Diary of a Heretic

Flayed Alive (again)

kathleenmaher — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 10:00:00 -0500

My original post called “Flayed Alive” is almost as consistently popular as the pictures from “The Land of Oz,” by L. Frank Baum, which will show up here soon. How do people find “Flayed Alive, though? It took me almost half an hour and it’s on my blog. True, I’m always losing things, things in practically any category you can name, and I often can’t find them until somebody asks me what I’m looking for. From the other person’s perspective, my lost item or business is right in front of me. However, sometimes my searches for the obvious produce a...

Justifying My Existence (again)

kathleenmaher — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 12:00:00 -0500

From my lost novel, “Diary of a Heretic,” a writing prompt: For years I adhered to the idea that if I lived spartanly and maintained hope, a day would come when I would metaphorically if not actually be invited to speak my mind. And someone would listen. Someone would understand. The way I imagined it: When you were called upon to speak, you were supposed to say why you think you’re alive, why you were born, and why you’re still around: What are your reasons? Everyone needs to come up with his or her own personal answer. After all, no...

Guaranteed Happiness (again)

kathleenmaher — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 09:10:00 -0500

Here’s Diary of a Heretic’s all time readers’ favorite: My family called me, “Pris,” which I hated. It bothered me until I was thirteen and Felicity sauntered into our humdrum classroom, after being expelled from some top echelon school. With several seats vacant, she collapsed into the one beside me, and blew a balloon of bubblegum that somehow didn’t stick to the gleaming swatch of dark hair covering half her face. Behind her books, she exaggerated our teacher’s lisp. “Such supercilious pusillanimity.” I laughed and spent the afternoon in detention. Thereafter we were best friends. Felicity lived in a mansion...

Fiction Interrupted Again

kathleenmaher — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 22:24:54 -0500

Here’s an illustration of The Crosby Street Hotel’s lobby in New York City that’s remarkably similar to the fictional Crosby Street Hotel where Matthew King and his agent Jeffery are staying. After (providing?) I return from visiting my family in Chicago, Matthew and Jeffery will meet with a fictional Barbara and her fictional half-brother Michael from a fictional enterprise called Eon to name my hero Matthew King the next James Bond. He’ll be the first one from the United States but he’s got a full retinue of coaches as well as a pair of very savvy teenage girls to propel...

Temporary Lover

kathleenmaher — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 10:31:11 -0500

Tara’s pleasure in getting the better of Matthew King—leaving him to contend with her gaga mama, refusing to take his note to Brooke, and pressuring him into the summer play—had nose-dived even before she reached Route 212. She liked Matthew King and he liked her. He told her things he didn’t tell anyone else. He confessed his weaknesses and accepted Tara’s approval or disapproval as if she were the only dependably honest person alive. In general, Tara would rather be the even keel to Matthew than the cause of his insanity, like Brooke. [Click here to read the first episode,...

Heroin-Flavored Bananas

kathleenmaher — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 19:42:13 -0500

Alone with Matthew and his children, Brooke and Tara’s mother Connie acted like a flighty teenager compared to her splendidly capable daughters. She wore a billowy smock dress with puffed sleeves and black Converse high-tops. Her complexion looked parched from the sun but her face was round and freckly. These were incidental, though. The main thing was the way she stared open mouthed at Matthew and giggled. [Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.] After dinner he asked if she minded exchanging cars—his Mercedes M-series for her Prius. Matthew doubted he’d stay two...

How to Audition

kathleenmaher — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 10:17:27 -0500

Cleaving a chubby, thrashing four-year-old girl to her chest, thirty-eight-year-old Connie Logan gazed at Matthew King in unabashed idolatry. She was telling him, between giggles, that most movie stars were shorter in real life—she was used to movie stars; there were some every summer and they were always short. But au contraire, Matthew King! Au contraire! Tara’s mother often embarrassed her but she never said au contraire; or she hadn’t in Tara’s lifetime until now. Matthew smiled and acted pleased, even delighted by Connie’s fawning. But he was wet and muddy and–Tara knew this beyond proof—guilty of something really stupid....

Cannonball

kathleenmaher — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 10:52:04 -0500

By the time Matthew stood up, Brooke’s little black shoes were already disappearing into the water that rippled outward, glinting up from a shallow stillness. [Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.] Last week, either they dove from an outcropping half this high or today’s waterfall was different, and monumental. Matthew grew dizzy peering down, waiting for Brooke to surface. When she didn’t come up, he decided to jump, not dive. Landing cannonball-style, his feet touched sharp boulders. Searching for her, he plunged through the curtain of white water. He skimmed the shallow...

Overexposed

kathleenmaher — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 13:09:24 -0500

Matthew King had sent all the help away, privacy being the only security that mattered here. He arranged for their meals to arrive prepared, and he, Brooke, and Tara took turns serving and cleaning up. [Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.] At eight, Monday morning, he was watching the girls riding their bicycles toward the farmhouse when his agent Jeffrey phoned. “The meeting’s tomorrow in midtown.” Matthew nodded. “Three-thirty.” “It’s Barbara from Eon who really wants you, Matthew. She usually doesn’t attend these things. But she’s in town. And she’s the one...

The Half Shell

kathleenmaher — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 13:29:40 -0500

Tara pushed Ivy in a bucket swing. Dexter swung from the hanging rings. Brooke in her French hat and Matthew in sopping wet jeans rose from the hillside. [Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.] Earlier, while the children were preoccupied, Tara had learned that “the age of consent” in New York was seventeen. Any man older than twenty-one who had sex with a girl younger than seventeen committed a felony. Brooke wouldn’t be seventeen until Halloween. Tara watched Brooke and Matthew King approach, keeping their distance yet moving as one. Matthew King...