What Time Is the Tea Kettle?

"What Time Is the Tea Kettle?"

So I'm not much into promotion, even self-promotion; however, when I have a new product out, I figure I ought to at least mention it. Speaking of which, my new thing is out! Actually, it's two things. Two novelettes about the same character and his cat. I posted an excerpt from it quite a while back on a different site, so I'll give you that same taste in a moment. I'd call this new story whimsical. Definitely offbeat.

Bryan Pedas, from A Beer for the Shower, put together the spectacular cover, and I think he captured the feel of the story pretty well. He called it "absurdist" rather in the same vein as Carroll's Wonderland. Did you know that there's no real category for that? Well, there's not.

Briane Pagel, who also got an early look, said it's "perfect."

And my students, who also got to hear the excerpt, can't wait to find out what happens to Jeffry and what's up with the tea kettle.

I'm just going to say it: If you've liked anything I've written, this is one you should read.

PLUS! Not only do you get "What Time Is the Tea Kettle?" but you also get "Soul Cakes"! A second novelette featuring Jeffry and his owner. That's two for the price of one! Seriously, go pick up your copy, read it, love it, and leave a review!

Just to help you on the way, here is a bit of "What Time Is the Tea Kettle?"

The red tea kettle was blocking my view of the clock. It kept doing that. I sighed as I rolled over and sat up in bed. It was new and hadn't yet learned its place, so I picked it up by the handle and carried it out of the bedroom, down the darkened hall, and into the kitchen, only once stepping on one of the cat's toys, quite an accomplishment. I flicked the little stove light on and set the kettle on the counter.

What time was it again? That was when I realized that I'd forgotten to check the time after I picked up the kettle, so I glanced at the stove clock in the dim light of the kitchen to find it blocked by the red tea kettle, handle up so that I couldn't read the time. I glanced over to the counter top where I was sure I had just set it, but, yes, it was not there. I sighed again, shook my head slightly, and picked the tea kettle back up, looking for somewhere else to set it. It needed a place, its own place, to be. Maybe, then, it would quit wandering around.

I could put it in a cupboard, but that would just be inconvenient, having to get it in and out all of the time. I wanted it to live on the stove but on the burner where it wouldn't block the clock.

Oh! The clock. I wanted to know the time. I looked over at the clock, and there was the tea kettle again. Hadn't it just been in my hand? I was sure I hadn't set it down.

I reached for it again, but, at that moment, the cat floated by, ghostlike, doing whatever it is that cats do at night. He brushed my cheek with his tail as he lightly pressed one paw onto my shoulder as he passed by. Looking for flying bugs, I supposed.

His sudden spring to the ceiling almost caught me by surprise, and I saw him going for the spider in the corner where the ceiling met both walls on that side of the dining room that adjoined the kitchen.

“Geoffrey!”

The cat stiffened, caught in the act, but he couldn't stop like he would have been able to if he'd been on the floor. He looked back over his shoulder at me and “mew”ed just as he collided with the ceiling and bounced to the wall, grabbing hold with his claws.

The spider scurried into the crack where the two pieces of trim met. I could see him peeking out but was too far away to hear the cursing that I was sure was happening. Spiders like very much to curse. Most of them, anyway. Tarantulas are above that sort of thing. Or so they say.

The cat arched his back and, then, marched down the wall studiously ignoring me as I scolded him, “Geoffrey, what have I told you about the spiders? We leave the spiders alone. Spiders are good.” I spoke slowly and distinctly, as if he was hard of hearing, which, honestly, at that moment, he was.

When he got close enough, he leaped from the wall to the dining table and sat like the puff of smoke he had originally been named for.

I sighed and shook my head at the cat, thinking back to the small, gray puffball he'd been when he'd shown up on my doorstep. Like a puff of smoke when you blow out a match or a candle. All except for the toes on his front paws, which were white. I had determined to call him Smoke and actually had for a number of weeks.

Until my nephew came to visit.

