We all have those little foibles we were unaware of until some tactless individual with an outside perspective dared to reflect them back at us. Or possibly we first learned of these foibles after inviting said individual to share our lives more intimately and said individual does so only to later stare at you with bewilderment and/or horror in their expression.
Whichever the case may be, the ultimate expression of these foibles comes when we recognize them in our own children. At that point, we are left to wrestle with whether said foibles are a curse or a unique, defining characteristic. (I prefer the positive spin.)
One of the more odd quirks I recognized early on in the wife’s family is the manner by which the women sneeze. Rather than a single, brain expelling eruption (which is typical on my side of the family), the females on the wife’s side of the family are afflicted with a series of tiny, cutesy-poo, cartoonesque sneezes that always travel in odd-numbered packs of five or seven. It’s bizarre to be sure, and none of them appear able to disrupt the process once it has taken over. My nieces have been infected as well. But seeing how the wife and I have just the two sons, we’ve apparently been spared this oddity.
Recently, it’s become quite obvious that both my sons have been afflicted with what the wife has long labeled “verbal spasms.” These most definitely stem from my side of the family, and by all accounts were introduced into the gene pool through my father. (I’ve not performed adequate interviews to determine how far back these spasms travel in the family tree.) A verbal spasm can best be summarized as the sudden and irrepressible verbalization of nonsensical noises. These are not seizures or nervous ticks. There is no regularity or repeated pattern in the sounds expressed, but they are most certainly involuntary.
These verbal spasms can take the form of “beep bob de doop” one moment and then immediately morph into “yaaka yakka yeee!” the next. “Er ja err jaaaaa” or “blickablickablack” or “blblblblblbllblblblblup” would be equally as likely.
Of course the question remains, be these spasms nature or nurture? Seeing how my eldest son is adopted, you might think a simple solution would emerge. Alas, this doesn’t appear to be the case. In fact my oldest son suffers a mild version of verbal spasms while my youngest son is inflicted by a much more extreme version that often involves full body gyrations culminating in him spanking the wife or myself and then flapping his T-rex arms as if he is a butterfly. The condition does seem to intensify during pre-adolescence. I suppose there may be some chemical or hormonal element involved. And so the debate rages on.
One thing is for certain; if the wife had known the first time she beheld my family in all of its bewildering and spastastic glory that her own household would rival it in auditory irregularity, she would have begun her practice of centering meditation much earlier in life. Oh well. Live and learn.
At the Desk This Week
This week I’ve finished my creative level edits on Season Three of the Green Ones so that I can focus on writing the last episode (6) for that season this upcoming week. The story feels pretty clean and solid at this point. The narrative quality has finally risen to the standards I’m capable of, and I’m really enjoying the trajectory of the story. At this point, I expect to be able to write episode six without all of the herky-jerky starts and stops. This practice has been invaluable to me seeing how I’m planning on diving back into live, serial publishing on Kindle Vella at some point later this year.
If you missed it in the last few updates, Amazon Kindle is launching a serial reading app/platform this summer called Vella. I’m already loading two serials into the platform in anticipation of it going live for readers. I chose to test Vella with Extinction Force and Gridiron 2029. Extinction Force is a Military Sci-fi series that I’m 100,000 words into already. It was made for serial release via the failed reading app I spent 2018 and 2019 working on. During those same years, I also started Gridiron 2029 with the idea of creating a techno-thriller with a focus on the future evolution of American football. I’ve only written around 30,000 words of Gridiron, and they’ve yet to see the light of day in any form or fashion. With both serials, I’ll have a bit of a headstart. But eventually I’ll be publishing as I write. That means making sure everything is set for future episodes before I fully know what those future episodes are gonna be!
If You Wish to Start Reading The Green Ones…
[Click here to start at the beginning.]
Thanks so much for taking the time to read these scenes of Boundaries, Season 2 of The Green Ones. I’ll be publishing FREE daily scenes from The Green Ones until…I die…or something terrible happens. Seriously, I’ve got over 100 scenes written so far, and I’ll be writing more until the story reaches its natural ending. You are totally welcome to read the entire story for FREE! If at any point you decide you would rather finish the story in ebook or print format, just click the buttons below and you can do that as well. If you enjoy reading the serial releases, BUT you would also like to support me as a writer (my kids need wine!) please subscribe to my premium content for bonus scenes, exclusives, and insider access to my process. And of course, I’d be grateful if you would share this post with any of your reader friends who you think would enjoy The Green Ones. Happy reading!