Is that it is almost done.
I've been working on BOOMTOWN for a very long time. How long? Well, it was the project I was actively writing when my wife passed away.
I have to say, for me at least, the death of a spouse tends to slow down the writing on a project.
I came to a complete halt. Of course the fact that the publisher I was going to sell it to went belly up didn't help. Maybe it did'tt really hurt, but it certainly took away from the incentive to get my butt in gear any faster.
I managed to keep myself busy with other projects. Also, I managed to write several sequels to the novel in question. How many? Well, there's "Black Train Blues," "The Devoted (a serialized novella), Songs in the Key of White, "What Rough Beast (With Charles R. Rutledge), and another on the way. Roughly 70,000 words worth of sequels to a novel that has not been finished.
But it's very close. Very close, indeed.
So close, in fact, that I'm willing to put the first scene here for people to read. It's a Jonathan Crowley story. It is also a weird western. That last part will probably make it a challenging sale, but I am a patient soul. I'll make it work, one way or another.
Almost done. I'm between projects, which means I'm only working on three different things at once. Well, four, but who's counting?
Here, because I can, is that sample I promised you: the first scene from BOOMTOWN, A Jonathan Crowley Chronicle.
BOOMTOWN
By James A. Moore
copyright 2018, by James A. Moore
Colorado Territories, 1869
Chapter One: “Frozen Moments”
“There’s something wrong with the world when it’s cold enough to
freeze a waterfall.”
The trapper spoke to himself, or just possibly his horse,
but neither of them responded. The proof of his comment lay above him and to
his left, a frozen wall of white ice that only two days before had still been
running water.
The cold was all-encompassing, a living thing that seemed to
thrive on sucking the heat from the world around man and stallion alike. He
called his horse Stomper and it was a massive thing, meant for hauling wagons.
The black beast barely seemed to notice his weight or the burden of the sled
behind it, but the cold sent plumes of steam from its muzzle with each breath.
Covered in the thick coat he’d sewn for it, his stallion looked almost more like
a locomotive than it did an animal. He wouldn’t see his beast of burden and
closest living acquaintance killed by the elements if he could help it.
It wasn’t the elements, however, that had done most of the
killing in the area. If he had to guess it was Indians. Someone must have
driven them half mad if they were responsible for the bodies he kept finding.
The idea had been, as it always was, to shoot enough bison and
foxes and wolves to load his sled with furs. Instead he’d been gathering the
dead for the last two days. He didn’t have it in him to leave them frozen to
the ground for animals to feast on. His mother would surely rise from her grave
and beat his fool head into a new shape if he ever got that callous.
Didn’t much help him get his work done, but there was enough
money set aside and as a trapper and hunter it wasn’t overly likely that he’d
starve any time soon.
The latest body showed itself on the left side of the trail, and
he nodded his head and tugged the reins. Stomper came to a halt and snorted
agreeably.
The trapper slid from his saddle with practiced ease and walked
over to the latest grisly find. Nine bodies so far, each one cut, shot and in
different stages of undress, depending on the sex. There were two women who had
likely been of marrying age among the dead. There was also a little girl child
and an old woman who should have never headed from the east to the wilds. Only
the crone had any clothes on her by the time the murdering dogs were done. The
others had been treated as poorly as the whores in San Francisco, and that was
poorly indeed.
The man in the snow stared with dead eyes behind thin
spectacles. The frost on the lenses hid the color of his eyes and made him look
blind as well as dead.
That he was dead was obvious. Even if he’d not been frozen to
the ground there were lacerations on his skin and shreds of meat and flesh
peeking from under his tattered clothing. Like the waterfall a short ways back
the trickles of blood had frozen into twists of crimson that hung suspended from
his wounds. If he had to guess, the trapper would have told anyone curious that
he suspected the man had been dragged behind a horse for a while. His shoes
were torn apart—a pity that, as they could have fetched a few cents—and his
clothing, thin and fine and no doubt very expensive, had peeled half way from
his body during the long trip. Ropes still bound his hands and cut into the
flesh of his wrists and forearms. He’d very likely fought hard to get away
before his attackers had finished with their job.
“Well, sir, I’m sorry to meet you this way.” He looked the body
over again and frowned. Someone, his killers or otherwise, had turned out the
man’s pockets and taken everything that might have value. The cloth of his vest
was split where his watch fop had been torn away. The derby he’d likely worn at
one time was nearby and judging by how clean it was, he guessed it had been
dropped by the killer after the fact.
“I reckon we should get to work, old boy.” The wind let out a
moan from the nearby trees and sent an additional shiver through him. No one
else bothered to reply and he reckoned that was for the best.
He took the axe and pick from the bundle he kept on Stomper’s
flank and got to digging. The night before had seen a hard, freezing rain and
the body was stuck in a thick caul of ice and mud.
Ten minutes later he had a rope wrapped around both wrists—new
rope that had not frozen into the ground—and he tied that to Stomper’s sled
before urging his horse forward. The ground gave up the its prize reluctantly,
and for a moment the trapper thought the corpse would break like a sapling
before it finally came free with a crunching sound.
Once uprooted the dead man slithered stiffly across the ice and
bounced off two aspen trees before coming to a rest. He slid the body across
the ice until he could wrestle the weight onto the back of the sled.
He had leather aplenty and he used it to lash the body on top of
the other corpses.
“Well, sir. You’re the tenth and I pray the last. Let’s see
about getting you to Carson’s Point. Might be we can arrange a funeral for
you.”
The rain started again, dropping from the sky in a half frozen
state and solidifying as soon as it touched the ground. The sound it made as it
rattled to the earth was not unlike a dozen sets of teeth chattering away.
“I’d never wish a good man to hell, sir, but I reckon it just
might be warmer in either end of the journey than it is here.”
They rode together in silence, he and his ten companions, and
Stomper carried them all without complaint.
