Rodney Dodig

The last week flew by. There were moments when the thought popped into my head, I need to update the webpage, and then in an instant it was gone. Now I sit here on a Monday morning trying to think of the things I accomplished in the last week as well as the social moments. The writing and editing portion of my week was superb. I finished the second draft of the book including the addition of a prologue that will hopefully explain portions of the book. I brought Eduardo back to life at the end. Instead of having his nephew kill him, he ends up in a coma. I needed him to live and participate in the third book of the series I am planning.

I met Tim and Lourdes this past Sunday at Café Z for breakfast again. As usual I was there a few hours early and used the time to people watch. A cab pulled up and a woman in athletic gear exited holding a field hockey stick. For whatever reason, a story instantly exploded into my mind from that sight. So, I spent the next two hours writing the first chapter of what will be either a long short story or a new book. I haven’t decided which yet. For those who are curious, she’s an assassin and the hockey stick is her weapon of choice. Here’s the first couple of paragraphs, let me know what you think.

The petit girl exited the cab, field hockey stick in hand. Wearing running shoes, skin tight lycra sports shorts and bra, her thin body exuded strength with muscles strung over her frame like wires on a finely tuned piano. She had an innocence about her face, pretty but not beautiful. The pixie style haircut made it hard to guess her age. She bounced into the café and stopped beside my table.

“Emilio?” she asked, her eyes sparkling with mischief.

“Yes,” I answered. “Do I know you?”

“Gregor sent me.”

My guard went up immediately. My hand slid from the table top and nestled on the butt of my gun. A reflex when alarm signals started going off in my head. Gregor Mendez controlled the street gangs that operated throughout the city of Lima. We had an uneasy truce for the moment. I had saved his son from the clutches of a murdering pedophile. In turn; he brought the more violent members of his organization under control, which meant a few less murders in my district to solve.

By the way, Tim and Lourdes are doing fine.

I had coffee with Larry this past week also. We spent time discussing writing and the publishing business. That quickly devolved into the deteriorating financial situation for expatriates living on the dollar. The exchange rate continues to drop here. We met in Barranco again at my favorite little café/bakery, “Espige de Oro.” After our meeting ended I taxied over to Café Z to meet Kathy for a snack and a juice. We talked writing also and she let me know how the writers’ group meeting had gone the day before. They had worked on a new piece by Victoria.

I spent Thanksgiving Day with Steve. It had been awhile since we had done stuff together. It was a beautiful sunny day and we ended it with a great dinner at Brujas de Cachiche and a movie in Larcomar afterwards. His brother Alex will start my dental work soon. I’m looking forward to having a brand new smile when it’s all done, one that will look good in a photo on the back cover of my first book. The rest of his family is doing well.

Saturday, Amanda came over to spend an antisocial afternoon with me. We spent most of the time in the living room chatting about all manner of topics. Naturally the time consuming topic was our writing. She will be leaving for the states in nine days to visit family and friends for the holidays. She also graciously agreed to read a start on a novella involving my Detective Rodriguez, a prequel to the novel. I’m looking forward to her comments. Unlike the novel which is in third person unlimited, the novella is in first person limited. I’m anxious to hear what she has to say about my writing in that tense. Amanda also used the occasion to test her Pisco Sour making skills. She got it perfect on the first try. I was impressed.

That was my week; I hope you all had a good one also. This coming week I intent to make one more pass through the novel looking for grammatical errors and polishing a few lines up. I am on schedule to meet my goal of having the book out to the agents by the first of the year. I may  not express it here, but I am very excited about it all.

The social part of my life kicked in the past few days. I had to leave the confines of my work area and actually talk to people for more than a minute or two. I like this polarization of my life, being the reclusive writer and then turning into a social animal. I wonder if that’s what Robert Louis Stevenson was really getting at with Jekyll and Hyde. The act of being social requires a different set of skills than writing although my friends Katrina and Amanda might disagree. Both use their interactions with society to build their characters, plot and dialog. Mine tend to pop into my head full blown but then I have trouble putting them to paper so that a reader can see what’s already in my head. I enjoy sitting and listening to the two of them talk about the processes they use to get their stories out. They each have their own individual style and I extract useful bits of information from them for use in my writing. Maybe all writers do that; it might make an interesting treatise someday.

