My Writer’s Identity Began Ten Years Ago

For the last ten years I’ve joyfully called myself a writer. I feel better able to claim the title on some days than other days. And there were decades of my life when I despaired of being able to write at all.

I was one of those little kids who knew very early what I wanted to become: I was going to be a writer! And then life happened, an income to be earned, and rent and bills to pay.

I had so many self-doubts. Who was I to think I had enough talent? What did I know about life, anyway? Whatever I did know, it couldn’t be enough to write a book….

So I went out into the ‘real’ world and forgot about my very first, exhilarating dream.

Or did I?

I wrote freelance for Massage Magazine for a decade and I’ve always kept a journal, but in my mind those activities never qualified as actual writing. Gods, I was dumb.

About twelve years ago I decided to re-read all those old journals in consecutive order, from beginning to end. By the time I got to the fifth one moaning about ‘Woe is me, how I wish I could write a book’ I was ready to hurl the journal and myself across the room. Enough whining!

I started to write in earnest, I found and joined the Writers in Stuttgart, a writers’ group  that meets monthly. On September 5, 2012, I self-published my first book. On this day ten years ago, I held the first copy of Broken In: A Novel in Stories in my hands. As I held it I literally felt my heart and my body and the room and my life begin to expand and glow. I was filled with a joy that has never really abated since.

Writing remains easy some days… less easy on others. I still have those self-doubts. Those, I think, will never really go away; I’ve learned to regard them as healthy. They’re reality checks. But you know what? The only question I ask myself these days is    ******What took me so long?*******

Don’t wait to start on your dreams. Whatever they may be, no matter how impossible. Part of our soul will only feel complete if we are following whatever Muse has chosen us.

Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Happy Birthday!

NOTES: ©2022 Jadi Campbell. My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded, and The Trail Back Out. 

Tsunami Cowboys was longlisted for the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award. Broken In: A Novel in Stories was a semifinalist for the international 2020 Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Award from Hidden River Arts and a Finalist for Greece’s international 2021 Eyelands Book of the Year Award (Short Stories). The Trail Back Out was American Book Fest 2020 Best Book Award Finalist: Fiction Anthologies, Runner-Up for the 2021 Top Shelf Award, 2021 IAN Book of the Year Award Short Story Collection Finalist for the Independent Author Network, and 2021 Wishing Shelf Red Ribbon. The title story The Trail Back Out was longlisted for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award.

Broken In: A Novel in Stories went on to become a Semifinalist for the international 2020 Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Award from Hidden River Arts and was a Finalist for Greece’s 2021 Eyelands Book of the Year Award (Short Stories).

Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.

….And Broken In: A Novel in Stories is a FInalist for Greece’s 2021 Eyelands Best Book of the Year Award

I can’t believe I get to write this…

The Trail Back Out was named 2021 IAN Book of the Year Finalist (Short Story Collection) by the Independent Author Network.  As if that wasn’t enough, I get to write this: a week later I was listed for another award! My first book Broken In: A Novel in Stories is now a finalist for Greece’s international 2021 Eyelands Book of the Year Award (Short Stories). Two awards in one week, I am in the kind of time continuum writers dream of! I keep crying with joy and laughing in disbelief. I’m I shock.

Eyelands 2021 Book of the Year Awards

NOTES: ©Jadi Campbell 2021. For more posts go to jadicampbell.com

My books are Grounded, The Trail Back Out, Broken In: A Novel in Stories and Tsunami Cowboys.

Tsunami Cowboys was longlisted for the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award.

Along with being named 2021 IAN Book of the Year Finalist, The Trail Back Out was named a 2020 Best Book Award Finalist in Fiction: Anthologies for the American Book Fest. And, in addition, the title story The Trail Back Out was longlisted for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award.

Broken In: A Novel in Stories was also a semifinalist for the international 2020 Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Award from Hidden River Arts.

Click here for my author page to learn more and purchase my books.

