To Peddle a Story

Update:

I just updated Where's My Book? for the first time since creating the page.

As you can see, yours is very likely on the way or in my office waiting to be hand-delivered right now!

I just need addresses for one last fistful of folks.


To Make Contact . . .

------

Confession: Marketing is never been my brand of whiskey. Now that In Verse has been released into the wild in paperback form, and the Kindle Edition is set to release on April 1st, the challenge shifts to getting it noticed.

I believe it's a great story with the potential to sell, but "Read my book!" feels like "Hold my baby!" You never have to ask your mother twice, but its long-term success is out of her hands. Whether it flies or dies will depend on unbiased opinions and word-of-mouth. A story must prove itself worthy, one stranger at a time . . . or have enough cash and advertising prowess behind it to arrest or hoodwink the masses.

I don't have an agent or the means to fund a media blitz. So as I christen the double decker strugglebus that is self-promotion, I hope to garner some favorable reviews from strangers and possibly some awards that I can point to and say, "Look what she said! No! She's not even my sister!"

There are a lot of fiction contests out there that only accept novels published in the previous calendar year, which means it will be a while before my title is a contender in those arenas. In the meantime I aim to get creative. Going door to door like an old school encyclopedia or Hoover salesman is completely against my nature, but you never know what getting a free copy into the hands of a modern-day Midas might achieve.


By the way, I just noticed that the "Look Inside" feature for In Verse on Amazon is now available!

The Novels are Coming! . . . And a short story.

The novel I promised to pry my fingers from and share with the world via Project Gratitude 2018  [ here ] is finally on the virtual shelves at Amazon. If you were a letter recipient last year, your copy should be on the way soon.

To tide you over, here's a short story that I wrote a few months ago for the 2018 Winter Hackathon by Owl Canyon Press. For the Hackathon they provide the 1st and 25th paragraphs and you take care of the rest for a strictly 50-paragraph short story. I've highlighted the seed paragraphs below.

In the Shadow of the Wall

By Tex DeJésus

Beyond the cracked sidewalk, and the telephone pole with layers of flyers in a rainbow of colors, and the patch of dry brown grass there stood a ten-foot high concrete block wall, caked with dozens of coats of paint. There was a small shrine at the foot of it, with burnt out candles and dead flowers and a few soggy teddy bears. One word of graffiti filled the wall, red letters on a gold background: Rejoice!

            The street art was exactly ten weeks and one day older than the modest temporary memorial. Sixteen-year-old Hannah Southworth knew this because her safest route to school each day, whether she caught the bus or walked, passed right by the singular cinderblock plane in a debris-littered lot where a grocery store stood twenty years ago.

Hannah watched with excitement as the commissioned street art took shape. A philanthropic initiative to mask the less-tasteful tags and gang symbols that covered a lot of crumbling infrastructure in the borough was set in motion just in time for the holiday season. The wall seemed to turn from gray to gold overnight. Hannah pressed her forehead to the bus window and tried to guess what it was going to say as the letters appeared over the course of days. Repo? . . . Recoil? . . . Rejoin? . . . Rejoice!

Then, in stark contrast to the cheery display, Hannah’s 19-year-old sister Lola’s lifeless body was found sprawled out at the base of the wall just a week before Christmas. Hannah felt hollow as the improvised memorial sprang up and gradually grew through Christmas Eve. She participated in two vigils and a funeral service, showing just enough emotion to appease her mother, Freda.

Snowfall in mid-January buried the withering installment to the candlewicks. The masking came as a relief to Hannah, but the fresh white blanket melted within weeks. Heartfelt letters turned to pulp. Endearing plush toys appeared more morbid than innocent as they emerged, muddy and contorted—especially those from which crows harvested eyes.

By May, a stranger might not realize that amidst the rubble there had been a memorial at all. Funding for neighborhood art projects dried up as fast as the ten cases of spray paint that it bankrolled. The glaring red “Rejoice!” was to be a seasonal installation. But even as the dandelions reared up through the gravel in the shadow of the wall to shake their manes in the spring breeze, it screamed irony across the urban landscape. By day, the freelance installment of a crude green cock-and-balls, underscoring the word, distracted passersby from the candles that still stood at the foot of the wall.

Hannah struggled with a deep sense of loss. She didn’t miss Lola, as a sister, in the slightest. The unforeseen involuntary forfeiture of things that depended upon her sister formed the void. The heaviest cross Hannah shouldered came from the guilt of not feeling how the world expected her to feel. Her role in a stage play with no end—being disingenuous day in and day out—was draining. But pretending to miss Lola was a critical front. Her mother’s sanity hung on the perpetual charade.

~

Between five and six years ago, Hannah lay in the top bunk above Lola in the smaller of an apartment’s two bedrooms. Hannah’s father, Greg, and Freda yelled at each other in the kitchen. Surfaces of containers and cabinets made contact at high speed for emphasis. It had something to do with money. Canned grievances became weapons of war, with their bearers drained of any temporal capacity for nuance. It didn’t matter that Hannah didn’t understand the finer details of the initial argument, or the depths of the mud slung. The tone was enough to terrify her.

