. It's a quirky, fun little show, and I can't get enough of it. Great cast, great writing, great time. I look forward to it every week. |
About the AuthorSean Patrick Little is a writer, speaker, editor, educator, and general literary dude from Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. Click the pictures below to purchase books!
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