Toward The Sky: Into Each Life

Fred Dawson yanked his face from the onslaught of cold water thrown by a passing car, but otherwise, he didn’t bother to acknowledge it. After what he’d been through the past few months, icy dirty water gushing over him was almost laughable. Except he’d yet found a good reason, or even the tiniest excuse, to laugh since he’d been home.

Home. He supposed it was home. It was at least as close as he had. Why he sat on a saturated wooden bench alongside the road past one a.m., in the rain no less, when he had a comfortable warm apartment waiting for him was anyone’s guess.

Truth be told, he did know. He would never admit it to anyone, but he did know. Life brimmed to the top out here. It was everywhere he looked. Normalcy. Shops with closed signs in the windows, the edges highlighted by security lights within. An all-night convenience gas station with an occasional customer stopping and dashing through the rain to get whatever he had to have at this time of the morning. Protection from a last-minute romantic encounter, maybe. A case of beer to get through the rest of the dark before daylight.

And the rain. It had a life of its own as well as producing and supporting life. He watched it run along the road in search of a drain to empty into. He focused on how it panged his bare arms and slid off, leaving goose bumps in its wake. He blinked it off his eyelashes, tasted its crispness on his lips.

The wet cold held a magnificence he would never be able to explain to anyone who hadn’t been out there in the desert, in the dry cold, the lifeless cold. The cold from which there was no escape, even huddled around the heater in the center of the tent. He never bothered to huddle. It did no good. Even when his outside was warm, his inner core was always cold.

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So starts Toward The Sky, my short moment in time story accepted by Classic Romance Revival for its premiere anthology.

Rain is an oft-used metaphorical device in fiction. There is so much it can say to a reader without having to actually say it. We’re all familiar with the verse: “Into each life, a little rain must fall.” Sometimes, it’s much more than a little. Some of us feel too many torrential downfalls or too often.

At the start of Toward The Sky, Daws has just come home from a very long deluge and sitting in the rain inviting it is a reflection of both his past and his personality. At some point, the strong who have been drenched often enough already simply raise their hands and say, “Okay then, bring it on.” This is Daws.

I stole Daws for Toward The Sky. He is actually the antagonist in my November 2009 novel, Off The Moon. That’s the one where Ryan, my young pop star with much to learn, is thwarted in his attempts to be as self-centered as he wants to be (or as part of him wants to be) by his bodyguard, Fred Dawson, aka Daws. There is more to the story of Daws and his relationship with Ryan than I could put in the novel, however, and so, this story came about to re-introduce him. This November during Nanowrimo, I plan to write his story, a love and redemption story, as well as a deeper look into Ryan’s past.

In the meantime, if you’re interested in reading this 2,000 word romance to find out what happens to Daws while he’s sitting in the rain along the street at the dead of night, go check out CRR’s The Cupid Diaries: Moments In Time. For only $2.99, you get stories by 13 different authors. It’s a great way to find “new to you” authors of all different romance subgenres. 

And be sure to follow the mini blog carnival this week and read entries by some of the other anthology authors about their contributions!

http://www.classicromancerevival.com/blog/?p=1782

CRR will draw 10 winners from those commenting on the blogs during the carnival to win a copy of The Cupid Diaries, so be sure to let the authors know you stopped by!

Oh, and just as the rain, that so often signifies sorrow and distress in fiction and yet feeds the earth’s soul, my fiction often deals with sorrow and distress, but it always ends upbeat, and it hopefully leaves a bit of food for the reader’s soul.
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