            Lola suddenly kicked the bottom of the mattress above her as hard as she could. Hannah nearly flew over the side-rail. It was more than the little girl could handle, and she began to cry. Cold as ice, Lola warned her, “If your dad hits Mom, I’ll make him pay.”

              Hannah never witnessed physical violence between her parents. Though sweet harmony was a rarity between her parents, she couldn’t comprehend Lola’s brazen resentment of Greg. Sure, the man drank almost as hard as he worked to keep the family afloat, but he kept them in the black. As far as anyone knew, he was faithful to Freda. He took time to play with both his daughter and stepdaughter. That was more than could be said for Lola’s father. Ska just gave Freda her first child along with a side of Hep C and flew the coop.

            The way Greg seemed to favor Lola made her obvious distaste for him even harder for Hannah to comprehend. Sure, Lola was older, more mature, often better-behaved. But Hannah was a smart kid. She didn’t get into much trouble at school. She was also Greg’s flesh and blood—his baby girl. She loved him too much to hold the jealousy against her dad.

Lola got more hugs, more lap time, and regular “daddy-dates.” Greg would often drive away with Lola in his Ranger. Sometimes he let her ride right next to him, perched high on the armrest with the seatbelt across her knees. Upon their return, Hannah would run out to greet them and right into his open arms. Lola usually retreated quietly to her room with a new toy in-tow.

Eager to hear about the fun they had, Hannah would beg for details. Did she get to play in the ball pit? Did daddy go down the slide with you? There were visions of sugarplums since Greg promised her that, when she was just a little older, she could go. Lola tortured her by divulging very little. “You don’t know what you’re missing,” she often stated blandly.

Greg’s last day happened to be on an outing with Lola. He never drank on those trips. The autopsy couldn’t pin the horrific wreck that killed him on a stroke or a heart attack, either. The truck was so mangled after it clipped a backhoe parked in a construction zone at high speed and cartwheeled down the freeway that a mechanical failure couldn’t be proven. So everyone held to that theory.

Lola was in the hospital for over a month. Both of her little legs were broken. She didn’t seem to remember anything leading up to the accident despite multiple therapy sessions over the following years. Hannah couldn’t shake how her sister avoided eye contact in the hospital, even when she brought Lola a giant stuffed rabbit that she bought with her own savings to try and lift the poor girl’s spirits.

 Greg’s extended family was desperate for his stepdaughter’s suppressed memories of his last moments after the man’s sudden departure. Some from Freda’s side of the family questioned why Lola had on nothing but a bloody tee shirt when she was pulled from the tangled nest of bent steel and shattered glass. “I must have blacked out,” became her tagline. The way she would later come to say that, through a half-sneer with circles under her eyes as dark as her purple lipstick, made Hannah uneasy.

The unexpected loss of Greg was even harder on Freda. She, after all, had to weather the financial implications head-on. Life insurance through Buckhorn Construction, Greg’s employer, helped cover Lola’s hospital bills. But Freda made weekly trips to the local food bank by the time her daughter came home.

Freda had to find a job to keep their heads above water. She ended up with a rotating shift on a tight circuit, caring for the basic needs of homebound hospice patients. Her empathetic nature was a perfect fit from the perspective of vulnerable people yanked back and forth between agony and the euphoria of painkillers near the end of their ropes.

In hindsight, a job that forced her to accept the rapid-fire fading of people she cared for, even as she bonded with them, wasn’t the healthiest career field Freda could have chosen right after her husband’s death. Depression set in. The power of the medicine she regularly administered to dull pain was too effective, too available, to resist. Soon, it just wasn’t enough.

~

Hannah thought she might be going crazy. Lola’s funeral was months ago. The memorial at the foot of the wall was scattered—disintegrated, looted, and composted, but for the candles. The candles, despite the snow, the time, and the vandals that defaced the “Rejoice!” lettering beyond legibility, were still in place. On some days, through the school bus window, Hanna could make out slight variations in their heights or formation. It was as if someone still burned and replaced them regularly.

            Hannah chose to walk to school the following Monday. She stopped to take an up-close picture of the candles with her phone. Friday, she walked again. Trembling with excitement as she knelt before the shrine, she pulled up Monday’s photo and confirmed her suspicions. Not only did some of the candles melt down further, some were taller. There were five on Monday, and now six—someone maintained the shrine. Hannah decided then to do her homework at the bus stop across the street the following Monday, and stake out the scene as night fell.

~

Three and a half years ago, Lola walked her sister home from school. They made a routine stop in the shadow of the wall, then an evolving rainbow of backjumps, tags, and grey patches from short-lived municipal buffing campaigns. Lola always made Hannah stay near the crumbling sidewalk and “watch for pigs” while she held a rapid-fire series of brief meetings with individuals loitering in the lot. One day she returned to Hannah to find her crying. “What’s wrong with you?” she asked testily, her head making an involuntary jerk sideways.

