Worse, Sam related: Count Wreckala dotes on folks’ blood.
"You mean—people?” Casper.
Sam nodded and the Count looked embarrassed. He didn't speak American, but I reckon he understood well enough.
"But he sucked up this bantam,” I pointed out.
"Reformed,” Sam informed. Seems as how the Count aimed to reform of sucking folks’ blood on account of his neighbors took exception to the practice and threatened a necktie party—this was back in Hungary or Roomany or one of them European places—so he skipped town, resolved to mend his ways afore he did a mid-air ballet under a cottonwood. He come out West, sampling alternate fare and found bantams right tasty and nourishing. Sam met him outside a poultry farm in Saint Jo.
"He's wanted in six states for chicken thievery,” Sam declaimed, “so he's on the lam. Looking for a spot to light where folks ain't apt to shoot nor stretch him. I'm resolved to assist, the comradely thing to do, but I'm short of notions, and this storm—"
"Stuck, then?” Banky.
"Tracks are blocked a spell. Then—well, dunno what then."
Just then, Jack Thatcher arrived, snow and wind in his wake. We brought him up to date as we husked the chicken and set plates and forks. Sam ordered up a bottle and kindly shared as we was all broke, as told. Count Wreckala sat, elbows and knees askew, smiling content as a canary-fed cat. Burp. Tranquil.
Dinner got cooked up pronto; roast chicken smell replacing unwashed body smell in the saloon.
"Eat up good, boys,” Jack saluted us with a forkful of chicken liver, “cause this might be the last bite we get till spring thaw."
"Huh?” Us all again. Except Charlie, asleep.
Jack told: as he made his way to the saloon, he got turned around in the blow, and entered the telegraph shack two blocks over by the railroad station instead. There, he heard the storm was getting worst instead of petering out and no supplies was coming for a week.
And we was bereft of supplies, foodwise.
At this news, Banky drew, Casper took out his eye and buffed it, Mick polished glassware, scritchitchitch, and I was concerned too. Sam wrote in his itty-bitty reporter notebook and Count Wreckala smiled and burped. Charlie slept.
We set aside a slab of chicken for Charlie. When he woke up, he'd be hungry as well as thirsty, and we was comrades, after all. We ordered another whiskey bottle; Sam paid, bless his heart, and we drank slow, as it was going to be a long day.
Long week.
We'd et just now, sure, but how long afore we required more fuel? Whereat was we to get said fuel? As I told, the pantries was empty. Not just the saloon storeroom shelves, but the whole town. We was in dire straits for certain sure.
Except, I pondered, for the Count. Hadn't Sam told us the Count doted on folks’ blood? Sure, he'd reformed, but what if he ran out of chicken and had to rely on—
"Um, Jack,” I wondered. “Seen any chickens about?"
"Nor dogs nor cats nor horsehide nor flesh of any sort. The whole town's bust. This here chicken—burp, ‘scuse me—is the last of the foodstock betwixt Cheyenne and Grand Encampment, so I heard in the telegraph office."
"Uh, Sam,” I continued wondering, “what if—"
I couldn't finish the thought. Imagine your very blood the only food source for a hundred miles around. I stoked the stove but still felt as cold as a well digger's pale patootie.
Well, no point in dragging out this part, so here ‘tis: the week drew on, we boiled Jack's wooden leg and chewed it for sustenance, and as feared, by and by, the Count got hungry too.
We could chew our boots and belts and holsters to last out another couple days, as needed, but the Count required blood to keep bellybutton and backbone apart. We had us no chickens to suck on, but there was folks.
"What ought we to do?” Casper bemoaned.
'Twouldn't be neighborly to let the Count starve to death, but who among us, starving too, would offer up our very blood?
We drew straws is what we did.
Charlie lost. We'd included him in the drawing even though he was asleep at the time as ‘twouldn't be neighborly to leave him out, would it? Anyways, he got the short straw.
Just in time, as the Count was woozy and near to buzzard bait when he crawled under the piano and bit Charlie on the neck.
