I Was Vs. I Am

I wrote my entire first book, and most of my second, in first-person, past tense.  I thought it gave the story a feel of a personal storyteller, recounting the experiences that had happened to him.

However, I've read a few other YA books lately, and I've noticed that a few of them have been in present tense.  I found myself liking that tense better.

For one, it allows readers to feel like they're discovering facts at the same time as the protagonist.  In my books, my main character has no memory of where he's been or who he is, so having him live in present tense allows a shared mystery with the character and the reader.

Secondly, in past tense, you know the main character is going to survive whatever circumstances are thrown their way.  They have to, since they're still talking, and the situation has already happened.  But in present tense, that knowledge is gone.  I remember reading Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins, and thinking, you know, Katniss might not survive.  I could easily imagine an outcome where Katniss dies, and the story switches to another viewpoint.  Since the story was told in present tense, there was nothing external stopping the author from doing that.

I want that same kind of tension in my stories.  The kind where you're constantly thinking, oh, is Garrett going to survive this?

So, I have started to rewrite my books from past tense to present tense.  And it's a large undertaking.  I have done a few find/replaces, such as I was to I am, I could to I can, but I still have to read every word.  I have a lot of other verbs in there, and they all need to be switched over.  And the stupid English language seems to have more irregular verbs than regular one.

I've finished two chapters, and I like the result a lot more. Add that to the continuous editing process, and this book should be much better when I finish with it.

Cutting Out the Dross

Oh, editing.

When I finished my first book, Powers Awakening, it had a different title (The Awakening), and was pretty long at 142,000 words.  I had learned that Shadow Mountain Publishing only took Utah authors, so I created a query letter, proudly stating that I had a 140k+ word book.

The rejection letter returned promptly.  It was a standard form letter, so I didn't know what, if anything I had done wrong.  But another aspiring writer and a friend, Janette Clark, told me that she thought the page count was too long for a first-time novel of that genre.

Turns out that the average YA debut novel is 80k to 100k words.  Publishers just don't want to risk printing a longer book for a beginning author.  It costs more money to print, and takes up more room on a book shelf.

But now I was faced with a dilemma.  I had to cut out pretty much a third of my book.

I think I've done a good job so far.  It's been about three years since I finished that novel, and I've cut it down to 120k words.  I haven't worked on it continuously, obviously.  I've been learning my craft, writing in my second book, and evolving into the writer I want to be.

I have a few more items to erase.  I originally had my protagonist join a family where there were six kids.  I cut out one kid already, and I think I'm going to cut out another.  They just don't add anything extra to the story, and any story arcs that include them can easily be changed to the other kids.

I also have a few chapters that can be summed up in a page or a flashback.  I don't need to go into all this detail on how the Stillwells are building a room for Garrett.  It's just not exciting to hear about hammering and nailing and putting up sheet rock.  See, you're bored already!

And near the end of the book, an event happens where I'm suddenly introducing twelve new characters.  These characters are actually based on three of my sibling's families, and I did it as a thank you for their help with my book.  However, that's just too many new characters five chapters before the end.  I'm sad to see the bulk of them go, but it needs to be done.  I have a few printed books where those characters can live on, but the final version will only have one family remaining.

Hopefully, with all these changes, and other general tightening up of the paragraphs, I can hit my goal of 100,000 words.  Once that happens, I'll start to shop around for an agent and/or a publisher.  It should help that I'll have the bulk of my second book done already.

Chapter Two of Powers Awakening

Chapter 2

Growth

I awoke suddenly, in the dark, knowing that something was wrong. As I looked around, trying to determine the danger, I realized that I couldn’t breathe. Something was around my neck, cutting off my airway. I tried to get my fingers underneath it, but it was too tight, and my muscles didn’t want to cooperate. I still had enough presence of mind to not just yell out, and so used some of the little breath I had left to let out my best impersonation of a baby’s cry.

It seemed to do the trick, because immediately, I heard feet jump to the ground off of a bed somewhere. A door creaked, the hallway light came on, and those same feet walked quickly down the hall. The door to my room opened, and Susan came through it to stand over me. Light spilling from the hallway illuminated my face that must have now been turning purple.