“I just remembered . . .” Hannah sniffed, “It was three years ago today that you and Dad—” Lola rolled her eyes with a huff and brushed past her sister. Hannah yelled through undiluted grief as she hurried to catch up, “Don’t you miss him? What’s wrong with you?!? . . . Seriously! Lola! Are you even alive!?”

            Lola turned to face Hannah. She leaned forward menacingly to bring them nose-to-nose. That’s when Hannah saw her sister’s everyday-self buried treading water several miles deeper than usual in a boiling emotional and chemical slurry. It only surfaced in the bloodshot around the open windows of her dilated pupils. The sudden flash of concern Hannah reflected was enough to tell Lola, even on a high, that her cover was blown. She hissed, “The world is a better place without that monster. You’re welcome.”

~

Three days later, an automobile pulled up and parked beside the concrete wall. The driver opened the door, but did not get out of the car. Although her face was in shadow, it was easy to tell she was sad. There was something about how she turned away from the sun and rested the weight of her hands on the steering wheel. Something about her silent composure caused Hannah to sigh. The young girl watched the driver lean out of the car and stretch her hand out toward one of the burned out candles.

            Under a streetlight on the other side of the road, Hannah’s commitment to memory of the capitols of eastern European nations went on hold. The blemish-free dark blue BMW looked quite out of place. Class tribalism quickly snuffed out the whiff of empathy sparked by the woman’s wistful silhouette. Hannah slid her geography textbook into her backpack in exchange for an empty glass Topo Chico bottle, and zipped up.

Hannah hoisted her book bag over her left shoulder. Through a break in traffic, she ran across the street, hurdling a pothole. She rounded the rear bumper of the sedan and jumped into the car behind the stranger. Slamming the door behind her, she quickly pressed the mouth of the bottle firmly against the driver’s neck, “Who are you, and how did you know Lola!?”

The woman shrieked. A box of matches flew into the passenger seat as her hands shot up. Her eyes locked onto the girl’s in the rearview mirror, “Hannah! Oh my God! You really scared me! Your sister is probably laughing at me right now.” She lowered her shaky hands to her knees, and relaxed slightly with a sigh, “You know—I can see your bottle in the side-mirror. You can put it down. . . Let’s go for a ride.”

            With that, the woman stomped on the gas. Gravel peppered the undercarriage as the sedan’s wheels spun under sudden acceleration. Hannah lurched back against the leather bench seat, wide-eyed. She yanked at the door handle. It refused to open. For a split second, she weighed smashing the window with the soda bottle. Her wheels spun as the car rolled onto city streets. “Let me out!” She yelled, “Who are you?”

~

Almost a year ago, Hannah peeked through security bars of her family’s first-floor apartment and tried to discern any movement behind the curtains. No signals offered. With the piece of butcher’s twine around her neck, she pulled a key out of her gray V-neck and unlocked the front door.

The familiar warmth of stale tobacco-tinged air caressed her cheekbones as she stepped into the unit. Her mother was on the couch near the door, her feet planted as far apart as her short skirt would allow. Head cranked back, her eyes and mouth chomped sporadically at the ceiling. She gulped air between unintelligible strings of syllables.

            Lola sat next to Freda on the stained floral upholstery accented by burn holes. Hannah noticed the seat cushion and skirt beneath Freda were soaked with piss. Lola held her mother’s hand and stroked her arm, “It’s okay, you’re doing great!” she said soothingly, even as her fierce green eyes flashed Hannah a stern warning.

            The young girl’s stomach turned and churned. Indignation and anger gained quickly on her fear and anxiety, but couldn’t catch up to incredulity. She met Lola’s icy glance with her own signature ocular firebrand, “What did you give her, Lola?! Is that what you’ve been selling? Are you going to fucking kill everyone that I love!?”

~

“You can call me Carla.” The driver offered, “I’m glad to finally meet you, Hannah. And yes, I knew Lola well—she showed me pictures of you on her phone. I was able to pick you out of the crowd at her memorial service. I can pull over and let you out right now if you like, but if you want to know more . . .”

Curiosity overpowered Hannah. With skeptically pursed lips, she nodded reluctantly at the sad, mascara-shaded blue eyes begging for consent from the mirror. “About Lola?” she asked, “Okay—tell me what you know, then. I heard once that she had a girlfriend. . . . Was that you? Mom would so flip out.”

            Carla nervously cleared her throat, “My father was dying from stage-four colon cancer, and Freda was his hospice caretaker . . . or supposed to be. I went to check on Daddy one afternoon and found Lola administering his medication. I threatened to report her when she couldn’t show me any credentials. She was still honest enough to tell me that Freda was the person swallowing his pain pills when she made the house calls.