Here is what readers will find: The chapters are casual but carefully arranged spokes, radiating out from a rainy evening. At first glance it’s the story of an accident near JJ’s Bistro involving a drunk driver and some parked cars. With each chapter, the picture grows more complex. Each character faces the challenge of being broken in, one way or another…. Gabe is the mixed-race bartender with a sore heart. Lisa is about to confront the hyper-sexual reality of Bangkok. Rob died, because ambulance and police were all racing to the scene. A burglar schemes to steal Jeff’s sanity. A star chef knows it’s her fault that a man is dead. Jeremy should tell his wife he has an incurable disease. Sally mourns her missing children. What seemed so clear cut (a rainy night, bistro patrons, an accident) is an event with layers, and consequences, and after-effects. The circles will go on rippling long after the reader finishes the book.

My Imaginary Friends: #7. An Insect

When my nephew Niko was quite young, I took him to the Woodlands Park Zoo. Late that afternoon I watched a young man standing at a building; he kept peeping into the box he was holding.

I couldn’t contain my curiosity. “Excuse me,” I said, “but can I ask you, what’s in the box? You keep checking on it.”

He answered me with a solumn look. “I work in a grocery store. One of the stockboys was opening a box of fruit and got bitten by this.” He opened the box and we gazed down at a very large, very irridescent insect with huge pincers. “It was in the box hiding underneath the fruit,” he said. “The store manager’s worried it might be poisonous. I called and made an appointment to come in to the zoo and talk to their entomologists. We don’t know if we should send the guy who got bitten to the hospital.”

A decade later I used that memory to write a scene of Jeremy, a character in my first book Broken In: A Novel in Stories. The insect has morphed into a Thai giant centipede, and Jeremy is bitten. – Jadi

Jeremy unpacked the two crates of baby pineapples and stacked them on their sides in the bin. The sweet smell of the fruit put him in a good mood. Jeremy was humming ever so slightly under his breath as he broke the next exotic produce crate open and began to unpack its contents.

“F**k!” he screamed. The front of the store suddenly went silent and his coworkers came running.

Jeremy knelt on the floor cradling his right forearm and breathing in and out heavily. “Something just bit me,” he said in a strangled voice. He began to hyperventilate.

The day manager Lynnie Wendels pushed through the others wielding a metal stool. “Sit!” she commanded. She somehow got Jeremy onto the stool with his back bent over and his head down between his knees.

The others made a ring and offered suggestions. “Keep your head down, Jeremy! Just try to breathe, long slow deep breaths. That’s it, guy; you’re gonna be okay.”

“What was it?” Lynnie was still trying to ascertain what had happened. Jeremy raised his head and his face was damp from pain and shock. He held out his arm. “What in the -?” Lynnie didn’t finish the sentence. On the inside of Jeremy’s forearm, just above his wrist, two puncture marks stood out against the skin. The wounds were swelling and their red pulsated in angry color.

-from my chapter Punctured in Broken In: A Novel in Stories

Thai giant centipede, Khao Yai National Park, Thailand

NOTES: Jadi Campbell 2021. All photos and images © Uwe Hartmann. To see Uwe’s animal photos and pics from our trips go to viewpics.de.

Find me (and more of my posts) at my current address jadicampbell.com.

My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded, and The Trail Back Out. Books make great gifts!

Tsunami Cowboys was longlisted for the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award. The Trail Back Out was a 2020 Best Book Award Finalist for Fiction Anthologies. The title story The Trail Back Out was longlisted for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award. Broken In: A Novel in Stories was a semifinalist for the international Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Award from Hidden River Arts. 

 Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.

# 99 # 99 # 99 # 99 # 99 #

PLEASE NOTE: I’ve moved. You’ll find me (and all of my previous posts) at my new address jadicampbell.com.

I always feel a little strange when I recognize it’s time to mark milestones and I have several to announce.

This is my 99^th blog post.

I’ve posted in these virtual pages twice a month since I began way back in September of 2012. It all started with my husband’s suggestion that I establish an Internet presence….

My published books are fiction, and this blog serves as a good place to present excerpts. Potential readers of my books might want a sample of my writing and a glimpse of the human being behind the words. It’s also a place for non-fiction essays. I get to explore ideas and topics that don’t need to be transformed for novels. Posting every other week is great writerly discipline. I’ve never missed a bi-monthly posting date!