“Oh my goodness!” she shrieked, “You’re choking!” She rushed over and pulled down the blanket. I couldn’t see the problem, but her gasp made me realize that it was something bad. She looked wildly around the room, and then lunged for something out of my line of sight. When she came back, she had a pair of scissors in her hand.

“Hold still, Garrett, I’m going to have to cut your shirt,” she said as she grabbed the bottom of my shirt and started clipping it. As she got closer to my neck, she added, “I’m so sorry, but this might hurt. I might cut your skin.” I didn’t care, as long as I could breathe again. It had been 20 seconds since I had last been able to breathe, and my newborn lungs couldn’t hold much air. I was slowly losing consciousness.

Suddenly, with a loud snap, accompanied by a sharp pain in my neck, the constriction was gone. I inhaled long and deep, never tasting anything so delicious in my very short lifetime.

Susan gave a whimper of consternation, and then pressed the cloth that had previously been my shirt against my neck. My neck still gave out twinges of pain, but I didn’t feel any warm liquid running down. Susan must have been stopping the blood flow.

“What’s the matter?” “Is the baby ok?” Todd and Jason’s voices came through the door. It appeared that my cry and Susan’s shout had awoken the children. One person came into the room, and I could tell by the height and age that this was Jack, the father. The light from the hallway cast his features into shadow, so I couldn’t see exactly what he looked like.

“What’s all the commotion, Susan?” he asked.

“Everything’s ok now, it’s just that Garrett’s t-shirt was choking him. I had to cut it off, and I accidentally cut him in the process,” she replied.

“Why was his t-shirt choking him? It looked fine on him before.” Jack came over and picked me up.

“Whoa, he’s heavier than I remember him being. Wait a second…” Jack trailed off as he looked me over.

“Kids, it’s time to go back to bed. And I mean now.” There were some grumblings, but everyone did as they were told. Jack waited until the last straggler was gone. “Susan, turn on the light.”

Susan flipped the light on, and gasped. I glanced down on myself, and joined Susan with my own quick intake of air. I was bigger. If I had to gauge my age now, I would have put it at two months old. Gone were my newborn hands and feet. My body was longer, and I even looked a little pudgy. I couldn’t remember eating anything, so that kind of threw me for a loop. While making this assessment of my new body proportions, Jack and Susan were doing the same. Even though I was again thrust into a new situation, I still scolded myself. I was trying to be a perfect, normal newborn. Newborns don’t gasp. I think it was only because of my new dimensions that neither of the adults noticed my un-baby-like action.

“He’s so much bigger,” Susan whispered. “What’s going on, Jack?”

Jack looked just as flabbergasted as Susan. “I don’t know,” he whispered back. “Maybe he has one of those rare diseases, one that makes people grow really fast. Maybe that’s why he was left outside. Someone didn’t want to have to deal with the added expense of raising a child like this.”

“But you said that no one in town had heard anything of a baby.”

“I don’t know, Susan,” he repeated. “Maybe it was someone from far away that drove here and left him behind.”

“What should we do now? Should we take him to a doctor?” wondered Susan. “I doubt that Dr. Johnson has ever come across something like this. We’d probably have to take him to Iowa City or Omaha to see a specialist.”

Jack visibly pondered his wife’s words. “I think that for right now, we should all go to sleep. We’ll get him some new clothes in the morning. Then we can decide what to do.” Jack laid me back down, and rearranged the blanket to fit over me.

Susan turned and reached for the light switch, when she stopped. She turned back around and stared at my face. “Jack, do you realize that Garrett only cried the one time? He didn’t cry when I cut him, and he’s looked back and forth at us the whole time we were talking. Any normal baby would have been crying this entire time.”

I realized belatedly that she was right. A normal baby would have cried as soon as the t-shirt was gone. I was so busy being upset with myself for gasping, that I forgot about other normal baby actions. Of course, it was too late now. If I tried to start crying, right after she had said something, it would only confirm Susan’s suspicions.

“In fact, it even looks like he knows what I’m talking about right now,” Susan said. “Do you think he can understand us?”

Jack, however, was not so easily persuaded. “I think that might be pushing it, Susan. True, he hasn’t cried, but some babies don’t. Remember Michelle? She almost never cried.”