“She also told me that, without your mom’s income, you would all be living on the street in a matter of weeks. I decided to let Lola stand in for Freda until Daddy passed. She even came to his funeral. We grew very close after he died . . . then someone took her from me!”

Carla wiped watered down eyeliner from her face and rambled on, “The city just mopped up and left. They don’t care. I’m following up on her case. I send letters to officials. I try to keep her memory alive with candles at the memorial. . . . I’ve been wanting to get in touch with you, Hannah. Lola told me things . . . things she didn’t tell anyone else. But she refused to tell me where you lived. I’ve been worried sick for you, since she isn’t here to cover for your mom anymore. How are you getting by?”

City lights, pushing harder through nightfall, scrolled past the car window and Hannah’s glazed-over eyes, “Mom got how important insurance is after Dad’s wreck. She talked about it all the time. She paid extra to get us all covered once she got a job. We’re okay. She doesn’t even pretend to work now.”

Carla was visibly relieved, “Oh! Wow . . . That’s so good to hear . . . Are you hungry? Can I take you to dinner?” Hannah shook her head as the woman drew to a stop on the shoulder and turned on her hazard lights, “I can take you home, then. Would that be okay? Just tell me where to go!”

“Lola wouldn’t tell you where we live. You think I will!? I can get myself home,” Hanna said, defiantly testing the locked car door again. Carla’s arm reached back between the seats with a roll of cash in her hand. Hannah hesitated. It was the familiar look of the bills, tightly wound and circled by a lavender elastic hairband that gave her pause. “I don’t want your money. Let me out!”

            “It’s not mine, Hannah. Lola wanted you to have it if anything ever happened to her. I think she knew, somehow, that she was short on time. I don’t know about her source of income. . . I know she wasn’t a whore. I also know that she cared deeply for you. She said she didn’t think you would ever understand her completely . . . that’s why she needed me . . . but I know she loved you more. You don’t know what you had. Take this, please, and I’ll let you out.”

~

Hannah lay in her upper bunk, looking for familiar shapes in the lumps of popcorn ceiling a few feet from her nose. The mental scavenger hunt helped distract her from the haunting image firmly stamped into her psyche. It always seemed to boot up when she wanted to sleep—when there was no work, conversation, or music to flush it away.

The room seemed colder, if safer, without the familiar flicker of Lola’s smartphone reflecting off the walls, or the rhythmic sound of her breathing. Rambling intonations of late-night infomercials, for which Freda developed an impressive level of tolerance, blended with traffic noise outside to form a new audio baseline.

Hannah rolled over and squirmed into position to descend the wooden ladder. She walked over to her fading pair of black denim jeans piled on the floor and dug the money roll out of a pocket. Quietly, in her socked feet, she skated down the hallway to peek into the living room. Freda sat on the unsoiled side of the couch. Her chin, pressed against her chest, served as a kickstand for her head. Saliva had barely breached the sagging corner of her mouth—a sure sign she would sleep for at least a few more hours.

Back down the hall and into her mother’s cold, seldom-used bedroom, Hannah lowered herself to her knees before her father’s old wooden chest of drawers. She carefully worked the bottom drawer outward to avoid squeaks and clanks. A King Edward cigar box covered with crayon scribbles snuggled with dress socks and a few rolled-up leather belts inside. Hannah carefully lifted it out and set it on the floor. She swung open the lid and tucked the cash into the carton alongside a black subcompact Glock pistol and a handful of loose hollow-point rounds.

Hannah picked up the handgun and deftly removed its empty magazine. It seemed much heavier than a week ago. With the front of her nightgown, she polished the cold metal surfaces, the smooth parts and the knurling. From the muzzle to the handgrip, she massaged the piece. With her sleeves pulled over her fingertips, Hannah reassembled and returned the pistol to its place. She closed the box, and then wiped down the exterior. Struggling to breathe, she carefully placed the container back in the drawer, and pushed the drawer closed.

The strength Hannah needed to make her routine ascension just wasn’t at her disposal when she reached her room. She rolled onto the squeaky springs of the lower mattress. The sudden, familiar scent of Lola’s mango mist body spray, embedded in the sheets, overwhelmed her.

Grief and remorse struck like fangs of a newly awakened viper. They ripped into her heart with a precise and unrelenting ferocity. Hannah curled into a ball and silently wept with the subliminal hope that she might drown in her tears before the shadow of the wall swallowed her whole. How else might she free herself from the loop of film that whirred constantly in her conscience?

At the foot of the golden wall, near where the candles would burn, Lola’s blue hair feathered out on the dirt and amongst the weeds like cotton candy stolen and rejected by a playful gust of wind at the county fair. Agony etched terror into disbelief on her face. Her cheeks grew paler by the second. The hole in her stomach dribbled and gushed, as if the bright crimson “Rejoice!” overhead was destined from commencement to melt and drain through Lola’s person. Tears saturated her closed eyelids. They pooled there to plummet from the bridge of her nose to Earth and form a solitary freckle in the dust. Hannah turned and walked away.

