NEWS FROM ROME #1

    As you may know from my Twitter feed (and if you’re not following, start before I send an angry old Russian woman to box your ears - @tonypetracci) I’ve been writing my first novel, The Trial of Marcus Aurelius, for over a year now. The first draft is finished, clocking in at roughly 143,000 words. I’ve got the story and the characters down, and now it’s time to tackle the yeoman’s work and make the book actually, you know, good. So, I thought I’d start updating you all on the book’s progress and my thoughts on my own evolution as a writer, what I’ve learned, what I still have to learn, and whatnot. But first thing’s first...

  SPOILER ALERT!!!

“Tony, you’re spoiling your novel before it’s even finished? What’s your problem?”

I’ll explain. The Trial of Marcus Aurelius is historical fiction, which means it’s a bunch of made-up stuff incorporating other stuff that really happened. But historical fiction is not a sub-genre I patronize frequently. The majority of what I’ve been exposed to has incorporated only the giant, textbook-sized events and made up the rest, usually contradicting the very nature of the characters its portraying. This, to put it mildly, frustrates me. In my opinion this signifies a disrespect for history and an inability to recognize a good story. History is brimming with fantastically rich stories that do not require a rewrite. The life of Marcus Aurelius is one of them, and I don’t intend to alter any more of it than I absolutely have to. I’ll change minor details and some of the chronology, nothing that will impact the story, but I will not rewrite history. I’ll extrapolate from it and expand upon it, not ignore or contradict it. All you have to do is read Marcus’ Wikipedia entry, and you’ll know everything that happens in the book. But that’s the plot, not the story, and if the novel works, it will work because of the story.

So... why am I writing a fictional biography of Marcus Aurelius?

A couple of years ago I was thinking about what I wanted my first novel to be. I had a few ideas and started to explore them, crafting characters, concocting plots, writing scenes, just trying to get a handle on one of those ideas and see which one took root. Eventually one of them did, a sort-of fantasy with some interesting, if not entirely original, ideas. I ended up writing a third of a draft before realizing that the story’s narrative and thematic foundation wasn’t as strong as I’d originally thought, and the ending I’d written myself into didn’t resolve anything. Maybe one day I’ll revisit it or recycle some of its elements into something else, but right now those pages are sitting in a drawer (I write longhand). 

While all this was going on, and I was writing short stories (which I will continue to do), I was listening to Mike Duncan’s The History of Rome podcast. I was already enthralled, being an enthusiast for ancient Rome, by the time Mike got to Marcus Aurelius’ reign. Mike is excellent at putting a beating human heart into the stone effigies we think of when we hear the names of the famous ancients. Inside Marcus, he put the heart of a long-suffering man forced by circumstance into a life he never wanted, but who rose to meet every challenge and fulfill his responsibility. But when we got to the end of Marcus’ reign, and he had to face the reality of his son Commodus succeeding him, Marcus’ story took a decidedly sad turn. Mike noted how, in his biography of Marcus, Frank McLynn illustrated how Marcus was faced with a stark decision regarding the issue of succession. He knew Commodus was going to be a train wreck of an emperor, but on the other hand, he couldn’t name anyone else. Commodus was his only son. If he named anyone else emperor, the parasites would come out of the woodwork once Marcus was dead and swallow Commodus with their talk of, “Who’s this usurper denying you your birthright? You’re the son of the great Marcus Aurelius! YOU should be draped in the purple!” And Commodus would go, “Yeah!” Before long... civil war. It had happened before, and it would happen again. Therefore Marcus had to name Commodus as his heir... unless he had to name someone else because Commodus wasn’t around to be his heir. So, Marcus either had to name Commodus his successor, or kill his own son. 

