The Unpublishables

The Road to Publication

2012-01-06T09:18:00.000-08:00

Writing is hard work. Whether it's poetry, fiction, nonfiction, short stories, micro fiction, or novels, we slave away everyday, tiring our eyes and hands, making sure it's just right. Finally, after several drafts, edits and copyedits, we finish our work, and sit back, waiting for the offers to roll in.

After waiting, and waiting, and waiting for those publication offers, sending out query after query, only to be faced with rejection after rejection, we realize the work has just begun.

I finished my first novel early last year. Up until then, it was the hardest thing I'd ever done. I've written short stories and poems, gotten a few of them published, and those were hard work as well, but nothing compares to the sheer volume of a novel, sustaining a story over hundreds of pages, and going through thousands and thousands of words with a fine toothed comb. It took me over two years to complete. I was proud of myself when I got it to a state that I was happy with. "I'm a writer now," I told myself. And then I started trying to sell it, and that remains the hardest thing I've ever done, and continue to do.

I took the first few rejections with a grain of salt. I was no stranger to the "we cannot take on this project at this time," sort of form letter. But as the weeks and months rolled by, with not even a partial request, the doubt set in, and with it the depression, the worry, the nights asking, "what am I doing with my life?" Rejection on a short story or poem is one thing, but on a novel, something that takes so much time and dedication, and something that, at least for me, is so much more personal, well, it hurts.

One thing I learned while submitting stories, is that publishing is much like a numbers game. Editors, agents, and publishers receive mountains of submissions, and they can only accept a few. My strategy is always to continue submitting to as many venues that are in existence, and on the basis of sheer statistics, someone, anyone, will eventually accept my work, accept me.

Since I started querying, I've gained some traction; partial requests, full requests, revision requests, but I've yet to receive "the call" from an agent, or sign my name to something that ensures payment for my work. But you know what, I carry on. The writerly life involves rejection, and lots of it. I hold on to the hope that someone will connect with my work one day, if not this novel, then the next one, or the next one, and it will happen just when it's supposed to. That kind of thing you can't rush, or wish and hope into reality.

I'll continue trying to sell this novel until I've exhausted all possible routes. From someone who has yet to have any success in the industry, you may not think much of this advice, but I hold it true. Stick to the two P's; patience and persistence.

Literary Quotes Greatest Hits

2011-12-16T09:28:00.000-08:00

I love reading quotes on the art of writing from the masters. Below, I've compiled some greatest hits. Some are inspirational, enlightening, while others are downright depressing.

"Finishing a book is just like if you took a child out in the backyard and shot it."
-Truman Capote

"Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers."
-TS Eliot

"Writing a book is the closest men ever come to childbearing."
-Norman Mailer

"Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry. With both, you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood."
-Gabriel Garcia Marquez

"A good writer are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clean."
-Ezra Pound

"The writer is the Faust of modern society, the only surviving individualist in a mass age. To his orthodox contemporaries he seems a semi madman."
-Boris Pasternak

"So cheat your landlord if you must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be done. You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal."
-William Burroughs

"There are no laws for the novel. There never have been, nor can there ever be."
-Doris Lessing

"Originality is nothing by judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed from another."
-Voltaire

And my personal favorite:
"A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit."
-Richard Bach

Confessions of a NaNoWriMo Failure

2011-11-30T10:32:00.000-08:00

25,000 words. 50% of the goal. If this were school, I'd get a big, fat, "F."

But, I'm happy, happy with my 25,000. The story has good footing, characters are getting interesting, and I'm excited to keep writing.

My excuses for failure:

1. I had other things to do.
Like sleeping and eating.

2. My process got in the way.
I start everything longhand, then transfer it to the computer. It's time consuming, but it works for me. I wish I could type a first draft directly into the computer and ignore my typos and atrocious sentence structure, but I can't.

3. I got distracted.
Did I really need to spend a week mapping out that Science Fiction novella I'll never write? No.

4. 50,000 is a lot of words.
Though I didn't reach the goal, I did increase my writing stamina. I hope to keep it up.

If you actually completed 50,000 words this month, I'd like to shake your cramped, arthritic hand. And if you have children or pets or other responsibilities, I hope the negligence you've displayed towards them over the past thirty days hasn't been too criminal.

Book Review: A HARD MAN IS GOOD TO FIND by James W. Lewis

2011-11-14T11:42:00.000-08:00

Michelle Larsen is an intelligent, driven, modern woman. She's modern in the sense that she doesn't need a man to take care of her or provide for her, she does that herself, but sometimes, she really wants one. When Michelle's trying-to-concieve best friend, Charlotte, convinces Michelle to go clubbing with her so Charlotte can sow her pre-motherhood oats, Michelle meets a few men she thinks can live up to her standards, yet they always disappoint, each one more hilariously than the last. Then, she meets Daryl Jackson, her attractive and successful new neighbor. They instantly connect. Michelle thinks she's finally found "the one," until she starts to suspect Daryl is keeping something from her. Did the string of past rejects make Michelle unfairly paranoid about men, or is Daryl really not as perfect as he seems?

James Lewis tells his story through Michelle's point of view. Her voice is casual, realistic, and never overdone. She refers to the reader as "girl," making me feel like I'm having drinks with a girlfriend, listening wide eyed and slack jawed as she shares her wildly entertaining experiences. I wonder, though, how men would feel reading this book. At the worst, I'd imagine they'd feel ostracized and disconnected. At the best, they'd see it as an opportunity to "listen in" to how women talk to each other, and learn from those insights.

Lewis manages to maintain tension throughout, compelling the reader to continue. And when the big twist is finally revealed, as Michelle would say, "Oh, Lawd!"