There were only three of us for the writers’ group Thursday. We went over the piece by Rinda, our Cusco member, and submitted our comments to her individually. I like her stories. They tell about a part of Peru that I’ve unfamiliar with, a part that goes back in time before the Spanish arrived. We also discussed setting up some guidelines for the meetings, something to keep them under control somewhat. They’ve been running a little long lately and it’s starting to cause a problem with some of the writers. Kathy’s article on Cajamarca was published by Living in Peru. It’s a nice piece and I recommend that you go to their website and read it. The group is getting away from stories exclusively about Peru though. We’ll see how that works out.

Friday I trucked over to Barranco to meet Larry for coffee again. We talked about a lot of things. Politics, child rearing, divorces, the Book and the pitiful exchange rate were just a few of the topics we went through in our two plus hours of chatting. Larry is a busy man. Lots of students and his University job keep him busy. He’s still doing his essays for Living in Peru. It’s one of his great pleasures and I doubt he will give it up anytime soon.

Breakfast and coffees were the order of the day for today. I met Katrina, Oswaldo and Amanda very early for breakfast at Café Zeta. Then, Tim and Lourdes joined us after they attended Mass. It was a good time and a good little social get together. I hadn’t seen Oswaldo, Katrina’s novio, in awhile. He finishes his degree in engineering at one of Lima’s fine Universities in December. He’s a very bright young man and I’m sure he will be very successful.

I’ve really been on tear with the book this past week. Besides the 20 chapters I mentioned in my last post, I’ve completed another 17. That leaves 15 chapters and the epilog to be edited, the prolog to be written and I will be done. I should be done by the end of this coming week.  After that, a quick pass through to fix any glaring errors and off it goes to some agents to see if anyone is interested. Everyone keep your fingers crossed.

“A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.” Oscar Wilde

I’ve managed to get some serious writing done since my last post. Twenty chapters of which, five are brand new, ten were totally rewritten and five had minor editing changes. That puts me back on track to have my editing done and the book submitted to an agent by the first of next year. I don’t know about other writers but for me, the hardest were the rewrites. Trying to save the good parts of a chapter, weave in the new story lines and make it seamless proved difficult at times. Lourdes cries out to be a stronger character, fearless, maybe a little too fearless. Rodriguez wants my readers to know more about him and the villains, well, villains will be villains. I’m in the process now of looking through the last forty chapters of the original book and trying to decide what can be deleted and what has to be deleted. This involves reading each of those carefully and pulling out any pieces of writing I want to save and including them in those chapters that won’t be tossed. Occasionally, I wonder if Steven King or William Faulkner ever had to go through this process. I know that all the writing books say they did but, was it this hard on them?

Dialog continues to be my weak point and I’m not sure how to work on improving that. People, my little word thief in particular, have recommended that I sit in Cafés and restaurants just listening and recording bits of conversation. Listen to the way different people speak. That’s a bit hard since I’m living in a Spanish speaking country and my book is in English. I suppose I could start going to a few of the meetings that various expats always organize, since they come from a wide range of countries that might help. Still, I need to figure out how to put tone, accent, pitch and other characteristics of speech into my dialog. I hope to make significant progress on this aspect of writing before I start my second novel.

I’m learning more and more about character development as I write. Almost all the books I have read about writing suggest that you answer at least 45 questions about each of your characters. Others suggest you write five pages on each of your main characters and two and a half on the lesser ones. Being a first time writer, I find that my characters change and grow as I write. They become a different person than the one I started with. I’m thinking that is possibly a good thing. A characters growth throughout the book can be an important aspect to good writing. I suppose that I will get my answer when I get my first critique back from an agent or publisher.

I haven’t left the apartment much since the last post either. A few trips to Wong for supplies and the Mercado for fruits, that’s about it. The days have been varied as is the wont of spring. They vary from cloudy and chilly to sunny and pleasant. I sit at my desk occasionally looking out my window and watch it all pass by. Birds perch intermittently on the roof of the house. They turn their heads, eyeing me with suspicion before flying off. Male pigeons ruffle their feathers and coo sounds to attract a mate. I watch all this for varying amounts of time. It all depends on where my thought process is at any given moment. Tomorrow my social life kicks in again. So, I’ll leave my bat cave and try to remember the rules of social interaction. Have a great week, as I am constantly urging, “do something creative.” Let’s all exercise the right hemisphere of our brains.

