Heading Down the Home Stretch

Marvin is headed down the homestretch! It's neck and neck, but we hope he'll win by a nose.

Working on the final draft and have, of course, found much to change and tighten up. Then we've got the galley to go through - ugh! - where I'm sure I'll find more things that need to be fixed.

The next deadline I must absolutely meet is Oct. 14th - when it is due to Harper Collins...

80 More to Go

As promised, I've been editing, editing, editing. I've got about 80 more pages to run past the writer's group. At an average of 10 pages per week, it'll take 8 more weeks. Then the real fun begins! I've had full manuscripts out to beta readers and I'll go through those suggestions as well.

It amazes me that after almost two full years there are still major things which need to be changed or fixed. I wish I had the funds to hire a pro to give the book one more thorough edit... But, even that doesn't guarantee the book will be perfect. I guess the old adage about a piece of art never being finished is true. Especially when you read articles about successful authors, such as Stephen King and John Grisham, who've had inconsistencies pointed out sometimes years after a book has been in print!

Full steam ahead toward publication!

Chapter 3

On their return from the deli, Marvin pointed Tommy to the door marked 2-F in nickel-finished characters toward the end of the carpeted hallway. “This is it. It’s a small building. Only six condominiums on each floor. The F stands for Front — you pay extra for the street view.” He hesitated and began to dig through his pockets.

“Are we waiting for something?”

“I’m trying to find my keys. I don’t know what I did with them; I had them when —”

“Marvin, you ain’t gonna find ‘em, bud. They’re in your pocket — at the morgue. But, you don’t need ‘em anymore,” Tommy said and walked through the closed door.

“Oh. Right. Hey, does it hurt, walking through stuff?”

Tommy answered from inside the apartment, “Nah, you’ll just get a little buzz, a tingle really. Like, did you ever stick one of those nine-volt batteries to your tongue?”

“Yeah, when I was a kid.”

“It’ll feel like that. You get used to it.”

Marvin pushed a hand through, waited for the sensation to register, then smiled and walked in. The dead quiet of the place surprised him. He thought Jen would’ve been home, on the phone to notify friends and family, looking like hell and feeling much too distraught to even think about funeral arrangements. It disappointed him that she wasn’t there.

“Nice pad, dude,” Tommy said from the bedroom.

“Mmm, yeah. Thanks.” With a job secured, he’d purchased the two-bedroom, two bath condo right out of college. The graduation gift from his folks covered the small down payment. In the heart of the up-and-coming urban area, the pseudo-brownstone appealed to him and reminded him a little bit of the row houses where he grew up in upstate New York.

“My place isn’t nearly as nice. And the old lady that moved in after I died snores like a gorilla.”

“So, what you’re saying, if I understand, is I can still stay here?”

“Of course. Most of us find it, um… comforting, I guess, to stay where we lived. ‘Specially younger ones, like us, when we — how did you put it earlier — we ‘bought the farm’? so early. Some just wander around until they decide to 'go into the light' as the living world likes to think of it. But, I'll tell you it's nothing like you see in the movies. Older folks tend to gravitate to the parks and coffee shops; wherever they spent lots of time. Unless they left a spouse behind, then they tend to want to mess with them as much as possible,” Tommy snorted a laugh, spreading his arms out to indicate the apartment. “Hey, I’m kinda hungry. Got anything to eat?”

“We usually did take-out, but there might be something. Look around,” Marv said from the balcony in the exact spot Jen had witnessed his death. He could see the pool of his blood still on the pavement. “Jesus, don’t they clean that stuff up? It’s kind of creepy.”

Back in the kitchen, Tommy rattled pans. Marvin went in to sit at the table to watch and the smells made him aware of the hunger pangs that stabbed at his stomach. Tommy wrestled up a mean brunch: bacon and eggs, toasted bagels with a schmear as Marvin’s mother used to call the plain cream cheese, big glasses of orange juice (which Marvin didn’t realize Jen had stashed in the fridge, or he would’ve grabbed some that morning along with his coffee), and small bowls of fruit cocktail mixed in plain yogurt.

“Quite a spread, Tommy. Thanks for doing the cooking.”

Tommy shrugged. “I was one of the short order cooks. At Epstein’s.”

“Really? How come I never saw you in there?”

Tommy laughed. “Dude, it was years ago.”

Marvin contemplated asking how many years, but nodded instead and dug into the plate of crispy bacon.

“Bacon? I thought you said you were Jewish.”

“You’ve heard of Jack Mormons?”

Tommy nodded.

“Well, just think of me as a Jack Jew!”

They ate in silence and when they finished, Marv got up, washed everything, put it away and even emptied the trash per Tommy’s instructions: “If you leave things in disarray it’ll spoil the fun later on.”

