Focus on the Novel: Character Descriptions & Sample Scene

Character Descriptions for Antelope Canyon

Toby Hunter: Lonely. Searching for the something missing in his life. Well-respected by all but himself. Carries guilt about not being around to save his parents when they were killed when he was 16. Now, 25, his right hand trembles uncontrollably at times. Unaware of his own anger that seethes just under the surface. Born in Hannibal, Missouri, but raised in Santa Fe, New Mexico since the age of two. Very light sleeper. Sheriff of Santa Fe. Very active and a practical joker with his friends. Having an affair with the wife of the mayor of Santa Fe. Thin, wiry and muscular with very curly dark brown hair. Outwardly confident and charming.

Logan White: Insecure. Superstitious about being born on All Hallow’s Eve as he believes it caused him to be born two months premature. He looks 20, although he is 31. He was the deputy under the current mayor, with no ambition to become sheriff, so he is still deputy, under Toby Hunter. While Toby exudes masculinity, there is a softer quality to Logan. Falls in love with an African-American woman. Toby’s best friend for about the last 8 years.

Rabbit Ears: A Navajo two-spirit, meaning he is spiritually respected as someone who is both male and female. 18 years old now, at 10 years old he was forced into a Christian missionary school, where he lived in a dank, windowless basement with his fellow students. His father rescued him from the school only to cast him out of the family a couple of years later for sexual indiscretions with a Navajo warrior. At 16, his father nagged him about wearing too few clothes around the home, his father feeling that a young man should dress and act like a warrior, not like a naked child. His father never believed the shaman’s notion that Rabbit Ears was sacred because he was a two-spirit. Rabbit Ears’ mother died a couple years after he was born.

Lance: Painfully shy 16 year old Anglo boy. His father is the only Baptist minister in predominantly Catholic Santa Fe. His father is ostracized from the city after an affair with an underage girl. Deeply conflicted about his religion and his budding homosexual desires. In school, he gained the nickname “Head in the Clouds” because of his height, about 6 feet 3 inches. Closer to his mother than his father. Shaved blond hair when the story begins, as his mother had to cut off all his hair due to lice.


Sample scene. POV character: Lance.

Lance watched his mother through the back of the tent: her attention was not upon Lance’s father but upon the almost naked man that he and the Navajo boy had found. The sight unnerved him yet he did not turn away. He felt a light tap on his shoulder and turned around, surprised to see the Navajo boy behind him. The boy motioned for Lance to follow.
“Where are you going?” Lance asked, following close behind.

“On the path.”

“Back home?”

“No, I cannot go back home.” Lance felt a similar conflict within himself due to his father being shut out of the church. He had overheard his mother threatening to leave.

“Why not?”

“I am forbidden.”

“Why?”

“I fell in love with a married warrior,” Rabbit Ears said, walking on, his long hair flowing behind his back, his slender body silhouetted against the soft pink glow of twilight. Lance continued to follow him, not really sure if was leaving his parents or not.

Lakai, the bear cub, chased a large bumble, trying to catch it in his mouth. The two boys laughed aloud simultaneously: the bee teased the bear cub, buzzing around his nose and flying off to safety at the last moment. Lakai jumped frantically, snapping at the air with his teeth. The bear cub ran a few paces to keep up with the bee in the air before jumping around, snapping his jaws, and pawing at the air. When the bear finally tripped into a mud puddle, the boys fell onto the ground themselves, laughing heartily.

“My belly is hurting,” Lance said. Rabbi Ears had tears running down his face from laughing so hard. For a moment, they sat on the ground, quietly trying to catch their breath.

“My own brother said I was no longer his brother. He was the one who taught me how to use the bow…how could I not be his brother? I am not allowed to return home.” Rabbit Ears stared at his feet as he spoke.

Lance did not know what to say. Because of his father’s mistakes, his friends had stopped talking to him; he was no longer the teacher’s favorite. He had no one to talk to but his mother and father. Lance felt Rabbit Ears lucky just to have a brother. He had no one.

“We can be brothers,” Lance said but immediately felt foolish for saying it aloud. Rabbit Ears smiled, reached over and rubbed his shorn head.

“Yes,” Rabbit Ears said and before Lance could react, Rabbit Ears unsheathed his knife and drew it across the inside of Lance’s forearm.

“Aihhhh! Why did you go and do that?!” Lance watched as Rabbit Ears performed a similar cut on his own arm. Rabbit Ears let the blood flow freely while Lance clutched the wound to cinch the bleeding. Rabbit Ears closed his eyes and began to sing in Navajo. The song grew to a howl when Rabbit Ears grabbed Lance’s arm, rubbed it hard against his own, mixing the blood together. Lance howled along with the Navajo boy, as a sharp pain sped from his forearm all through his body. His toes curled in pain; he gritted his teeth. Rabbit Ears still pressed their arms together, the blood smearing across their forearms like paint, the singing pounding in Lance’s ears. But then, the native melodies drifted away like smoke and white spots appeared before his eyes. Lance fell over, unconscious.

