2018 arrived the way every year does... with me sitting at home and absolutely avoiding going out into the world. Mainly, I live in a little ghost town on top of a mountain and there is no nightlife up here (unless you like walking in the woods at night which is kinda fun 'cause you're walking through the forest in the dark) and what nightlife there is must be had down in either Prescott (to the left) or Jackass Flats (that's the real name but some dumb developer thought it would draw suckers... and it did... if they named it Prescott Valley) to the right. Prescott has Whiskey Row, the legendary strip where once Doc Holiday and Virgil Earp played cards for eight months before heading down to Tombstone. Now it's just, well, bars with bad music and sloppy drunks, both the barfly variety and the party-party type. Not my scene. In Prescott Valley? I have no idea. Possibly one of the poorest designed cities in the world and really, just drive through it if you are in the area. Go the speed limit 'cause it's a trap and I really think that's the only reason it exists.
Thus with the new year begun, I decided to be a fool once again and make another resolution to complete 12 stories for this upcoming year. I did it once, I could do it again. It was also time for me to reassess my overall strategy in how I was going to approach upcoming stories. I was able to avoid any monstrously huge projects such as had come in the earliest years where I was working without limit. Most of the Tales that appeared in 2017 were between 6,000 and 10.000 words. The remainder were split between a big ass poem, a one that qualified as being near the "flash fiction" range and the monstrosity of "Anger". As I had now found a resource for potential submissions, a website called The Horror Tree, I had begun noting the range of stories which most calls asked for. That number specified was 5,000. If I was going to be serious about trying to get some stories published, I figured I should set a new goal along with the amount to be written. That goal was to try to focus my attentions at that 5k word limit.
With this new challenge of focusing on a specific length along with the continuing challenge for number of stories per year, the only thing I needed to do was decide what story was needing to be written next. Lucky for me, it was January and there was snow on the ground and snow on the ground meant snow-blindness for one who squints even on cloudy days. Have I mentioned I prefer night-time walks when I can? Well, that snow-blindness played a factor when I was searching for what to write next. I turned to one of my first ideas, one which had haunted me since and which I knew I must face eventually. I turned my gaze to the coat Hans Kroeger wore in the story featuring his name. I needed to know why Hans wore his brother's coat.
"Claude" is 4,932 words long. It revealed itself complete towards the end of that January, a success, in my humble opinion, on every level. First, it was on time and within the word count range I had set. Having set that range goal, I had been unsure if I would be able to adhere to it and this first test of working under such a limit proved itself. As well, with the structure alternating between present and past, I was able to advance the story of immediacy while separating the backstory completely from the advancing narrative. This I had not done before, always placing the backstory into the active narrative. It allowed the direct action to flow uninterrupted in those moments needed to advance Hans to where he needed to be.
As far as the story and how it developed, I tried to run these two sections somewhat parallel. I needed to give reason as to how Hans and Claude ended up in the Arizona territory. This is a common thing that I need to take care of in these stories because the 1800s had very few people out here. That means I've got to find a way to get people out here and I need to make it integral to their character. Thus the necessity of the backstory between the brothers. That is a space in which I get to examine their relationship with each other and how it changes due to the circumstances they find themselves.
As for those circumstances, I needed a blizzard. Now I naturally do not remember this because it was my birth year, but in 1967 my parents told me there was a hell of a blizzard out here. In the Verde Valley where the family was stationed at the time, somewhere around 3,300 feet elevation. They told me there were three foot drifts of snow in that Valley that year. Prescott is at 5300 feet elevation, the real Mile High City (you can tell Denver Colorado to suck it). The canyon in which I live outside of Prescott is 6300 feet elevation. This is equivalent to the Bajazid Valley. The snow drifts that year were much greater at this height then they were down in the Verde Valley and I have evidence from another such blizzard in 1938 from a letter penned by my great-uncle before he was lost in his mine of up to 12 feet in some places. This is the model I am using for scope and scale of the blizzard to illustrate why such storms can strike Arizona regardless the images of desert cactus that one tends to think of for this state. As far as placing it on an historical timeline (this story takes place in 1878), I was just throwing it out there. That I will admit right now. That I got lucky, something I will detail fully later in a different post, is just one of the many wonderful things I've had go right with these stories.
Insofar as the immediate story in "Claude", that is nothing more than our hero needing to go to town in order to purchase some beans and some candles and some kerosene... nothing more than a shopping trip and the journey it takes to get him into town. This is where I have a lot of fun. First of all, there is a house that he passes on the way still buried in snow. I had yet to write this story, but I knew it was going to happen and I wanted to make sure that it was there, that I would have to return to it. That story will be written in 2020 and it will be titled "The Family in the Frozen House"" and it will be my first attempt at multiple perspectives in a short story. The formula used for that I truly do hope works but that is again for another time.
The real fun comes when we get to Devitt's General Store in Bairds Holler. I get to play with some serious interactions in there. I get to pull up some characters and get to introduce them such as one of the Sultans by the name of Steven Clayton. I had not realized this when I wrote this story but I had already encountered this character just as I had already encountered another character who appears in this story, which I did not yet know. That other character was Caleb Walsh, the accountant for the Mortenson mine.
Lastly, I was able to introduce finally the Devitt family who first earned a mention in "In A Meadow". The mention was at first just a hint, something to help fill out the suspicions against Leopold Tarkenfeld. I have gotten to know a few things about this family and there is much more to be developed. In fact this will probably be one of the primary story arcs as I grow deeper into this. Right now though, this family is just introduced. The father and two sons, one adopted, are in this story. His wife and two daughters are mentioned. As far as the adopted son, this hint, even though it is not specifically mentioned, lies at the back of the very next Tale I wrote.
Small Post Script: It was in this month that I received word that I had my first sale, "Kachina", to Weirdbook. Yeah, imagine how hard it was to scrape me off that ceiling...
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