“I suppose you’re right, but still…” Susan gave me one last look before turning off the light. Both she and Jack went through the door, and Jack closed it afterwards. And that left me in the dark, contemplating what was happening to me, and trying to figure out why. I was too tired to think for long, though, and fell asleep shortly after.

* * * * * *

It was after all that drama that I had my first dream. I was sitting in a dimly-lit room, sketching out a diagram of some kind of complex machinery. I could see that I was good at this, as I quickly traced various parts of the diagram. I finished one aspect, and sat back in my chair. I noticed that I was in a windowless room, the walls cracked and broken. I was sitting in a utilitarian chair that was quite uncomfortable, but that I knew my body had learned to ignore long before. The sole illumination was a single panel of light, set flush with the ceiling. I could tell that there were other panels up there that at one time had had the task of lighting the room, but they were all burned out. There was only one door leading out of this room, made of steel and inlaid with wood, in the far corner from where I sat. My dream-self looked towards the door, as if he were waiting for something. As I gazed through his eyes, I realized that I was included in him, but not entirely. It felt like I was a conscious person, occupying a part of his body. I thought the things he thought, but I couldn’t access any memories, or take over his actions. I was just along for the ride. But when parts of his body moved, it felt like my body moving, too. It was very disconcerting. He and I shrugged our adult-shoulders, and went back to drawing.

Suddenly, we heard a rush of footsteps beyond the door. We stood up from our chair, not really knowing whom to expect. My dream-self hoped that it was the news that he had been waiting for, but also knew that it could be someone very unwelcome. He enjoyed being in this out-of-the way, secluded room, far from the populated areas, but it was also out of the communication loop. We reached down and grabbed a bizarre-looking gun, set in a holster at our waist. The gun had two barrels, set on opposite sides of a grip, so that the grip connected the two. It was black, and small, but something about it made me realize that it was lethal. We didn’t draw it, but left our hand around the grip, ready to use it at any moment. There was a familiar way in which he grasped it that made me realize that my dream-self had become quite adept at using it. I also realized that he had worn it for a long time, so long that it was a commonplace feature on his hip. We braced ourselves behind the steel table, ready to employ it as a shield if needed.

The other-Garrett had a sense of dread as the footsteps echoed closer. He knew that alarms were supposed to go off, but it was always a possibility that they had disabled the perimeter system. It was so antiquated that he was vaguely surprised that it still worked during tests. My dream-self knew that if they were coming, he wouldn’t have much of a chance before he died. But I could see that he hoped to give a good fight before going down.

The footsteps stopped at the door, a good sign. A knock sounded, rapping twice rapidly, then twice more slowly. We sighed, rolling our eyes as we let go of his pistol, and walked over to the door. We opened it quickly, pulled in the person waiting, and shut the door.

“Do you know how idiotic that knock sounds?” we asked. “If it was the Shock Squad, they would have just busted down the door.” We surveyed the person before us: my dream-self’s friend, Greggor. His clothing was slightly tattered, and there were pieces of dirt in his short, black hair. His dust-lined face made him look five years older than his actual age, which my dream-self knew to be about the same as himself, twenty-one. He also wore a holster with a double-barreled gun, though it looked like he didn’t wear it as easily as we did. He peered at us with his brown eyes, waiting for us to ask the question. We sighed again. The other-Garrett hated it when Greggor made him wait.

“So, did it work?” we asked, eyebrows raised.

“Well, it did, and it didn’t.” He paused again.

“Greggor,” we began exasperatedly, “I feel like I’m pulling teeth here. What do you mean?”

Greggor scrunched up his face in an expression the other-Garrett knew all too well. He wasn’t going to tell us anything more. “Maybe it would be best if you came and saw for yourself, Garrett. I don’t think I can do the telling justice.”

We sighed for the third time, something the other-Garrett did quite regularly around Greggor. “OK, lead on.”