My topics bounce all over the place like gleeful ping pong balls. I’ve written about current events like The Death of Robin Williams, Helping Refugees: Part 1 and Tunisia Without Terrorism, to the World Cup in The Year the World Came to Party.

I occasionally write about historic events, too. Several are 8:15 A.M.,  Amsterdam, and Stolpersteine 1: Tsunami Cowboy’s Stumbling Stones.

I riff on artists in Meet the One-Tracks and art, like the sacred sublime in Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Chartres or sacred sexual in The Erotic Architecture of Khajuraho. I profile art made by human hands Wine and Sculpture, Wildly Creative in Upstate NY: The Ferros of Little York, Egypt 1: We had the entire Valley of the Kings to Ourselves or found in Nature: The Music of the Heavenly Spheres, Steamy Rotorua! and It Was a Bitterly Cold -22°.

Art can serve as reminders to bring us together, as in Stolpersteine 1: Tsunami Cowboy’s Stumbling Stones and The United Buddy Bears.

Of course, I write about writers: My Sister & Maurice Sendak and Baum, Bats, and Monkeys. I quote my beloved Shakespeare with Egypt 2: Along the Nile. Even Colleen McCullough gets a mention in The Outback!

And I write about writing itself: The Gift of Gab, Someone Burned My Book.

Food has been a topic: My Mother-In-Law’s Cookies, Despair Is An Exotic Ingredient, Adventures in China’s New Territories 3: The 100-Pound Fish, Deep Fried and Served with Sweet & Sour Sauce, The Fork is Mightier Than the Sword. A Post in Which I Eat Paris, The Salt Pits and A Visit to the Food Bank, Part 1 &  2.

Holidays have been fun, from You Rang? (the worst/best Valentine’s Day in history) to Happy Halloween!

My day job is as massage therapist, and sometimes I write about healing and medicine. Helping Refugees: Part 1,  Massage in Indonesia: Lombok, Adventures in China’s New Territories 4: The Gods of Medicine, A Massage at Wat Pho are a few of the posts.

…. and this all began simply as a way to introduce my two novels Tsunami Cowboys and Broken In: A Novel in Stories. Both are available at amazon.com in book and eBook form.

It’s been a fun journey these last three years! Thanks to all of you for visiting these pages. I wish everyone the happiest of holidays. I’ll be back in the new year with an announcement. Milestone #2 is on the way!!!

# 99 # 99 # 99 # 99 # 99 # 99 # 99 # 99 # 99

Someone Burned My Book

I’ve moved! You’ll find me (and all of my previous posts) at my new address jadicampbell.com.

I’d been warned: the 5-Star reviews couldn’t last forever. “Be prepared,” people cautioned me. “Trolls are out there and sooner or later one of them will pan a book. It’s going to be ugly.” I don’t check for reviews on Amazon much as I take the long view. Writing a book is a slow process, and building up a list of reviews can take a while. I’ve been pleasantly surprised to receive consistently solid, glowing reviews.

Until now.

I got my first 1-Star review. The German guy says Tsunami Cowboys is the worst book he’d ever read. He didn’t finish it. And, after page 56, HE BURNED IT.

WTF? Really?? In the 21^st century, people are still burning books?!?

I went into shock. I was horrified. Shaken. Ashamed, even. In my worst nightmares, I never ever ever imagined someone would actually destroy my words like this. Until now, it was beyond my powers of imagination.

I got out a copy of the book. What could possibly be so offensive? I opened to page 56 and the peak of a chapter in which Coreen, one of the main characters, is trapped in a cult and can’t get out.

Ok…. Maybe the troll was upset by the topic. I sure was; that’s why I wrote about it. If he’d made it to the end of the book he would have learned the following: I’m religious. I believe in God. My heroine’s story continues well past the page where he stopped reading.

If he’d bothered with the author’s Afterword, he’d have learned my personal reasons for even including this thread in my book.

