Thursday, December 26, 2019

Don Travis: Impotent-Chapter 2 (A Serial Novella)

Don Travis: Impotent-Chapter 2 (A Serial Novella): dontravis.com blog post #368 Courtesy of NeedPix.com Last week, we left our corporate executive Forrest De la Roche and his rescue...

Impotent-Chapter 2 (A Serial Novella)


dontravis.com blog post #368

Courtesy of NeedPix.com
Last week, we left our corporate executive Forrest De la Roche and his rescuer, cowboy Austin Andino, in the cab of Austin’s Jeep in the middle of a raging thunderstorm. Let’s pick it up from there.

*****
IMPOTENT

“What’re you doing out here in this storm?” the slickered figure asked.
“Acting the fool,” De la Roche answered. “Decided on the scenic route to San Ysidro same moment the Good Lord decided on the second flood.”
The driver flashed a smile that reached down into De la Roche’s groin. “Promised He wouldn’t do that. Didn’t anybody warn you August is our rainy season up here?”
“Wasn’t smart enough to ask,” he acknowledged. “Just took off blind.”
“And wrecked a fine piece of machinery. Lucky you crashed where you did. The road drops off into Cebolla Canyon at the top of that hill.”
He laughed harshly. “Tell me about it. I found a friendly tree before I went over the edge. The accident happened when I back-peddled down the road.”
The young man gave a chuckle that came up out of his belly. “Old Beulah’s saved more’n one careless soul.”
“Old Beulah? You name your trees around here?”
The driver pushed his hat to the back of his head, dribbling water down his slicker. “That one we do. She’s been Old Beulah for as long as I can remember. Where you headed?”
“Albuquerque. I have a meeting there tomorrow. I’ll be glad to pay you to drive me there. Square it with your boss or whatever.”
Another chuckle. Despite his misery, De la Roche became aroused.
“You could offer me a thousand dollars a mile and you’d still miss your meeting. Nobody’s going anywhere until the county or the Forest Service or the pipeline people get out the graders. Is it an important meeting?”
“Yes, but one of my execs can handle it. Do you have a phone at your place?”
“Cell. Not worth a damn in this weather.”
“Same as mine,” he acknowledged. “I feel so damned impotent! Well,” he patted his briefcase, “I’ve got a GPU in here. My people will pick me up by air as soon as the weather clears.”
“GPU? Ground Positioning Unit? Be damned! Haven’t seen one of those since I was in the army.” The young man stirred in the seat as if reminded of something uncomfortable. “You can stay at my place until then. According to the last radio report this storm’s a big one. Likely to last into tomorrow.”
“Appreciate your hospitality. Uh, is it far? Your place, I mean?”
“Couple of miles. I have a little spread up here. Run some cattle on my hundred acres and a permit in the Forest. All the land around here’s National Forest except for some private plots like mine here and there.” He tossed a thumb over his shoulder at the stock trailer. “Today I had to come for a cow with a bummed up leg.”
“Lucky for me that you did,” the executive commented.
The downpour became so heavy that driving demanded all of Austin’s attention and made conversation all but impossible. De la Roche watched the cowboy out of the corner of his eye and recalled the first time he’d been with a man…well, with a boy, anyway.
It had been in high school. Everyone on the soccer team debated about whether one particular kid was queer or not. In typical fashion, De la Roche stayed late one night in the locker room and waved a hard-on at the suspect. In a flash, the guy was on his knees in front of him. That was as far as he’d planned on taking things, but he lost the will to protest. He was shocked that the experience turned out to be genuine pleasure instead of mere relief. He never alleviated the team’s curiosity, but he never went back to the kid, either. Leaking water all over his side of the Jeep, he let out a small chuckle at the recollection.
Austin Andino’s ‘home place’ was an authentic log cabin that would have looked ramshackle if it had been big enough. Big common room, two small bedrooms and a bath plus a walk-in pantry. Maybe a thousand square feet, the engineer in De la Roche calculated. Tight, cozy. A solid sanctuary against inclement weather like this. In the middle of August, he was wet and chilled to the bone at around eighty-eight hundred feet above sea-level. Summer had disappeared… at least in these mountains.
The cowboy opened the door to the cabin and snapped on the lights. They promptly flickered and went out. “It happens every time we have a good rain, so I’m prepared.” The tall man soon had a log fire and kerosene lanterns casting a warm glow around the little building.
“Water’ll still be hot, Austin said. “You need a scalding bath to chase away the chill. I’ll lay out a couple of blankets to wrap up in after you finish. Whiskey’s under the sink, if you need a bracer. I’m gonna go tend my cow.”
