Illinoir

“into”

That is all.

Word count: 34488

I press the button for the elevator and wait for its arrival with a couple businessmen in suits. We exchange polite nods and they continue a conversation that matches the vague and complicated language from Lobranches’ website. They speak of cross-valued silo platform pollenation or some such thing. Business speak has always eluded me. It might as well be an unbreakable cipher. I like playing along, though, so I nod like I know what they’re talking about, as if contemplating my own issues with cross-ventilated value-added self-leveraged synergistic nodes. God bless these people for being on the frontlines, down in the trenches, getting the work of America done.

…I am, as we speak, making my main character take a hot bath.

Come on — he’s had a really rough couple of days.

Word count: 32216
Percent complete: 64.43
Estimated completion date: Nov 22

Exiting through the kitchen again, I am stunned by the wall of sound that hits me. The rain has died down to the point that outside travel is no longer life threatening. I walk down the back stairs leaning now not against the wind but against the noise. It has a physical presence out here. I picture it as a monster with a diabolically evil face. It rears up and takes a swipe at me, forcing me to cower back in fear. I gather my wits and will and cross the yard to the garage. Struggling against the cacophony, I open the door and face my nemeses.
The band is in the middle of a cover of a Portishead song that until I hear them murder it, I am quite fond of. They look up at my entrance but do not bother to stop or even to acknowledge my presence.
I try yelling for them to stop a couple times but it is no use. The music is even louder within the confines of the garage. The band members are all wearing earplugs – an idea I have contemplated of late. I wait for them to finish and then I speak again.
“Hey! Guys!” I yell, the ringing in my ears causing me to speak louder than usual.
“What?” yells the bassist.
“Can you take the earplugs out?”
“What?” he repeats.
I mime the act of removing earplugs. I never thought I’d have to do this. “Take. The. Earplugs. Out!”
They comply. “What do you want, dude?” asks the singer.
“Guys. It’s two in the morning. I’ve had a long day. I just want to go to bed. I’m sure the entire neighborhood just wants to go to bed. Do you think you could call it a night?”
“But we just got started,” complains the guitarist, a sallow-faced kid of about 20.
“We don’t have to listen to this guy,” says the singer.
“Actually, yes you do,” I say. “You are breaking so many noise ordinances right now I can’t even begin to name them. And you’re being incredibly bad neighbors.”
“You think we give a shit?”
“I’m starting to think that you don’t.”
“Exactly. Now get the fuck out of here.”
I really wish I still had that gun. I don’t want to shoot the kid, but I would love to scare him a little.
Actually, I’d love to shoot him. I’ve never shot anyone before but this one seems like a prime candidate to start on.
“I don’t think so.”
“Fine then, we’ll just keep on practicing.” He turns to address his band mates. They replace their earplugs. “Alright, let’s do ‘Two Carts Full of Crap.’ Ready? 1…2…3…4….”

Saw a commercial for a sleep-aid. They listed possible side-effects as drowsiness, dizziness and fatigue.

Seems to me — and this is just me, mind you — that those should be right-up-the-front, straight-down-the-middle effects.

Like side-effects of aspirin may include reduced pain. Side-effects of Rogaine may include regrowth of hair. Side-effects of…. you get the point.

A side-effect of reading my NaNoWriMo report card from 2003 is part of me wishing I was back in my New Jersey apartment. How weird is that? It was a nice, cozy place though. And those were nice, cozy times. Lonely and isolated times, sure, but still. Plus, I’ve been looking at pictures, and you know what happens when I do that.

All the same….

Word 30,000: “a”

Sorry.

Word count: 29,473
Minutes to 30,000: I’m guessing about 25.

This excerpt contains a little tribute to The Thin Man — I actually wrote the “put two and two together” bit before I read the passage in Dashiel Hammet’s book, but I just now added the bit about “twenty-two.” (Just so you know how the genesis came about.)

It starts raining on me as I walk home. It is another one of those sudden storms that descend upon this city without warning and often without remorse. Wind whips through the trees, blowing stray newspapers around and kicking up dust until the rain soaks down the ground and it turns to mud. Huge drops of rain batter me as I struggle to make any progress down the street. It’s the kind of rain you’re scared to get caught out in. At any minute, you might get washed away.
Lightning arcs across the sky, each time lighting up the night briefly but intensely. The white flashes are a cruel reminder of each blow to head I’ve taken lately. Thunder cracks after each flare, closer and closer. Car alarms, almost inaudible above the noise of the storm, go off in response to the rumbling aftershocks.
I never know whether to run or to just keep on walking. If you run, you just run into raindrops you wouldn’t have hit, but if you walk, you stay wetter longer. I figure I’m already as soaked as I can possible get and my main goal now is to get inside as soon as possible. Gripping Kimp’s jacket tightly in one hand and using the other to secure the gun in my pocket, I start jogging towards home. It feels good to be running to something. In the back of my head, there is a feeling that it’s the first time I haven’t been running away from something.
The good feeling doesn’t last long, however. It is replaced by the feeling of cold, wet, hard concrete rushing up to meet the back of my head at a pace roughly equal to that of the speed of gravity. I must have hit a slick patch of sidewalk and my feet went out from under me, sending me to the ground. My head’s taken so many blows over the last twenty-four hours, I’m surprised I can still put two and two together.
“It’s four,” I say to the sky, just to prove that I’m still able. I’m reasonably sure that’s the correct answer. It’s either four or twenty-two. I’ll check on a calculator as soon as I can.

word count: 28629

At Steve’s suggestion, I registered Illinoir.com today. Neat. Not sure what I’m going to do with it, if anything, but now I have it. Wahoo.

Did a google search on Illinoir and it seems like all the hits are PDFs containing OCR errors on “Illinois.” How come nobody else has used this? Is it possible that I had an original idea at one point?

Deadly.

Had a really great day today. Worked at Morseland and that went well even though I was bartender/manager which I’ve never done before. Had good after-work-drink-a-beer company. Bears won. Then I came home and wrote and had neat experiences.

One in a while, something will happen where I’ll say “Oh man, maybe so-and-so did such-and-such.” My novel is surprising me in ways that a story I was writing never has before. Not sure if it’s because I’m writing a mystery and I’m figuring it out as I go along or what. But I’m having these neat “a-ha” moments that feel just like the moment when you figure out something clever in a movie…. Except I’m making it up as I go along.

It’s kinda neat.

I think I know what “Illinoir” means.

And you people — you just have these bits and pieces of a bigger picture. Wild. Wild stuff.

Word count: 27131 (with words written at work still to be counted)

“Thank you, Mr. Bonnet,” she said. So she was in the right place after all.
“I’m sorry, I don’t think I caught your name,” I said, sitting down as well.
“Oh. I’m Olivia Tweed,” she said, extending her hand across my desk. I took it lightly in mine but found that she has a powerful grip. We shook hands and honestly, I didn’t want to let go, but I did before it got awkward. She asked, “Didn’t Mr. Barnum tell you I was coming?”
Of course Mr. Barnum didn’t tell me you were coming, I thought to myself. Mr. Barnum is a fat, lazy slob who wouldn’t know how to relay a message if Samuel Morse, Alexander Graham Bell and Steve Case were all giving him pointers. But of course, I said none of this. I simply tell her that unfortunately, I had no idea she would be visiting me that day.
“Well, that’s too bad. I’d hoped you’d be able to prepare for me,” she said.
I took a surreptitious glance at her left hand. There was no ring. “Don’t worry, Miss Tweed, I’m always prepared for everything.”
She smiled. “That’s nice to hear.”