Writing

Never Stop Never Stopping (Experimenting)

Author: May 8, 2021 0 Comments

I just posted the newest episode of my wee little podcast, The No Pants Cocktail Hour. This one focuses on a story I published a few years ago called “Supply and Demand,” which appeared in the anthology No Bars and a Dead Battery, which collected the winning entries to the Owl Canyon Press Hackathon. As I explain in the podcast, part of what attracted me to that contest was the constraint of the rules: They gave you the first and last paragraphs and you had to fill in the middle following specific guidelines.

As I blathered on about this story for the podcast, I was reminded about the importance of experimentation. My own work is not very experimental; aside from a feint here and there, my work is pretty straightforward. But that’s my published work. In my private noodling I think it’s important to experiment a lot, even if you know most of that work will never see the light of day.

That’s one reason why I think writing just for yourself is important. You need a place where you can get weird and try shit. A place, most importantly, where you can fail. That’s why I write a short story every month in a notebook, by hand: Most of those stories never get out of that book, which means y’all will never know about that time I tried to write an entire story in haiku1.

Now, if the haiku story had been successful, you can be damn sure you’d know about it. But it’s safely hidden away, which allows me to keep experimenting and failing in ridiculous ways, which in turn hes me refine what my style actually is, because I know from failed experiments what it’s not.

A willingness to experiment is crucial to keep stretching your own boundaries. I don’t write in the same way I did 10 years ago — I’ve learned a few tricks, largely from experiments that went horribly wrong. Besides, if you can’t take chances in your private writing that no one will see unless you show them, when can you take chances?

It’s In the Way That You Use It

It’s important to note that not all experiments are going to be flashy. It’s not always ‘let’s see if I can write a murder mystery from the point of view of a pet parrot in a cage’ or ‘let’s see what happens if I tell the story from five distinct viewpoints but obscure that from the reader.’ What is or isn’t experimental is a very personal matter for a writer.

For example, if you spent your wild youth fearlessly playing with POV and timelines, crafting complex narratives that required several readings just to comprehend, maybe writing a straightforward story with no narrative tricks is your experiment. Or if you’ve always written science fiction, maybe just writing a non-speculative story is your experiment. When I was a teenager, I wrote almost exclusively sci-fi and fantasy, so when I sat down at the age of ~20 to write a story that had zero speculative elements, it was experimental writing for me — although you’d never know it from the result2.

Bottom line: Don’t be afraid to experiment. In fact, don’t just not be afraid — push yourself to experiment. For example, right now I’m going to go try some whiskey I’ve never had before. I’m the hero here, is what I’m saying.

Podcast, Writing

Detained Chapter 17

Author: May 3, 2021 0 Comments

I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Detained every week throughout 2021. Download links below!

17. Mike

The moment she started walking, he wanted to reach out and stop her, call her back. For a second the insanity of what they were doing hit him, and hit him hard. The chances they would all wind up dead were stacked against them. Then he reminded himself that chances were they were going to end up dead no matter what, and taking a chance at going out in charge of their own destiny was better than sitting on his ass in this shithole bar, waiting to be executed, or to start coughing up blood.

He watched her storm over to Raslowski, though, and thought it should be him out there with a target on his back.

He watched with admiration as she laid into the scientist, fighting back the urge to grin. When she leaned in and slapped him hard enough to send the short man spinning to the floor, he was as surprised as anyone in the room. As the two guards by the front door leaped into the chase, he stepped behind the bar, nodding to Eastman and making his way to the trap door again. No one was looking in his direction.

He wouldn’t be any use in the front room. He wasn’t armed, and if Candace failed to pull the guards away from their posts, they would be on high alert and intolerant of any other misbehavior—and he didn’t doubt the next step would be to simply restrain them all. He had to put himself where he thought he might be of some use, and that was with McCoy and Haggen.

He dropped into the crawlspace and started moving, crawling as fast as he could. Glass cracked under his hands and knees and cut him, but he ignored it, listening to the noise in the bar as it receded and yet swelled and swelled. Sweat streamed into his eyes and dust and cobwebs choked him. When the second trap loomed above him he pushed himself up and climbed onto the floor of the back room.

He held a finger up to his mouth, breathing loudly through his nose. McCoy and Haggen had both turned with their weapons, and each nodded as he walked briskly for the door and back up the hallway. He pushed webs and dust off his clothes and pushed his bloody hands through his hair, composing himself just before he stepped into the office, saying “Colonel you had better get out here!” as he turned the corner.

Hammond was already out of her chair and around her desk, on her way to investigate the noise of chaos drifting from the bar. She stopped, and for a split second they stared at each other.

Her arm moved. Mike threw himself forward.

Candace needed time, she needed chaos and confusion. He’d seen enough of Colonel Hammond to know she was the sort of commander who took control of situations very quickly, effectively—with one order she would have everything back under control, and he needed to stop her from issuing that order. He needed to ensure she wouldn’t get in McCoy and Haggen’s way, either, or creep out behind them.

He locked onto her right arm, using his weight and momentum to drive her back into the desk. She bared her teeth and tried to push him off, but he was too heavy and had the advantage—she was off balance and he was driving forward with his legs. With her free hand she slapped at his face, trying to get a finger into his eye, forcing him to whip his head around to avoid her.

He leaned forward, bending her back over the desk and pinning her arm and holster between them. He pushed his free arm up and over hers and bent it down towards the desk, putting his weight into pinning it down.

Without warning, Hammond swiveled her pelvis and somehow rolled him; with all his force concentrated on pinning her down he was easily shifted horizontally, and suddenly she was pushing him until he crashed into the wall with teeth-shaking force. He hung onto her arm with everything he had, and then suddenly she went still.

“All right, Colonel,” he heard Haggen say. “Back on off.”

He had Warner’s sidearm pressed against Hammond’s head. After a moment’s hesitation, she decided to take him seriously and put her hands up by her shoulders. Mike leaned forward and snapped open her holster, removing her sidearm with one clean motion. Keeping his eyes on hers, he felt around her pockets, locating one extra magazine and pocketing it.

Out in the bar, the noise had reached incredible volume. Mike flicked the safety off the weapon and stepped back from Hammond.

“Not exactly the plan you outlined, huh?” Haggen said.

“Had to improvise; the guards didn’t cooperate. Thanks for the assist. I’ll take it from here.”

Haggen sketched a lazy salute. “I live to serve, motherfucker,” he said, grinning, and turned to step back out into the hallway.

“Take out a ziptie,” he said to Hammond. “And go to the radiator.”

She didn’t move right away. “You’re making a terrible mistake here,” she said.

He shook his head. “Colonel, you made the mistake when you swept in here and didn’t tell us anything. When you treated us like prisoners. You didn’t leave us any choice.” He gestured with the gun. “Ziptie. Radiator.”

She turned and started walking, fishing in her pocket. He watched her hands. “Maybe so,” she said. “I’d like the opportunity to explain what’s at stake, why our orders are what they are.”

