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 13
I picked Regina up at 7:30 at the Reporter. It was Friday night and she had called last night to offer the rain-check she had promised. She was still at work at 10:30 p.m. finalizing the Saturday edition.
“This is the Walt I remember.” Regina said as I opened her car door and let her step up into my Ford pickup. “Always the gentleman.” “Thanks for remembering,” just before closing the door.
We headed to Oneonta. We both felt we needed to maintain privacy. I’m not sure the main reason. I was okay with it, especially if we were going to eat BBQ. It was a new joint on Highway 35 west of the square. Oneonta was the county seat for Blount County. As we turned right, I saw the football field to my left.
“You remember our eleventh-grade trip here?” I said.
“You mean the year Oneonta beat Boaz and knocked us out of the State playoffs?”
“Yes.”
“Seems like I remember you dropping the winning touchdown pass.” Regina said looking over at me with the bluest eyes I had ever seen.
“Let’s talk BBQ or something. I don’t need to relive that scene.”
We arrived at a full parking lot and had to wait for nearly an hour. We sat outside in the truck after I registered. Seemed like the restaurant had an outdoor public-address system that would call us when they had our table.
“I hope their ribs are good. That’s what I want.” Regina said pulling a notepad out of her purse.
“Is our meeting on the record?” I asked.
“No goofball, don’t you remember me being a die-hard journaler?”
“Kind of, now that you mention it.”
“It started in the ninth grade. My grandmother told Belinda and me that she had journaled since she was a child. She showed us a shelf in her bedroom closet that held dozens and dozens of journals of all sizes and shapes. If you looked closely at my journals you would find only a few days that I had missed creating some type of entry.”
“So, your little black book is a journal?”
“No, this is just where I jot down my noteworthy thoughts, that’s what Grannie called them.”
“So, what’s so noteworthy right now?” I said as Regina was scrawling something down with a short stub of a yellow pencil.
“Walt, don’t you know that journals are private?”
“Now I remember. Nearly every night that we met in the loft of our barn you would whisper something to yourself and I would ask what you were saying. You would say, ‘just a noteworthy thought for my journal.”
“I didn’t have enough light most nights to write my thoughts down, so I whispered it a couple of times to myself and, with each separate thought, look at a certain place to anchor my mind to later enable me to write in my journal, after I got home. Those thoughts were private then, and they are private now.”
I looked at her and smiled. She reached out and took my right hand sliding over next to me. “Walton Shepherd, can I share something with you, and you promise you will keep this our secret?”
“You mean you would share something from your journal?” I said.
“Yes and no. Part of what I want to tell you is in a 45-year-old journal, and part has never been written because it is happening right now.”
“I wouldn’t be here if I weren’t interested in you and in everything you have to say.”
“After you broke my heart the night before we were to graduate high school, I went into a depression. It was something I had never known. It took me years to get over you. From May 1972 until almost Christmas, I pretty much lived in my bedroom at home. After a few weeks, Mother became so concerned she asked Pastor Walter to come speak with me. He did, and I’ll never forget. After I shared with him how you had dumped me and how I didn’t think I could hardly breathe much less go forth with my life, he said something I will never forget. ‘Regina, God has a plan for your life. I don’t know for sure, but that plan could still include Walt Shepherd. You just have to have faith that God knows what’s best.’ Of course, I thought he was the chief lamebrain of a church full of lamebrains. Six weeks later, I was admitted to the Center for New Beginnings, a Christian camp Mother and Walter had found. It was in Williamstown, Kentucky. It was really a prison. Someday, I’ll tell you how I escaped that brainwashed oasis. The oasis part was true. It was in an idealic setting in a valley with green meadows and a glorious, sparkling river. I still have postcards in one of my journals.”
“I never realized that I hurt you so badly.” I said taking Regina’s hand back in mine.
“I might as well tell you. You want to know my noteworthy thought I was jotting down?”
“I do.” I said, ashamed of how horribly I had hurt someone I had cared so deeply for.
“I wrote, it seems Pastor Walter wasn’t the fool I thought he was.”
“What do you mean, exactly?”
“You’re not listening Walt. In my deepest depression, during the darkest days of my life, he told me to have faith that God could bring you back in my life. And now, here you are, here we are.”
Just as I put my arm around Regina’s shoulder the PA called out our number. I pulled her closer and said, “Gina girl.” That’s what I called her during high school. “I have loved you since we met in ninth grade English class. I apologize for being such a fool, for getting mesmerized by money and power. It’s clear to see now. Jennifer’s father got her everything she wanted. He thought his riches could bring her happiness, and he put the con on me. I was deceived to think that marrying into a wealthy family could overpower love. I’m sorry I fell to that age-old temptation.”
“Let’s go try some ribs.” Regina said shoving her butt against me. “Open your door before we lose our table.”
During the next hour, we ate some of the best slow-smoked ribs
I had ever eaten. The slaw, beans and homemade bread were nearly as good. Freshly made coconut pie paralyzed our thoughts. We drove home with hardly a word. None were needed as I drove with my left hand on the stirring wheel and my right hand in Regina’s as she sat as close as she could. The only thing I remember saying during our too short drive back to Boaz was that I had called Ginger and scheduled an appointment to investigate the part-time court-reporting job. Regina’s smile showed she was pleased.
Unexpectedly, life had conspired to bring two lost souls back together. For that, I was thankful.
I let Regina out of my truck, gave her a quick kiss on the cheek, and watched her walk back inside the Reporter, reminded that she was ageless, still possessing the perfect young-adult figure.
The Pencil-Driven Life 