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 64
Before I arrived, I had decided not to say anything to anyone, especially Regina, about what I had learned at the Quik-Mart. Ginger had told me to park behind the Sand Mountain Reporter building and to come in the unlocked back door. As I was walking down the hall towards Regina’s office I could hear laughter. When I turned inside the doorway I could see Ginger, Zell, and Regina all sitting at her round table in the corner.
Zell saw me first and motioned me over. “Walt, good to see you.
Thanks for coming on such short notice. Please join us.”
Regina got up and gave me her seat and she moved over into the seat closest to the wall. “Did you get a nap?” She said as I sat down trying to maintain a mild, unfettered face, as I shook my head in the negative.
“Walt, are you okay? You look at little pale.” Ginger asked.
“I’m fine. Just feeling like I’m on the outside looking in.” I said looking at Regina and then back to Ginger.
Zell reached over and patted my back and said, “Let me tell you a little story. By the way, it’s why we were all laughing when you walked in. We were talking about the first time Ginger and I met Regina in Chicago. It was at the Kane Hotel. It was right after the 2000 Presidential election and the Florida recount between Bush and Gore had just been completed a few weeks earlier and now George W. Bush was President. We three were there, Regina separately of course, attending an all-day lecture by Illinois Senator and University of Chicago Professor Barack Obama. I cannot recall the exact name of the conference but the part that stuck with me after all these years was Obama’s contention that the U.S. Constitution needed to be amended to include substantive qualifications for someone to be elected President. He suggested ….”
Ginger jumped in and said, “Zell, too much detail. During lunch, Zell and I sat down by Regina. It was simply fate that put us together. After we started eating, the typical questions started to roll out. What do you do? Where are you from? That sort of thing. Come to find out Regina was from Boaz. And I was from Chicago. She had gone to college at the University of Chicago and I had gone to college at the University of Alabama. We were laughing over how much I still talk like a true Southerner and Regina’s brogue is true Chicago.”
Zell wasn’t finished so he said, “over the next several years Ginger and I had several opportunities to see and talk with Regina. It was mainly over cases we were dealing with and she was either researching or writing an editorial piece. You might not recall, but at the time, Zell and I worked for a public interest law firm, one created by Thaddeus Colburn, the man who started the Constitution Foundation.”
I was growing tired of all this stage setting. “Okay, it’s good to learn, for the first time I might add, that you all know each other. You said it was important that we meet. Can we get to that?”
“Yes, sure, okay.” Zell said. “We have reason to believe that Professor Romanov might need a little motivation to talk. We want you to meet with him at the County jail.”
“Why don’t you meet with him?” I said.
“Walt, I take it that you are a little pissed. You should know the answer to that. Is something bothering you?” Ginger asked.
“To be totally open, yes there is. I feel like I am being kept in the dark about what is truly going on. I sense I might be treading into waters that are shark-filled. Can you tell me why I feel this way?” I said.
“Fair enough.” Zell said standing up. I recalled from our meeting in Birmingham that he liked to pace while he talked. “Romanov may be the single most important man in the world. What I mean is he may know more about how Russia manipulated the 2016 Presidential election than anyone else. We need him to tell the FBI the truth, the full truth. We doubt he will do that without a little old-fashioned arm twisting.”
“What are you suggesting I tell him?”
“That his brother, Anatoly, is in grave danger of losing his freedom if he does not confess.” Zell said.
“What am I to tell him about who is sending this message?”
“Tell him Thaddeus Colburn promises to help him if he helps himself now. Tell him that he can use anything he knows to make a deal, but he needs to confess to the murder of Kip Brewer.”
“Don’t you think it looks a little odd for me, the court reporter in his case, to go visit him in jail?” I said.
“It doesn’t if you have a good reason. Create that reason. You are creative. Also, when you go, give Romanov this envelope.” Ginger said looking over at Regina who had said nothing substantial since we began.
“What is this? It’s a few photos that will get Romanov to thinking.” Zell said.
I finally told Zell and Ginger that I would think about their request. That’s when they offered me a $20,000 bonus. Again, I told them I would think about it. Driving home my thoughts were certain that I was still in the dark, that there was something big I didn’t know about. I wanted and needed to talk to Regina, but she said it would be too late for her to come by after being delayed on her usual Sunday afternoon work of completing the final layout for Tuesday’s paper. Maybe being alone was what I needed. No doubt I had to try and figure out what Regina was up to. I felt in my gut that her lying about the photograph and its source was directly related to what I had just been asked to do. I also knew that I would screw up royally if I acted on a gut feeling. I had to have some proof. I had to hide my feelings at least long enough to snoop around and find out what Regina was up to.
The Pencil-Driven Life 