Author Archives: Richard Bowker

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About Richard Bowker

Author of the Portal series, the Last P.I. series, and other novels

Voices from the Marathon

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Stories from the folks at work today (with names redacted).

From a woman whose son ran:

What started off a beautiful day turned out surreal and frightening beyond belief. I was at the finish line to watch my son who was running for Mass Mentoring.  At that time, the runners were charity runners.   I was happy that I found a front row spot right at the street barricade on boylston between lord and taylor and the Lenox Hotel. The two bombs exploded right in front of us, at street level, one to the right and one to the left.  We could see people falling and injured , and as the crowds ran to the middle of the street,  we were left staggering in the middle of boylston street not knowing where to go and afraid that another bomb would go off.  We also could not find family members.  There was no way to call anyone, but my husband climbed a pole and found me and then we found my daughter in law who had been on the bleachers. but still no clue where my son was.   He was 3/4 of a mile from the finish line when they stopped the race.  Luckily some kind college students took him into their building and gave him a plastic blanket and some water and the use of their cell phone. We retrieved him from 400 comm ave and walked to Brookline.   We waited for transport home.  Thankfully we are all safe, but so very sad that some people who were standing not too far from me have been hurt or worse.

From a guy whose wife’s cousin was running:

I drove to MIT and walked over the bridge into Back Bay to guide my (wife’s) cousin and her husband back to my car. This was her second Boston Marathon. Due to some cramping, she was running behind her target pace, which is a good thing. Her target time would have put her at the finish line when the blasts occurred. Instead, her race ended at Mass Ave. From there she walked off the course and down to the Public Garden area to meet her husband.

She is full of praise for the residents of Boston, the race fans, and the other runners. While people at the blast site were understandably shocked, confused, and frightened, in the surrounding blocks the prevailing mood was one of calm, competent support and care. One resident came out of her apartment and handed her a thick comforter to keep warm in, asking only that she leave it on her stoop later if it was convenient, or just keep it if not.  This was not an isolated event, as residents throughout the area offered food, water, warmth, phones, and the like to anyone in need.  I spoke with a number of runners as I walked to the corner of Berkeley and Commonwealth. They were sad, and caring for each other, exchanging what news they had, and universally determined to run the next marathon to keep the bastards from winning.

From what I saw, law enforcement was firm yet polite about controlling the boundaries of the secured area, and as helpful as they could be given the circumstances and their necessary priorities. Since I wasn’t trying to get into the controlled area (few if any people seemed to be doing that), I walked mostly on Marlborough, a few blocks away or on Commonwealth Ave, and so can’t say anything about the immediate scene of the bombing. But from what I saw in the neighborhood, we should be proud to live and work near such a great city.  These are good people. who rise to face down the worst, and to help each other.

From one of our editors:

I was standing in front of LensCrafters, just a couple of doors down from Marathon Sports, where the first bomb went off. Fortunately, my buddy and I took a break for lunch about 1/1:30 and then left that area around 2/2:30. The bomb went off at 2:50.

He was in Harvard Square when I texted him to see if he was okay. He had no idea what had happened.  He was able to respond to me; soon his phone was lighting up with texts, but the network was overloaded and he couldn’t respond.  He listened to the events on the radio at a newsdealer in the Square for a while and ran into a Kenyan runner who had finished the race, and then for some unknown reason decided to run the five miles or so to Harvard Square after the bombs went off.  Very strange.

Here is a jersey hanging in the Red Sox dugout tonight; 617 is the Boston area code:

Patriots’ Day in Boston

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It has always been special.

It’s spring!

It’s school vacation!

At dawn there’s a reenactment of the battle with the redcoats on Lexington Green!

At eleven in the morning there’s a Red Sox game!

And then there’s the marathon, where the best athletes in the world compete alongside your nephew, alongside the software developer who sits a hundred feet away from you.

I’ve been at the battle reenactment.  I’ve seen Bill Rodgers racing along Commonwealth Avenue towards the finish line.  I’ve ridden the T with the exhausted runners wearing their foil capes.

Now someone has taken it all away from us.  Now our son has to email us to say he and his friends are all right.  Now one of our editors has to text us that he left the finish line before it all happened.  The software developer reports that he and his wife and child were walking along Huntington Avenue when they heard the explosions, and suddenly everyone was running towards them and everything turned into chaos, but they’re safe at home now.

Everyone we know is okay.  But a wonderful part of our life has been taken away, and that is not okay.

Did I really read that book?

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A while back I read The Good Soldier.  As I did, I kept having the feeling that I had read it already.  But this was never more than an occasional niggling at the back of my mind — a scene, a character would seem vaguely familiar, but then for long stretches the feeling would disappear.