He's my sister's kid. We don't ever see each other, my sister and me, unless she needs something. That particular day, she had needed me to babysit, her usual reason for seeing me, so she had dropped my nephew off at an obscene hour on a Saturday morning. A time when normal people are still sleeping. My nephew came in asking, “What's for lunch?”

I told him it was too early for lunch, to which he replied, “Actually, it's late for lunch. At school, it's already nap time.”

I grumbled and went to grub around in the kitchen and look for food.

He met the cat while I was trying to find slices of leftover pizza that I could pick enough of the mushrooms off of that it would convince him to pretend they weren't really there to begin with.

“Warm or cold?” I shouted out into the room with the TV that only worked three days a week.

“Cold's fine.”

“It's going to the table, then. Why don't you bring Smoke, and you can feed him some treats while we're eating.”

That's the great thing about pizza: I was about to have it for breakfast, and my nephew was having it for lunch, and we were both perfectly satisfied that all was right with the world with that arrangement.

He plopped the kitten down on the table in much the same spot as he was currently sitting and eyeing me sullenly for the scolding.

As I dropped several cat treats into the boy's hand, he said, “Why do you call him Smoke?”

“That's his name.”

“No, it's not.” He said it very matter-of-factly, very like when he had said, “At school, it's already nap time.”

That was annoying. I wasn't even awake yet. No pizza. No coffee. And less than four hours of sleep. “Yes, it is. I named him that.”

He looked at the cat, held out the hand with the treats, and cocked his head slightly as the cat took one and sat down with it.

“He says he already has a name, and he doesn't like Smoke.”

“What's wrong with Smoke?”

The boy shrugged, “I don't know. He says he doesn't like it.”

“Why didn't he tell me, then?” I raised one eyebrow at the kid, thinking I'd won.

He glanced back at the kitten and offered him another treat. The pizza, his slice and mine, was just sitting there on our plates waiting to be eaten, making me cranky, while my nephew chastised me on behalf of the ball of fur that looked like it was about to drift away.

“He says he did tell you. He says you don't listen.”

“I do, too, listen.” I crossed my arms, thinking back, trying to figure out if I'd been listening. I wasn't sure, and that made me more cranky, because the kid might be right.

“If you listened, you'd know his name is Jeffry.”

“Jeffry?” I blinked, stared at the kid, and picked up my slice of pizza. Just to make a statement by doing it. “What kind of name is Jeffry for a cat?”

The small shoulders of the boy shrugged as he took a bite of his pizza, “I don't know. I just know that's his name.”

I waved my pizza in the air, “I like Smoke better.”

With his mouth stuffed, barely comprehensible, he replied, “He doesn't like Smoke.”

“So. He's my cat.” I obstinately took a bite of my pizza.

The cat made a cat noise, not quite a meow, that I didn't catch. I should have, but it sounded jumbled.

After a moment of chewing, the boy said, “Jeffry says he'll call you Bob.”

“But my name's not...” I ripped a big hunk of pizza off with my teeth and sent it spluttering everywhere as I said, “Fine!” After I swallowed, I added, “Geoffrey, it is.” Internally, I smiled, knowing that neither of them could spell so couldn't tell that I had given the cat a name I wanted to give him anyway.

As the cat sat on the table and stared at me, I wasn't entirely sure he hadn't known all along. Cats always look like they have secrets, even when they don't. Who knows what was going on in that cat's head.

I saw the spider creeping back out of the crack in the ceiling, and I glanced up at it, “You leave that spider alone.”

The cat stood up, turned, and lifted its tail to me as it hopped off of the table, drifting off through the house but near the floor this time.

I stood there a moment in the arbitrary division between the kitchen and dining room completely unaware of what I was doing. Why I was up. What time it even was.

Oh! The time! I turned back to the stove, and there was the red tea kettle again blocking the clock. I grabbed the tea kettle and jerked it from the stove. 1:16 glowed dimly in green on the little panel on the back of the stove where the knobs are, and I stood there staring at the readout. I didn't even remember why I'd wanted to know what time it was. Or why I was awake...

Why was I awake? Something had woken me up. That's why I had been trying to look at the time. Oh, well. I had no idea what it was, if I had ever known at all. What I did know is that I was going back to bed.

