by Inmon, Shawn
The moment Nathaniel Moon died, he opened his eyes in surprise. He was not in the dark stream where he had frolicked from life to life so many times before. Instead, he was in a dazzlingly white room, filled with white benches. A lovely woman with long, sandy hair and bangs sat beside him as though she had been expecting him.
She nodded at him, half-acknowledgement and half-bow. “Hello, Nathaniel.”
“Carrie?”
“Of course. I wouldn’t let anyone else come and welcome you.”
He reached for her and hugged her close. He inhaled deeply, she smelled of sandalwood and fresh air. She was dressed in a long robe the color of pale moonlight on freshly fallen snow.
Nathaniel glanced down at himself and noticed he was wearing the same.
“You look wonderful, and it is so good to see you again. I remembered so much last life, but I had forgotten you. You’ve been so many things to me, over so many lifetimes,” Nathaniel said.
“I know it felt like you remembered much, but you were clever when you decided to bring some memories into this final life with you. You still forgot enough that you could learn the lessons this life held for you.”
Nathaniel took a moment to reflect back on his most recent life and saw the truth in Carrie’s words. “You said, ‘final life.’ Does that mean I’m not going back?”
“Only if you want.”
Again, Nathaniel paused to think. He shook his head. “No, I think I won’t. There is so much beauty there, both in the place and the people, but I don’t think so.”
“I made the same choice. I understand.”
“What do you do here, then?”
“I oversee those who watch the souls on earth, the Watchers, who feed the Machine.” She blushed a little, looking almost shy. “I brought about a change here, so now I feel like I have to stay and see it through.”
Nathaniel laughed a little, nodding in appreciation. “You always were a rabble rouser, in your own quiet way. So, what’s next for me?”
Carrie held out her hand. A tiny ball of pure, iridescent light sat on her palm. She held it out to him. “A gift. This will take you wherever you want. The universe stretches out before you.”
The next book in the Middle Falls Time Travel series, titled The Emancipation of Veronica McAllister, will be available in May, 2018. You met Veronica at the end of her first life, when she encountered Nathaniel Moon.
Veronica felt like she had wasted her whole life, and was more than ready to give up. After hearing the last words from Nathaniel – “Know that you are safe. You are loved. You are perfect. No harm will ever come to you.” – she died. In the opening chapter of her own book, Veronica will open her eyes back in her teenage life, all memories intact.
I hope you’ll read her story to see whether she can find her strength, and overcome the many obstacles before her.
If you would like to preorder the book so that it shows up on your Kindle the moment it is published, you can order it here. It’s only $2.99 during its preorder period.
Author’s Note
Thank you for joining me on this fourth trip through the world of Middle Falls, Oregon. This book is a little different from the first three in the series. I think of those first three books as a complete trilogy, and Nathaniel’s story is a bit of a palate cleanser before I dive back into the more intertwined lives of the other characters in The Emancipation of Veronica McAllister.
By the way, if you would like to be on my New Release Alert List, you can join that here. If you join, I will send you a copy of my book Rock ‘n Roll Heaven for free. If you want, you can even join, get your free book, and then leave. No hard feelings.
Nathaniel’s story has been brewing inside me longer than anything else I’ve written. At age sixteen, I already knew I wanted to be a writer. It was then that I read Dune, by Frank Herbert. That book had a character named Alia Atreides, often referred to as Alia of the Knife. Through the mechanics of the plot, Alia gained consciousness in her mother’s womb. That idea resonated with me and clung to my brain, never to leave.
Over the years, a number of other books and characters did the same – Donald Shimoda from Richard Bach’s Illusions, Valentine Michael Smith from the great Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, and many more. They all went into the bouillabaisse that is my brain, and sat marinating. It must be about dinner time, as I am using a lot of food metaphors, I notice.
The year I turned twenty, I decided it was time for me to write my first novel. The only problem was, I wasn’t anywhere near ready to write it, mostly because I simply hadn’t lived enough to have anything to say, yet. That didn’t stop me from trying, though, and so I struggled through a few chapters of a truly horrible novel called The Man Who Is. I am so happy no one else will ever see those pages.
Time moved on, as it inevitably does. Life, in the form of a career and a family, pushed any thought of writing out of my brain. I could never forget that “Man who Is,” though. At the time, I thought his name was Jon, which you will recognize as the name of Nathaniel’s best friend in this book.
Over the years, when I would see various situations come up, I would wonder, “How would that character respond to this.” Essentially, I was practicing writing his story, even when I wasn’t.
