by M. L. Buchman
Hope?
This theme is such a keystone for me, I don't even know where to begin. Hmmm...
Well, I'm a writer, so I'll start with a little story.
There was this pleasant enough seventeen-year-old...dweeb. (Great beginning, huh?) One day, while wallowing in a de rigueur bout of dark teenage angst, a friend offered him a simple lesson.
"Look," said the friend. "You. You're the only one who gets to choose who you want to be. Do you want to step forward in fear and doubt, or in hope and trust? Your choice. Second one is more fun, but also higher risk. Choose...now!"
So, I, er, the naïve dweeb chose. Second one, obviously.
Are the disappointments hard? Brutally.
Are the benefits ginormous? Beyond imagining. It was the reason I chose every single project in 30 years as a project manager, "Is it going to really help people?"
It's also how I select what to write. My writer's motto is simple, "To champion the human spirit."
My romance genre motto is, "Strong women and the men they deserve." A good (despite choosing the first option) friend, saw that motto as "Strong women and the shitty men they're going to get anyway." Yeah, not so much my view. I'd used it for a decade before that alternate interpretation was pointed out as even a possibility.
Hope. I choose it every single day. What can I do to try and make this moment better? To improve this story? To help a friend? To help spread hope. (Hint: It's one of the major reasons I became a writer.)
In fact, I have a book releasing next week. The opening scene epitomizes what that friend calls my "Cheerfully naïve culpability."
Damn straight!
“What was I thinking?”
The gull bobbing gently nearby didn’t answer back and she
really, really wished it would.
Reflecting the Seattle skyline, Lake Union lay quiet
beneath the summer sunset. The breeze rippled the surface just enough to break
up the bright reflection of the lowering sun. It was hard to believe that she
was in the heart of a major American city. Her home in San Antonio might boast
the River Walk, but it had nothing like this.
The lake was a half-mile wide and a mile-and-a-half long.
The southern shore was protected from the urban core by a thin line of
restaurants and a wooden boat museum. The expanse of a park filled the north
end with a lovely grassy hill that caught the evening light.
To the east and west, tall hills rose steeply, thick with a
piney green so verdant that it practically clogged the air with oxygen. Only
scattered apartment blocks and low office buildings risked those slopes that
resisted most attempts at urbanization.
On this quiet June Tuesday, the lake was thick with more sailboats
than all of Canyon Lake on July 4th weekend. Every year, Mama had made a point
of driving the forty miles from San Antonio to take her and Ricardo there for
the parade and fireworks. After she’d died, they’d only gone one more time—to
scatter her ashes where their father’s had been all these years.
Isobel had never become attached to the sea; it was too vast
and unruly. But she loved the happy bustle of a big lake.
The shoreline here was lined with marinas for boats of all
sizes from daysailers to mega-yachts. Even a few massive workboats added their
contrast to the scenery.
Several large houseboat communities also gathered along the
shore. Though houseboats conjured the wrong image for her. A houseboat was a
trailer on a rectangular metal hull rented for a few days on Canyon Lake. These
were actual floating homes, hovering along finger piers that stuck out from the
shore. They created a world away from the city, a quiet corner, without having
to travel miles through sprawling suburbs to seek some peace. From here, the
predominant evening sounds were the slapping of sails interrupted by the
occasional hard burr of a seaplane lifting from the water.
No, the problem wasn’t the lake. Or the “houseboat” she’d
rented for the team. She turned to look at it, a pleasingly eclectic mix of old
and new. The weathered cedar-shake siding was offset by the dramatically large
windows.
It had four bedrooms, three baths, and a luxurious great
room that spanned the entire first floor and made it easy for her team to all
be together or spread out in smaller groups. It had an open plan kitchen that
reminded her how much she used to enjoy cooking, back when she had the time.
The back deck had a rack of single and double kayaks. A
smaller deck spanned across the two front bedrooms on the second story. And the
rooftop deck was ideal for looking out over the lake to watch the sunset light
up the sixty-story-high Space Needle even though the sun would soon be sliding
off the lake and going behind Queen Anne hill.
She could happily stay here forever.