We both exited the room, Greggor leading the way. Pools of light lit the corridor, but it was mostly dark. I could see other hallways branching away, each one suffering from an absence of light. As we walked, I learned the facts as my dream-self reviewed them in his mind. He wasn’t involved in this stage of the Project, so he didn’t know much. I perked up at a mention of this Project, but the other-Garrett didn’t dwell on it. I only saw a brief glimpse of the drawing he had been working on, and then his thoughts turned again to this area of the Project. He knew, and I learned, that it was something to do with charging different frequencies that the brain used. This was supposed to unlock areas of the brain that no one had uncovered yet. I also knew from my dream-self that they had just completed their first test on a rat, to see if it worked like they had been theorizing. That’s why Greggor’s statement was so puzzling: “It did, and it didn’t.”

As we walked, Greggor turned to us. “Hey Garrett, did you know that when glass breaks, the cracks move faster than 3,000 miles per hour? So, if you want to photograph the event, you’ll need to find a slow-motion camera that can film at a millionth of a second. Isn’t that weird?”

We gave a glimmer of a smile. From my other-self, I learned that Greggor was full of these little factoids, most of them pretty useless. But my dream-self enjoyed learning them. They took his mind off life, the utilitarian surroundings, the bland food, and the threat of the Shock Squad. These factoids were absolutely worth it.

My dream-self was about to respond with a factoid of his own (the world’s oldest piece of chewing gum is nine thousand years old), when we turned a corner, and came to our destination. It was a small door that looked too short for our height. We opened it and entered. I tried to duck, but my dream-self didn’t. Since I didn’t have control over our body, nothing happened. However, I could see that the other-Garrett knew from experience that there was a one-inch clearance for his head. Still, I would have felt better if we had ducked.

The room beyond was bigger than I had anticipated, given the relative smallness of the door. Five people were inside, three women and two men, all standing around different pieces of equipment. A young woman and older man were talking together in front of a large screen, and the other woman and men were by themselves. They were all wearing the same type of clothes as my dream-self and Greggor, in what looked like the standard-issue. All of the clothes were in the same style: a long-sleeved t-shirt and a pair of pants, with unassuming gray shoes. The colors differed, so that there was some individualism going on, but the cut was exactly the same. From the clothes that my dream-self was wearing, I could tell that even though they didn’t look like much, these vestments were extremely comfortable.

Greggor turned his head in a weird way, and we looked over at him. He was looking at the young woman, a pretty, twenty-something girl with dark hair. It looked like he was trying to catch her eye. From my dream-self’s thoughts, I knew that Greggor liked this girl. We cleared our throat, and Greggor snapped his head around to the front, red staining his cheeks at being caught.

The woman standing alone finished her work, and turned to us. She had blond hair, and looked to be about thirty-five years old. From the other-Garrett’s thoughts, I knew that this was Dr. Alice Pearson, one of the lead scientists in this part of the Project. “Ahh, Garrett, you’re here. Did Greggor bring you up to speed?” Alice turned her gaze to Greggor, who seemed to shrink within himself to escape that glare.

“No, he didn’t,” my dream-self replied. “Greggor offered a cryptic statement, how it worked, but didn’t work, which explained nothing.” We gave Greggor a hard look, who cringed a little more, and continued, “so here I am.” Before Greggor could feel too badly about it, we sent him a wink, letting him know that we were joking with him. He smiled back. Alice shook her head, and turned away, but not before I heard her mutter, “Why am I not surprised?” In a normal voice, she continued, “Well, you’re here, so let’s show you what happened.”

My dream-self and I started to walk over to a shelf. On the shelf was a large, box-like structure, totally covered by a sheet. Loud, unpleasant screeching emanated from the box, like nails on metal.

“We had to cover the cage with this blanket,” explained Alice, “to hide ourselves from its sight. Otherwise, the rat was hurting itself against the bars, trying to claw its way out. As you can hear, it’s still trying, but believe it or not, this isn’t nearly as loud as when it could see us. So, the experiment worked in this way, but not in another.”

As soon as Alice finished speaking, the screeching greatly diminished in decibels, as if the rat’s strength had given out. “Ah,” she said, “and here’s why it didn’t work.” I was curious about that, and Alice looked like she was about to explain, as she reached for the blanket. However, I could feel myself waking up. I tried with all my will to stay there longer, but my consciousness didn’t cooperate. I woke up, again in my bassinet, everything still dark around me.