“Need any help,” De la Roche asked, fighting to keep his teeth from chattering.
“No, thanks. Get dry and warm. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
When younger man was gone, he poured a straight shot of Wild Turkey and got out of his cold, sodden clothing. Under the hot spray of a shower bath, De la Roche rubbed life back into his numb limbs and gloried in the warmth.
Wrapped in two soft blankets, De la Roche wandered the cabin, feeling the need for activity. He was about to get dressed when Austin reentered, shaking off rainwater and shedding his Stetson and slicker. What had appeared a big, beefy man turned out to be a tall, rangy cowboy with the broad shoulders and deep chest of a gymnast, and the trim lower torso and hips of a horseback rider. By the firelight in the gloom of the rainy day, those attractive angles and planes De la Roche had noticed earlier settled into a remarkably handsome countenance. That wasn’t quite right. Too powerful and commanding to be classically handsome, the raw masculinity of Austin’s face overwhelmed the softer, somehow more feminine beauty of a mere Adonis. The power of the intense agate eyes alone made him striking. De la Roche was momentarily speechless, a phenomenon new and slightly uncomfortable.
“Got the leg fixed,” Austin said in a deep voice as he stripped off his damp shirt.
It took De la Roche a moment to realize the man was talking about his injured cow. Gawking at the smooth, broad chest loaded with muscles and finely pelted by short brown hair between the huge areoles, he closed his mouth with a snap before coming up with a response.
“No complications?”
“Nope. She’ll be all right. With beef prices the way they are, she represents a fair investment,” the cowboy said, drying his torso with a towel. “Of course, she wouldn’t even make a blip on your financial radar.”
De la Roche permitted his surprise to show. “You know who I am?”
Austin bent to a table, muscles rippling with the movement, and tossed him the US News and World Report issue that covered the acquisition of a pipeline company for something in excess of three billion dollars. There was a closeup of De la Roche in the article.
“When did you know?” he asked.
“What you said about your people picking you up by air.” Austin paused a moment and swiped at his flat, ridged belly with the towel, one of the most unconsciously erotic movements the older man had ever seen. “Just don’t try to throw your money at me.”
“You got a very important man out of a very bad jam, and that’s worth something in my world.”
“In mine, it’s simply being a good neighbor.”
The throaty growl grabbed De la Roche in the gut. “Well, neighbor, maybe I can reciprocate one day.”
“If you ever find me lost in the canyons of downtown LA, feel free,” the cowboy laughed.
“A rugged individualist. I like that.” He laughed, stimulated as much by what he heard as by what he saw.
Austin’s shower was by necessity a short one; De la Roche had used most of the hot water. In a few minutes, the cowboy strode into the room with a towel clasped around his trim waist, pausing only to indicate a door. “That’s your bedroom for the night.”
Feeling that an opportunity had been missed, De la Roche entered the small room and wiped down his soaked bag before throwing it on the bed. He donned a comfortable pair of chinos and an expensive sweatshirt, assessing the situation while he dressed. He wanted Austin Andino, and he was accustomed to getting what he wanted. But maybe this wasn’t the typical situation. The young man had already shown that he was not interested in his money. Although De la Roche was a handsome man in good physical shape, he seriously doubted that would get him what he wanted in this instance. What was left?
He sat on the bed and watched the rain soak the mountainside outside of the window. Viewed from the warmth and safety of a solid log cabin, it was beautiful… beautiful and nourishing. It made the mountains what they were. And what was Austin Andino? A cow man. An individualist. A maverick. Independent. A man who would respect power… be drawn to it.
But all the power lay on the other side at the moment. He was totally dependent on the young cowboy for his very existence for the next couple of days. He was more refugee than power broker. He had to change that. How? Not by bragging about his accomplishments; that would turn the young man off. It was simple. His mind was his power. Use it!

*****
It looks as though a mental gauntlet has been thrown down. Will Austin pick it up? Did he even recognize the industrialist’s attraction to him? We’ll see. Next week, Chapter 3

The following are buy links for the recently released The Voxlightner Scandal.


Now my mantra: Keep on reading and keep on writing. You have something to say, so say it!

