Act One (What Doesn't Kill You Prequel): An Ensemble Mystery Novella

by Pamela Fagan Hutchins

  And then, then . . . give me a hot day in June. Let me fill our beater Suburban to its capacity with tweens and teens, some of them mine, some of them his. Let us pick up my second and last husband at the airport after a long and tiring business trip, let us giggle all the way home and nearly burst with the pressure of our shared secret. We have a surprise for him, you see.

  We whisk him home to his bicycle and tri bag.

  “What’s this?” he asks, dark circles under his camouflage-colored eyes. Eyes that are sparkling now between the red lines.

  “Here!” his daughter Liz cries, unable to hold it in any longer. She waggles her hand at Clark and Susanne, who pull t-shirts on over their heads. The hand-ironed custom logo is slightly askew on each of them. It reads “The Eric Ralph Hutchins First Annual Invitational Triathlon” above a (really bad) picture of Eric.

  “Those are great, guys, thanks,” he says as Liz hands him his and he slips it on.

  But that’s not all. “Put your swimsuit on, honey, because the race starts in fifteen minutes,” I say.

  Now he’s grinning ear to ear. We all jump on our bikes and pedal over to the Marilyn Estates pool. We swim ten thrashing, splashing, laughing laps of the tiny rectangle of water. We race our motley crew of bicycles around the block. And we finish by running figure eights around the trees in the park by the pool. Fifteen minutes later, we each get a trophy, with awards for first (Liz), second (Eric), poutiest (Susanne), goofiest (Clark), and best-looking, AKA last (me). We’ve attracted quite a crowd, and they cheer as the kids present the awards.

  My husband doesn’t seem tired anymore. He looks like the luckiest middle-aged man in the history of the world. Although he doesn’t look middle-aged, which makes me the luckiest middle-aged woman ever.

  This. Give me this. Or something a whole lot like it. Give me beautiful days together, active and alive, happy and feeling fifteen instead of closing in on fifty.

  This, or something like it.

  Putting The Fun Into Dysfunctional

  I am a planner. I plan and schedule and plot, much to the delight of my engineer/triathlete husband, who loves to live by a plan. Even more, he loves for me to make the plan and then for us both to live by it. And what he loves most of all is when the plan I make and we live by includes a healthy dose of us bicycling and swimming together. I believe a plan is a structure to make reasonable changes in, while Eric casts his plans in cement. Obviously, I am right, so there usually isn’t much of a problem.

  But I did not plan what happened to us in the Good Old Summertime Classic, a sixty-nine-mile bicycle ride along some of our most favorite cycling roads anywhere. The bike route runs in and around Fayetteville, Texas, and includes the tiny old town of Roundtop. We had trained for it. We had talked about it with joy and reverence. Eric even accidentally went to get our packets a full week before they were available for pickup. (Don’t ask.)

  The night before the race, I developed a PMS[1]/hormonal migraine. Because it was the middle of the night, I took one of my gentler migraine prescriptions, hoping that this pill plus sleep would be all I needed. But when I woke up at 5:00 a.m. to the mother of all migraines, I caved in and went for the elephant tranquilizer. When morning came, I was so nauseous that I couldn’t eat. My husband, a man of immense patience and even greater kindness, suggested we stay home. But we had made a plan, so I got in the car. I theorized that I had no idea now how I would feel in two and a half hours—but I kinda did know, and just didn’t want to admit it.

  I should have listened to my husband.

  On the way to the race, driving in the dark, the unthinkable happened. I had my head on Eric’s shoulder, sweetly sleeping (make that “snoring and drooling under the influence of the elephant pill”), when he let out a tiny swear word. Actually, I believe it started with an F, and was preceded by the word “mother,” and that his voice blasted through my cranium and echoed madly inside my impaired brain.

  “What happened?” I screamed, heart pounding, hand clutching throat, eyes sweeping the road for signs of the apocalypse.

  “I hit a cardinal.”

  OH MY GOD. HE HIT A CARDINAL.

