I am wondering if any of you would consider reviewing the book. It will be released on Amazon/Kindle on October 18th. I need reviews posted to amazon on the release day, if possible. You get a FREE pdf, word.doc or kindle copy and plenty of time between now and mid-October to read it. Let me know, friends!
Today I am sharing chapter three of Thawing A.C. Nielsen. This chapter further develops the characters of Kate, the protagonist, and her roommate, Aria, as they make plans to get Aria to her big job interview. I also foreshadow the fact that satirizing reality TV is a big part of the book, by having Kate recount an odd dream she had. Little does she know that the crazy, jaded, misogynist folks of the reality TV world will intersect her story later on! Kate recounts this lucid dream to Aria and they both wonder about its strangeness. I have lucid dreams myself from time to time (a lucid dream is one where you know you are dreaming and can even nudge the story a bit yourself). I think you'll enjoy this chapter:
Today I am sharing chapter three of Thawing A.C. Nielsen. This chapter further develops the characters of Kate, the protagonist, and her roommate, Aria, as they make plans to get Aria to her big job interview. I also foreshadow the fact that satirizing reality TV is a big part of the book, by having Kate recount an odd dream she had. Little does she know that the crazy, jaded, misogynist folks of the reality TV world will intersect her story later on! Kate recounts this lucid dream to Aria and they both wonder about its strangeness. I have lucid dreams myself from time to time (a lucid dream is one where you know you are dreaming and can even nudge the story a bit yourself). I think you'll enjoy this chapter:
CHAPTER THREE
The next day Kate was putzing around, wasting time doing random stuff around the apartment. To be blunt, she was bored. It was about three in the afternoon when she saw Aria’s car pull in. A minute later Aria traipsed through the door with her instrument cases.
“Hey, there you are!” Kate said. “Home early, huh?”
“I was coaching a string quartet of sophomores down at DePaul for free as a favor to someone I know down there. They were sucking so much I broke it off early, told them you can’t take French music like the Debussy String Quartet and blitzkrieg the thing to death with way too much down-bowing. I mean, good Lord, we gotta treat French composers with some tenderness, oui? I told them we’ll try again next week after they’ve rethought their approach. The poor things looked crestfallen when I criticized them. Huh—I just said crestfallen, that’s a first!”
“Hey, it’s only three thirty. We could hit the tennis court,” Kate suggested. “It’s nice out for April. What do you say? Run over to Mitchell Park and whack some balls?”
“There’s a setup line if I ever heard one. Sure, let’s go. Just take it easy on me, okay, Captain Pearson?”
“Sure, no problem. We can grab some Thai on the way back and chill the rest of the evening.” They got changed and jumped in the car to drive over to the park. There were only four courts, but this time of day they weren’t usually all taken. Traffic was backed up so there was time to chat in the car.
“Oh my God, Aria, you wouldn’t believe the dream I had. Right after you left this morning I fell back asleep. This dream was just so weird and it went on forever.”
“Yeah, so what happened? I like your dreams. You know, I hardly ever dream.”
“I’m sure you have dreams, you just don’t remember them. Everybody dreams. I started having lucid dreams about six months ago.”
“Remind me again what lucid dreams are,” Aria said.
“You know, where you sort of know you’re dreaming and now and then you can just slightly change stuff—like maneuver it a bit.”
“Okay, so let’s hear this one.” Aria grabbed a bag of pita chips and ripped it open.
“Okay, so I’m sitting at an outdoor cafe and I’m like spying on this woman. Her name is Enmity Philips and she’s a model. She does some commercials, too, and just low-level modeling—she’s not like a supermodel.”
“That’s too bad. We supermodels enjoy the high life,” Aria boasted, swerving to avoid a merging car.
“I don’t think supermodels stuff their face like you do, Miss Distracted Driver. How about watching the other cars more and paying less attention to your bag of chips? So… Enmity used to work in a cardboard box factory, but she was depressed and wished she could invent something to go in all the boxes.”
“Sounds very Freudian, Kate. When was the last time you got laid?”
“Don’t interrupt. So anyway, somehow somebody decides she doesn’t have to work in the box factory anymore and she can be a model, even though in my dream, she had really droopy titties. Like Sagsville—you know what I mean? She leaves the box factory and I’m spying on her, like I said. Then up walks this guy and tells her to get to the studio. All of a sudden the dream switches to this television studio—the dream just jumps there. And there’s Enmi—”
“Wait, what does that word mean? Enmity? That’s not a real name. There’s already a lot of weird psychological stuff in there, Kate. You need to see a shrink.”
