Want To Read the First Chapter and a Half of my Novel?

[Jazzooo]

Want to or not, here it is.

HAWAIIAN STORY (working title)

Chapter 1, Page 1

Hano and Aimoku held their breath. When they couldn’t stand it any longer, they silently pushed tiny bits of air in and out between their lips, careful not to gasp. They were at least 30 yards from the terminal; no one would have heard them either way, but it was better safe than sorry. Plus it was just the principle of the thing to stay silent.

The sun beat down on them, but there was a feathery breeze that made it bearable. It was starting to look like they were going to pull this off after all, but they knew better than to relax until it was all over. Lying flat behind the landscaped hill, they craned their necks to check out the tourist one more time. There he stood, outside Baggage Claim in a crisp new Aloha shirt that hung stiffly on his oversized frame. Hano couldn’t see his face, but he could tell from the tourist’s body language that he was getting impatient.

The tourist checked his watch, looked away and then checked again. He wasn’t really interested in the time so much as he was tracking the elapsed minutes since he had last spoken with the hotel. This would be one of his all-time great rants, he decided. If he couldn’t weasel at least one free night out of this minor disaster, then he was either losing his touch or there was just no justice left in this world. The shuttle should have been here over 25 minutes ago at this point, and you just don’t do that to guests, especially guests like him. He stood next to a small tower of his own luggage, a hanging bag draped over his golf clubs which leaned against his large duffle bag. He looked up the road and saw nothing but shuttles for other resorts, rented convertibles and the occasional roofless Jeep, covered in red mud and white sand. He saw surfboards, other pale tourists carrying too much luggage, and bored skycaps in shorts with copper-colored skin. His hotel’s shuttle was still nowhere in sight, though.

A white stretch limo with a license plate that said “Hang10 LIM1” pulled up next to him, and for a minute, he imagined that this mess—first a ridiculously delayed flight and then the hotel shuttle being almost 30 minutes late even after two increasingly passionate calls to the front desk—had motivated the hotel to send a limo as a way of apologizing. Maybe the manager realized that you didn’t screw around with guys like him. He had never been the guy you wanted to fuck with, at least not since it was clear that he was on a one-way ticket to the top of his company, breaking sales records and landing their biggest contracts along the way. Of course, riding in the company limo back home was nothing new for him—it was always a cool way to make an entrance at the annual sales conference even though the drive to the meeting was only a few blocks from his office at corporate. Still, he found himself relaxing a little in the face of the generous gesture. At the same time, he reminded himself to stay a little pissed. If he was going to leverage his being inconvenienced into some kind of larger conciliatory step from the hotel, he knew he had to maintain a touch of righteous indignation.

The limo pulled forward a few feet and it still could have been stopping for him, but for some reason he suddenly realized this was highly unlikely. He sighed loudly as the driver eased slowly out of the vehicle, walked to the curb and held up a welcome sign with someone else’s name. Within a few seconds, a group of 5 or 6 teenagers came stumbling out of baggage claim and seeing their name, raced to the limo. They were happy and excited as they piled into the limo, leaving the driver to load in all of their scuba gear while they opened the top of the limo and a few of them stood up, laughing loudly. The driver smiled a resigned smile at the tourist, as if to say “Kids—what are you going to do?” and then gestured at the sign that said “Limousine Loading Only.” It took the tourist a second to realize that he had been waiting in the wrong place for his shuttle. He scanned the signage, looking for the “Hotel Shuttle” zone and found it about 50 feet to his left. He quickly shouldered his hanging bag, grabbed the golf clubs and dragged the remaining duffle in his other hand. After a few sideways steps, he was in the right place. He waited.

And he started to sweat—damn, he didn’t remember the Big Island being this humid last time he had been here. Granted that was almost 20 years ago, and he had spent most of the trip under water, either in the ocean or the hotel pool. Scratch that—most of the trip took place in the hotel bar, and he honestly couldn’t remember that much beyond some of the lengthy discussions he had with his buddies about how much better the islands were than the mainland for scoring weed. By the end of the trip, though, they had decided it was nothing but urban legend—in the entire two weeks, absolutely no one had offered to sell them pot. The one time they approached a local guy, a Hawaiian surfer, he just gave them a rude stare, as if he couldn’t understand English. Kind of unlikely, since the kid had a bumpersticker that said something like “Keep Hawaii Hawaiian—No More Golf Courses.” Even back then, though he’d never swung a golf club, the tourist had said “Good luck with that!” under his breath as the surfer walked away from him .

