Rob's NaNo Thread - excerpts

Rob, I'm putting this on your own thread :-) …

The Last Invasion:  Chapter Four (last half)

……The following morning when the call horn sounded, neither one of them wanted to get up.  “Just a little longer,” Martin groaned.
“That damned horn, I knew what they were up to when we saw them installing it.”
“You were right, as usual.”
Laura wenced and almost cried out, “Oh Marty, my feet feel like their on fire.  If I don’t get up and put some weight on them right now, I might not be able to.”
“I’m so sorry, hon.  I’ve just got to catch a couple more winks.”
“Okay, I’ll be up.  I won’t let you oversleep.”  Then, under her breath she said,  “I sure don’t want to loose you.” 
Laura painfully finished getting dressed and managed to put on the teapot.  The pain in both feet was excruciating this morning, so she carefully put her left foot up on a chair and tried to message it starting with the toes.  They were so tender that she had to stifle a cry so as not to wake Martin.  The shooting pains triggered those old memories.

It was that forced march through the snow, daddy. I nearly lost my feet.  It’s so ironic.  Oh daddy… way back then you thought this was about to happen.  You were so frightened that the nuclear war was about to start.  That Cuban missle crisis even had the officials in Washington saying goodbye to their wives for the last time.  You were sure that the atomic bombs would start to fall and the Red Chinese would come pouring into southern California.  And in the middle of that night… I remember… you woke us up at 3 in the morning and threw mom and me into the car and there we went… up to the isolated mountains of New Mexico.  Truchas.  You were so scared daddy… ever since you got back from Korea.  It crippled you forever.  You wanted me to live… so the combat training, how to kill,  taught me to resist torture, deprived me, played Russian roulette with me, please… please daddy… I don’t want to pull the trigger with that gun to my head, and you starved me, made a marksman out of me, interrogated me, made me run through freezing snow up to my waist barefooted, made me eat snakes… raw.  I was only six years old, daddy… forty years ago.  Oh if you could be here now.