“You’ll get it,” he said, following her a few steps behind. “Once we’re in control.”

She snapped off a sudden, angry laugh. “We’re not even in control, Mr. Malloy.”

She held a ziptie up in one hand as she stopped in front of the radiator.

“Loop it around the radiator’s feed pipe,” he instructed. “Don’t pull it tight.” He watched her do it. “Put your wrists through the loop.” She did so, settling down on the floor. He leaned in quickly with one hand and pulled the ziptie tight.

“Ow!”

“Sorry,” he said. “Hopefully you won’t have to be like this for long.”

“If they end up cutting off my hands, I’m bringing that bill to you.”

“Noted.” He turned just as the noise out in the bar died away completely—followed immediately by a scream and a volley of gunfire.

He started to run.

As he neared the dividing line between the dark hallway and the bright bar, he forced himself to slow down and pressed himself against the wall. He took a breath and checked the Beretta before leaning forward to look in.

Five of the guards were down, two with arrows in their thighs, one clutching a gunshot wound in his shoulder that was bleeding heavily. The other four were gathered behind an impromptu breastwork of flipped tables, exchanging fire with Haggen and McCoy, who were behind the bar, popping up and dropping down. He couldn’t see Candace or Eastman.

Taking another deep breath, he ran into the room and turned right, racing along the wall until he was perpendicular with the soldiers behind the tables. For a moment they were completely exposed to him and unaware of his presence, and he took aim.

He remembered his anatomy lessons with his shooting guru, a plump, taciturn man named Jerry who lived on a rundown ranch in Montana, tons of acres his family had owned for decades. Jerry made a living as a ballistics expert, and had been happy to take what amounted to a year’s salary to teach Mike how to shoot—and a lot of other things about guns that went beyond shooting.

“You don’t shoot at someone to wound,” Jerry had complained of the request. “That’s hippie bullshit. First of all, you can’t have that kind of control. Second, no matter where you aim you can hit something vital and kill them. But mainly, you shoot to stop. Someone coming at you, you need to drop ’em. If you try to aim for some fucking nonlethal spot, you’ll end up missing, or killing them by accident. You want nonlethal, kid, shoot rubber bullets.”

“Yeah,” Mike remembered saying around his beer. “But say I just want to know. Maybe I’m writing a book.”

Jerry, he recalled, had sighed in resignation, obviously reviewing the money Mike was paying him. “Well,” he said, “if you actually were dumb enough to try and drop someone non-lethally, you got to avoid bones. Bone shatters bullets and keeps them in the body—shoot someone in the ribs and that bullet’s gonna dance around in there. The torso’s where you drop people, but you can hit the heart. The head’s less fatal than you would think—most headshots don’t actually kill anyone, because they tend to be grazes, the head’s a smaller target than you think at distance, and skulls are thick. Arms and legs—too many arteries, too easy to bleed someone out.” He shrugged, taking a pull from his beer. “If I was looking to wound someone, and stop them, I’d go for the foot. Reasonable size of target if you’re close enough, chances of fatality are low, hurts like fuckin’ hell and immobilizes them.”

Mike thought: Aim for their feet.

Remembering Jerry’s eternally aggrieved training, he took a breath, steadied himself, and sighted on the nearest soldier’s boot.

He didn’t shoot.

Instead, he moved the gun slightly until the next soldier’s boot was right in the crosshairs. Then he moved the gun back, exhaled, and squeezed the trigger. The familiar kick and ear-splitting noise, and the nearest soldier rocketed backwards, screaming as his boot exploded into gore. Mike moved the gun and settled himself, not hesitating, not worrying about what the others were doing (“Easiest way to get dead is to try to shoot and watch your target at the same time,” Jerry had said, chewing on a cigar) and squeezed the trigger again.

Another scream.

He stepped forward rapidly. “Down! All of you, weapons down!” In his peripheral vision he saw someone stand up behind the bar. There was a tense moment when he wasn’t sure it was over, then the two guards dropped their guns and put their hands up.

Mike realized he was trembling. Get the weapons, he thought, first gather up their weapons. Then first aid.

He didn’t know what then. He almost didn’t believe they’d won.

A second later there was a commotion near the front door, and Mike looked up in time to see Raslowski dash out of the bar, something in his hand that might have been some sort of radio or phone. Before he could react, Candace dashed from behind the bar, carrying McCoy’s crossbow, and without a glance back sprinted after him.

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Detained, Novels, Writing

Detained Chapter 16

Author: April 26, 2021 0 Comments

I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Detained every week throughout 2021. Download links below!

16. Candace

She steeled herself. She could hear her father again, the man who’d supplied most, if not all, of the sage advice she’d received over the course of her life: Sometimes you just gotta step in it. He’d said that any time he had to do something without the luxury of preparation, research, or practice. Like the time he had to give a speech at her Eighth Grade class because the father who was scheduled to talk about Career Day got sick, and he had to just step up to the podium in front of twenty-three disinterested kids and their even less-interested parents and talk about being a Plumber.

Correction: A Master Plumber, something that at least got a laugh from the class. And when she’d informed him that the teacher had suggested Mr. Cuddyer for an impromptu speech, she remembered the frightened look on his face, and then the immediate, warm smile as he’d shrugged, looked at her, and said well, sometimes you just gotta step in it.

She took a deep breath and thought, well, Dad, here I go stepping in the biggest pile of it I’ve ever seen, and started walking across the bar towards Dr. Raslowski.

She knew the paths of the bar perfectly. She’d covered every square foot of the worn wood, she’d gone through countless pairs of sneakers weaving her way between tables for tips. She kept her eyes locked on Raslowski’s pale, skinny frame as she moved, because she was worried if she looked at any of the soldiers they’d know what she was about to do, and if she saw them knowing she’d lose her nerve, because there was the very real possibility of being shot, just like poor Mr. Simms.

Raslowski was concentrating on a compact piece of equipment that he’d put on his crowded table. She could see he’d inserted one of her blood samples into a slot on its side, and he was typing instructions into a tiny chiclet-style keyboard. His glasses reflected the light of the tiny LED screen, making him look eyeless, like a monster.

She thought she could feel the whole place stiffen as she drew close to him. The two guards by the front door each stepped forward slightly, and she knew every single soldier had their eyes on her.

“You get what you need?” she asked, trying to make her voice bitter and acidic, which wasn’t very difficult.

Raslowski didn’t look at her. “Please go away,” he said.

“Do I have it?”

That made him blink and glance at her, though he looked at her midsection instead of her face. “What did you say?”

“Do I have it? It’s a disease, right? A bug? Am I sick?”

Mike had made a joke about an alien virus, but something told her it couldn’t be that simple—a disease. As Glen had pointed out, no one was following any sort of containment protocol. No one seemed worried about contracting anything. But it seemed like a perfect excuse to act like an idiot.

He stared at her belly for a moment more, then turned to look back at his work. “Go away.” he said with an irritated sigh.

Well, Dad, she thought. Here I go.