Maybe I did read The Good Soldier, and its memory simply disintegrated in my brain over the years.  I didn’t like it this time around, and it’s unlikely to have made much of an impression on me in high school or college, when I was vacuuming up novels daily.  But it’s also possible that I didn’t in fact read it — that the scenes and characters just reminded me of something else, also now lost.  Beats me.  Memory, modern science tells us, is fragile and unreliable.  We don’t know what we think we know.  (This recent Radiolab podcast tells the story of a woman who confidently identifies the man who had brutally raped her, only to find out years later that she had been mistaken.)

All of this is by way of an introduction to the following lovely review of The Distance Beacons from a very perceptive reader named D. Jensen:

What I can’t believe is that no one else has reviewed this book. Perhaps it is because this is the second (and hopefully not the last) that Bowker has offered us.
It has been a long, long time since I read this book, but I do remember it as a better than “a good ‘un”.

Walter Sands, the only P.I. in a post-apocalyptic (no longer United) States is asked to search for a rebel organization that is threatening to assassinate the President when she comes to Boston to campaign in favor of the New England states to rejoin the union.
Along with his friends and roommates, Walter uncovers much more than he or his employer expect.

Another great read from Bowker. I think that I like it that he never really describes the nuclear war that created this future mish-mash country. It was what it was and now the survivors are just trying to rebuild their lives and perhaps a country that may or may not resemble the earlier version. There is no sweeping view of this time; there is just the observations of the people “on the ground” so to speak. Bowker knows how to keep the characters relevant and relate-able and how to build the tension in the story to keep the reader turning pages–or flipping screens.

Worth the time where so many are not.

It’s all so very true!  Except for the part where he (she?) says “It’s been a long, long time since I read this book.”  As I may have mentioned here, The Distance Beacons was written a while ago (with a different title), but it ended up in a carton in my basement after Bantam declined to print a sequel to Dover Beach.  No more than half a dozen people read it back then, and it’s only the e-book revolution that has allowed it to see the light of day now.  D. Jensen is having a Good Soldier moment.

Unless, you know, my memory is playing tricks on me.

Portal, an online novel: Chapter 28

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Chapter 27: Well, that was a bummer.  Kevin, Larry, and Stinky Glover make it back to Glanbury and move into the Barnes farmhouse.  Kevin and Larry look for the portal without success.  In a snowstorm they run into Larry’s Mom and brother coming home from Boston in their cart.  And in the back of the cart is his sister Cassie’s dead body.

Why do writers think they can get away with killing characters off like this?  Have they no human decency?

We’re not far from the end now, so I may ramp up the posting of these chapters.  The suspense is killing me.

***********************

Chapter 28

Kevin and I walked alongside the wagon as Mom made her way through the snow back to the farmhouse.  She didn’t say anything; she didn’t ask who Kevin was or why we were there in Glanbury.  Even Matthew was quiet, except to complain about how hungry he was.

“We have food,” I said.  “We’ll take care of you.”

Stinky saw the wagon drive up the lane and came out to meet us.  “Julian?” Mom asked, with a puzzled look on her face.

“Just staying with Lawrence, ma’am,” Stinky replied.  “I hope you don’t mind.”

She didn’t respond.  She and Matthew got down from the wagon, and we took them inside and had them sit in front of the fire.  In the kitchen, I explained to Stinky about Cassie.  “Terrible,” he said.  “To live through it all, and then at the very end . . . ”

I nodded.  “They’re going to need all the help we can give them.”

Stinky had already cooked the turkey I had shot yesterday.  We carved it up in the kitchen and brought some out to them.  Mom looked like she didn’t want to eat, but she was too hungry to resist.  Matthew wolfed his food down.  “We’ve had almost nothing to eat for two days,” he said between bites.  “And we don’t know where Papa is or if he’s alive, and Gretel got lame and we thought we might not even make it home, and it’s been terrible, just terrible.”

Mom put her hand on his arm.  “We’re all right now, Matthew,” she murmured.  “Try not to eat to much.  It might make you ill.”

He leaned back against her, but kept eating.

Mom stood up when she had finished.  “We can’t leave her out there,” she said.

Did she want to bring Cassie’s body inside? I thought stupidly. No, she headed out the back door to the barn.  I followed her.  Inside, she found a pick and a shovel.  “Three days she’s awaited a proper burial,” Mom murmured.  “She can’t wait any longer.”

“I’ll help,” I said.  “We’ll all help.”

She stopped and gazed at me the way she had in the camp–puzzled, like she was on the brink of understanding who I really was.  “Thank you,” she said.  “Thank you, Larry.  Finding you here is–is the only good thing that’s happened to us in a long time.”

I took the pick and shovel and followed her back out front.  I set the tools down by the wagon and went inside to get Kevin, Stinky, and Matthew.  Then we all followed behind the wagon as Mom drove it around the farmhouse to the edge of a little patch of woods beyond the barn.  Matthew was sobbing.  Kevin glanced at me a couple of times, but he didn’t say anything.

Mom got down from the wagon and led us into the woods.  We came to a small clearing after a while, and in the middle of the clearing a few crosses stuck up through the snow.  My head started spinning as I stared at those crosses.  Kevin gripped my arm.  Mom pointed to a spot in the snow.  “Cassie needs to go here,” she said.  “Beside her brother.”