What must that have felt like, I thought. You dedicate your entire life to fulfilling the gravest responsibility your world can offer someone, against your own wishes, your own desires. In the end you have to make a decision that will ensure all your work was not in vain, and you can’t do it. What would’ve been running through Marcus’ mind as he lay on his deathbed, the Antonine Plague eating away his body? I started reading more about Marcus, and everything I found further convinced me that Marcus' life was a tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions. I started writing, figuring out the characters and the story and the tone, everything. But I knew that, as a writer, I needed to find my own personal avenue into the story, that deep connection that makes me, as the creator, emotionally and psychologically invested in this story. Eventually I found it. What was it? None of your business. But as soon as I had it, I knew that The Trial of Marcus Aurelius was going to be my first novel.

My goal is to provide new updates every couple of weeks. I’ll probably focus on some different aspect of the work with each new update. I also have a lot of ideas about how I’m going to try to drum up interest in potential readers -- marketing ideas, that sort of thing -- and I’ll let you know about those when it comes time. I don’t know. We’ll see what happens. If nothing else, I hope these updates get you a little excited about the prospect of what the novel could be and make you more inclined to check it out once it’s done. But keep coming back here. I’ve got short stories I’ll keep posting too, and for godsake, TWITTER: @tonypetracci.

Thanks for reading, and don’t be the internet.

THE WATCHFUL EYE OF SOL INVICTUS

           People love the Sun. It’s understandable. It’s etched into their DNA. The earth started as a primordial jambalaya of disparate molecules. Then the Sun started kicking those molecules into one another until the simplest little lifeforms poofed into blissfully unconscious existence. The flora still rely on the Sun for their sustenance. Which means the fauna rely on the Sun for their sustenance. Which means humans rely on It for theirs. Maybe that’s why they keep farting into the mouth of the ozone. Their eyes are bigger than their stomachs. I guess you could argue that I should feel a particular devotion to that great incandescent teat in the sky too. If you can draw a straight line from the Sun to the plants to the beasts to Man, then you can certainly slot me into that next leg of the relay.

            But I’m the City. The Sun doesn’t agree with me.

            I was created for large swaths of the population to live together in one centralized location. That’s a big word, “together.” It’s tethered inexorably to that weird vestigial reflex of humans’ to amalgamate into a community. That’s another big word. I’m community writ large. Literally. In me the community’s become so gargantuan it now defeats its own purpose, like some gluttonous mastodon that’s gorged itself stupid and lies prone on the ground paralyzed under its own weight. You hear about it all the time, stories about people crushed lonely amidst the teeming masses. It’s all about the affects of energy, and what’s the Sun but a whole lot of concentrated energy? Some of it spills onto the earth, and the affects are not always positive. I’m sure that far, far away from me, wherever agriculture still happens, the positive affects are more obvious. But within me, the City, they’re evasive to the point of doubtful.

            People order their civilizations around the Sun. Each morning it punctures the horizon like a newborn chick punching through the shell of its egg and life springs to life. Slowly the streets fill with each man and woman’s conveyance of choice until they’re enmeshed in a swamp of gridlock. Each car, bus, truck, train, and trolley belches its gaseous affront to the olfactory with arrogant impunity. Their fumes collaborate with the ascending heat of the rising Giver of Life to thicken the air and fan the tempers of the ones who breathe it. The bleats and barks of those machines echo through my steel and concrete extremities. Computers and cell phones spit invisible waves so enigmatic their users don’t even understand how they’re poisoning themselves. But even if they did, they would still have trapped themselves in the sepulchral society of their own making. That’s the tempo, tone, and timbre they’ve defined for themselves. They set out every day as the morning’s rays first fall upon the backs of their heads and make their way to their places of employment, each one of them with the best of intentions. The ones who drive try to obscure the surrounding vicissitudes and ignore the omnipresent threat of reckless motorists with the becalming soundtrack of their choice, whatever they feel will best ready them for the gauntlet they’ve committed themselves to running. But there’s a logjam ahead, and if they’re late for work their immediate supervisor will be only too happy to exorcise his own tortures at their expense. The pedestrians are forced to keep pace in a veritable Pomplona of slaves to the market place. They know at any second they could plant their expensive new shoes into a thoughtlessly discarded puddle of freshly chewed gum, gong their already taxed knees into a fire hydrant unseen in the throng, or unwittingly walk into a rising wall of rainwater spewed onto their trousers by a passing taxi. All they can do is blot out their conscious mind. They lose themselves in either unattainable fantasy or the labyrinths of their very real miseries. Their eyes cloud over and soon they resemble livestock more than they’d care to admit. Overworked, underpaid, and completely devalued throughout the course of their day, they find momentary respite only in the toxic embrace of the occasional cigarette or an inflated sojourn to the lavatory. But the only hope they dare entertain is that once they’ve clocked out and made their barely navigable trek in reverse, they’ll have the liberty of dropping their guard within the familiar and customized confines of hearth and home. Is it any wonder I’m so often loathed and derided by the poor people who trudge through my streets, enduring the judging eye of the Unconquerable Sun?