My personal links: (Note the change in the Email address because I’m still getting remarks on the old dontravis21@gmail.com. PLEASE DON’T USE THAT ONE.)
                                                                                                    
Facebook: www.facebook.com/donald.travis.982
Twitter: @dontravis3

Buy links to Abaddon’s Locusts:


See you next week.

Don

Thursday, December 19, 2019

Impotent (A Serial Novella)


dontravis.com blog post #367
  
Courtesy of NeedPix.com
I’m going to try something different (at least to me) this week. I want to publish a heretofore unpublished novella in serial form. I’ve done short stories in installments, but this is quite a bit longer. We’ll give it a try, at any rate. Please let me know how you like this first installment.

*****
IMPOTENT

          Forrest De la Roche swiped at the cold, damp windshield. The Volvo’s defogger failed to clear the mist inside, just as its wipers could not cope with the downpour outside, leaving him virtually blind. It appeared to be twilight, although the dashboard clock and his gold Rolex insisted it was not yet two in the afternoon. Who in the hell knew it rained like this in New Mexico? Admittedly this was northern New Mexico… but still.
          For a brief moment, De la Roche surrendered to a sense of overwhelming depression, something entirely foreign to him. As the chairman and CEO of ConstructCo International, he had controlled his own destiny and that of thousands of employees for years. Problems were simply knots to be undone by the application of knowledge, experience, logic, and brainpower, and this situation was no different
          An inveterate workaholic, he had felt the sudden need to snatch a couple of days from his crowded schedule, and a solo trip to a meeting in Albuquerque seemed just the ticket. He deplaned the company’s executive jet in Farmington, a small New Mexico city in the Four Corners Area, rented the Volvo, and started driving, ignoring demands that one of his security staff accompany him. He wanted to forget about White House invitations, Congressional hearings, power lunches, and merger strategies while motoring cross-country in the superbly engineered Swedish automobile.
          Almost immediately upon leaving Farmington, he ran into long stretches of road construction. After consulting a road map, De la Roche struck out across the Jemez Mountains, planning on rejoining the highway at some place called San Ysidro where the construction would be behind him. In any case, the prospect of a mountain trip pleased him more than the flat, high-desert country he had traveled so far. A few miles east of a quaint little town called Cuba, he ran out of pavement and really began enjoying himself.
          The first big raindrops approached from behind and failed to give adequate warning of what was to come. The landscape faded from green to gray behind a heavy veil of water. The weather system hovering to the west all day had rushed up to catch him by surprise. De la Roche pulled to the side of the road to punch up his satellite phone. Nothing but static. He glanced at the briefcase on the seat beside him and assumed the Global Positioning Unit inside was doing its job. Past experience with mountain storms told him the front would rush past, leaving only the worry of washouts and bog holes. Since the road was well graveled, he threw the Volvo in gear and continued. 
          Before long he suspected he had miscalculated. The rain relentlessly pelted the countryside. Frequent flashes of lightning momentarily brightened the day-turned- night, but the deluge drowned out the thunderclaps except when a bolt hit especially close. One strike on a stretch of road a hundred yards ahead of him excited the hair on his forearms. The gravel foundation that gave such comfort and confidence began to thin, and in places totally disappear, but by that time he was committed. Reducing his speed, he doggedly kept driving.
          Half a mile later, he powered through a stream of water rapidly eroding the dirt road. Once across the newly formed creek, he realized he’d foreclosed returning the way he came. The roadway would be completely washed out in a matter of minutes. In typical fashion, he shrugged and continued his slow way over the sodden road.
          He was climbing now, and his primary worry became the condition of the roadway. On sudden, severe down-slopes typical of mountain roads, the car planed on treacherous caliche clay. More than once, he slid off the slick road into water-filled ditches, but the valiant machine always pulled itself clear... until it didn’t.
          Cursing vehemently, he crawled out into the pounding rain to stuff rocks and branches under the bogged wheels with little hope that it would help. To his amazement, the rear wheels grabbed, and the Volvo gradually tore itself from the mud with loud sucking noises that sounded amazingly like Griego, the hunky masseur at this discrete little club in San Diego.
           The car topped a steep hill and entered a flat, open meadow. Negotiating the long gradual curve to the right, he almost did not see the fallen tree until too late. Even so, he calmly pumped the brakes gently. The automobile fishtailed alarmingly but stopped short of the pine blocking the road.
          Fighting panic, he noticed a track leading off to the left, undoubtedly an old logging road. With no other real alternative, he urged the Volvo on its uncertain way into the misty forest. A short time later, the rough track connected with another graveled road. Relieved, he turned right and prayed this would lead him to civilization.