He unconsciously fingered the covered head of his Taylormade driver and thought about that surfer’s bumpersticker, wondering what that kid would make of him today—a prosperous man, even by today’s inflated standards, certainly light years from the young beach bum wannabe looking to get high with his college buddies. Hey, Tonto or whatever you guys call yourself—today you’re looking at the VP of Sales for one of the larger printer manufacturers in the US, a guy with two secretaries and a personal assistant and four managers whose livelihoods depended on his opinion of their performance. Bet you’d jump at the chance to sell me some weed now, right? Asshole. He shifted his weight again.

One more time, as if it might move things along, he checked his watch and wondered if anything was going to go right this trip. He had come to relax, but he was not off to a relaxing start.


Hano was having second thoughts. He turned to ask his friend if this was really worth the risk, but then he saw the look in Aimoku’s eyes and he knew his question would only piss him off. They were there; they were doing it. Suddenly, Aimoku moved to his knees and then turned around, hunching as he walked quickly away from the airport. Hano took one last look at the tourist, and then followed his friend. The further they got, the straighter they stood—at this point, he couldn’t see their faces anyway. They climbed into the hotel shuttle with Hano behind the wheel like they’d agreed, and started down the road towards the turnaround that would lead them to the pickup area.



“Jesus Christ. JESUS!” the tourist said under his breath. How could they be this late? This was the fucking United States, not some third world country. He knew that Hawaiians were laid back, but they needed tourism to survive—could they really be this casual about a guest whose company had reserved the entire third floor for 10 days? He started rehearsing what he’d say to the hotel manager once he got settled. This had to be good for a comp’d night, maybe even a meal. If not, he’d call Judy and ask her to start scouting for another, more appreciative resort. These sales award conferences were way too important to let things like this go.

In three days, 180 of his top salespeople would get off that plane, ready to party and soak up the sun. The last thing he wanted was to be stuck fielding complaints from a bunch of coddled salespeople, some of whom only qualified for the trip due to what amounted to a bookkeeping error. It wasn’t their fault that no one had noticed the threshold was set at the gross dollar amount as opposed to the net profit amount as usual. That was Judy’s fuckup, and the reason he had taken special pleasure in telling her that she wasn’t coming along for the fun like last time. Even still, he didn’t feel like taking their shit, not for a second. He was here to enjoy himself, and he wanted all obstacles out of his way. If that meant switching to the Mauna Kai tomorrow night, so be it. Where the fuck was that shuttle?

No sooner had he completed the thought, when he saw the shuttle moving slowly towards him. He doubled checked the hotel name on the front, let out an exasperated gasp and checked his watch, this time slowly and deliberately, hoping the driver would see him do it. Service people always like to help out when they sense a customer is pissed—it triggers their need to please, makes them try a little harder he thought. He only looked up from studying his watch when the shuttle pulled up next to him and stopped.

Hano opened the door and Aimoku hopped out onto the sidewalk. With a big grin, he said “Mahalo! Are you…” He checked a 3 x 5 card. “…Mr. David?” The tourist nodded sullenly and the next he knew, Hano had loaded his bags into the back of the shuttle. Good to see that the kid at least as some pep in his step, as his dad used to say. He climbed aboard and the shuttle started moving again.

“Where were you guys? I’ve been out there almost 45 minutes. Kind of a shitty way to start my vacation.” Aimoku kept his eyes on the road, but when he replied his voice was friendly.

“Sorry ‘bout that, sir. The road is all torn up between here and the hotel. Things are a little backed up all over this side of the island.”

So this was how they were going to play it, he thought—unavoidable delays in paradise. He could see them covering their backs so he couldn’t complain to their boss.

“Still, if you knew that, you could have left earlier, right? I’m not trying to be a pain in the ass, but you know…” and he paused for effect “…when we come here, it’s to get away from stress. I’m just saying…” and he let the sentence drift off. Every window in the van was wide open and the breeze was invigorating. He caught the aroma of flowers in the air—man, that air! It felt like feathers on the skin of his arm. Yes, he was tired, and aggravated too, but it was hard to stay mad in this environment.

