Linda Mims Author – Fiction Favorites

As a member of Rave Reviews Book Club, I am proud to showcase several exceptional writers. All are members of the literary section of the club titled Rave Writers – International Society of Authors. RWISA.

Today I want to welcome Linda Mims with her story Solace.

Solace

by Linda Mims

Eighteen precocious kindergartners stared as Carly walked into the colorfully decorated classroom. Carly hoped her smile was more reassuring than she felt. Was this a mistake? She spotted two six-year-olds who’d been in her charge on the first field trip she’d chaperoned. They gave her a friendly wave, and a true smile parted Carly’s pursed lips and lightened her heart.

Ms. Jones, the principal, asked all of the children to file around and shake hands with Carly, but some of them hugged her around the waist and Carly bent to embrace them. The huggers stared up at her and quickly turned away unsure how to behave.

After Carly shook hands and hugged them, she asked their new teacher’s permission to lead them to the circle in the back of the room. She’d read that schools were frowning on seating students on the floor, but their former teacher, Miss Mason, had valued the practice.

Miss Mason sat smack dab in the middle of “her kids” and shared her own childhood or read to them from her favorite stories.

So, hovering above the painted line, Carly squatted until she dropped. Sitting crossed-legged wasn’t as comfortable or as easy for Carly as the children made it appear. She smiled as they sank to the floor on legs like rubber bands.

The children sat on the painted circle touching their neighbors with legs, arms, or elbows. There was no jostling or whining from anyone about invasion of space. They needed to connect in this strange time, so it was okay for someone to sit too close.

Two little ones, seated across from Carly, couldn’t stop sniffling, so she held out her arms, and they came over. She pulled them down on either side of her and nuzzled them there. She wanted to join in. Be as free and uninhibited as they, but she held her feelings in check.

The children bowed their heads, but a few raised their eyes to cast envious glances at the two burrowed beneath Carly’s arms. She smiled around the room, looking for the ones Miss Mason had told her about. Johnnie, who was the biggest discipline challenge. Grown-ish Jenny of the fresh mouth and Einstein mind.

Carly recognized little unkempt Anna who caused Miss Mason enough anxiety to refer her family to DCFS. Diana Mason loved these children, and they loved her. The students spent more time with Carly’s daughter than with their own parents.

“Listen and I’ll tell you about the day little Ms. Mason broke the rules and made cookies for herself and her little sister,” Carly said. “When her father and I were away from home, she wasn’t supposed to fool with the stove, but you guys know how feisty Ms. Mason can be.”

“She was a mischievous little girl,” Carly said with exaggerated feeling.

One of the little ones giggled and hurriedly stifled it when the others swiveled their heads to stare at her, disapprovingly.

“Children,” Carly said. “Ms. Mason would want you guys to smile as you remember her. She’d want you to remember the stories I’m about to tell you and think of her with love.”

***

Joe Mason waited outside the old brick building where, four years ago, his daughter and some of her colleagues had started their own small school. His wife was inside visiting his daughter’s kindergarten class, but Joe remained in the car.

He hadn’t agreed with Carly that this was a good idea. His family had spent a crushing two days grieving Diana’s sudden death and just when—maybe—the weight was easing, his wife sprung up.

“Oh God, Joe! Her kids.”

“I’m sure someone has told them,” he assured her, but Carly wouldn’t be comforted.

“They’re five and six years old, Joe. They don’t understand death. Can you imagine the confusion and anguish for those children? I have to go,” Carly said.

“They need to hear from me and know that it will be all right.”

She had made up her mind and Joe didn’t try to talk her out of it. Perhaps she needed this, too. He, on the other hand, couldn’t bring himself to think about Diana without feeling guilty. There was no peace for him as he shouldered the weight of his daughter’s death.

The night Diana died alone in her room, Joe had convinced himself that he’d heard her knocking for help. He’d been dreaming and in the dream, Diana had knocked on the front door. He was upstairs, and he wondered why Carly didn’t go to the door and let their daughter in.

She knocked in random succession maybe three times, but when Joe woke, he heard nothing. He lay there for a long while listening and wondering if someone had been knocking on the door for real.

It was 1:45 a.m. and outside, the sounds of jazz music told him his neighbor Jimmy was in his parked van, again.