          One hour and no more than five miles later, the road dropped abruptly to snake down the side of a steep ravine. He pumped the brakes, but it did no good. In the terrifying moments before the car gently caressed a big Ponderosa, halting its uncontrolled forward movement, De la Roche noticed a Forest Service sign announcing Cañon Cebolla. As he stared down the two hundred-foot precipitous drop just beyond the friendly pine to the distant floor of the canyon, his stomach dropped into his scrotum.
          Mindful of the shallow root systems of these mountain pines, even one so formidable as this, he threw the car into reverse. Alarmed that the rear wheels spun sideways, swinging the nose of the car free from the protecting tree trunk, he hit the seat belt button and prepared to abandon the vehicle when the tires found purchase and threw the car backward. Removing his foot from the gas pedal, he allowed gravity to take him wherever it wished, so long as it wasn’t down into the canyon. Where it took him was on an unrestrained slide back along the sloppy road. The car slued sideways as it picked up speed before bouncing across a washed-out furrow and crashing against a boulder.
          The rain quit abruptly as he climbed out of the car. The respite was only momentarily; another wall of water approached from a hundred yards down the road. Rushing through an inspection, De la Roche found the right rear fender crushed and the wheel beneath it bent at an awkward angle. The Volvo wasn’t going anywhere except for a piggyback ride aboard a wrecker. Unwilling to risk the steep road down into the canyon, he tackled the hill behind the disabled car. After falling twice and sliding on his L. L. Bean-clad butt all the way back to the car, he turned at right angles to the hill, dug the length of his soft Italian shoes into the mud, and side-stepped his way to the top.
          Despite hours in a gym and a disciplined exercise regimen, he was breathing laboriously. It was the altitude, he told himself, exhaling white vapor into the mountain atmosphere. Just before the rain came again, he caught the distant growl of a laboring motor. Immediately, he began running down the road like some panicked greenhorn in pursuit of what may or may not be a vehicle. The rain struck, descending in angry torrents that blinded and rendered him deaf. He floundered on, clutching at the faint hope of salvation. Chilled to the bone, he nonetheless began to sweat heavily as he slipped and slid on the untrustworthy clay.
          Then he faltered, coming to a halt with his hands clutching his knees while he fought for breath. Out of the corner of his eye he caught movement! Lights! A car! Awkwardly, he stumbled ahead, understanding immediately that the machine was on a sidetrack intersecting the road fifty yards ahead of him. The vehicle towed a stock trailer so the driver would not attempt the descent into Cebolla Canyon. The car would turn away from him if he did not attract its attention. Given the lashing rain, the driver would be concentrating on the road ahead of him.
          He wouldn’t make it to the intersection in time! The headlights shimmering through the rain approached the turn-off while he was still twenty yards away. Realizing that he wore dark clothing, De la Roche tore off his windbreaker and quickly reversed it, flapping the tan lining frantically. The vehicle, a Jeep, reached the intersection and turned in the opposite direction. He nearly collapsed from fear and disappointment.
          Halfway into the turn, the brake lights flashed. The Jeep drifted to a halt and sat puffing pale clouds of fog at him. A yellow-slickered figure in a Stetson emerged from the cab of the vehicle and peered through the falling rain.
          De la Roche, reaching down inside himself to reclaim his dignity, calmly put on the soaked windbreaker for the scant protection it afforded before walking toward the vehicle with as much poise as he could muster on the slippery surface. The driver, a large figure obscured by the pelting rain, approached on foot.
          “Trouble?” asked a basso-profundo voice when they were five yards apart.
          De la Roche downplayed the thing. “You might say that. Car’s propped up on a rock at the bottom of the hill,” he half-turned and gestured behind him.
          “Let’s take a look,” the figure said, striding past him, amazingly sure-footed on the treacherous surface.
          De la Roche had the impression of a big, beefy man. Young. Confident. Capable. “It’s disabled,” he called, turning to follow the yellow oilcloth raincoat.
          “Blocking the road?” The voice was muffled by the failing rain.
          “Halfway. Rear end’s in the ditch; front’s sticking out some.”
          “Better do something about it.”
          The man preceded him down the slope, digging in the heels of his calf-high waders to keep his sliding to a minimum. De la Roche almost plowed into him from behind when he stopped beside the Volvo.
          “Let’s see if we can shove the front end into the ditch.” In a move De la Roche admired, the stranger picked out some hefty rocks and stomped them into the greasy mud for leverage. The wet clay made the task reasonably easy. Soon the handsome black car sat forlornly in a water-filled ditch at the side of the road.
          “Help you carry your things?” the man asked, pushing his dripping hat back on his head during another brief lull in the downpour, revealing an immensely pleasing face of angles and wind-burned hues.
          Cowboy for some ranch. About thirty. Good-looking. Sexy as hell. And a Godsend.
          “Thanks,” he responded aloud, allowing the stranger to take his overnight bag while he claimed the briefcase.
          They reached the Jeep just as the rain started in earnest again. Safe from the deluge for the moment, the cowboy eased his vehicle and trailer out onto the road before glancing over at De la Roche and shooting out a hand.
          “Austin Andino,” the cowboy yelled over sound of rain slamming against the roof.
          Impressed by the grip, he responded. “Forrest De la Roche.”