Slowly but surely, the tropical breeze and the piped in track of music by the Brothers Kazamero helped the tourist unwind. It was a simple melody, sung in perfect unison by two men with high voices until the chorus which blossomed into lush five-part harmony, performed by a women’s choir. The effect was surprisingly moving. And he was aware that he was losing track of his anger. He decided to let it go until he reached the front desk of the resort, where he’d once again tap into the insult of being made to wait far longer than was reasonable for the shuttle…but for now he let his eyes drift lazily over the black fields of lava. It looked like some kind of moonscape except for the tiny bits of greenery impossibly poking out here and there. The tourist had lost track of the other kid who showed up with the van, who had chosen to ride in the back with his luggage.

Twenty minutes had gone by when the shuttle pulled up to the front of the enormous marble entrance to his resort. The driver turned and told him to go check in and that his bags would be waiting for him in his room. The tourist hopped down from the shuttle and considered tipping the driver and then decided against it. Rewarding bad performance sent the wrong message. He didn’t do it at work, he didn’t do it at home and he wasn’t going to do it here in the land of $17 cheeseburgers either. He barely noticed as Aimoku grabbed his luggage and golf clubs and deftly swung them onto a wheeled cart, his bronze legs pumping as he pushed the cart to the side and gestured towards the front entry.

The lobby was an open-air maze of marble, obsidian sculptures, waterfalls and more concierge desks than he’d ever seen in one hotel. Every ten feet or so sat another grinning white person in a flowered shirt. They each offered hearty ’Aloha’s as he passed by, some fingering packets of literature they would gladly have pressed into his hands had he slowed his pace to see what events they were pushing. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed resort-sponsored luaus, 4 x 4 excursions, Zodiac trips, kayak/snorkel outings and so on. These held little interest for him, though, as Judy had already arranged some outings—at a pre-negotiated discount of course--for his people once they arrived.

His presentation at the front desk had gone smoothly. Sensing the tourist’s unhappiness, the young woman got the manager immediately and within moments he was now sitting in an upgraded suite, holding a coupon for a free dinner in their most exclusive restaurant, a world-class Sushi place with a single curving table that snaked from one end to the other, a chef stationed every two feet along the way. He had heard about this restaurant before. The décor was supposed to be as impressive as the food, with artifacts and authentic Japanese ruins brought over to the islands at a cost of over 15 million dollars. He kicked his shoes off and stretched his toes a little, then plopped down onto the edge of the gigantic bed and looked around his room. His luggage sat in the corner just inside the open-air balcony. For a moment, he thought he smelled something funny, but then a gust of wind blew straight into the his room and whatever odor he had noticed was lost in a refreshing tropical breeze that conjured up salt water and suntan lotion.

His eyes moved to the low glass table in the opposite corner. In addition to the meal coupons, there had been a bottle of champagne and a basket of local fruit and the obligatory Macadamia nuts waiting for him. For a moment he wondered if it was a standard check-in gift, but only until he noticed the hastily written note from the manager himself, apologizing once again for the inconvenience.

He wandered over to the private balcony that overlooked the sprawling 40 acre complex. There were several swimming pools large enough to float a small yacht, each connected by narrow waterways, bridges, and slides for the kids. The sun felt amazing as he stood on his balcony and breathed in the scent of flowers. Again, though, there was an unpleasant odor that mingled with the salty air. He couldn’t ignore it this time.

It wasn’t until he grabbed his golf clubs to move them into the corner of the room that he had a vague sense of uneasiness. The bag weighed the same, he thought, but it didn’t feel right. Something moved inside as he set it down on the floor. Man, if they bent one of his clubs on the flight…the thought was too upsetting to even follow it through. Unzipping the top, he saw the heads of all of his clubs neatly displayed as usual, but when he grabbed the driver to inspect it, only the head came away in his hand. Staring with his mouth open, he saw that it had been neatly sawed off the shaft about two inches below the head.

