CANDLELIT CHRONICLES: HISTORIC HAUNTS

March 22: 2nd Novel Completion in March!_1102 word count

Greetings, Gentle Persevering Readers,





Today I completed my 2nd novel this month-the first I began on Dec. 9, and completed on March 11. The second, which turned out to be the second in a series (with the Dec.9-Mar. 11 being the first) I began on March 1, for MarNoWriMo (March Novel Writing Month, an off-season version of NaNoWriMo in November). Well, I completed the March novel today, in 22 days.





On March 12 I had the concept for Book Three of the series, so I'll begin that tomorrow; and today the concept for Book Four arrived. Books One, Two, and Three will be clearly related, and sequential-Book Three is a stand-alone, and set in the same locale, but with several differing time periods (we can finally get out of May 1957 for a while )and with the central character being the evil entity/Corporation of the Series title. Also, luckily for me cause I'd miss 'em if 'twere not so, at least 3 of the characters of Books One and Two will be making their appearance-but how different they will be in Book Three!





I'm thinking now that Book Three, the sort of stand-alone, will be converted into a stage play script for April's Scripting Frenzy. I hope. Otherwise I'll be writing a novel at 2500 words per day plus creating a 100-page script. Hmmhmm.





In sadder news, Stewart Udall, whose tenure as U.S. Secretary of the Interior provided four national parks; and Liz Carpenter, First Lady Ladybird Johnson's Press Secretary, both passed away, on Saturday March 20 (the first day of Spring). They will both be deeply mourned.





http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postmortem/





Another environmentalist alert:


the Monarch Butterfly population is drastically declining. Please take time to read David Knowles' report at http://www.aolnews.com/science/article/monarch-butterly-population-has-dropped-d...





Endangered species are sold on the Internet:


http://www.aolnews.com/science/article/internet-fuels-threats-to-rare-species/19...

Today's Free Read: from The Phantom Logging Operation

Chapter 16

         Hardware purchases complete, I loaded up the trunk and headed further into town, seeking out Courthouse Square. That building wasn't hard to miss: a four-story of blindingly whitewashed stone, with a reflective dome which on certain summer afternoons angled the sun's rays just accurately to cause drivers to lose control and create a morass of fender benders.





         The attorney's building was nearly as easy to locate. In the next block beyond the Court House, at the far corner on the left, was a clean white stone facade with a tasteful sign above the front door reading “Deaneasson Antiques/Rare Books Sought and Found.” On the last window of the second story was another sign, this one much smaller, reading simply “Attorney-at-Law/Civil and Estate Practice.” I seemed to have found what I sought, so I turned the Merc into one of the available angled spaces and emerged, checking for a separate entrance for the upstairs office.





         I couldn't see anything, so decided to ask in the Antiques shop, and stepped in to the accompaniment of a pleasantly jangling bell just over the door. The shop was quiet and shady, not crowded up as I had expected. The merchandise seemed to be plotted out tastefully and with a note of elegance; plenty of space was left between displays for shoppers to browse. Every wall was stuffed with books, some of which might possibly have been first editions for all I knew. The interior space appeared larger than I expected.





         At first I saw no shopkeeper to question about the attorney's office entrance, so I wandered to the left, away from the display cases of antique jewelry and dishes on the right, and walked toward the books. Yes, I had been right: one shelf held what appeared to be the entire collection of Mark Twain, in first edition; below that, the same for Jack London, and then a shelf of firsts of James Fenimore Cooper.





         Behind me a throat-clearing harrumph startled me and I believe I actually jumped before I calmed and turned. A middle-aged gentleman, several inches shorter than I, with long black hair combed straight back from a high forehead, greased down, and curling slightly beyond the collar, stood behind me. He wore an actual velvet smoking jacket (yes, I had seen them in movies) of a deep rich maroon, over a white silk shirt and old-school English tie, with black dressy slacks and poufy loafers with tassels. He said no more, just continued to gaze at me, till I began to feel uncomfortable and as if I had no business here.





         I stared back at him, gazed around, cleared my own throat which had become unaccountably congested, and finally asked,





         

“I was looking for the entrance to the Attorney's office, upstairs.”

         He waved a well-tailored right arm toward the rear of the shop, to the center of the back wall. Now that I paid attention, I could see a brown door set in a recess, and assumed that was it. I murmured a thank-you and stepped toward it, but now he began to address me, or at least to speak, as it seemed he was looking at the books while he talked.





         

“Seven generations,” he proclaimed in a fruity British accent. I was reminded of  butlers in those old 1930's black-and-white films Leill and I used to take in at the retrospective theater in Champaign. She always laughed at the fashions, the accents, and what she considered the “silly goings-on,” but I found them indicative of a simpler time, where folks possessed moral values, and knew how to act on them; when everything wasn't  so  hurry-flurry and narrow-minded; when the goal of the day was not to report “the pinko” on the next block or in the next office or film studio.





                   My mental forays and my continued approach to the alcove door neither fazed the fancy gentleman nor discontinued his monologue. He continued in the same plummy accent and exact same vein of discourse as I reached for the doorknob:





         

“Seven generations of the same bookseller in our family: my five-greats' uncle, he was, who founded our establishment, there in Glasgow. (That is in Scotland, young man.) Harley Deneasson by name: Dealer in Rare Books and Antiquities by profession. Now of course (he said more softly) the focus here is primarily on the Antiques; the Rare Books don't sell as well” (he sniffed) “in the backwoods. Nor do the Antiquities as they should, I am afraid; were it not for the consistent purchases and orders from collectors and other rare booksellers of my acquaintance in Europe and in the more-civilized regions of this forsaken territory, I would indeed be at a loss for profit.”