I woke up with my friend Steve yelling at me from the front of the apartment.

“Get up, my Mother’s bringing you breakfast.”

It was the start to a very pleasant day. I’ve never been one of those people who freaks out about how old I am when my birthday rolls around. The ages 30, 40, 50 and 60 came and went without so much as a twinge. After all, there’s not a lot you can do about it. For some reason 65 gave me a little pause. That’s a big number I told one of my friends recently. There was no deep depression though, no regret that I had missed something in my life or wish that I was in a better place now. It simply gave me a moment of reflection, a minute or two of thinking back over the good and bad moments in my life. By the way, as far as I can remember, the good far outweighed the bad. My friend Cyndi asked me on my recent visit home if I was happy with my life. I told her that if I died tomorrow, I would die a happy person. I have experienced more of the world than most and have been blessed with great friends, wonderful parents, an amazing Sister and people who truly love me. You can’t ask for more than that. It was a great birthday starting with that breakfast. A lazy day enjoying the company I was with and ending in a swashbuckling movie in 3D, “The Three Musketeers.”

The next day, the writers’ group met. We discussed an excerpt from a book that Katrina is writing. She is working with NaNoWriMo an acronym for National Novel Writing Month. She has selected a topic dear to her heart, farm life in Minnesota. The writing was rough but Katrina has a talent for taking her first drafts and turning them into masterful pieces in edit. I found it hard to critique the piece not knowing what went on before and after the six pages we were working on. Still, I can tell the book is going to be wonderful. Katrina brought me a bottle of Pisco called “Demon of the Andes” (thanks a lot, I can feel the hangover already LOL) and Kathy bought me a piece of cake and coffee from the café. They then sang Happy Birthday to me in the Peruvian fashion. It was fun.

Friday morning I met Larry for coffee and we caught up on all the things going on in our lives. Larry’s daughter is still having problems with her divorce and he is a busy man with teaching and trying to get some writing done. We will be meeting on Fridays in Barranco for awhile. His class schedule has changed and he has very few free days. It will be nice to visit my old neighborhood and walk the malecon there.

I’ve finally made it through the 80 chapters and am ready to start working on the novel again. I noticed that Lourdes hadn’t started her investigation into the drug trade at one of my villain’s bars yet. So, I’ve started a new chapter with her sitting in a nice bar getting ready to ask for a cocaine contact from the bartender. She will be wearing a cleverly disguised wire. I haven’t decided yet whether it will be the bartenders or the waitresses who are distributing. I’ll let the characters talk to me as I’m writing. I’m going to spend the next five days concentrating on the book. I need to finish this edit and get it out there, Agents beware! I’m also ready to start writing the second book in the series and polish up the prequel I have written. My number one goal now has to be getting published.

Sunday started out with Lima’s cool gray blanket covering her with its last attempts to hold on to winter. A chill, slightly damp breeze floated through the air making me wish I had brought my light hoody with me. The taxi had to let me out a few blocks before my requested destination of Parque Kennedy. All the roads leading to this area of Miraflores had been blocked. Red banners flapped in the breeze, a bandstand had been set up to entertain and white balloons were attached to people and anything else that would hold them. A running event sponsored by Nike was in full swing. Everyone wore red t-shirts with the Nike logo on them somewhere. A festive attitude hung in the air with smiling faces, laughter, friendly chatter and excited children in every direction.