  Since the time he could speak, my husband has proclaimed himself a fan of the Chicago Phoenix St. Louis Arizona Cardinals football team. His screen saver at work has always been a giant Cardinal head logo, until very recently when he finally switched it to a picture of us, under teensy-tinsy little applications of subtle pressure from me. He watched their 2009 playoff game at 2:00 a.m. from his hotel room in Libya through a webcam picture of our TV on his laptop. He collects cardinals and Cardinal paraphernalia and insists on displaying them prominently in our bedroom, which is painted Cardinal red.

  Despite his lifelong obsession, Eric had never seen an actual live cardinal bird until we moved to Houston. Growing up in the U.S. Virgin Islands, he’d caught glimpses of them on TV, and he pictured them as red, fierce . . . and large.

  One day while unpacking boxes in our new house, I saw a male cardinal through the window. Nonchalantly, I called out to my sweetie, “Hey, Eric, there’s a cardinal in our bird feeder.”

  Eric, whose physique looks like you would expect it to after twenty years of triathlon and cycling, pounded into the living room like a rhino instead of his usual cheetah self, wearing an expectant grin and not much else.

  “WHERE IS IT?”

  Lost for words, I pointed out the front window and prayed the elderly woman next door was not walking past our house.

  “It’s awfully small.” (That was Eric that said that, not the elderly neighbor.)

  He was crestfallen. The mighty cardinal was a tiny slip of a bird.

  Back to the car: ear-splitting expletives and wife under the influence. “Honey, I didn’t feel an impact. Are you sure you didn’t miss it?” I asked.

  “They’re awfully small birds,” he said.

  Ahhhh, good point. We drove on, somberly. We arrived at the race. I stumbled off to the bathroom. When I came back, Eric was crouched in front of the grill of our car. I joined him, confused. He held up a handful of tiny red feathers.

  I swear it was the drugs, but I burst out laughing. “You, you of all people, you killed a cardinal?”

  He glared at me as he picked out the brightest of the small feathers and tucked it reverently into the chest strap of his heart monitor. “I’m going to carry this feather with me in tribute, the whole way.”

  So we got on our bikes: me, wobbly, cotton-mouthed, and somewhat delirious; Eric, solemn and determined. This, the ride for the cardinal, would be the ride of his life. Sixty-nine miles to the glory of the cardinal.

  I made it all of about two miles before I apologized. “I’m anaerobic, and we’re only going twelve miles per hour on a flat. My neck and back are seizing up. I don’t know if it’s drugs or hormones, but I’m really whack.”

  “You can do it, honey. We came all this way. Now we’re riding for a higher purpose.”

  I gave it my best, I really did, but a few miles later after a succession of hills where going up with a racing heartbeat was only slightly less awful than cruising down with a seriously messed-up sense of balance, I pulled to a stop. “I’ve never quit before, but I can’t do it today, love.”

  A beautiful male cardinal swooped across the road in front of us. Eric bit his lip. “I understand. Do you want to flag a SAG [support and aid] wagon?”

  “I can make it back if we just take it easy. I’m sorry, honey.”

  My husband treated me like a princess that day, but all the excitement had drained out of him. This race was not to be, and a teacup-sized bird had sacrificed his life in vain because I’d overdosed on Immitrex and ruined the plan. The waste of it all, the waste of a day, the waste of a life—it was hard to overcome. But Eric tried; I’ll give him credit for that, the man really tried.

  That night, after we did a make-up ride on the trainers while we watched We Are Marshall (interrupted occasionally by Eric’s sobs, because the only thing worse than a dead cardi
nal is a dead football player), I pulled our sheets out of the drier and brought them into our room. Eric, wearing his new Fayetteville Good Old Summertime T-shirt, helped me put the warm, clean cotton on the bed.

  As we hoisted the sheets in the air to spread them out over the mattress, a tiny red feather shot straight up toward the light and wafted down slowly, back and forth, back and forth, until, pushed by the soft breeze of our ceiling fan, it landed on the pillow on Eric’s side of the bed.

  Above: Actual cardinal feather on Eric’s pillow.