Project Gratitude 2018 in Review

Dear Reader,

I’m happy to announce that Project Gratitude 2018 has been a smashing success! A worthwhile exercise in thankfulness, remembrance, and writing. Two copies of In Verse now exist in book form (proofs) and I’m more than halfway through putting the finishing touches on the final first edition. The best way to track its trajectory between now and its Amazonian debut is by following this Facebook page. I hope to have the book on the market by the end of January. An E-Reader edition should follow shortly and, maybe - just maybe - eventually an audio version. As a frequent mumbler, dictating the book could serve as a good personal exercise in enunciation.

I didn’t expect or receive a response from everyone who got a letter from me in 2018 but, when I did, that served to confirm mailing addresses, which will make it easier for me to confidently order their promised copy of my novel. I'm putting the list here to track who’s copy has been sent, and who I would like verification from.

Several responses to letters last year were immensely gratifying. There was the indirect compliment on my writing from none other than Ray Stevens [ raystevens.com ] via Cyrus "Buddy" Kalb, the lyricist who penned Mississippi Squirrel Revival, one of my all-time favorite Ray Stevens ballads:

And then there was a touching letter in reply from my best friend from high school, David, who I hadn’t talked to in almost 20 years. It lead to a reunion at Martin House Brewing in Ft. Worth a couple of weeks before Christmas. We found that our careers bring us both to DFW on a regular basis, so I’m sure we'll be catching up more frequently going-forward.

The MVR (Most Valuable Reader) award goes to Steve Dymale, who’s encouraging feedback on many posts, via email and happy hour sessions (sometimes followed-up by the ravenous consumption of Pizza Dan’s house pie at Peel and Press) really helped keep me motivated last year.

The cadence of posts here at One Face in the Crowd will be dropping now that the letter-posting portion of Project Gratitude 2018 is completed, but I’m sure there will be a number of short stories and essays popping up over the course of 2019. Much of my focus will be shifting back to digital art this year, as I’ve revived Artiquitous.com, and poetry on Eclectic Scribe.  I would be honored if you consider subscribing to my work in those arenas.

As always, thank you for reading!

