About The Book
Author: Christopher P. Ring
Publisher: Independent Self Publishing
Publication Date: December 5, 2014
Pages: 73
ASIN: B00QOBEIX4
Genre: Literary / New Adult / Short Stories Collection
Format: eBook (.mobi / Kindle), PDF
Buy The Book:
Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/electricity-christopher-ring/1120893130?ean=2940149963393&itm=1&usri=electricity+christopher+p.+ring
Book Synopsis:
A teenager wrestles with the meaning of love when his parent’s high-voltage marriage turns deadly. School boys playing chicken with a commuter train, search for answers about life and death. An American teacher working in Peru struggles to reconcile the gap between her idealism and the reality of poverty when an act of kindness leads to a frightening episode. Covert baptisms, duels of love and highway robberies: the coming-of-age stories in Electricity share a vision of America marked by tainted innocence and misguided idealism.
Book Excerpt:
But Licho remains tall. Scanning the horizon of the classroom, his
hand blocks out an imagined sun. Micah
follows his vision across the walls.
They are tacked with pictures she has torn from history books and
language books. There are pictures of
Quechua farmers from the hills re-enacting ancient Inca dances for Inti-Ramin,
and next to those, pictures of Gene Kelly and Audrey Hepburn dancing on the
Seine in Paris. On the back wall there
are pictures of conquistadors and ancient emperors, Pizarro paired with
Atahualpa, Cortez paired with Pachacutec. And then Licho’s face expresses the
consternation of a soldier under attack.
“Look,
Injuns,” Licho calls, pointing over Micah’s head. “Man the fart.”
She
laughs. “It’s fort.”
“Fort!”
he says. “Man the fort!”
He
leaps off the desk and runs for the far wall.
Then he comes back slowly, touching the ground and smelling his hand,
like an Indian tracking an animal. This,
from a man who kills pigs and tars roads.
Nothing seems to phase him. Yet,
she knows she would starve if she had to do these same things to feed herself.
“I
thought you worked nights only?” Micah asks.
“What happened to work tonight?”
Licho
leaps to her desk and scurries across it like a crab.
“Stop
it Licho. What happened?”
“No
work,” he says, falling backwards into her desk chair. It groans as he slides backwards. Suddenly he seems sullen. “How do you say in Amer-eeca. Fried?”
“You
got fired!”
“Now
you.”
Licho
springs to his feet and nudges Micah towards the stack of chairs. “Now you.
Tell what you see.” He slides the
desk closer and jerks his head in an upward motion.
“No,”
she says, listlessly.
“Vengas. I will hold chairs.”
She
feels silly doing this, but thinks she owes it to him. After all, he has given up the afternoon,
reading to one group while she read with another. And she has seen a world he has not seen, a
world he wants to see, and she feels sorry.
Yet, this is what scares her. She
is afraid of what he might expect; with her, he could escape it all. She climbs on to the desk and feels his hands
pushing and holding her waist at the same time.
The stack of chairs is a teetering ladder and for a moment, looking down
on him, Licho seems small.
“What
do you see?” he yells out to her excitedly.
Shhh! Micah puts a finger to her lips. The principal is in his office a few rooms
down the line from hers. Micah should be
gone already. With a free hand she grabs
at the tiled windowsill. The moon is
streaking down across the courtyard, the dirt pale and white like dried bones.
“I
see the moonlight,” she says. “And
dirt. And a pencil in the moonlight.”
“Si,
si. More. What else?”
“Nothing.” The game feels silly. She is thirty, not twenty-one. What she has seen in Peru has made it hard to
pretend. If she really wants to look,
she already knows what she will see - the things she has not been able to look
beyond. Alcoholics littering the streets
with empty bottles of rubbing alcohol, stray dogs, piles of garbage clogging
the river, four year old children selling candy, dirty children, poverty. A city still recovering from an earthquake
twenty years earlier. Decay. “Nothing,” she retorts.
“Liar. Let me look.
I will show. I can see.”
From
her perch the emptiness of her classroom seems out of tune with the life her
students bring. Licho reaches up for her
hand and pulls her down. His hand goes
up the back of her shirt and it pinches her.
She stiffens.
“That
hurt,” she says.
“Sorry.” He puts one hand to his lips, reaches out
with the other. His finger tips are
coated in tar, small pebbles dried into them.
“No com off.”
Micah
relaxes. It is his right to imagine, to
hope for something better. He has
dreams, damn it. They, too, must
pinch. She can still feel where his hand
touched her, perhaps as much as he had hoped for, but she gives him a shoulder
and helps him up. He rises against the
glow of the window.
There
is silence.
“Hmm,”
he says. “Oh yes. I see.”
Licho
talks about getting a job as a handyman in an apartment building in
Denver. He paints dreams of ten hour
work days and coming home to sit on a balcony that overlooks the freeway, and
sipping Pisco Sour’s. A movie theater is
a block away and there are three markets on the corner. Nothing changes in his America but the
numbers. There are more jobs, more cars,
twice as many food stands, trains and buses going to more places, elections
every week. Micah stands by the door and
looks out.
“Maybe
you have apartamento on other side of road.
