The primary aim of the "Novel Excerpts" blog category is to showcase my creative writing, specifically from the novels I've written. Hopefully, these posts will provide a glimpse into my storytelling style, themes, and narrative skills. It's an opportunity to share my artistic expressions and the worlds I've created through my novels.
The Boaz Stenographer, written in 2018, is my fourth novel. I'll post a chapter a day over the next few weeks.
Book Blurb
Walt Shepherd, a 35 year veteran of the White House’s stenographic team, is fired by President Andrew Kane for refusing to lie.
Walt returns to his hometown of Boaz, Alabama and renews his relationship with Regina Gillan, his high school sweetheart, who he had ditched right before graduation to marry the daughter of a prominent local businessman. Regina has recently moved back to Boaz after forty years in Chicago working at the Tribune. She is now editor of the Sand Mountain Reporter, a local newspaper.
Walt and Regina’s relationship transforms into a once in life love at the same time they are being immersed in a growing local and national divide between Democrats and traditional Republicans, and extremist Republicans (known as Kanites) who are becoming more dogmatic about the revolution that began during President Kanes campaign.
Walt accepts two part-time jobs. One as a stenography instructor at Snead State Community College in Boaz, and one as an itinerant stenographer with Rains & Associates out of Birmingham.
Walt later learns the owner of Rains & Associates is also one of five men who created the Constitution Foundation and is involved in a sinister plot to destroy President Kane, but is using an unorthodox method to achieve its objective. The Foundation is doing everything it can to prevent President Kane from being reelected in 2020, and is scheming to initiate a civil war that will hopefully restore allegiance to the U.S. Constitution.
While Walt is writing a book, The Coming Civil War, he is, unwittingly, gathering key information for the Constitution Foundation.
Will Walt discover a connection between the Foundation and the deaths of three U.S. Congressmen in time to save his relationship with Regina, prevent President Kane from being reelected as the defacto head of a Christian theocracy, and the eruption of a civil war that could destroy the Nation ?
Chapter 11
Regina arrived at The Reporter early Tuesday morning, only the night janitor was there, and he was coming out of the rear entrance as she removed her briefcase from the backseat of her Nissan Maxima.
“Morning Miss Gillan.”
“And good morning to you Ned.” She said wanting once again to remind him he could call her Regina and abandon all the formality. Instead she reminded herself this was the South, and nothing would change Ned’s instinct for respect and honor.
“I hope you have a nice day.” He said walking towards a big dumpster at the back of the employee parking lot, toting two huge garbage bags. “You gonna have a busy one given how the phones started
ringing at midnight. Your article gonna be hot.”
“What do you mean Ned?” Regina said turning with her briefcase walking towards Ned.
“All night, all over the building, ever since today’s paper hit the streets at midnight, phone buttons look like a Christmas tree. My break time at 3:00 a.m., I always read the new edition. I like your approach of telling things straight, but this ain’t New York City.”
“Chicago, Ned, not New York.”
“Not much difference to folks around here. No disrespect intended Miss Gillan.”
“None taken Ned. Now, you go on home and try to get some sleep. I’ll probably be here late again, so see you around 9:00 tonight.”
Just as Regina poured a cup of fresh coffee, thanks to Ned, she heard her phone ringing from her office down the hall. It kept ringing as she half jogged, being careful not to spill her coffee. On the sixth ring, she answered.
“Thanks baby sister.” Belinda, her twin, only used this phrase and tone if she was extremely happy or upset. For some reason, Regina knew it was the latter.
“To what do I owe this early morning surprise big sister?”
“Frankie called from Grumpy’s parking lot. Your article has our little diner and my husband out of every sort imaginable.”
“Why is that?” Regina asked, not intending to play dumb but to hear Belinda’s exact words and response. It wasn’t like Regina didn’t expect an uproar. She knew her brand of journalism would mix in Boaz, Alabama about as well as a gay bar or a black city councilman.
“People round here like Kane. Frankie worships the man. Your article made him, and the other members of Kane Tribe, look like idiots last Friday night at Brewer’s Town Hall. The way I read it, seems like you are insinuating Frankie is a likely suspect in Brewer’s murder.” Belinda said, cursing Regina without using the actual words.
“Belinda, you know I write it the way I see it. I don’t have to tell you that my philosophy has always, well, since journalism school anyway, been to follow the facts, pursue truth no matter where it takes me.”
“But, I’m family, Frankie is family.” Belinda’s voice calming some, Regina feeling her beginning to play another version of her victim’s card. Big sister, as Regina often called her, was born two minutes before Regina, thus, she was the older sister. However, Belinda always believed she got the raw end of the duo. She always had to play second fiddle to Regina. It was ‘baby sister’ who won the Spelling Bee eight straight years in primary school. It was ‘baby sister’ who was elected a varsity cheerleader in tenth grade. It was ‘baby sister’ who had the best figure and dated the best-looking guys. It was ‘baby sister’ who stole Walt Shepherd away from Belinda.
“Dear, are you forgetting our conversation we had the first week I moved back? I thought we hashed through this every possible way. We ended that little chat with us agreeing I had a job to do and that had nothing to do with our love and friendship. I told you, and I meant it with all my heart, I want us to get back to how we were at the beginning of ninth grade, before, well, high school.” Regina said now feeling the pressure to end the call, Claire had arrived and was standing in her office doorway waving her right hand back and forth across her throat, indicating Regina needed to kill her call.
“I do remember, but I didn’t realize that your job could affect my marriage, like accuse Frankie of murder.”
“Belinda, please don’t accuse me. I in no way did that. I simply wrote a chronology of the events that occurred Friday night after Kip and his wife arrived in Boaz at 4:30, all the way until he was found murdered early Saturday morning. It’s not my fault that Frankie and crew made such a scene at the Bevill Center. Surely, you’re not accusing me of that.”
“I got to go, Frankie just walked in. Bye.” Belinda said with a whisper, almost as though she was afraid.
As Regina listened to the dial tone, speculating the unfolding scene at her sister’s house, Claire shouted, “Regina, the call has ended.” Regina just then realized she had Belinda on speaker phone all along.
What is it Claire? What is so urgent?”
“Delton texted me and said Frankie Olinger was a suspect in Kip
Brewer’s murder and was about to be brought in for questioning.”
“How did he know this?”
“Well duh, you know he is our crime reporter and spends half of his time in Guntersville, hanging around the Courthouse and Sheriff’s
Department.”
“Sorry, I’m still learning everybody’s name and role around here.” Regina said, feeling nausea making an emergency landing in her gut.
Richard L. Fricks 