When he awoke, Rabbit Ears sat beside him, staring intently at him, as if he had been waiting patiently. Behind them, Lakai rolled around in a fresh pile of bison dung. Despite the still throbbing pain with the cut exposed to the open air, Lance smiled looking down at the fresh wound on his arm: he imagined he could feel Rabbit Ears’ blood pulsing through his own veins. It was a strange yet wonderful feeling.

“You are my brother now,” Rabbit Ears said, “my brother of blood.”

Focus on the Novel: Antelope Canyon

I am about 4 weeks into the novel writing class I am taking. It has really forced me to up my game in regards to a novel I have been working on for some time. For those that I have briefly mentioned the project to but have only given you bits in pieces, here's a clearer synopsis of the story, based on an assignment I had to do for class.


Antelope Canyon

The city of Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1879 is growing rapidly. The Plaza is rarely seen without new construction projects. Young sheriff Toby Hunter watches as his beloved hometown turns into something he no longer recognizes.

At the age of 16, Toby’s parents were killed and for a short time, he was thought to have killed them. A Navajo elder helps to bury his parents, a favor Toby never forgets. Now, almost a decade later, Toby is beaten and left for dead by an outlaw who could be the same person who murdered his parents. Hours before, the criminal killed a traveling magician who was staying at the Widow’s Saloon in Old Santa Fe. In order to finally clear his own name, Toby must track down the assailant before he has even recovered from a broken jaw and a couple of bruised ribs.

Toby sets out in pursuit of the criminal aided by a posse of close friends as well as his best friend and deputy, Logan. On the trail, they soon find out that the killer is a woman and she is stalking two young boys, one a Navajo, the other the Anglo son of Santa Fe’s only Baptist preacher.
Rabbit Ears, the Navajo boy, meets and befriends Lance, encouraging him to join him on a trip to a sacred canyon. Lance, having been ostracized from Santa Fe Baptist Church along with his father, due to the minister’s infidelity with an underaged girl, is easily persuaded to follow his new found friend.

On the trail, accompanied by Rabbit Ears’ pet bear cub Lakai, the two boys soon find they have much in common: they both desperately need to escape from the world of their parents. Lance finds himself profoundly conflicted with his own budding sexuality and a growing love for Rabbit Ears, a situation in great opposition to his family’s religious beliefs.

Meanwhile, on the heels of the criminal, Toby and Logan come to blows over Toby’s petty jealousy that Logan has brought along his girlfriend, thereby jeopardizing the success of the venture, in Toby’s opinion. Logan aptly points out that Toby is upset because he cannot openly love Carolina White, the wife of the current mayor and ex-sheriff of Santa Fe, the man who gave Toby his job as a lawman. Unknown to Logan, the Mayor, and others, Toby and Carolina have been having sexual encounters in the abandoned casita where Toby’s parents once lived.

In the open wilderness of the desert, Toby finds himself dealing with the loneliness and anger over his parents’ deaths for the first time since it happened. The parents of the young boy who has run off with the Navajo accompany the posse in fear that they will never see their son alive again.
As circumstances push them all towards Antelope Canyon, a violent storm brews on the horizon, saturating the ground with water causing a massive runoff to occur. Miles from the origin of the storm, the canyon lands seem peaceful and quiet but flood waters speed across the ground unbeknownst to the two boys in love, the assailant or Toby and his posse.

The boys reach the sacred canyon where Rabbit Ears leads Lance to a hideout only he knows about, while the criminal spies them from a distance. Toby observes the outlaw descending into the ground, into the opening of a slot canyon, and follows. The flood hits with a devastating fury, sweeping through the canyon slot, and taking everyone in the vicinity of the canyon along for the tragic ride.

With or Without Muse

One of my muses has always been music, particularly the band U2. As I am reading the book "U2 by U2" now, I am finding comfort in so many similarities related to the creative urge and the creative struggle.

I find this passage from Bono particularly interesting:
"The lyric [to "With or Without You"] is pure torment. One of the things that was happening at the time was the collision in my own mind between being faithful to your art or being faithful to your lover. What if the two are at odds? Your gift versus domestic responsibility?...I was at least two people: the person who is responsible , protective and loyal and the vagrant and idler who just wants to run from responsibility. I thought these tensions were going to destroy me but actually, in truth, it is me. That tension, it turns out, is what makes me as an artist. Right in the centre of the contradiction, that's the place to be...
"...If I had cut loose, what would have become of me?...All of the people whom I looked up to as writers, they'd all done the same. Nothing had stood in the way, they had acted with abandon, and had lost marriages, bands, friendships, all in pursuit of the muse. But the muse is taciturn and can abandon you, leave you with nothing. My muse makes different demands...
"So that song ["With or Without You"] is about torment, sexual but also psychological, about how repressing desires makes them stronger. The most important line is probably 'And you give yourself away.'"