I looked at the cross next to where she was pointing.  Two words were crudely carved on it:

 

Lawrence Barnes

 

I was staring at my own grave.

“That’s the boy who would have been just about your age,” my mother was saying to me.  “My baby.”

I think maybe I forgot to breathe for a while.  “It’s okay, Larry,” Kevin whispered to me.  “Take it easy.”

Kevin and I’d had talked about what would happen if we ran into our other selves in this world.  Would we both explode, or destroy the fabric of the space-time continuum or something?  Stupid.  We never talked about this.

Nothing happened, of course, except that I was as spooked as I could possibly be.  But I didn’t do anything.  I just stood there in the snow.  I was alive, the earth kept spinning, and that other me–the baby who didn’t make it–was still at rest in the cold ground.

And now we had to lay his sister–my sister–to rest, too.

We took turns using the pick and shovel to dig the hole in the frozen, rocky soil.  I did most of the work, though–Kevin still didn’t have all his strength back, and it wasn’t the sort of task Stinky enjoyed.  It seemed to take forever.  It grew dark, and my muscles were screaming with pain after a while–the most digging I’d ever done was a little bit of snow shoveling, and I’d usually complain about having to do that.  But we kept at it, and at last the time had come.  We lifted Cassie’s body out of the wagon, then slid her down into the ground and covered her up.  After that we stood around the grave as darkness fell and said some prayers, while I felt sorry for every mean thing I’d said to her in every conceivable universe.

“Thank you all,” my mother said at the end.  “God bless you.”

And then we made our way slowly back to the farmhouse.  Stinky took care of Gretel, and Kevin and I hauled in the few possessions Mom and Matthew had brought home in the wagon.

With her duty done, Mom seemed to relax a little.  She looked even older, more worn down than she had in the camp.  But she didn’t cry much, just a few tears.  Mom wasn’t a crier; she was the one who gave comfort, not the one who needed comforting.  She put Matthew to bed–she let him sleep in the downstairs bedroom with her–and then came out to join us in front of the fireplace.

And she asked the questions I knew were coming: “Larry, what happened?  How did you get here?”

As usual I hadn’t thought through my answer, so I just blurted something out.  “My father died, and I had nowhere else to go.”

“Oh no, Larry, what happened?”

What happened?  “He was–he was working with the army.  He had invented this electric fence that would, like, give the enemy soldiers a shock when they tried to climb over it.  He was operating it at the battle with the Portuguese.  And it worked great but–but they shot him.  He died instantly.”  I remembered Professor Foster dropping to the ground, killed in his moment of triumph.

“Oh my poor sweet boy.  Is there no end to these horrors?”

“I didn’t really have anywhere else to go, so I came here,” I continued.  “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Mind?  Of course not.  Stay as long as you want.  And your friend–”

“Kevin.  He’s, uh, an orphan.  He lived with us.  And Julian–we met him at the army camp, and he helped us get here.  We couldn’t have done it without him.”

I glanced at Stinky.  He didn’t say anything about how a couple of days ago Kevin had told him we lived in an orphanage.  Did he remember?  Of course he did.

“You’re all welcome to our home,” Mom said.  She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes.  Stinky threw another log on the fire.

“Can you–can you tell us what happened to Cassie?” I asked.

“Perhaps another time,” she said wearily.

“Sure.  I understand.”

But after a moment she said, “I suppose it might help.  There’s been no one to talk to–just Matthew . . . ”  She paused again, and then began.  “You were there in the camp that last day, Larry.  You saw how wild things were becoming.”

I nodded.  “I barely got out.  Soldiers were firing at people by the main gate.”

“Yes.  We’d endured for so long in the camp, but then–we knew it was ending soon, and it seemed to drive some people mad.”

“Cassie wouldn’t come out of the tent,” I recalled.  “She wouldn’t listen to anyone.”

“Yes, that was Cassie.”  Mom’s eyes got a faraway look, and I imagined she was thinking about all the ways in which Cassie had caused them problems.  Or maybe it was just the opposite.  What do I know?  “Cassie just couldn’t stand it anymore,” she went on.  “Not another day, not another minute.  We all heard the shots by the main gate.  We weren’t sure what had happened.  Twenty people dead, someone said; someone else said a hundred.  And there were other rumors: the gates had been stormed and the guards had fled.  The Canadians were already in the city.  There was a drikana outbreak in the camp.  The wildest things.  Cassie begged me to leave.  But even if I had wanted to, there was no way we could get out of the camp in that madness with a horse and wagon and all our possessions.  ‘Leave them behind,’ she insisted.  ‘It’s all worthless anyway.’

“But I wouldn’t do it.  ‘Let’s wait for the morning,’ I said.  ‘Everyone says the soldiers will be gone by then.’