As I came awake, the memory of the dream faded quickly. I tried to hold on, but already all I could really remember was looking at a sheet-covered cage. Soon, even that was gone. I was still extremely tired from my near-choking, and again sleep quickly pulled me under.

Beginnings

I began writing Powers Awakening on September 13, 2008. I had a dream that was extremely vivid. I immediately woke up at 5 am, and got on my laptop to start writing down an outline. The dream was just so cool; I knew it would make a great book.

I wrote for three hours, and the ideas kept coming. I surpassed the original dream, and started adding more events and conflict. After that first writing stretch, I realized that I had too much for just one book, and decided to write a trilogy.

I had just started my Master's in Business at Utah State, while working part-time, so it was hard to find time to write. But I managed to fit it in. At first, I thought I was only going to have 120 pages or so. But after one year, with my MBA in hand, I had 170 pages, with a lot more of the story left to be told.

It took another year to finish. I started a full-time job, and I wrote on my lunch break and during down time. In that year, I wrote another 135 pages, for a total of 305 pages in Word, 12-pt Times Roman font.

Needless to say, I was thrilled with the outcome.

Here I had an honest-to-goodness novel. A work of fiction with a plot, conflict, dialogue, antagonists and protagonists, and an over-arching story line. A conclusion that left you with a sense of satisfaction, but also left a desire to know more.

However, once I finally leaned back from my laptop where I had spent so many hours, I realized I was about to embark on a whole other journey: editing.

Chapter One of Powers Awakening

Chapter 1

The Discovery

“Mom! Mom!!!!”

The far-off, muffled sounds stirred my consciousness, slightly waking me from a deep and dreamless sleep. I wondered groggily what had awoken me, when I heard them again.

“Mom, it’s over here! Hurry up!!”

I knew those noises meant something, but my brain was not cooperating. I came awake a little bit more, fighting the unconsciousness. My eyelids, however, remained closed. It was like a force was physically keeping them down. I heard footsteps crunching as a person approached, still emitting those syllables. I made an effort, willing myself to understand, and the sounds resolved themselves into words.

“Oh my gosh! I just can’t believe it.” The speaker was very close. I heard the young feminine voice, but no other information was apparent from listening alone. I heard her moving, and then a sharp, stifled yell, as if she had shouted over her shoulder. “I’m over here!!” A keen whistling punctuated her words as a strong wind blew past my face.

I became aware of another voice, quickly drawing nearer. This voice was lower, but still had a womanly quality to it. “Natalie, where is it? I can’t see anything in this snowstorm!”

I heard a sharp intake of breath, only a few feet away. I needed to know what was going on, so I determined to open my eyes. It was like pushing up a giant weight, but I finally succeeded.

Small white flecks floated before my eyes, swirling around as that same whistling pulled them one way or the other. I peered past the curtain of white, and saw two faces staring at me. One was closer than the other, but they were both blurry, the features too indistinct to make out. The closest face leaned over, and my body achieved weightlessness as I was lifted from my resting place. The heaviness on my eyes overwhelmed my meager strength, and my eyelids fell closed as I slipped into the unknown once more.

* * * * * *

As I gained consciousness, my first sensation was the smell of lavender. I also quickly became aware that I was lying down on something soft, with a blanket of some sort covering me. I wasn't sure how I came to be here. I vaguely remembered two featureless faces, but I wasn't sure if those belonged in a dream or not.

I immediately opened my eyes. I wanted to see where I was, and maybe figure out how I got there. The weights that had held my eyes closed from before had vanished completely, leaving me free to visually explore the area around me. My first sights surprised me. It appeared as if I were in a white, oval-shaped room. From my vantage point of where my head rested, I couldn't see any doors or windows. There was a ceiling high above me, probably twenty to thirty feet away, but nothing covering the top of the walls, which appeared to be only six or seven feet tall. I looked closer at the walls, and realized they were draped in cloth. What a weird place, I thought.

I tried to lift my head to examine the rest of this area, and maybe find a door to leave, but my neck refused to cooperate. It was a very odd sensation. My muscles resisted action like I had never moved them before. It took all my strength just to make a fist in my right hand. I felt a small triumph as my fingers closed into position, but that victory was short-lived. I could feel my fingers against the palm of my hand, and the dimensions were different than I remembered. My fingers felt a lot smaller than what I was used to. OK, I thought, this is getting really weird.

