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 24
I woke up Sunday morning with a splitting headache. I had a hangover. I couldn’t remember if I had ever had such a thing. I hated beer, and rarely drank any type of alcohol. Last night after Justin Adams’ campaign kickoff I had this insatiable desire to kill myself. I settled for getting drunk. Regina and I had wound up at my house, but only after I convinced her to let me purchase a six pack of Coor’s Lite. We sat out on the back porch till nearly two a.m. After three beers, I was buzzed, and she helped me get in bed. I now assume she left because I don’t see her, and she certainly isn’t lying beside me in my bed.
After stumbling through my bathroom routine, I went downstairs and grabbed a large cup of black coffee, thankful for an automatic coffee maker, and promising myself I would never drink another beer. I sat down on the couch and flipped on the TV.
For some reason, Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace was on. I guessed Regina had watched some TV after I went to sleep last night on the couch. He was talking about Kane’s Twitter fight last week with Morning Joe’s, Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough. As usual, Kane had called Morning Joe’s assessment that a ‘real’ President doesn’t make public statements that he is going to rain down fire and brimstone on another nation, especially, through his Twitter account. Just as I was about to flip over to CNN’s Meet the Press, I saw a photo of President Kane standing on a stage behind a podium. Behind him was a huge banner that read, “Justin Adams for Governor.” This caught my attention.
Wallace went on to describe how a mean and tactless Kane had totally humiliated and embarrassed a former White House stenographer.
The screen revealed the President’s exact statements he made to me, while Wallace read them: “I see I’m here among many friends and at least one enemy. Walt Shepherd, you should be ashamed of being such a coward, of hating freedom and being so brainwashed by the liberals.” The TV then showed multiple panorama sweeps of the entire Bevill Center, revealing an overflowing crowd of diehard Kane fans.
I switched the channel to CNN and caught the tail end of Chuck Todd’s, Meet the Press. He, likewise, had chosen to conclude his Sunday morning program by featuring President Kane’s trip to Alabama, and his branding of gubernatorial candidate Justin Adams as the face of Kane America’s revolutionary governors.
Over the next couple of minutes, I flipped back and forth between CNN and Fox News. I was more pleased with Todd’s conclusions than Wallace’s. But, both were more sympathetic to my position than to Kane’s. It was refreshing to hear a Fox News reporter say, “President Kane appears to care only for himself and loses all his empathy, assuming he has any at all, simply to throw raw meat to his base supporters.” Chuck Todd got specific. He spent nearly a minute conveying my public statement, the only one I gave after being fired, where I described what had happened in the Rose Garden, what I had heard, and how I had no choice but to stick with the truth. Todd said, “this country is going to need a lot more Walt Shepherd’s to stop the Kane Train from wrecking America.”
The Pencil Driven Life 