I sighed and raised the red tea kettle up to eye level, “But what do I do with you?” I yawned, shook my head, and set the tea pot back down on the stove. I'd figure it out later.

The Road to Fiction

[Note: There is one more installment of the Lies Writers Tell series, but that one will happen next week. More news about it, then.]

I was asked an interesting question recently. I like interesting questions; they make you think. Well, they make me think. I don't actually know about you. I don't actually even know if you do think, because so many people don't, though I like to think that if you're reading this blog then you're a thinker, so we'll just go with that.

Anyway...

The question was, "How do you write fiction?" Let me clarify that. I get the question, "How do you write?" a lot, but I've never had the question, "How do you write fiction?" Her contention was that writing non-fiction is easy; it just requires a bit of research and putting it together in a way that's easy for the reader to take in. But she didn't know how to go about writing fiction.

So I get the thing about non-fiction. I've never had a problem with it, though I know some fiction writers do. There is a lot that is easy about presenting information that already exists. So her real question, as I took it to mean, was, "How do you make up information that did not previously exist?" And that is a good and interesting question. And it made me think.

For me, writing fiction began with telling stories. True stories, I mean. Verbally. You know, standing around in a group and telling stories. During high school especially, I began to excel at this and became the preferred storyteller among my groups of friends. It probably didn't hurt that I also started doing quite a bit of public speaking stuff, all of which continued into college. Learning to tell a true story, especially one that is mostly boring, in an interesting way, embellishing without lying and adding humor where there might not, strictly speaking, be any is an excellent place to begin in writing fiction.

Of course, doing a lot of reading helps, too.

Once you have that down, the telling of stories, it's just a small step to making up your own. In fact, it's a natural extension. I know that part of my impetus was the repetition of requests to tell by my kids and their friends to tell stories. I'd answer, "But I've told them all to you," and they'd either say, "So, tell us again," or, "Well, make one up." So that's what I did.

Not that it's easy. It sounds easy, but it's not easy.

Fictional stories don't necessarily follow the same rules as non-fiction ones. Here's an example I gave back during the school year to my creative writing classes:
I was watching this movie once, a based-on-a-true-story movie, and it was moving along, and the action was rising, and I was wondering what was going to happen -- but it was getting close to the end (time-wise) and I was starting to wonder how in the world they were going to wrap it up in time -- and, suddenly, the protagonist was in a fatal car crash and that was it. It was one of those "what the heck!" moments, but that's how it happened. The dude just had a car accident and died and, when you're telling a story based on actual events, that's the kind of thing that sometimes happen.

But you can't really do that in fiction. You can't cut your readers off like that, because, well, they won't like you. People don't like stories without resolution, not in general. In fact, they want more than just resolution; they want it all wrapped up in a nice, pretty package with a bow on top. But that's the beginning of a different topic, so I'll stop right there.

I don't really think I've completely answered this question. I only know how I got to fiction. It could be completely different for other writers. Even so, I think it's a good place to start.
Read a lot.
Learn to tell true stories in an interesting way, a way that's not just about delivering a set of facts.
Go from there.

If you want a specific example of one of those ways I've done all of this, taken a real story and moved it into the fictional arena, check out "The Magic Cookies." It began as a true story and may have been the favorite of the stories I used to tell my kids and their friends.

Plus it has a great bonus story by Briane Pagel! It has nothing to do with cookies, though it does have vampires. And, hey, for $0.99 it's practically like taking a cookie from a... wait, do babies eat cookies?

The fate of the universe now rests in the hands of an ill-advised, unprepared hero who didn't want to be here in the first place. How's that working for you?

Neither one of these people is Andrew Leon.

Andrew Leon, contributor here and author extraordinaire, posted a review of A Wrinkle In Time on his blog the other day that really got me thinking.  While the entire review is worth reading (there'll be a link at the end) here is the part that worked on me:

Another thing I have really come to dislike: the giving of "gifts" that will help the heroes but not telling them how to use those gifts. How dumb is that?
"Here's a red button. Only push it if you really need to."
"What does it do?"
"I can't tell you that."
"How will I know when to use it?"
"I can't tell you that."
So Meg's usage of the spectacles that were given to her were less used as a "last resort" than as a "well, I can't think of anything else to try."
As a plot device, this ploy is rather lame.

