Babe in the Woods — preface

By way of a teaser, here’s the preface to Babe in the Woods, a novel.

Prologue

March 24, 1995

Friday night

It was about six when I walked into the newsroom, a typical Friday night in progress. Joe Lampman looked up from his keyboard, saw me, and said, “Well! Back from the dead! How’d it go, Ace?” I grinned at him and made a waffling motion with my hand, and didn’t even slow down. A couple of other reporters and I exchanged nods, and then there I was at Charlie Reilly’s desk. I’d seen him glance up and register my presence and then go back to whoever’s copy he was editing. By the time I sat myself in the chair next to his desk, he had already saved the copy and was giving me the usual – the piercing appraisal, the challenging grin with the sparkle in his eye, the indefinable attitude that made him look like reporters must have looked 50 years earlier. He should have been wearing a battered fedora, cocked back and to one side, maybe with a little feather in the hatband.

“So, Angelo,” he said. “We friends again?”

I was biting down on my own grin. “Yeah, you’re forgiven, maybe.”

“Do we have a story?”

“I do believe we do.”

“Do we have a good story?”

 

Babe in the Woods — finished

Finished revision three today, third time is a charm. Now to get it published.

I didn’t expect this novel to proceed so straightforwardly and well. At 115,000  words, it’s considerably longer than my previous novel, Messenger, and considerably more complex. Yet it was a very easy novel to write in certain respects. I knew the people, I knew the situation, and I really knew what I had to say.

So now I’ll give myself a little rest and perhaps I will post the first chapter here after a while.

 

Babe in the Woods

Thanks to all who have said so many nice things about the fiction I posted here. It’s very gratifying to get appreciation for one’s children, you know.

Currently I am 80,000 words into “Babe in the Woods,” which looks likely to become my first completed novel since Messenger. I am very tempted to post it, a bit at a time, but really I should at least try to find a conventional publisher first.

“Babe in the Woods” is the story of my week at the Monroe Institute’s Gateway Voyage, 15 years ago this month. I tell people, that week in December, 1992, was the beginning of my life as a conscious being. Everything in my life changed after that, slowly or quickly, but thoroughly.