Purchase A HARD MAN IS GOOD TO FIND: Pantheon Collective

Find out more about James W. Lewis: http://www.jameswlewis.com/

The NaNoWriMo Challenge and Facials

2011-11-02T11:21:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year again, when professionals, amateurs, and the clinically insane alike attempt the daunting challenge that is NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. In case you're a balanced person and don't know what NaNoWriMo is, it's a challenge to write a draft of a novel, or 50,000 words, in one short month. You can check out the official website that keeps track of your word count for you and hooks you up with other NaNoWriMo participants.

NaNoWriMo

I've never accepted this challenge before out of fear and time constraints, but since I was going to be starting a new novel anyway, I figured now was the time to try. Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a full draft of a novel in thirty short days, something that normally takes me six months? That would be wonderful, and I'll let you know at the end of the month if I actually achieve this.

NaNoWriMo is a challenge indeed. As much as I love to write, it takes mental stamina. I usually clock in an hour or two of writing, and about 1,000 words a day. This month I'm challenging myself to 2500 words a day. We're two days in, and so far so good, but it does take a sort of mental olympics to chain yourself to your desk and write more in one day than you ever have before.

So you may be wondering, if you like writing so much, wouldn't you want to do it all the time? The answer is yes. I do want to do it all the time. It's all I think about. But in reality, an hour or two is all I can stand. Writing is at once scary, stressful, tedious, and also enlightening and surprising. I was thinking about this when getting a facial recently. The esthetician asked if I wanted extractions (basically hardcore zit popping) to which I replied, "I love extractions." I realized that was a strange thing to say. I certainly don't like the experience of extractions. It's painful. But I love the results. And in a weird way, I love the pain too because of the results.

So, in conclusion, writing is a lot like extractions. It's a beautiful pain. We suffer it because the end result brings us so much joy, as does the pain itself.

Inspirational Article

2011-08-17T12:04:00.000-07:00

Check out this article about the hit novel, The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, and the sixty rejections she had to endure. The article is written by the New York Times bestselling author, Michelle Richmond.

The Art of Rejection: Kathryn Stockett's tale of never giving up

It's Friday, Did You Get Rejected this Week?

2011-07-22T08:44:00.000-07:00

Me too. We writers live in a world full of rejection. But remember, it's also a world full of...

...puppies!

rainbows!

and ice cream!

Chin up. Write to write. Have a great weekend!

Interview with Jack Boettcher, Author of the Upcoming Novel, Theater-State

2011-07-19T08:21:00.000-07:00

Jack Boettcher's novel is Theater-State, out very soon from Blue Square Press. Other recent fiction appears in Fence, Pleiades, and Dark Sky, and is forthcoming in DIAGRAM. He lives in Austin, Texas.

When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

I always had an interest in writing and reading growing up. I wrote adventure stories in elementary school, like with archaeologist protagonists. I produced a bunch of tripe for poetry.com, then waited patiently to win their "contest." I tried to write a novel one summer in high school, etc. In K-12 I seemed to land in schools with teachers who were more invested in conveying the importance of writing and literature and being creative than they were probably required to be, which was nice. At the same time, I felt that this interest - encouraged by the people around me - was partly mine and partly theirs. I didn't know if it was something I would actually keep doing. It would fade and then spark whenever I read something that was profoundly good.

In my first years of college, I read a lot - I had a new library - but I wasn't writing much anymore. There was no one to tell me to do so. My sophomore year I came across some poems on the Internet, smaller magazines and younger poets I didn't know. Specifically, I remember reading a poem by Zachary Schomburg on the Fence magazine website, "I'm Not Carlos," which would later appear in his first book The Man Suit. I read this poem and I couldn't figure out what was happening, in a good way. I read more poems by newer poets, much of it in online journals. I was kind of floored. I started writing again, but no one was asking me to do so, and it didn't have to feel like a fate.

You've had a prolific career, with publications in journals like Black Warrior Review, Denver Quarterly, Gulf Coast, the publication of two chapbooks (The Deviants and Surveyic Hero), and the upcoming novel, Theater-State. After all of this success, do you still get rejected?

Yes. The majority of emails I get from editors are rejections. And "majority" is generous in its ambiguity.

Could you tell us about the road to publication with Theater-State? Did it differ from the publications of your previous chapbooks?

Yes, it differed. The editors at Blue Square Press had read an excerpt and some other writing, and they contacted me about seeing a manuscript. I'd never had a manuscript solicited, so that was different.

How do you know when a piece is ready to submit?

That's a hard question. I revised my novel a lot in the time between sending it to Blue Square and the final edits several months later. Borges said something or other about publishing pieces so that he could get rid of them, so that he wouldn't be able to work on them anymore. Otherwise they were never finished. I'm pretty sure it was Borges.

Eventually, you learn by cringing. You reread something you didn't sit on long enough, and you see how it's problematic that it escaped you and another person read it. So I'm evading a real answer to this question because I don't have one. My best guess is that its an intuitive thing that improves the more you read your own writing for revisions.

As a poet and fiction writer, have you noticed any differences between the two markets? What about the writing process itself?

I'll start with the process part. I think the differences are just conventions that can be used or ignored, and a lot of writers and editors talk about hybridity and mixed-genre work and other forms of defiance these days, which I think is healthy. I do adhere to most of the conventions of fiction when I'm writing fiction. And I am interested in telling a story, in entertaining. But I also feel like many of the images and fleeting ideas of Theater-State - the small details that distinguish the world of the book from this world - come from writing and reading a lot of poetry before I turned to fiction.

Poetry is more difficult.

As for submitting work and all of that, I think the differences you see between any two journals have much more to do with the aesthetic views of the current masthead than with which genre is emphasized.

How do you think technology and the internet has changed the pursuit of writing as a career? Are technology and the internet a friend to writers (and readers), or foe?

The Internet has changed things for me, and I'm hardly pursuing a career in writing, meaning I don't expect my writing to be a source of financial stability. That would be a lot to expect, and a lot of pressure. Maybe the pressure helps some people be more productive, but I like to keep it relatively pressure-free. Writing's not work (for me) and I see an advantage in that.