I walked past the event, stopping only to get a couple of quick photos. I then headed for Café Zeta where Tim and Lourdes were going to meet me for breakfast after attending church. Always the early one, I arrived at 8am for a 10:30 breakfast meet. I spent the time reading another 25 chapters of the book, making notes and highlighting areas I thought needed a little help as well as having my breakfast. No way I can wait till 10:30 to eat it. It was good to see the two of them, I hadn’t seen them since I returned to Lima. Unfortunately they had separated again, although they did come to the breakfast together. We’ll see where it goes. After they left, my friend Amanda showed up for our appointed lunch together at a small vegetarian Menú in Miraflores. Afterwards we headed down to Larcomar for a glass of wine and some ocean watching. Unfortunately, my backpack was stolen while we sat at an outdoor table enjoying our time together. I thought I had placed it safely between me and the wall next to my chair but the tricky little devils managed to slip it out without Amanda or me noticing it. Losing my notes was the worst part of the experience. Obviously everything else can be replaced. As a matter of fact, I’ve already purchased a bigger and better backpack. Amanda has damned the thieves to the darkest corners of existence for ruining our day. Read her blog about it, http://myllamaandme.blogspot.com/2011/11/damn-thieves.html you’ll love it. By the way, it didn’t ruin my day! I always enjoy my outings with Amanda; she is my mythical Word Thief, the good kind of course!

Naturally that incident has set me back a little where the book is concerned. I have made it to the stores, purchased a new binder and notebook as well as pens and highlighters. I have finished reprinting the first 80 chapters and three hole punched them. The bad part, I now have to start over on my re-read and try to remember my comments and places where I highlighted phrases that needed rewording. That is a little frustrating. The good thing, the story is back in my head like a living thing. The characters are elbowing each other out of the way in an effort to get my attention. I am back on course again and hopefully will be able to maintain my schedule. The biggest problem with my writing at the moment is my short stories. I have quite a few half written that I can’t seem to bring to a conclusion. For some reason, they aren’t ready to be concluded. The characters involved haven’t finished telling me their story yet. I need to take a day a week and set it aside for that. The other goal I want to accomplish before the end of the year is finishing, polishing and publishing the novella on Detective Rodriguez’s first big case. I plan to do that using Amazon and publishing it as a Kindle offer. Not sure how quickly I can get all that done though.

That’s it everyone. The writers will meet again this week. I will see Larry on Friday for coffee and hopefully have the weekend to concentrate on writing. Oh, tomorrow’s my birthday. Nothing planned and hope it stays that way. Have a great week all.

At first I thought it was a headache, later I realized the characters from my novel pounded at the locked door to my brain in an effort to escape their suffocating confinement. During my time back in the US I kept pushing them into the background as I made small mental notes about their desires to end up on a page of A4 paper. For those of you in the US, A4 paper is standard stock in other countries. It’s slightly narrower and longer than the 8½ X 11 that you are used to. All that clutter in my brain led to a block concerning the novel I am working on. I had “lost my train of thought.”  The fun of being with family and friends kept me away from the keyboard. The only writing I had done, updates for this webpage and that was far and few between. The minute I realized this, the “headache” faded and my characters started screaming again. Unfortunately when I went to work on the next chapter, the storyline had become muddled in my head. Now, I am rereading the first 80 chapters in the hopes that the story will come to life in my head again.

It’s fortunate that I’m doing this. Several areas need to be expanded and I had forgotten some important incidents in the first of the book. An important clue for Detective Rodriguez lies hidden in a file, a couple of characters need to spend a little more time together one afternoon and Lourdes needs to start sitting on a bar stool in her investigation of the drug trade are just a few. I am getting my groove back though. The clutter is being organized, the characters seem to be happy for the moment and the story line is fresh in my brain once again. I hope to back in the saddle again by the end of next week.

I’m very happy to be back in Peru and settling back into my life here. The writers’ group met on Thursday. We talked briefly about our writing but spent most of the time catching up. It was nice to see them again and next week we will return to our critiques. Katrina will be first up with something she is working on, then a short story by Victoria and finally, something by me. My friend Kathy has joined the group and is starting to write articles about her travels. I also hope to expand the group with some new members but so far, no takers.

I made it to a couple of movies this week. The first was “I Don’t Know How She Does It,” starring Sarah Jessica Parker. The movie had its funny moments although the plot was very predictable. I give it 3½ Llamas but it’s certainly not worth the price of admission at a theater. Rent it or buy it if you are a big fan of her acting. The second movie was “In Time,” starring Justin Timberlake. Although I think he is growing as an actor, he still has a way to go. The plot of the movie was very interesting but in the end I think the movie was a comment on the growing disparity between the rich and the poor. I give it 3½ Llamas also and once again recommend that you rent or buy the movie. There’s nothing about it that screams “big Screen” to me.