“Totally ironic,” she whispered to herself as she poured the tea.  “It finally did happen dad.  Yes it did.  You weren’t so far off after all.  Just a little out of date.”
“I’ve just got to get up,” Martin moaned.
“Yes, unless you’re ready to get disintegrated.”
“That wasn’t funny.”
“No… but true.”
“Okay, I’m rolling, I’m rolling.” It took Martin a long time to finally get into his coveralls and even longer before he could get both boots on.  Laura stuck some cornbread into his mouth as he finally tied his boots.  They barely made it in time for the motorcart to pick them up, but they didn’t get left behind. 
That day was a horror.  Early on, Cathy got severly injured when a dumptruck ran over her foot and crushed it. The Cadre just disintegrated her right there.  Pooof.  She was completely gone.  Turned into steam as she lay writhing on the ground desperately needing medical attention.  Murdered right before everyone’s eyes.  Not even a brown spot on the ground where she had fallen when the truck got her. Laura was raking leaves in a different area but found out what happened to Cathy when a crew arrived back from there.  Laura could just barely get through the day.  She was not only in physical agony but now completely depressed.  When they got home, they were both exhausted. Still, Martin knew he had to see Bill.  So, Laura heated some leftover beans and they ate in front of the fireplace.  Then Martin gave her a kiss and headed out the door. As he was walking, a Red neighborhood patrol whizzed by in a truck but seemed to not noticed him.  Nevertheless, he took the same precautions as before and hid for five minutes in the grove of trees before knocking on Bill’s door. Bill quickly pushed him inside and closed the door. 
”Let’s sit and have some coffee first,” he said.  “It was a really awful day huh?”
“Terrible.  What are we going to do?”
 Bill poured the coffee and they sat in front of the fire. “You see how brutal they are, Marty.  Do you have any suggestions?”
“We need to get inside somehow.”
“Oh sure,” Bill scorned.
“Okay then… we need to find a traitor that is already inside.”
“Now that’s a possibility,” said Bill,  “but apparently they are all in the same groove.”
“Apparently… yes.”
“So, probably the best thing to do is keep our eyes open for some sign,” Bill said.  He sounded very thoughtful.  “Maybe there is someone who has a different taste and doesn’t agree with murdering other human beings so easily.  Maybe there is someone among them who still remembers human mercy and compassion.”
“It’s possible,” said Martin.  “First, before anything else, we have to watch carefully.”
 “I think you have a good idea, Marty,” he agreed.  Bill went over and opened his door to check out the street.  “We’re still okay.  Marty, I must tell you about today’s email from the other party.”
“Yeah, what is it?’
“The Reds are going to declare Sunday a holiday and give everyone a day off.”
“What?  What’s going on?”
“Apparently they saw that their harshness was starting to be counterproductive, especially after what happened to Cathy today, and they think offering a pleasant surprise will help alleviate the growing fear and despair among the disgruntled workers who are now more fearful than ever.”
“How did your email correspondant know about that, being somewhere else entirely?”
“I really have no idea where that person is actually located and they might be closer than I think.  Somehow they heard about it through their intelligence sources.”
“Well, I can tell you that if Laura doesn’t get a day to rest, she is not going to make it very much longer.”
“They’re going to announce it tomorrow as if they are graciously giving a gift for good work and productivity.”
“Is this what your email friend tells you?”
“Yes.  He (or she) found out about it somehow.  I don’t know how.” “It’s probably better that you don’t know,” said Martin.
“Right.”  Bill sat just looking Martin in the face for a moment and then said, “Come with me downstairs.  I want to show you something.”
Bill picked up an oil lantern off its hook, lit it and then led them through the kitchen and down some stairs.  When they got to the basement, Bill set the lantern on a large table, got six other lanterns off shelves and placed them on the table lighting up each one.  “I want you to see this.” He opened a closet door.  It was piled four feet high with all kinds of old clothes and shoes.  He dug through the pile throwing stuff out onto the basement floor.  Then he found a case, carried it over to the table next to the lanterns and unzipped it.
Martin couldn’t believe his eyes.  It was one of the Red Chinese beam weapons.
“How the hell did you get this?”  Martin demanded.
“Never mind about that… but here it is.”
“Do you know how to… “
“Fire it?  No, not yet.”
“Well, what good is it then?”
“None now.”
Martin picked it up and began to look it over.  It was smaller than a conventional assault rifle.  It was basically a pistol grip attached to an oblong flat oval box with a cylinder on top and a smaller diameter barrel protruding a little ways out the front.  It had a foldup metal stock and a wide military strap. “See how these sights fold up,” Bill said as he reached over and flipped them open. “That is an amazing piece of engineering,” said Martin, “what do you plan to do with it?”