*****
Well, now they’ve met. And they’re stranded in the middle of the northern New Mexico mountains in a horrendous rainstorm. At the outset, I said this was a novella, which gives me time to develop characters, unlike a short story. We already know that Forrest De la Roche, big shot or no, occasionally likes to get it on, like with Griego the masseur. But we don’t know anything about the desires of a big cowboy, do we? Not yet. At any rate, the Los Angeles executive usually is in control of things. But now he’s at the mercy of a strange cowboy. He’s in an unaccustomed condition… he’s impotent.

The following are buy links for the recently released The Voxlightner Scandal.


Now my mantra: Keep on reading and keep on writing. You have something to say, so say it!

My personal links: (Note the change in the Email address because I’m still getting remarks on the old dontravis21@gmail.com. PLEASE DON’T USE THAT ONE.)
                                                                                                    
Facebook: www.facebook.com/donald.travis.982
Twitter: @dontravis3

Buy links to Abaddon’s Locusts:


See you next week.

Don

Thursday, December 12, 2019

Hector Running Wolf and Billy Youngston


dontravis.com blog post #366
  
A Running Wolf -
Courtesy of Free Images
Wow! Got a lot of hits on The Voxlightner Scandal last week. Hope every one of them buys a copy of the book.

This week, a piece of flash fiction by my fellow Oklahoman Mark Wildyr caught my eye. It’s short and pithy and gets its point across in a hurry… which is the object of such short-short pieces. At any rate, it’s something he posted on his web site in July of 2016. He’s given me permission to post it on my site.

Here goes. Hope you enjoy the read.


*****
HECTOR RUNNING WOLF AND BILLY YOUNGSTON
By Mark Wildyr
“Billy?”
“Huh?”
“You wanna do it?”
My back went cold from goosebumps while my groin caught fire. We were out in the woods at the old lean-to we’d made back when we were kids. It wasn’t the first time I’d thought about what he was saying. Not by a long shot. But Hector was a coyote, which was a trickster in his culture. Sometimes he’d come out with these outlandish suggestions and then make a joke of them. Mostly they were for fun, but sometimes they bit.
I didn’t even know why we were best friends. Sons of a white farmer and a Creek carpenter, we were an unlikely pair. White sugar and red pepper, my mom used to say with a shake of her head. But friends we were, ever since we’d laid eyes on one another in middle school five years back.
I remember the first time we went skinny dipping together the summer after we met. We came out of the water with him examining me like I was a mule he was intent on buying, while I snatched furtive glimpses of his equipment. That pretty well summed up the difference between us.
As time went by, our friendship strengthened. On my part, it was almost exclusive, but he was lots more social than I was. I admit to being jealous of his other friends. Seemed like they shared lots more with him than I did. Of course, they did… an entire culture. But it gradually dawned on me that I got more of his time than any of the others. Shoot, than all the others, and that was what counted.
I didn’t know if half a minute or half an hour had passed since he asked his question, but I answered it anyway.
“Don’t make no difference to me one way or the other.”
The air seemed charged with electricity like when a storm’s approaching. The surrounding pines dropped their sharp scent on us like it was a tangible thing. I grew aware of strange things. The toes in my boots. A beetle crawling over the back of my right hand. A squirrel fussing from the oak tree overhead. And the long, lanky form of Hector Running Wolf lying beside me.
The world turned normal again as disappointment rose within me. I took a breath and tried to relax my taunt nerves.
And then he reached for me.