“She wouldn’t listen to me, though.  She was never–she was never easy.  Not bad, no, but . . . she knew her own mind.  Perhaps if I had tried harder to understand . . . ”

Mom paused then, as if she were thinking about how she could blame herself for Cassie’s death.  “Then what happened?” I asked softly.

“She ran away,” Mom answered.  “She didn’t argue, she just ran, as if she couldn’t stand it another moment.  I told Matthew to go stay with the Lallys and I went after her, but it was so difficult.  It was dark, and all the paths were crowded with people and wagons, and no one would get out of the way.  She didn’t head toward the main gate.  She went to the water station.  I don’t know why–perhaps she thought it wouldn’t be guarded at night.  Perhaps she’d heard that the fence had been torn down, and there was just that little stream to cross.  Or perhaps she had met the guards there and flirted with them, and she thought they would let her pass.

“I almost reached her.  I called out to her, but she just kept going.  I was near a soldier, and he was very young, and I could tell he didn’t know what to do.  Someone else called out ‘Halt!’  She was in the middle of the stream by now.  She paused and looked back.  She saw me, and I called out to her again.  But then she turned and kept going.  And then I heard the shot.”

Mom paused again and stared into the fire.  I wasn’t going to say anything this time.  If she wanted to talk about it, she’d do it when she was ready.

“Cassie went down,” Mom continued at last.  “I kept going after her, through the stream and onto the other side where she was lying.  So why didn’t they shoot me, too?”

I thought she wanted an answer, but I couldn’t think of one.  I guess she was just asking herself, though, because she repeated the question softly, and then went on.  “I held her in my arms, but there was no bringing her back, no bringing her back.  I noticed that the young soldier was standing next to me after a while, and he was crying and saying, ‘Didn’t she understand?  All she had to do was stop.  Why wouldn’t she stop?’

“Because she’s Cassie, I thought.  Don’t you see?  She didn’t think she had to stop for anyone.

“I didn’t want to move, but I couldn’t stay there.  The soldier helped me carry the body back to our wagon.  And then I had to get Matthew and tell him what had happened.  And then . . . ”

Mom put her hands to her face.  Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, I thought, making her relive all this stuff.

“If she could have just waited a few more hours,” she said.  “A few hours later, all the guards were gone, heading off to the battle.  It must have been midnight when I heard that, and it wasn’t a rumor this time.  The gates were open, the guards had disappeared, and people were pouring out into the city.  Not that they had anywhere to go in the city.  Not that I cared.  Some of our friends were sitting with me, helping me grieve.  They wanted me to leave with them, but what was the point?  This was where Cassie had died.  Why should I go anywhere else?

“They couldn’t wait finally.  Everyone was leaving.  The camp was emptying out.  But then near dawn Matthew awoke–despite everything, he had finally fallen asleep–and I knew that I had to leave too, I had to get him home if I possibly could.  So I packed the wagon and hitched up Gretel, and we left.”

“Kevin and I were in the camp a little after dawn that day, looking for you,” I said.  “It was pretty empty.”

Mom nodded.  “It was a dismal place, and we were all so tired of it.  People looted the army buildings during the night, then set fire to them.  I think they might have shot the guards if they had found any of them.

“But the city streets were no better–worse, really, because the other Glanbury families were gone, and I had no one to talk to, no one to help me.  That first day I stopped at a church, and the minister took pity on us and gave us a little food.  He offered to bury Cassie in the church’s graveyard, but I couldn’t leave her there–she had to go home too.  Then I tried to get out of the city, but Gretel went lame–poor girl, she’d had no exercise for months.  It’s a wonder she’s still alive.  I don’t know what I would have done if she hadn’t recovered.  Matthew was frantic.  He wanted us to go find his father, but Henry was fighting the Canadians, and we have no idea where he was, or if he was even alive.

“Finally at dawn this morning we started out, praying that Gretel would make it.  She did, thank the Lord.  And now we’re home.  Now we’re home.”

I reached over and put my hand on her arm, the way she liked to do.  She smiled at me and squeezed my hand.  “I never thought I’d see you again,” she said.  “But under such awful circumstances . . . ”

“I’ll help you,” I said.  “We’ll all help you.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, and fell silent.

Mom went and joined Matthew in bed a little later.  Stinky fell asleep by the fire.  I was still wide awake.

“That was weird,” Kevin remarked.

“What?  The graveyard?” I said.

“Yeah.  I thought you were going to faint.”

“It did make me a little dizzy,” I admitted. “But in a way, it’s weirder thinking about Cassie.”

“Sounds like she was kind of–you know–the same in both worlds.” Kevin said.

“A pain, you mean. ‘Difficult,’ my dad says.”

“Yeah, I guess.  Not that she deserved to die.”

“For going nuts in that camp?” I said.  “No, she didn’t deserve to die for that.”

“Your mom and Matthew–that’s weird, too.  They look just like, you know . . . ”

“You see what I mean?” I pressed him.  “They aren’t different people.  They are my family.  They’re just . . . here.”

Kevin stared at the fire.  Thinking about the portal and getting home, I supposed.  Thinking about how he had no one here, no Albright family to welcome him.