“What the fuck!” he said aloud, and then repeated it again, without thinking: ”What the FUCK!” as he checked the other clubs. They were all fine, but the driver—his prized titanium Big Bertha—was destroyed. For a moment, he couldn’t even think of how to get into this with the hotel’s management. Some tourist-hating luggage handler at the airport must have done this, of course, but he was going to lay it all on the resort. After all, they had handled his bags most recently. He reached for the phone, and then decided it would have more impact if he showed up at the desk again holding his sawed off club. Just before he opened the room to leave, he decided to grab all the paperwork for the entire sales trip to waive around for emphasis during his rant. He pulled open one of his to remove his briefcase and rolled back on his heels, the stench was so disgusting. He’d never smelled anything like it that he could remember. That is, it smelled like shit but like more shit than he’d ever smelled at one time. Holding his breath, he dumped the contents of his duffle onto the flowered bedspread and stared at the pile of paperwork, toiletries and computer paraphernalia, all of which was nearly covered by a small mountain of human feces. There must have been a week’s worth of shit smeared on everything in his duffle. Exasperated, he forgot he was holding his breath and he breathed normally. Gagging suddenly, he lunged for the bathroom and vomited on top of the closed toilet seat before he could even lift it.

Down in the lobby, no amount of reassurance from the manager could calm him down, not even when the manager assured him that the resort did not send shuttles to pick up their VIP guests. Instead, the manager insisted, they always sent one of two female drivers, both Asian, to pick up such guests in their customized resort Hummers. It was even a trademark of theirs, he had said. No one could explain how a regular shuttle, driven by two young Hawaiian men, could have taken its place at the airport. It appeared that someone was playing an extremely rude and elaborate prank on the guest.


Chapter 2

Sophie opened her eyes, breathed in deeply, and closed them again. She smiled gently as she breathed in again, this time slowly through her nose, enjoying the smell of the tanned man lying next to her. He was close enough that she could have kissed him if she merely turned her head to the side, but instead she rolled slowly off the other side of her bed, careful not to disturb the thin paisley scarf they had used as a bedspread the night before after they had made love. She padded across the tiny bedroom, shut the door softly behind her and disappeared into the bathroom. At the sound of the door clicking shut, Ben opened his eyes and in one motion rolled out of bed and pulled on his pants. He stopped briefly outside the bathroom door, considered knocking but then moved on silently to the kitchen where he proceeded to search for coffee.

Ben caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror above the funky dining room table in Sophie’s tiny rented house. His skin was darker than it had ever gotten growing up in Minnesota, that was for sure. But compared to Sophie and other native Hawaiians, he still stood out as a haole, literally 'any stranger' but of course it had come to mean a white person over the years. That was ok, that was just the way it was. He had plenty of Hawaiian buddies on and off the base who accepted him just fine. Being with Sophie didn’t hurt, although the beginning of their relationship had taken a few of his Hawaiian friends by surprise. There had been lots of guys in his position, he supposed—an army grunt stationed in paradise, probably with white girlfriends or even wives back home, who took advantage of the situation to sample some island fare for 18 months or so until they got shipped back to the mainland.

Once it had become clear that the two of them were serious, though, the tension had lifted. Sophie’s brother had made sure of that. Rikki was Ben’s protector in those days, running interference any time Ben had run into a scrape with locals who’d had a few too many and felt like giving him a hard time. Rikki saw how Sophie cared for Ben and that was all he needed to know—she was as good a judge of character as anyone he’d met, and Ben was the man she had chosen.

Ben realized that he had slept later than he’d expected and that he needed to get back to the base by 10am for a meeting with General Thomas. He knew what was coming. It was an opportunity to extend his stay in the islands into something more permanent, or at least officially open-ended. There had been one candidate for the position of xxxx who had a slighty better performance record than Ben, a local who was as tough and bright as they come, but the rumor was that he had blown his chances for promotion by getting blasted and beating up a tourist last weekend while on leave. For a local to take out his frustrations on some sunburned mainland accountant on his second honeymoon wasn’t as rare as it used to be—it seemed like Sophie told him new reports of nasty remarks, harrassment and even minor violence against white tourists every week or so, most of which she learned from the housekeeping crew at the resort where she worked. Word about that kind of stuff traveled fast among the locals, even if it happened on other islands. But for a disciplined military man, Hawaiian or not, to succumb to the racial tensions that had been brewing since the incident last year was almost unheard of.