In the late 1980s, I began to notice how the world would hold its collective breath over a single news story—a baby down a well, a pro athlete charged with murder, a Long Island Lolita, a missing plane. As I watched the endless interviews with the people in the middle of these events, I noticed something they all had in common. None of them really had anything to say. That’s when the idea occurred to me: what if my “Man who Is” was dropped down into the middle of a scene like that, and actually did have something to say.
So, the scene in this book where Laura Hall interviews Nathaniel was actually the first scene I had in mind for the book. I’d like to say the rest of the book wrote itself, but no, nothing about this book was destined to be that easy.
I had my own fifteen minutes in the spotlight, back in the fall of 1980. It was in the midst of the Iranian Hostage situation. I was working as a producer for radio station KAYO in Seattle. The host of the show I produced was none other than Laura Hall. I chose to pay tribute to her by naming the interviewer after her, because I admired her, and thought she was an incredible interviewer.
My job as producer was to line up guests, and then to man the phones and make sure everything ran smoothly during the show. Laura and I had a show meeting every Monday morning, and she would rattle off a list of people she wanted me to book. It was an incredible gig. I was only twenty years old, and I had the chance to meet and talk to people like Charles Schulz, Og Mandino, Buckminster Fuller, Abby Hoffman, and Ann Rule. At the end of each meeting, Laura would say, “Oh, and why don’t you get me an interview with one of the hostages.”
And then, we would both laugh, since the American hostages were being held under such tight scrutiny by their captors, she knew that was impossible. Right? I was young, and I didn’t know yet what was impossible. So, I went to work on the task. I burned up the phone lines for months, looking for any way to get a number that might ring where the hostages were being held. Eventually, I came into contact with a British reporter, who gave me a phone number he thought had once rung into where the hostages were being held. He was certain it had been disconnected, long since.
I called the number. It wasn’t disconnected. When I called, a male voice would answer in Farsi, rattle something off at me—I speak zero Farsi—and hang up the phone. We played that game for weeks, getting me nowhere. Eventually, I had the brilliant idea to pose as an overseas operator. This time, when the man answered the phone, I said, “This is the overseas operator. I have a person to person call for Bruce Laingen,” in my most official voice. Mr. Laingen was the chief diplomat at the embassy at the time they were taken hostage.
The man on the other end didn’t say anything, but this time, he didn’t hang up. Instead, I could he
ar him set the phone down with a “clunk.” I sat on hold, trying to calculate how much of my station’s budget I was burning through every sixty seconds. Several long minutes later, a tired-sounding man picked up the phone and said, “Hello?”
I couldn’t believe it! “Hello! Is this Bruce Laingen?”
“Yes...”
“This is Shawn Inmon, with radio station KAYO, in Seattle. Can I put you on the air with us?”
At first he demurred, but I am nothing if not a good salesman. I promised him that we wouldn’t ask him any question that would get him in trouble with his captors, and that it would mean the world to all of America if we could just hear his voice. After a moment’s pause, he agreed.
I was faced with a horrible dilemma. Laura was on the air in a room around the corner from me, and she couldn’t see or hear me. In order to put Mr. Laingen on the air, I had to first put him on hold, which was pretty risky with our old phone system. I said a little prayer, hit the “hold” button, and burst into the studio. Laura looked at me like I was crazy, but I grabbed a commercial, slammed it into the cart machine, hit “play,” and told Laura, “I’ve got Bruce Laingen on line three. You’ve got about twenty seconds to prepare for the biggest interview of your life.”
I ran into the newsroom to make sure we had a tape rolling to capture the interview for history, and stood there with the nighttime news guys and watched in amazement as Laura, with zero preparation, conducted an incredible, insightful interview with Mr. Laingen.
It was the only interview any of the hostages gave in their 444 days of captivity.
To say that chaos ensued is an understatement. In the following twenty-four hours, I gave interviews to ABC, NBC, CBS, the BBC, Reuters, the Associated Press, United Press International, and two guys in black suits with badges that wanted to know how I had done it. I was contacted by a radio station in Los Angeles, who offered to triple my salary if I would come produce their afternoon drive show. I didn’t take them up on it, by the way. I was twenty years old and scared to death to move to Los Angeles, where I knew no one. Instead, I happily accepted the $200 a month raise that KAYO offered me to stay.
Of course, my little moment in the spotlight was nothing like what Nathaniel experienced, and I didn’t do anything dramatic, like swallow a bomb blast, but it did give me a perspective on what it’s like when everyone wants a little piece of you, even for a just a day or two.