            But the City at night – that’s a horse of a different color.

             I’m still the same City, still the same collection of fears and desires, ambitions and vices. It’s not so shallow as a change in cosmetics. It’s the Sun. The earth, abundant with existence, knows the Sun can’t shine ceaselessly. That the life It bestows would be maddeningly short-lived under It’s unblinking glare. So the earth wisely turns away to shield us, hide us, and grants us a view of the pastoral Moon.

            If the City under the Sun is an electric guitar rippling with distortion, the City beneath the Moon is a tenor saxophone, a plaintive mating call across an anesthetic ocean. At night my pulse drops to an adagio lullaby. The Sun requires a shielding of the eyes, averting them from the great wrathful god. But the Moon, closest to us of all the heavenly bodies, beckons us to look upon it and lose ourselves in Its coolly defined contours.

            My streets don’t choke on vehicles at night. Cars still litter the streets. They still erode my asphalt skin. But the air swirls between their steel heads and tails. I can breathe. I’m wrapped within a plain black canvas. Only the sweeping headlights of the passing cars and the gentle peck of the street lamps cast away the pervading darkness. We lose ourselves in those ensorcelling pools. Suddenly those pockets of urban squalor take on the mien of man’s glory illuminated. The glowing windows of our skyscrapers draw our eyes heavenward, the whole being a spire of slumbering fireflies. The worker bees may be buzzing behind those windows, but they beat their wings at their own speed, humming the tune of their choice. On the streets below, men and women young and old drape themselves in their most inspiring finery and set out to meet that certain soul whose madness can match their own. Every one calls out in prayer with each clack of heel on cobblestone, each clink of ice against glass. Every hour of our daylit lives are manacled to the apparatus of our own devising. Gears, motors, wires, and coils hobble our instincts and reflexes, our unconscious wisps of omniscience. Like beasts of burden worn raw and then discarded, we’re flogged ever forward through an endless storm of circuitry, driven on without pause or variation. We pray with every jest, every compliment, every show of gratitude, to find someone with whom we can share our defeats and our victories. Someone with whom we can vanquish the clocks and computers and conquer our addictive modernity.

            It’s a prayer the City can answer at night.

            But that prayer, however timely it’s answered, however fortuitous its answer may be, is little more than cold comfort. We know the Sun will always rise to coldly brush aside the blanket of night. Every morning the Sun will crest over the horizon, a border rendered porous beneath the unifying Moon. Waves of Hunnish light will sweep over us and mercilessly exterminate the wills of pauper, princeps, and all of us in between. Our hearts, once vibrant and fecund, will shrivel and expire in the inferno of day. Our carcasses will shuffle from point to point like the re-animated dead. We’ll drink in a Sun-scarred world through empty uncomprehending eyes without passion or purpose. We’ll never pray again. Then, only after several billion more years, will Sol Invictus, like a scientist who’s gleamed all he can from his cruel experiment, gorge himself on everything in sight, finally granting us the deliverance we’d prayed for.

THE SIREN'S CALL OF BAKED GOODS

            “I swear to God, I’m at a point where all I want in someone is a pulse.”

            “Don’t get down on yourself.”

            “I’m serious. Yesterday I tried flirting with a crossing guard.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “I’m at a red light down the street from an elementary school, and there’s a crossing guard at the corner waiting for the school to let out.”