“You think you can just snap your fingers and have me tackled and do whatever you want,” she spat. “But maybe you don’t, you son of a bitch!”

She launched herself forward and slapped him across the face as hard as she could. It hurt like hell as he hand made contact. Raslowski let out a squawk of combined surprise and pain and was spun out of his seat, one laptop and the testing machine clattering to the floor. Candace herself was overbalanced and she staggered forward and to the side, crashing into one of the tables and chairs, which skidded across the floor and allowed her to gracelessly hit the floor, landing on her ass with a single bounce that made her click her teeth together.

Up, she thought, head suddenly buzzing. Get up, goddammit.

She clawed her way up using a chair as a brace. The two guards from the front door were almost on her, so she pivoted away, off balance, and crashed into another fourtop. She took hold of the edge of the table and dragged it around, swinging it into their path as she skipped into another lane.

She stole a glance at the guards by the hall entrance. They were on high alert, tense and following the action, but they hadn’t moved yet. There wouldn’t be any other chances; if they subdued her, she had little doubt Hammond would be tired of the constant trouble and would order they just be restrained. Or killed.

She whirled. She had four soldiers in pursuit. She needed more, she needed them all, which meant she was going to have to somehow stay ahead of them long enough to pull everyone in.

She leaped up onto the nearest table. Took another leap, and immediately another, and she was ten feet away from them. She hesitated, crouching on top of the tables, as two more soldiers left their posts to join in pursuit. But not the two by the hallway.

She leaped to another table, then another, then with an effort that sent the table under her skidding backwards into the shins of her pursuers, she launched herself for the bar itself. Glen scrambled to the other end as she hopped over.

A strange feeling of delirious excitement descended on her as she plucked two of the heavy beer mugs from under the bar and came up throwing. Her first one hit one of the soldiers in the shoulder, spinning her around. The second missed as the rest ducked, but she dived down and returned with more ammunition, tossing one at the knot of four working their way towards her. Then she pivoted, forced herself to exhale, and took aim at the two by the hallway, making the one to the left duck in shock as the mug exploded into glass shrapnel over his head.

She ducked and retrieved four more mugs, holding three awkwardly in the crook of one arm and striding quickly down the length of the bar towards the hallway.

You motherfuckers, she thought grimly, you’re going to move from that spot if I have to set you on fire.

There had been one moment in her life as exciting as this. Senior year of high school, drunk with some friends, she’d broken into the school and run around the dark, empty halls playing pranks. Looking back, it was all silly, juvenile stuff—toilet paper everywhere, a thousand photocopies of her friend Shelly’s ass littering the halls—but in the moment she’d had this white-hot thrill, that sense that the moment she’d engaged in a little casual breaking and entering she’d crossed a line and had a free pass. She was already in more trouble than she’d ever been, so why not stay ten more minutes and break into Mr. Hemming’s office and retrieve four years’ worth of confiscated items?

It was the same feeling she felt now as she ran to the end of the bar and planted herself to lob glassware at the two soldiers. She’d crossed that line thirty seconds before. If they were going to shoot her, if they were going to tie her up, whatever it was they were going to do, it was already going to happen. Nothing she did was going to change that fact, and there was this incredible sense of freedom because she literally couldn’t make things worse.

Glen ducked down and ran back the other way, intercepting the pursuing soldiers by apparent accident in his haste to escape danger. You go, old man! she thought. If nothing else the Weirdest Day of Her Life had shown her a side to old Mr. Eastman she was glad to be aware of. She hadn’t realized it before, had never consciously thought about it, but the way Mr. Eastman had transformed from the history-spouting PE teacher of her teen years into the slightly ridiculous old man hanging around the bar all the time, always happy to discuss his theories on sovereign citizenship and the myriad ways the government had abandoned the original intention of the Founding Fathers had been sad for her. Seeing him show this kind of spirit was exciting.

She hurled a mug at the closest soldier, and he ducked and scrambled away. She sent another one trailing him, then launched a third at his partner, who dived behind the nearest table. She sent one more glass bomb in his direction, then spun and ran back along the length of the bar. Two soldiers appeared at the other end while two paced her on the other side. She was aware that someone was yelling, bellowing really, but she didn’t have the time to home in on it.

With a leap she was on the bar, sliding a few inches on her ass before spinning and leaping to the floor. She stumbled, an ankle turning under her weight, and staggered forward. Two of the uniformed men were just a few feet ahead of her. She froze, and one of them stepped aggressively towards her, then stopped.

She stared at the soldier’s suddenly perplexed face. Then her eyes dropped to the crossbow bolt sticking out of his thigh.

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Detained, Novels, Writing

Pro Tip: Irritate the Betas

Author: April 25, 2021 0 Comments

WRITING is in many ways masochistic. You have an idea, you put it on paper, and then you sit back and let the wash of criticism and disappointment hit you full force for the rest of your life. Because trust me, no matter how much time goes by someone will still find your book, story, or article and send you a note forming you of all it’s flaws. It’s fun! And exhausting.

And sometimes it’s purposeful. Writers engage with Beta Readers differently — at different points in the writing process, and to different degrees. Personally, I use Betas very sparingly, as I am an overconfident doofus who often tells himself that if someone doesn’t like my first draft they’re just not getting it3. But when I do route my work through an objective third party or two in order to garner feedback, I know two things: One, they probably won’t love everything in the book, and two, that’s great. Because you should irritate your Beta Readers.

You’re the Worst

A big mistake some writers make when they’re routing a manuscript through Beta readers is trying to please those readers. Any criticism, anything the Betas don’t like or immediately understand is worked on, dealt with, smoothed away until they get an enthusiastic endorsement from all involved.

The problem, obviously enough, is that you’ve just pleased a very, very small audience. If your goal was to sell three copies of your book, congrats, job done. If you want to write something great, be ready to irritate your Beta readers — especially when you ignore their complaints. And if you’re doing your job as an author, you should be irritating the hell out of your Betas, because part of your job is challenging your readers.

Admittedly, this can be a difficult line to toe. At some point you irritate your readers too much and go full Season 8 of Game of Thrones and you’re lost. And not irritating them enough leaves you with the literary equivalent of Wonder Bread — inoffensive and forgettable. There’s no precise formula here, but there’s one fundamental lesson to keep in mind: Your job is not to please your Beta Readers. Your job is to use their feedback as you see fit, and that will sometimes mean ignoring it aggressively.

Of course, most of my Beta Readers these days are cats, who like to sit in front of my screen and block my work when they don’t like the direction I’m taking. The good news is, they’re cats, which means they’re irritated literally all the time. Which means by this logic my writing is amazing.

Novels, Writing

Detained Chapter 15

Author: April 19, 2021 0 Comments

I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Detained every week throughout 2021. Download links below!

15. Candace

She didn’t know how to pretend to faint. She’d just dropped to the floor and then did her best to keep still, to keep her eyes closed, and not startle as people drew close, touched her, shook her, and yelled at her. She felt a vague sense of shame being a woman who’d just used the oldest trick in the damsel-in-distress handbook to solve a problem, but she’d had no time to think. And she had been in distress.