After Marvin inspected the kitchen to make sure it was spotless as always, they went into the living room.

“Daytime T.V.,” Marv said picking up the remote. “What’s that all about? Is it still all soap opera crap?”

“Not if you have cable. You do have cable, right?”

Marv looked at him as though Tommy had just asked if he wanted a blueberry bagel with strawberry cream cheese, which as far as Marv was concerned is akin to sacrilege. He’d stick to plain or onion bagels, thank-you-very-much, and don’t even get him started on flavored cream cheese. He tossed the remote to Tommy. “Whatever you want. I’m new to the scene.”

Marv noticed Tommy flipped through the channels much slower than Jenna had ever done. For some reason, when Jenna got control of a remote, her inner man reared his head as if her testosterone levels had suddenly surged and she blazed through channels; it always aggravated him. Somewhere around the thirtieth click, Tommy landed on a baseball game and turned to wait for Marv’s reaction. Marv shrugged indifference. Two more clicks and there was Bruce Willis in a wife-beater, all dirty and grimy, with his Beretta at the ready.

“Ah! Die Hard. I love this film. Have you ever seen it?”

“Can’t say as I have. But ask me about any musical and I can give you a blow by blow.” Tommy smiled at Marv’s reaction. “What can I say, man, I’m a sucker for musicals.”

“Hey, turn it up. It may not be as awesome as something like Twister, but the explosions will rattle your cage with the surround sound.”

At precisely two-thirty in the afternoon Mrs. McClaskey stepped out of her condo across the hall to check her mail as she did every day. She heard music and a man’s voice say very loudly, ‘Yippie-ki-yay, motherfucker!’ from inside Jenna and Marvin’s unit. The sound was up awfully high. ‘Don’t damage your ears and they’ll serve you for a lifetime’ was a motto she lived by. She tried to spread the wisdom, though the kids of today often laughed and ignored her advice. She knew one day they would finally understand, though it would be too late. She tapped her knuckles on the door, “Jenna? Jenna, dear, are you home?”

She waited several seconds and, when she got no response, went down the stairs to get her mail. On the way back up, she heard music and gunshots, but thankfully no cusswords — not that swearing bothered her, as a retired librarian, words were just words to her — drifted through the hallway. She’d heard them and read them all before, but still, she believed young people overused such things, perhaps to a point the words almost lost all effect. She tapped on the door again and waited.

Tommy thought he heard noise coming from the hallway and cocked an ear. When he didn’t hear anything again he turned his attention back to the screen.

Mrs. McClaskey went back into her place.

Chapter 1

“Oh, shit!” were the last words Marvin spoke.

The last thing Marvin heard was Thump!

-1-

He stood up, a little dazed from the impact and inspected his clothes They didn’t seem to be any worse for the wear, no dirt or grease stains, no tears, not even a scuff on his shoes. He looked himself over, all six-feet two-inches, and didn’t see any blood, but he knew one thing for certain: Marvin Broudstein, “Marv” to his girlfriend—no, that wasn’t right—fiancée, Jenna, “Brody” to his friends and certain co-workers, was dead.

He knew it because he saw the body lying halfway under the bus and the face looked like it had been slammed into the nose of a 747. He knew it because a dirty imprint of the bus grille showed smack in the center of the light tan shirt. He knew it because he watched the driver, who had slammed on the brakes, cut the engine, scrambled out looking like a woman with apoplexy (though he wasn’t entirely sure what that was, but thought it sounded right), and shake her head after she checked for a pulse.

He knew it because he heard Jenna, who knelt over him, wail like a banshee. She punched him and screamed, “Get up, Marvin! Come on Marv! Get up!”

He knew because after the E.M.T.s arrived they didn’t rush medical equipment to him; they grabbed him by feet and armpits, plopped him onto the gurney, secured it in place, shut the back doors and drove off; without the benefit of lights or siren.

Goddammit! How could this happen? In all his twenty-eight years, Marvin had never done anything so stupid. He sensed what he considered one of his well deserved rants coming on, but knew it wouldn’t help or change a thing. For the first time in months he took a deep breath and held it until the urge dissipated. He wanted to think it was all Jenna’s fault; at least the way he saw things right at this moment.

And there she stood, staring at the back end of the ambulance as it drove away, lipstick all smeared (though that could have been from him bumping into her in his rush out the door) and mascara running down her face in a river of non-stop tears. He wanted to tell her she looked like shit right now. But he figured it would just piss her off and start her on another tirade like the one she’d been on when he left. That and, well, he wasn’t sure she’d hear him anyway. Being as he was dead and all.