-Daniel

God

~~~~~~~~

Dear God,

No pun intended . . . but you knew that. You and I go way back—all the way back to the big bang. With a masterful one-hand clap, there I was—a mess of unconscious scattered particles, yet to be assembled by time, gravity, chemical reactions, and a chain of unrealized trysts and love stories. I don’t know if you hunkered down over a drafting board to sketch out concepts for birds of paradise, or just propped your proverbial boots up for thirteen-billion years to watch what you set in motion unfold, but it sure turned out interesting. Thank you for the colorful diversity of life on Earth and our capacity to relish it.

The biblical worldview through which I grew up to understand you was predominantly literal. The Bible I read may well have dropped from the sky as Jesus ascended, my name etched into the leather, dictated by you and typed out in the King’s English by Gabriel himself. The versions generally accepted by Bible Belt Protestantism I’m familiar with included the KJV [some folks I know would stop the list right there], NKJV, NLT, ASV, NIV, and ESV. The edgiest evangelicals would even dare read Eugene Peterson’s controversial modern translation The Message.

I've learned a lot about the origins of the good book over the last ten years. English translations of the Bible have been around less than half as long as Christianity itself. For a long time literacy was a luxury of the elite. Hand-scribed books were prohibitively expensive. Full-time priests handled replication, digestion, interpretation, and distribution of scripture. Then the printing press came along, with the protestant reformation hot on its heels. The ability to read became an increasingly important life-skill as information increasingly went to the press. The mystic anthology grew cheaper and more available to the common man.

Dather

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

November 6, 2018

Dear *Dather,

In the earliest memory of you that I can recall, I have one foot on your head and another on your shoulder. You’re sitting on the floor in the kitchen, leaning against the knotty pine cabinetry, and I’m balanced on you, leaning over the countertop, transferring dirty dishwater with a ladle from one container to another in the kitchen sink. It felt deceptively industrious and productive at the time. Maybe that’s why the memory stuck.

Before I started fighting boredom and loneliness with cheese and morphed into a 220lb Bobby Hill doppelgänger by the age of 12, there were all of the fun acrobatics we would attempt in the name of Vincent Morales. We latched on to that name when going to an actual circus, but he must have never achieved celebrity status . . . I can’t find him on Google. Balancing our bodies on your socked feet, Katy and I would soar like birds. You’d grab our shoulders and, with a kick, we’d somersault over your head and land on our feet.

I still remember when you took me to my first movie in a theater. It came out in 1988, so I was 7 years old. Unfortunately it wasn’t the kid-friendly flick you’d imagined. Watching Judge Doom subject the poor little squeaky-shoe toon to the “dip” in Who Framed Roger Rabbit gave me nightmares for weeks. You must have also suffered a bit of PTSD, as that first movie you took me to was also the last I can recall watching with you in a theater. The strongest emotions, positive or negative, seem the best at making memories stick.

Steve

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

October 17, 2018

Dear Steve,

I’ve been picking up the cadence when it comes to letter-writing so I can clear the board for novel-formatting in November. There are actually only three people left in my list of 52 to write for Project Gratitude 2018 – you, my father, and God. As much as I’d like to say it was because I was putting all the women before old white men, that’s just not the case.

You were on my list from the beginning precisely because, over as many pints we’ve quaffed together over the last 6 years, you’ve probably come to understand better than any other unrelated human on Earth why the last two letters to the earthly and heavenly fathers will challenge me the most. I’ve only put off writing yours to give me something fun to look forward to all year . . . and maybe to make you squirm a little.

It started in the Dymales’ living room in early 2013 with what I like to call the smirk of understanding. I was masking sarcasm with Sunday School verbiage before our new home group when your eyes lit up and you cracked that wry grin. It happens when your bullshit detector gets triggered—and sometimes when you’re enduring the status quo for the sake of civility. I knew, right then, that a like-mind just read between the lines. You heard me loud and clear.

Dear Reader (An Overdue Update)

Dear Reader,


I really buckled down on letters in October and November. I was even behind on posting them for a little while. Since catching up, I've been releasing them here, one each week, in the order they were written and mailed. I apologize if you've had to wait for weeks to find your letter here, and finally make sense of what I scrawled out by hand.

Finishing up on letters allowed me to buckle down on the novel. I completed the final in-depth editing and formatting pass, designed the cover, figured out all of the hullabaloo that comes with the copyright and ISBN info page, and racked my brain for way too long over all of the self publishing avenues and options available.

I ultimately chose Kindle Direct Publishing to get the paperback into tangible form, ordered two proofs, and it escaped the world of screens and drives. It's a real book! I must say, it feels really good. I added a few pictures to the novel's dedicated page so you can see the current cover design.

There is still a lot of work to do. With Jenn's help I'll be undergoing a read-through of the proofs, and make the final final edits before taking the book to market. I hope to have it available to download to E-readers, as well as old-school paperback. Then there's getting noticed. I've always been better at writing than marketing, but in today's market you have to be proficient at both in order to rise above the thatch.

Lastly, if you are one of the recipients who I haven't directly spoken to in years, and you haven't touched base since receiving your letter, I would greatly appreciate it if you could make contact, just to confirm that I have your correct address. I don't want to buy you a copy if I'm not sure it will find you. I'm sure you understand.

As always, thank you,

Daniel

Susan W.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

October 17, 2018

Dear Susan,

It’s pretty ironic that the first time I ever saw a drag queen it was through the window of a church van that took a wrong turn and sputtered into Deep Ellum—150 miles from its rural home port in Marietta, TX. My jaw dropped a quarter-mile. Was that a man in a dress, or a woman with a beard? The van would break down a few blocks later and the youth were promptly armed with tire irons. The next 15 minutes of tension could have been a suspenseful pre-massacre scene from Night of the Living Dead. Of course we all lived to tell the tale.