She heard her father laughing and saying you’re a card—you have to be dealt with.

She heard Raslowski shouting at everyone to just leave her there until he got his sample, then a woman—King?—shouting for “the kit,” which Candace assumed was the first aid kit. Or at least she hoped it was the first aid kit; after just a few hours in the company of these people, she had to admit she couldn’t be sure they didn’t have something like a Suffocation Kit, or an Immolation Kit. At this point, lying on the floor and struggling to appear unconscious, Candace had to admit nothing much would surprise her.

She worried about how long to keep up the pretense; what was believable? She didn’t like not knowing what all the commotion meant. Was someone pointing a gun at her? Was Raslowski preparing to stick her with a needle? What were the others doing? The lack of information was maddening, but she kept her cool and forced herself to remain still for what seemed like forever.

Until the worst smell in the world was suddenly thrust up in her face, seemingly directly into her nose. It startled her, and her eyes popped open as she convulsed, trying to scramble away from it, whipping her face this way and that. Someone took hold of her arms and legs, and that just made the panic worse, and she struggled even harder.

“Hold her! Hold her!”

Raslowski’s voice had the same pitiless tone she remembered from before. She began imagining all manner of awful things being done to her—needles and scalpels and Raslowski grinning over her, telling her that its doesn’t matter in that nerdy, clipped voice of his.

“Ms. Cuddyer!” Raslowski shouted, and she realized he was leaning over her, his pinched face red and his glasses reflecting the light back making him look eyeless, soulless. “Ms. Cuddyer! I must ask you a few questions! Please! Calm down!”

She would never overpower them, she realized, and wasn’t even sure why she was trying. Although her performance was likely distracting them all in a huge way, so there was that. She wasn’t going to stop them from doing whatever they were going to do, she thought, so she should take a page from her father’s playbook and meet whatever it was head on. She stopped struggling and took a deep breath. Then she forced herself to look Raslowski directly in the eyes.

He studied her. “You are calm, Ms. Cuddyer?”

She nodded. He wasn’t holding anything alarming in his hands, nothing sharp or ominous. He still had rubber gloves on, which wasn’t exactly encouraging, though.

“Ms. Cuddyer, this is vitally important, when you appeared to lose consciousness just now, was the event preceded by a strong sense of deja vu or premonition, did you see what might be described as a vision?”

She frowned at him. “What?”

“You lost consciousness, Ms. Cuddyer. Before doing so, did you experience a strong sense of deja vu or what might be described as a vision??”

She frowned at him. “I—”

He leaned forward and slapped her across the face, hard enough to bring tears to her eyes.

“You fucking—” She struggled with the people holding her down, but was powerless, and finally surrendered, going calm again.

“This is vital, Ms. Cuddyer. Yes or no?”

She shook her head, eyes locked on him.

He sighed. “All right. I’m going to take a blood sample.” He raised his eyebrows. “I am going to keep trying until I succeed. If you fight, you will only injure yourself.”

She nodded.

“Good.”

It was very clinical, very professional. He tied off her arm, told her to make a fist, and moments later the needle was in. He hummed as the blood filled the tube. He switched it out for a second tube, then pressed a cotton ball against her vein as he pulled the needle out.

“All right,” he said. “If we let you up, will you cause trouble?”

She shook her head.

He smiled. She thought it looked like a grimace. “Very good.” He looked up and nodded. The hands were removed from her limbs, and King stood up and held her hand out to help Candace up. Then Raslowski was in front of her, proffering a bandage. She blinked, then reached out and took it. He winked and turned away.

She turned, holding the bandage in her hand. She started walking towards the bar, then stopped. Jack McCoy was nowhere to be seen, but Mike was behind the bar, leaning forward with his arms crossed, staring at her.

She walked over rapidly. “Everything okay?”

He nodded. “We’re just picking our moment,” he said quietly. “You okay?”

“You went down like a sack of potatoes, Candace,” Glen Eastman whispered, looking around exactly how Candace imagined nervous conspirators looked. “What happened?”

“I’m fine. I needed a distraction. It was the best I could do.”

Mike smiled. “Smart girl.”

“What did that bastard do to you?”

She shook her head. “Just took some blood,” she said to the retired teacher. “Asked me some questions. He seemed really worried that I’d—that I’d seen visions. Hallucinations, I guess.”

“Symptoms,” Mike said quietly. “He was worried you were showing symptoms of something.”

Eastman frowned. “A disease? Doesn’t make sense, Mr. Malloy. None of these people are in any sort of protective gear.”

Candace shook her head. “He seems freaked out. And who wouldn’t be—I mean, I don’t care what his experience is, or his career, no one’s prepared for this scenario, right? You don’t think he’s under stress, ready to lose his mind at any moment?” She shook her head. “My bet is, they aren’t 100% certain what they’re dealing with. Raslowski’s worried he might have missed something.”

Mike nodded, scanning the room. “Doesn’t change anything. We’re not going to get a perfect moment to do this.” He looked at her. “You up for a little more risk?”

She didn’t hesitate. She hated the feeling of being trapped in here, of being pushed around. Someone had just held her down and taken blood from her for the purpose of running a DNA check of her identity—she was ready to fight back. She nodded. “What do you need me to do?”

“If we can get them to gather someplace, when McCoy starts shooting he’ll have a good chance of taken more of them down if they’re clumped up. They’re too spread out now. Think you can figure out a way to make them come together? At least a few of them?”

She turned and followed his gaze around the room. There were ten soldiers in sight, and Raslowski. Mike was standing there, so the one named Warner was already neutralized. And then, of course, there was Hammond, sitting in Jack’s office. The ten men and women were posted at intervals; two on the front door, two at the hallway that led to the office, the bathrooms, and the back room, and the rest around the perimeter.

“We should at least get the two away from the hallway,” she said quietly. “If Jack shows up there, they’d be out of his line of sight and able to intervene without even exposing themselves.”

“Good,” Mike said, and she was pleased to hear approval in his voice. “That’s good thinking. If you can get them to leave their post, it’s a huge advantage for Jack. We’re gonna get one shot at this. If we blow it, if they overpower us, kill some of us—there won’t be a second chance. Anyone not dead will be restrained, imprisoned. So far they’ve been more or less polite. Forgiving. Tolerant.”

Glen Eastman snorted, and Mike held up a hand.

“Okay, Mr. Simms—but since then Hammond had made it clear she’s willing to let us have a modicum of freedom as long as we don’t get in her way. But that’s on sufferance. We pull this and we fuck it up, all that changes.”

“Maybe then we don’t do it,” Glen said in an urgent whisper, leaning in behind her. “Maybe we take a little time to work it out, have, I don’t know—a plan?”

“Every minute we wait makes the odds they discover what’s happening in the back room better,” Mike said. “We can’t wait. It has to be now.”