Neighbors streamed en masse back into the building and he regretted not getting to know any of them better like he’d planned. He watched a neighbor lady, Mrs. What’s-her-name, the old lady from the condo across from theirs, wrap an arm around Jen, lead her up the stairs and into the building, saying soothing things that didn’t register in Jenna’s brain.

“I’m sorry, Jen,” he called out, but since it got no discernible reaction he figured she definitely couldn’t hear him. His voice softened, “I really am.”

“Oh, man. Bummer, dude.”

Marvin turned around to see a kid, about eighteen, maybe twenty, with long, sandy blonde scruffy hair that looked like it last saw a comb sometime in the 1960s and blue eyes, standing about three feet away wearing old sneakers, frayed jeans, and a Grateful Dead t-shirt.

“I saw the whole thing, man. What a bitch, huh?”

“Are you talking to me?” Marvin asked.

“Yeah, man. Who’d you think?”

Marvin looked around the area. There were people still standing around: the cops interviewing the bus driver and several others who interjected into the fray of questioning, a few men staring at the pool of blood on the pavement; still more who just began to drift away, off to wherever their hectic lives took them every day. Then, as if a mist lifted, he noticed people who were there, yet not entirely. They were a trifle transparent; not quite solid, living, breathing creatures. He could see items through them: the traffic, which had started to move again, storefronts of the buildings across the street, people standing on the corner at the intersection a half block away now cautiously waiting for the light to change in their favor. It seemed weird.

He really wanted to launch into one of his rants to curse the rotten luck, but the small pragmatic streak in him burst through to the forefront of his brain; this time before he needed to hold his breath. How can you fix being dead?

“So, what are you, the Welcome Wagon or something?” Marvin finally asked.

The kid laughed. It was a clear, tenor tone that made Marvin smile. “Um, or something. Tommy. Tommy Kincaid,” the kid said and put a hand out in greeting.

“Marvin Broudstein.” Marvin shook his hand, surprised it didn’t slip right through like he’d seen in the movies. He could actually feel it.

“I know. Nice to meet you.”

“You knew my name? What — because I bought the farm there?”

“Nah, nothin’ like that. I heard the girl — Jen? — tell the cops.”

“Oh. So…,” Marvin shrugged, “now what?”

“Nothin’, really. Just, whatever.”

“ ‘Just whatever’? Where do I go? What do I do?”

“You do whatever you want. No more punching the old time clock, huh? You go wherever you want.”

Marv heaved a sigh. “So — Tommy is it?”

Tommy nodded.

Marvin didn’t know for sure, but thought maybe he’d like to see his boss, Crowley, the schmuck, handle today’s meeting without him. That could be quite entertaining. Instead, he asked, “So, what do you do for fun around here?”

“All kinds of stuff, dude. Watch people; mess with them. Oh, and movies. I really like going to the movies.”

Marvin nodded. He felt a little off-kilter, pushed his palms against the sides of his head, careful not to mess up the executive cut of his brown hair, and sat down on the curb. When he lifted his face to say something to his new friend he felt a knee bang through the back of his head. He uttered a quick “Ow! What the hell was that?”

“Oh, yeah. They — people, that is live people — they can’t see you. So you gotta be careful, or they’ll be smacking into you all the time. And the bitch of it is, they know they’ve bumped into something, they just can’t figure out what. Actually, it’s pretty funny to watch them gawk around with the same look on their faces you just had on yours!”

A confused look crossed Tommy’s face as he paused.

“What?” Marv asked him.

Tommy shook his head. “Nothin’. I was just thinkin’. Hey! You want to go see a movie? The early show starts in an hour.”

“Actually, I’d like some coffee. Can I do that?”

“Sure. Come on, I’ll show you how this works.”

Marvin stood up to follow Tommy and explained, “I wore mine this morning, instead of drinking it.”

“What happened? Your lady get pissed and throw it at you?”

Marvin snorted a laugh. “Nah. Jen snuck up on me, scared the bejesus out of me. Where to?”

“There’s this great little deli around the corner on 45^th.” Tommy hooked a thumb over his shoulder.

“Yeah, yeah…Epstein’s, right? I love that place. Best pastrami this side of Pittsburgh.”

“Yeah, I go in there all the time.”

“You do? You Jewish? You don’t look Jewish.”

“No, but what exactly does Jewish look like?”

“Like me, ya schmuck!” Marvin said, chuckling and slapping Tommy on the back of the head.

“Dude! Don’t mess up the coif, man!”

Marvin followed him the three blocks being very careful not to bump into any of the living, though he got plenty of enjoyment watching Tommy stand stock still while some guy walked right through him. The look on that guy’s face as he wondered what the hell just happened: Priceless! Laughing like a school kid on a playground, Tommy turned to see Marvin’s reaction.