I’m appalled that someone would be so hateful. I questioned everything I am doing as a writer, and worried about the consequences of exercising my voice. Then I remembered: I just went to a high school reunion. It was a fantastic weekend spent seeing wonderful people again. By far one of the most lovely is a woman who was a missionary.

She’s read both my novels. At the reunion, she made a point of telling me that the story of Coreen and the cult disconcerted her, and she had to put Tsunami Cowboys down for a while. It hit a little too close to home. But, she said, she picked it back up a few months later, read it to the end, and liked the story I told very much.

So that reassures me.

Words contain a lot of power, more than we realize. My encounter with the troll really brings that realization home to me, and in the future I will pay closer attention. His other reviews have the same ugly caustic tone, so I’m not alone. I’m not sure if that makes me feel better, or worse.

As my dear writer buddy Nancy Carroll remarked: “You’re now in good company, Jadi. Think of the books that have been burned through the ages.”

Indeed.

Think about them.

NOTES: [1] http://www.ala.org/bbooks/

http://uwm.edu/libraries/exhibits/burnedbooks/

[2] I swear it just came to my notice that this is Banned Books Week: September 27th – October 3rd.

Tsunami Cowboys

Prepare to meet Todd, a hero with dangerous fantasies. Coreen, trapped in a cult. Ronnie, dreaming other people’s futures. Guy, waiting for disaster at a Christmas Market. And Lynn, the connecting thread, taking a train with a seductive stranger. By turns terrifying and funny, this is the story of people riding life’s waves… the tsunami cowboys.

It’s official: My new novel Tsunami Cowboys is available in paperback and eBook versions. Look for it on Amazon around the world. The following links will get you there for the US and Germany:Tsunami Cowboys (for Amazon.com) Tsunami Cowboys  (Amazon.de)

I’m excited and proud and tired and floating on air. This book is the results of the last two years of writing. Thanks for your encouragement and support. It has made this journey a real pleasure.

 

Book Excerpt: The Hostess 2

“I’m Lynn.”

“Josh. Nice to meet you, Lynn.”

“You’re joshing me, right?”

“Yeah, as in, I’m joshing you.” His voice had a strange note as if he were thinking, that old chestnut again.

His gaze swept me up and down. I sum myself up as average weight, median income, medium length brown hair (graying and dyed to hide that fact), and better than average features. Still attractive enough… for middle-aged. But Josh’s frank glance was admiring.

Bemused, I registered the fact that I was flattered.

We began the conversational short hand of strangers. “Lynn, where you off to?”

“I’m heading home.”

“I’m on my way to Portland,” Josh offered. “This is the tail end of a long business trip. I always take the train so I can work. I get a rental car after I arrive. But my God, this train’s packed!”

“I visit the coast the weekend before Thanksgiving, and bring back seafood,” I offered. “I barely fit my bags in the bin.”

The conversation stopped while we studied the menus the waiter brought. “Sea food stew,” I decided aloud. If the taste even remotely resembled the chowder I’d had at Mo’s Restaurant with my parents the day before, I’d be happy.

“The chicken,” Josh requested. “Can I talk the lady into joining me for some wine?”

“Actually, you can. I’d love a glass of rosé or white.” There’s something about train travel indeed… and it wasn’t like I’d be having airplane travel mile high sex with Josh in the bathroom. Is there a name for having sex on a moving train? I wondered suddenly.

Josh added, “…and the Semillon.” This time his smile was filled with promise.

I smiled back. When was the last time I’d flirted with someone?

The train staff had found their rhythms in the busy dining car. Our waiter was back almost immediately. He expertly opened a cabernet sauvignon. Josh swirled the wine in his glass and tried it, nodded his head. The waiter poured more and set the bottle down. Then he opened a second bottle, this one my white wine. “You don’t have to finish it,” Josh said when he saw my expression.

I decided to go with the flow. “Okay,” I nodded, and gave my approval. The wine tasted perfectly cold and crisply dry. The waiter set an ice bucket at the window. “Enjoy,” he said, and vanished back into the galley.

“Cheers.” Josh clicked his glass against mine and drank deeply. “Ah!” he set the empty glass back down and sighed with satisfaction. “So, are you getting out in Portland?”