Had I just come out of a coma? Is that why my muscles moved differently, due to the atrophy that occurs when you don’t use them? I hoped that wasn’t it. For one thing, this was no hospital bed, unless they had begun making them with walls. But there were no electronic devices monitoring my pulse or breathing; surely, if I had just woken up, a doctor or nurse would have visited me by now. No, that’s not right, I decided. This isn’t a hospital. I didn’t think that I could be in a coma for that long anywhere else, so I began exploring other possibilities of what happened to me.

Maybe I was in a car accident. Maybe I wasn’t able to move because I had received a serious spinal injury. But nothing hurt, so it didn’t seem like I had been injured anywhere. It was just hard to move.

But I don’t remember anything, either. A car accident could explain my memory loss. Hitting the steering wheel with my head could cause amnesia. Oh wait; I do remember those two faces. Now that I was more awake, I could tell that those faces didn’t belong in a dream. The voices had said that they were in a snowstorm. That would make sense, since there was all that white stuff floating around. But what was I doing in a snowstorm in the first place? I mentally shook my head, knowing that I couldn’t answer that now. I continued thinking on the memory. I remembered one of the faces had bent over and picked me up, seemingly without effort. How is that possible? I wondered. Picking up a deadweight is incredibly hard, especially from a bent-over position. Either I’ve found my way to a land of super-strong people, or something else is going on.

As I continued thinking about it, nothing was making sense. I listed off the issues in my mind. I was in a snowstorm, I can hardly move my muscles, someone, a woman by the sound of her voice, was able to pick me up, and I have no recollection of anything that has happened to me before. At that thought, I realized something important. I didn’t even know my name. I racked my brain, spewing off a rapid litany of names. David, Jacob, Travis… But nothing clicked. None of the names felt like they were mine.

I breathed in and out, laboring to bring enough oxygen into my lungs. My heart rapped against my ribs. I wondered if this is what a panic attack felt like. However, I forced myself to calm down and take a few deep breaths. Panicking would solve nothing. I needed a clear mind if I was to come up with any answers.

I focused on trying to move my muscles. If I could gain a view of my body, and of the rest of this room, maybe some things could be explained. The weird dimensions of my hand bothered me, and I wanted to see if there was anything different about me. I started rocking my head from side to side. At first, the movement was negligible. But as I persevered, my muscles grew stronger, and I was able to move more. Finally, I was able to turn my head in a complete one-eighty. With my newly-strengthened muscles, I was finally able to lift my head and look at my body.

What I saw completely blew me away, insomuch that I couldn’t comprehend it at first. I flexed my right hand, and saw the fingers move in conjunction with my nervous system command. I blinked a few times. This, this is impossible, I mentally stammered.

The fact that I gathered as I gazed at my arms resting on the blanket, was that I was small. And not just atrophied-muscles or stunted-growth small, but infantile small. As in, my hand looked like it belonged on a baby. The fingers were tiny and wrinkled, the fingernails a delicate pink. I curled my hand again, reeling from this discovery.

I closed my eyes, overwhelmed. On one hand, a lot more things were making sense. My inability to use my muscles, the strange proportions of my hands, and the ability of someone to pick me up with no effort. Of course, these answers didn’t mean much in the face of the much larger issues at hand: where was I, why couldn’t I remember anything, and how in the world did I end up AS A BABY???!!!! I couldn’t help mentally shouting those last words, as the horrid reality hit me full in the face.

But something stopped me before I really started freaking out. I had no memory before this time. How did I know that I wasn’t just born, and this is how all babies are when they first enter this world?

But something about that seemed off. For one, I somehow had a mental image of myself being an adult. I just knew that I should be six foot one. Also, although I couldn’t remember my name, quite a few names came to mind as I searched for mine. I knew about hospitals, car accidents, snowstorms, panic attacks, and comas. There was no way a newborn would be able to know about all that. No, there was another reason for my new state of being.