Here is the comment I left on his blog, which I am reprinting here because I think both that commentary and the response deserve wider dissemination than it might otherwise get:
*******

I read this last night and then had to do other things before I could comment, so I have had a night to think about it. Don't think that will make my comment any more intelligent.

I have been thinking about re-reading this story, too, recently, because I only vaguely remember it and wanted to see if it was as good as I recall. Now your review suggests that it may not be. Some of that is because as we get more sophisticated we need better stories: what appealed at 11 doesn't at 45. Some of it is that in retrospect, you can question a lot of what you question here. My rule on such questions is if you noticed them the first time you read the book/watched the movie/etc., they are big problems that pull you out of the story. If you only noticed it in retrospect it's not such a big problem. The "Looper" thing is a good example: that question of why the mob would ONLY use the time travel device for that purpose occurred to me the moment I heard the plot, and so it's a big problem.

So some of what you say is a big problem, some a little problem, because of course you read this again, so you have the ability to reflect instead of being carried along on the story.

But the biggest problem you identify is one I hadn't ever really thought of before, and that's the plot device of "I can give you this but not tell you how to use it." Until I read that, I had never even THOUGHT about such a plot device, but of course you're right: it's through EVERYTHING in speculative fiction. And it DOESN'T make any sense. 

It's one thing if the failure to give information is accidental (Wizard dies before explaining the magic scroll) or because the person can't handle the information yet (In Robert Asprin's MYTH books, Skeeve is a novice magician who learns as he goes) but the problems you identify are pretty huge, and hadn't been brought up earlier. Definitely worth a longer post.

*****

So if you use this trope, DON'T.  Andrew is right: it's supposed to create suspense, but it's creating suspense in a stupid, unorganic way.  Any real group of heroes/adventurers, etc., would of course make sure everyone knows how to use everything as much as possible.  If you're not going to give your characters information about something important, have the reason be one that works in the story, rather than simply being a cheap plot device.

Read Andrew's original post here.  Seriously. Do it. It'll take you like five minutes and it's worth it.

_________________________________________________________________________

Speaking of cheap plot devices, Saoirse's life didn't begin until it ended, at which point she died and went to 'the After', where William Howard Taft tells her exactly how things work.  Read the After, available on Amazon by clicking here.

Andrew himself would never resort to such tricks.  Not even in real life, like when he decided to teach a rude 'friend' of his a lesson via The Magic Cookies, a hilarious story that is available on Amazon by clicking here.








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DO NOT FORGET:

COMING ON THE FOURTH OF JULY, it's the first-ever anthology of stories by indie writers to bear the INDIE WRITERS MONTHLY stamp of approval*, and we want YOU to be a part of it.

The anthology is going to be a collection of stories about Time Travel, and here is HOW YOU CAN GET IN ON THIS:

A. Have a story about time travel, or write one.

2.  Submit that story to us, by June 15, 2014.  (send submissions to litaplaceforstories[at]gmail.com** and label them "IWM TIME TRAVEL ANNUAL" or something like that.)

THIS IS IMPORTANT: paste the story directly into the of the email.  

I'M NOT OPENING ATTACHMENTS.  

III. Make sure you have the rights to the stories and it'd be nice if it hadn't been published somewhere else.  

Word limits? Who do you think you're talking to, here? Because there'll only be a few weeks to read them, shoot for somewhere between 1 and 1,000 words, but if you go longer, by all means, go longer.

Still reading?  Good.  Here is WHY you want to get in on this!

8(a)2.: The stories we like the best will get put into the anthology and you'll be a published writer! 

and

C: There are prizes! Specifically, the story picked as best by the IWM gang will win a $15 Amazon Gift Card and the Runner Up will get a $10 Amazon Gift Card.

So there you have it!  I look forward to getting those stories.