  Steeling myself for the worst, I shot a glance at him to see if he had noticed. I did not exhale. Maybe I had time to brush it off quickly? Too late—he was staring at the feather. “Is that damn bird going to haunt me for the rest of my life now?” he asked. But he smiled.

  Now I could breathe. And tease. “Probably. You did senselessly murder a cardinal, Eric.”

  And he laughed.

  Click here to continue reading

  Hot Flashes And Half Ironmans.

  * * *

  Technically, I suffer from premenstrual dysphoric disorder, but try to say “I’m feeling PMDDy” or “I’m really PMDDing right now.” Yeah. It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. PMDD is a severe and sometimes disabling form of PMS. ↵

  1 • EARN (NO) MONEY ALL BY YOURSELF {On the financial implications of traditional versus indie publishing}

  My personal description of an indie-publishing Loser:

  —Willing to work hard to make little or nothing

  —Comfortable having people whisper “he couldn’t get a real book contract” behind his back

  —Under the right circumstances, would run naked on a beach

  Seriously, y’all, any writers out there? If you’re a writer, chances are you’re not in the game expecting a Spindletop-gusher payday. Sure, it would be nice, but we all know most writers—most traditionally published authors—are working stiffs like the rest of us. For every J.K. Rowling, there’s a legion of also-rans slodging away at day jobs they might not even like. English teachers. Air-conditioner installers. Attorneys by day, like me, and night-and-weekend artists, like most of you reading this book.

  For every traditionally published author working a day job, there are millions of writers who haven’t wrapped their hands around that solidly satisfying brass ring—true writers, writers called by their hearts to lay their souls or their wisdom on the page, yet writers who haven’t earned a single cent on a book sale in any form of publishing. Maybe they’re already living the life, working as journalists, Hallmark-card poets, writers of jingles, dishwasher ads, and Viagra commercials, but the bulk of them aren’t summering in the Hamptons.

  Have you ever met anyone who worked harder than a writer trying to make a living off writing alone? Yeah, me either.

  So why do we write, and why do we seek to publish, if it isn’t a sure path to riches? I can’t speak for you, but I can repeat what writers around the country tell me. It’s the same thing that drives me, and it’s easy to sum up: we can’t stop writing and dreaming of sharing our work with other people any more than we can stop breathing in and out. We just can’t help it. Nor can we help dreaming that someone is going to come along to take the whole mucky, scary business of publishing off our hands—or at least make it very easy.

  Because make no mistake, while writing is an art, publishing is a mucky, scary business, complete with supply chains, distribution networks, profit and loss statements, and inventory issues. It’s a business of relationships, contracts, and figuring out how to get the customer what she needs. It’s a business where, in essence, the decision about which books to publish usually hinges on whether or not they will be profitable; in other words, whether they will earn more money than it costs to put them into the customers’ hands.

  It’s a business, like all businesses, that relies on the almighty dollar (or euro or deutsche mark or whatever). Can we afford to keep the lights on and the doors open? Can we pay our employees? Can we assure the owners that their money isn’t better spent elsewhere?

  That doesn’t sound very artistic, does it? It isn’t. No wonder many of us would love some publishing company to swoop in and take away the risk, the effort, and the sheer messiness of it all. Plus, gosh, doesn’t it mean you’re somebody special if a big publisher takes on your book? It’s validating, at the very least.

  But signing yourself and your art over to a publisher comes at a price. For all that help—valuable help—you give up a hefty piece of your future earnings and a large measure of control. Make no mistake: you pay the publishing company to publish your book. They choose your book(s) because they think they can make money off of you. They provide services and call most of the shots, like what (if any) budget they will allot for advertising, marketing, promotion, and publicity. Like what your cover will look like. Like whether they’ll ever let your book see the light of day without the revisions they deem necessary. Whether and which reviews they will seek for it, and what kind of weight they’ll put behind those requests. How they’ll promote it. When they will release it, and which other possibly competing books they’ll be handling as well.

  Shall I go on? I could, and it’s a pretty sobering list, considering you thought you’d come up sevens when the publisher bought the rights to your book.

