Is this how you all roll in here?
I would like some feedback on this start of my novel. I’m new to this area, so if I’m committing any faux pas, let me know, okay?
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Chapter 1
Someone was coming. Anthony could tell, though he didn’t know exactly how. He knew he had a reputation as a psychic, a mystic seer of some kind. It wasn’t so. His insight wasn’t as keen, he thought, as other people’s was dull. But the legend served him well. He neither fed it nor starved it.
The woods hadn’t fallen silent, just changed. There had been chickadees down the path, their games raucous and familiar but seldom played in the company of intruders. Replacing them, a raven. Not one calling its angry-woman cry to clear the woods or warn it, but croaking questions from the treetops. Moving slowly and speaking curiously.
Probably someone out for a little nature walk, thinking the trail was just an old forestry road, as most were. He went to his toolbox and got a pistol anyway. Tucked it and his hand into the pocket of his red-plaid Woolrich jacket.
“Hello?” It was the voice of a man, barely reaching a volume that could be called a holler, too far off yet to merit answering. Anthony waited. Another hello, much closer, and the raven winged over, silently. The man would be wearing city clothes. Glasses, because guys like him like the importance glasses imply, whether they need them or not. And he wouldn’t be alone. Men alone in the forest call out more loudly than those in company, not worried about looking the coward to their companions.
Moments later, a tall man with a nice haircut for a bald guy stepped into view. Navy pea coat, frameless glasses, thin leather attaché. He was dressed for a bank lobby, and hadn’t set foot on anything but dirt for the last half mile. It hadn’t rained in weeks. Anthony wished it had. The man looked uneasy, Anthony thought. More so than could be blamed on his wardrobe.
Right behind Mister Haircut, a woman that Anthony hoped was his single daughter. Slim and gracious, not quite as ill at ease, but every bit as over-dressed. He smirked at her choice of shoes. Fashionable heels. He knew people who could have named the designer on sight, but he wasn’t one of them.
Anthony took his hand from his pocket and left the little gun behind. He stepped forward a few steps and waited for the pair to arrive. “Welcome to Casa de Toren. Would you care to see our lunch menu?” As jokes go, it wasn’t a good one, but the quizzical look the man gave Anthony kept the smile on his face.
“You must be Tony Toren.”
“Anthony.” He held out a hand. “And you would be?”
The handshake was exactly as Anthony had expected, strong and petite. In business circles, probably just strong, but to Anthony it lacked the solid flesh that said a man was more than just negotiation.
“I am Lloyd Smoot.” The man spoke in a clipped, curt manner that told Anthony their relationship, if any, would be master-to-servant as far as the man was concerned. That bearing people have who expect their reputation to have preceded them.
The woman, not yet thirty and beautiful in the way that money makes any young woman beautiful, did a respectable job of looking not entirely out of place. Dark hair, nearly black, fair skin, pretty hazel-green eyes. He noticed her heels were not only intact but showed no sign of having sunk to their full depth in the forest floor. Anthony reached to shake her hand and got exactly what he expected. Perfect flaccidity. He could have been shaking the hand of a person fast asleep. It wasn’t the handshake of a weak person, but of one trained in indifference, passivity, or both.
“Hello.” She didn’t offer a name, and Anthony didn’t much need one so he didn’t push it.
Damn. He’d wanted to like her. He didn’t.
“So what brings you to this neck of the woods?” Anthony turned up one corner of his mouth in a smart-ass smile.
The man, of course, spoke: “Mister Toren, we are in need of your skills.”
“Ah, yes.” An opportunity to try to make this man either smile or go away. Anthony strode to the porch of his little rustic, wood-sided cabin, and picked up a straight burnished walking stick. He turned back to the pair and held it forward with both hands, as if for viewing. “We have these available in pine, black ash, birch… all cut to fit your unique walking style.” He turned it to display all sides.
Smoot saw the small humor, Anthony could tell, but wasn’t about to entertain it. His storm-gray eyes locked into battle with Anthony’s, lake-blue.
No contest, Smoot broke the silence almost at once.
“I’d like to hire you as a private investigator, Mister Toren.”
Thanks, my friends. Yes, Skinny, I am leaving. Not again, but for a first time. That is, any absences of the past have been matters of personal time constraints. This time I’m checking out because I’m not interested in the place anymore. It’s been just amazing playing with you all, and I may return, but if I bet against it. I really have no tolerance at all… well, for people, truth be told, but more specifically for people who feed on or feed to drama.
I posted in here on a whim, see if it might be different, but after the fact I realized it’s not really a sensible idea, posting a novel in a forum, ten paragraphs at a time, so I don’t plan to continue.
Thanks for all your friendship, and you may contact me through email if you’re ever inclined, but I think I’m gone from the halls of YAP.
-Randy