But I think it's undeniable that technology has been powerful for small literary operations So many journals are freely accessible now, because they're online, and the aesthetic diversity of online journals is astounding. People sometimes have serious literary conversations on blogs. And you think, blogs aren't the most glorious platforms for human communication, but these are conversations that might not happen elsewhere.

At the same time, a lot of people point out that technology can be as distracting as it is helpful for writers. That's true for me at times. It's like the pollution of the Internet, distraction.

But with online journals, lit blogs, the ability to see what other people are talking about - it's undoubtedly a net positive for writers and readers. I speak for myself alone, but it's helped me. I thank the Internet.

Tell us about Theater-State. What's it about? Will we like it?

Thanks for asking. The central character is a new high school student at an illustrious if somewhat murky private academy in southern Louisiana, which emphasizes original student work in its curriculum. He's investigating the so-called immortal jellyfish (it's real), a species which he keeps as both pet and subject. His principal, a businessman who keeps ambiguous ties with Central American governments, is taking interest in his work, but too much interest - sort of stalking him even. There's a shapeshifting office that gets redecorated a whole lot, and there's a secret swamp, and there's more but I'll stop there.

The title comes from Arthur Demarest's writings on the Classic Maya states.

Will you like it? It is possible.

Jack Boettcher's new novel, Theater-State, is available at Blue Square Press.

July Issue of Midwest Literary Magazine, Live

2011-07-15T08:54:00.000-07:00

I'm honored to have my piece, What We Left in the Yucatan, included in the July 2011 issue of the Midwest Literary Magazine alongside so many amazing writers!

Read it here: Midwest Literary Magazine, July 2011

Top Ten Websites for Writers

2011-07-12T11:55:00.000-07:00

Since its beginning, the internet has been an invaluable resource for writers. Remember when you had to go to the library, read literary journals and send a letter to them to get submission guidelines? Or go down to the basement and search through microfilm to do research? I don't either, but it sounds awful. Below is a list of ten websites, that, if checked regularly, can help launch your career, right from your own home!

1. Poets & Writers Provides regularly updated database of contests and awards, residencies and conferences, jobs for writers, and more.

2. Publishers Lunch Read up on deals made by major publishing houses, find out who agents represent, and which agent may be right for your project.

3. Preditors & Editors It's tough out there for a writer, especially with all the scams floating around. Got an agent or publishing house interested in your work? Search for them on this website to make sure they're legit.

4. Writer Beware Another scam watchdog group. Scammers are growing more intelligent and crafty everyday, and with this site, you can too!

5. Duotrope Easy to use database of literary journals and book publishers.

6. Freelance Writing Gigs Get paid for your words! They provide new job listings everyday, and informative articles on the writing life.

7. Craigslist Check this site frequently not only for writing jobs and gigs, but for opportunities you won't find anywhere else. I once got to go to a writer's conference for free just by answering an ad I found on this site.

8. Baby Names World Stuck on what to name your characters? Browse this website for the perfect name. You can also search a specific year to find what names were most popular then.

9.Query Tracker Database of literary agents. Keep track of your queries and read comments about agents by other writers.

10. Unemployment Benefits J/K

Upcoming Deadline-Wordstock Short Fiction Competition July 15th

2011-07-11T10:00:00.000-07:00

From the website

fiction competition

The 5th Wordstock Short Fiction Competition
SUBMIT YOUR STORY!
This international contest is a “double blind” competition. The judges, a collection of writers, academics, publishers, bookstore owners, and literary critics, will choose 10 finalists. All 10 finalists’ stories will be published in the Wordstock Ten, an anthology that will be available at the festival, at Portland-area bookstores, and online through the Wordstock website. Every writer who enters the competition will receive a copy of the anthology.
The winner of the competition, chosen from this field of 10 finalists, receives a first prize of $1,000 and publication in the October 2011 issue of Portland Monthly magazine. The final judge for this year’s competition will be novelist and story writer Aimee Bender.
This year, for the first time, Wordstock will only be accepting electronic entries to this competition. (Click here to go to the submission page!)
Submission guidelines
- All short stories must be works of fiction written in English
- Stories must be an original work and not previously published
- The entry fee is $20 per short story entry
- There are no genre restrictions, and comics are acceptable
- Manuscripts may be in Word or PDF format
- Manuscripts must be double-spaced
- Stories should be no less than 1,500 and no more than 3,000 words
- Each submission file you upload must omit the writer’s contact information—DO NOT put this information on the manuscript!
- Entries that do not follow these guidelines will be disqualified
Deadline for 2011: July 15, 2011
SUBMIT YOUR STORY!
Any proceeds from the Wordstock Short Fiction Competition are used to support Wordstock’s work with teachers and students.
WordStock Festival

Publishable!

2011-07-10T10:25:00.000-07:00

My creative non-fiction piece, What We Left in the Yucatan, was picked up by the Midwest Literary Magazine. I managed to get this published only one short year after I wrote it!

Details to come.

Midwest Literary Magazine

How to Avoid Rejection (By someone who wished they knew)

2011-07-08T14:16:00.000-07:00

Rejection hurts. No matter how many times writers have been told they need a ‘thick skin,’ or at what stage they are in in their career, the ‘thanks, but no thanks’ responses that pile up on pieces they sweated, laughed, and cried over are likely to send even the most confident writer down a spiral of self doubt and cliched drunkenness. While there is no way to avoid rejection completely, there are certain things you can do to improve your chances of receiving that allusive acceptance letter.

Write something really, really good

It’s that simple, and that complicated. Journals, agents, and publishers are inundated with thousands of submissions each year. What makes yours stand out? What makes readers want to keep reading? The first step is to create a vivid main character. Give your character as many authentic details as possible, and make them flawed. No one in real life is perfect, and your character shouldn’t be either. Flaws make your protagonist sympathetic to readers, and also stand in the way of them achieving their goals, creating suspense that keeps those pages turning.