Ben slipped on his shirt as he mulled over the events of last year. Even before he got assigned to duty at xxx, he’d heard about mounting tensions between locals and mainlanders, and that several scattered incidences of violent crime had gone unreported in the local communities. When he and Sophie had started dating, he asked her about it and she had explained that no one—not the police, the community leaders nor the resorts--believed that these isolated incidents posed any serious threat to tourists overall, but the sensationalized way the local papers would have treated them would have indeed hurt everyone involved. Sophie had written off the laid back attitude of the local community leaders as a “typical Hawaiian” lack of energy for anything other than pursuing the pleasures of their easy-going lifestyle. No one wanted to make a fuss, especially one that might negatively impact tourism revenues.

Still, some of the stories Ben had heard were chilling. The worst was an unconfirmed rumor about a Japanese tourist on Oahu who had been chased down an alley by some punks who not only raped her and set her on fire. Most people thought it was just the Hawaiian version of ‘urband legend,’ but one night, after several rum and Cokes at Tahiti Nui's, Rikki had confessed that he not only thought it had actually happened, but that it was just the tip of the iceberg. There were rumors of other horrifying attacks that never got any media coverage. There was the story of the tourist on Maui whose 9 year old boy had disappeared from a resort beach and was thought to have drowned. The boy had apparently shown up on the Hana side of the island days later, alive but suffering from severe exposure after being dropped off on the Eastern side of of Haleakala Crater, his face, arms and legs torn up by the almost impenetrable jungle of moss-covered ‘ohi’a and koa trees, ferns and vines. No one knew how he got there in the first place, and he was apparently too confused to say so himself. There had been an investigation, but the local police were stumped and wrote it off as a prank. In the end, so the story went, the parents were happy to get their son back in one piece and left the island without ever knowing who had taken their boy.

All of that threatened to change last year, though, when the events turned too grisly to avoid the national spotlight. Bobby Altman had been a handsome college kid from Southern CA who had been coming to Hawaii every summer for years to surf. He was not really liked so much as tolerated by the local surfers wherever he went--his faterh had opened up the first McDonalds restaurants in the islands back in the '70s and many locals held that against the son. But he was a good surfer who knew the etiquette and managed to stay on everyone's good side until he supposedly had started fooling around with the girlfriend of Reid, a sullen islander who was openly hostile to tourists. Whether Reid was actually behind what happened was never determined, but both Bobby and the girl, a Japanese Hawaiian, had gone missing last summer. Despite local politicians trying to keep the situation quiet, a statewide search was launched, thanks to the efforts of both Bobby’s and the girl’s parents.

Just as the week-long search was winding down, some honeymooners found a bloody ear in their resort bathroom on the island of Kawai. A DNA match confirmed that it was Bobby’s. They never found the rest of his body or the body of the missing girl, and Reid had gone missing as well, though there were signs that he had packed some belongings before disappearing. Ben remembered the huge outcry from both the white and native Hawaiian locals, each side accusing the other of deep prejudice. The open hostility was something that most had never seen before on the islands, at least not in a long time. Soon enough, the tensions sunk below the surface but things hadn't felt the same since then. Tourism had taken a big hit and still had not recovered--Newsweek's cover photo of a Hawaiian hotel security man holding up the severed ear in his latex-gloved hand above the headline "Paradise Lost?" hadn't helped--and many locals blamed the white population for sensationalizing a crime to one of its own when there was still the unsolved matter of the missing local girl that everyone seemed to forget about.
_________________________

[Valerie]

good writing, guy!! guess you've got at least one book pre-sold!!!

[Jazzooo]

My second biggest fan.

[Pete C]

My second biggest fan.

Who's your first--you or your wife?

[Derek Taylor]

Ouch!

[Jazzooo]

I actually thought it was you, Pete. We both know you've been crushing on me for some time now.

[tippy]

It's just his anti-shyness medication, Jazzooo. It makes him amorous.

[Jazzooo]

It's not that I'm not flattered, but I'm just not into him.

my two main characters, however, just had great sex. I'm into them.

[tippy]

oh yeah - what were the important features of their session?

[Jazzooo]

Having never written a novel before, I didn't want to fall into the trap of writing something too explicit just to titillate readers. Then Glenda said "You ought have some explicit sex to titillate readers."

I haven't filled in those blanks yet, but so far the main features are the color of her native Hawaiian skin contrasting against his, the smell of hibiscuis and a freshly-cut papaya on the counter. Oh, and he's got a huge schlong. You know, just generally erotic stuff like that.

