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Jon Batson Author Songwriter
Category:
Action/Thriller
Publisher: Midnight Whistler Publishers
ISBN-10: 1441404392
Type: Fiction
Pages: 184
ISBN-13: 139781441404398
Price: $2.99 (eBook)
The research for a fiction novel turns deadly as the disjointed pieces begin to make sense.
Unpublished novelist Jack Richmond is given an assignment by a publisher, write a book that is relevant to our time. He begins researching the book, not knowing that his task is an exercise in data gathering. But there are factions who don't want the data gathered, and other factions who want it gathered but not evaluated. Things turn ugly when Jack discovers someone is trying to kill him.
Excerpt
The giant stone lions outside the New York Public Library watched me walk down the great steps, my breath reaching out before me in the cold. They seemed to be there as my personal protection, looking out for me as I stood waiting for the bus.
I pulled my coat collar up against the freezing rain of the January evening and looked around to smile at the stone guardians, still and vigilant. But they didn't blink as the dark SUV swerved, jumped the curb and headed straight for me. I caught it out of the corner of my eye and rolled toward the great steps, notebooks flying.
A woman screamed and horns blared as I came to rest at the bottom step, sitting in a puddle of slush, my knees and elbows pulsing. The black monster, twice the size of a standard sedan, squealed, tires skidding and swung back onto the street. Four frightened pedestrians were also sitting on the sidewalk, thanking whatever deity protected them for their narrow escapes.
“Are you OK?” asked a man in a uniform. The patch indicated a private company. He was a hired security guard, possible for the library.
“I think so.” I took the offered hand and pulled myself up to my feet. “Shaken is all.” My notebooks were blowing across the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Forty-Second Street, ignored by the ever increasing number of cars filling the street.
“I'll help you gather up what we can,” said the guard.
“Thanks,” I replied, glad for the help.
It took us a quarter-hour to collect all we could without risk to life and limb. There were no injuries, no one hit; the incident was ignored by the passing police. An SUV jumps the curb a lot these days, so many people are on the phone, driving with one hand, while also drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette. It was dark when I finally gave up on the rest of my notes.
“Student?” asked the guard, handing me the remnants of a loose-leaf notebook.
“Novelist. I've got a pipe and a bottle of Jack Daniels at home to prove it.”
“Ah! Researching a story?”
“Yeah, my publisher wants something relevant.”
“Well, OK. Keep an eye out for wild SUVs.” He slapped me on the arm like a drinking buddy and turned to lope up the steps.
“Thanks,” I called after him. He waved a hand over his shoulder and was gone into the great hall of the library. The twin lions said nothing. Their protection was apparently at an end. From here out, I was on my own.
The bus pulled up, further soaking my pants cuffs. I got on, thinking of myself as lucky to have been missed by a run-away vehicle, unlucky for losing my notes in the slush. Maybe I was lucky to have lost no more than a few pieces of paper in a city with one of the highest crime rates in the country.
I didn't really care for New York, but it's where the agents and publishers are. And after all, I am a novelist. I have a laptop: cheap, reliable, and portable, containing a basic writing program and not much else. I didn't need anything else, I was a novelist and colorful as hell. That was what I reminded myself as I opened the door to my tiny apartment in the Village. “I'm a New York novelist and I'm colorful as hell!”
I threw my coat over the back of the couch and my notebooks down on the rug. I'd sort them out later and see if I had saved anything. Most of the concepts were in my head, but the details were on the paper.
I used to think that the trick of being a novelist is to make enough money to survive until you are dead and your novels and worth something. Now I see that it is a matter of staying alive until you finish your novel. If you are on the right track, you see, there are people you will meet along that track who want to kill you. I didn't think that at the time, the SUV might have been a fluke, an accident. No one was hurt, after all.
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