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 85
Thaddeus Colburn was a no-show, although I had waited for over an hour. Before meeting with District Attorney Abbott and the FBI’s Special Agent Cory Stiller, I someway found the will to go vote. Even though I knew Regina was dead, my imagination kept telling me she was watching and desperately needed me to continue to do everything within my power to stop President Kane from being reelected.
I could never have denied anything to Regina.
At 9:00 p.m., I gave a detailed statement to a room full of local, state, and federal law enforcement officials in the City of Boaz courtroom. Everyone had been considerate enough to come to me.
While I was being interviewed, two FBI agents had learned that no Thaddeus Colburn had been registered at the Hampton Inn in Guntersville. Also, all attempts to reach him at his home and office in Chicago had been unsuccessful. It seemed he had gone into hiding. Finally, similar results were obtained regarding Ginger and Zell. By 10:30 p.m., every law enforcement agency in the country had been notified of Regina’s abduction by the Russian Semyon Ivankov.
I finally arrived home at 1:30 a.m. After leaving the Boaz courtroom I had taken a drive. All during my interview I had this weird and troubling feeling that Regina’s body could be found in the well of the old home place of Tom and Betty Rickles between Rodentown and Collinsville. My rational mind knew this was virtually impossible. How on earth would Semyon Ivankov know about this place? Then, it became clear. He could have forced Regina to tell him what she had done with his brother. Would she have told him? This troubling feeling and my rational mind had prompted me to drive to the Rickles farm. When I arrived, I found nothing to indicate anyone had been there since Regina and I had disposed of Sergei’s body. I spent the next thirty minutes trying to figure out how to determine if Regina was 88 feet down in the well. My flashlight was too weak to see clearly that far down. Finally, I had left, frustrated, and returned home.
I spent one minute at most in mine and Regina’s bedroom. I was overwhelmed with grief and memories of our trip to Tifton to purchase the antique bedroom suite. In sixty seconds I had seen every day since late 2017 that the two of us had spent together. Claustrophobia and near-suffocation attacked me and forced me downstairs. Sandi and I went outside and sat at the end of the pier until nearly 3:30 a.m. and looked at the stars. I had pondered how and when I had gone wrong. What could I have done, and when, to have avoided losing Regina? How had I been so blind? Why had she not trusted me enough to tell me the truth right when we started getting serious?
When I went inside and sat in my lounge chair I was surprised how easily I had fallen asleep. I was also surprised that I slept until 8:30 a.m. Sandi woke me licking my hand. My mind was cloudy. I made a pot of coffee and it dawned on me that the rest of the nation, the world, right now, knew who had won yesterday’s election. I walked back into the den and turned on the TV. CNN called it ‘Breaking News.’ To me, as I saw that President Kane had been elected, I thought it was not news at all. Even though I had not said it aloud, I had known for weeks that Kane would be reelected. The forces, as Vann and I had called them, were unstoppable.
The more I thought about it, the idea that Eric Salers, his candidacy, might have been arranged by Thaddeus Colburn. My mind doubted it, but my heart thought it quite possible. What better assurance that Kane would be reelected than to have his opponent be an atheist? There certainly was no way in hell that most Americans were even remotely ready to vote for someone who didn’t believe God existed. Christians, especially those of the evangelical stripe, would open-armed voted for Satan himself before voting for an atheist.
From CNN, I also quickly learned that Americans across the country had elected 22 new Republican Senators, including Roy Moore of Alabama, who all proudly carried the extremist banner. Just like Moore, these men and women would create an open-door for President Kane to march in legislation that would push the Constitutional limits far, far towards a theocracy, and when that failed, these new Senators, along with enough presiding Senators, would give him the power to call for a Constitutional Convention. I didn’t see any way for the country to avoid a theocracy. I did see dark days ahead for all minorities, including homosexuals and humanists.
The Pencil Driven Life 