Not long after the interview, the station was sold, and I was fired by the new owners, because I was making $200 a month more than the other producers. Welcome to radio. Laura, meanwhile, did indeed give up her talk show and move to a small town in Oregon, so my art imitated life in that way as well.
And now, almost forty years after I first conceived it, my story of “The Man who Is” is complete, and I can let go of it. Thank you for having been a part of it.
As always, I owe many thanks to many people for helping me bring this book to life.
As he did in The Life and Death of Dominick Davidner, Dan Hilton was my editor for this book. His professional approach, excellent grasp of my grammatical quirks, and keen eye for details not only made this book better, but saved me from looking a fool from time to time. What more can you ask from an editor?
Linda Boulanger from TellTale Book Covers once again created the cover for the book. Sometimes it takes us many iterations to get a cover right, but the first cover Linda presented me was the one you see here. I knew it was perfect. She gives my books the outer face they show to the world, and I love and appreciate her for it.
I had two proofreaders for this book, Deb Galvan and Mark Sturgill. Why two proofreaders? Possibly because I make twice as many mistakes as authors do! Plus, Deb and Mark each approach the book from different perspectives. Deb is my grammar and extra spaces maven, and Mark is my fact-checker extraordinaire. I don’t know what I’d do without them, so I intend to never find out.
I hope it doesn’t show in the final product, but this was a difficult book for me to write. My best writer friend, Terry Schott, served as my alpha reader and suffered through many different iterations of the first half of this book, as I struggled to locate the line of the story I wanted to tell. His insight and honesty helped me to do just that.
Likewise, I used a team of beta readers, who read early drafts and made suggestions as to how the book struck them, and what could be done to improve it. They were invaluable, and I want to thank Jeff Hunter, Carmen Anslow, Barb Larson, Laura Heilman, Marta Rubin, Kerri Lookabaugh, Fay Barger, Jerry Weible, Craig Simmons, Jan Tanner, Dale Lewis, and Janice Friedman-Snyder for their input. If you read for me and I forgot to mention you, the blame is mine. Nathaniel Moon is the only near-perfect person around here.
As always, I want to save my biggest thank you for you. You are the reason I sit at the keyboard, exploring the dustiest corners of my imagination.
Shawn Inmon
Seaview, Washington
March, 2018
Other Books by Shawn Inmon
The Unusual Second Life of Thomas Weaver – Book one of the Middle Falls Time Travel Series. Thomas Weaver led a wasted life, but divine intervention gives him a chance to do it all over again. What would you do, if you could do it all again?
The Redemption of Michael Hollister — Book two of the Middle Falls Time Travel Series. Michael Hollister was evil in Thomas Weaver’s story. Is it possible for a murderer to find true redemption?
The Death and Life of Dominick Davidner – Book Three of the Middle Falls Time Travel Series. When Dominick is murdered, he awakens back in his eight year old body with one thought: how to find Emily, the love of his life.
Feels Like the First Time – Shawn’s first book, his true story of falling in love with the girl next door in the 1970’s, losing her for 30 years, and miraculously finding her again. It is filled with nostalgia for a bygone era of high school dances, first love, and making out in the backseat of a Chevy Vega.
Both Sides Now – It’s the same true story as Feels Like the First Time, but told from Dawn’s perspective. It will surprise no one that first love and loss feels very different to a young girl than it did for a young boy.
Rock ‘n Roll Heaven – Small-time guitarist Jimmy “Guitar” Velvet dies and ends up in Rock ‘n Roll Heaven, where he meets Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Jim Morrison, and many other icons. To his great surprise, he learns that heaven might need him more than he needs it.
Second Chance Love – Steve and Elizabeth were best friends in high school and college, but were separated by a family tragedy before either could confess that they were in love with the other. A chance meeting on a Christmas tree lot twenty years later gives them a second chance.
Life is Short – A collection of all of Shawn’s short writings. Thirteen stories, ranging from short memoirs about summers in Alaska, to the satire of obsessed fans.
A Lap Around America – Shawn and Dawn quit good jobs and set out to see America. They saved you a spot in the car, so come along and visit national parks, tourist traps, and more than 13,000 miles of the back roads of America, all without leaving your easy chair.
A Lap Around Alaska – Have you ever wanted to drive the Alaska Highway across Canada, then make a lap around central Alaska? Here’s your chance! Includes 100 photographs!