We sit on balcony and wave to each other after work. Maybe you com over. We have ceviche or
MeecDonald’s. Yes, I see.” He looks at Micah in the doorway and
squints. “You see, yes?”
He
climbs down and turns her towards the stack of chairs. “I show you,” he says. She can feel his hands against her ribs as he
urges her to climb again, but she doesn’t want to. This is unrealistic. It is a fantasy she knows not to encourage,
yet she does not want to break it. She
grabs the edge of a chair and resists.
With her legs she pushes back against Licho. She feels the back of her head knock into his
teeth.
“Puta!”
he says, pinning her with his rough hands.
The stack slides up against the window sill. Down the hill there are people working and
walking the streets, but they are miles away at this point.
“Mentirosa!”
he spits. Liar. Micah is gated between his arms and the
chairs and she can feel his breath on her neck.
Its sweet smell of cola mixes with the dried tar on his shirt. Twisting her by the arms he wrenches her
loose as the chairs topple over in a big crash.
The small room is split in half by the meager courtyard light. Where they stand by the desk the light is
soft and dusty, but the far end by the doorway is darkness. She winds her way through the fallen desks,
stepping on markers and crayons that she had to purchase with her own
money. Holding close to the back wall
Micah finds herself crossing out of the light, but away from the doorway. She remembers the old woman squatting on the
corner a few days earlier whom he had scolded, swatted at the woman’s head with
a rag he was carrying. “Puerco,” he’d
said. Pig. She’d gotten mad at him for that, though at
the time it seemed innocent. A woman
should not have to see that, he’d said.
“Puta,”
he calls over softly, leaning into the desk.
The single drawer is open. In his
hand he is waving something, her passport.
For a moment her breath is paralyzed.
Discuss this book in our PUYB Virtual Book Club at Goodreads by clicking HERE
About The Author
Christopher P. Ring writes fiction, poetry, children’s stories, travel essays, social commentaries, humor and screen plays. His writing has appeared in numerous regional magazine and small literary journals such as Caldera and The Broken Bridge Review. He received his Master’s Degree in Creative Writing from the University of New Hampshire and taught High School English for several years in the U.S. and abroad. He continues to teach the art storytelling to Elementary school students in Southern Maine, where he resides with his wife (a teacher too) and two children.
Much of his fiction draws on the experiences and discoveries of his life as a “rambler”. Growing up in Long Island, New York, he developed an insatiable thirst to escape the confines of conventional living, spending his twenties and early thirties travelling the globe to off the beaten path places in search of adventure. He has called many regions of the U.S. his home and has also lived in Ireland, the Andes of Colombia, and Vienna, Austria. As with the cultures and places he has visited, the settings in his story shape the events and characters profoundly.
You can learn more about Christopher P. Ring and check out other writing of his at www.mortalsandfools.com. His next book, The Glow, a collection of speculative fiction short stories, will be available in April, 2015.
Interview:
When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?I don't think I ever did. Writing simply grew out of my life. In the same way that a warm sun can lure me out to my hammock, experiences drew me to the craft and inspired me to write stories. It was a calm awakening, not a concrete decision. Originally I wrote only poetry, but I lost interest in it as the power of stories started to appeal to me. Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It shook me up, from a creative perspective. The simplicity of his story telling and the lyricism of his prose inspired me to focus more on stories.
Believe it or not, I never read any fiction voluntarily until I was just out of college. I only read poetry and non-fiction at that point. That was 23 years ago. Even now I read as much non-fiction as fiction. Experiences and learning provide the fuel for everything I write.
How long does it take you to write a book?The answer to that varies greatly. Before children and marriage I would crank out several pages a day. I would hole up in my office for hours and just pound on the keyboard until I was tired out. I went through some keyboards with the way I type. Generally, the first draft of a novel has taken me from eight to twelve months. With a family and other writing interests such as children’s stories and screenplay writing getting my attention, a first draft will take at least a year. But I have so much more to write about, so many changing perspectives that influence my writing as a result of new relationships and practicing other forms.
What is your work schedule like when you're writing?Currently, I work part time. On days I am not working, I get the kids on the bus and immediately sit down to write fiction for at least two hours. If I don’t do that, I’m in trouble. There are so many distractions that could lead me astray, but I need to write early when my creative strength is strongest. After that, I work on other writing forms; my blog, a screenplay, and children’s stories. Or not. Today, I am quitting early to paint the trim in my bedroom. There is always something that comes up.
On my work days, I usually carve out an hour of writing at 5 am and try to get a little more around 8pm, when it is sensible. I need to spend time with my lovely wife and after 9pm my brain is shot for all but the most mundane writing tasks, so I don’t always get that extra hour.
What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?I try to write lyrically, so I always listen to music. I use music that matches the mood of what I am writing at that moment. The music supports my prose and helps me maintain focus. This is probably common, though.
How do books get published?That’s an interesting question and from what I have learned, the traditional process is failing to bring forward the bulk of available talent. The rise in Indie published books has proven that.
Now that Indie publishing has grown so much, there are lot of great books available that might never have gotten traditionally published and a lot of terrible books that never would have been published. The more important question is: how do books get noticed? The answer regarding fiction is simple. Write a great story.