***

Prepare to meet a hero with dangerous fantasies. A young woman trapped in a cult. A person who dreams other people’s futures. A man drinking glühwein at a Christmas Market as he waits for disaster. And Lynn, the connecting thread, taking a train trip with a seductive stranger. I’ll be posting the first pages to each chapter.

Committing my characters to an appearance on this blog makes them real. As of tonight, they exist beyond my imagination.

Here are the opening pages to my novel Tsunami Cowboys. This fifth chapter is titled, The Hostess.

Tsunami Cowboys will publish with Amazon in December, 2014.

Book Excerpt: The Hostess 1

“Time is the thing I am made of. Time is a river that sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that tears me apart, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.” – Jorge Luis Borges, “New Refutation of Time”, Other Inquisitions, 1952.

Well Trained

We filled every car and our suitcases, bags and packs threatened to topple from the bins. On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, the entire West coast was taking the train.

I tried to read. The book I held dated me: it was three-dimensional and had paper pages. In the seats around me people bent over electronic devices or talked in muted tones. A young couple slept with their arms around one another and a blanket draped across their legs and torsos. The retiree in the window seat ahead of me dozed, his head gently rocking.

The doors to the train car slid open and a good-looking man stepped through. Perhaps in his late forties, he wore a sweater over slacks and loafers, and carried a slim brief case.

I watched him tuck something into his pocket. Small change, I guessed.

His aura called out, inviting me to look closer. He had the tan of a man who went on golf safaris in the Southwest. His well-cut clothes hid the extra pounds around his waist. Perhaps he’d consulted with a wardrobe coordinator; shades of dark green in the nubby sweater suggested understated taste and male power. He passed my seat and I was at eye level to his crotch.

Ooh! I thought. This guy really is a big man.

When he reversed directions and backed up, I bent my head and pretended fascination with the cover of my book. He looked at the purse on the next seat. “I think this spot is mine.”

I moved my bag and he sat down. His smile vanished when he realized there was no room for the expensive brief case.

He stood back up and pushed at a large blue backpack on the rack across the aisle. The hiking boots laced to it swung, but otherwise nothing budged. He turned to the bin above my head as the train jolted. The man lost his balance and a hand smacked my shoulder; it would have stung if he’d been wearing a ring.

When I looked up, I was back at eye level with his crotch.

“I am so sorry,” he apologized as he fussed with the luggage over our seats. Satisfied, he moved out of my personal space. “Stupid space allowance!” He spoke to the air, but a smile was back.

I picked up my purse as he looked a question at me. “Lunch,” I said. I swayed my way through the train to the dining car.

A harried waiter led me to a table for two and asked, “Ma’am, would you mind sharing your table? I know you reserved a table for one, but we can use any free seats. These pre-holiday trains are always totally booked.”

“Of course!”

“We’d sure appreciate that.”

“It’s really no problem,” I assured him, and meant the words. I enjoy the random interaction with other train passengers. And I never cease to be amazed at how much information people willingly reveal about themselves to perfect strangers.

Dining on board a moving train as the landscape glides by is somehow magical. Who’d claim the chair across the table? Someone heading back home for the holidays or making a long trek cross-country? Or someone like me, visiting the coast?

Five minutes later there he was, sitting across rather than next to me: the man with the good clothes and big body. “Well, well. We meet again,” he said.

***

Prepare to meet a hero with dangerous fantasies. A young woman trapped in a cult. A person who dreams other people’s futures. A man drinking glühwein at a Christmas Market as he waits for disaster. And Lynn, the connecting thread, taking a train trip with a seductive stranger. I’ll be posting the first pages to each chapter.

Committing my characters to an appearance on this blog makes them real. As of tonight, they exist beyond my imagination.

Here are the opening pages to my novel Tsunami Cowboys. This fifth chapter is titled, The Hostess.

Tsunami Cowboys will publish with Amazon in December, 2014.

Book Excerpt: What A Guy 3

They encountered air turbulence two hours into the flight and the pilots lost time. Air traffic was backed up when they reached European airspace. At last they landed in Frankfurt, ninety minutes late. Guy slumped over in a deep sleep and noticed nothing.