            “Was she hot?”

            “She was at least sixty.”

            “What was your intro?”

            “ ‘If necessary, would you have to take a car for a kid?’ ”

            “I’m guessing she wasn’t receptive?

            “She said, ‘Have you ever heard of Megan’s Law?’ ”

            “Well, that’s uncalled-for.”

            “That’s what I said!”

            “Of course bringing up her mortality may not have been the savviest icebreaker.”

            “The icebreaker’s always been my problem. I’m like a golfer who can’t get off the tee.”

            “You should try an online dating service.”

            “Eh…”

            “No, seriously. My friend Mark met his fiancée on JDate.”

            “Mark’s Jewish?”

            “No.”

            “I don’t know, man.”

            “I’m telling you, it’s all about confidence. You just be yourself – not obnoxiously, but unapologetically – and people will gravitate.”

            “Easy for you to say. You’ve never had a problem.”

            “It’s not about quantity. I had to sift through a lot of rough to finally find a diamond.”

            “How are things with Meredith?”

            “Good! She’s a lot more comfortable around the family now. In fact my mother invited her down to the shore with us this summer, and she said yes. She even wants to meet you and the guys.”

            “Fantastic.”

            “Yeah, she’s really let a lot of her guard down. She’s started telling me more about where she’s coming from, her parents and college and all that.”

            “Is it that bad?”

            “I mean, I don’t think so. But I can see how she got scarred and why she’s gun-shy about opening up. I’ll go into details with you one day. But right now she’s just coming out of her shell and she trusts me, and…”

            “Don’t worry about it. When we’re friendly enough, she can tell me.”

            “I appreciate that, man.”

            “But let me ask you. How is she with you drinking?”

            “She’s fine with it. But I limit myself to one out of consideration for her.”

            “That’s downright chivalrous of you.”

            “I think so.”

            “Have you guys talked more about the A.A.?”

            “A little, yeah. She’s actually in a good place where she can talk about it and she’s rarely tempted. And when she is, she immediately calls her sponsor and then she’s fine again.”

            “What are those meetings like?”

            “I don’t know. I’ve never been to one.”

            “But what does she say about them?”

            “Mostly generalities. She takes the Anonymous part seriously, so she keeps the specifics confined to her.”

            “You know, I heard something recently about A.A. I heard for your fifth year of sobriety they give you a cake.”

            “I don’t know. She’s not there yet.”

            “Yeah, apparently they make a big to-do of it.”

            “Really?”

            “Yeah, they wheel the cake out on a cart and they sing and clap and chant or something.”

            “Chant?”

            “Well, not like some Druidic rite or anything. But the cake is supposed to be outrageous.”

            “ ‘Outrageous?’ ”

            “Yeah, it’s supposed to be this secret A.A. recipe that gets passed down by word-of-mouth. Like it’s not written anywhere.”

            “What?”

            “It’s supposed to be so delicious that everyone comes to the meeting even if they don’t attend religiously anymore. I’ve heard people who were in the program but fell off the wagon will even abstain for as long as possible beforehand. That way they can go into the meeting with a clean conscience and enjoy the cake. And if they catch a drunk there, all of A.A., wherever he goes, will ostracize him from that point on. But first they tie him to a chair and make him watch as they feast on the delectable cake.”

            “What the hell are you talking about?”

            “I’m talking about A.A. cake.”

            “Who cares about cake?”

            “It’s really good cake. This one guy on a message board called it, quote, ‘the culinary equivalent of a threesome with Helen of Troy and a thousand-dollar bill.’ ”

            “You believe everything you read on the internet?”

            “Everything about A.A. cake.”

            “Stop calling it ‘A.A. cake.’ ”

            “What would you call it?”

            “I wouldn’t call it anything because I wouldn’t be sitting here talking about cake, be it A.A. cake, N.A. cake, or KKKake!”

            “Can you get Meredith to get me some cake?”

            “Are you crazy?”

