Saturday, September 27, 2014

A Candid Writing Moment with Lee Carver



"My husband and I were in a shabby taco stand in Weatherford, Texas, on a scorching Saturday afternoon after the annual peach festival. A noisy group sat in an oversized booth to our right, deep into their beers. One man had added a chair to the end of the booth, which put him a few inches from me.


The music blared as they received margaritas served in glasses the size of fish bowls. The guy nearest me held forth with some story as our tacos were delivered, and I tried to ignore the noise.


The fellow leaned back. "So I told him I'd do the whole roof for seven thousand dollars, but I want the pig!"


The people at the booth roared with laughter, and I began to think what a great first line that would be for a novel. In fact, I thought so hard that I bit my bottom lip worse than ever before in my whole life. What situation might surround this statement? Who might deliver that line, and why?


Lee CarverLater, I tapped the guy on the shoulder and told him he'd just given me the first line to my next novel, and he chatted about how he'd been up on someone's roof to give an estimate for the roofing job and spotted a pig in a small pen in the back yard." Lee Carver, author of A Secret Life
 Exclusive sneak peak of Lee Carver's upcoming book, Retreat To Shelter Creek
“I’ll do the whole roof for seven thousand dollars, but I want the pig.”
Ashley squinted up at the plaid-shirted man in a wide, used-to-be-white cowboy hat. A light sensation gurgled up from unknown depths inside her. She threw back her head and let laughter overtake her. Nothing in the past few months had triggered such light-hearted abandon."




http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00N265MUM/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B00N265MUM&linkCode=as2&tag=inspromanove-20&linkId=VTWWFARMRDNPTHUCThe German Army of World War II rips Karl Von Steuben from his family and privileged life, forcing him to conceal his American sympathies and Jewish heritage. Stripped of every tie to his home country, he determines to escape. As he crawls to the Siegfried Line, only he knows the hiding place of gold ingots melted from the jewelry of death camp prisoners. Wounded after assuming the identity of a fallen American soldier, Karl briefly deceives even himself. Discharged and shipped to America, he discovers God's unmerited favor in a beautiful Atlanta nurse. But he must return to Germany or relinquish his family fortune and rear children under the name of another man. Will Grace forgive his duplicity and accept him as an American?


 EXCERPT

Copyright 2014 © Lee Carver

Karl struck out for yet another green grocer or meat market. So the cook was correct about all the nearby ones. There used to be a fresh market a kilometer away. Probably down Kugelstrasse. He turned right and picked up his pace.
Shopkeepers told him the way, begrudging more than volunteering information. Queuing on the cobblestone sidewalk, he realized how much his awareness of Germany’s condition had changed this morning. Instead of the deference he had come to expect, citizens who didn’t want to share the food remaining in the city growled at him. His family’s money and profession mattered little to those who had no money, no provisions, and certainly no investments.
The roar of two German Army trucks startled Karl from his thoughts. They pulled in front of the store, bracing the customers right and left. Soldiers waved their Mauser 98 rifles and dismounted from the cabs and canvas-covered backs before the tires stopped rolling.
There goes the food. He stepped out of line, the urgency to escape spiking his heart rate. These men were dangerous.
“Halt! Get back here. Where do you think you’re going?”
A soldier with several stripes on his uniform grabbed Karl’s shoulder and shoved him toward the end of one of the trucks.
“Show me your Ausweispapier.”
Karl handed over his ID paper. The fellow glanced once and slammed it on the clipboard of the other soldier. That man copied the details then pushed Karl against the truck.
Stumbling, he braced on the high floor and found men staring out from benches along the inside walls. The reality of forced conscription stabbed his lungs. They would take him away without a word to his family and send him off to die in a war against his mother’s people and his father’s politics.
“Wait. I have a deferment. Von Steuben Investments manages Reichland funds—”
The kick half-missed its target as Karl turned to explain, to beg, whatever necessary to return home with or without food. His rear end throbbed with pain.
The soldier’s laugh broke from a crack in hell. “Yeah, and my son’s a lawyer but he’s serving. Get in. Now.”
An arm jerked him upward off the street, yanking his shoulder joint hard. Dangling, he scrambled for a foothold, scraping his shins on a metal edge, until he fell into the truck on his stomach at the boots of another soldier. His rifle barrel motioned for Karl to sit with the others. Its bore, aimed at his head, killed any idea of escape.
A man, fifty or sixty years old, climbed up at gunpoint.
“That’s all. Let’s go.” The soldiers with the uniform stripes swung into the truck as it lurched.
Shadowed occupants around Karl had to be too young, too old, or too sickly to fight, while his own prime condition made him a sure target. But nabbing him off the street was wrong, just plain wrong.
The older man stared out the back with haunted eyes, his mouth open as if in a silent scream. He slapped a hand over his heart, showing a thin wedding band. A family man. With him gone, they might not have food either.
A boy too young to shave sobbed, tears and slobber running down his face.
Karl held back the sting in his eyes, blinking hard.
I. Will. Not. Cry.
He gripped the bare wooden bench as the streets of Munich passed beyond the truck’s open back. Bumping over the rough cobblestones, his bruised rear took further beating. Three times the truck stopped to nab more men and boys. Three times his heart pounded with the challenge to make a dash for it, but the guard assumed a strong stance with his Mauser assault rifle at the ready and a dare in his eye.
Would they tell his family? Could his father find out where they took him and appeal his abduction? Most of all, he hurt for Mother, who would wring her hands and walk the floor crying. He had thought himself impervious to conscription.
Hours later, the captive recruits passed through a security checkpoint and into a barebones camp. Was this a prison camp?
Had they found out about Mother?


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lee has lived in six foreign countries and studied nine languages including German and French. She and her husband traveled extensively throughout Europe while living in Spain. A five-week World War II history tour covering the areas where her father-in-law fought created the stimulus for this book.

Lee taught biology and chemistry, served as a volunteer church musician, and in retirement was a missionary in the Brazilian Amazon. She is a member of ACFW and president of its ACFW-DFW “Ready Writers” Chapter, and is active in Stephen Ministry and Kid’s Hope.
Learn more about Lee on her website at www.LeeCarverWriter.com.


4 comments:

  1. Lee, what a hilarious first line. I can picture the whole scene in Weatherford. Thanks for sharing the story. I can tell my husband I now have a reason to eavesdrop on nearby conversations. :)

    DiAne Gates

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  2. I love your candid moment, Lee! You never know where an idea might spring from and real-life humour is the best.

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  3. I love inserting real moments in my fiction writing. It's like a special secret you share with yourself, grinning as you write it!

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  4. I SO agree, ladies. Who woulda thought I'd soon be interviewing hog farmers to write a book? Seriously, I met a prosperous hog farmer at my husband's 50th high school reunion right after that, and fired a few questions. "If you saw a pig that you instantly recognized as desireable and valuable, what would it look like?" Without batting an eyelash, he fired back the answer. "A white crossbread." And so the pig named Pearl is exactly that.

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