Candle’s Point of View

Man, writing a mystery in a day may not be the best idea. It’s a tempting enterprise, because the plot-coupon nature of the mystery yard is very appealing from a first draft perspective: Main character must collect plot point A, B and C in order to unlock the secret ending. Details about how dark the mean streets are Draft 2’s domain.

Naturally, I threw in a sci-fi conceit, because I can’t leave well enough alone. Throw in trying to write this on Election Day, when I’d rather be obsessively checking Obama’s progress to the Presidency, well, it’s like I was setting myself up not to finish it in a day.

When his eyes opened, he was a detective. He knew this because he woke up in a detective’s office, and he could read the backwards “Candle Investigations” written on the window of the office door. A look into the wallet in his pack pocket found a Private Investigator’s license, a driver’s license with an unflattering picture, an ATM card, and a dry cleaning stub, all bearing the name Salvatore Candle. A thin stack of business cards, however, said his name was Sonny Candle, which he liked better. He was Sonny Candle. So it was his wallet , his office, his bank account, and, presumably, his 3-piece suit that would be ready on Friday.

“What was today?” Sonny wondered to himself. He couldn’t remember, any more that he could remember this office, or the color of the 3-piece suit. But he found comfort in the correlation of the details. The collection of information gave him a very clear idea of the man he presented as himself to the world, if not the man he felt like. He was a detective. He owned a 3-piece suit. These were facts.

Sonny was comforted by facts…

Sterrance & Thomas See The Solar System

Sterrance and Thomas, a hedgehog and a small boy who go on adventures with the assistance of Thomas’s many eccentric uncles and Sterrance’s complete disregard of common sense, are characters I’ve been meaning to write since I first doodled them in their spaceship years ago:

Stories like this, with their limited vocabulary but whimsical premises, are the reverse of mysteries. They are in fact too easy. They kinda feel like cheating.

This does not mean, however, that there will not be more Sterrance and Thomas stories. I mean, what happens when they go to the market? To the Renn Faire? To Japan? These are questions that are screaming for answers!

Thomas was just spreading the toast with marmalade when Sterrance told him he’d like to live on Mercury. Sterrance was not normally a hedgehog given to extreme desires—he liked balloons and soft toys and toast with marmalade, but that was about it—so Thomas was taken a bit a back.

“Mercury,” Thomas said. “You mean the planet.”

“Of course I mean the planet,” said Sterrance. “I have been thinking about it along time, almost since I got up this morning, and I think that Mercury is were I want to live.”

“I don’t know,” said Thomas. “I hear it gets pretty hot there.”

“So does Florida,” Sterrance said. “And yet we visit your Uncle Wilbur there every summer.”

Thomas did have to admit that Florida was hot in the summer. “Well,” Thomas said. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to look. And Uncle Roger did leave me that rocket in the backyard.”

Thomas’s Uncle Roger did indeed bring the rocket ship with him to Thomas and Sterrance last time he visited, and he did forget to take it with him when he left. Thomas had brought this up on several phone conversations, but Uncle Roger merely changed the subject to pheasant hunting or argyle socks or any of the other many things uncles like to talk about….

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