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 12
Ginger Crumbley, the Rains & Associates court-reporter Regina had met at the Draper Hearing, had more on her plate than hustling from one stenographic job to another. Since Andrew J. Kane announced his candidacy for President of the United States in May 2016, Ginger’s main role had been managing a 50-person fleet of professional stenographers. It was Ginger who made the assignments, matching the person with the best speed, accuracy, and personality, to the needs of the job. The jobs varied greatly. A two-lawyer two-car accident with no deaths deposition in a small firm in Moulton. A multi-law firm medical malpractice videotaped deposition including an expert pathologist of Indian descent who struggled with the English language, particularly English diction. The assignments also included jobs inside the court system. Rains & Associates held the contract with the Administrative Office of Courts. Permanent stenographers, employees of the State of Alabama, those whose sole job was working for a judge, like any other employee, sometimes got sick, injured, they died or had to take maternity leave or to take care of an aging parent. On notices sometimes less than a few hours, Ginger, on behalf of Rains & Associates, would deliver a neat and highly competent professional stenographer for a day, a week, a month, or for whatever the need demanded.
Before moving to Alabama in May 2016, Ginger lived and worked in Chicago. The 44-year-old single mother of a ten-year-old daughter worked for Chief Judge Ruben Castillo, District Court Judge for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. That job ended in 2008 when she was drawn away by the American Center for Constitutional Allegiance, a public-interest law firm based in Chicago.
Some talking heads considered the Center a sister firm to the ACLU.
Ginger’s new job, with pay and benefits, was nearly three times that of her Federal employment package. She accepted the position mainly to better provide for her daughter, but also because of her budding attraction to Zel Peterson, the Center’s lead attorney. It had started the first time she saw him in action. On behalf of the Center, Zel had sued Benton Consolidated High School and the BCHS Board of Education, in
Franklin County, Illinois over a long-taught Bible class. Zel, arguing such class was a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, the part often referred to as creating a ‘wall of separation between church and state.’
Six weeks after accepting her new position with Zel’s public interest law firm, Ginger was surprised, pleasantly surprised, to be offered a lateral move from the Center, along with Zel, to The Constitution Foundation, a moderately liberal think tank founded by
Thaddeus Colburn and three of his fellow University of Chicago Law School professors in the year 2000 after the highly controversial Bush vs. Gore presidential election. Zel had spent over fifteen years as lead litigator of the Center fighting Constitutional battles all over the U.S.
The announcement by Andrew J. Kane, had seeded a dreadful thought in the mind of Mr. Colburn and his Foundation: “What if Kane became
President?”
This question then seeded the brainstorming of a plan to respond to the near-absolute certainty that such a Presidency would train-wreck the U.S. Constitution and thereby America as we knew it before such election. It was this framework that spurred Thad to transfer Zel, and his zealous and talented stenographer, to his Foundation’s newest project: Cane Kane.
“Regina, Regina Gillan?” Ginger said with kind affection.
“Yes, whose calling?” Regina said sitting up on the edge of her bed still feeling the effects of Brandy and Sean’s romp beneath the sheets from the Harlequin romance she was reading when she fell asleep.
“It’s Ginger Crumbley, we met at the Draper Hearing in Judge
Broadside’s courtroom last week. I was the court reporter.”
“Oh. Yes, I remember.” Regina said, standing and reaching for her pink robe laying across her reading chair.
“Do you have just a couple of minutes. I promise that’s all it will take.”
“I guess, but I have to shower and dress and be at the Reporter in 30 minutes. I’m running a little late.” Regina said.
“After the hearing, you mentioned a man you thought might be interested in some part-time court-reporting. I hate to bother you with this, but Rains & Associates is about to kill me. I pretty much have abandoned my daughter and wouldn’t be surprised if I were arrested for child neglect. Sorry, I’m rambling. Would you mind giving me his name and number?” Ginger said with her most-polished sincerity.
“I did mention it to him, but I would prefer to ask him to call you. I have a thing about giving out private information without permission.” Regina said, naked but with one arm through the sleeve of her bedside robe.
“I understand. I shouldn’t have even asked. Now, I feel horrible. I truly feel the very same way you do. Privacy is extremely important.” Ginger said continuing to slather on the sincerity, adding a smarmy pinch.
“Give me your number and I’ll call Walt, uh, sorry. Well, so much for his privacy. I’ll ask him to call you. I’ll even try to give him a little nudge. He really needs more to occupy his time than teaching.
There I go again. What’s your number?”
Ginger gave Regina her phone number, and nearly got effusive with the ‘sorry to wake you,’ and ‘thanks for your time’ phrases.
Twenty-five minutes later, pulling into the employee’s parking lot at the Reporter, Regina, after three attempts, left Walt a message on his cell phone to call Ginger Crumbley with Rains & Associates Court Reporting at 205-495-4954, ending her call with, “Walt, baby, I promise you this call will change your life.”
The Pencil Driven Life 