Candace’s heart was pounding. She saw all the bad outcomes, all too clearly. She saw herself knocked down, a knee in her throat, plastic zipties around her wrists. She saw herself shot, blood exploding from the entry wound. She saw everyone shot, Hammond lining them up facing the wall and ordering her soldiers to execute them all. She imagined standing next to Mike and hearing the report of the gun and the sound of bodies dropping, getting nearer, nearer, right next to her. She saw it all going off the rails and all of them dead. But she also saw the same outcome if they did nothing, and she thought it would be better to get shot trying to stand up for themselves than just sitting and waiting.

She nodded. “Okay. I’ve got a plan.”

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Novels, Writing

Sticking the Landing

Author: April 18, 2021 0 Comments

As a professional writer, I have my tricks. One of those tricks involves excusing myself to the bathroom just before the bar bill arrives, then climbing out the window and fleeing. Another trick is what I call the Plane Crash Ending (PCE). I employ the PCE when I’ve got a story without an ending. Maybe it’s a 60,000+ word novel, or a 1500 word short story; either way, I can’t figure out how to end it. So I kill everyone. Every character. I kill them all in whatever way seems feasible. Then I type THE END and put the story aside, and usually when I come back to it I have a better ending in mind.

The PCE is fun. It’s not a viable way to end a story, but sometimes a story can be 90 percent great and then dissolve into a sticky mess at the end. This happens to a lot of stories — including, of course, many stories that do get published or broadcast or released in move theaters. Which leads me to a fundamental question about writing/art: Does a bad ending ruin a good story?

Bran the Broken Indeed

Let’s consider the current ur-example of bad endings, Game of Thrones. I was prompted to think about this subject in the first place by an essay by Michael Walsh over at The A.V. Club, in which he remembers why he fell in love with the show originally. He’s right: Game of Thrones was pretty damn excellent for 6+ seasons. It was grand, it was complex, it was unpredictable (if you hadn’t read the books). And then it was absolutely fucking terrible in its last, oh, ten episodes or so.

I have an acquaintance who can’t forgive a bad ending — so much so that he won’t watch serialized TV shows until they’re finished, because he can’t countenance the wasted time of getting into something only to see it rot in front of his eyes. I get that, but I’m on the opposite side of the question. I think there’s tons of value in the journey.

We used to argue over Lost, another show that (IMHO) devolved into a crapfest in its final season. For a while, that show was intriguing and messy in a good way. Then it kind of rambled into a confusing jumble, but the late-run reset from flashbacks to flashforwards brought me back. Then — again, IMHO — it got really, really awful in its final run. My acquaintance damns the show for eternity for wasting his time. I’m happy I got to experience those truly amazing twists and character beats. It was fun, and a bad ending doesn’t change that.

Or does it? I’ll admit that the re-watch value of a show or a re-read value of a book series goes down if I know the ending will be a frustrating disaster. It’s not that endings don’t matter at all — it’s just that I don’t think they wipe out all the existing value of a work that was good for at least a significant part of its run.

Of course, I am a man who just admitted he has dozens of manuscripts lying around his hard drive with Plane Crash Endings. I am obviously not an authority on this issue. Carry on.

Bullshit, Someone Else's Writing, Writing

Detained Chapter 14

Author: April 12, 2021 0 Comments

I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Detained every week throughout 2021. Download links below!

14. Mike

The crawlspace took longer than he’d expected. A second after the trap door was lowered softly behind him, it went pitch black and he smacked his head on a joist hard enough to send him spinning to the floor. He sat for a moment, head ringing, and when he shook it off he realized he was turned-around and had to force himself to pause and regain his bearings. He fished his phone from his pocket and thumbed the flashlight on.

The crawlspace was a disaster, The floor was dirt, uneven and littered with rocks and old cans and bottles. The whole place was layered in spider webs, and as he swept the light around a dozen small bodies scampered away. He was sitting hunched over and the floor joists scraped against the back of his head.

“Three feet my ass,” he whispered.

He started crawling, awkwardly holding the phone in one hand and trying to avoid the bottles and other sharp edges buried in the dirt. It was surreal and quiet under the bar; the moment the trap door had been lowered all the sound had muted down to nothing, and all he could hear was his own breathing and the crunch of the dirt and debris under him. He moved as quickly as he could, searching the subfloor above for signs of the second trap door.

It was surprising how quickly his sense of the physical space above faded away. It seemed impossible that the crawlspace was as large as it was—it went on long after he assumed he must be close to the back room. Being able to see only small areas with his phone contributed to the sense that the darkness went on and on, infinite and featureless.

And then there it was: The trapdoor leading up into the back room. He was sweating freely as he positioned himself under it, shining the light up to make sure he could see exactly where it was in relation to himself. Then he killed the light and pushed the phone back into his pocket. Rising up on his haunches, he put his hands flat against the panel and slowly lifted the door up, just as a commotion happened in the bar, shouts and the thud of feet on the floor carrying back to him.

He hesitated, listening. The shouting went on, but he couldn’t make any of it out. He considered turning back, creeping back up behind the bar, pretending that nothing had happened, but without knowing what he was crawling back to, it was too risky. The best way forward was to press the tiny advantage they’d managed to establish.

He waited another few heartbeats with the trap suspended above his head, listening and letting his eyes adjust. The air smelled damp and ripe, like stale beer. He was behind a shelf filled with cans and cardboard boxes. A wall of used kegs was on the other side, both barriers serving to shield him from the rest of the room.

The commotion in the bar had died down, and he could hear talking in the back room.

“—kind of weather you get up there?”

“All kinds, man. We got that saying: You don’t like the weather, just wait and it’ll change.”

“Four seasons in one day, huh?”

Jesus, he thought, they were chatting, getting to know each other. Haggen sounded relaxed, even, like he wasn’t worried about anything.

Slowly, Mike lifted the trap up, standing slowly as he did so. His head swam a little as he straightened up, and for one panicked moment he thought he might pass out. Then everything firmed up. He could see through the shelves that Haggen’s restraints had been adjusted; his wrists and ankles were still bound but he wasn’t hogtied. He sat more or less comfortably on the floor, and gave every indication he was unworried, confident, and possibly enjoying himself. Mike found himself liking this guy a lot. He knew that under normal circumstances they would have hated each other, they would have been the sort of guys who were unable to go five minutes without starting an argument. But somehow the alchemy of being in this incredible situation had changed the whole dynamic.

The guard, Warner, stood with his back to the door. He wasn’t holding his sidearm, but Mike thought his posture could be described as ready. He seemed friendly and just as confident and comfortable as Haggen, but was obviously not going to let that interfere with guarding the man as he’d been ordered. Mike was impressed in spite of himself. Some guys could either be friendly or they could be ready. Not many could be easygoing and chatty without sacrificing their situational awareness.

As his eyes got used to the dim light, he scanned the rest of the room. It was an all-purpose supply closet he was surprised had passed a health inspection, assuming they bothered with such things when you were as far off the road as McCoy’s place. Dry food, kegs, bottles, condiments, boxes of napkins and other equipment were stacked all over the place.

