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Cool crescent of proportional perfection, the nautilus shell gleams in a slash of sunlight. A lustrous comma contradiction of itself, its form pale punctuation. I palm the sensuous pearly curve, wondering from which languid reef it came. I sense the sacred geometry, the swirl of luminosity deep within, the hypnotic tumble into slippery darkening shadow. There is a flawless symmetry in these nacred walls, these ordered wavelets of calcified ooze from long forgotten mantle tissues. I cup the slim shell to my ear - the sea-sound is a muted hush. No thing resides within its burnished cavernosities. I stroke the stiff ridges of past lives, the vacant tidal chambers of translucent armour, protecting naught.
You can shape your true story like fiction and incorporate the emotion that brings it to life.
Night The vast silent weight of limitless indigo sky weighs on my ears like relentless waves on a broken furrowed field. The grass, seared to sisal by the blasts of July, crackles under my feet. I am but dust in the cosmos under a bulbous pearl of moon.
Note: I seriously started writing The Fifth Man (Book 2 in the Kenora & Jake series) while I was in Ajijic, Mexico in 2019. This post was written in April 2020, when we were still in the thick of pandemic restrictions. I’ve read many articles about how we, as writers, should approach stories where Covid-19 is part of the setting. To include or not to include the pandemic in my novels, that’s the question? Twelve months ago, who could have predicted (and been believed) that life around the globe would sputter to a slowdown such as we’ve never seen. Investment portfolios are in ruins, travel is done for now, holidays and special celebrations are being held via video link and grocery shopping is an exercise in managing personal safety. Thousands of sewists around the world are making cloth pandemic masks and surgical caps because local supplies have run short. Of course, if you write dystopian, fantasy or sci-fi genres, then our current situation may make your world-building easier. For me, not so much. Kenora Tedesco, the female protagonist in my novels, is a private investigator. The house she bought after her divorce is on a small lake north of Toronto. That means she either drives south or takes the commuter train to get to work. She works for a company located in mid-town Toronto – Barclay, Benford & Friday. The firm specializes in industrial risk mitigation. Her love interest, Jake, a retired Metro Police Superintendent, is CEO of the company. The people he employs include lawyers, former police officers, accountants and forensics specialists. Because she’s still considered a rookie, her mentor Bosco Poon, who worked with Jake at Metro and is his business partner, sends Kenora out and about various locations in Toronto to hone her skills at going undercover, interviewing informants or collecting information. Learning to interpret body language and determine deception requires face-to-face interactions. Private investigation is not a desk job. Kenora’s in constant contact with her co-workers, folks on the street, clients, etc. She hangs out at courthouses, restaurants and malls where people she needs to track, investigate or talk to might congregate. There are social events she attends with Jake to schmooze existing and potential clients. She works out, goes to the market and the public library. And she has friends and family, too. I considered whether to have Kenora and Jake isolated due to the virus. Separately, not together. In fact, I started writing a piece where they conducted business from a distance. But it just didn’t work. It felt fake. They have to be out and about to carry on their budding romance. BB&F staff have to investigate people, places and things. Bad stuff has to happen so that she can get herself out of scrapes. Wearing a mask and social distancing as plot devices or sources of conflict? No. I unearthed an old draft where I had her racing home due to a family emergency. Old, as in August 2010. Can you believe it – that’s how long it has taken for me to get to this point! But that was before I realized I’d crammed two books into one. To get one book into a manageable, marketable size, I had to spend a few years surgically separating Book 1 and Book 2. Originally, the plot device/tension-builder was the interruption of her travels by the eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland. I would have had to set the story in 2010, which would have required too much research and rewriting. I abandoned that idea. After months of cogitation and false starts, I’m back to my original story line that takes place starting in 2018. There was enough going on in the world to keep things interesting, plot-wise. But freedom to meet and travel are important enough that volcanoes and pandemics just won’t work for me. Kenora doesn’t need a pandemic. She can generate enough action on her own while she tries to be the best PI she can be! So it’s back to the keyboard – not excuses.
The old man thrills to read the dirty bits where they’re most unexpected. Book shop displays, pale pages splayed wanton behind glass for all to see those slight sweet smuts; words that sound like what they mean - the awe of throb; the thrust of pearly breast, an itch to ‘b’, the hush of saucy whispers simply nothing – not even sweet unless she’s fifteen and fresh, her ink unsmudged. Cookbooks are better than prose, he finds, exposed riots of flushed cooks and rosier fruits – tumbling cherries burst with scarlet sap, the candied apples ooze, caramel toffee drapes a spoon; apricots slump over-ripe on a steamy counter in a drizzled honey bun kitchen - salacious orgies of what ifs, could be. A lap of pooled untempered chocolate, gauchely dark in its shadowy bowl; culturing yogurt teased from tepid milk, turned swollen and bulbous in bellied jars like the softened shape of virgins. After the slather of soft veiny cheese, the smack of cocktails and the seep of fruit juice on diner’s chin, then tussles at the table. Seduced by sweat peas bathed in butter, with lobster tails and a melt of cheddar spuds, the climax a shameless tart of passionfruit and mangoes, An errant breeze - the pages whorl meaty invitations to eat, slurp, stroke berry nipples stemmed by fingers, nails dirty from the dumpster. The words keep coming. A breathy stain of ‘O’ on the window, a blotch of forehead grease - the old man hitches up the cord that holds his pants and turns away, packing an appetite uncontained by empty pockets.