But what should characters do? Adherence to basic story structure will keep the story moving along, provide it with energy, momentum. Particularly in short fiction, the hook needs to happen right away. Some editors read every word of every submission that comes their way, while many make a decision after the first paragraph. If there’s no hook, the editor will see that story as an easy pass.

As the writer, creator of this story, ask yourself this; what does my character want, and how do their flaws keep them from getting what they want? From there, the central question is set up; will they or won’t they get what they want? This creates suspense. This can make your story really, really good.

Write something marketable

Most writers scoff at this suggestion. Writing is, at its core, an intuitive process. Any creative act comes from within, and the source of inspiration is difficult to identify. However, anyone attempting to write professionally must keep one eye on their subconscious, and the other eye on the market. The publishing industry is an industry after all, and the goal of any industry is to make money. Say you’ve created a vivid character and set up the central question, but what is it about your story that will make someone plunk down fifteen dollars for a paperback or journal?

Consider Stephanie Meyer. She has a lot of critics that point to the lack of quality of her prose. She also has a lot of fans, and, in turn, a lot of money. What the Twilight books have going for them are an interesting, marketable premise; a mortal high school girl falls in love with a beautiful, immortal vampire that also kind of wants to kill her. It’s concrete, interesting, and ripe for possibility.

Know who to submit to

Every writer dreams of seeing their work in The Paris Review or on the cover of The New Yorker. Unless your name is synonymous with years of publishing success, you have a good publicist, or your story is really, really, really, really good, don’t submit to them. You won’t get in. No way, no how. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the big name magazines receive more submissions than anyone else. You’re better off going to websites like Duotrope.com and scouting out smaller presses who aren’t yet jaded enough to reject you based on reputation alone. Duotrope also has a function where you can sort the list of journals from the highest rate of acceptance to the lowest. Start there.

Don’t check your email/mail

You know it’s there, why even look? Especially if it’s Friday. Rejections always hurt worse on Friday.

Don’t avoid rejection

Embrace it. Realize that rejection, many, many rejections, are unavoidable on the path to sweet, sweet, career success. And even when you do attain career success, and you think you’re such hot sh*t, the rejections will keep coming. They never stop. Might as well get used to them.

The Woods

2011-06-27T11:14:00.000-07:00

Rejected: 9 times before being accepted by The Momo Reader.

But why? I guess some magazines don't consider stories about dumps literary.

Why post it here? This piece received a strong response when available.

The Woods

by Carol Gore

I sat in my parents’ house in North Carolina, sipping coffee and watching the Today Show, both bland and unsatisfying. There was a note on the counter from Mom, saying she’d gone to the grocery store and would be back that afternoon. My sister, Sadie, wouldn’t be up for another hour, at least.

I gazed out of the window to the woods behind our house. Now, it was neat rows of pine trees. When I was younger it had been a large open field that Dad grew beans in, surrounded by woods. I used to go exploring out there with Sadie where once, we found a little flowing creek that we’d promised to keep a secret. Down the middle of the rows of trees was a wide path, and I decided, since I’d spent most of my time sitting in cars and on couches for the past few days, to take a walk.

It was warm, despite being late December. I stripped off my sweatshirt down to a tank top. I was already sweating. I blew air under my arms to dry the sweat from the hair, and made my way in bare feet to the woods.

Small wild rabbits scurried over the bare and uneven ground. Peering between the straight rows, I could see clear to the other side, where Aunt Anna and my two young cousins lived. She’d recently divorced Uncle Hunter, and won the drawn-out custody battle with the help of Dad’s testimony.

Though the rows were neat, I couldn’t walk among them, thanks to the briars that made up the low-lying brush. I started to notice objects lying out, deep in the woods. They looked like cardboard boxes. I walked to the end of the path, looking down each row. I counted about a dozen. Though I couldn’t read what was on them, a few I identified as pizza boxes. During my three years in San Francisco, I’d learned trash, especially old food containers, in woods or parks signified someone living there. I immediately thought of Uncle Hunter. The first time Aunt Anna had tried to divorce him he’d come to their house with a shot gun, calling for his kids. I was doing homework when I heard the shots. Again, Dad had helped. He’d walked over there and convinced him to put the gun down.

I walked back towards the house, unsure of what to do. I didn’t want to alarm anyone, and then my speculations turn out to be false. I watched a rabbit hop along the edge of the trees, then down a narrow path between the rows. The path was so slight, I hadn’t noticed it before. The briars were manipulated away and the ground was smooth, probably due to several crossings. The path led nearly to the heart of the woods, and ended in a small clearing between the trees, where I found my next clue, or, rather, several piles of my next clue.

I stumbled back quickly through the small path. Feces. Piles of feces scattered around a clearing in the woods. An animal, perhaps? No, the brown stained paper towels rendered that theory moot. I turned back on the main path. I had to tell someone.

As I crossed over into our yard, I saw Dad in the driveway loading soft water pellets in the water well. Should I tell him? He was so emotionally connected to the situation, I wondered if he’d do something rash. But no, I had to tell someone. Who knew when it would be too late?

“Dad. I was walking in the woods and saw something weird.”

He ripped open another sack of pellets. “What was it?”

I didn’t want to mention the feces just yet, so not to startle him.

“There was trash out there. Boxes.”

“Sometimes I’ll throw cardboard out there. Anything that’ll rot but’s too big for the can.”

“Even pizza boxes?”

“I reckon so.” He opened the top of the well, which looked like a miniature version of our house.

“I saw something else weird.” I braced myself for his reaction. “There were all these, dumps, out there.”

He looked up and laughed. “Dumps?”

“That means someone’s living out there.”

“Living there? No, I don’t think so.”

“What about Uncle Hunter?”

“I highly doubt it.”

I walked back to the house where I found Sadie lying on the couch watching TV. She’d recently moved to New York City, so I was confident she’d recognize the tell-tale signs of hobo-living. She looked at me in shock. I must’ve looked a sight; sweaty, with plant life clinging to my hair, and nervous as hell.