Jimmy did that after a spat with his wife, Vanessa. That’s what the knocking had been. A radio commercial. Satisfied, Joe turned over and went back to sleep. It never occurred to him to wake Carly or to go check on Diana. If he had, his daughter could have gotten help, and she’d still be alive.

Joe couldn’t tell anyone. Carly and Diana were more than mother and daughter. They were best friends. Carly would never forgive him for, if nothing else, letting her remain asleep. God! The pain of losing Diana, compounded by his guilt, was eating Joe alive.

Inside, Carly carried her own guilt. Diana had been working herself to the bone raising money to keep the school afloat. More than just exist, Diana and her colleagues wanted the school to make a huge impact on the lives of their students and their families.

Diana wasn’t sleeping. She was losing weight, and more than a few times, Carly argued with her about taking care of herself.

“If you don’t take care of your own health, you won’t be any damned good to your students!”

“Mom, relax! What am I going to do? Die?”

“Your heart, Diana. Please remember your heart.”

“I do, mom. I think about my heart all the time. School is the only thing that prevents me from thinking about my heart. Can you give me a break? And don’t go to Dad with your suspicions.”

So, Carly gave her a break and she didn’t tell Joe that she suspected Carly was sicker than she was letting on.

***

“You smell like her,” said a little one who’d scooted over and was hugging Carly from behind.

“Let me smell,” said another, peeling his classmate’s arms from around Carly and nudging the child over to squeeze in.

“I wanna smell,” cried a young girl who had stopped twirling her hair around her finger and now stood.

Soon they clustered around Carly, talking and gesturing. Their little voices serious as they shared stories of the times Ms. Mason had been kind, or funny, or very, very stern. Their beautiful faces weren’t so sad now and they made Carly laugh. An hour passed and the pall over the room lifted.

Outside, the breeze blew leaves from the young trees Diana had planted across the grounds. Joe trained his eye on a leaf that floated across his windshield on the gentle breeze. Instead of drifting along, the green leaf frolicked and rolled on the air in front of him.

He’d never paid attention to leaves, and he wondered that this one seemed determined to hang right there, tumbling and playing in front of him. While Joe watched, the leaf floated down and lay on the hood as though spent. Then, to Joe’s amusement, it blew flat against his window and stuck there for a few moments.

The leaf stood on its stem and Joe bent to see it flutter across the car and brush Carly’s face just as she opened the passenger door. Carly started, then laughed and touched her face. Smiling, without even knowing why, they watched the little leaf fly off over the building and out of sight.

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Thank you for supporting this member along the WATCH “RWISA” WRITE Showcase Tour today! We ask that if you have enjoyed this member’s writing, please visit their Author Page on the RWISA site, where you can find more of their writing, along with their contact and social media links, if they’ve turned you into a fan.

We ask that you also check out their books in the RWISA or RRBC catalogs. Thanks, again for your support and we hope that you will follow each member along this amazing tour of talent! Don’t forget to click the link below to learn more about this author:

Linda Mims RWISA Author Page

Linda Mims

I want to Welcome Linda Mims to Fiction Favorites. She has just released her book The Neon Houses, and she is on tour with 4Wills Publishing. I am pleased she chose to stop by today.

Thanks, John.

What Will Writing be Like in 2065

My good friend, also named Linda, doesn’t own a Kindle and her iPad doesn’t hold any novels. Reason being, Linda is a former librarian, and her love for books runs deep. When asked how she thinks writers will communicate with readers in the future, she just shakes her head. Recently retired from more than 30 years spent in the preservation of books and their care, she loves nothing better than to crack open a real book and inhale the fragrance of a freshly published novel—preferably in hardback. Writing in the future is going to remain the same, as far as she’s concerned.

As an indie author who, to date, hasn’t tried vanity publishing or the Amazon interpretation of a physical book, I have a different view of what writing will be like in the future. My friend Linda may or may not read my ebooks when they’re published (she probably will), but I fear that if she doesn’t get onboard the ebook train, she will be missing out on some awesome future writers.

Today’s young writers are using both traditional publishing and self-publishing, and their work is rife with intellect, deep meaning, and skilled storytelling. They are poised to become the recorders of our lives, our chroniclers—the writers of the future. All indie writers are surging and telling their stories. They’ve seen what traditional publishers are touting as best sellers and decided they can do as well and, in some cases, better.