“First, find out how it works.”
Martin examined it closely.  It was smooth on the left side but the right side had a recessed row of five buttons.  “What are these?”
“A complete mystery right now.” Bill carefully put the weapon back into its case, zipped it and set it aside up against the wall.  He extinguised five of the lanterns and put them back on their shelves leaving one on the table and holding one by its handle.  He handed it to Martin.  “Here, hold this a second and give me some light over here by the closet.” Martin took the lantern and followed him over to the closet where, to Martin’s surprise he began digging out more of the clothes and shoes and then tossing them outside the closet.  After everything was removed, he began to slide out a large box.  “Marty, hold the light up a little please.”  Bill reached down and found a ring.  He opened a trap door.  Martin could see a flight of very steep stairs going down. “Follow me,” Bill said, and took back the lantern from Martin.  He led them down a flight of stairs which ended in another room.  It was pitch dark and Martin had no idea how big it was until Bill rolled over a rack of metal steps, climbed them and lit up a huge overhead chandelier with many flames that illuminated the entire room.  Underneath the chandelier was a large round table with at least a dozen chairs.
“What’s this, Bill?”
“It’s where we are going to meet on Sunday.”
“Wow, when you said the ‘underground’ you really meant it.”
 “This is the place we meet.  However, meetings are usually very sporadic and very short.  But, Sunday will be different for the very first time.  Everyone will be here and we will gather as soon as we get up Sunday morning.”
“That’s going to be very dangerous isn’t it?  I mean with all those people coming up to your front door?”
“No.  They won’t be coming up to my front door nor to my back door.”  He motioned Marty toward a very large mirror at the back of the room.  “Help me with this,”  said Bill.  Martin took one side of the mirror as Bill took the other and they lifted it off its hooks.  Bill carefully directed them over to the side where they set it down and tilted it up against the wall.  When Martin looked where the mirror had been, he could see the mouth of a tunnel going off into the blackness.  “You have a tunnel?”
“Oh yes.  The resistance crawls here from various points where hidden openings exist.  Marty, this leads to a labyrinth of tunnels and caves.  You know good old Missouri, caves everywhere.  Many of them natural.  Some… not natural.  If anyone happens to find any of the entrances and trys to follow them, they will get completely lost without knowing how to negotiate the underground maze.”
“Bill, this must have been here longer than six weeks.”
“Oh yes.  Some of us have been expecting national tragedy for a long time and have been preparing little by little.  For several years actually.  There is more but that’s for another time.”
“That’s incredible,” said Martin.  He was dumbfounded.  Finally, he said, “I… I see you’ve been busy.”
“Not just me,  there are ten of us at the moment and now with you, eleven.  Let’s get the room back together and go back upstairs.” When they arrived at the kitchen, Bill poured them another cup of coffee and they went into the living room once again.  They sat down again in front of the fire.  Bill remembered something he should do and went over to the front door, opened it and looked up and down the street once again.  He seemed satisfied, closed the door and came back to sit down. Martin was very surprised that such activity had been going on so close by without him knowing anything at all about it.  This was really starting to get dangerous. 
“I don’t know what to say, Bill, I’m on overload at the moment.”
“Don’t say anything, just be here Sunday morning.  You will find out a lot.  A young physicist will be here.  He will disassemble the beam weapon and try to figure out how it works.  Should be exciting.”
“If you figure it out… who are you going to disintegrate to test it out?” Bill chuckeled.  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
“How the hell would you test a powerful weapon like this?  I mean, to be sure you know how it works and how to operate it properly?”
“Very carefully.  Very carefully, Marty.  We do have something in mind, but you don’t need to know about it right now.”
“Three guesses.” Martin said.
“Suffice it to say that we do not plan to disentegrate anyone to test it out, only conduct a safe field test.”
“I guess you have the way to do that?”
“Yes.  We’re pretty sure.”
“Okay, Bill, I’d better get back to Laura.  Today almost defeated her.”
“Yes.  Go on home.  I’ll see you here on Sunday.”
“Okay.  I guess they’ll make that announcement tomorrow?”
“That’s what I am told.”
 Martin didn’t say anything more but only nodded.  Then he went out the door, carefully looked around and walked home. 

