Have you ever been listening to Piano Man by Billy Joel and wondering exactly what a Real Estate Novelist is, or how Paul can be one?

Turns out there is no such thing as a real estate novelist. He is just a real estate broker who’s been working on a novel for a long time. I can identify with Paul on that one but you would have to call me an Electronics Technician Novelist. A lot of times I don’t think I’m a real novelist at all. I’ve wrote things through the years. Some I’ve finished, and some I haven’t. Nothing I’ve ever written has been published, unless you count pushing the Publish button on this blog, and I don’t.

Just as a side note, as a former sailor I can say that the dude Paul is talking to in the video, you know, Davy, who’s still in the Navy? He needs to get a fucking haircut!

Anyway, let me get to the point of this post. A while back I had an incident with a park ranger that I have already written about. A little over a year ago I was thinking about this incident and it inspired an idea for a fictional novel. So I started working on this story which is about a man and his dog doing a section hike along the Appalachian Trail (write what you know I hear) and the trouble and adventures they get into after coming into contact with this particular ranger.

I’m about halfway through the rough draft but I have to say I think I have put more effort and thought into this one than any other I’ve done before. I started using a tool called Scrivner to write this book. It is an awesome tool for keeping everything organized, including characters, research, and the writing itself. It takes a bit of a learning curve to use it, but if you are willing to work through the four hour tutorial that comes with it, you won’t be disappointed. BTW, I’m not paid by Scrivner to review this. It’s just my own humble opinion.

I’ve decided to drop an excerpt from my novel here just for the hell of it. It’s a section from the first quarter of the book and it is still in very rough draft form. The whole story is told from two points of view. One from the eyes of the man and one from the eyes of the dog. So if you want to give it a perusal, go ahead. If you have any critiques go ahead and drop a comment.

Here is the excerpt from Sawyer’s Run:

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Dad

Up and down mountains, we continued to hike.  Camping at shelters or tent spots, ducking in to towns to do resupplies, and just generally having the time of our lives.  Sometime later we crossed the James River on the longest footbridge on the AT.  Once across the river we got picked up by a driver from the Stanimal’s Hostel in Glasgow.  This hostel was run by a former thru hiker named Stan whose trail name was, naturally, Stanimal.  I had never stayed in a hostel before so I wanted to give it a try for the night.  It was like a communal living experience.  Your fee got you a bed in one of the rooms you shared with other hikers.  I thought I might be a little uncomfortable in this environment but I actually found it pleasurable.  You had full kitchen privileges and access to most of the areas in the house.  There was a common room that all us hikers hung out in to watch TV, movies, and just shoot the shit.  Sawyer was quite the hit there too, especially with the female hikers.  I had only planned on staying for the night but I just couldn’t get my rear in gear the next morning and ended up taking another zero there.  Sawyer certainly didn’t complain.  The following morning I finally managed to pull us from the suction of the vortex and we continued up the trail.

A couple of weeks later, Sawyer and I were dead beat tired from crossing over a section of the trail called Three Ridges.  It was pretty tough ups and down with a lot of rocks that can be hard on the feet and are nasty trip hazards.  Up until this point I hadn’t had many major falls, but coming down a particularly steep rocky downgrade, my foot caught a rock and down I went.  I bounced and ricocheted off rocks down the slope.  Sawyer saw what was happening and pulled back hard on the leash, digging all four paws into the ground.  If he hadn’t done that I would have fell much further and probably suffered a lot more damage.  As it was I had a pretty good welt on the right side of my cheek where my head had bounced off a rock.  I came to rest in a little thicket off a bend in the trail.  Problem was, I was lying on my backpack and, like a turtle, I was having a hard time righting myself.  Sawyer encouraged me by licking my face and I eventually got up again.

I got down on my banged up knees and draped my arms around Sawyer in a tight embrace.  “Thanks boy!  That could have been bad.  Love you!”  Sawyer normally doesn’t go in for hugging but this time he seemed to tolerate it.

As I was getting myself cleaned off I noticed something was missing.  Where was my walking stick?  I looked all around and couldn’t find it.  Several feet off the trail from where I had come to rest was a drop off.  I carefully peeked over the side and ten feet down, on a ledge outcropping, was my walking stick.  It was precariously balanced on the side of the ledge, half of it sticking out over the edge where it looked like about a 1000 feet drop to the valley below.  Shit!  A stiff breeze could upset that balance and my stick would be a goner.

I tied Sawyer off to a nearby tree and dropped my pack.  I opened it up and withdrew my throwing rock bag.  Inside was the para-cord.  I tied a carabiner to the end of the cord and laid down on my belly, hanging slightly over the drop off.  My plan was to try and lower the carabiner and somehow get it latched on to the leather strap on my walking stick.  On the first attempt, I just let gravity take over and lowered the carabiner down to the ledge.  That wasn’t going to work.  It ended up coming to rest near the ledge wall and too far away from the stick.  I was going to have to throw it to get it next to the stick.  It took me several tries but I finally got it close enough.  As I pulled on the cord the carabiner slid along and up against the strap.  I gave a quick tug on the cord hoping to snag the strap.  The carabiner caught the strap but it didn’t fully snag it and popped loose, but not before upsetting the stick’s position, causing it to swing out even further over the side of the ledge.  I held my breath as I watched the stick move, thinking it was gone for sure.  But the stick finally stopped moving and didn’t go over.

I took in a big gulp of air and began to breathe again.  That was close!  When I got my courage up, I retrieved the carabiner and tried another throw.  That’s when I really fucked up.  The carabiner hit the part of the stick that was hanging over the edge.  The stick upended and slid off the edge!  I put both my hands over my head and buried it in the dirt, crying, “No!”