“You won’t believe this,” I said. “Somebody’s been taking dumps out there in the woods.”

Immediately, she started laughing. Maybe she hadn’t lived in the city for long enough.

“What if Uncle Hunter’s camping out there?”

“No,” she said. Laughter snorted through her nose. “Mom goes out there and takes dumps.”

“Mom? What? Why?”

“She says when the house is full she doesn’t want to stink up the bathroom, so she goes outside.”

I picked leaves out of my hair, collected them in a little pile on the coffee table. Mom had become more eccentric since we left home, but what kind of person went outside to take a dump? I turned to the pile of books I’d brought, their combined thickness enough to make air travel exponentially more painful. I turned back to the Today show. A young female pop star jumped around an outdoor stage, her armpits as clean as a baby’s. Someone who’d made almost as much money as I’d like to someday talked about their book. For the last hour, I dozed as the TV voices lapped over me. The heavy wave of midmorning sleep came. I didn’t fight as it pulled me under. This was Mom’s house, her land, her life, and she could take a dump where ever she wanted.

End.

The Woods first appeared in the November 2010 issue of The Momo Reader.

Ghosts

2011-04-21T11:04:00.000-07:00

Rejected: 20 Times

But why? Besides a few structural problems, it deals with some touchy themes, specifically racial relations in the South. Also, it's too damn long.

Why post it here? I like ghosts.

Ghosts
by Carol Gore

Helen’s startled awake at 10:16 am when she hears a clatter, a scream, and a thump, in that order. She takes a second to dread having to leave the pillow under her head and the cool sheets that have fallen just right over her bare thighs, before rushing out to find Damian, standing at the sink, running water over his hands. Helen almost trips over the mugs and French press as she sidesteps around the brown stain expanding on the carpet.

“It wasn’t all that hot,” Damian says as she inspects his hands. “I didn’t see the ball. I guess it blends in.”

Helen picks up the hunter green ball, almost the same color as the carpet, and squeezes it. At the sound of the wheezing toy, Robert jumps off of the couch and sits in front of her, wagging his tail.

“I put this away almost two years ago.” Helen throws the ball and it lands in the middle of the living room. Robert bolts after it. “I realized it was a hazard and buried it in the closet. Though, it saved my life once.”

“What happened?”

Helen drops a towel on the floor and watches it absorb the brown liquid. “I’ll tell you over coffee.”

“You’re out,” he says.

“Then I’ll tell you at Emma’s.”

Robert, with the ball squeaking in his mouth, trots to an empty corner of the room, and sits, wagging his tail.

“And I think I know who’s responsible.”

Damian gathers his keys and wallet, then stands up straight. “Wait. ‘Who?’”

Old Grace Peterson stands on her balcony three apartments down from Helen’s, wearing the nightgown that reveals the folds of her tired knees, drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette. Her husband had been a professor at the nearby East Carolina University. Physics, Helen thinks. As an art history major, she’d only taken non-mathematical science.

“Good morning, Grace,” Helen chirps, skipping to Damian’s white ’87 Honda Accord. The clear sky is filled with sun. The wind has a slight sting of chill, though not enough to require a jacket; the perfect weather for ghosts, in Helen’s opinion.

They pull out of the apartment complex and turn onto Greenville Boulevard towards downtown before Helen notices Damian’s face, pouting as he stares at the road ahead. She rubs his knee and smiles at him.

“You didn’t see that lady back there?” Damian says.

“Old lady Peterson? I saw her.”

“Did you see the way she was looking at us?”

Helen lets go of his knee, looks out the window. “I guess I didn’t see that.”

“She was staring at us. Hard. With a mean look on her face. Like she didn’t think people like you and people like me should be together.”

Helen takes off her shoes so she can prop her feet up on the dashboard. She’s not going to let the likes of Grace Peterson drain the excitement from the day. “This is the South. What do you expect? She’ll be dead soon anyway.”

Damian turns into the small shopping center where Emma’s occupies the space in the middle, a used book shop and Home Bazaar on either side. Emma had introduced Helen to good coffee her freshman year at ECU when Helen got a job at the nearby plasma donation center, where she continues to work.

Helen’s already through the door when she senses Damian isn’t behind her. He’s staring across the narrow road to another shopping center that features a pool hall, a cheap late night pizza place, and a discount meat market that always seems to be leaching out onto the sidewalk. There’s a group of guys, four or so, standing around a large black truck in the opposite parking lot.

“I don’t like the looks of them,” Damian says.

Helen takes a deep breath, raises her eyes to the sky. Sometimes they could stay out all day without incident, other times they couldn’t step outside the front door.

“Shouldn’t you be used to this by now?” she says and immediately wishes she hadn’t. She’d thought it would be funnier. An engine thunders through the bright, cloudless day and they both turn to see a short chubby man, standing up in the back of the truck, looking in their direction. His face is shaded by a baseball cap and facial hair.

“Let’s just go inside,” Helen says. Not now, not today, she pleads with the sky.

They give their order to Emma’s current chiseled, barely English-speaking foreign exchange student barista. He says his name is Rodolpho, and little else. Though they can’t see Emma, they can clearly hear her from the back room, talking loudly on the phone in Spanish. Every now and then she breaks into a great, robust laugh that rattles the silverware and porcelain mugs. While they wait for their coffee, Helen explains how the green ball saved her life.

“One night, not long after I moved into that apartment, I was watching TV and someone started knocking on my door. I went to get it, but didn’t see Robert’s ball lying in the middle of the floor. Before I could get there, I tripped, spraining my ankle a little. It hurt so bad, I stayed on the floor and let the person knock until they left. The next day, I found out a girl a couple buildings down from me was raped that night. Someone had knocked on her door, pretending to be maintenance.” Rodolpho brings their coffee. Helen inhales the steam.

“So, the person knocking on the door could’ve been the rapist,” Damian says. “Therefore, the ball saved your life.”