Re: Rob's NaNo Thread - excerpts

Oh yes! something to get stuck into! Rob, this reads so very well. I'm trying to find the words to express why – it' something to do with feeling that this story is very tight, that there will be no loose ends, nothing for me to get hooked on and then left hanging. Well realised characters, good dialogue, a story moving at pace. Good, good stuff. I think the only bit I paused at and I'm not quite sure why, was the memory flashback in the beginning. Somehow it didn't feel 'real' - the way it came out, not the details. I didn't believe that Laura would actually 'think' it like that. I could be way off here. It felt like it wanted more to be told, as in Laura telling Martin rather than her just having the thoughts, or? dunno.

Clearly you are doing just great!

Re: Rob's NaNo Thread - excerpts

*rubs hands with glee* oh yes (echoing Sandra) I'm in. I love this kind of story - a step into the fantastic, into sci-fi… I am loving this. I want to know what is going on, what happens next, what happened before.. .more about the characters. I would sit inside this story and just soak it all in. more please!

Re: Rob's NaNo Thread - excerpts

It didn't fly into cyberworld after all!  I didn't have a senior moment.  I am not going senile after all!  The secret operative of Gaiaville did a Julia Childs.

You're right Sandra.  The italics are suppoe to be a flashback but I gave far too much information because the story is true.  However, that requires a bit of necessary tightening-of-the-fixtures.  Mainly by red-lining so much information.  (no pun intended) Too much telling here is not  necessary for the story but interesting.— probably not to the reader.  I wrote far too much backstory here. 

I had a boss once that knew what a red pencil was for and you reminded me– thanks.  “Forced march through the snow,” is all I really  need here, however I am likely to say a bit more than that in order to establish the PTSD– something I am not particularly interested in developing in Laura, although I want it to be there.  Believe it or not this is the only place in the entire novel that I did this type of rumination.   Sandra, if I had $5.25 I'd hire you as a suggestor editor!    SingingWolf, my dear wife, is a little more…uh..  colorful?  with her critiques, but like you, she is almost always right.  (OK $5.50?)  :O)  (SingingWolf gets $6.00 but I'm already so far in debt that I can't pay attention.)

I am thrilled that you gals liked this part.  It's a little on the machismo side.   It's still just the basic setting, the ambiance,  and hasn't yet gotten into the… chile con carne.  I think what I am going to do is write up my short synopsis and post it up on this thread. I'll put it up on NaNo in the box for it.   I am ready for that now having completed this mini-tome.   Lots of time left to check the battery, kick the tires and change the oil but that's for me not NaNo.  The ending turned out to be exactly what I wanted to say in this.  The setting looks like I am some kinda doomsday John Bircher but such is not the case and I absolutely love the Chinese people.   Remember Tiananmen square!  Thanks Sandra for putting this on its own thread.  I didn't spend a whole lot of time searching for it and assumed that it had just vanished.  I still don't know why it didn't show up in my activity indicator on my profile but I'm sure there is a technological reason.

“Glee” eh, quietlaughter.  And the gleeful part comes later.  If the story pulls you in then it is successful.  I just want to tell a story that pulls and moves.  The moving part comes later too when Fear, Suspicion, Angst and Terror are no longer the motivating factors.  But thanks to that gang of four they sure get your attention.  Without at least a cameo appearance by the FSAT mob this kind of story would be dullsville but I am not one to give them top billing, I'll leave that to CNN.

Namaste,

Rob

Re: Rob's NaNo Thread - excerpts

The Last Invasion (synopsis)  

 Martin works in a group-home for the developmentally disabled and mentally retarded.  One morning after getting home from his night shift and going to bed, his wife, who is watching TV hears an annoucement about an 8.3 earthquake that just occurred along the Madrid Fault.    St. Louis and Memphis have been completely destroyed and countless people killed.  She gets Martin up and they watch the disaster unfold until late, when they finally go to bed. 

The next morning there is no TV being broadcast.  All channels are static.    Martin calls a friend who is just waking up.  He finds the same thing but then discovers a channel that is functional.  Channel 37—not one programmed into the TV.    Martin immediately turns it on to find out that overnight the Red Chinese have invaded America in a surprise attack with very advanced military technology which includes devastating beam weapons that disintegrate whole cities.  Their scalar interferometers had set off the earthquake to weaken America so that the invasion could be carried out and an occupation facilitated.  Washington D.C. and the Pentagon have been vaporized as well as several other American cities.   

 He hears a speech by the Chinese Chairman who tells them that America is no longer a sovereign nation and the People’s Liberation Army  have completely taken control by overwhelming force.

 In the middle of a phone conversation between Martin and his daughter Marci, the phone lines go dead and they soon discover that all the utilities have been cut off.    A few days later, Chinese troops arrive in Martin’s small town of Riverview Missouri as well as the rest of the United States.  They begin the occupation. 

