Jessica Scott

Something has happened to me and I’m not sure what. It might be that the rejection list is growing. It might be that I wrote a LOT in Iraq and was hoping to have something to show for it, other than rejections (and when I say that, I’m strictly referring to the fiction side of the house. The nonfiction seems to coming along nicely, if accidently:).

I finally finished my revisions on my first paranormal Resurrection and fired it off to my beloved critique partner, Julie, who is squeezing in time to hack it via hard copy.

I wanted to start on the next book. I still need to finish Monster, which is about 10 – 15K from the end. And once more, I find myself, well, stuck. I love the idea behind Monster. I think it might be the first book that I’ve written that doesn’t require a complete do over to get a workable plot. And yet, this is probably the hardest book I’ve ever written. It comes in fits and starts. I jam on it for a few days, then take a month off but the story remains, nagging at the edge of my brain.

So I’m getting there. But then what? I’ve got other books to revise but I’m seriously considering moving beyond everything I wrote in Iraq and starting something new.

But nothing’s coming. I keep getting these great ideas but they’re all just kind of bouncing around with no spark demanding they hit the page. I’m sure I could write them, if I, oh I don’t know, had a contract or something. Or maybe an agent. Yeah, someone to say, this will work, write this.

Cause I’ve written and I’ve written and I’ve written but I don’t have a direction right now. I’m lacking purpose because you see, I’d had a purpose. Then I received a Facebook note that summed up a LOT for me: I’ve no interest to read about war, romance or otherwise.

What if there aren’t a lot of books out there like mine because, well, no one wants to read them? That’s sobering, huh? Kind of takes the wind out of your sales.

But I’m okay with that even. I’m digging into my religion degree and writing my paranormal and I LOVE being able to justify reading Jewish legends and lore as research for a book. But the new book won’t start off. Actually, it started, but fear, that rat bastard is stopping me.

See, I have a problem with plotting. I don’t do it. Funny, when I rewrite a book, it comes together into a decent plot (at least that’s what I keep telling myself), but that first draft? Total shit. In that I don’t even bother sending them out to my critique partner because, well, she’s too busy to waste time reading my first draft shit.

But as I stand on the blank pages of the Dreaded New Novel, I’m afraid. I want to reach a point where I don’t have to write the whole book over. And what if I write this book, then rewrite it and then it still doesn’t sell? On the other hand, maybe that’s just my process. Maybe I need to rewrite the whole book so I can find what the story is really about and I need to take a 100,000 word detour to figure it out. Sure makes writing a synopsis sound a little better, huh?

So I’m not sure what’s going to happen. I’m researching book 2. I’m pretty sure I’ve got my main plot points (in that I know the last sentence, if that counts). And I know what happened between the characters before the book started (at least there’s a rough idea of it fleshed out in my scrivener window). So I’m not sure where this is going but I do know that I need to figure out a way to deal with the Fear of the Blank Page.

I’ll muddle through, I always do. But fearing the blank page? Yeah, not used to that.

And since I’m sharing, here’s the last sentence of this book:

Across the ocean, in a dark house at the edge of a farm, a little boy sneezed.
And Death smiled.

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So here’s the deal. I’m posting the first few pages of my new book over here. It’s just the opening. But I’d really like some feedback. You can post comments here or on Facebook or just email me your thoughts and impressions but I’d really like feedback on this.

Here goes nothing:

Escaping through the lily fields
I came across an empty space
It trembled and exploded
{and left me} in it’s place
- Grateful Dead