“Oh no,” Helen says, laughing. “It was Charlie who saved my life. Well, not my life. Virtue, maybe. He put the ball there. That’s when I started thinking I had a ghost.”

“You mean the apartment had a ghost,” Damian says.

“No,” Helen says, licking foam from her finger. “I mean me. I’m not sure, but Charlie may have been around all my life.”

“Charlie’s back,” Emma’s voice booms behind them. “You okay, hon?”

“I’m fine,” Helen says.

“How did you know what we were talking about?” Damian asks Emma.

“Emma is kind of a shaman,” Helen says and turns to Emma. “Charlie tripped Damian.”

“That doesn’t sound like Charlie,” Emma says. “He’s a protective spirit, the reason your girl here’s lasted so long.”

“That’s right,” Helen says. “Do you know how many times I’ve forgotten to look before crossing the street? Too many times to count.”

“Then what’s his deal, tripping me?” Damian says.

“Well, sometimes he makes mistakes,” Helen says. “Like when UPS came to the door, but it wasn’t the regular guy. Anyway, when I opened the door, the ball, the same green ball, rolled out onto the patio between my feet. The UPS guy and I stared at it for a little while, then Robert came bolting out of the apartment, knocking the guy over.”

Damian shakes his head, puts his face in his hands. “That was Charlie? He threw the ball?”

“What else could it be?”

“I don’t know. There are other causes to rolling balls besides ghost.”

Helen stares into her coffee. “You don’t believe me?”

“Actually,” Damian says. “It makes perfect sense. Now I see how you can walk through the world the way you do.”

“Maybe you could learn a thing or two.” Helen jabs his bicep. “I still have a weird feeling. Could this be some kind of warning, Emma?”

“I don’t know, honey, he’s your goddamn ghost. Listen, most of these spirits ain’t perfect. They’re flawed like the rest of us because they used to be living like the rest of us. You talk to him, ask him what’s on his mind. And burn some sage.”

“Sage,” Helen says. “That’s your answer for everything.”

Emma shrugs. “It ain’t the sage that matters, it’s the intent. The sage is more for your benefit. The living like to have something to do with their hands. How you doing back there, Carl?” she calls to the homeless man she allows to sit in the shop as long as he likes. “Need a refill?” Emma withdraws an airplane bottle of bourbon from inside of her vest, and leaves to top off Carl’s coffee and wait on her other customers.

“I can drag out my Ouija board and we’ll have an old-fashioned séance,” Helen says. “Let’s stop by the Food Lion and get sage.”

Damian doesn’t answer. Helen follows his gaze outside, where the guys from before are crossing the street. It looks like they are walking up to Emma’s, but once across, veer left, out of view.

“They’re walking towards my car. I’m going out there,” Damian says, and stands up. Helen grabs his arm.

“Stop,” she says. “They’re probably not doing anything.”

Damian remains standing. “My car’s over there. I know you’ve been protected by ghosts all your life, but what about my car?”

“Just sit down,” Helen says. She has her hand around his wrist. They stare for a few seconds, then watch as the guys pass Emma’s and enter through the automatic doors of the Home Bazaar.

“See,” Helen says. “Wouldn’t you have felt dumb?”

Damian rubs his eyes until they are red. He chuckles and sits down.

“You really should learn to be less paranoid.” Helen grasps his hand. “I know. Why don’t you try not being paranoid for one day? Today we don’t worry about people staring or saying things under their breath or what they might do. Try putting your trust in Charlie for one day.”

Damian sighs, releasing all of the air from his lungs. “Okay. But just today.”

On the way out, Helen’s feet get tangled in the doormat and she stumbles while shouting goodbye to Emma and Rodolpho. The humid air clings to her skin. The sun has burnt away the morning brisk and down the road gray clouds gather, darkening the spaces between the trees. The second after she sees the word traced with a fingertip in the dust that cakes Damian’s back windshield, thunder cracks through the sky, the sound conjuring the image of a man in Helen’s mind. His face is blurry, but she can clearly imagine his dark legs against the beige of his uniform, the sound of his shriek as he toppled to the ground, and in this instant she knows why the ball rolled out on its own that night, why Charlie tripped Damian.

Charlie's racist, she thinks.

Damian hasn’t seen it yet. They settle into the car and sit still while he searches for something to listen to. CD’s are tucked everywhere; behind the visor, the doors, in large, overstuffed folders all over the back seat and floors. A tingling streak runs through Helen’s body, burns out at the bottom of her foot where she knows she’ll have a wart in the morning. She turns the word over in her head, the one no really says out loud anymore, but seems to be on the tip of everyone’s tongue. Damian asks what she wants to listen to, but her brain can’t bring up the name of any musical entity. She shrugs. He flips down the visor, grazes his fingers along the sleeves of music. Helen stares at his hand, gets lost in the depth of color.

“Helen,” Damian says, waving his hand in front of her face. “What is it?”

She jerks back to reality and forces an asthmatic laugh. “I can’t believe you haven’t noticed.”

“What?” Damian laughs and glances around.

Helen sighs, points to the back windshield. He looks at it, then back at her. She smiles coyly.

“Oh God, how long has that been there?” he says. “At least they didn’t key it, right? Charlie must be watching out for us.”

“I told you he was a good ghost.”

Damian retrieves a thick CD folder from under his feet. While he flips through the plastic pages, Helen watches the entrance to the Home Bazaar. The black truck is still parked across the street. Silently, she pleads for Damian to find a CD. Every time the automatic doors of the Home Bazaar part, her breath stops. A man in a baseball cap walks out and lights a cigarette. His facial hair glows red in the sun. She can’t remember if the guy who’d stood in the back of the truck and watched them had had red hair, though it could look different according to the light. Damian reaches back, searching for another folder. Helen picks up a loose CD from the floor under her.

“Let’s listen to this,” she says, shoving it at him.