In the deli, Tommy told him, “Now, here’s how it works. You walk around the counter, grab a cup, pour your coffee and enjoy.”

“Won’t someone see the cup and carafe move, or anything?”

Tommy glanced around until he picked out a target. “Watch.”

The waitress in a short black skirt and white blouse with long, brown, curly hair carried a tray with an empty cup and a carafe of coffee across the small restaurant, weaving through the crowded tables. The tag over her left breast read TINA in large letters and under that in small print, I’ll be your server today. She approached a professional-looking woman sitting alone at a small table for two, placed the cup down, filled it to almost overflowing, pulled a menu from the pocket of her apron and dropped it on the table.

“I’ll be right back to take your order,” Tina said, as she turned on her heels and strode off.

The woman mumbled something under her breath. As she picked up the cup, her cell phone rang. She put the cup down and rummaged through her purse. Tommy grabbed the coffee as she glanced down and put the phone to her ear. He turned back to Marvin with a grin.

Amused, they stood and watched as the woman replied to a question from her caller, nodded, made a grab for the cup and swiped air. Confusion passed over her face when she looked to find nothing more than a menu lying on the table. The woman glanced around the deli, shook her head as if to clear it, then said into the phone, “Hang on a minute, Sal.”

She waved Tina over. “Do you think I might get some coffee while I look at the menu? Would that be too much trouble for you, hon?”

From experience, Tommy knew Tina didn’t like people like this. Especially rich-bitch ones, dressed in their Jimmy Choo’s and Donna Karan power suits, copping attitude. They watched as she struggled to contain her anger. “I know I — Um, sure thing, hon.”

Tina appeared befuddled when she turned on her heels to fetch the requested order.

“It’s easier to go somewhere that has DIY-slash-free refills, but this is much more fun, don’t you think? Here.” Tommy held the cup out to Marvin.

“Am I going to be able to hold that? I mean, don’t I have to learn — you know, like what’s-his-name, uh…Patrick Swayze in Ghost?”

Tommy rolled his eyes. “Dude, that was a movie, this is life. Well…sort of.”

 “And no one will see the cup in my hand? It’s not just floating in the air?”

“Nope. Not until you put it down. Awesome, huh?”

Marvin accepted the coffee as he laughed and slapped Tommy on the shoulder. “Oh, I am going to have some fun with this!”

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Your reaction comments to this will be appreciated.

Marvin gets edited

Well, my-oh-my, how the time does slip away. But, rest assured, I've been editing away on Marvin and the gang. The writer's group has been through almost 200 of the 330+ pages and they're finding all sorts of things that need to be fixed; holes that need to be filled.

Which is probably why the manuscript didn't advance into Round 4. Lesson learned: Do not enter a novel competition with a third or fourth draft. It needs to be edited until you're sick of looking at it and then edited some more. And, should it actually get chosen or picked up by an agent or publishing house, expect to do another couple of rounds.

I've also had a couple people do a beta read on the entire manuscript. One has finished and sent me some very useful information; the other hasn't finished yet, but promises to do so before heading out on a 3-week cruise to the Netherlands. The only difficulty with my two readers - who are extremely good at content editing, by the way, - is they are both female. I know some of this book may escape them and they've given me help in beefing up the appeal for women. And though Marvin is definitely an escapade and adventure from a man's perspective (that may explain why my pitch labels it as a 'bromantic comedy') I still want women to read it and enjoy it. But, still, I sure could use some male input.

It crossed my mind that some folks did not get the chance to read the excerpt on Amazon before it disappeared. Or, if they beat the deadline, they didn't have a Kindle and weren't able to read it.

So... I'm going to post those chapters here. Let me hear your thoughts by leaving a comment. Is it funny? Did it grab and hold your attention? Did it leave you wanting to follow the adventure?

(Marvin's) World of Deadheads

(Marvin's) World of Deadheads is the first installment of the planned Deadheads series of books. Once you get started, you'll be hooked on Marvin and his ghostly gang.

You can get a sneak peek at Marvin by visiting my official website: Paul Atreides and browse to the Sneak Peek tab.

Really want to get hooked? Got a Kindle? You can read the first (approx) 5,000 words on Amazon right now! How is that possible you ask? Marvin has advanced into Round 3 of the Amazon Breakout Novel Award contest for 2012 and he'd love you to visit. It's quick. It's easy. It's fun! As one contest reviewer has already stated: "Marvin is a lot more fun now that he's dead and I would totally hang out with these guys!"

Go there NOW for your free download.

Once you've read the excerpt, go back and leave a review. Tell Marvin whether you'd like to know if he succeeds in his efforts to kill Jenna or not.