Thursday, November 19, 2015
First Chapter in Book I'm working on: "The Church Critic"
Since several have asked about my short story that won 2nd place in the Missouri Writer's Guild contest for short fiction, I'm going to share the first page here. Although I wrote it as a short story I really consider this the first chapter of a book and I'm working on more chapter.
Read the first page and you will get the idea of where this story is going. But don't be fooled, I've got plenty of surprises planned along with a climax and ending that you may not expect.
Read the first page and you will get the idea of where this story is going. But don't be fooled, I've got plenty of surprises planned along with a climax and ending that you may not expect.
The Church Critic
My
page one column for the Plano Herald
was provocative and I didn’t care. The text was still making me laugh, even as
I read it for the twentieth time.
"I
was greeted warmly at the door of Scenic Avenue Christian Church, and then left
to fend for myself. Once inside I was asked to move out of my cozy aisle seat
by a member who had obviously sat in that seat for 50 years. The choir music
was plentiful but missing male voices and rhythm. The offering plate was nearly
empty by the time it reached me but by the time it did I was nearly asleep.
"The
sermon was a neat 21 minutes. It might have been shorter if the reverend hadn't
had to consult his notes so often after losing track of his thoughts. The
actual message took two minutes, reinforcing its meaning took 18 minutes. In
all fairness, the preacher dove into his sermon with personal anecdotes setting
up his theme that -- well, I'm not sure what his theme was but I enjoyed the
anecdotes."
When
ink is in your veins, there is always something special about seeing text in
print. But, I was surprised last week when Don Rigby had pointed his thick
index finger and his fat cigar directly at my face and assigned me this new
column.
"I'm
adding this to your regular beat," coughed Rigby. "You can thank me
later."
Rigby's
thick fingers were crowded together on his hand. This helped explain why he
typed with only his index fingers. His cigar was more chewed than smoked. He
smoked one cigar a day but ate two a day.
“Since
you are asking me to write a weekly review of local churches you should know,
I’m agnostic.”