Twenty-something years later, I live in the Seattle area and work in Dallas most weeks. I stay in AirBnBs instead of hotels, sometimes right in the heart of Deep Ellum. Hipsters abound in the artsy atmosphere. Their fashion sense can be quite prissy, but I don’t see many full-on bears in heels. I don’t know what’s changed more since the SBC inadvertently rolled a band of impressionable youth through what was then considered the coronary artery of the heart of darkness—Deep Ellum, or me. But that will always be a fun story in hindsight.

I’m writing to thank you, though, for another memory that has endured the test of time. Even before my family changed churches to attend Oakridge Baptist full-time, my sister and I would attend Vacation Bible School there, just down the street from our house, in the summers. The earliest, most vivid introduction to contagious joy that I can remember came from you, behind a keyboard, leading our little music sessions.

You can’t get to heaven on roller skates
Because you’ll roll right past those pearly gates.

You can’t get to heaven in a putt-putt car
‘Cause a putt-putt car don’t putt that far.

What couldn’t help me gain admission was more evident than how to acquire the golden ticket at that point. It would be a few years before Randy Fair showed up to put on that chalk-sketch revival. It wasn’t until then, at the age of 7, that the power of grace and the significance of the ultimate sacrifice sank in deep enough to motivate me to walk down the aisle and get dunked. But you were one of the first people I knew in whom the joy of the Lord was so evident that it made me want whatever it was in your heart that put such a smile on your face and sparkle in your eye. Thank you for sharing the love with me and the other kiddos during your time in Marietta.

Sincerely,

Daniel

Mr. Rowe

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

October 16, 2018

Dear Mr. Rowe,

I won’t bore you with another rehash of my wonder years. They were detailed in my letter to Ms. DeJésus and that’s available on my blog to read at your leisure if interested. But I do want to personally thank you for your voluntary involvement in my life during my 7^th - 8^th grade stint at Thomas Jefferson School.

My memory may be failing me, but I don’t recall taking any of your classes. I took Latin under Mr. Colston and, if I’d stayed at TJ, your Greek would have been next. I’m ashamed to admit it, but the intimidation of learning a new alphabet on top of a new language might have played a minor role in my personal decision to high-tail it back to Texas for 9^th grade. Spanish there was a breeze after Latin.

You weren’t my advisor, either, but something compelled you to reach out and do some shepherding during that period. I remember you taking me birding on a couple of occasions, offering a refreshing escape from my everyday world, which consisted of the TJ campus and weekend excursions to shopping malls. It was a chance to breathe and think about something other than school work. On top of that, your son introduced me to the peanut butter and American cheese sandwich. Quite a revelation!

I remember you as kind, patient, gentle, and firm at the same time. You had the perfect temperament for a teacher and mentor of youth. Thank you for your investments, large and small, in me and so many others over the course of your career.

Sincerely,

Daniel Loffer

David Brooks

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October 16, 2018

Dear Mr. Brooks,

Ideological echo chambers abound in the age of the internet. They generate web traffic with headlines that galvanize cognitive bias, but rarely change minds. Humble opinions based on factual evidence and anchored to morality are hard to come by, but a pleasure to read from any point of view.

I appreciate the fact that your reasoning gently ruffles feathers at the narrow minded fringes of the political right and the left, while imploring the practical to stop and think. Thank you for your thoughtful approach to hot-button issues.

Thank you for addressing matters that jeopardize the collective cardiovascular health of our nation and the world with a measure of grace, rather than stoking political fires with an inflammatory tone that only serves to polarize. Please continue to encourage contemplation and understanding over pitchforks and vitriol.

Sincerely,

                                                          

Daniel Loffer

Amber

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October 10, 2018

Dear Amber,

In December of 2006 I was Christmas shopping in Tyler. On my way to Best Buy, a big tent in front of the nearby PetSmart full of pups in need of homes got my attention. I fell for a jet-black shepherd mix labeled “Sport,” and adopted him on the spot. “Sport” didn’t really suit my boy, and “Scout” didn’t stick either. By the time Christmas rolled around, he was known as Shadow.

Shadow turned out to be an amazing big brother to my tiny border collie puppy, Daisy, who joined the family shortly after he did. She would nip at his ears or gnaw on his tail and he would just look at me like, are you really going to let her treat me like this? I’d purchased my first home, out in the sticks, shortly before taking on Shadow and Daisy in rapid succession. That made me a single father of two in the middle of nowhere. All of that was great, except for the single part. The rural setting wasn’t ideal for changing the fact—slim pickin’s.

Just a few months after assembling my family of three, an opportunity to relocate to a sales office in Dallas presented itself. I couldn’t pass that up. But a small house on two acres out in Nowhereville cost about as much as the rent for an aging 400 square foot efficiency in the Big D. I couldn’t imagine moving into a space that small with two puppies. I didn’t think the complex would let me keep even one of them at first, so I set out to re-home my babies.

Daisy has a redemption story all her own. But in March of 2006 you agreed to take Shadow, and for that I am eternally grateful. Also, thank you for touching base months ago to let me know that he’d recently passed after a long and happy life under your care. I don’t think circumstances could have worked out any better for him.

Sincerely,

Dan

Mrs. Foster

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October 9, 2018

Dear Ms. Foster,

You’ve been aware of my project since your husband got a letter months ago. Having served as a primary shepherd of mine through 3^rd and 4^th grade, I hope you’ve been expecting one. Those were good years, especially relative to those that flanked them.