Another spatter of laughter sounded from the rooftop deck,
which she could hear clearly from where she’d “reached the end of her dock.”
The problem was her team.
Not that she didn’t love them all.
But the other members of Shadow Force: Psi were now three
couples. Her twin brother had married Isobel’s best friend. They now supported
each other more than her. She wouldn’t wish it otherwise, but still she missed
them—even though they were right …there, up on the roof. And her best friend’s stepbrother
had just become engaged to a lovely English lass. Even the quiet Hannah and her
cowboy husband were utterly charming.
But she could feel their happiness.
She and Ricardo had grown up in a hard household. Papa dead
in the Gulf War. Mama a single mother who’d run an
entire nursing staff at a major hospital. Isobel had run their household from
the time she could reach the stovetop from a stool.
They’d made it. A tight, hard-working unit. Then, while
Isobel was in college and Ricardo in the Army, Mama was suddenly gone. Her
death still left a hole in Isobel’s heart that the last decade had proved would
never heal.
By keeping her team close, she was surrounded by happiness
every day.
Yet she wasn’t just a third wheel to Ricardo and Michelle’s
happiness. She was now a seventh wheel to all three couples.
Shadowforce: Psi was between missions, so they’d all
accompanied her here and were looking forward to helping on her latest film—with
an excitement that was a little overwhelming. They’d arrived in Seattle just
this morning and everyone had plunged into enjoying themselves as not a one of
the others had been here before. Nine years and a lifetime ago she’d been here
to shoot her breakout rom-com but not been back since.
Isobel had been managing it, enjoying their sense of fun.
Until Michelle had announced that she was pregnant.
The general excitement had turned to near ecstatic joy.
Hannah had exchanged a look with Jesse, who then announced that they were going
to start trying, too. Michelle had cried on Hannah’s shoulder that she might
not be facing this alone—as if that was possible in this group.
Isobel couldn’t be happier for them…but her mind couldn’t
shut them out.
They each had their unique gifts. Some of them could switch
them on and off, others couldn’t. Michelle and Ricardo shared a telepathic link
that was unique to them, and always worked without fail. Though Ricardo
occasionally complained about being unable to shut out his wife’s thoughts. The
others had absolute control over their skills. Hannah and Jessie could do strange
things with creating sounds, really strange and useful things if they were in
physical contact. Michelle’s stepbrother Anton could send his vision out to
take a look around without having to drag his body along. And his fiancée Katie
could feel if someone had been in a certain spot and then use her wilderness
tracking skills to follow their trail.
Normally, her own empathic gift was wholly under her
control. She could choose to sense what those around her were truly feeling, or
she could shut them out and just be “normal.”
It was a skill she’d always had, but hadn’t known was
unusual until Papa had been killed in action. Mama had put on the brave mask
for her four-year-old children, but Isobel had been overwhelmed by that hidden
grief. She’d had to learn at a very early age how to turn off her extra sense
in order to survive.
But tonight the joy was so thick in the air, she hadn’t
been able to shut it out. She couldn’t breathe.
“How can we stand it?” she asked the gull who had drifted
to the other side of the dock.
Apparently deciding that she couldn’t (or that Isobel was
not being sufficiently forthcoming with some torn bread), the gull fluttered
aloft and soared off in search of less frustrating places.
If only she could do the same.
Again happy laughter, big and deep this time. It sounded as
if Michelle’s stepbrother, Anton, had talked Katie into all of them trying
to have their children close together even though their own wedding was a month
off.
Isobel rubbed her own midriff.
She ached to be like them. Be one of them in this moment.
But all she could see of the future was becoming Auntie
Isobel. Always cheering for others but never for herself.
Her face had been on every cover from Vogue to The
Hollywood Reporter as her career had exploded. Even her Christmas
blockbuster had busted the block beyond all projections. People had
imaginatively dubbed her “The Sun-kissed Actress.” No matter how non-PC it was
to emphasize her skin color, it was true that fortune was absolutely smiling
down on her. Amazing career. Incredible friends who truly understood the joys
and fears of being gifted. A challenging life with the secretive Shadowforce.
And the personal life of a lone oyster. At least those
lucky mollusks got pearls.
