A NEW NOVEL IS IN THE WORKS

I’ve started a new novel, my third, after Big House Dreams and Nine Bucks and Change. My memoir, Tumor Me – The Story of My Firefighter, is finished and at the publisher, so it seems only right to begin yet again. The following quote by William Faulkner made me think about what I’ve been writing. I’ve created Flo, and will be chasing her through the pages of my next book, Go With The Flo. Let me know what you think. Would you like to know more about her?

THE QUOTE: “It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.”         -- William Faulkner

Florence Maxine Gray was old, or so she thought, although she was only forty-five. She felt much older than the calendar years marked and would have had little trouble convincing folks that she was over sixty and nearly ready to retire because experience had hewn and etched deep furrows into her brow and cheeks. Her long, straight hair, as flat as a blade, had turned grey when she was thirty and she never had had the means, or the aspiration for that matter, to do anything about it. Most days she tied it back in a tight ponytail that she then wrapped into a loose bun. Her face was nondescript, the only notable feature being a rather large, black mole that rested at the corner of her left eye like a blob of black tar. It was likely the first thing one noticed about Flo and she was conscious of it, as one is conscious of a gaping wound. It pained her, and although she lied to herself, imagining it as a Marilyn Monroe-like beauty mark, she knew better; so she suffered, and looked sideways at people with sad, brown, emotionless eyes.

She wasn’t as spry as she had once been either, the job she held being a constant reminder. Flo was a janitor. The job description labeled her a custodial engineer, but she knew better about this too; she didn’t engineer anything. She had been hired by the Center View School District to dust, sweep, vacuum, wipe, empty, and straighten, and to do so without getting in the way of the administrators and teachers who on most occasions did not give her the time of day. She was an expert on cleansers that some distant, district official had purchased by the truckload at a discount rate that mirrored their effectiveness. Some days she would sneak in her own, more potent, cleaning supplies that actually would pull the black graffiti from scratched, plastic desktops or wooden, door jambs and would loosen wads of dried, chewing gum that lined the undersides of desk tops or was smashed into tight tufts of carpeting. Sometimes she felt like a hamster on a carousel, continuously repeating her duties over and over to no avail for the graffiti and gum reappeared daily as though she had never been there cleaning in the first place.  She certainly felt no sense of accomplishment and was rewarded only with demands from school officials to do a better job, and to do it quickly. To that end, she was frustrated and a bit sad; yet she completed her tasks with bored efficiency that kept her out of the line of fire most days and in the most unique setting to be a watcher, and watch she did.                                Written by Judith DeChesere-Boyle -- 2014