He never asked to be a hero. He’d simply run away and joined the army the day after he’d graduated from high school, much to his father’s disapproval and mother’s quiet horror. One day, he was laughing with his buddies and trying to score beer and get Cass McLaurin to let him cope a feel. The next he was surrounded by drill sergeants in a shark attack, being screamed at by Fort Benning’s finest, unable to do anything but obey.
The first time he dreamed of blood, he woke up with a mouth full of it, having bit his tongue after he fell asleep in the prone, his cheek resting on the stock of his M4. His drill sergeant had kicked him in the back of the head to wake him up. He never slept well again after that.
The strange lure of blood stayed with him after that. The resonating answer to the drill sergeants’ cry what makes the grass grow. Blood! Blood! It pulsed in his ears and throbbed in his veins along with the quiet certainty that he would spill it when it was time.
The second time he dreamed of blood was the first night the mortars hit his combat outpost. He’d been dreaming of blood when the pounding in his brain threw him from his bed. The cadence in his head would hide in his dreams, stalking his sleep.
Then it started during the day. Out on patrols, he tasted blood but his gloved fingers would come away clean. In the chow hall, his spaghetti looked like the mangled remnants of his basic training battle buddy, who’d been hit by an RPG.
It seemed Iraq was determined to claim his soul even as he struggled to function on a few hours of sleep a night. Then he saw her. He didn’t know if the first time he saw her was real or a dream. But she was there. Always there.
The dirty child with no shoes and ratty hair. Standing and looking. Just looking even as he tried to see around the tiny body to the men hiding behind her. He saw her on street corners. Behind dumpsters.
And he felt his sanity start to slide away, like a dog beaten by its master.
Now, clean shaven and wearing his uniform for the last time, he cleared out of the Copeland Center on Fort Hood. He’d clung to the ideal of this day. The day he was handed his final out papers and his DD214. He was free. No longer a soldier. A civilian. His own man, who would be able to come and go as he pleased.
And he pleased to not see the shabby child anymore.
She left him alone for a while. He made the drive from Texas to Maine with relative ease and thought nothing of drinking a pint and a half of coffee brandy each night before dropping into a sleep that was anything but restful. He just needed a little help falling asleep, that was all. He was wired from too little sleep and too much coffee.
The old green bridge (XX name?) leading from New Hampshire into Maine welcomed him home. Ten years, he’d been gone. Ten years since he’d walked through the halls of his high school with his buddies and his brother.
He felt like that person hadn’t been him at all. Just a foreshadow of what life would be like as the boy had gone off to war and come home a man.
Hours passed like the ever green trees that lined I-95 and he pulled off in Newport for gas, coffee and a case of Coors Light. He knew better than to look for his favorite German beers or even any of the brands that were popular in Texas. He refused to think wistfully of Fort Hood. He was home now. Back in Maine. Hood had never been home. It had just been a stopping point on the journey into madness.
He started the engine of his Chevy Trailblazer and the headlights flooded the well lit parking lot.
He jerked and dumped hot coffee on his leg. As the liquid spread over his legs and cooled, he wiped his palms on his thighs. She wasn’t there. She wasn’t real. She wasn’t real.
She clutched the dirty rag that he guessed had once held a baby doll and stared at him. Her brown eyes wide and innocent in that dirty face.
He saw himself reach for the coffee like he was sitting behind the driver’s seat instead of in it. The lid popped off with a crunch of styrofoam. And the burn crawled slowly up the tips of his fingers until fire licked at his flesh and he snapped back to his body, his hand screaming in pain.
When he looked back, she was gone. His heartbeat slowed and the heat receded from the skin of his neck. This time, he knew when he reached for the coffee and swore when it burned his lips. But the burn reminded him that he was alive, so that was a good thing. Right?
He pulled into the Maine night, amazed as the stars filled the sky as brilliant points instead of being muted by city lights and desert sand. The moon filled the road until it was almost as brilliant as daylight. Buffalo Springfield came on the radio and that haunting peal that became the anthem for his father’s war pulled him to the present.
He was home. The tires crunched on the gravel driveway of what had once been his parent’s home. It was now his. The log cabin was nestled against a hill in a ten acre field that had once been a pasture. Wide dark windows stoically looked into the night sky and the wrap around porch made him smile as he remembered chasing his brother in summer nights forgotten until this moment.
His mouth went dry and he reached for a beer. The snap hiss was the only sound as he popped it open and slammed half the can. He downed the rest before he pulled the keys from the ignition and walked through the moonlight to house. The urge to rush to the porch and get out of the open nearly propelled him to run. Instead, he sucked in deep breaths and took the stairs. Two at a time but at least he was still walking.
The front door creaked and groaned as he pushed it open, the screen door slapping behind him with a crack that made him jump. The house smelled like apples and cinnamon and home. (XX Mom or Aunt?) had been here and cleaned the place up. The feelings inside him weren’t right. They weren’t his.
He ignored the feeling and looked around the wide open space that made his home. What had once been massive trees formed logs that framed the house and stood as beams through out the great room. The deer he’d shot when he was twelve was still mounted on the wall over the fireplace, right next to his brother’s moose.
A shiver ran across his skin. Christ it was cold in Maine. It was the first week of July, it wasn’t supposed to be in the forties. His t-shirt no longer seemed adequate and he turned toward the door.
He wanted his bag and his bed. A sweatshirt and another beer. The front door suddenly loomed larger in his vision, consuming every particle of visible light. His heart pounded in his chest and he felt the weight of his kevlar on his head. His rifle. Where was his rifle?
He stood and breathed, hard and deep, willing the panic to retreat. And he was glad he was alone as he rushed to the ancient truck and dragged his army issued duffle bag and assault pack from the back seat. He was still breathing hard when he slammed the front door behind him, locking the demons of the night and the wide open spaces out.
He dropped the duffle bag just inside the door and carried his backpack and the remains of the beer up the two landing stairs to the bedroom he’d once shared with his brother. He stopped, then turned, heading to the master bedroom. It was his now.
It didn’t feel right, sleeping in his parent’s bed but Aunt Mary had insisted. He wasn’t a boy anymore, she’d written in her last email.
He sat on the edge of his bed and pulled the forty five out of the holster he’d worn at the small of his back. He dropped the clip and cleared the weapon, checking the chamber automatically and catching the ejecting round before it fell. It was cold and smooth against his palm. Familiar. Comforting.
One by one, he slid the rounds from the clip. One by one he seated them back in the clip, then fed the clip into the weapon.
He reached into the wide front pocket of the assault pack, palming the cool orange plastic bottle. The Ambien felt like a hundred smooth tic tacs on his palm but their appeal was greater and held the lure of untainted sleep. One by one he counted them, dropping them back into the bottle. One hundred and sixteen.
One less than the night before.
He checked the safety on his forty five and set it on the bed next to him. He didn’t want to think about what happened when the pills ran out. But that was one hundred and sixteen days away. He’d worry about it then.
For now, though, he sank into the oblivion offered by Ambien’s waiting arms, he saw her.
And the dirty girl with ratty hair simply stared back at him with those sad brown eyes.