Every man who saw her instantly thought he knew her—and
wanted to conquer her. Not her, but rather her-the Movie Star. Her chances of
finding what all of her friends up above were now celebrating decreased with
each passing film.
The evening was still bright, but soon the team would
notice she was gone.
Michelle would come find her first; she knew Isobel’s moods
better than Isobel did herself. She’d slip a friendly arm around Isobel’s waist—her
emotions thick with the green velvet of her core kindness, and rolling pink
with compassion—and say something completely outrageous that would make her
laugh and feel as if she belonged and was just being foolish.
Isobel didn’t want to be consoled. She didn’t want to live
through her friends’ relationships, through their children.
Since playing the “Crippled Girl” in The Pied Piper of
Hamlin during second grade—a role she’d landed because her mother the nurse
had been able to borrow a child-sized crutch from the hospital—she’d loved
acting. But the price! The price was terribly high, and growing all the time.
She closed her eyes and concentrated on shutting herself
off from others.
There was only her, the evening breeze, the warmth of the
early evening sun on her face. She leaned toward its warmth. She could just—
“Don’t do it!”
Isobel opened her eyes and looked at the man who’d called
out to her. He floated a short way off in an elegant sailboat. It was long and
lean, with a teak deck and a bright-varnished wooden hull. She’d never sailed
on one, but she knew it was a model called a Dragon. It had been easy to remember
because it was how sleek a flying serpent should look.
“Excuse me?”
“Don’t jump, lady. Whatever’s wrong, it’s not worth it.”
She looked down at the water lapping quietly a foot below
her bare toes. One of the first things they’d all done on arrival this afternoon
was jump into the water and swim about to wash off the flight from San Antonio.
“I think I’d survive the fall.”
“Maybe there’s a hungry Kraken lurking below. Why risk
possible doom when you can sail?”
She focused on the man. His skin was roughly as dark as her
own though differently toned—less Latin-brown, more desert ochre. Black hair
strayed down to his collar and a close-trimmed beard and mustache emphasized
the strong cheekbones that stood out despite his mirrored sunglasses. He wore denim
cutoffs, and the edge of a colorful tattoo peeked out from the sleeve of a
white t-shirt that declared, “I’d rather be sailing.”
She nodded toward his t-shirt. “But you are sailing.”
“Wouldn’t you rather be sailing?”
“I’d rather be doing anything.”
USA Today and Amazon #1 Bestseller M. L.
"Matt" Buchman has 60+ contemporary and military romance novels, and action-adventure
thrillers. Also 100 short stories and lotsa audiobooks. Booklist says: 3x “Top 10
Romance of the Year” and among “The 20 Best Romantic Suspense Novels: Modern Masterpieces.”
NPR and B&N say: “Best 5 Romance of the Year.” PW declares: “Tom Clancy fans open to a strong female
lead will clamor for more.” A project manager with a geophysics degree, he’s designed
and built houses, flown and jumped out of planes, solo-sailed a 50’ sailboat,
and bicycled solo around the world…and he quilts. More at: www.mlbuchman.com.
5 comments:
I really enjoyed your excerpt! Sounds like a great book.
"Hope"fully you'll find it so. :)
An intriguing excerpt but then, that's what a good beginning of a book is - intriguing in some way to draw us in. Always fun to read descriptions of places I actually know about. And in these days of "Stay Home, Stay Healthy" reading your description of Lake Union was almost as good as being there.
Hope and the outsider is always a great combination. Your excerpt definitely made me interested in reading more. I think most people feel on the "outside" at some point in their life. Some people feel it most of the time. The latter is difficult to write with the depth of feeling and still retain hope. You certainly have a good start there by ending on an opportunity.
Maggie, I feel outsider less than a hundred percent of the time...on a good day as low as 98%, so I know exactly what you're talking about. If you've ever seen me looking like I have my shit half together when I teaching, it's at least half a sham. One guess which way. (I must discount the time I spend with my wife. One of our little house "cheers" is "Outliers together!")
I hadn't really thought about that as a writer, but it so much of who I am. Hmm... From one view, I'm always writing about the outsider reaching a place of belonging in the end. But really bringing that to the fore for a character... Hmmm... THANKS!
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