Do you relate to the pull between domesticity and wild abandon? How do you manage that tension?
If you are an artist, has the Muse's need for wanderlust taken you to places you would rather not have gone? Was it worth it?

Great sentences (or paragraphs)

Lately, I have felt an urge to return to the basics of creative writing. In this mindset, I have noticed wonderful little nuggets of writing in the everyday "literature" of our lives: emails, blogs, Facebook statuses, etc. Today I came across Barry Shaeffer's Facebook blog about his recent trip to Nepal. I quote from it here:

"Daai?"
"Yes?"
"Cinema?"
"Yep. Cinema tomorrow."
"Lollipop?"
"Yes, lollipop tomorrow at the cinema."
Repeat ad infinitum ad nauseum.

Source: Barry Shaeffer, Blog post “This Little Light of Mine”

That little passage tells so much in so few words. Beautiful.
What great writing have you recently come across in your daily life?
Feel free to post a sentence or a paragraph here.

Little Girl Lost

Today I am working a piece entitled "Little Girl Lost," which is focusing on a female archetype that illuminates our own life struggles through a journey from innocence to maturity amongst harsh or repressive institutions. After studying Alice in Wonderland extensively for my English thesis, I have seen this archetype show up most recently in the film Pan’s Labyrinth; the first book in the His Dark Materials trilogy, The Golden Compass; and in the recent Michael L. Printz Honor award winner, The Book Thief. In their creations, Guillermo Del Toro, Philip Pullman and Mark Zusak have provided readers with intelligent and rebellious young girls as reflections of ourselves. Have you enjoyed any of these incredible works of art? If so, what have you learned from Ofelia, Lyra or Liesel that you could share?

Blogging: Writing about Writing?

As a writer with a new blog, I have been visiting other writer's blogs to help refine and focus what I want the world to see about me. It seems like writer's blogs fall into 2 camps: those that write about writing (and their original works appear in other published formats) and those who post their work for free on their blog site, poems, short stories, even novels. My own blog started off as a place to post some of my poems and short stories and is now evolving into a place to write about my writing. I am seeing the value of being paid for my literary work as well as the benefit of having an editor's contribution to the final product. But I also don't want to lose out in receiving immediate feedback from creative inspiration.
Other writers, what are the pros/cons of these approaches? Feel free to share your own experiences with me.

Living in the Void

The spiritual leader at a community I belong to likes to use the phrase, “living in the void.” This notion resonates with me so much lately as I continue to move deeper into a life as a writer. After 17 years of full time work with the same company, I changed to a part time schedule in September. Let me tell you, the first couple of weeks, I was struck by an unexpected insecurity that made it feel like I was walking on water but that at any moment, I would sink below the surface. Who did I think I was that I could walk on water? In the current economy, I was opening myself up to greater risk in being laid off by going part-time, wasn’t I? And considering my history of cancer and the need for healthcare, which keeps me tied to a corporate employer, wasn’t I being foolish, losing the benefits of short term and long term disability? And the reason that I was doing all of this…to concentrate more on my writing and to make up the loss in my hours at the company through income I would make in my writing. What the hell? Was I crazy? I had not had anything published since college and even then, it was 3 or 4 poems in various university literary magazines that paid me nothing.
Months into this experiment, I don’t feel any more confident about my job security or the scary possibility of a cancer recurrence, and I have come to the hard realization that I won’t be immediately paid for my writing. In fact, these couple of months have felt unstructured, unfocused and without much “work” to prove the loss of self-worth that my previous corporate identity allowed me. But I am more comfortable sitting in this place, sitting in the void, to use my spiritual leader’s words. I lived in the void going through my treatments for brain cancer, trusting that I was making the right decisions based on the information from my doctors and other experts. Perhaps, the experience of a health crisis prepared me to be able to take on the risks that I am living in now. And ironically, it was the health crisis that spurred me to make such a radical change (at least it was radical for me), as I was forced to realize that I am not going to live forever, and maybe not even as long as you.
It was in college, when I was studying for my Creative Writing degree, before I took the path of safety and security in the corporate world, that I first picked up the Tao Te Ching. It taught me how to let go of the religious structure that I grew up with, with all of its neat answers and to live in the complexity and contradictions of life. I remember hearing a friend’s interpretation of his own reading of the Tao: that it was the space between life’s moments that provide the real meaning, those times of waiting for the next great thing to happen. It is the moment between breaths. It is the time between moments. I started to notice these gaps, to allow in the undefined, unknowable mystery of them, to sink into the nothingness of them; I was surprised to find myself comforted.
It is these open spaces that have taught me the most and have allowed me to move forward in my life. As I sit in the void of my current situation, of no longer being the “corporate man” and not yet having the credentials of the writers I admire, I trust that although I will sink below the surface at times and not be able to see where I am or where I am going, that it will be the lessons of the void that guide me.
What lessons have you learned from living in the void? Please drop me a line. I would love to hear.