Story Sample plus Links :
Hello, Darling – Light Suspense Mystery
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Pictured Left :
“Hello, Darling”
Currently exclusive and free on Kindle Unlimited.
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Original fiction, photo-memoirs, and poetry by Felipe Adan Lerma
Available via subscription, direct purchase, or library.
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“the intent of this blog is to incrementally build a body of thought that works toward integrating various topics, yoga, fitness, and the arts – it’s a process…”
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Site Areas
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Story Sample plus Links :
Hello, Darling – Light Suspense Mystery
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October 03, 2014
Categories : Story Samples plus Links
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Related Articles with Sam (Samantha) :
Dirty Sixth Street, Austin – A Light Crime Mystery Laced with Humor (Short Story)
Story Sample plus Links : Dirty Sixth Street, Austin – Light Crime Mystery
One Night in the Hill Country, a Thriller : 3000 Word Sample
“One Night in the Hill Country” – A Cozy Thriller?
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Sample Chapters & Links – My Blog Series
Though each digital outlet usually has a preview capability, what is previewed to the reader varies tremendously.
Some outlets have pre-determined unalterable percents, and some, like Smashwords, allows the writer to set the percent, which then is passed on to where the book is distributed. But even then, the receiving retailer may have their own set limits.
What I want to be able to present to a reader, is at least 10% of the actual content.
Of the story. Or photo-memoir. Or photography. Or poetry.
This new series on my site allows me that.
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Hello, Darling
Synopsis
Sam (Samantha), a police woman, tells six Texas children she helped and befriended, a little of a scary episode, growing up as a child, in her home state of Vermont.
9800 story words.
39+ standard pages.
Set in Vermont, winter.
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Sample
“Hello, Darling.”
I comically exaggerate my voice, and the kids chuckle, but kind of nervously.
We’re gathered at the home of two of a group of children I met about a month ago. All six are here. All are related. Grinning and anxious to hear my tale. Not the usual demeanor of kids I work with in the police department. Victims of violence. It’s a nice change. Reminds of what kids can be like.
“I still remember the sunny cool afternoon my uncle first said he heard it,” I tell them.
It’s the story of how my brother and I started saying “Hello, Darling” when we called each other on the phone. I had told them, when we had gotten to know each other a month ago, I would explain how it came about, when I returned to Austin.
Arriving from Vermont, it was a promise I’m glad to keep.
“‘Hello, Darling. You hear it Sam?’ my uncle asked me,” I tell them.
The kids are quiet as church mice. I keep going.
“My uncle listened again, holding his good ear out like the way a cat hears something, but doesn’t know where. But the sound didn’t return,” I tell the kids, “til later.”
“He called you Sam then too? Not Samantha?” asks Buzz. He lives here.
“Yeah, our uncle felt uncomfortable having to explain why he was raising two young kids, him being near eighty, and one of us being a girl. So he just told folks I was Sam. Less questions, less explanations. Stereotype’s pretty much true, Vermonters don’t like jabbering and gossiping and explaining.”
“And now you’re Sam,” smiles Cherise. “And, we’re asking you to jabber.”
“Guess I should of said, old Vermonters,” I smile back. “I jabber a lot!”
Just telling this, for the first time, brings back a lot of memories.
My Uncle Constantine was old. At least to my brother and I. We were kids and he was ancient! About three times taller than us at six foot something. Shock of white hair like a cotton bulb plant that’d exploded and froze in a Vermont Alberta clipper. Ruddy. Half Irish by birth, he’d say, and full Irish every day since.
What happened wasn’t a pleasant memory. For me or my brother Matt.
Saying “Hello, Darling” when we called each other, was a way of remembering.
But in short hand. Less pain.
It’s evening in Austin. Mild. Sun sets later here in winter than back in Vermont.
I’m telling a story to six children, cousins, sitting around me in the large living room of the home of the youngest two. Buzz and Zilker. Kids I’d just met a month before, all six, outside the Convention Center near downtown. I was applying for a new police position in the city. Special Agent for Children’s Affairs. And the youngest boy had been robbed. I helped them find out who, off books. And when I got the job, moved down to Texas. Last week.
When I called them to tell them I’d moved, first thing they wanted to know was, why did my brother and I sometimes answer phone calls from each other saying “Hello, Darling.” They had heard Matt and I on the phone, when we were looking for Zilker’s camera, and I’d promised I’d tell them, later.
“Now it’s later!” Buzz had said excitedly, when I’d let them know I was arriving.
And now, here we are. Ready for the telling.
Question was, could I show them enough so they’d understand.
“It’s a kind of joke,” I tell them again. “Had to make it a joke though, cause…well. Otherwise. It would be too scary, too spooky. Too sad. I wish Matt and I could change it somehow. Make saying it sound nicer to us, but I don’t see how.”
Antone and Cherise, the two oldest, brother and sister give each other a look.
Buzz squirms on the sofa next to his younger brother Zilker. Unlike their cousins Simone and Tabitha, sisters, sitting nearby in overstuffed chairs, neither boy is a tween quite yet. So they want to get to the “good parts.”
In other words, get scared, not sad.
“These are good parts,” laughed Simone, teasing Buzz.
Cherise and Antone, he legal and she “almost,” sit off in table chairs they’d pulled up. Quietly enjoying their younger cousins’ banter. Though the possibility of sadness, clouds Cherise’s eye for just a moment.
I’d met them all at one time. They were out together, just the month before, to ride the train in town, when I’d visited to attend a convention, and apply for a job. I’d seen a lot of tragedy with children already, and the convention was about handling the stress from dealing with violence against kids. Crimes, accidents, and natural tragedies. I knew from long ago, trauma to a child comes in many forms.
Well, we got into a bit of a fix, after I found little Zilker had been robbed and was crying. I’d decided to help them. Against my brother’s repeated wishes. The kids and I ended up on what they called Dirty Sixth Street. A PR name for the party strip of Sixth Street.
My brother Matt, still in Vermont, moving down to join me soon, said these six kids were the Dirty Six. So I knew he had resolved himself to liking them.
“But why’d you have to live with that old guy?” Simone asks me, meaning my uncle.
“Uncle Constantine? That’s part of the sad part,” I tell her, Cherise listening a touch more intently. “No one else to take care of us, and we were just kids. And to tell the truth, it was better than going to a home with someone we didn’t know. Even if they might’ve turned out ok.”
“Your uncle, he really give ya’ll a whole apartment!” asks Tabitha.
“More or less, yeah.”
Now I have Antone’s attention too.
I give into a chuckle, not always I have all six of these kids’ attention.
“See. It was this really old house and -”
“Was it spooky!” asks Zilker, his eyes wider than a full moon.
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End of Sample
Links to : Hello, Darling
Note: Things digital seem to be changing more each day (vs settling down), and some online outlets have had sporadic problems with downloads, links, and accessibility. In addition, as events evolve, it may have become necessary for me to either remove an outlet, or settle on just one I can depend on.
If all else fails, please contact me for availability : yoga (dot) adan (at) gmail (dot) com .
Updates are also posted on my Samples Page on my site.
Amazon – currently (092914) exclusive on Kindle Unlimited
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namaste´- con dios – god be with you
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*** INTEGRATING YOGA FITNESS AND THE ARTS
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