What do I imagine future writing will be like in 50 years? In my book, The Neon Houses I describe a scene where over half the population of the town, Gang Territory can’t read. The percent of writers in 50 years may not be any better than the percent of readers. It will be different! Virtual book sales will grow as will the methods of viewing them. Right now we have Kindle, Nook and iPad devices, but over the next few decades, other apparatus will crop up because there can never be enough great ideas and App designers will invent ways to enhance the reading experience with moving pictures, animated sounds, and a hyped version of reader immersion.

My guess, based solely on supposition and conjecture, is that the FCC will attempt to bring the world-wide web under the umbrella of regulated services. Users will have tired of hackers, identity thieves, predators, and foreign terrorists strong-arming the air-waves. A segment of people, who want to tame their own frontier, will run an internet outside government control, but without a lot of money for refinement and regular upgrading. They will be the crusaders and defenders of writing and free speech in 2065.

Writing of the future will resort back to the written (pen and paper) version of what it was in the mid 20th Century for many people. Communication between and amongst people will have returned, and technology and social media will take a backseat to social interaction where people actually meet and talk face to face.

However, the same fifty years could see Ebonics having taken control of language and communication in our inner cities. Facebook and 140 character Twitter lingo may have encouraged a form of modernist communication that will be spoken and written by only the technologically limited and the poorly educated.

Future writers of this ilk will have stories to tell, but they will have no idea how to research them, sans the internet and sans Google. Over the years the internet will have eradicated the need for encyclopedias, dictionaries, and thesauri and left writers with no idea how to research information on their own.

Most public schools will have ruled out reading the classics and, sorry E. D. Hirsch, Jr., “Cultural Literacy” will be an obsolete idea, meaningful only to the very wealthy. Consequently writing in the future by inner-city school children will be random, infrequent, or nonexistent.

Fifty years from now, illiterate citizens will head to city parks on heralded “reading nights” to hear the classics read by those who remember how to read and to whom the skill was passed.

***
Author Bio:

Linda Mims started creating tales in her head as a child. At age 12, she knew she was onto something when she sold a story to her grandmother for a quarter, but it was her dad’s more practical advice, to get a good education and find a real job, that she followed.
After retiring from her “real job” as an educator, Linda began her writing career as an indie author. The tale of The Neon Houses was born out of a careless comment that people had lost interest in reading. The joke was that decades from now we’d need to hold reading nights in neighborhood parks for citizens who wouldn’t be able to read.
Linda rolled that idea around in her head until it turned into a whole society of have-nots. Once the idea got rolling, she worked nonstop until she’d finished the first draft. Writing is now her real job!
Linda Mims resides in a small suburban town 30 miles outside of Chicago, IL where she likes to cook, garden, and blog, sometimes simultaneously. She is married to her long-time love, has two grown daughters and one bossy, bichon-pom, Alexis.
Twitter – http://www.twitter.com/boom_lyn
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/AuthorLindaMimsmbria
Website – https://lindamims.com/blog/

The Neon Houses

***
THE NEON HOUSES

Dr. Noel Kennedy hears screams inside her head, but the screams aren’t hers. While preparing for her annual end-of-summer barbecue, Noel hears her young friend—twenty-year-old Zarah Fisher—screaming for her life. However, Zarah is miles away!
Noel knows the exact moment Zarah takes her last breath because Noel has a secret! It’s a secret that not even her husband Richard knows.
As the Deputy Chief of Schools of Gang Territory, Noel has perfected her life. She is a solid, middle-class citizen from New Chicago, Incorporated. New Chicago and Gang Territory have become vastly different societies since the early Urban Wars. Now, the year 2087 finds New Chicago’s military-trained police determined to enforce laws that keep “gang people” out.
Harlem Pierce, a New Chicago police detective, has been warned to stay away from this case and he urges Noel to let it go. But a new killing involves Noel’s younger cousin and her boyfriend and links Noel to it in a startling way.
Who can Noel draw on? Must she turn to Warren Simpson—the menacing, treacherous boss of Gang Territory? Or … could he be the killer?