Flogging Charlie

Since I don't have any time for blogging today, I leave you with another excerpt from my recently-published novel--allowing myself yet another opportunity to flog it. As blogger Chuck Butcher has noted, "there is an economy of styling and language and the protagonist is well drawn." As a good portion of the novel takes place in the presence of beer, I can therefore recommend it wholeheartedly (if not objectively) to everyone. Get your copy today--delivery before Christmas is assured!

An excerpt, with the protagonist, Charlie di Paulo, and two friends--Carlos Munro and Clay Lapierre--in a bar scene.

__________

“You think that’s really his name--Heater?” Carlos eyed a bank shot on the five ball.

“You don’t have the angle.” Charlie’s eyes were peering from the edge of the pool table.

“I think he’s got it.” Lapierre, with less interest, leaning against the wall.

“I’m telling you, the physics just aren’t with you.”

“Watch and learn.” Carlos tapped the five gently off the rail, just in front of Charlie’s nose, and watched it dribble toward the corner before losing steam a couple inches short of the corner pocket. “Damn. But the physics were there.”

“Nope. If you’d hit it hard enough to knock it in, you’d have lost the angle.”

“Piss off—it was easily makeable.”

They looked at Clay for a ruling. “Inconclusive,” he judged.

Carlos picked up his beer and joined Clay on the wall. “What do you think—is he a dangerous guy?”

“I don’t know. I tell you though, I wouldn’t want to get on his bad side.”

“Maybe our next movie should be about a bookie,” Clay suggested.

Charlie, lining up a shot. “Actually, you look a lot like him. Younger.”

“Gambling is one of the most ancient professions.” Carlos, retreating into speculation. “In fact, the argument could be made that it’s the oldest profession—not prostitution. Exchanging money for sex is a fairly advanced concept, but gambling. . . .”

“Gambling depends on money.” Lapierre noted.

“No, think about one caveman saying to his buddy, ‘If I can hit that pterodactyl with this rock, will you give me your share of mastodon?’ Rudimentary gambling, like kids.”

“What about, ‘I bet you your woman that I can hit that pterodactyl with this rock.’ Gambling and pimping at the same time.”

“Co-emergent professions—nice. But they’d have to have the idea of ownership first, so I think it’s unlikely.”

“What are you talking about? Men jealously guarding their women? That’s as ancient as mankind.”

“He’s got you there,” Charlie said.

Charlie sank a difficult angle shot, but missed the simple follow—twelve in the corner. Carlos smirked on his way back to the table. “Where were the physics there, Charlie boy?”

Charlie joined Lapierre on the wall. “How much work do you do for Heater these days?”

“Driving?”

Without thinking, he answered, “Yeah.” He considered Charlie’s answer further. “You do other work?”

“He doesn’t call me for fares very often, but about twice a month he has me run collections for him.”

Carlos, poised over the three ball, straightened up. “Collections? You pinch hit as a bookie?”

Charlie shrugged. “Oh, for God’s sake, I’m not Vito Corleone.” He nevertheless took the opportunity to take a theatrical, Godfathery sip of beer. “When Heater’s car was broken down, I took him on his rounds a few times. Got to know the routine. Now, once in a while when he gets busy, he gives me a call, and I take a spin around his other businesses. It’s very small time stuff. A cashier at the towing business wants to put a ten spot on the Ducks, that kind of thing. I just run the meter and he pays me that.”

“Sure, that’s how it starts out,” Lapierre goaded. “But pretty soon you’re taking C-notes, maybe a car title. Before you know it, you’re out with Heater at 2 am packing a lead pipe.”

“He’s probably in too deep already.” Carlos cracked the three, rattling it into the side pocket. “He’s like a rat in one of those humane traps. He’s munching on the cheese, but he doesn’t realize there’s no way out.”

Charlie put down his beer, scratched his cheek, and did his best Brando. “What have I ever done to make you treat me so disrespectfully?”

Buy This Book

Pardon me while I interrupt our regularly-scheduled blogging with this commercial announcement.

I have written a novel.

It has been long in coming--six years since I started it, though I actually finished the first draft by 2003. The next year or so was editing, and then the rest of the time I have been trying to get it published. My final bid was the major independent publisher Milkweed Editions, who decided to pass after subjecting it to a thorough editorial review (not just the slush pile reader, who as in many other cases, rejected it outright). Cue the sad strings.

