Sorry I haven't been on for so long. My computer died. It literally died. We buried it and held a service. The eulogy was beautiful. I am still in mourning.
I have been on my other computer, the one that is like a prostitute with all the viruses and problems in it, and have been getting by so far. My virus program is broken and won't update so I am having to work behind the popups of people wanting to sell me some bogus protection device. I sometimes sit back and think how well off I would have been if I had bought a condom for my computer's wire that leads to the internet. Perhaps I wouldn't have any viruses then!
So on this machine riddled with smallpox, AIDS, and Alzeimers in which it sometimes loses its train of....train of...uh....train of...I have been writing a book called Hole in a Helmet. You saw Chapter 1 in my last post. Well, a few things have prevented me from finishing this book in this wonderful month of September. For one, my back gave out again so I had to lay in bed and wait for it to heal. My fiance's grandmother and her mother's best friend died. I am getting ready to move to Colorado. Oh yes, don't forget laziness. And the lack of a working computer...did I mention laziness?...were the big factors. So what did I do? I compiled a book of every Pickup line you can imagine so I have a sister or brother book to my Confucius Say book. I literally published it today and will tell you guys more about it next week when it's published.
Recently I got the opportunity to send in my manuscript of Areoth to Dawpublishing, which is a distributor of Penguin. Within 4 months I will know if I can publish with them or not! Pray for me! :)
As for now, here is a little bit of Hole in a Helmet. I am on page 104 at the moment, so I am getting there slowly...slowly........train of...uh...train of...
“God I hate this shit,” Mike whispered to himself before exiting the room. He didn’t hate Americans, but he hated the ones in the military. Half of them seemed to be assholes and the other half seemed to be off fighting the war.
The day was young so it kept his spirits high that he would find his new company before any of them would head off. Following the directions he had mapped together from the previous night, finding the right tent was as close to being a breeze as possible. The doorway was already open, having been unzipped as the sun had made its appearance, and shouts coming from inside.
Each of the tents seemed very affective at containing the noises within them to where a shout was just a peep to anyone outside, despite the doorway being wide open.
Mike approached the tent, but right before he got to the entrance a figure shot out of it, tackling him and causing him to stumble back and drop his bag and rifle, catching the man who thrust against him. Rather than being a full-on tackle, it seemed the man had been thrown out rather than running out.
“Hey, buddy!” Mike said in reaction as he was nudged by the mass hurdling towards him. The man in his arms straightened himself out. His nose was bleeding and he had a bulge under his left eye.
Standing upright, he straightened his uniform out as though it were no big deal to be all banged up and huffed. “Throw me out of my Goddamn tent, will he?”
A voice called out from the doorway. “My tent!”
The expression on the man standing with Mike grew more intense that it had been already. The man gripped his fists and threw a miniature tantrum right in front of everyone before bursting back into the tent screaming, “I’ll fucking rip your guts out and strangle you with th-“
There was a slapping sound of skin meeting skin. This time the man came out not bent over but spinning around seemingly unable to stop his rotation. He tripped and fell into Mike’s arms, his back against Mike’s chest.
“Fuck you cunt!” He screamed back to the tent as he straightened himself up and out of Mike’s grasp.
“No thanks. I’m straight,” said the voice in the tent as a reply to his insult.
Mike was totally bewildered at what was going on. The man in front of him turned to him and pointed back at the tent saying, “Can you believe the nerve of that guy?” Upon seeing this already beaten up face, the feature that was added was now a bump on top of his right eyebrow.
The only thing Mike could do was shake his head and say, “Nope, sure can’t.” The whole time in his head, Mike was rerunning the numbers he had read on the paper through his head. On the tent in front of him was a large patch where all the white numbers read out to anyone passing by of what company and what squad of that company was inside the green miniature fortress.
As Mike slowly leaned down to pick his gatherings up, the paper he had gotten from the main office being in his pack, the man who had been thrown out twice was busy licking his wounds, wiping the trail of blood from the bottom of his chin as it had rolled all the way down.
With his belongings attached to him, he closed his eyes for a second before marching forward. Was this to be his new military company and regular company? Hopefully, he wished, the rest of them were going to be a little less aggressive than this. He had been in France for only a day and already he wanted to go home. Ducking his head, Mike made it easily into the entrance of the tent before there was a slap and everything went black.
