So I was up at 4 this morning and began finger-stomping on the Underwood Champion. Working on two different projects today, one of them being a novelette (which may become a novella) called The Faces, to be released via Patreon’s membership well-before it’s published.
I wrote or edited between 4 to 9 a.m., then hit the sack in my polyphasic sleep lifestyle, up again just after noon. Mostly tackling some business issues since then. Writing fiction ain’t all fun and games — there’s the publishing side, too.
Here’s some of the rough draft opening of The Faces. Want to read the whole thing in its pre-publication period? Be sure and become a member of my Patreon group. For all the details, click here. And yes, I’d love to see you over there.
“Fills me with dread,” came a voice in the midst of the sudden quiet of the coffee shop.
If you sat nearby you might glance to the next table over and notice the man who said this —late twenties, well-dressed in the forgettable office attire of the moment, hair smoothed back from ears, clean shaven.
From the outside, he looked anything but dread-filled.
This was Harold, allegedly full of dread yet looking perfectly normal, generally happy, possibly in his prime of life but with a smudge of despair around the eyes.
Beside him, Margaret, white streak through her thick black hair, ivory cable-knit sweater with her mother’s pearls hanging down, just enough make-up to look as if she had none, a nearly-drained mug cupped in her hands.
“Don’t look. Seriously, don’t. I think we’re being watched,” he said.
“Here we go,” she said.
“What?”
“If I had a dime for every time you said that…”
Someone did in fact glance over at the two of them, but who it was Harold couldn’t say. The stranger seemed familiar yet not at all. Harold wondered if this might be a forgotten classmate from college or someone noticed for no particular reason in a crowd downtown or from the bus or at his barber shop.
He rarely forgot a name or face, but couldn’t place this one at all. Perhaps someone of note? Politician? Local celebrity? Someone from a morning news show?
Harold would’ve examined the stranger’s face a bit longer but Margaret tugged him back to their purpose.
“It’s a Halloween party, which means costumes and masks,” she said. “We have forty minutes before the junk shops close. Shall we allez?”
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Excerpt copyright 2019©Douglas Clegg. All rights reserved.