All utilities have been cut and the people are in severe deprivation. There is no longer any contact with the outside world.   

Martin is concerned about his clients in the group-home and also his beloved co-worker Grace, a black woman from Kenya.  There is no longer any communication.   The condition of Martin's daughter and son-in-law are also unknown causing much consternation to Martin and his wife.   

Everyone must now work for their Chinese masters as slaves. They are put to work preparing the land to planet food in the Spring.   The Chinese bring in portable greenhouses with areoponic growing methods to produce some food as soon as possible.  They will even operate during the winter cold.  To supplement this, the Chinese offer basic but meager staples.  The Americans now have barely enough to eat. 
Water must be hauled from the Missouri River and many become ill.  

Martin contacts an underground movement bent on revenge.  The whole underground is so dangerous and fanatical that he longs for a better way of dealing with the situation.  The underground has acquired one of the beam weapons and plans to carry out an attack.  Although Chinese casualties are produced, it is an instant failure and the three attackers quickly killed.

The rest of the resistance is relieved that they were not captured and tortured to reveal the names of resistance members.  

No one has any information as to what is happening across the world because all media as well as the utilities have been taken down.

 Later they find out that there has been a total world-wide economic collapse and every nation is so busy trying to handle local chaos that very little international interaction is taking place at all.    It is a completely unprecedented world-wide crisis. 

The Chinese have carried out some attacks on other countries also but not completely destroyed their entire infrastructures as they have in America whom they consider to be their number one enemy.  

 Martin meets Courtney, a like-minded dissenting member of the resistance, and becomes a Remote Viewer.   

 Finally it becomes known that the beam weaponry the Chinese are using is unshielded and all the users have become poisoned by an undetected energetic backwash that occurs every time the beam weapons are fired. Since the Chinese troops practice with these weapons twice a week, all of the Chinese Reds have now been poisoned and there is no cure for their pathological deterioration.    

This completely foils the Chinese occupation of America.   

When the Red Chinese find out that they are all going to die within a year due to being poisoned by the unshielded beam weapons, the occupation is broken.  The Chinese Supreme Chairman resigns and a new regime replaces him.  The Red Chinese occupying America are ordered to stand down. They retreat and are sent back to China to be with their families before they die.  

The new Chinese regime represents the student human rights movement and the will of the vast majority of the Chinese people who are heart broken and sorrowful over the terrible and vicious Red invasion of America in their name.  They feel responsible for allowing bullies with the old out-worn mentality of the Mao era to gain control once again in China. This group of hard-liners represented the Chinese Military/Industrial complex and had secretly developed the super-weapons technology over many decades.  

The new regime immediately adopts a policy of restitution.   

They give away their high technology to the entire world starting with the U.S. to help facilitate a recovery.  They unilaterally destroy all their nuclear weapons and the rest of the world is so astounded by this move that they do likewise.  Every nation on the planet disarms.   

 Oil, gas, coal and nuclear power-plants are completely superceeded by unlimited free energy for the entire planet expressed in several technological innovations which had long existed but long been suppressed.  Many of them had originally been invented in the United States but held in secret due to the supposed threat they posed to the special interests and their penchant for business as usual. 

The beam weapons are destroyed under international supervision but the nanotechnology removed to be used for peaceful applications.   

An unprecedented  world-wide epiphany and renaissance has occurred and Martin becomes part of a Remote Viewing and research team due to his involvement in a strange phenomena that occurred during the midst of the occupation and was carefully recorded by him and Courtney.    All the world’s top physicist want to carefully study the phenomenon.  The new China leads the way in a joint venture with American scientists fully grasping its importance.   

A world-wide resource based economy begins to evolve and with the new energy technology, the world’s pollution is finally cleaned up and neutralized completely.   

It is the beginning of an entirely new era of history and a new paradigm which will lead to planet earth becoming a type 1 space-faring civilization and the ongoing exploration of all the realms of time and space.   

