LastCallAgain: Blog

Adam's bike accident is based loosely on two true stories from my own life:

My bike accident was in seventh grade, the bike was a second-hand Huffy Bandit, and the broken bone was the radius in my left forearm near my elbow. It was about three weeks before the end of the school year, so I spent the majority of the summer in casts from my fingers to above my elbow. Ironically enough, I had recently read a book called "There are Two Kinds of Terrible," in which the protagonist broke his leg at the end of the school year.

The leg injury and subsequent treatment was from a car accident in college. No thanks to my douchebasket orthopedist, who refused to even attempt to contact the insurance company about the surgery, the broken leg took longer to heal than my broken-in-SIX-places jaw and fractured skull. I was in a cast for nearly six months! It was well over a year before I could run properly again; I had to drop out of ROTC and it nearly derailed my military career completely. Dr. Douchebasket's reasoning for refusing to do the surgery was that my military career was over anyway… but I eventually managed to go back , complete Officer Candidate School and serve for a total of 24 years-- WITHOUT a medical profile-- before retiring in 2011.

Yes… in hindsight, I may be just a tad bit still not over that yet.

I almost goofed big time this week-- I actually put chapter 5 in the queue yesterday afternoon before heading out to work. D'oh!!

I've brought in a couple of advance readers (who aren't married to me, and therefore might be more likely to tell me what I NEED to hear rather than what I WANT to hear).

I'm interested in seeing how that works out for me ;-)

Chapter 5 is queued for posting tomorrow.

If anyone is interested in beta reading, please holler.

In the morning, Mom brought breakfast and my meds to my room. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she ruffled my hair. "How are you doing?"

"How am I doing?" I grumbled. "It's the third day of summer vacation and I have a broken leg. I can't sleep, I can't ride my bike, I can't go swimming and I have to use crutches just to get around. The doctor said I could be wearing this stupid cast for TEN WEEKS! How do you THINK I'm doing?" By the end of my tirade I was on the verge of tears.

"Look at the bright side, sweetie," she started. "You--"

"There is no bright side!" I interrupted. "My whole summer is ruined!" I didn't say it, but there actually was a bright side: Charlotte wouldn't be around to see me gimped up like this. "Just leave me alone," I grumbled. Through my tears I could see the worried look that crossed her face. I knew none of this was her fault, but at that moment I didn't care about her feelings.

Looks like Adam is in for a rough summer. Things can only get better from here... or won't they?

Happy New Year, dear reader! Starting this week (now that the holidays are over) I'm back to the original schedule of posting every Thursday.

This week's songs are Cruel Summer by Bananarama and Thunder Road by Bruce Springsteen. The Adam and the Ants 'soundtrack' is available for free listening at http://bit.ly/13U48s1

Coming this week on Adam and the Ants:

I turned onto one of the trails that led up the larger North hill, dropping down into a lower gear as the trail started to steepen. The others fell behind and I soon found myself alone at the peak, looking down Fast Lane. It was the steepest of the trails, nearly a straight shot up from the valley. It was used mostly by the dirt bikers who competed for the fastest ascent-- but today I was going the other direction. The others caught up after a few moments, huffing and puffing from pedaling their single speed bikes up the trail. Brett was the first to catch on to what I was planning. "You're not thinking of going down Fast Lane, are you?" he asked incredulously.

"Not thinking," I stated, turning my bike downhill. "Doing. See you all at the bottom!"

As with last week, this week's installment is posting early as my holiday gift to you, my readers. Next week I will go back to the original schedule of one chapter every Thursday. This serves two purposes: (1) Most importantly, A&TA is a serial. I deliberately write most chapters with at least a minor cliffhanger or some other abrupt shift in the plot. Hopefully, this keeps you, dear reader, interested and anxious for what comes next week. (2) Part 2 of A&TA is outlined and Part 3 is, well, sort of sketched out. Stretching out the posting of Part 1 gives me time to keep plugging away at the rest of the story.

I am continually amazed at the wonderful reception I've gotten as a new writer-- fully 33% of you have voted, giving me a score (as of early this morning) of over 7! (I will, as always, give credit as due to the crazy mad editing skills of TenDerLoin along with my advance readers, UnaPrincipessa and LilBitIrish)

This week's chapter contains the first of several references to Eddie's parody lyrics. I will include the songs he parodies on my Spotify playlist (http://bit.ly/13U48s1), along with the songs from the chapter introductions. This week's additions: Bicycle Race by Queen and Stuck on You by Lionel Richie.

Well, I goofed... I had intended for this chapter not to post until Wednesday, but it's up, so.... enjoy!

Jeannette is a real place and the geography as described in Adam and the Ants is mostly accurate. There have been bike/atv trails in the vicinity as far back as the early 90's that I know of (One of them could easily be seen and heard from my in-laws' back yard). However, this being a work of fiction I have taken the liberty of changing some details.