I looked back at my hand. Judging from standard growth charts, whose information I pulled from somewhere, I gauged my age to be about fourteen days old. Of course, I could have been older or younger, depending on if I was larger or smaller than average. I didn't know for sure, so I decided to just accept the idea that I was two weeks old. I could see a red t-shirt poking from underneath the crocheted blanket, and some kind of diaper covering my other end. I shifted a little. It didn’t crackle like a store-bought diaper. Maybe it was cloth.

The room around me took on new dimensions as well. Where once I assumed the walls to be seven feet tall, now I could see that they were probably eighteen inches. The cloth walls gave me a final clue as to where I lay. This is a bassinet, I surmised. I looked closer at the walls. They looked like they had seen their share of use; the white of the cloth fading into a yellowish tinge.

I wondered if there was anybody around. Since I could form coherent thoughts, I assumed I could talk as well. However, I didn’t want to just start calling for help. I thought I would lay low for a while, and find out as much as possible before I surprised anyone with my very un-baby-like vocabulary.

I made a small noise, just a whimper, and immediately, someone was there, looking over the edge of the bassinet at me. She must have been waiting nearby for me to wake up. I recognized her from my memory in the snowstorm. She had been the one to pick me up. Now that my eyes weren’t as blurry, I could better see what she looked like. She had very fair skin, contrasting nicely with her shoulder-length, chocolate-brown hair. Dark sapphire-blue eyes gazed at me. Her small button nose crinkled as she smiled, displaying even teeth and full lips. She had faint laugh lines around her mouth, and crow’s feet framing her eyes. I gauged her age to be roughly forty-three to forty-five. She was a very pretty woman, with kindness radiating from her eyes.

She reached over the bassinet and picked me up. The swirl of colors as the room whirled nearly gave me a headache, but she soon nestled me in her arms.

“Oh, we were so worried about you! When Natalie came and told me there was a baby in the woods, I didn’t believe her. After all, it is snowing, and I thought that the snow was playing tricks on her eyes.” Her voice matched the older female voice that I remembered hearing. “But something told me to go see, and we found you, in a little blanket at the base of a tree. Thank goodness for Natalie. If she hadn’t have seen you, you probably would have frozen to death.”

The words came out quickly, more like she was talking to herself rather than to me. Even though she was looking at me, she had a somewhat dazed look in her dark-blue eyes, as if she were seeing that snow-covered place instead of me. Those eyes came into focus and she looked into my face.

“But look at you!” she exclaimed, putting her index finger near my left hand. I obediently gripped her finger. “You are such a cute little baby! You can’t be more than a few weeks old! How did you get here? Who would leave you alone?”

I realized right away that she didn’t resort to infantile baby-talk, something I knew that I would not be able to stand. I decided that I liked her.

She walked around the bassinet and sat down in a chair, rocking me. The feeling was really quite calming. I could see why normal babies would succumb to the motion and fall asleep. I, however, had more important things to do. I glanced around the room, as slyly as I could. I saw that my bassinet was standing close to two bunk beds. The beds hadn’t been made that morning, and I could see red and blue Superman sheets adorning the mattresses (how did I even know who Superman was?). Behind the beds, I could see dark blue wallpaper, with graphics of trains and planes. A window showed heavy snowfall, with dark branches stooping under their added weight. I slowly turned my head to the left, and saw the top of a stand-up basketball hoop, the ones that younger kids enjoy. I deduced from all this that I was in a kid’s room. Two kids, most likely boys, ages ranging from five to eleven years old.

I turned my attention back to the woman holding me. She spoke American-accented English, so I knew I was in the United States. The fact that it was snowing heavily cut off the possibility that I was in the South, Southwest, or Pacific states. Judging by the way she pronounced certain words, like ‘found’ and ‘seen’, I considered that I was in one of the Midwestern states, possibly Iowa or Nebraska. However, other than asking her a direct question, I didn’t think that there was a way to signal what I wanted to know. I decided to stay awake, and see if she would tell me more.

I didn’t have to wait long. She began talking, probably more to soothe me than to convey information, but it told me more of what I wanted to know, all the same.

“I know you don’t understand me, but I’ve found that talking helps a baby feel loved. So, my name is Susan Stillwell, and I’m the wife of Jack Stillwell. We live in the town of Meriwether, which is in the very southwest corner of Iowa. On a good day, you can see into both Nebraska and Missouri. I actually have had the privilege of being in three places at once.”