[tippy]

LOL to you and Glenda.

[clinthopson]

Doug,

Keep your day job - as if you had one.

[Jazzooo]

If I had a day job, I probably wouldn't have time to write a novel! Maybe I still can't--I guess we'll see. It's very funny the contrast in reactions I'm getting here compared to another music community where I hang--then again, the other is filled with artists and music makers as opposed to critics.

I'm enjoying the process of trying to fill out an arc of a story I dreamt up, but it's daunting since so much is based in reality--there has been some form of separatist movement in Hawaii since it was annexed in 1893. Some of the acts of violence I'll be dealing with in the story are based on actual occurrences, either public record or things told to me by Hawaiian friends who knew some of the people involved. But getting that right isn't the hard part--getting the culture, the locations, and even the proper names right is complex, let alone making sure the history is correct. I can finally understand why genuine authors have such lengthy acknowledgments in their books. I'll be leaving a lot of details blank until I see whether or not this book will ever get finished--I can always fill it in later.

[tippy]

Doug, I am enthusiastically waiting for the dvd (and I know I am going to love it!). Really. I support this reckless dive into fiction writing.

[Jazzooo]

That last sentence is actually some pretty good writing.

[tippy]

Yeah, I'm pretty damn good.

[Jazzooo]

Perhaps you should write a novel. it's pretty freaking hard.

[Gentle Giant]

Tell me about it. I finished the first draft of my novel a few months ago. Now I'm on my fourth draft, and I'm wondering if I'll even know when it's done.

[clinthopson]

Doug,

To be serious for a change, I think you are off to a good start.

Years ago, I wrote a couple of techy books about qualified retirement plans which, except for limited distribution, never got published, but have never tried a novel. I've tried fiction, but beyond a few lies, it isn't my strong point.

I have a good friend who is a brilliant writer who is on her fifth or sixth rewrite of a novel. We've read early drafts and think that if she is ever satisfied with it, a publisher will jump on it.

[Pete C]

We've read early drafts and think that if she is ever satisfied with it, a publisher will jump on it.

Unless she's already famous or has some kind of intriguing life angle they can push outside of the book, no publisher is jumping on anything.

[Squaredancecalling Steve]

I'm on my 115th draft. But I'm going to self-publish, I have an local audience for at least a few hundred copies.

[Pete C]

I have an local audience for at least a few hundred copies.

Yeah, but do you have an proofreader?

[Squaredancecalling Steve]

Yeah, but do you have an proofreader?

When the time comes. What's your price?

[Squaredancecalling Steve]

I see... 'an local'. That's because it was first 'an audience', and when I added the 'local' I forget the change the article. That's why I need so many drafts.

[Pete C]

That's why I need so many drafts.

The drafts (and the bottles) could be the problem.

[Chris D]

I see... 'an local'. That's because it was first 'an audience', and when I added the 'local' I forget the change the article. That's why I need so many drafts.

And a proofreader.

[Jazzooo]

Proof reading is an interesting phenomena. Both Glenda and I got pretty good at it back when we were working (proofing each other's stuff as well as what came back from our layout artist), but we always had others check the work. I don't see any problem with over-proofing. You can usually catch something that got missed. It used to really blow my mind to see national advertising campaigns, print or TV, with flubs. Today, I know how easily it can happen.

I'm into an interesting part of the Hawaii novel process, where I'm starting to integrate a little research about the separatist movement into the lives of the fictitious characters. I have to communicate a lot of data, without it sounding like a lot of data. I've re-written the same two paragraphs at lest 6 or 7 times.

[Pete C]

I'm the lone proofreader at my current job, and it's tough because one person can't catch everything, and the brain fills in so much. At large ad agencies and law firms everything gets at least two different readers, at least in early stages. Unfortunately, many publishers don't even have proofreaders and rely on the authors, which is deadly.

[Jazzooo]

I just finished a thriller I grabbed for a place ride, and was shocked to see several significant spelling and other errors, including using a wrong name in a dialogue between two of the main characters. I read the paragraph three or four times to make sure I wasn't missing something.

[Squaredancecalling Steve]

Iincluding using a wrong name in a dialogue between two of the main characters.

That's what happens when you when you change the name of a character along the way, or two characters merge.