Time to get back to the 50 chapters I need to read before starting in on the book again. Hope you all have a great weekend and remember; “the brain is a muscle too, exercise it.”

I am sitting in the Miami airport reminiscing about the last few days of my visit home. Surrounded by travelers, all in a hurry, I’ve decided to fork over the bucks for a day pass in the Admiral lounge. Quiet, drinks, free internet, and other goodies; the five and a half hour layover demands that I try to escape the lemmings as they skitter back and forth from gate to gate. Ordinarily I enjoy the people watching but I am much too pensive today. My friend Deb told me the other day she could tell that my heart lives in two places. So henceforth, whenever I leave one for the other, a bit of pain and pleasure will always be involved.

Lourdes wandered by a short time ago. Her well-shaped legs accented by high heels that added at least three inches to her height. She glanced at me with those smoky eyes of hers, a moment of seduction she gave all men who passed in front of her view. Then she was gone. Rodriguez, not inclined to international travel, wouldn’t be caught dead in a place like this. All my characters have traveled with me but I have done a good job of ignoring them. I know that on my return to Lima they will be shouting to get out. Their story needs to be told and it needs to be told well. That will be my task over the next few months.

Last Wednesday I had a last lunch with Deb and Tim. Mona accompanied me on this one. Tim regaled us with tall tales and off the cuff story lines that kept us in stitches. There are times when I wish that my mind worked in the offbeat quirky way that his does. Then, when I stop  to think about it, it does on occasion and I have to edit my output to make it more enjoyable to the masses. We ate at a vegetarian restaurant and the food was quite delicious. I had the black bean quesadea and would gladly have ordered it a second time if I hadn’t been so full. That bits for you Amanda. LOL Getting together with my friends and co-workers, made me miss the old job for a bit. That quickly passed though as they complained about the same things we did before I retired.

I followed that up with dinner at a Thai restaurant and drinks at one of my old haunts, PKs, the next evening. Brenda and David shared their exploits for the last couple of years and I returned the favor. They are quite the couple. The two have traveled the world in search of adventure. They have spent a month to six weeks living on beaches or the jungle in huts simply to experience the place or people up close and personal. I hope they will return to Peru and visit this coming year.

Friday I hit the wineries with my friend Cyndi. It was a great day. The sun shone between the passing clouds. The colors of fall continued in full glory; the shades of gold, bronze, red, purple, brown, green and orange spread over the hillsides meshed like a paint on a palette. The wines flavors danced on our tongues as we tasted from several bottles. Oak, cinnamon, fruit and others tantalized our taste buds until we settled on a nice red for Cyndi and a white for me. We drove through the country on lanes barely large enough for two cars, the passing scenery distracting to the point of danger. Sitting on decks, the cool breezes eventually drove us inside to admire the vistas through the windows. It was a perfect day and I enjoyed spending it with Cyndi in lively conversation. It all came to an end when friends/co-workers joined us and the conversation veered into all the things that were wrong at work. Afterwards I dropped Cyndi off and joined Mona and Kelly on their patio for cocktails which led to watching the Cardinals win the World Series. That was a nice little present for me before leaving the States.

I spent my last two days with my sister, Rita, and brother-in-law, George. Those two days were highlighted by a visit to the St Louis Botanical Gardens. It’s a place I recommend that everyone visit whether it is the one in St Louis or another closer to where you live. It’s hard to describe the beauty, the abundance of colors, the variety of flowers and other plants. You simply have to experience it firsthand. They change by season so four visits a year should provide you with separate experiences. On this trip, fall foliage and flowers were highlighted throughout the garden. A large crowd of adults and children in costumes were in attendance when we arrived. Ghosts, ghouls, superheroes, witches, goblins and characters from fairy tales wandered the grounds looking for treats and enjoying the vistas. We wandered through the park for about four hours, taking time to visit the Japanese, English and Chinese Gardens as well as other areas. If you are a camera buff or an artist who enjoys plein-air painting, you will need to start early and stay late. It’s overwhelming to the senses and a visually exhilarating place. After a late lunch, they dropped me off at my hotel across from the St. Louis airport where I got a few hours sleep before getting up at 3:30am to catch my plane. I’m back in Peru now and the characters that have been screaming to get out are happy. Now I can put pen to paper, so to speak, and give them life.