“We can keep looking for the portal,” I said.  “It’s gotta be out there somewhere.”

“Yeah,” he said.  “Maybe.”  Then he lay down and wrapped the blanket around him.  “Let’s just get some sleep.”

And then there was just me awake in the silent farmhouse.  I had found my family again, but things hadn’t exactly turned out the way I’d wanted them to.  Poor Cassie.  I know she can be difficult, Dad had said to me once, but she’s family.  And that’s the most important thing.  Someday you’ll realize that you love her.

I didn’t know about that.  But I couldn’t help thinking about Cassie.  And, difficult as she was, I couldn’t help wishing she was still alive and giving us all a hard time.  No, she didn’t deserve to die.  And my mom sure didn’t deserve the heartache her death had brought.

I didn’t want to bring her any more heartache.

Who needs an editor?

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Jeff Carver has a post on the Hugh Howey article I recommended.  He says:

It’s pretty interesting, although I don’t necessarily agree with everything he says. (For one thing, he doesn’t mention the role that traditional publishers play in helping writers, especially new writers, improve their craft and produce better books. Some say that that role is diminishing these days, but I think it really depends on the publisher and the editor.)

This got me to thinking about just how much help my various editors have been to me.  The answer is: not much. Probably the best known of my editors was Judy-Lynn Del Rey, who bought my first novel for the Del Rey imprint of Ballantine Books.  She did two things, as I recall:

  • She made me change the book’s name to Forbidden Sanctuary, claiming this was a more commercial title than the one I had come up with.  Can’t say if she was right or wrong about that.
  • She pointed out that “He shone the light” should be “He shined the light.”  That’s a fair cop.

And that’s it.  Well, she also ordered a cover that was ludicrously unrelated to the actual events of the book.

My other editors were similar.  They made various small suggestions, some of which were good, some of which weren’t so good (in my opinion).  None of them helped me improve my craft, or made any of my novels substantially better.  They didn’t have the time or the interest.  Or, possibly, the talent.

This is not to say that a good editor can’t help a writer.  I just don’t think the odds are good you’re going to find such an editor in mainstream publishing.  If your book isn’t deemed publishable as it stands, it isn’t going to be published.

What most writers do need is copy-editing.  But, as Howey points out, you can hire a copy editor, just as you can hire an artist to create your cover.  There are lots of people out there who know the difference between shone and shined, even if you don’t.  And they don’t charge very much for their expertise.  When you’re self-publishing, you’re the boss.  That can be a bit scary, but it’s also liberating.

The Red Sox: one week in

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Okay, so I’ll leave Fenway Park as my header image for a couple more days.  The Red Sox have been been providing us with everything we could ask for: good pitching, good hitting, good fielding, no tantrums.  A bunch of players have been playing beyond what we expected from them–Iglesias, Nava, Middlebrooks; and others have returned to form–Lester, Buchholz, Ellsbury.  And we haven’t even seen Ortiz and Drew yet.  I’m not expecting this to last.  Because I’m a Red Sox fan, that’s why.

Portal, an online novel: Chapter 27

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Chapter 26: Larry, Kevin, and Stinky meet up with Mrs. Gradger and her daughter as they make their way south towards Glanbury.  They spend the night with at the Gradgers’ house in Weymouth, but Kevin is desperate to keep going and reach Glanbury.  Stinky surprisingly turns down an offer to stay with the Gradgers and continues to accompany the boys on their journey home.

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Chapter 27

Home.  Sort of.  Certainly not for Kevin–he wasn’t interested in this Glanbury.  And it didn’t look at all familiar to me.  The North River was in our Glanbury, too, but I hadn’t paid much attention to it.  It wasn’t a very big river.  At least its bridge hadn’t been destroyed.

We crossed the bridge.  Glanbury didn’t look any different from what we had already passed by along the Post Road.  A few shops and houses, but mostly just woods and farmland, and occasionally a road leading off to the east or west.  Just another little town.  I wasn’t surprised that President Gardner hadn’t thought much of it.

Kevin looked around intently, trying to spot the place where we had burst out of the woods with the Portuguese soldiers shooting at us.  It would be on our left–I recalled that much.  But that was about all I remembered.  And if Kevin insisted it was on our right, I’m not sure how strongly I could have argued the point.  Nothing looked familiar to me.  Kevin hesitated once in a while, but he didn’t run off into the woods.  I could sense him getting worried as we walked.

“How far to the Barnes place?” I asked Stinky.

“Another mile or two, I expect.”

I wondered if the farmhouse was where my house was in the other world.  Was that how things worked in these alternate universes?  That would make it easier for us to find the portal–just look in the woods behind the backyard.  But I remembered how confusing the geography of the Burger Queen world had been, and I figured we weren’t going to be that lucky.

I was tired and hungry by now.  Kevin was starting to look pretty worn-out too.  I knew he wanted to keep searching until he found the portal.  But he only had so much energy; it would only be daylight for so long.  It would be tough.

