by C. S. Laurel

Writers get lonely sometimes. I know I do, despite the fact that I have a loving partner and a decent enough income to keep me out of the homeless shelter. Just about.  But the thing is I’m really a social animal, and the writing life consists mostly of sitting at the computer, alone, conjuring up imaginary friends to play with – pretty pathetic for a guy who likes to talk and lecture and, I confess, on occasion babble – then yanking out your virtual notebook and secretly recording the proceedings before any of them notices and shuts up. The trick is to get it down on “paper” (really, it’s an electronic file, but let’s not quibble) before your “friends” leave. Unfortunately, some days are better than others; some days your “friends” don’t want to play.

What to do then? Turn to your real  or at least corporeal friends, of course!  The thing  is, when you work by yourself, you don’t have work friends.  And even if you still have a day job, as I did at a time, you can’t sidle up to the water cooler and go “my imaginary friends are driving me crazy” not unless you want to be taken away in an I-love-me-jacket.

Years ago, when I was slinging words onto the page at the blistering pace of a few hundred words every third Tuesday of months that didn’t end in “-ary” and not nearly as determined to earn a living writing, I found a writing critique group that met regularly and after I camped on their doorstep for two weeks unshaven and unwashed, they let me in, or at least told me to take a shower already, and I slipped into their meetings. When my characters misbehaved, I turned to my writing peers, moaning about how my characters froze me out. Sarah was in that group at the time, and she turned to me, looking like I’d grown a second head, and asked, “Really? Mine won’t shut up no matter what!” (Anyone who has known Sarah for any length of time realizes the newbie mistake of trying to garner her sympathy with errant figments but, in my defense, I had just met her.) I realized then that the relationship between writers and their characters wasn’t much different than the average schizophrenic’s – except maybe more like a marriage, honestly, with all the joys and heartache and the occasional partner who won’t shut up — I wonder why mine snorts when I say that?  The point is, they’re just as real to us as real people are.  Occasionally they’re also just as troublesome.

That experience stuck with me, and I learned from it. Now, when my characters give me the silent treatment, I treat them like my real friends and refuse to let them freeze me out. Usually, they relent quickly enough to release me from the doldrums.  Yes, they probably do that to get me to shut up, but what matters is that it works.

So, how can a writer ever be lonely then, you ask? Back in the day, when it was just me and my critique group, the only time most of us writerly types saw each other (beyond our groups, of course) was at conventions, once or twice a year. I used to look forward to those conventions for months, and that kept me from getting too lonely.  These days, I rarely go to conventions. We writers congregate almost daily online, on Facebook, Twitter, and the blogosphere, so we’re rarely alone any more, but I still feel lonely sometimes. Maybe it’s just because I’m a social animal, but I miss the quick hugs from con-friends you haven’t seen in years, the exhilaration of getting invited to an unexpected dinner party with a VP of a big publisher, the pleasure of shaking your idol’s hand and blubbering like a fan-boy idiot for a few minutes before sitting down next to that idol so you can sign your own books for your own fans.

I really miss personally connecting with my fans. You know who you are. One day, once I’ve built enough of a fan base to support the expenses involved with conventioning, I’ll get back to it. Which brings me, sideways, to an announcement.

My first novel, B. Quick, came out a few years ago, and has been gaining readers ever since. I can’t tell you how pleased I get every time I get fan mail! (My partner could, but it would involve lots of eye-rolling and snickering and the occasional mention of duct tape.) As much as I love the book and the attention it’s received, I have a secret to share: it wasn’t my first Quick mystery! Yes, that’s right, I had actually written another one before, called Quicksand. Bill and Brian were already an established couple in that novel, and the main complaint I got from my critique group was that they wanted to know how such an odd couple got together, so I wrote B. Quick, which naturally got published first, being first chronologically. But I didn’t forget about my other baby.

So, without further ado…

Naked Reader Press will be publishing Quicksand next month! And to celebrate, I’ve asked them to put up B. Quick for free for a while and they did! Download it today, as my gift to you for reading about my figments and telling so many of your friends.