Damian rights himself in his seat and takes the CD from her. “Lewis Black at Carnegie Hall?”

Helen nods, keeping her face calm. She doesn’t turn her head, but can feel the red-headed man’s presence, still standing there smoking and probably waiting on his friends to purchase blunt objects.

“I guess I could use some comedy,” Damian says and pops the CD in.

In her periphery, Helen sees the automatic doors part. Had Charlie sent them here? The coffee, tripping Damian, Emma’s; could he be that good?

“Let’s just get out of here,” she says, more forceful than she means to. “I want to beat the rain.”

“We can do that,” Damian says and backs out.

In the rearview, Helen sees the man is joined by a pregnant woman pushing a cart piled high with stuffed bags, the plastic tops billowing in the wind. The pregnant woman yells at the man, who yells back and takes the cart from her. Helen laughs at herself, then realizes her head’s being rattled by Lewis Black’s voice. She raises her hand to turn the radio down, but stops when she glances in the rearview in time to see four young men exit. Camouflage. He’d been wearing a camouflage hat. Helen expels a small gasp.

“Jesus, what is it?” Damian asks. He’d been turning left at that moment.

“Nothing,” Helen says. “I thought that car was going to hit us.”

“It wasn’t even close,” Damian says. “Are you feeling okay?” He puts his hand to her forehead.

“Yes, Mom,” Helen laughs.

She doesn’t make a sound when she sees the four guys jog across the street to their truck.

But when the guys don’t pull up behind them, tires screeching, engine roaring, and rebel flag waving, Helen relaxes. She turns off Lewis Black, and tunes into NPR. She loves the gray sky before a storm. She knows something’s missing, gone forever; the separation wound so new, she’s not had the chance to feel it. They pull into the Food Lion just up from Helen’s apartment complex.

“Place is packed tonight,” Damian says. “I guess everyone’s having a séance.”

Damian drives down the main lane of the parking lot and suddenly the car begins to shake. There’s a terrible, loud groan as they pitch up, and down again. Helen throws her hands out on the dashboard to catch herself. The voices on the radio drone on like nothing’s happened.

“What was that?”

“I ran over something,” Damian says. “Looks like a huge chuck of asphalt. The parking lot is crumbling.”

“The manager should be legally obligated to fix that. It’s a hazard.”

Damian pulls into a space. “I thought we weren’t going to worry about other people or what might happen.”

“What about your car?”

Damian pats the dashboard. “This beaut’s a 1987 Honda Accord. They don’t make them like this anymore.” He puts his arm around her shoulder. “You ready?”

“Uh, yeah,” Helen says, pulling away a half inch. Her eyes dart around. She wonders who can see them. “Actually, I think I’ll stay here. Do you mind running in?”

Damian pauses, retracts his hand. “I don’t mind.”

“I like the way the air feels,” Helen says. She pumps the window down and sticks her hand out in the gray sky.

“Sure.” He takes off his seatbelt. “Do you want anything else? Besides the sage. Does Charlie like root beer floats?”

“I don’t know about Charlie but I do.”

As he kisses her lips, Helen suppresses news reel images of hate crimes. Damian inspects the car then walks away, leaving the car running and the radio on. She tries not to, but can’t help picturing Damian’s face, bruised and swollen, or her own mother crying at her funeral, her father not in attendance. Once Damian’s far enough away, she rolls the windows up, makes sure all of the doors are locked, and turns off the radio. She figures Damian will be safe inside the crowded grocery store, probably safer without her.

“Charlie?” she says. “Charles, I hope you’re listening.” She carries on despite the silence. “You’ve been a great ghost. I’m lucky to have had you. Even when I was at my loneliest, I always had you to talk to.

“But, Charles, we really do disagree on this one point. Damian is wonderful, wonderful to me. He is in there right now buying me vanilla ice cream and root beer and I know he doesn’t even like root beer. And after all of the losers I dated before him-“

She stops for a moment, breathes, continues in a choked voice. “I love you, Charlie, my friend. But I have to say, you’re either with us, me and Damian, or against us.” Helen opens the glove box and finds a clean stack of fast food napkins. She wipes her face and blows her nose. “It’s the 21^st century now. You can’t expect to be a ghost, wander around forever, and not see things change.” She lowers the visor and opens the small mirror. Red blotches cover her face. Allergies, she’ll say. A sneeze attack.

A low roll of thunder startles her. In the rearview, she catches the end of a black truck passing by. She spins around but SUVs block her view. Rain sloshes against the windows. The ends of the ‘n’ and ‘i’ streak down in the dust like rattails until they eventually wash away. Helen’s up on her knees, straining to see the truck. She listens for loud mufflers, but in North Carolina, if you stop to listen, a muffler is roaring somewhere. She sees Damian come out of the store. He stops under the shelter by the shopping carts and sticks his hand out to test the rain.

A muffler roars somewhere in her vicinity. She waits and watches and soon she sees them, the chubby guy walking down the main lane with his three friends behind him. Is the world really this bad without Charlie? Helen wonders about the girl who was raped. Where was her ghost?

Damian checks his watch and squints up at the sky. Make a run for it, Helen thinks. Don’t wait for it to pass. The guys from the truck have stopped moving. The small one with stringy blond hair is bent over and the rest watch him. When the blond straightens he’s holding a block of asphalt, so large he has to use both hands. A scene plays in her mind, of him hoisting it up and bringing it down on Damian’s head.

“Fuck you, Charlie,” Helen says as she hurls herself over the console into the driver’s seat. She backs out of the space, nicking the side mirror of the car beside her, and pulls out into the lane. The guys walk slowly in front of her, tossing the heavy slab between them, laughing when one of them nearly topples over. When she beeps, they don’t immediately get out of her way so she barrels down the lane and zooms around them, making them jump to the side.

“Crazy bitch,” one of them yells.

She stops in front of Damian and pumps down the window. “I thought I’d pick you up in the rain.”

“Did you hear someone yell?” Damian says. “Were they yelling at you?”