*****
I wonder what they did? Was it fumbling kid’s stuff? Or did Hector Running Wolf turn it into a real experience for Billy Youngston. Mark’s story allows you to finish it according to your own fantasy. Have at it!

The following are buy links for The Voxlightner Scandal.


Now my mantra: Keep on reading and keep on writing. You have something to say, so say it!

My personal links: (Note the change in the Email address because I’m still getting remarks on the old dontravis21@gmail.com. PLEASE DON’T USE THAT ONE.)
                                                                                                    
Facebook: www.facebook.com/donald.travis.982
Twitter: @dontravis3

Buy links to Abaddon’s Locusts:


See you next week.

Don

Thursday, December 5, 2019

Voxlightner Scandal’s Out, So Let’s Take a Look at It


dontravis.com blog post #365
  
Artist: Maria Fanning
DSP released The Voxlightner Scandal, the sixth book in my BJ Vinson mystery series, last month. I’d like to present an excerpt of that novel for you this week. Part of the Blurb for the book serves to set up the narrative. Take a look:

No good deed goes unpunished, as investigator B. J. Vinson is about to discover.

Writer John Pierce Belhaven was murdered before he could reveal the name of another killer--one connected to the biggest scandal to rock Albuquerque in years. Two of the city's most prominent citizens--Barron Voxlightner and Dr. Walther Stabler--vanished in 2004, along with fifty million dollars looted from Voxlightner Precious Metals Recovery Corp. It only makes sense that poking into that disappearance cost Belhaven his life.

But BJ isn't so sure.


The following excerpt comes in Chapter 1. In the first part, BJ is calling his old partner from his days on the Albuquerque Police Department, Lt. Gene Enriquez, to solicit some information on the author’s death, but also to clear his investigation with the police. He always does this before snooping into an active police investigation. The second part is a conversation between BJ and the love of his life, Paul Barton, about the case.

*****
THE VOXLIGHTNER SCANDAL

Ignoring the mayor’s call, I scheduled my testimony on the embezzlement case with the ADA before dialing Gene’s private number. Our phone conversations, although increasingly rare, followed a pattern. Brusque greetings and catching up on domestic affairs before getting down to business. Given Gene’s family of five children, most afflicted with the dreaded teenage condition, he talked a lot more than I did. Today was no different. After he filled me in on Glenda and the brood, I brought him up to date with news of Paul and me. Once everything was covered, I asked if there was a police investigation of the Belhaven death.
“You mean the writer toasted in his garage? Why? Should there be?”
“You know the answer to that better than I do, but Paul’s convinced something’s funny. Claims Belhaven wouldn’t have attempted to repair a lawn mower or anything else. He wasn’t a hands-on type of guy.”
“We’ve had that feedback too.”
“So you’re looking into the death?”
“Like usual, we’re satisfying ourselves everything’s on the up and up… unless the medical investigator declares it an accidental death.”
“Paul wants to write a story on it.”
“Have him touch base with a detective named Roy Guerra. He’s handling it for us.”
*****
Midafternoon I heard Paul’s familiar voice in the outer office. Hazel’s delighted rejoinder hinted I might be relieved of my current task, at least momentarily. My office manager-cum-surrogate mother—although totally perplexed by my gay life—nonetheless loved Paul as much as she did me. After a hug and a once-over from Hazel, he came through the doorway to invade my private space, and a welcome incursion it was. I never tired of looking on his handsome features.
“Hi. Am I interrupting anything?”
“Nothing uninterruptable,” I quipped. “Come on in.”
“I talked to Detective Guerra. We’re meeting here later, if that’s okay. Thanks for getting the contact for me.”
“Pleased to do it. What did he say?”
“He has reservations about Belhaven’s death, and I added to them.”
“Any theories?”
“Couple. I found out Pierce was interviewed on TV the afternoon he died. The interviewer quizzed him about his new book, and his answers might have cost him his life.”
“Why do you say that?” I asked as we moved to the conference table in the corner of my office.
“He writes—or wrote—mysteries. Fiction. But according to the interview, his next book was going to be based on an actual event. Do you remember the Voxlightner blowup a few years ago?”
I nodded. “A big scandal. I was still at APD, so it was probably late 2003 or early ’04.”
Paul flipped out a notebook and clicked his ballpoint pen. “What do you remember about it?”
“Gene and I weren’t assigned the case, so I just remember bits and pieces. One of the local lights, a guy named Barron Voxlightner, and a fellow named Stabler found acres and acres of mine tailings in Arizona that tested positive for commercial grade silver and gold. All they needed to do was extract the precious metals and sell them.”
“Sounds like a sure thing,” he said.
“That’s what everybody thought. The whole town wanted a piece of the action. The money poured in. People went crazy.”
Paul checked his notes. “I take it they formed a company called Voxlightner Precious Metals Recovery to do the project.”
“Right. They took VPMR—as it became known—public and raised fifty million.”
“That’s a lot of dough.”
“Absolutely. And yet the bottom fell out within six months. It turned out the tests were rigged. The tailings were worthless. But before the hammer fell, Voxlightner and Stabler vanished, and the lawyer exposing the fraud was murdered. The thing was never solved.”
Paul’s face assumed a thoughtful look. “When I was a kid, I thought anyone called Voxlightner was royalty.”


