Specula One

By William Van Winkle

What if…?

What if history contains hidden cracks where monsters reside? What if the aliens of Roswell crashed because they were driving under the influence? What if apocalypse swept the world and left love as the most painful ordeal of all?

In Specula One, author William Van Winkle presents seven stories of dark wonder. Sometimes humorous, always absorbing, these tales will ignite your imagination. Specula One contains two stories never before published, and every tale comes with an afterword detailing the story behind the story.

So come for the wonder, stay for the truth, and return for more!

Note: Contains the novelette "The Followers" and the following short stories:

The Sound of Autumn Night
Stay Cold
General Invasion
The Rainbow Box
The Visitor
Last Light

• Language: English
• Publisher: William Van Winkle
• Release date: Oct 23, 2013
• ISBN: 9781492330844

Book preview

Introduction

In his amazing book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell talks about how it takes 10,000 hours of practice in a field to achieve mastery. Does mastery yield automatic success? Of course not. When I was seventeen, I worked on a dairy farm. If I’d stayed there, I might have spent 10,000 hours milking cows and become one of the greatest cow milkers in the northwestern United States. Would that have brought me widespread fame and success in my profession? Probably not.

There is a strong right place, right time component to the 10,000-hour proposition. Gladwell uses Bill Gates as an example and how both Gates and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen logged in ridiculous amounts of programming time while still in school during the late ‘60s and early ‘70s — a time when hardly anyone had access to computers. When 1975 arrived, not only was Gates prepared with expertise, he happened to be in the right place at the right time. There are two sides to the success coin, and both are necessary.

No one explained this to me as a kid. I went through my childhood blathering on about how I wanted to be a professional author when I grew up, but not even in college did anyone ever provide any concrete objectives or mileposts that might be required to make that happen. No one said, Practice for 10,000 hours and you’ll get there. Instead, all of the common wisdom repeated the same generalities: write every day, start selling short stories, then leverage those sales into novel contracts.

OK, so what does that mean? Write every day? How much each day? Some books touted fifteen minutes as an acceptable amount in a pinch. And what if you spend (like I did) seven years trying to sell short stories and come up with $10 to show for your efforts? That’s pretty demoralizing. No wonder so many young people love to write and never become writers. All that advice, all that work, all for nothing.

There’s a bit in Gladwell’s book that often gets overlooked. Yes, it might take 10,000 hours to achieve mastery, but not everyone needs to be a master. According to Gladwell, one can obtain enough expertise after 4,000 or 5,000 hours to teach, even at the university level. In other words, it might take 10,000 hours to reach the stars, but if you’re content to walk on the moon, the barrier to success is much lower.

I reel to think how my life might have gone differently if someone had pulled me aside at age 17 or so, back when I had all the free time in the world, and said, You want to sell stories for a living? OK. If you practice writing fiction for 10,000 hours, pushing yourself to learn more and do better with each one of those hours, you’ll come out at the end of it with a best-seller. But if you put in 5,000 hours, you’ll sell stories — probably enough stories to make a comfortable living if you keep working hard at it.

That one statement would have given me a tangible goal to hit: 5,000 hours. Do the math.

Imagine if the Life Fairy had appeared before me, waved her magic keyboard, and said, William, if you write for two hours every day without fail for the next seven years, I’ll make you a successful novelist, I would have freaked out. You couldn’t have pried me away from my 286 PC with a crowbar.

That’s it? Only 5,000 hours? What if I do three hours a day? That’s only four and a half years!

But I didn’t even get close to that number. When we don’t have concrete objectives, when we lack a solid plan able to turn a dream into a goal, it’s easy to lose focus and get distracted. I know I sure did.

The cool thing about dreams, though, is that they never disappear. They might lie shriveled and brown on the floor of our spirits, but they never entirely die. They simply require some care and commitment in order to revitalize and flourish.