After a moment’s searching, he saw the crossbow. It had been hung on the wall behind Haggen, along with a few other items: A bright orange vest, a green canvas backpack, and a sheathed hunting knife that hung by its own separate strap. He couldn’t see any bolts for the bow, but he assumed they would be in the backpack.

There was no sneaking it out. He was going to have to take out the guard, quietly.

He scanned the room again. There was no way to sneak up on Warner; he would have to come from around the shelves, putting him squarely in the soldier’s peripheral vision. Even if he manged to get the jump on him, there would be time for him to yell, to attack, to make noise.

When he looked back at Haggen he jumped, because Haggen was staring right at him, still talking. He winked, then turned back to face Warner as if nothing had happened.

“Dude, you mind if I stood up? My ass is asleep!” Haggen said, all aw-shucks hick charm.

Warner hesitated. Mike imagined he was running through the possible interpretations of his orders. Mike had never served in the military, but he’d known plenty of people who had, and he knew the one overarching fact of life in a military unit of any kind was obeying orders issued from the legitimate chain of command was not optional.

But what was legitimate? Mike had the idea that this was an unusual unit, in an unusual circumstance. From the shadows, he watched Warner’s face as he worked through the implications.

“All right,” he finally said, laying a hand on his sidearm. “I won’t help you. If you can stand without assistance, and stay right where you are, I won’t object.”

“Cool,” Haggen said. With what Mike thought was transparently theatrical effort, he struggled to get to his feet. When he was upright but still clinging to the shelf for support, he spun away and sailed into Warner.

“Oh, shit, I’m sorry!”

Warner caught Haggen by instinct, and Haggen grabbed onto his shoulders and spun him slightly so his back was turned. Mike moved immediately, running and launching himself at the pair, wrapping one arm around Warner’s neck and slapping his other hand on the soldier’s mouth. For a few moments the three of them struggled in near-silence, with the only noise being heavy breathing and grunts, the scraping of their shoes on the floor.

For one horrible moment, Mike thought Warner was going to break free. The kid was strong. Haggen, unbalanced by his ankle bonds, had both hands planted on Warner’s sidearm,. preventing him from drawing it while Mike choked him with an imperfect, rushed hold.

Slowly, Warner weakened, and finally slumped his weight against Mike, who strained something in his back desperately stopping them all from falling with a loud crash to the floor. Gently giving in to gravity, the three of them sank down until he and Haggen were sprawled, panting, on either side of the soldier.

“You a wrestler, too?” Haggen said between gasps.

“Was,” Mike said, sitting up and rubbing his arm. “For a few months.”

“I gotta become a millionaire and travel the world taking lessons,” Haggen added, slowly climbing to his feet. “It’s got benefits. What’s the plan?”

Mike got up and plucked the crossbow, backpack, and knife from the wall. He dropped the bag and bow and pulled the knife from the sheath, using it to cut Haggen’s bonds. “Grab his sidearm.” He looked around. “Does he have more zipties on him?”

Haggen stuffed the gun into his waistband after checking the safety and then searched Warner’s pockets. “Yup,” he said, brandishing a fistful of black plastic ties.

“Let’s get him up and tie him by the wrists to the shelf here, so it looks like he’s standing,” Mike said. “Then you get the bow and bag out of the way and wait here, look like you’re still bound, just in case anyone just pops their head in here. I’m going back through the crawlspace to the bar, and Jack is coming back through. he’ll take the crossbow, and then the two of you are coming down the hall, and we’re taking them all down. We’re taking the bar.”

Haggen met his eyes and held them, face slowly breaking into a grin. “Hot damn, when you first walked in I thought you were an asshole tourista,” he said. “I’m declaring you an honorary citizen of One-Eyed Jack’s.”

Mike smiled back. “It’s an honor.” He walked over and dropped back into the crawlspace, crouching down. “Don’t start anything unless you have to,” he said. “The longer we put this off, the better our advantage.”

Haggen nodded, bringing the bag and bow over and dropping them on the floor. “Got it. I can improv the shit out of this, don’t worry.”

Mike nodded and disappeared under the floor. A moment later he popped up again. “Haggen: This is all about surprise. We’ve got a handgun and a crossbow. We’ll try our best to help out in the bar, but it’s gonna be you and McCoy making the difference. McCoy’s skittish about killing people and he’s going to go for non-fatal shots to incapacitate.”

Haggen nodded. “You think I should too?”

Mike’s expression was neutral. “I think you know if we fuck this up, we’re all going to be hogtied in here until they decide what to do with us. And they’re going to be irritated if we injure or kill some of them. I guess all I’m saying is, we gotta make this count.”

Haggen nodded. “Got it.” Then he grinned. “Kill ’em all.”

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Novels, Writing

Stuff Happening Does Not Equal a Plot

Author: April 10, 2021 0 Comments

I recently wrote a brief article recalling an old episode of Seinfeld with the central joke that Elaine is dating a man with the same name as a notorious serial killer. I’d forgotten all about the episode and Joel Rifkin. It’s often amazing how time works; back in the early 1990s Rifkin was definitely big news where I lived, and once reminded I can recall how much his name was in the news, which sells Seinfeld’s joke. Thirty years later, it’s amazing to realize I’d completely forgotten about a man who killed 17 people.

Seinfeld was, of course, famously about “nothing.” Of course, that’s cute and all but not really true: The show’s episodes definitely had plots in which characters did things, those actions had consequences, and there were defined arcs. But I think of it now because I’ve recently read a series of novels by aspiring writers that appear to have been informed by the Seinfeldian Nothing Rule. In other words, they don’t have much of a plot.

Plot is So Bourgeois

Now, you can pull off a novel that doesn’t really have a plot, of course, but that’s not what I’m talking about. The problem with these recent books is more fundamental, because the authors think they have a plot. But they don’t. What they actually have is a series of events. A lot of writers apparently confused “stuff happening” with plot.

Plot requires shape. I won’t get into the different models for a story, the theories about rising action and when your protagonist should experience despair — the point is, your story should not be a flat series of events. You need conflict, setbacks, twists, and a discernible arc of some kind as your characters move through the story. If all you’re doing is listing the things your characters are doing, it doesn’t really count as a plot, does it?

And yet so, so many writers make this mistake. They come up with some characters, they come up with a goal or, worse, a scenario of some sort, and then they just … describe things that happen.

An easy way to make this mistake is to assume that if the events you’re describing are dramatic and powerful on their own, that’s all you need. While describing a terrifying or dramatic event can make for some good writing, it still isn’t a plot. Even describing how your characters react to the event in question isn’t a plot unless it has shape to it, unless their reactions drive them to other actions that intersect with other events and/or the desires and intentions of other characters (preferably in conflict with them).

One way to test whether you have a plot or a series of events is to check each action taken by your characters and ask if they’re acting in their own interests or simply reacting to external forces. This isn’t foolproof, but if the answer is the latter every single time, you likely have a series of events instead of a plot.