“We turn here,” Stinky said finally, pointing to a road up ahead on the right.  “Go left and the road’ll take us to town and the harbor, go right to the Barnes farm.  It’s a nice little place.”

I looked at Kevin.  He shrugged.  “Let’s go to the farm,” he said.

So we turned off the Post Road, and then took another turn after a while, onto a small lane lined with hedges.  “There it is,” Stinky said.  “Lucky thing, looks like the Portuguese left it alone.  Probably didn’t bother coming this far off the main road.”

The house was small, far less imposing than the Gradgers’, or Professor Palmer’s house in Cambridge.  The red barn behind the house was bigger than house itself was.  Both seemed to be in good shape.  We walked up the lane to the front door.  I knocked.  There was no answer.

“What do you want to do?” Stinky asked.

“Go inside,” I said.  “Start a fire.  Get the place ready for them.”

“You mean just . . . move in?”

I nodded.

“If you say so.”

The door wasn’t locked, so we walked inside.

We found ourselves in a small entryway.  On the left was a long, dark, low-ceilinged room dominated by a big fireplace, with heavy black pots and pans hung next to it.  On the right was a smaller, brighter room with nothing in it but a table and chairs.  We walked into the room with the fireplace.  It led into the kitchen, where there was another table and chairs, and some shelves with pewter plates and cups on them.  Next to the fireplace was a small storage area.  In a corner of the living room was a spinning wheel.  “Home Sweet Home” said a piece of embroidery hung on the wall to our right.

Home.

Strangely–or maybe not so strangely–it did feel like home.

Everything was where it should be, where I wanted it to be.  Beyond the room on the right was a bedroom, with a Bible on the nightstand next to the bed.  From there you climbed up a wooden ladder-like set of stairs to an attic, where there were a couple more beds with a curtain between them.  On the floor I saw some wooden toys that probably belonged to Matthew.  I wondered how Cassie put up with Matthew chattering away on the other side of that curtain at bedtime.  In this world, she didn’t have a choice.

We checked out back.  Firewood was stacked neatly by the door.  Beyond it was the well, and on the other side of the yard was the privy.  Everything was simple but solid and clean.  I thought about how my mother always insisted that we keep our rooms tidy.  When we’d whine that the mess didn’t bother us, she’d say, “There’s no excuse for being a slob.”  There wasn’t, really.  I had a lump in my throat when I went back inside.

“Must be pretty weird for you, huh?” Kevin murmured while Stinky brought in firewood.

“It seems so . . . familiar.  How are you doing?”

“All right, I guess.  Pretty wiped.  Do you think the portal’s further south along the main road?”

“Probably.  I haven’t seen anything that looked familiar so far.  But then again, it was so foggy, and we were running for our lives, and–”

“I know.  I remember a bunch of pine trees across the road when we came out of the woods–but there are pine trees all over the place.  Anyway, it can’t be far.  Glanbury’s not that big a town.”

Unless the portal had disappeared back where it came from.  Unless it had moved.  Unless, unless . . .  “It can’t be far,” I agreed.  Kevin didn’t want to hear anything else.

We went and helped Stinky get the fire started.  Then it was time to go hunting for our supper.  Kevin stayed behind again.  He was tired, and besides, he didn’t care about hunting; it wasn’t something he was going to do once he got back home.

So Stinky and I went out with my rifle and his pistol.  We had to tramp through fields where cornstalks drooped, then climb over a long stone wall.  We passed by a small body of water that Stinky was familiar with.  “Amity Pond,” he said.  “Good fishing.  We may be able to catch some trout there.”  And then we headed into the woods past the pond.

This time when we spotted a turkey, Stinky motioned to me to take the shot.  It was a lot different from aiming at an empty Coke can with a BB gun.  Sorry, bird, I thought.  And I pulled the trigger.

The turkey squawked and keeled over.  Stinky clapped me on the back.  “Terrific,” he said.

All I could think of was the soldier with the wispy mustache.  Still, I had gotten us dinner.

We trudged back to the farmhouse, and this time all three of us helped prepare the turkey.  It was gross, but it had to be done. Another skill worth learning in this world.  Then we cooked and ate it the way we did the night before; it tasted fine, but I could tell I was going to get sick of turkey pretty soon, if that’s all we could find to eat.  Better than going hungry, though.

We found some blankets in the storage area and slept in front of the fire in the living room, like we had at the Gradgers; using the beds didn’t seem right.  We figured we were safe here, so we didn’t stand watches.  And in the morning the sun was shining, the fire had died down, and we had to figure out what to do next.

I assumed Stinky would want to leave, but he didn’t seem to be in any hurry.  “Oh, I’ll find old man Kincaid when the time comes, and we’ll work things out,” he said, talking about his master.  “In the meantime, there’s plenty to be done here.  Chopping wood, hunting, fishing . . .  We can cart ice back from Amity Pond to preserve the meat.  There should be a root cellar somewhere around.  We can search for seed corn and make sure it’s protected.  That’ll be important come next spring.”