            “Why?”

            “I’m not asking her to get you cake.”

            “Please?”

            “No!”

            “Well, can she get me into a meeting?”

            “NO!”

            “Why not?”

            “Because I’m not asking the woman I love to sneak you into Alcoholics Anonymous so you can steal some goddamn cake!”

            “You got to help me get some of that cake. I need that cake!”

            “Why?”

            “Are you my friend?”

            “Don’t pull that on me.”

            “I’m not, I’m not. As my friend, can I confide in you?”

            “Yeah.”

            “I have met someone through the internet.”

            “Really? Where?”

            “Yeast explosion dot com.”

            “What the hell is that?”

            “It’s a website for baked goods.”

            “You sure it wasn’t, yeast infection dot com?”

            “Yeah, I’m sure. Anyway, I was on yeast explosion dot com – ”

            “What were doing on a website for baked goods?”

            “It doesn’t matter.”

            “What were you doing there?”

            “I thought it was yeast infection dot com.”

            “Ugh.”

            “ANYWAY… I was there and I started chatting with this guy who’s looking to take his bakery to the next level. He started talking about how great it would be for him if he could get his hands on the recipe for A.A. cake. So I told him I knew someone in A.A.”

            “And?”

            “And I told him I’d try to get the recipe or at least a sample – ”

            “No. I mean why are you trying to seduce a guy?”

            “Not him! We made a deal: I give him the A.A. cake, he gives me his daughter.”

            “HIS DAUGHTER!?!”

            “Yeah.”

            “I’ll ask again: are – you – crazy!?!”

            “What? It’s on the up-and-up.”

            “No it’s not! He’s pimping his daughter!”

            “It’s fine. He says she’s very slow and stammers like Claudius. So if you think about it, what I’m doing is straight-up benevolent.”

            “Does she have a say in this?”

            “He says as long as I take her once a week to McDonald’s and let her go in the playground, she won’t even notice.”

            “Oh my God, I don’t think I can be friends with you anymore.”

            “Don’t judge me! When you’re a lost cause, you take what you can get!”

            “I told you, if you have confidence – ”

            “I will have confidence if you get me some A.A. cake.”

            “I want you to listen to me very carefully. I will never betray the woman I am going to marry so that you can infiltrate a group of people whose health depends on anonymity, steal some fabled pastry with spurious properties, and use it to barter with an unscrupulous scumbag you met on the internet in exchange for a retarded girl who may or may not be his daughter!”

            “You only care about yourself.”

A BRIEF HISTORY OF HILLFIELD (Pt. 3)

3 - The Redcoats Are Coming!

            When open warfare finally erupted in April, 1775 between the nascent United States and the still-waxing British Empire, Hillfield came to a standstill as it debated whether to declare themselves Loyalists or take up the Patriot cause. The town's population was still predominantly Quaker and generally considered the violent revolution advocated by the Patriots anathema. On the other hand, the town's citizens found the British to be insufferably snotty and exceptionally annoying. Perhaps predictably the town fathers ultimately settled on a policy of unofficial neutrality. Hillfield would not openly declare for either their fellow Americans nor for their English overlords. It was also decided that in the event a contingent from either army was to enter the town or otherwise make demands of the citizenry, each situation would be dealt with on an individual basis.

            Isolated deep in the wooded tangle of the Pine Barrens, Hillfield remained untouched by the fires of the Revolution for the first four years of the war's hostilities. During that time life in the small town continued uninterrupted, the town's residents only peripherally aware of the conflict over their future. But on August 4, 1779, Colonel Tye brought the war to Hillfield's doorstep.