*****
I hope the above is enough to hook you on the book sufficiently to follow the next chapter in the career of Burleigh J. Vinson… do you blame him for going by BJ?

The following are buy links for the book”


Now my mantra: Keep on reading and keep on writing. You have something to say, so say it!

My personal links: (Note the change in the Email address because I’m still getting remarks on the old dontravis21@gmail.com. PLEASE DON’T USE THAT ONE.)
                                                                                                    
Facebook: www.facebook.com/donald.travis.982
Twitter: @dontravis3

Buy links to Abaddon’s Locusts:


See you next week.

Don

Thursday, November 28, 2019

A Thanksgiving Day Lesson on the Interrobang


dontravis.com blog post #364
  
Courtesy of pl.m.wikipedia.com
First of all, a happy Thanksgiving Day wish to all my readers, foreign and domestic. I say that because last month, I received 2000 hits from Israel, 800 from Russia, and almost as many from Hong Kong, and the Netherlands.

Today’s post was inspired by two things:

First, it’s a holiday, and not many people will indulge in the practice of checking some guy’s blog.

Second, a recent reading in our Wordwrights Writing Class.

Last Monday, one of our members read an original poem to the class, in which he used both a question mark and a comma to end a sentence. This prompted a discussion of why this unusual pairing. Unusual but not unheard of. Upon returning home after class, I dragged out a paper I’d given the class two years ago. I found it interesting and hope you will as well. The tip is reproduced below.



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WORDWRIGHTS WEEKLY TIP #67       For Monday 7/10/17

A deviation from the norm this week. Last Monday, Stan Rhine introduced us to a form of punctuation called the interrobang (also known as the interabang), which was unfamiliar to most of us. Let’s take a look at it.


The interrobang was the concept of Martin K. Speckter, the head of an advertising agency, who believed that ads would look better if copywriters conveyed surprised rhetorical questions using a single mark. He introduced his idea in the magazine TYPEtalks in 1962.

As you can see from the glyph above, the interrobang is a fusion of the exclamation point and the question mark used in informal English to ask a question in an excited manner, express excitement or disbelief in the form of a question, or to ask a rhetorical question.

Because many fonts do not contain such a symbol, some writers use them in succession (?! or !?). However, I produced an interrobang glyph from Microsoft Word’s Character Map by using ALT+8253 (‽).

The Chicago Manual of Style is silent on interrobangs, as is Diana Hacker’s A Writer’s Reference, The Elements of Style, The Elements of Editing, and English Grammar for Dummies.

As stated, many people are unfamiliar with the interrobang, and it enjoys limited support today. The symbol is not a standard punctuation mark and should not be used in formal writing. If you use it at all, do so rarely and selectively.

As a matter of interest, the two grammatical marks in question are used as punctuation in chess annotations. The “!?” denotes an interesting move, while “?!” denotes a dubious move. Personally, I will limit use of the interrobang to my copious writings on the great game of chess.

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While I recognize not all readers are as fascinated by writing and grammar and the like as I am, I hope you found the above interesting.

The Voxlightner Scandal was released Tuesday, November 19. The following are buy links for the book”


Now my mantra: Keep on reading and keep on writing. You have something to say, so say it!

My personal links: (Note the change in the Email address because I’m still getting remarks on the old dontravis21@gmail.com. PLEASE DON’T USE THAT ONE.)
                                                                                                    
Facebook: www.facebook.com/donald.travis.982
Twitter: @dontravis3

Buy links to Abaddon’s Locusts:


See you next week.

Don

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