Quite the Life (and all in Times New Roman 10pt!)
I ended last week’s WildLife post with “A problem to be solved…”.
Ever inventive, Susan (wife/partner/Princess) and I came up with this solution.
It works well.
And as will be seen in future WildLife posts, our solution also makes for handy seats while dining.
Leddy sat across from Penny Lane in the Boston Public Library’s Johnson Building. Leddy always thought she and Penny’d look like a tower salt&pepper shakers if Penny could get on her shoulders. Leddy, stocky and dark like her father, Penny thin and fair like her father if he didn’t get to his Bermuda home for a weekend.
Out the window she watched firetrucks and ambulance race towards the waterfront until people crowded around her and blocked the view. She switched her tablet from screen to dVids, a gift from Penny’s father, and guided her drone with a specialized pen she designed inside MIT’s Media Lab as part of the Future Entrepreneurs Club. She couldn’t stop actionable ideas from coming to her. Her advisors wondered if she were adopted. Grad students and professors attempted to copy her designs. Penny’s father, Briggs, told Penny to keep an eye on her and bring any things she came up with to him.
Briggs had Penny and Leddy to lunch at least once a week. He ate little, a salad if anything and rarely more, bottled water on the side, made sure Leddy ate like a queen, and probed her about anything Penny brought to his attention, but gently, conversationally, so she wouldn’t catch on.
Leddy thought him a playable fool. He could get her hands on tech even her Media Lab buds knew nothing about and Leddy always let him think something profitable would come of it.
But gently, conversationally, so he wouldn’t catch on. After their third lunch she started picking at her food.
She’d order everything and anything, then have it boxed up to go and pass it around when she got back to the lab.
A lot of those students were just getting by.
And Leddy liked to pay it forward when she could.
She tapped Penny’s tablet. “People will see what’s on your screen.”
Penny laughed. “I’m going inside. I’ll be able to sell this, create a bidding war. We’re the first on the scene.”
“You take too many chances.”
Penny kept her tablet active. “You don’t take enough. What are you doing?”
“Watching vehicular and foot traffic.”
“Do you listen to yourself? You sound like your father.”
“You sound like yours.”
“Yeah? How ’bout you give those dVids back. Briggs won’t mind.”
Once again we glory in Hecate and note she has concerns.
Because we value The Old Ones in our lives, their concerns are our concerns.
In this case, we suspect Hecate is concerned about the growing Coyote population in the woods behind our home.
We want the Raccoons to feel safe when they grace us with their presence.
Likewise, we want Coyote to know we appreciate them as well.
Hmm…
A problem to be solved…
Let me know you’d like either
I’ll email the you ARC ASAP.
Thanks!
The rest of this email contains The Inheritors early reader comments (which will probably end up as front matter in the book along with yours, if you get them to me before 28 June 2023).
<BEGIN HYPE>
Early Reader Comments
Joseph Carrabis’s Inheritors is a wild, time-traveling, mind-bending story… A staggering amount of world-building is layered in every chapter, making you hungry for more. Physics, mysticism, biological science, and theology are woven into dark, thought-provoking settings that are altogether different but connected and reward the reader the deeper they look. Yet, a suitable setting would be nothing without interesting characters, which this book has plenty of. A shape-shifting monster driven by primal desires brushes shoulders with intelligent design, becoming an incarnation of vengeance. A child with a strange gift is abducted from home and must learn to co-exist with beings far different from himself. A boy exposed to dark magic and demonic rituals must tread carefully or become the thing he dreads. All these elements combine into a thrilling tale that concludes with a bang and gets richer with every telling. Yes, this one is a must-read but get ready, because you’re going to want to read again and again.
It is rare to find someone who writes the way Joseph Carrabis does—with the gift of a true storyteller, weaving stories that enrapture readers from the first word to the very last. As they travel through the The Inheritors’ pages, readers will encounter so much more than just the story of a little boy named Tommy. Guided by Carrabis’ carefully-metered and eloquent prose, readers will find themselves on a journey they could have never before imagined possible, challenged to rethink everything they thought they knew about history, time, space, and the nature of life itself. Reminiscent of the works of Pynchon, Clarke, and Vonnegut, The Inheritors is as intricately complex as it is emotionally resonant and will no doubt draw readers back again and again for subsequent rereads. A magnum opus of modern day storytelling, The Inheritors is evidence of Carrabis’ consummate skill as a writer.
<END HYPE>
Cranston stopped at the doors to the precinct’s central office. John Rhinehold knelt beside Cranston’s desk. Rhinehold was the latest edition to the BPD’s undercover cybersecurity squad. Undercover Cranston could get. Rhinehold, too-thin for that tall a frame with an unruly, bushy black beard and always in a tshirt and jeans no matter the weather, looked like an early to mid-twenties heroin addict desperate for his next score. But that’s where the undercover aspect ended. That thick, long braid got caught in drawers, doors, was long enough to strangle him and was the perfect handhold for someone wanting to do damage to Rhinehold’s head.
His head popped up and watched Cranston’s screen light up. Rhinehold smiled, stood, and his head fell back as some cables came up with him, his hair snaked in among them.
Cranston shook his head as Rhinehold extricated himself. Leddy’s ring sounded from his mobile. “POPS?”
He TXTed back. “K U?”
The precinct’s wall mounted blues flashed ON-ON-off ON-ON-off. Chairs screeched across the hardwood floor.
Leddy TXTed “C THS?” and Cranston’s attention returned to his phone. Leddy sent her video through. “SIMON GOT IT ALL!”
SIMON. Situational Intelligent MONitor. She sent him pictures at every stage of SIMON’s development and he had them made into a tshirt collage with the heading “Leddy’s Little Project.”
She loved it.
But “SIMON GOT IT ALL!”?
She had it working?
He needed to pay more attention during dinners.
Its cameras moved through hazy clouds flecked with ash. He wasn’t sure what he was seeing until the drone cleared the clouds. It flew just above street level and revealed the clouds as billowing smoke.
“WRU”
“BPL Johnson w Pen.”
Cranston’s jaw tightened briefly. He didn’t like to interfere in Leddy’s friendships. Getting into that special high school MIT-Harvard thing really made her blossom. She hadn’t been able to focus on anything since her mother passed five years back. Cranston knew his daughter was special, used his connections to get her time with top grief counselors and therapists, but it wasn’t until Penny Lane and her father, Briggs, that Leddy got into the program.
She didn’t make the cut and the reason infuriated him more than her; she didn’t meet their BIPOC or LGBTQ diversity requirements. “Was that a requirement for all the white kids who got in?”