"Don't you drain our buddy,” we warned.
Slurp, slurp.
After a short time, the Count burped, smiled, and curled up under the piano next to Charlie to take an after-dinner nap.
He snored. From both ends. From the nether end, he was eye-wateringly odiferous.
Now, I reckon he snored whilst asleep in the week he was with us, and passed wind. We couldn't go nowheres in the blizzard and had to sleep right here, close by the stove and all of us curled up in a ball to keep warm, but nobody heard him snore afore as we was all asleep at the time. Nor smelled him, praise Jesus.
But we heard now. And smelled. And fainted from the gassy venting, mostly.
Charlie woke up. He looked a tad pale and woozy.
Maybe Charlie had woken those other times the Count had fallen asleep, but we didn't know for sure neither, because, as told, we was asleep them times.
"Gosh,” Charlie yawned, “he snores loud enough to wake the dead.” Charlie had nasal restrictions; he couldn't smell diddly.
Come to think of it, nasal problems probably explained whyfor Sam could pal up with the Count while the lack of nasal problems explained whyfor those foreigners wanted to string the Count up. Sucking blood was a bad enough habit, but—well, you get my drift.
* * * *
The storm abated two days later, a supply wagon got through, and we all ate hearty. The tracks got cleared and Sam left with the first westbound U-P, but the Count didn't go with him. No sir, Count Wreckala's days of running from mobs with pitchforks and rope are over, for he has gainful and welcome employment right here in Laramie.
Go down the alley betwixt Grant and First toward the stockyard, behind Miss Dolly Dubois’ Residence for Refined Ladies, and listen up. From the ladies’ backyard, where they got a henhouse for breakfast eggs for the ladies and their guests, and choice white pullets for dinner, you'll hear, louder the closer you get, a sawmill buzz, the foreign royal making it asleep and content in a cozy little hut they built for him.
Coyotes nor wild dogs nor chicken thieves bother those bantams. None dare get too close unless you're desperate hungry, crazy, asleep, or got nasal problems.
They pay the Count in a chicken now and then, as needed, which he sucks out and offers the leavings to his new friends.
Burp. Tranquil.
* * * *
Ex-reporter, humorist, and Wyoming-lover Ken Rand resides with his family in Utah where he writes “semi-full time.” He's sold millions of words of nonfiction, 200 humor columns, more than 75 stories to 50+ magazines and anthologies. This is his third appearance in Challenging Destiny, following “The Ear of Mt. Horiuchi” in Number 16. He has several novels and collections out (and upcoming), plus a growing bookshelf of writers how-to's from his publishing company, Media Man! Productions. Details on his Web site: www.sfwa.org/members/Rand. He teaches writing at conferences and workshops (arrangements on request).
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Interview with Edward Willett by James Schellenberg & David M. Switzer
CD: How does writing fiction for young adults compare to writing nonfiction?
EW: Fiction is more fun. While I've enjoyed writing my various science and biography books for educational publishers (and learned a lot in the process—until I wrote Kiss the Sky, my children's biography of Jimi Hendrix, I had no idea The Experience once opened for The Monkees), my first love is storytelling.
CD: Do you need to switch back and forth?
EW: Usually I'm working on both at the same time, but I wouldn't say I need to switch back and forth. Better to say I like to switch back and forth.
CD: Does one strengthen the other?
EW: Well, maybe. T
o a certain extent, writing is writing: you have to put words together in a (one hopes) coherent fashion and communicate ideas by doing so. But the kind of nonfiction I've been writing doesn't allow for a lot of use of my storytelling muscles—it's not what is sometimes called “creative nonfiction,” nonfiction told using the techniques of fiction, but rather pretty basic educational writing, designed to communicate information in as straightforward a manner as possible.
CD: Do you read up on various theories of communicating with younger audiences or do you jump in and write what you might have wanted to read at that age?
EW: You mean there are theories of communicating with younger audiences?—G—No, I've never read anything like that. What I usually say is that I started writing as a kid—I wrote my first short story ("Kastra Glazz: Hypership Test Pilot") when I was 11, wrote a couple of novella-length stories in junior high, and wrote three novels in high school—and although I grew up, my protagonists didn't.