“I think enmity means you dislike someone and maybe you have a grudge against them? Like how I feel when you keep interrupting. So there’s a film crew and a director and everything, and the makeup people have given Enmity like totally disgusting yellow, cracking fungus-y toenails and they’re filming her trying to cut these honkin’ things, and when she actually can get the clippers to work, the shards of the gross nails go flying all over. Then the director yells ‘cut,’ and they stop for a bit. That’s when I realize what’s going on. She’s been hired to be on a TV reality show about weird and wacky inventors—it’s called You Wish You Thought o’ Dat. They follow various goofball inventors around for a few days and film them pitching their new product to investors.”
“You Wish You Thought o’ Dat? Dat… not that? Weird. And this is all rolling around in your precious little subconscious, huh?”
“Yeah, strange isn’t it? So they set up this next scene—”
“But you said it was a reality show, why are they setting up scenes? I don’t get it.”
“I’m not sure I do either. It’s a dream, remember? Maybe reality shows aren’t all for real, anyway. Perhaps they script some of the stuff?”
“I wouldn’t know. I’ve hardly watched any TV for the last seven or eight years or so. That’s how long I’ve been a practice-room rat. Plus, I mean, how many reality shows do you and I watch, right?”
“Right, Aria. So anyway, the scene setup is this nerdy guy who has invented a way to catch your toenails before they go flying in your boyfriend’s face in bed at ten p.m. ’Cause that would be a real romance killer, right?”
“Yes, for sure.” Aria smirked.
“So they shoot this scene where the inventor shows Enmity how to use the product. It’s just like one of those cones they put on dogs so they won’t chew on their stitches after surgery, right? I think it’s called a ‘cone of shame’ or something. You sit tailor-style and this thing wraps around your ankle and then the clippings fall inside of it. So Enmity thinks it’s stupid, and potential investors would agree with her because when she tries it, the gnarly toenail clippings are still flying out past the cone. And that’s where the dream gets really weird.”
“Ooh, weirder than it’s already been? Go on!” Aria urged as she pulled into the parking area nearest the tennis courts.
“Yeah, so the inventor, his name is Benjamin Rutherford the Fourth, says to Enmity, ‘See the button? There, down at the bottom. Push it.’ So she does and the rim of the cone lights up really cool, like with pulsating purple lights and the whole thing makes this amazingly cool new-age whirring sound. ‘Now try,’ says the inventor guy, so Enmity rolls her eyes and clips another of the fake disgusting toenails and it starts flying out of the cone, too, except just as it looks like it’s going to escape, the cone’s energy field grabs the nail and pulls it back in—tada!”
“Oh my God, Kate, I think you’ve got a brain tumor. But heck, who wouldn’t want one of those light-up conie things, ha-ha.”
“Yeah, and then I woke up. Most of the time I was lucid dreaming. I think I made up the guy’s name and nudged some details here and there.”
“Well, gurl, you better register a patent for that space-age cone—or send that reality TV idea in to somebody, right? Make some slick LA producer-type give you cash for that program idea. Dat’s what you should do!”
###
Kate and Aria picked up their Thai on the way back home from their tennis workout. As usual, Kate won every set—she had been the captain of her high school tennis team and captain at Northwestern for two years as an undergrad. For Aria it was simply a chance to get exercise, she knew she could never beat Kate. They settled in with the Thai and opened a bottle of wine, intending to keep the vino consumption a little more under control than the night before.
“So, please,” Kate said, “can we figure out Wednesday? I’m getting nervous about this interview and I really want to get it planned.”
“Sure, what time is it again?” Aria asked, as she dug voraciously into her Pad Thai.
“Downtown, ten a.m. at the Winston House. When’s your rehearsal in Milwaukee?”
“Noon. Some dreamboat French pianist Andre-something is coming in to do the Bartok Three. Good thing he’s not doing One or Two, he might permanently damage his precious little French fingers, never to uncork a Beaujolais again.”
“Okay, so sounds like this could work, right?”
“Yeah, I’ll drop you downtown about nine, then I’ll drive up to Milwaukee, rehearse, tie Andre to his hotel room bed and ravish him, and then be back to get you.”
“Super, and if I have to I can kill time at the Art Institute. Sounds like a plan. Can you pass me that chicken satay?”
“Sure. Hey, Kate, I started thinking again about what your job could be at this company. You wanna hear?”
“Sure. Serious this time, or no?”
“Serious, for sure. I think they want you to clone Hitler’s moustache. They have some of it in a vault in Berlin, I hear.”
“Jesus, you’re crazy.”
“Well, my mom says my dad dropped me on my head a lot when I was a baby. He says I was really squirmy—that’s the excuse they make.”
“Wow, Aria, that explains a lot!”
“Yes indeed, I believe it does. But you’ll still be my friend, woncha?” Aria said, pouting her lips and batting her eyelashes.
“If I have to, goofball!”
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