Playing with a new character

Have a snippet!

Mikas Rowe’s mother always said that his red hair would lead him astray, and until the day he left her house, she made him keep it shaved close to his scalp in hopes it would grow out dark. It never did.

Once Mikas went so far as to try transforming it as it grew—another thing she found troublesome in him; that skill for magic.

That was how he learned that casting a transformative spell on flesh and blood caused so much pain that the results could not be anticipated. The scarlet blossoms had faded first; but the thorny vines lingered for weeks, cat-scratching his face and ears and forcing him to wear spectacles at all times, lest he blind himself.

So no transformation spells cast on living things. Though, theoretically, transformation spells cast on other people—well, their pain wouldn’t distract your focus, would it?

Those were the types of thoughts his mother blamed on his red hair.

For most of his life, she persisted in thinking him on the ever-teetering cusp of villainy.

Three Things and Another One

It’s cold and I’m rewriting a novel. I have no thoughts to spare. Arguably, at this point I have no thoughts at all.

That said, here is one thing in general that I have loved this last month–MYSTERY– and three things in particular.

Nina Simon’s Mother Daughter Murder Night. A fairly low stakes mystery–I wouldn’t really call it a cozy, though I have seen others do so–that shines because of the characterization. I loved that the mother and daughter have a fraught history between them, but that the author doesn’t take the easy route out and tar one of them as “villain” and the other as “wronged”. They’re both stubborn women who know how to fight, and the third member of the trio–the grand-daughter–is just like them both. One of the dangers with amateur sleuths is that often it feels too forced or contrived that they would be able to solve the case, especially when there are police involved. Here, the women are placed in good position to find out what they need to know to beat the police to the solution. The mystery holds up all the way through and was just a pleasure to read.

Death & Other Details on hulu. There was little to no chance that I wouldn’t watch this given the glut of advertising, Mandy Patinkin’s role, and my fondness for mystery. But I really loved the first three episodes: the writing is exactly to my taste, the clues are doled out well, the time jumps are interesting, and I feel like the mystery is going to play out properly–surprises, but surprises that we will have been set up for. That’s the big thing in mysteries, right? That we have faith in the writer. That they’re going to tell their story well, laying out the clues in the right way, and not randomly ambushing us with bullshit twists for the sake of twists. I am grateful to Knives Out and Rian Johnson for proving that mysteries can be well-plotted and profitable again (and probably to a lesser extent Kenneth Branagh’s Hercule Poirot outings, which were not faithful to Christie’s books but were still intriguing.). More mysteries please! With the classic form of the amateur detective–the well-respected private investigator. As a side note of no importance, I do love the name Imogene. I hope to see more from the writing crew of Heidi Cole McAdams and Mike Weiss.

In the same vein, I have just this moment started A Murder at the End of the World, and so far, it has the same quality as the above: writing that feels confident, an actor who is compelling, and an amateur sleuth I immediately want to root for. If it turns out to be bad, don’t tell me! I’ll just be disappointed.

A fourth thing, tangentially related: Mystery, yes; amateur sleuth, no. In this instance, The Puppet Show by MW Craven was a really interesting police procedural of the type I like: the protagonist is not without his (significant) flaws, but never to the point where you wonder, how on earth is he even capable of detecting? It is also, despite its very dark subject matter, not unrelentingly grim. I enjoyed it and because for once my library has let me down, bought the second book online.

The Book Resists Reading

The Book Resists Reading

You’re left the book in your uncle’s will, not singularly, but part of his collection. Not so many books really, a single car load, hatchback crammed full, axles protesting. A lot all at once, but it’s not like you could start a store with them.

The executor—your oldest cousin—blushes, embarrassed that this is your share, but you don’t mind. You like books, and though money is always nice, there wasn’t much of that. The dirty books leave itching streaks on your forearms and sandpaper your fingerprints.

At home, it takes you a dozen slow trips to unload your car, walking while scanning titles beneath the dust. You wanted an itemized list, but your cousin never made one.

You pass a pleasant afternoon, dusting and slotting your uncle’s collection into your own shelves of unread books. His books are things you’d never have selected on your own—obscure philosophers, questionable autobiographies, religious tracts bound in cheap leatherette warning about witchcraft, pamphlets about mysterious artifacts with even more mysterious powers.

One particular book draws you. It’s faded and dusty, bound in green leather, its title indecipherable, stamped letters blurred by time and pressure. Your hand lingers on its spine.

You read alphabetically. This book, with its unreadable title that might begin with an ornate S, is for later. The book reminds you of a journal.

You love old journals, that slow creep into someone else’s thoughts. The pages cling together, reluctant to part. You set the book down to mix up a mister of alcohol and water to clean the pages. When you come back, the cats have avalanched all your piles of books into one heap. By the time you think about the book again, you’ve mislaid it somewhere in the mess.

Your uncle died with a book in his hands.

You wonder, which book was he reading? Not the kind of question you can ask. Even if your cousins knew, asking would be insensitive. His death was sudden and surprising.

When you move apartments, you lose the book. You find it again when you clear a room preparing to paint. You set the book beside your bed, and it’s gone in the morning. You find it dead center beneath your bed a week later when you sweep. It’s in your hand. The phone rings.

You carry the book and race to the phone, and sometime during the long call, you mislay it. When you retrace your steps, the book is nowhere to be found.

You notice, of course you notice. There are only so many times you can lose something. And you wonder, every time you pick up a different book, a consolation prize, what’s in the book.

You lose the book when you set it down to answer the door.

You lose the book when you need to answer a few emails.

You lose the book while doing laundry.

You lose the book.

In the midst of a search, you try to tally the losses, but they rapidly reach triple digits. You start tallying possibilities instead.

The book might be attractive to your cats. Though you smell only dust and paper, a faint hint of smoke, who knows what your cats smell. Maybe they’re the ones moving the book, driving a maddening taste before them.

The book could be moving itself; stranger things happen. Rocks sail across Death Valley. Surely a book slicked with dust could sail itself around a small house.

The book could be full of information so dense and so powerful that the book might work like some kind of magnet, propulsive, repulsive in equal measures.

The book could be waiting for the right reader. And you’re not it. You try not to think about that too much. There’s a rejection you’d never get over.

The book could be the journal you think it is, but its pages might still be writing itself. Maybe it’s your journal, and the end page will end you. All biographies end with a death. And your uncle is dead.

The book could be magic. Not that you believe in magic; you’re too old, too tired to believe. Except if anything could be magic, it would be a book, wouldn’t it?

Embarrassed, you think the book could just be a book. It’s not like you’ve never mislaid a book before. Two just this past month, one fatally lost, left on the bus. One, you left in the freezer. But you found that one, minutes later, backtracking.

You find the book behind the shelves.

You find the book atop the refrigerator, blood warm with reflected heat.

You find the book beneath the stairs, shrouded in cobwebs.

You find the book in the piano bench, amongst the pages of Pavane for a Dead Princess.

You find the book in the patch of rue in your garden.

If you’ve had it in your hands so often, why haven’t you been able to read it? Books are created to be read. Cat and mouse for months now.

You find the book.

The book flexes in your hands, the pages fluttering against your fingers like frantic moths, a panicked heart-beat. By now, you’d expect nothing less. Yours is beating just as fast. You part the spine, press the page flat, and begin to read.

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