Where do you get your information or ideas for your books?From everywhere. Interviews, personal experiences, scientific developments, world events, social challenges, economic trends. We live in a rapidly changing world and the subjects for story are vaster than ever. I read a lot of non-fiction and I spend a lot of time learning about new technologies and assessing their potential impact on the world. With many stories I want to answer a question. Sometimes I want to challenge an idea. Whatever the inspiration, every story is part exploration.
The title story Electricity was inspired by an interview with a singer that I heard. She spoke about the passion her parents had for music and how they would argue for control of the stereo. She didn’t get into her feelings about that; she just described her parents to explain the role of music in her upbringing. I seized on the idea of her circumstances. I wondered what it would be like to live with such passionate parents. I wanted to know her feelings and how her parents impacted her emotionally, so I wrote that story in my own way.
When did you write your first book and how old were you?My first novel was garbage, but it taught me how to write. I must have written 700 pages, drafted until it was down to 350 and when I was done I burned it in the woodstove. But I learned how to develop a good character and a good voice. I was twenty-seven at the time. I had never written a word of fiction, though I used to tell tales on long backpacking trips. Up to that point I had only written poetry and nonfiction.
What do you like to do when you're not writing?I love spending time with my family. Right now, we have six feet of snow in our yard. I don’t think there is anything more engaging for young children than the creative play that happens when there is snow on the ground. My wife and I love joining the play.
When I have time alone I love outdoor adventure sports: backcountry skiing, surfing, hiking, mountain biking, sailing. I spend as much time as I can outside. When the weather is warm, that includes downtime on the steps of my porch, usually in the evening, playing my guitar. So far the neighbors haven’t complained. And I read, of course. Fiction and every imaginable subject.
What does your family think of your writing?My children love it. They get very excited to hear my children’s stories and are always asking me to tell them a story. I have to come up with ideas on the spot. Now that they are learning to read and write they have started to craft their own stories, too.
My wife, on the other hand, has simply given me space for my writing. We don’t discuss my writing until a story is done. She doesn’t need the pressure of critiquing my work, just like I don’t critique her work. She does share her feedback if my writing makes her laugh.
Writers are hard to understand. From a distance, all we seem to be doing is sitting at a desk, typing or handwriting. Taking notes. Researching. What non-writers don’t realize is that our craft is no different than a sport. We need to exercise our writing muscle every day to be good at it. When we are writing we are practicing, we are working out.
What was one of the most surprising things you learned in creating your books?Quite simply that I learn. Imaginative exploration is a learning process. If you are open-minded as you write you’ll be surprised by how much you can learn. Though reading is much more active than entertainment such as TV, it is still somewhat passive. Writing engages all those ideas we encounter in our lives, it challenges them. That’s why the margins of the books I read are covered in ink.
How many books have you written? Which is your favorite? Have written three novels and two short story collections. (The second short story collection is coming out in the spring.) My favorite story is the novel I first wrote eighteen years ago. It’s challenging me more than anything I have ever written now that I have started a new draft, even though two central characters are based on grandparents of mine; a former bootlegger and an IRA rebel. The bootlegger never spoke much about his past, but I have his letters. My Irish grandfather died before I was born and the stories of him are fragmented. So, I’m completing their story and tying it in to the present day.
Do you have any suggestions to help me become a better writer? If so, what are they?I doubt I have anything new to offer. Write a lot. Read a lot. Experience a lot. I think experiences are the most important element. Without that we’d all be writing trivial and mundane stories. I think there is enough of that already.
Do you hear from your readers much? What kinds of things do they say?I have just begun the process of self-publishing, so at this point I am looking forward to hearing from readers. I am very curious to hear what they have to say.
Do you like to create books for adults?I like to create books for everybody. I don’t necessarily set out thinking about the audience; at least, not at the start. When a story is calling to your imagination you just have to respect its potential and make the best of it, regardless of the audience. That said, most of my stories would appeal to adults.
The only time I consciously plan to write for a specific age is when I’m creating children’s stories.
What do you think makes a good story?That’s a big question. I’ll try to keep it terse here.
Great characters, a strong voice, and an arc. I want something to happen, a reason to listen to the characters reveal their emotions. Stories that take place too much in a character’s head bore me. I like raw, emotional honesty, humor, surprises and urgency to the writing. A solid command of the language is always important. This shouldn’t be sacrificed just because a story has action. I know I said it already, but once again, humor. Humor makes the world we are reading authentic, even if the characters aren’t laughing. Especially when the characters aren’t laughing! A good story can bend the genre and use language differently, but effectively. It always gives us questions and sometimes challenges our ideals and assumptions.
As a child, what did you want to do when you grew up?I just wanted to live far from cities and suburbs. I wanted to live without confines, physical and cultural. I grew up in a suburb and dreamed of uncommon adventures and unpopulated places. In that sense, I have been very successful.
What would you like my readers to know?I’ll let my stories convey the answer to that.
Author Website: www.mortalsandfools.com
Author Blog: www.mortalsandfools.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/untermarmot Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/13084642.Christopher_P_Ring
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