It’s true that life is just one damn thing after another. But that’s why we need stories that aren’t. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to drink six beers in ten minutes. Don’t ask why, just dial emergency services.

plot, Writing

Detained Chapter 13

Author: April 5, 2021 0 Comments

I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Detained every week throughout 2021. Download links below!

13. Candace

She added to her virtual resume the little-known skill pretending to enjoy your own imprisonment. Her list of skills was getting pretty long and esoteric. She wasn’t sure what kind of job they would help her get assuming she wasn’t executed in the next eight and a half hours.

None of the soldiers seemed to be paying any particular attention to them, but they were careful anyway, keeping up a stream of chatter and basically pretending to get drunk. It made sense, she thought; they’d tried a few gambits and seen one of their own killed and the other two threatened. It made sense that they would simply drown their sorrows. It served two purposes: It made everyone think they’d given up, and it gave them a reason to hang around the bar area and shift position a lot.

Mike made his way around the bar in stages, always engaged in conversation.

That was the hardest part, she thought. The chatter. Behaving like you were talking to people and hanging out was exhausting when it was all for show, when all you wanted to do was watch the guards and scream out of frustration and fear.

Mike just dropped behind the bar. One moment he was there, the next he was on the floor and hidden from the rest of the room. None of them reacted in any way. None of the soldiers took any notice. And she kept pretending to have a conversation with Jack and Glen, or she was having a conversation but it made no sense, it was just the three of them saying things to each other and nodding. She couldn’t pull her thoughts into line long enough to make any sense as Mike crawled to the trap, pulled it up, and slipped down, pulling the trap shut behind him.

They’d allowed about three minutes for Mike to make his way to the other trap in the back room, based on the darkness, the difficulty of moving in such a confined space, and an effort to not make any unnecessary noise. Longer, if he got turned around. But from what she’d seen of him, she doubted that was likely. After that, she had no idea what would happen.

“Excuse me?”

Candace felt herself tighten up, her throat closing up as a surge of panic went through her.

“Young lady?”

You’ll be okay. She could picture her father nodding encouragingly, telling her to make it work, she was smart, like her mother. She forced herself to turn. Dr. Raslowski scowled at her from his table, his glasses turned into opaque discs of white light by the collection of monitors facing him. He waved impatiently.

“Yes you, dear God save me from the hicks of the world. Come here.”

Her mind raced. Up to this point, Raslowski had acted as if the entire population of the bar didn’t exist, and she realized she preferred to be a figment of someone’s imagination. That terrible eyeless face pointed in her direction was much, much worse. She kept hearing him spit doesn’t matter after Simms had been shot.

Doesn’t matter.

She tried to mirror his scowl and did the only thing she could think to try: She stalled. “What do you want?”

He cocked his head as if examining an interesting-looking bug. “I want you to come here.”

She looked at Eastman and McCoy, but they both had no suggestions for her. So she took a deep breath and turned and walked over to where the Physicist sat, staring at her. As she approached he leaned back and crossed his arms.

“Please do take your time. As you might imagine we came here and are holding you all under guard for no reason of any importance whatsoever, so there is no urgency to any of this.”

She stopped a few inches away from him. His eyes roamed over her and she felt the familiar, creepy vibe of a man studying her body and making a record of it for later use. “What?”

She was conscious of Mike, worming his way under the bar, in the dark, about to creep up from below and try to take out an armed guard, free Jim Haggen, and deliver weapons to Jack McCoy.

“Sit down,” Raslowski said, turning and placing a small metal box on the table. “I’m going to need some blood.”

“What?”

Raslowski sighed as he pulled a pair of plastic gloves from the box and began tugging them on. “Solely to check identities. Jesus, you people,” he muttered. “King!”

King stepped out of a knot of four soldiers who’d congregated around the front door. “Sir?”

Candace eyed her. She was cute, sort of, short with dark, curly hair. She moved with a fighter’s posture, Candace thought, shoulders out and head lowered, like she was always prepared to scrap. Her face was round and blandly pretty, set in a mask of near-total disinterest.

“Round them up,” Raslowski said. “I need to take some blood samples.”

Candace stood frozen, mind racing. Mike! He was under the floorboards, or in the back about to jump Warner. If they discovered him missing, it would go badly for all of them.

King snapped off a salute, then hesitated, a scowl flashing across her face. She doesn’t like him, or taking orders from him, Candace thought. He wasn’t military. He was a scientist, and they’d probably been ordered to take his commands. But how long does that discipline last? Candace ran her eyes over King and noted the black armbands they all wore. If they were right and something bad had happened and might happen again, and these soldiers were assigned to guard them—

Candace gasped a little as it hit her. The black armbands—these soldiers had been chosen, or volunteered, to die. Or at least to take that risk—this was a suicide mission, in some sense. They were dead anyway.

King’s face smoothed out and she snapped off another impressive salute. “Sir!” Raslowski didn’t even notice; he was busy pulling syringes and tubing from the box, along with a small beige device that had a tiny screen on one end. It looked like an advanced pencil sharpener.

Candace thought furiously, holding herself still. If she tried to signal Jack and Glen, she might be observed, it might give everything away. If she did nothing, in a few moments they were going to discover something was up.

I could cause a disruption—I could jump King and knock her down, start a fight, she thought.

She saw Mr. Simms in her mind, dead, staring sightlessly up at the ceiling. That seemed like a dangerous choice, to say the least.

I could try to signal Mike. Make a noise.

But I don’t know what would make it through the floorboards, and I don’t know what would make sense to him but wouldn’t give everything away.

King had turned away. Candace knew she had a second to make a decision, to do something, anything.

She thought,

Jesus Christ, just do it!

She closed her eyes and let herself drop to the floor.

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Detained, Novels, Writing

Detained Chapter 12

Author: March 29, 2021 0 Comments

I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Detained every week throughout 2021. Download links below!

12. Mike

McCoy laughed. “Are you fucking kidding?”

Mike shook his head. The whiskey had been a mistake; he’d been shaky and at first the alcohol had felt good, calming him down. But now he felt fuzzy, and he wanted to be sharp. “We don’t have a choice. Listen—it’s not certain, but there is a chance that this ends with executions, right? No matter how remote, if there’s a chance of that, we have to defend ourselves. Even if it’s just 1%.”

McCoy leaned back, taking another hit from the bottle. Mike wanted to say something, to suggest he stay sober, but hesitated: He didn’t know these people. “Maybe,” McCoy said. “You got a point.”

“Damn right he has a point,” Eastman said fiercely, surprising Mike. He’d taken Eastman to be an academic, a milquetoast. He didn’t expect him to see reality so quickly, or be so supportive. It remained to be seen if the retired teacher was going to be able to back it up with action, but Mike was encouraged. He had a feeling he was going to need everyone at their best.

He took a deep breath, because that led him to his next thought. He looked from McCoy to Eastman to Candace. “We need to get Haggen out of the back.”

“What?” McCoy said, grinning. “You think that won’t be noticed?”