Off to the side of my head I could hear a weird noise and I looked up.  The excess para-cord was quickly unwinding as it ran over the drop off.  Before I could react I saw a blur of gold as Sawyer pounced on the cord with his front paws, then managed to clamp down on the cord with his mouth.

“Good job!” I said to him.  “At least you saved the cord and carabiner.”

But then I saw that Sawyer started to struggle with the cord and it began so slip through his mouth.  I reached over and grabbed the cord.  At seeing this, Sawyer let go and I noticed a much heavier weight on the cord than there should have been with just a carabiner tied to the end.  I slowly wound the cord back up and several seconds later I saw the top of my walking stick come up over the edge of the drop off.  What the what?  I quickly grabbed the stick and hauled it all the way up.  Firmly attached to the carabiner was the leather strap of my stick.  Evidently, when it went over the edge, the strap had snagged the carabiner on the way down and caught.  If it hadn’t been for Sawyer’s quick thinking, the stick, carabiner, and cord would all be a 1000 feet down right now.

I broke out some doggy treats and let Sawyer have his fill.  As an additional reward, I took his backpack and strapped it to mine.  I’d take a little extra weight for a while in appreciation of having my walking stick back.  I gripped the stick tightly and we set off up the trail again.

A little while later as we were coming down from Three Ridges, I was aching pretty good but my spirits couldn’t have been higher.  Why is that you ask?  At the bottom the trail opened up into a wide meadow and led to a road at Reeds Gap along the Blue Ridge Parkway.  So what?  Well, at the gap parking lot sat my Jeep and in that Jeep sat my wife!  We only lived about three hours from this spot and she had come to visit me.  We were going to spend three days in one of the cabins not too far from here that we often vacationed at.

It was the first time I had seen my wife since she dropped us off over a month ago in Damascus.  You know what was the first thing she did?  Bypassed my outstretched arms to cover Sawyer in kisses and hugs which he had no problem with either.  Instead of getting mad I just laughed.  It was typical her.  Besides, she made it up to me later that night, if you know what I mean.

We spent an awesome three zero days at the cabin on Love Mountain.  That’s a real place, I shit you not.  We grilled out, drank, played board games, and even did a few small hikes as a family.  One of the days we went back to Reeds Gap and did trail magic.  Some of the hikers that stopped I had met before and I enjoyed introducing them to my wife.  I shuttled a few of the hikers down the mountain five miles to a microbrewery called Devil’s Backbone.  They made my favorite beer, Vienna Lager.  I didn’t waste a chance to load up on a big growler jug and bring it back to the cabin.

The break was great but seemed to fly by and Sawyer and I found ourselves at Oh-dark-thirty standing back in the parking lot at the trail head waving good-bye to my wife again.  I tightened the waist strap on pack and we hiked on north.

Sawyer

On we hiked, having the time of our lives.  We crossed this real long bridge over a river and then took another ride in a van to a place with a bunch of people.  All of them were cool and I hardly got to spend time with Dad because of all the attention showered on me by the other hikers.  The women especially loved to give me ear scratches and belly rubs.  It worked for me!  We stayed there a day and a half.  I could have stayed there even longer but Dad said we had to get back on the trail.

 Weeks later we were hiking through some serious rocks when I saw Dad trip and fall!  He bounced down the slope and I could see the leash running out of slack.  The only thing I could think to do was dig in with all four paws and fight the forward tugging.  It was quite the jerk on the leash but I managed to slow Dad down enough so that he came to a stop.

Dad!  Are you all right?  I ran to where he was laying and licked his face.  Once he got upright again he thanked me, told me he loved me, and got down on his knees to give me a hug.  I’m not a big hugger but I allowed it this time.  Besides, I have to confess that while I wanted to help him, my actions had been somewhat self-serving too.  I didn’t want to get dragged over the side of a mountain either.

I then saw Dad frantically start searching around the area looking for something.  What was he doing?  He got some stuff out of his pack and then tied me off to a nearby tree.  Then he laid down on his stomach and started fiddling with things over the edge.  Dad, what’s going on here?  He didn’t answer me of course.  I heard him shout “No!” which startled me.  Then I heard a whizzing noise and saw that the cord Dad used to do his inept bear bag hanging was slithering through the leaves on the ground.  I still wasn’t sure what was going on but my instinct took over and I leapt at the cord and got my front paws on it.  Luckily, I was within leash range to accomplish this.  I then clamped down on it with my teeth and stopped it from moving.  I heard Dad say something to me but I didn’t make it out because just at that time the cord in my mouth got really heavy and it started to slip out.  Dad quickly grabbed the cord and got it stopped again.

I let go of the cord and watched Dad wind it up until I saw something come up over the edge.  Oh!  It was his walking stick.  It must have gone over the side when he fell.  So I had saved his stick?  It wasn’t much use to me but I know Dad loved that thing.  I was glad to help.  In fact, unbeknown to me at the time, I had just saved my own life, but that’s still up the trail a ways.

Dad gave me a bunch of treats as a reward and I enjoyed them, but the real treat was when he took off my backpack and carried it himself!  Now that was some gratitude there!  If I could initiate a hug I definitely would have given him one.  Love you Dad!

A little while later we were following the trail through a meadow and it seemed familiar to me.  Then I saw something I knew was familiar, our Jeep was parked there.  Then there was Mom running up the trail to embrace me!  This must have been national hugging day but I allowed this one too because I hadn’t seen her in a long time.  I looked over to where Dad was standing with his outstretched empty arms and if my anatomy had allowed it I would have snickered.  Ha!  She loves me more than you pal!  I knew that wasn’t true but I was going to play it up anyway.

We spent three glorious days at the cabin that I had been to many times before.  But all too soon it was over and Dad and I geared back up, said good-bye to Mom and hiked on.

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