CD: What kind of guidelines do you get from publishers for YA nonfiction?
EW: I'm occasionally told I write at too high a level, so I've been urged to break up long sentences, explain more terms, that kind of thing. It's tough to write, say, The Basics of Quantum Physics: Understanding Line Spectra and the Photoelectric Effect without writing at a reasonably high level, though.
Each publisher has a style guide they provide with hints about what they're looking for. I'm not sure I've ever read one all the way through. Partly that's because all my nonfiction has all been assigned. An editor contacts me and says, “We need writers for such-and-such series. Here is a list of topics. How many can you do?” They do that, presumably, because they like the books I've turned in for them in the past, so I just keep writing them the same way.
CD: How do you find time to write so much? What is your typical schedule like?
EW: I get up, get my wife to work and my daughter to daycare. Then, if I'm being good, I jog around Wascana Lake or lift weights at the YMCA. If I'm being bad/lazy or can come up with a good excuse, I go to Second Cup for an iced cappuccino and a cinnamon bun and read whatever book or magazine I'm currently reading. I come home and read blogs and news sites on the Internet for far longer than I should. Finally, late in the morning, I get started writing, and continue in fits and starts, with occasional venturing out for meetings, errands, etc., until it's time to pick up my daughter from daycare. I usually avoid working in the evenings, but if I'm way behind on a project, I might put in two or three hours after my daughter is in bed, which usually isn't before 9:30.
CD: Are you a fast writer?
EW: Yes. Years of newspaper reporting forced me to be. (I was a newspaper reporter/photographer at, and eventually news editor of, the Weyburn Review in Weyburn, Sask., over an eight-year period out of university.) . There's no time for writer's block with that news hole to fill—even on a weekly.
CD: How much time do you spend researching a nonfiction book before starting to write? Does this compare to the research for a science fiction novel?
EW: My short educational books typically just take a few hours of research before I'm ready to begin. I really can't be more precise. My science fiction novels to date have not really required a lot of research, although I'll need to do more than usual for the new one for DAW.
CD: Can you give us any hints about your next DAW novel?
EW: Sure. It doesn't have a title yet—DAW didn't like the working one I provided on the synopsis. I can tell you it's set on two worlds, Earth and an even more watery planet, as well as outer space, and it features a conflict between genetically modified humans and religious fanatics. Since I haven't written it yet, I don't want to be any more precise!
CD: Tell us about Lost in Translation. What is the book about? What kind of a story were you trying to tell? It was originally published in hardcover and now is coming out in paperback from DAW—can you tell us how all this happened?
EW: Lost in Translation began as a short story which was published in the premiere issue of TransVersions in the 1990s. One review said something to the effect that it built a more effective space opera universe in just a few pages than many long novels had ... which was impetus enough for me to consider turning it into a novel. Which I did: the short story is still embedded in it, for the most part, with a piece in the prologue and another piece in the middle, but a great deal more happens around it.
Lost in Translation is set in far future in which an interstellar, inter-species Commonwealth has recently stepped in to end a war between humanity and a race of somewhat bat-like flying aliens called S'sinn. Humans started the war by inadvertently killing S'sinn without realizing they were sentient. The S'sinn were not happy about the Commonwealth ending the war, and neither were some humans, so conditions are ripe for a resumption of hostilities.
The Commonwealth is held together by the Guild of Translators, natural empaths whose abilities are augmented by a universal nervous system interface—an engineered symbiote that Translators take into their body and allows them to link with each other, establishing a telepathic connection that enables them to provide absolutely honest, absolutely accurate translations among some very alien species.
The main characters are Kathryn, a human Translator whose parents were killed by the S'sinn, and Jarrikk, a S'sinn Translator whose young friends were killed by humans in the incident that started the war. Nobody has more reason to hate the other race than they do, but they must work together, in a highly unorthodox and dangerous fashion, to somehow stop a new war from breaking out.