It was the Last Invasion in planet earth’s history.

Re: Rob's NaNo Thread - excerpts

Holy crow!  I wish I had my whole story figured out like that.  Here I am just getting by day by day hoping I come up with something.
I liked the first post, good dialogue, etc. and then the synopsis helped me to understand exactly what was going on.  I'm quite wow-ed!  Carry on!
xo

Re: Rob's NaNo Thread - excerpts

Hi ayla,

I didn't have it figured out ahead of time.  It just wrote itself.  When I started this I had no idea where it would go.  That's why I was unable to write a synopsis until today after the thing was finished.  Once I had the title I did think about it.  In fact it went places I never suspected, such as the RV angle.  I had originally intended to develop the whole mysterious cave labyrinth idea but the story just didn't go there so I said,  “Okay run with it.”  Kinda like you do with a horse that gets the bit in her mouth.

Where did the horse come from?    That's a good question.  Probably lurking somewhere in my subconscious mind.  My mom and dad suffered through the Great Depression and the terrible stress of WW2 which probably effected my paranoid gene or something.  The later part of the 20th century was commie/capitalist conflict.  This excited me to see where the hell it was headed.   It just kinda… emerged out of the title and a very vague notion of where The Last Invasion would go and what the meaning of that might be.  Why the “last,” why not just the “next?”  I dunno.  But it does seem that any more than this might mean the total destruction of the entire planet and Mother Earth might object strongly to that. 

Maybe the thing to do is just start writing and not think about it too much.  I was really thinking in terms of sheer quantity when I started out because 50,000 words in a month seemed rather intimidating and I even considered just writing a bazzar stream of consciousness blah blah blah.  But somehow there was this fairly cohesive story wanting to be told. And since I'm more interested in being a story teller than a writer I let it tell itself and just unfold the way it wanted to.   Someone says something and someone else responds… pretty soon you have an entire page of dialog.  That way your inner censor becomes a sensor instead and you start listening to what the characters are saying.  Of course, all I had to work with was my own weird life experiences.  Of course there were a couple of times that I did take the reins and that's where this story suffers the most, like what Sandra pointed out.  I guess there are two factors here driving me.  What do I most fear to see?  and What do I most want to see?  Maybe anyone can use that to tap into their subject matter lurking in the shadows according to their own life experiences– really that's all any of us have to work with.  For example, I'd really be lost if I had to write even a few paragraphs about the advertising industry or basketball.  It would be obvious that here is a person that knows absolutely nothing about those subjects.  Then, there are subjects that everyone knows something about: love, faith, fear, hopes, desires, dreams, visions, opinions, distastes, tastes, favorite music, a painting that moves you, appreciation of craftsmanship, beauty of nature, accidents, synchronicities, deja vus, appreciation of life processes, disease, terrors, our amazing human bodies, depression, thrills, stupors, addictions etc etc.  BUT every person who writes about any of these things will do it differently from anyone else because their vantage point is slightly or greatly different.  That's what makes horse races and political opinions.

Glad you were moved by it.

Namaste,

Rob

Re: Rob's NaNo Thread - excerpts

What do I most fear to see?  and What do I most want to see?  Maybe anyone can use that to tap into their subject matter lurking in the shadows according to their own life experiences– really that's all any of us have to work with.

Brilliant, Rob. I'm going to put it up on the 'Tips' thread.

Re: Rob's NaNo Thread - excerpts

Dear Sandra,

I am greatly honored.  Thanks sister.