And, because my partner says I’m a tease, let me prove it.  Here’s a short excerpt from Quicksand.

 *  *  *

The doorbell rang at eight a.m..

I was already twenty minutes late for my first lecture of the day, stark naked and in the laundry room, rummaging through the hamper for a less than dirty pair of socks I might wear again.

I yelled “Brian,” as loudly as I could but without much hope.  “Brian, will you get the door?”

Our bedroom was right next to the laundry room, but I got no answer.  Then again, I didn’t expect one because the love of my life could easily have slept through a seven forty seven landing on the bed.

The doorbell rang and rang, as though the caller, tired of waiting, had decided to glue his finger to the button.

I tried to ignore it till I’d found socks, but the two pairs I unearthed — one liver-pill-yellow, one shrieking red — were obviously Brian’s, bought at bargain sales and unsuitable for a conservative lecturer in an old-fashioned college.  What the man did with my socks was beyond guessing.  Last time I’d asked him, he said he ground them and sold them to the health food store as gourmet cheese.  I hoped he was joking.

I yelled again over the ringing din, “Brian,” before giving up and walking down the hallway.  On the way I grabbed a robe and ran my fingers through my short dark hair in an attempt at looking knowledgeable and respectable, the type of scholar who would have spent the night poring over the most obscure Elizabethan Literature instead of blond ex-students.  You never know when the dean might decide to come calling.

Okay, yes.  It had never happened.  But that didn’t mean it couldn’t happen.

It didn’t help to look in the bedroom and see Brian, sprawled cater-corner on our king size waterbed, his expression one of absolute bliss.  Like a cat, he can take up all available space on any bed.  I pulled the door to — just in case our impromptu visitor got this far — and arrived at the front door ready to play decency incarnate.

I should have saved myself the trouble.  The man leaning against the doorbell didn’t even see me. The knife was stuck below his ribs, the blood pouring out to soak his striped blue and white flannel pajamas.

Murder, my mind said, helpfully.  Murder most foul.

While having Shakespeare quotes run through my mind might be a professional deformation as a professor of Shakespeare, that one was hard to argue with.  I looked at the blood pouringout onto the marble floor of the hallway.

Murder, definitely.  Unless this man had decided to perform surgery on himself on my doorstep, and that seemed too bizarre, even for a college town.

Police.  I should call the police.   The police would know what to do, right?  It was their job, wasn’t it?  But I couldn’t close the door and leave the man here, bleeding, could I?

Why not?   I hate it when my mind waxes sarcastic, but the whole point of the dead is that they are somewhat mobility challenged.  So it should be okay to leave him right here.  I started backing away and pushing the door closed.

My supposed dead man opened his pale blue eyes.

I must have jumped three feet back and the only reason I didn’t slam the door shut is that my hands were otherwise occupied, covering my mouth.

The dea– wounded man looked at me slowly, with a sort of wondering expression, then frowned, as if he were trying to recall something very difficult.  “Bill?” he rasped.  And then he fell sideways.

He’d called me by name.  I surged forward, broke his fall, pulled him into the house and banged the door behind me.  All too late, I realized I was trying to render assistance.  This, given my knowledge of first aid, was not unlike trying to grow a pair of wings.

I couldn’t find his heart beat.  As for his pulse, though I had a vague idea of how to feel for it, I could never locate a beat on anyone.  In health class, back in tenth grade, I’d gone from classmate to classmate, lying about counting their heart beats, all the while wondering by what luck I’d landed in the zombie class.

Assuming that the man might still be alive, I grabbed the handle of the knife — a smooth, wooden handle, much like our own kitchen knives — and pulled it once, hard.  I remember thinking I had to pull straight up, so as not to make the cut worse.

Listen, I’m not a medical doctor.  I’m a doctor of English and literature.  If a split infinitive ever comes to the house with a knife stuck in its middle, I’ll know exactly what to do.  With a wounded man, I acted on impulse.

The result was much the same as if the proverbial Dutch kid had taken his finger from the rhetorical dam.  Blood spurted everywhere, including my face, my white robe and my brand new white carpet.