Helen shakes her head. “So get in and we’ll go.”

Damian shields his eyes with his hand and looks into the distance. “Maybe we should wait for this to let up. I don’t have very good traction.”

Helen knows the guys will be at the curb soon, all riled up from their encounter. “The ice cream,” she says. “It’ll melt.”

“It’s fine,” Damian says. “What’s wrong with you? Why is your face all red?”

The four guys approach the curb. “There she is,” one of them yells.

“Damian, just get in the car.”

“Are they talking to you?”

“What’s she still doing here? Hey lady, you almost killed us.” The guys walk towards them, the chubby guy in front, and the blond lugging the asphalt in back.

Helen grips the steering wheel. Without Charlie, she has no one to ask for help. “Damian, they’re going to kill you,” she says, enunciating every word.

It takes a second for Damian to absorb her meaning. Helen watches his focus bounce from her urgent, tear-streaked face, to the asphalt slab, then as he hurries out into the sheets of rain to the passenger side. Helen speeds off as soon as he’s in.

During the short ride home, Damian stares out of the front window, stunned and shaking his head to himself. Helen’s silent and drives back to the apartment as fast as possible. In the kitchen, Helen puts the vanilla ice cream in the freezer, then comes out to the living room to scan the carpet for toys.

“What was that about?” Damian asks, finally coming around.

“I really didn’t want that ice cream to melt.”

“Come on, Helen,” Damian says. “Did you say those guys were going to kill me? I think I had poli-sci with one of them last year.”

She checks under the couch. “I just had a moment of hysteria.”

“You’ve been acting weird since we left Emma’s. Is it because someone wrote that shit on my car? I’m not upset, I promise.”

Helen’s checked every carpeted inch of the living room and proceeds to the bedroom. Damian follows her.

“What are you doing in here?”

Rain pounds the bedroom window.

“Looking for ghost activity,” she laughs, but Damian’s face is steady.

“Why don’t we break out the Ouija? It’s in here, right?” He opens the closet and gropes up to the top shelf, where he rifles through sweaters and locates the board game. He pulls the letter board out and lays it on the bed, grazing the pointer with his fingers. He starts a monotone hum, then intones, “Charlie, what’s up, man?”

Helen jerks up from looking under the bed and shouts, “No.”

“No?” He jumps away from the pointer.

“It’s not even close to midnight,” Helen says.

“Midnight? So, wha-? Listen, you have to talk to me, Helen. I want to be around you for a long time, and that’ll be hard to do if we don’t talk.” He sits on the bed and says nothing more, only waits. Helen rises from the floor and sits next to him, the Ouija board between them. They stare at the wall in silence until Helen speaks.

“A long time?”

“As long as you’ll have me. Look, tell me or don’t tell me. Just know I’m here.”

His last phrase resonates in Helen’s body, radiating warmth. She wraps her arms around his neck and they spend a few moments gazing at each other, then approximately thirty more seconds kissing and whispering, “I love you, I love you,” and finally Helen sits back and takes a breath.

“Okay. Remember the UPS guy?”

Damian nods.

“Well, I didn’t mention he was black.”

Damian nods again. “And?”

“And,” she looks into his eyes. His pupils are deep brown with pockets of gold. “Charlie’s a racist.” She holds his gaze while this sinks in. He blinks, looks away, and covers his face with his hands. She feels his broad back shudder and he doesn’t make a sound. She clutches him, trying to push him towards her.

“I didn’t know,” she says. “I mean I didn’t think about it. But that doesn’t mean that I’m –“

She feels the tears coming now and she lets them. Soon her face is wet. Damian turns to her, his face dry and red, and she realizes he’d been laughing. He puts his arms around her. She wipes her face on his sleeve, feeling foolish.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry I laughed,” he says, rocking her in his arms. “Although they say if a pet is racist, so is the owner, owch-“

Helen bites at his chest through his t-shirt. He threatens her with a noogie until she stops. The rain falls harder and the lights flicker, threatening to go out.

“You still want to talk to him?” Damian says. “Ask him what’s up?”

Helen buries her head in his chest. “I’d rather ask him to leave.”

There’s abrupt darkness and the sound of rain as the electricity goes out. Robert bounds from room to room barking. Damian finds the flashlight and shines it around the room.

“Okay this is starting to freak me out. Let’s ghostbuster this thing.”

They call Emma and she says the sage should do the trick on Charlie, that bigot, if their intent to get rid of him is strong. They tie together bunches with butcher’s string and ignite the ends. The smoke fills the apartment with a savory scent. They walk through each room, waving the bundles and catching the ash on a salad plate.

“Should we chant or hum or something?” Damian says and starts a low hum. Helen joins him and they hum through the living room. In the bedroom Helen adds words. “Get out of here” they repeat and Helen adds a “hey” at the end for rhythm. In the kitchen, the mantra morphs to “Get the hell out of here, hey, get the hell out of here, hey,” and when they finish at the front door, which they open to wave the rest of the spirit energy out, they’re laughing too much to chant or hum anything.

They watch the smoke tendrils curl, expand, then dissipate into the rain, barely trickling now, and soon everything electrical in Helen’s apartment whirs back to life. Robert joins them and sits in the doorway, staring out into the night. Helen pats his head.

“I think he’s gone,” she says.

“How can you be sure?”

Helen blows out her bundle, shrugs. “I guess I’ll never be sure.”

A light flicks on a few doors down. Grace Peterson comes out on her balcony with a glass of red wine and a cigarette. She spots them immediately and her face goes sour.

“It’ll never be easy, will it?” Helen says.

“No, but you can’t let other people ruin your life.”

“Telling my parents won’t be easy.”

“So the question is, is it worth it? I know it is for me.”

“Me too.”

Damian wraps his arms around Helen’s torso, dips her back, kisses her. She drops the burnt bundle of sage at the very moment Old Lady Grace Peterson slams her balcony door.

End.