She laughed, like wind chimes in a gentle breeze. Her laugh was contagious, and made me want to chuckle along with her. However, that act would instantly dissolve my pretenses of being a normal newborn, so I kept my mouth shut.

I heard footsteps running underneath our floor, heralding the arrival of more family members. Multiple pairs of footsteps came pounding up the stairs, and two small boys ran noisily into the room. Susan was not pleased.

“Todd! Jason! You’re lucky this baby had already woken up by the time you came tromping inside, otherwise you would have had to take care of him while he cried.” Her voice was stern, but I could hear the love underlining her words. She seemed more exasperated than upset.

The two boys immediately dropped their heads and murmured apologies. I could tell that in their exuberance, they had forgotten about my arrival. But their heads soon lifted, and they ran over to see me.

“Mom, why was this baby in the woods? Who left him there?” asked one boy, a wayward brown cowlick sticking up from the back of his head. He looked to be about nine years old. His younger brother copied Susan in curling my hand around his finger.

“I don’t know, Todd. There wasn’t a note. All that we know is that the name “Garrett” was sewn on the front of his shirt. Other than that, all he had was a blanket. ”

At the sound of this name, a hazy feeling came over me. I knew that this was in fact my name, though anything else associated with that knowledge remained hidden. Well, that’s one mystery solved. Garrett. I like it.

“Mom, what are we going to do with him? Are we going to keep him?” these questions were put forth by Jason, who was probably two years younger than Todd. There was a space between his two front teeth, which probably resulted in a sibilant ‘s’. I wondered if people thought it was cute.

From the tightening of her eyes, Susan didn’t know the answer to any of these questions. “Jason, your father is in town right now, asking questions to see if anyone has recently had a baby. Maybe that someone didn’t want the baby anymore, and left him outside. Until we know more, we’ll just keep him around. Good thing we kept all your old baby clothes in the attic.”

Right then, a wave of fatigue washed over me. I didn’t know how I got to Iowa, but my body was telling me that it took a lot of energy to get me there. My eyes grew heavy.

“Oh, look at that, he’s falling asleep. We’ll let him take a nap,” said Susan. “Remember, boys,” she admonished, “if you’re going to be loud, take it outside. We don’t want to wake him up when he’s sleeping.” She paused, obviously thinking about something. Her mouth firmed as if she had come to a decision. “In fact, let’s move him to your dad’s office, so you don’t have to worry about waking him up if you play in here.” Susan put me down on the lower bunk bed, and covered me with the blue quilt. As she moved away to pick up the bassinet, the fragrance of lavender surrounded me, and I surrendered to sleep.

So that's the first chapter. If anyone has any comments or suggestions, let me know. It's not a finished project yet, and I'm still making changes.

Powers Awakening

At first, I was going to name the trilogy "The Cylinders of Power", and the first book was to be called The Awakening. However, it seemed too cliche and genre-limiting for me. My wife said that it was too much of a science fiction title, which could be off-putting to certain readers. Plus, looking up "The Awakening" in the Kindle store brought up about 9,000 book titles. I wanted something more unique.

I brainstormed with my wife for about half an hour while shopping, and she came up with this new title. Powers Awakening. I loved it. It wasn't so ambiguous that someone would bypass it in a library, and the syllables sound good together. It's also completely unique, which is always helpful. With the title change, the trilogy is also simply going to be called "The Cylinders". So, Powers Awakening is Book One of The Cylinders. I've actually mostly finished writing this book, just working on a final draft. So, hopefully, it will be available soon for anyone interested in buying it. I will post a few chapters from it, as well as discuss where I received the inspiration.

Allow Me to Introduce Myself...

My name is Justin Bailey, and I am writing a trilogy. I thought I would create this blog as an avenue for any readers to receive updates on the completion timeline, as well as give me an incentive to actually keep a timeline. I would also like to use this blog as a way to gather feedback. I will at times ask for opinions, and I feel this would be the easiest way to organize the responses.

I will also post chapters from my books, so as to give anyone who is intrigued a taste of my writing style. Hopefully, this will also lead to a greater interest for my books. :)