I suppose the story I was trying to tell is that old cliché of people learning to overcome differences and find a peaceful solution to their problems. It may not be an original sentiment, but it still seems a worthwhile one.
CD: On top of all the writing, you also act and sing. Tell us about this part of your career.
EW: I've enjoyed acting since I played the role of Petruchio in a one-act adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew in junior high. I was involved in drama and musicals through high school and slightly in university. When I returned to Weyburn from university I was one of the charter members of Crocus 80 Theatre, a new community theatre group (formed in 1980, hence the rather odd name—Crocus, of course, was W.O. Mitchell's fictionalized version of Weyburn). Over the next few years I acted in several plays, directed two, and served on the executive. When I came to Regina to take on the job of communications officer of the Saskatchewan Science Centre in 1988, I became much more involved in musicals, specifically with Regina Lyric Light Opera Society.
Over the years I'd always sung—my father taught at Western Christian College, then in Weyburn, now in Regina, a private high school/junior college/Bible college affiliated with the churches of Christ. The churches of Christ practice a cappella congregational singing—no choirs, no instruments. I grew up in that church, and sang soprano, alto, tenor and bass as I grew up. Then, in high school, I sang in my Dad's chorus, and at Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas, where I studied journalism, I sang in one of the finest choruses anywhere.
I brought that background to Regina and gained a modest reputation as a local singer. When I became a fulltime freelance writer in 1993, leaving the Saskatchewan Science Centre in October of that year, I did so partly because I had an offer of eight weeks of professional theatrical work with Prairie Opera out of Saskatoon, going on a school tour. (I'd sung in a couple of Prairie Opera and Opera Saskatchewan productions already by that time.)
I did that tour for three years, and in the meantime auditioned on occasion for Susan Ferley, then artistic director of Globe Theatre, Regina's professional theatre company. In 1998 she hired me for her production of On Golden Pond, her last production at Globe. That earned me my Equity card. Since then I've done occasional professional roles in Regina and Saskatoon and other places in the province. However, my usual outlet for performing and directing continues to be community theatre. For instance, this year I directed the classic thriller Rope for Regina Little Theatre an
d played the lead role of Voltaire/Pangloss in Regina Lyric Light Opera's production of Candide.
Allow me to immodestly mention that there are a number of samples of my singing, and singing by some of the choirs I've been in, online at www.edwardwillett.com/music.htm.
CD: How do you go about getting work as a freelance writer? You seem very busy—do you just start digging into something? Did you make a lot of contacts when you were starting out as a writer? Do you spend a lot of time on self-promotion?
EW: I had a few contacts as communications officer of the Saskatchewan Science Centre that I parlayed into work early on, but essentially, I auditioned for the nonfiction books just like I'd audition for a role. My first book was Using Microsoft Publisher for Windows 95, from the computer-book publisher Que. I frequented a forum on CompuServe where nonfiction publishers occasionally posted, looking for writers. Que posted, I responded, they had me write a sample chapter, I got the contract. My editor there moved to what is now John Wiley & Sons (before that it was Hungry Minds, and before that it was IDG) and hired me for some more work there, which led to additional books. I similarly auditioned for Enslow Publishers, for whom I've written more than half a dozen books, including my recent children's biographies of J.R.R. Tolkien and Orson Scott Card, after I read online somewhere that they were looking for writers. Ditto McGraw-Hill, for whom I wrote Genetics Demystified.
Rosen Publishers, for whom I do a lot of work-for-hire, first hired me when Josepha Sherman was (briefly) an editor there. I noticed her appointment to the position—I think it was in Locus, though I'm not 100 percent sure—and contacted her because she had come very close (as she said publicly at the Winnipeg WorldCon) to buying my YA SF novel Star Song for Walker and Company when she was there. (The publisher died just at that time and the new guy didn't want any more SF. That book remains unpublished.) It so happened she was looking for an author for a book called Careers in Outer Space. She hired me, and after that, her successors continued to hire me.
Challenging Destiny #23 Page 4