“Ah, let him stew back there,” Eastman said. “Jimmy Haggen’s all right, but he’s a troublemaker. Always complaining, always telling us how we’re supposed to be living. But he just wants to hide in the woods, to be left alone. Believe me, I tried to organize him a bunch of times. He’s no goddamn use to anyone.”

Mike shook his head. He was impressed with Haggen. The man was a little crazy, but he’d fought well, and he’d taken cues and picked up on things quickly. Mike had his doubts about McCoy and Eastman, but he thought he could rely on Candace—and Haggen, so he wanted him. “Haggen’s reliable. I think maybe he just hasn’t had the chance to show you what he’s got yet. Let’s think about how we could break him out without setting off any alarms.”

McCoy made a face. Eastman rolled his eyes.

Candace looked right at him. “They’ve got him in the back? With the kegs?”

Mike nodded. He fought off a smile; he liked this woman. She was smart, she was up for anything, and she was capable. He was impressed with how she’d handled herself getting online—there’d been no hesitation when he and Haggen had set to it. She hadn’t been shocked or tentative, she’d gone to work.

“We can get back there through the crawlspace. There’s a trap door behind the bar.”

“Dumb idea,” McCoy said. “They got Jim under guard, right?”

Mike thought back. Then he leaned up out of his seat and looked around, checking all the soldiers. “Yeah. One of the soldiers—Warner. Dark skin, bad attitude. He’s not here, so I think he’s still guarding Haggen.”

McCoy shrugged. “There you go. Fucking suicide to even try.”

Mike nodded. This was confirming what he thought: Haggen was reliable. McCoy and Eastman weren’t. That made it even more vital to get Haggen loose.

“Even if you got him free,” Eastman said, “it would just cause trouble. There’d be a reaction.”

“Not if we leave Warner back there,” Candace said. “Tied up, gagged. They’ll assume he’s still guarding Jimmy.”

Mike shook his head. “No, this is a military unit. There will be scheduled check-ins, relief.”

Candace shrugged. “We’d have a window, then. We’d have some time. First we need to know the schedule, right? They have to walk right past us here to get back there. We watch, we make a note. We know how long we’d have. Then we time it: We bring him out, we know exactly how long we have until he’s noticed.”

“And do what?” Eastman asked. “He’s not Superman, guys. Okay, Mr. Malloy says Jimmy’s useful, reliable, whatever. And okay—we have a deficit in terms of manpower, we could use a warm body. But say we have an hour—say we could get Jim loose and we’d have an hour until they noticed? We need to have a plan in place before we spring him. We need to know exactly what we plan to do, or it won’t mean anything.”

Mike nodded. “You’re right.”

“So let’s make a plan,” Candace said. She looked at Mike. “You said take control—how do we do that?”

Mike looked at her, then at McCoy, Eastman, and back to her. “We take the guns.”

McCoy laughed out loud. When he spoke his words had the slightest slur to them. “Sure! Of course, it’s easy. First we cut Jimmy loose but make sure they don’t notice, because having Jimmy Haggen on our side makes all the damn difference. Then the five of us take on, what, a dozen armed, trained soldiers with no weapons?”

Mike shook his head, feeling his heart rate climbing. He knew this was reluctance dressed up as objection—McCoy just wanted to get drunk and hope for the best, and any suggestion that they take action, take risks he was going to meet with all the reasons it was a bad idea. And the worst of it was, Mike knew it was a bad idea, for exactly the reasons McCoy had just outlined. But he couldn’t do nothing. He’d spent too much of his life doing nothing, and now he’d spent a year or more doing nothing in a different way, doing nothing by trying to do everything all at once. “Don’t play that—”

Candace interrupted. “We have weapons,” she said.

They all turned to look at her. She blushed, and Mike thought it made her look lovely.

“Jack, your hunting gear is in the back, too,” she said, looking from face to face.

McCoy frowned. “It’s a crossbow, kid.”

She nodded. “And a survival knife,” she said. “And the bow’s an auto-cocker, and you’ve taken down some huge Moose with that thing.”

“All right,” McCoy said looking around to make sure none of the soldiers were close enough to hear them. “But it’s still just one weapon.”

Mike was thinking quickly. “An auto cocker means you can reload in what, a few seconds? Without having to plant the thing for the pull. If we can get you into the right position, you could do some real damage.”

McCoy stared at him. “Some damage? You’re talking about killing people.”

Mike shook his head. “You know how to shoot. You can go for injury instead of killshots.”

“And when they start returning fire? When Hammond gives the order to just kill us all? Burn the place down?”

“And what, you want to just sit here and hope for the best?” Mike demanded, feeling his pulse pound. “Look, we have the element of surprise. I go down the trap, get the drop on the guard back there, and if nothing else we suddenly have an advantage they’re unaware of. It’s better than sitting here drinking liquor and waiting for someone else to decide if I’m going to live or die.”

Eastman was looking down at his hands. “I tend to agree, Jack.”

“Me too,” Candace said. “Better to do something than nothing.”

McCoy took another slug from the bottle, eyes on the soldiers around them. “All right. Why you?”

Mike shrugged. “It’s my idea, first of all. Wouldn’t be right to make someone else take the risk. And I know how to fight. No offense, but you and Mr. Eastman here are a little older and out of shape.”

Glen smiled. “And that’s being kind,” he said.

“I don’t suppose once I’m in the crawlspace there’s a way outside?”

Candace shook her head. “It’s literally a crawlspace, maybe three feet high. Its dirty and filled with spiderwebs and pipes and electrical. It’s dark—but it’s a clean shot straight back to the other trap, which will bring you up behind the freezer in the back. Between that and the shelves and kegs you have a good chance of getting up and out without being seen by the guard.”

Mike nodded. “All right. Jack, you stay behind the bar. Stop drinking. We need you as sober as possible. I’ll make my way back there and take care of Jimmy, and take the guard’s sidearm. Then I’ll head back, and switch places with you—you head back there through the crawlspace. The hallway entrance is your best position—no one behind you except Hammond, you’ll have visual command of the whole bar. Glen, Candace, when Jack heads back you get behind the bar—casual, move slowly, like you’re making yourselves a drink—so you’ll have cover.”

“What if Hammond comes at me?”

“Jimmy will have your back,” Mike said. “And I’ll be up here with the sidearm. They look like Beretta M9A3s, which means a minimum ten-round magazine, but maybe fifteen rounds. Either way I’m familiar with the basic M9 design and I think I can be pretty accurate with it.”

Candace smiled slightly. “Let me guess: You spent a few months paying someone to teach you about guns.”

Mike nodded, returning her ghostly smile. “I’m no expert, but I’m an okay shot.”

She looked around. “Okay. Me and Glen will be on distraction duty. Anyone looks like they plan on heading back there, we’ll do our best to stop them. We ready?”

They all looked at each other. McCoy picked up the cap of his bottle and deliberately screwed it back into place. “Okay,” he said. “Ready.”

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