Kevin wasn’t interested in doing chores.  “What’s the point?” he demanded when Stinky was paying a visit to the privy.  “Let’s just find the portal and go home.  Now.”

He was right, of course.  We had done it.  We had gotten back to Glanbury, and there was no one to stop us from going home.  Still . . .

I wanted to find out what had happened to my family on this world.  I wanted to make sure they were okay.  And I didn’t want to have them wonder what happened to Larry Palmer.  Did he die in the battle?  Why did he never come to see us like he promised?

But I couldn’t say that to Kevin; he would’ve gone nuts.  He was already staring at me suspiciously.  “What’s the matter?” he demanded.

“I’m just a little–I don’t know,” I said.  “What if the portal doesn’t take us home?  We could step out into a black hole or something.”

“Okay, yeah, it’s a risk.  We know that.  But we’ve gotta take it, Larry.  We can’t stay here for the rest of our lives if we have a chance to make it home.”

“Sure, but, you know, what if you bring those drikana germs back with you?  We don’t want to start a plague or something.”

“I’m not contagious.  This world doesn’t know how to cure drikana, but they know when people are contagious.  I’m out of claustration.  I feel fine.  Now let’s go.”

Stinky came back in.  “What shall we do now?”

Kevin looked at me.

“Kevin and I are going hunting,” I said.  “We’ll be back in a while.”

“I’ll come too,” he replied.  “If you shoot a deer, we might need the three of us to bring it back.”

“No, uh, why don’t you stay here, Julian.  We’ll be all right.”

He looked puzzled and disappointed, but he didn’t argue.  He also didn’t say anything when we went down the lane to the road, rather than back into the woods beyond Amity Pond.

I might never see him again, I thought.

Kevin couldn’t have cared less.  He practically raced back to the Post Road.  When we reached it, we turned right and started heading south.  “Give a shout if you spot anything that looks familiar,” he said.

“Sure.”

But it all looked more or less familiar.  Or more or less unfamiliar.  I peered into the woods on the left and tried to remember any details from those few frantic moments when we raced out of the woods and into the road.  “Maybe there?” I suggested at one point, although I couldn’t say why.

But Kevin got excited, and we tramped into the woods and wandered around for a while, waving our hands in front of us.  We didn’t find anything, although I spotted a deer staring at us like we were crazy.  “Why did you think it was here?” he demanded.

“I don’t know.  Just a guess.  I can’t really remember anything, Kevin.  But I’m trying.”

“All right,” he said.  “Let’s keep going.”

We went back to the road and continued heading south.  We stopped a couple of times more when Kevin thought he spotted something he recognized, and we went through the same routine, walking around in the woods, hoping we stumbled onto the portal.  We weren’t just looking for a needle in a haystack, I thought.  We were looking for an invisible needle, and we didn’t even know which haystack it was in.

But I wasn’t going to say that to Kevin.

Finally we reached a deserted building called the Wompatuck Inn.  I didn’t remember the inn, but Wompatuck was the town just south of Glanbury.  We looked at each other.  Kevin sat down on a hitching post.  “I don’t know,” he said softly.  “I thought . . . I thought I’d spot something.  I thought we’d get lucky for once.”

“We can keep looking, Kevin.  We’ve got time.”

“Until Lieutenant Carmody tracks us down.  He knows we’re here looking for the portal.”

“He’ll think we’re gone.”

“He won’t be sure.  He’ll check.  You know he will.”

“Well, it’s got to be here somewhere.”

“No, it doesn’t,” he replied in a tired tone.  “We don’t know anything about it–where it came from, how it works.  We’re just a couple of stupid kids who did a really stupid thing.  And now . . . ”

I didn’t know what to say.  Finally Kevin stood up, and we started walking back.  He didn’t suggest looking in the woods.  “We should do some hunting,” I said after a while.

He just shrugged.  We had seen plenty of game besides the deer.  When we got near the farm I went back into the woods; Kevin didn’t join me.  Within a few minutes I had shot another turkey.

“I’m sick of turkey,” he muttered when I brought it out of the woods with me.

He was not going to be great company, I decided.  “Tomorrow,” I said.  “We’ll search again tomorrow.”

“Okay,” he replied.  “Whatever.”

When we got back to the farmhouse, Stinky was cooking up fish that he’d caught.  If he was curious about why we’d taken so long just to shoot one turkey, he didn’t say so.  It wasn’t hard to tell that something was wrong, but he didn’t ask what it was.

So it was a quiet night.  Kevin just stared into the fire; he barely touched his supper.  I ate enough for two, even though I didn’t like fish.  Stinky talked about all the chores he had done, and it made me feel guilty.  We went to sleep early, huddled in front of the fire.

