You Only Get So Much Read Online Free Page B

degree sat in a file
somewhere. Useless, until I decided to start writing.
    What I wrote was crap.
And I don't say that to earn pity or in a weak attempt at modesty. It was crap.
No getting around it. Bad stories that never really ended. Or more accurately,
stories that I never finished. Thus the endings didn't exist anyway. I took up
the genres of the times—code books where mysteries were uncovered in
ancient texts somewhere. Da Vinci books flooded the market. Then I took on
vampires—hell, why not? Everyone else was doing it. Then I tried
erotica—way before those Fifty Shades books came out. That stuff just
gave me the creeps.
    I couldn't get a sniff
of attention for my writing. Probably because I was aimless and following the
current wave of popular books; which meant I was about two years behind people
who actually knew what they were doing. Not having a crystal ball, I said
forget it and decided to write what I wanted. It turned out that people liked
it. I also stopped writing with a computer. I decided to go longhand and fill
up blue notebooks with my story using a pen. It slowed down the
process—especially for editing, but it also made me pause before putting
the words down. And it worked.
    Isolated Highway was a family saga about
an American Army soldier who returns home after being a prisoner of war in
Germany during World War II. He struggles to settle into his old life while
reliving the torturous experiences he endured during his internment. He
marries, has kids and lives out his days fighting his past demons. I loosely
modeled the novel on a story my grandmother once told me, but the story was
mine alone. I finally used that history degree for something, if only providing
color for the details of my plot.
    The agent that agreed to
represent me had rejected my earlier works three times already. Rightfully so.
Like I said, it was crap. She worked at a big firm in New York City and sent
out dozens of rejection emails every day. But for some reason she liked this
WWII book and we sold it.
    For two years I became
the darling of the literary world—as much as an author can be considered
a darling of anything. The money came rolling in. We sold the movie rights to a
big name producer. I traveled to literary conventions and met with people in
Europe. The book was translated and sold in 14 countries. It was actually used
by some universities to teach WWII history and its impact on soldiers. I gave
speeches about it and lectured classes.
    It was fleeting and I
was so full of shit.
    *
* *
    You know when you wake
up after a good night of sleep and for a few minutes you can totally remember
the dream you just had? The vivid, wonderful dream slowly slips away; but
before it does you think to yourself that maybe this dream could be a good
story. Maybe I could write it out and make it a novel. Yes, I should do that,
you say. But then life gets in the way. The lawn needs mowing. The kids need to
do their homework and need you for something else. The in-laws are coming over,
so we need to clean. I'll write when all that stuff is finished, you say.  
    Well, that's my story. I
wrote out my vivid dream in between my living, breathing life. But dreams like
that don't come often. Even if you sleep all day in the vain hope that it will
come again. My dream came once. All the others were crap.
    This one good thing I
wrote has left a trail of destruction up and down my life.

Chapter 4

 
    The GreyHawk Sage
Retirement Community houses both assisted living residents, as well those who
need long-term care. My mother wouldn't have qualified herself in either
category; but then again, nobody really asked her opinion because they were
likely to get it—a punishment befitting the crime. I can only imagine the
hassles she caused the staff for herself or on behalf of her husband.
    The building was a
13-story high-rise near Spokane's Deaconess Hospital. Several floors consisted
of apartments where mobile seniors could maintain a sense