  “You mean it still might not get published? Or it might be published in a way that doesn’t maximize its chance of success, even in my own eyes?” you ask.

  Yes. That’s exactly what I mean.

  Shee-yut.

  And working with a major house doesn’t guarantee your financial success, either. Herman Melville sold only fifty copies of Moby-Dick before his death. In fact, most authors with major houses never earn out their advances, meaning they never get another cent after their initial advance check. The average debut novelist with a major house, according to Gary Smailes of The Proactive Writer (http://proactivewriter.com/blog/), sells about 2,000 books in the first year. If he sells 10,000 in the first year, chances are the house feels he is doing quite well. If he sells 14,000 or more in the debut year, the book will probably be deemed a big success to the house, but likely not earn the author much more than a pat on the back.

  A few years ago, I stood at a crossroads in my own writing journey. I had three novels out with three great agents. I had their cell phone numbers on my iPhone. I didn’t have offers of representation, but I did have phone dialogues going and requests to see rewrites. I wasn’t there, but I was this close.

  At the same time, the publishing industry was at a crossroads of its own. E-books seemed poised to take over the world. Profit margins were tight. Major authors like Stephen King (gasp, the moneymakers) were discovering self-publishing. And it wasn’t just them. There were the indie authors. Amazon was offering 70% Kindle royalties. E-commerce was truly accessible, and print on demand (POD) had become almost easy. Gone were the days when a writer’s only alternative to traditional publishing was an expensive vanity press. Amanda Hocking had burst onto the scene, making millions off books spurned by agents and editors. J.A. Konrath had shown that a middle-of-the-pack author could turn his backlist (backlist = all an author’s books but the newest one) released from contract by his publisher and future indie-published writing into a more than respectable income.

  A steady stream of authors began making their way over to Amazon. Their dribs and drabs of sales plus the sales of self-publishing rock stars summed up to something significant that the publishers felt in their wallets and in the deepest, darkest, most scared places in their hearts. The indie sales didn’t, however, make much money for the self-published authors themselves, who tend to have trouble selling a copy outside of their immediate families. And 70% of nothing is, well, nothing. Or rather, it’s nothing in terms of money, but if your goal is to share your words and your worlds, it’s a whole heck of a lot of

  something—and to the major houses, all of that something started taking a bigger and bigger toll.

  The publishers neede
d to figure out how all this change would impact their business model, but frankly, at the time that I was deciding whether to indie publish, they hadn’t yet. Writers discovered the concept of disintermediation, where the only truly necessary players in the game of book sales were author and reader, save possibly a freelance editor, a digital artist, a publicist, and a business consultant, all of whom an author could retain for herself if she chose to.

  Slim publishing-company profits narrowed further while I went back and forth over many months in dialogue with agents, and I had a decision to make: Should I keep chasing after a possibility that kept getting less likely and would cost me control of my work? I mean, who really knew what return I would get on my three novel rewrites? I certainly wasn’t guaranteed representation, and even if I got it, a book sale was not an automatic. Until I signed a sales contract, the size of my potential advance would be shrinking daily, and the other terms of my deal would be growing less favorable as well, because this was business, and a business on the rocks. That potential deal would still require me to promote and market my own book on my own dime and my own time. Bottom line: I had no guarantee of a return, or even of ever traditionally publishing.

  I started seriously considering throwing my hat into the ring of indie publishing. I’d still have no guarantee of a return, and I could lose my own money, at that. But the rewards were huge. I’d get the chance to share my works with whoever wanted to read it. I’d retain control—beautiful, blessed control—and publish the book of my heart, not the book of someone else’s balance sheet. And that was the crux of it to me: control. I’d been an entrepreneur for nearly twenty years. I knew how to run a successful business. And promotion was a wash; I’d be doing it whether I went indie or stuck to traditional. How big a stretch was it, really, to move from entrepreneur to authorpreneur? Bottom line: I had no guarantee of a return on my investment as an indie, but I did have a guarantee of publishing, and I could do it my way, which is what really drove me.