He woke to a strange sensation that was the absence of motion. Denice and Tia wore anxious expressions, waiting for him to rouse. Someone had gotten his carry on suitcase down for him.

Tia clapped her hands while Guy looked around and tried to understand why the plane was empty. “Mr. Guy, you were awfully brave! We hit bumpy air! I thought it was going to be bad, my mommy even got out a barf bag, just in case.”

“Tia!” Denice sighed.

“But Mommy, you didn’t use it. You were fine.” She drew the word out, fi-yine. “Mr. Guy, you slept like a baby, like there was nothing to worry about. That really gave me courage. You were zonked! I watched and did just like you.” Tia put her head against the side of the seat, closed her eyes, and snored loudly.

“I snored?” The child was informing him that he’d passed out.

“Like a trooper! No, that’s for when someone’s swearing! It’s okay, Mommy,” she added serenely. “Mr. Guy snored like a… a brick house. No, that’s not it. Like, a house on fire.”

Guy and Denice laughed and Tia joined in, all three laughing as if they’d never stop. The Lufthansa personnel watching in the aisle laughed too, relieved that they didn’t have a dead drunk – or worse, much worse – dead international passenger on their hands after all.

Denice and Tia retrieved their luggage at Baggage Claim and all three stood before a destinations board in the terminal. “Thanks again for waiting for me,” Guy repeated; he was still groggy. As he stared dispirited at the board, Guy knew he couldn’t face another flight, no matter how short.

They were taking a train on to Landstuhl. “I’ll walk you to the train platforms. I missed my connecting flight so I think I’ll just catch a train. Hey, I’ll go to Stuttgart. Aren’t Porsche and Mercedes Benz there? I’ve always wanted to go to the Porsche factory.” He lied, suddenly inspired. He and his therapist had worked out alternate plans in case Guy reached Europe too jittery to fly on. He’d arrived days before the conference began, so that he might take his time getting there. Progressive, systematic desensitization, he reminded himself.

They followed airport signs to the connected train station. Tia rode on top of the luggage trolley as Guy pushed. “So,” he asked, “will you get to see much in Germany?”

“It was planned as a family vacation. Our trip here.” Denice glanced up at Tia, perched humming. “Joe’s in the hospital,” Denice explained softly. “An IED; they’re telling me his condition is ‘serious but manageable’. Whatever that means. For his sake and Tia’s, I’m trying to stay optimistic. I want to wait until I see him before saying anything to her. It’s bad enough how much I worry.”

“Good heavens.” As they continued walking Guy held Denice’s hand in his for a long minute, a therapist unable to think of a single comforting word to say.

“I have to believe,” Denice’s eyes were tender as she checked again on Tia, “this will have been worth it. Joe still believes freedom to worship and vote and live as you choose are worth fighting for. Regardless of the deeper reasons for the war. My husband’s motivated by wanting a better world. They’re helping local groups rebuild.

“He was standing outside a school for girls when the explosion happened.” She looked at her daughter. “It’s the second time that school’s been destroyed. Like I said: whatever the other dynamics going on, we both hope for a better world for everybody’s children. They feel insurmountable at times, the problems,” she admitted. “But it’s all one world now. We have to believe that, because we’re parents ourselves.”

They reached the train station and Denice and Tia departed on the next train. Guy felt forlorn once they were gone, but he ignored the cold and his sense of foreboding. He tried to be stoic as he waited on the platform. No matter what, he wasn’t climbing on another plane! Maybe, just maybe, I can afford to sail home. I hear the QEII’s nice, he mused as a white and red ICE train approached.

***

Prepare to meet a hero with dangerous fantasies. A young woman trapped in a cult. A person who dreams other people’s futures. A man drinking glühwein at a Christmas Market as he waits for disaster. And Lynn, the connecting thread, taking a train trip with a seductive stranger. I’ll be posting the first pages to each chapter.

Committing my characters to an appearance on this blog makes them real. As of tonight, they exist beyond my imagination.

Here are the opening pages to my novel Tsunami Cowboys. This fourth chapter is titled, What A Guy.