            The escaped slave had been born (or branded, rather) Titus Cornelius by his former owner, a Quaker from Monmouth County, northwest of Hillfield. Prone to drink and eschewing the Quaker practice of educating their slaves and freeing them upon their twenty-first birthdays, Tye's owner had been known as an especially unforgiving slaveholder. Shortly after Lexington and Concord Virginia's last royal governor offered freedom to all slaves who escaped and took up arms under the Loyalist banner. Tye wasted no time. He quickly escaped to Virginia and was soon back in New Jersey, armed and uniformed with the intent of crushing the colonists' rebellion. While Tye's exact date of birth is unknown, it is believed that he was still in his mid-twenties by 1778. By that point he been granted the honorific of "Colonel" for his tactical ingenuity and charismatic leadership, despite the prohibition of blacks as commissioned officers in the British Army, and been given the command of one of the most dreaded Loyalist units in the country. The Black Brigade was an elite guerilla unit of two dozen former slaves committed to supply seizures, hit-and-run attacks on Patriot outposts and detachments, and assassinations of important American leaders.

            However, when his British commanders had not given him specific missions, Tye regarded the Black Brigade's standing orders to be the liberation of slaves, particularly if those slaves belonged to Quakers, and to do so with extreme prejudice.

            On August 6, 1779, two days after Tye arrived at the secluded hamlet of Hillfield, Filman Hazelworth, a tanner, recorded the eventy of the 4th in his diary:

The Black Brigade - twenty-three ink-black negroes on twenty-three ink-black horses - rode slowly, almost sleepily, down the thoroughfare. At the head of this obsidiun (sic) mass rode a single bright eye. It was he - the Colonel Tye - astride a steed white as milk. Of a paler complection (sic) than his fellows, the Colonel was the embodiment of patrician class and command. His carriage was that of Cornwallis himself. His likeness would not be misplaced were it displayed in Charring Cross, such was his austere comportment and stentorian resolve. His compatriots, meanwhile, seemed freshly plucked from the deepest jungles of the Dark Continent, for if they be any indication, Africa is as dark of soul as it is of skin.

The Colonel, the picture of gentlemanly eloquence informed us, the townsfolk, of his identity and that of his brigands. He requested, with utmost politeness and as a fully-authorized representative of the English Crown, a litany of provisions that, were we to acquiese (sic) to their requisition, would leave our settlement on a rather frightening brink. We relented, of course, with little argument for fear of raising the ire of the Colonel's savages.

Once the provisions were delivered in full, the Colonel demanded the town's entirety of slaves and indentured servants be brought forthwith. This we did with far greater consternation. The Colonel addressed our negroes sweetly as a governess, inviting them to cast off their shackles - they were not shackled at all - and join his Brigade. Our blacks, having grown accustomed to our munificence and having been well trained, did not move or make an utterance. It was then the Colonel, betraying the primitivity of his race, ordered his men to go forth and assault our women, which they proceeded to do with ferine abandon. With the rapine concluded, the Slave Colonel demanded we free our slaves before his return in September. If we had not done so upon his arrival, he swore to raze Hillfield to the ground.

            Tye and the Black Brigade wheeled around and rode out of town, carrying their requisitions back to the Loyalist keep in Monmouth County.

            The people of Hillfield trembled at Colonel Tye's promised wrath. But they were a proud and stubborn and not altogether intelligent people and were loath to bend to a man they considered to be little more than a dark-skinned terrorist. Their deeply-prized neutrality had been violated alongside their women. They determined to violate with equal violence the vengeance of Tye and his savages.

            It was then that Hillfield turned to the only man they believed could exact that violation.

Next:

Let the Red Flow Freely

WEEK THREE OF THE PRE-SEASON (LitBits #8)

            “Hello, everyone.! Welcome to week three of pre-season football. I’m Stu Isore, with me is Pigg Vittles. Today’s game is sure to be a good one as Philadelphia takes on New England. Both franchises made some bold, exciting moves in the off-season and expectations are sky high for both teams.

            “But before we get to the on-field action, it’s come to our attention that nobody really cares about the pre-season. The games have no impact on the standings and, if you remember from last week’s slew of pre-season games, Washington actually beat Indianapolis. So, clearly these games don’t tell us anything. Therefore, in the interest of entertainment, we’re now to going to switch over to footage of a crackhead taunting a polar bear. For Pigg Vittles and everyone here, I’m Stu Isore. See you next time!”