In 2^nd grade I quickly transformed from cherub to brat when the honor of being dubbed the first “student of the month” went straight to my head. I spent the rest of that year getting the pride beaten out of me. As you know, Mama was my teacher in 5^th and 6^th grade. She was determined to show no indication of favoritism. I was a cheeky lad. Those were hard-knock days. I spent a lot of time in my room.

My allowance at home was a meager fifty cents a week, but in your class I was flush with cash. Ballin’ as they say. The weekly games of Jeopardy that we played on the chalk board, with categories by subject and questions based on recent studies were an ingeniously fun way to reinforce what we learned. That Xeroxed monopoly money was worth far more than the paper it was printed on and, often, the pencils we could spend it on. Subliminal lessons in sociology and economics were abundant.

I wasn’t a very good student when it came to the post-lunch music period in elementary school. However, I do have fond memories of those daily sessions where our entire tiny school practiced together for small-scale musical productions while you played the piano. We really had something special in that. I danced through an auditorium in a white sweat suit with a modified Styrofoam bait bucket on my head as Frosty the Snowman, conducted a high-wire act on a hardwood stage, and went down on the wrong knee before a cabbage patch doll as a nativity scene shepherd. Good thing I wasn’t cast as a “wise-man.”

I still know the words to Rockin’ Robin, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, Chickory Chick, and many other songs that make me smile on the rare occasion that they surface today. From officiating jeopardy, to making sweet music, to cussing at Jody Crocker – thank you for the memories. But most of all, thank you for your investment in me and all the other kids who were truly blessed by both your care (and wrath J) as Marietta Angels.

Sincerely,

Dan

Rev

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October 9, 2018

Dear Rev,

Sometimes I wonder why the most passionate/compassionate pastors I’ve known have worked in construction. Maybe it takes the same propensity for faith-based risk-taking and people skills to be a successful contractor as it does to be an effective spiritual ambassador. Heck, even Jesus was a carpenter! When I watched the documentary about Sam Childers (AKA “The Machine Gun Preacher”) I couldn’t help but think of you.

I’m writing to personally thank you for your fearless leadership and personal investment in humanity—from your work with addicts in recovery at Renovation House, to the establishment and ongoing management of Heather’s Home orphanage. It was a pleasure to get my hands dirty alongside you during the recovery efforts in Joplin following the great tornado in 2011, and to serve as a sidekick during a visit to Haiti.

I miss your inspired, high-octane, straight-from-the-heart delivery of God’s hope for the world in a world where it’s becoming harder and harder to find. Please keep on keeping on, for the sake of us all.

Love,

Daniel

Todd

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September 26, 2018

Dear Todd,

It’s been way too long since we’ve seen each other, especially considering the fact that my 1700 mile commute has put me within reach on almost any given Monday-Wednesday for over a year and a half. But even if architectural side-ventures keep you too busy to meet up for the rest of your life, I’m still glad I met you back in 2006 . . . it seems crazy that it was 12 years ago!

I’d just moved to Dallas weeks earlier and didn’t have a single friend in the metroplex when you called me over in the parking lot between The Corners and Corners East apartments in The Village and introduced yourself. I didn’t feel invisible anymore. You proceeded to introduce me to Bob, the most endearing and dirty old man I’ve ever known. Our unlikely trio would share a lot of laughter over the following two years—out in that parking lot, poolside at the VCC, or partaking in dollar-fiddy well night.

I’ve moved a lot since turning 18. I lived in three different apartments, if within the same complex, just while in college. I moved to Brenham for my first job, then Palestine, TX for my second. After buying my first piece of real estate near Grapeland, I only lived there three months before moving to Dallas- into that run down little efficiency, across the way from your 2^nd floor bachelor pad. 

Since leaving Dallas I’ve lived in Maumelle, Arkansas, three addresses in Elmira, NY, then on to the Pacific Northwest – three different addresses in West Seattle before moving to Kirkland just across the lake. We would move back to West Seattle for a year before finally buying a house on Vashon Island. Barring natural disasters, I think I’m done moving around. I haven’t lived at the same address for more than two years since I turned 18. A total of 18 addresses in less than 20 years if you include the short-term stays immediately following long-distance moves.

Needless to say, I’ve had a lot of neighbors. Thankfully, some really great ones at our current, hopefully forever-home. But I’m writing to thank you for being one of the best.

Sincerely,

Dan

Lynn

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September 17, 2018

Dear Lynn,

I'm sorry that I had to miss half of your recent visit, but my shorter than average weekend with you and Alan was a lot of fun. Thanks for coming to see us on The Rock, and giving us another excuse to play tourist in Seattle. You guys are totally my kind of guests - cocktails, foodie culture, football games, and great conversation with no pressure from Jenn to go tripping down trails for 12+ miles to audit dirt, trees, and rocks.

I do have to admit, Jenn's the best gift you've ever given me - possibly the world. Even better than that citrus stripper that you sneaked back to the gift shop to get for me at Smith Tower. Even if she likes the color of baby poop and long sweaty walks in the middle of nowhere. I'm grateful that I can call you "Mom."

Love,

Daniel

Jeff

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September 10, 2018

Dear Jeff,

You’ve been on my list since it was compiled late last year, as one of the most appreciated supers I’ve worked for. I was always impressed by the way you graciously oversaw a talent pool in the tensile lab that reliably jumped ship just as it mastered the craft. On the meltshop side, we would always call your office first in a crunch. It was never a surprise to find you there after 6pm. Beyond midnight, your cell was the crisis hotline and rang at an ungodly hour on a frequent basis.

You were not only approachable at all hours, but open to new ideas, and gave us the freedom to put them to the test. When I proposed procedural changes to eliminate redundant manual transcription, you gave me the green flag. I think that eliminated at least an hour of tedium from each shift.

All of that’s just to say thank you for your leadership. It played an integral role in making my years with A-Crew, on shift in the chemistry lab, a very rewarding experience.

Sincerely,

Daniel