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 30
Detective Darden Clarke Abbott sat at his desk still puzzled at the red, five-pointed star found a month ago at the Kip Brewer murder scene.
The Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences, so far, had been unable to match the partial fingerprint found smudged on the star with anyone in any known database in America. The father and son duo who found the star had used a pair of needle-nose plyers to lift it from the location where it was found, to place it in a plastic, zip-lock bag.
It was sheer coincidence the red star was found. On Saturday, April 21st, Ronald Simpson and his son Rodney were celebrating the twelve-year old’s birthday with a day of treasure-hunting with Rodney’s new Tesoro Silver uMax metal detector. Ronald was a single parent, a truck-driver by trade, who had obtained custody of Rodney just a few weeks earlier when his mother had been killed in a car accident in Baton Rouge, her and Rodney’s hometown.
Ronald and Rodney lived off Highway 179, in an old 40-foot mobile home, on a dead-end dirt road that curled behind Spider’s Spirits, a small beer and liquor store just over the county line. The two had walked into the woods behind their house and headed straight to Cherryville. It was a nickname from Ronald’s youth and beyond. It was just a camp three-quarters of a mile into the woods. No one knew who named it, but long-standing rumor was that it was a teenage hangout, popular as a place young girls lost their virginity.
The plan was to hike to Cherryville and try their luck with Rodney’s new toy. After two hours, the two got bored with finding bottle caps and decided to turn north towards Kip Brewer’s pasture to see if the highly publicized murder scene was still forbidden to visitors. To their surprise, it was abandoned, except for the crime tape that still cordoned off a half-acre rectangle.
After another two hours of searching, without finding anything, not even a single bottle cap, Rodney climbed a big oak tree that stood next to the barbed-wire fence along the edge of the pasture. It was there the star was found. Fifteen feet off the ground and wedged between two smaller limbs that crossed the giant limb Rodney was sitting on. It appeared someone had probably been climbing down the tree and got a sleeve caught between the limbs pulling off the attached star. The backside of the star contained a tiny loop for thread in sewing it on something like a hat or jacket.
The only thing for sure Detective Clarke and the FBI had been able to conclude was the red star was a Russian symbol often associated with communist ideology. Another fact the Department of Forensic Sciences felt nearly as strong about, was this star, the one found by Rodney Simpson, was manufactured in St. Petersburg, Russia, probably at the metals plant started by Nikolai Kuznetsov, who produced most of the red stars for the Russian army during World War II. The Department’s consultation with three independent international collector’s and metallurgists yielded the same story. The subject red star was authentic Russian, manufactured in the mid to late 1940’s and was commonly used with military uniforms, most often, military hats and jackets. However, the collector’s all pointed out the ease of buying a red star from websites such as eBay, although most were imitations.
Detective Clarke sat frustrated. Today, he had to meet with District Attorney Clay Thompson, who was hosting Trevor Nixon, Frankie Olinger’s defense attorney from Boaz. He was scheduled to arrive at 11:00 a.m. to inspect the red star and the related Forensic’s report. Clarke imagined he could hear Nixon at Olinger’s trial, assuming the case got that far, spinning the tale that the Russian’s had murdered Kip Brewer. Surely, no Marshall County jury would buy into such a farfetched idea.
The Pencil-Driven Life 