But wait! I have, undaunted, decided that it's worth putting out there, damn the embarrassment and shame that comes with self-publishing. Art is, after all, a communication, not a product. There's something deeply depressing about the prospect of this thing moldering in the basement. I don't know if readers of beer blogs are readers of novels, but consider this an active pitch: buy the book, you'll like it! An additional hook: it's set in early microbrew-era Portland; see the birth of Beervana!

I'll include a couple of the beer-related excerpts below to give you a sense of the writing. But first, here's the description from the back cover:

The Puddle Variations
Walking Man Press, 2007, 260 pages.
ISBN: 978-0-6151-7184-5

What portion of a 16mm movie can be made for $1,000? Or, put another way, how does one turn a thousand dollars into a 30-minute short? This is the question confronting Charlie di Paulo, who has just received a seed grant from the Portland Film Institute to shoot his 16mm film. For a 26-year-old cab driver, a thousand dollars is a lot of cash, yet it won’t even cover the cost of his film stock.

Money isn’t Charlie’s only problem. His new girlfriend and his stepfather, Vic, are both convinced he should be pursuing his dream through more conventional means, and Vic has offered to pay for film school. For Charlie, whose 8mm short was good enough to win him the grant, education isn’t necessary—money is. As the book unfolds, he sets about trying to raise the money and mount the production, and along the way he receives support in various forms from the local doyenne of independent film, a cobbler, a philosophy student, and a bookie.


Excerpts
In the first one, the main character, Charlie, attempts to woo Janie with alcohol. Of course, he is a man with certain tastes. In the second one, Charlie describes the city to his step-father, visiting from Phoenix.

____

“Can I get you something to drink?” he asked.

“Whatcha got?”

“Alcoholic or non?”

“Alcoholic.”

“Beer. Two varieties: stout or India pale ale.”

“You don’t have any wine?”

“You’re in Portland now; you’ve got to kick that wine habit. This is a beer town.”

“Beer’s icky.”

He went to the table where he had left a paper sack next to the fruit bowl. He selected two bottles of beer, went to the kitchen and poured them into glasses. Thick and black as oil. “You just haven’t been drinking the right beer.”

“Ewww. This is going to be so icky. Look at it.” But she took the glass. “So when do we eat, mister?”

“Food will take a half hour to cook, roundabout. When do you want to eat?”

“Now.”

“Hmm, well. I’ll see what I can do.” From the kitchen, “Put some music on.”

He set the oven to preheat, pulled out the food, and put the rest of the beer in the fridge. While he puttered, he heard her testing music in the living room. A few notes of the Clash, silence. He put in the veggies, pulled out the salad, and tossed it. He came out of the kitchen to the sound of jazz, but then saw her stop the music. Eject. She picked up a handful of CDs and thumbed through them, stopping from time to time to read the back cover of one. Charlie, watching, noticing that she took sizeable swallows of her beer.

She finally settled on a 70s funk compilation. Decisively dropping the CD in the player, she pressed play and spun away from the stereo.

“Hey. How long have you been standing there?”

“Just came out.”

She turned back for her beer, sitting next to the stereo. “I don’t believe you. You were spying on me.” He didn’t say anything; didn’t move. She walked up to him, too close, looked down her nose at him. “You little spier.” Her assessment punctuated with another swallow of beer.

“See, stout. Tasty.”

She looked at the remaining inch of liquid in her glass, then back at him. Leaned back. “Do you like my music selection?” They listened to a fat bass line roll out of the speakers and let smiles bloom.

“I do.”

____

On the way through downtown, Charlie pointed out the sights. “The freeway used to be on this side of the river.” He indicated the green ribbon between the river and buildings of the city. “But they ripped it out in the 70s and put in Waterfront Park.”

“Nice.”

A few blocks later: “If you look up a couple streets on your left, you can see Pioneer Courthouse Square. It’s an open block we call our ‘living room.’”

“It’s a nice downtown. Clean.” He looked out his window and up. “And compact. The blocks are really small, aren’t they?”

Jake’s was still buzzing when they got there at nine. Vic stopped before they went in and sampled the air. “I remember this smell. What is it?”

Charlie pointed to an industrial orange-brick building two blocks north. The Blitz-Weinhard brewery. “Boiling beer.”

“Oh right. They brew beer often?”

“All the time. It’s the smell of the city.”