Namaste,

Rob

Re: Rob's NaNo Thread - excerpts

OK.  Sandra made some very constructive criticism about my excerpt piece here.  So, here is my analysis.  The italics part is burdensome and even unreal.  Why?  Because it is me trying to inform the reader.  It is the author force-feeding far too many details all at once (spread out they might work) …  because…  I egotistically want them to know.  They should know.  They need to know.  I'm screaming at them to know because it makes me scream inside, not as Martin but as Rob.  However, Rob is not in the story… that is not the story I'm writing here.  (of course in reality the whole thing is Rob as a buncha scizoid multiples some of them not very nice who act like robotic automatons with a poker up their ass) Nope.  So, here is the part of the except that needs something:

It was that forced march through the snow, daddy. I nearly lost my feet.  It’s so ironic.  Oh daddy… way back then you thought this was about to happen.  You were so frightened that the nuclear war was about to start.  That Cuban missle crisis even had the officials in Washington saying goodbye to their wives for the last time.  You were sure that the atomic bombs would start to fall and the Red Chinese would come pouring into southern California.  And in the middle of that night… I remember… you woke us up at 3 in the morning and threw mom and me into the car and there we went… up to the isolated mountains of New Mexico.  Truchas.  You were so scared daddy… ever since you got back from Korea.  It crippled you forever.  You wanted me to live… so the combat training, how to kill,  taught me to resist torture, deprived me, played Russian roulette with me, please… please daddy… I don’t want to pull the trigger with that gun to my head, and you starved me, made a marksman out of me, interrogated me, made me run through freezing snow up to my waist barefooted, made me eat snakes… raw.  I was only six years old, daddy… forty years ago.  Oh if you could be here now.

BUT there is another line that follows that I had Laura whispering instead of ruminating.

“Totally ironic,” she whispered to herself as she poured the tea.  “It finally did happen dad.  Yes it did.  You weren’t so far off after all.  Just a little out of date.”

uh…huh.  OK.  Here it is now:

It was that forced march through the snow.  I nearly lost both feet.  It’s so ironic.  Oh daddy… way back then you thought this was just about to happen.

 “Totally ironic,” she whispered to herself as she poured the tea.  It finally did happen dad.  Yes it did.  You weren’t so far off after all.  Just a little out of date.”

Taking all the excess away makes that whispered line really stand out and really, it is the punch line.  It could have ended a chapter but the chapter doesn't end here because there is more happening.  But it makes a good ending to Larua's PTSD flashback.  A kind of transition between the italics block of “thoughts” and the regularly 4D present present dialogue.  Good tense present present but it deserves straying away from for short intervals in order not to get dull.  A bit of rabbit trailing is called for.

Now see, I wanted to use this line: “Please… please daddy, I don't want to pull the trigger with that gun up to my head.”

However, it doesn't fit here.  I may use it further on or further back.  That, I have to decide.  Or if I wish to develop the PTSD in Laura, I could break up all of the paragraph that are in that big block of italics and intersperce parts of it throughout the story to help build Laura's PTSD a little.  Or do only part of the italics.  But, Laura had actually overcome her PTSD, and only has occassional falshbacks.  Otherwise she would never have been able to get through this and gone bonkers instead.  Or, more likely,  she would have become a suicide bomber for the underground having already been militarily indoctrinated from the age of six on up through her childhood.

Now those are decisions which one must make as a writer. 

What will I do?  Well.. something that's for sure and I think for right here I should just keep it short and sweet.

What you see above is the principle of the red pencil (not a communist pencil either)  Moreso this italics burden is a clear case of telling not showing.  That's why it is not believable. 

I do have some narrative style portions in this book but those are clearly a shift of perspective and are a back-away from the up close involvment with the characters. A breath of fresh air relaxation during a portion of the character's great upswing.   A needed change of rhythm.

Here in this italics passage, the content is (unbelievably) believable but the way it is used is not believable.  It's the author trying to inform the readers.

So,  I've learned something from Sandra's incredibly vectored gnosing nose.  She knows exactly if something is working or not because she has.. a little experience, to put it mildly. 

Anyhow dear Sandra, in a months time I have learned from you and thank you once again so much.

Namaste,

Rob

P.S. Finishing this novel has inspired me to write a long essay which will be in parts.  I will probably put it up on my Gaia blog as well as nestingwave.net.  It's not about writing the novel but about something else far more important.