I thought about my family–my “real” family–and how annoying they all could be, how rotten my life had been, with the “real” Stinky bugging me and Nora Lally ignoring me and my stupid teachers at The Gross boring me to death.  What if I didn’t have a choice–what if we couldn’t find the portal and I had to stay here?  No toilets or computers or TV, sure, but I was already used to not having that stuff.

What if I had to stay?

I fell asleep with that thought in my mind.

The next day was cold and raw.  Stinky and I did some chores while Kevin moped.  “What’s the matter with your friend?” Stinky finally asked me while we were in the barn.

“I don’t know,” I said.  “I think the battle bothered him.  He saw a lot of suffering.”

“We’ve all seen a lot the last few months,” was all he replied.

Eventually I got Kevin to go searching again.  Stinky didn’t offer to come with us this time.  I think Kevin was really starting to bother him.

We had only seen a couple of travelers yesterday.  Today there were a lot of people on the road, all making their way south.  We found out from them that no one was being stopped from leaving the city now; in fact, the army was encouraging it.  The travelers had the usual variety of rumors about what was happening with the Canadians, but no one said they had defeated us, and that was a good sign.

This time we headed north, back towards Weymouth.  We spent most of our time in the woods.  What was the point of walking along the road if we had no clue where to look?

After a while it started to snow.  “Great,” Kevin muttered.  “Now we won’t be able to recognize anything.”

But it wasn’t like we were recognizing anything to begin with.

We made it all the way back to the North River.  We watched the snow flecking the gray water for a while in silence, and then Kevin said, “Let’s go back before we freeze to death out here.”

“I’m sorry, Kev.”

He shrugged.  “Let’s just go.”

We turned back.  The snow was heavier now, and there were fewer people on the road.  We trudged along in silence, with our hands jammed into our pockets.  The snow was light and fluffy–not good snowball snow, but we were in no mood to throw snowballs.  For once I wished I was wearing those big old shoes from this world instead of my sneakers.

After a while I started looking for where we turned off the Post Road.  Visibility wasn’t that great anymore, and I sure didn’t want to miss the turn and keep on walking in the snowstorm.  Kevin didn’t look like he was going to be much help.  Up ahead I could make out a wagon, moving slowly along the road.  We got closer.  Suddenly the squeaking of the wheels stopped, and I heard a voice.  “This is Town Road, I think.”

It was my mother.

I started grinning and ran up to the wagon.  “Mrs. Barnes?” I said.  “It’s me–Larry Palmer!”

She was sitting on the bench with the reins in her hand.  Matthew sat next to her.  “Larry?” she whispered.  “Sweet Lord, it is.”

There was something about the way she said it.  There was none of the excitement and surprise I had expected; it was as if she could barely bring herself to speak.  I looked at Matthew; his eyes were red with tears.  “Larry, Cassie’s dead,” he said.  “Our own soldiers shot her, damn their eyes.”

I stared at my mother, and I knew that it was true.  A tear leaked out of her eye and fell down her cheek, mixing with the snowflakes.  I came closer and looked in the back of the wagon.  There, in the middle of all their snow-covered possessions, wrapped in a sheet, was the outline of a body.

“Oh, no,” I cried.  “Oh please, no.”

Mom reached down and touched me on the arm as I, too, started to weep.

A great article about self-publishing ebooks

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Hadn’t heard about Hugh Howey until last week, when Jeff Carver mentioned his success as a self-publisher of speculative fiction.  Now he’s written this piece for Salon, which encapsulates a lot of what I think about self-publishing in the ebook world.

With self-publishing, you learn your craft while producing material. You win over your fans directly. You own all of your rights, and your works stay fresh and available for your lifetime (and beyond). Nothing goes out of print. I think this advantage is difficult to fully appreciate. My bestselling work was my eighth or ninth title. As soon as it took off, the rest of my material took off with it. To the reader, it was all brand-new. To those being born today who will become avid readers 15 years from now, those works will still be brand-new. My entire oeuvre will always be in print and always earning me something. Nothing is pulled and returned from the digital bookshelf.

For me, one of the main motivations for entering the ebook world was getting my previously published novels, long out of print, back out onto the market. But even if you haven’t been in print before, self-publishing ebooks really does seem to be the way to go.  You may not be successful, but most print authors aren’t successful — I can’t say that I have been particularly successful.  At least the books are out there, available to anyone and everyone.  And you have a chance of finding an audience, the way Hugh Howey did.  And even if you don’t become rich, you’re likely to get more feedback from your readers than most print authors ever get.  Here’s a sample of reader reviews of my books in the past few weeks:

On Summit (four stars)

The beginning is a bit confusing but it becomes clear as you go along. I enjoyed this piece of fiction. Valentina and Daniel made very good heroes.

On Dover Beach (five stars):

One of the best scifi books I’ve read in a long time. . . . you’re right there, experiencing everything along with the characters and can’t wait to see what happens next… more please!!

On Senator (five stars):

Kept you guessing til end, lots of twist and turns. Better yet was the way he writes about politics in Washington, where lies are told til they believe they are the truth.

Praise like that is better than money.  And I like money!