Tsunami Cowboys will publish with Amazon in December, 2014.

Book Excerpt: What A Guy 2

Despite himself he laughed. Where’d this precocious kid get her great outlook?

“I don’t know where she gets these lines. Tia always has such a great outlook.” Denice smiled with wry affection as she read his mind.

“But Mommy, why get scared? Planes only crash in moo–vies!”

“It’s not that we sit around watching disaster flicks,” Denice qualified. “I don’t need disaster films playing on the screen in our living room; I’ve got the one in my head.”

“We all have our fears,” Guy commiserated, remembering for a second or two that he was a therapist. The plane angled higher in the heavens and they felt the ascent despite the pressurized cabin. He gulped.

“It’s okay, Mr. Guy! We’re going up, not down, silly! Nothing to worry about.” Satisfied she’d calmed the irrational adults sitting to either side, Tia returned to the magazine pictures.

She started a cartoon as Guy and Denice chatted across her head and waited for the plane to reach optimal elevation and level out so Denice could get up.

“What’s taking you to Europe?”

“Her daddy’s currently serving in Afghanistan. Joe already had two tours in Iraq. We have Tia in a wonderful school and I’m reluctant to leave my job, so we stay in the States and meet him for school breaks and furloughs. We’re on our way to a base near Frankfurt,” she looked at her daughter and hesitated. “To Landstuhl,” Denice clarified. “For the holidays. Joe will be home for good soon but we had this trip planned already, a chance to get to see some more of Europe and where he’s been on and off for the last four years. Are you heading to Germany for business or vacation, or traveling somewhere further?”

The seatbelt lights pinged off. Denice stood up and retrieved a bag from the overhead bin.

“I have a layover in Frankfurt.” Guy drained the bottle she handed him. “Thanks! What was your question? Oh, what I’m heading to Europe for: a conference in Zurich. And I have pteromerhanophobia.”

The child looked back up at the sound of the curious word with so many syllables. “What’s that?”

“Fear of flying.”

“Which part?” Tia broke it down matter-of-factly and her manner was eerily similar to his therapist. “Afraid of being stuck inside and you can’t leave? Or something bad happening? That’s silly, because flying’s safer than riding in a car. Are you really scared of being in a plane crash?”

“No!” Guy squinched his eyes tightly closed. When he reopened them, Tia and her mother were staring. “I’m scared of being in another crash. I was in a forced landing once.”

“But, Mr. Guy, you’re alive.” Tia kicked her legs impatiently. “The crash couldn’t have been that bad.”

Denice laid a hand on her daughter’s knees to stop the kicking. “What happened?”

“I was on my way back from a conference, ironically one concerning phobia therapies. Little did I know.”

“But, what happened?” Tia persisted.

“We landed in a field,” Guy told her, but he stopped there. It would be cruel to scare a child. And, as his own therapist kept reminding him, pointless to keep reliving the traumatic event. The landing had been a bumpy one indeed.

After that, he drove the entire distance halfway across the country rather than fly to a symposium. A second professional trip had involved a long train ride. Guy even turned down a vacation with Stan and Lynn, which forced him to acknowledge the problem.

The Jungian conference in Switzerland offered a perfect opportunity to overcome his phobia. Guy had been comforted by the thought of a roomy jumbo plane. And it would be professionally fascinating; he’d made a snap decision to attend. Now he asked himself, Why didn’t I pick a really short hop instead? You idiot! Guy closed his eyes again and wondered when the pills and Benedryl would finally take effect.

***

Prepare to meet a hero with dangerous fantasies. A young woman trapped in a cult. A person who dreams other people’s futures. A man drinking glühwein at a Christmas Market as he waits for disaster. And Lynn, the connecting thread, taking a train trip with a seductive stranger. I’ll be posting the first pages to each chapter.

Committing my characters to an appearance on this blog makes them real. As of tonight, they exist beyond my imagination.

Here are the opening pages to my novel Tsunami Cowboys. This fourth chapter is titled, What A Guy.

Tsunami Cowboys will publish with Amazon in December, 2014.