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Well, in order to stop focusing on all the things in my unit that I have no influence to change, I’m starting a new book. Actually, I’d written the first few pages about a week ago when I had the start of the idea that will eventually form into the new project but I threw most of that out as it wasn’t quite right.

What’s really interesting about this book is the research that’s going into it. I have to learn a ton about how the mind works and the different aspects of PTSD other than nightmares.

And I’ve chosen to make this book a comparison between the Iraq war and Vietnam. I find it amazing that when I talk to Vietnam vets, their stories are remarkably similar regarding the anti war sentiment. I spoke with an active duty major today whose father was in Vietnam and he made an interesting discovery.

He said that soldiers are still regarded with contempt. He was very blunt when he said that people pay lip service to the ‘soldier as hero’ but when it comes right down to it, soldiers will still be condemned for the actions they are expected to in order to come back home.

His thoughts and the thoughts of other Vet’s who’ve already talked with me really got me thinking about our society. About what’s really important. My mom told me that during Nam, the nightly news was about the body count. Every night was the latest news from Nam. A retired Air Force colonel told me that where she was in Vietnam that the protests were surreal and far away from the realities of the war. Different people, different places and different perspectives.

I find it interesting that an active duty officer would say that the people who praise the soldiers aren’t really supportive. I find it interesting that some civilians who support the troops would never support their children entering into the military. And most interesting is the perception that if you can’t find anything else to do, join the military. Its only an option for people who have no other way out. Hell, that’s how I got here and it was the best decision I ever made.

So learning about my parent’s generation and my parent’s war is very interesting so far. The soundtrack to my WIP is all classic rock, despite working on a contemporary novel. We’ll see where it goes.

I just hope that the people who’ve helped me so far and continue to offer guidance will enjoy the final product.

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Okay so I need help.

I’m starting a new book and I really want to tie in PTSD from Vietnam to my new character home from Iraq, who is seriously screwed up. I’m hoping you’ll take a look and email me with answers, impressions or anything else you think I might be able to use.

I guess the first thing I’m looking to know is who did you know that went over there? What was it like when they came home? How bad was the anti soldier sentiment? What did these guys do when they came home? How were they different? What did they say? Did they talk about it? Where there any significant events that started people changing the way we as a society looked at our soldiers (when was the turn around from baby killer to hero?) I know Dad didn’t go and he was busy protesting and all but what was it like for you and him back here at home? How did you feel when you watched the news? How is the media coverage different today than back then about the war?

Seems like that should be a good starting point. And I know you, you’re going to rally the troops and get me all kinds of information. I want this to be personal observations, not like Wikipedia entries…

Does that makes sense? Any and all help will be greatly appreciated

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