I did eventually put in my 10,000 writing hours, but I ended up doing it in technical non-fiction. And that’s fine. Mastery there has sustained my family for the last fifteen years, and for that I remain forever grateful. But those articles, for the most part, are not stories. They may tickle the mind momentarily, but they almost never grab the imagination, caress the heart, or kick the gut. They are two very different kinds of writing with two wholly different objectives.

One morning, as I stood staring my fortieth birthday in the face, I realized that my lifelong dream was neither satisfied nor dead. It was getting late in the game, sure. I was well beyond the early twenties that Gladwell says are so typical of when those with mastery break through to success. But it could still be done. It’s not over until the coroner goes home.

Measurement matters. I now have spreadsheets and applications that help track my time and progress with fiction. Writers measure more with words than hours, and the rough finish line you’ll often hear cited for mastery in writing is one million words. Again, my Life Fairy could’ve thrown that number at me and I would’ve been just as excited and determined. After all, even while holding down my regular career, I’ve logged in over 180,000 words of fiction so far in 2013. That’s probably more than I did in those first seven abortive years combined.

The stories in Specula One, my first short fiction collection, comprise a snapshot of my work at this point on my march to that million-word milepost. There will be others. You may be relieved to know that only one of the stories here is from that early seven-year period of my life. Everything else I wrote in that period was, to be honest, embarrassing and will hopefully never see the light of day. How I wish someone in a position of authority had said to me back then, This stuff is fine. It’s exactly the kind of thing a future writer produces in his first 100,000 words. Now go do your next 400,000.

I keep talking about myself here, but this isn’t really about me. I’m writing this introduction as a message to anyone out there with unfulfilled dreams, especially younger readers. All too often, there are no Life Fairies, no industry wizards waiting to take you under their wing. Excessive praise can give you a fat head that’s ripe for popping when you land in the real world. Short-term expectations and lack of a long-term plan can lead to crippling disappointment.

Take a different path. If you have a dream, turn it into a goal. Well-planned goals have very little to do with luck and everything to do with discipline. It’s about 10,000 hours. One million words. Little, manageable blocks of time spent every day in pursuit of the thing that makes the fire in your belly burn brightest. There are no guarantees, but these ingredients comprise the surest recipe around for success. And who knows? If you’re in the right place at the right time, you might be able to leap clear from success and mastery into world-renowned greatness.

Identify the mileposts. Race for them. Life is too short for anything less.

William Van Winkle

Hillsboro, OR

September 2013

The Followers

June 29, 1863

East of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania

General Longstreet hoped he could hear the wings of angels beating outside his tent, but he knew better. It was either the sound of the courier’s departing hoof beats or the pulse rising in Longstreet’s ears. There were no angels in this war.

He read the message from General Lee again.

George Meade has replaced Hooker as commander of the Army of the Potomac. Make all haste east. Your man, Harrison, reports two Union corps advancing north from Frederick, posing a possible threat to our supply lines. Converge with Hill west of Gettysburg.

Since defeating Hooker at Chancellorsville in early May, Lee had been itching to capitalize on his momentum into Union territory and take the war directly to Washington, D.C. Rumors of a possible peace settlement continued to swell, but Lee knew that having an unstoppable rebel army camped on Lincoln’s doorstep would yield far more favorable terms. The South was one major victory away from winning Britain’s recognition and ensuring permanent independence.

Longstreet didn’t care about victory. He only wanted peace. No, that wasn’t quite true. He wanted an end to the dying. The thought was always in his mind, low and monotonous, like a monk’s murmuring devotions. The sooner the dying stopped, the sooner they all might resume living.

The message fell from Longstreet’s hand and onto his battered map, obscuring most of Maryland. The plentiful fields of Pennsylvania had lifted the spirits of Longstreet’s First Corps, and his men would need their full bellies for the twenty-three mile sprint to Gettysburg. Every West Point graduate knew that Roman armies were expected to march fifteen miles per day, but Confederate armies were barely managing twelve. Some of this had to do with the considerable length of their supply lines beyond the Confederacy, but another crippling factor was the followers’ camp.

Followers were the boon and bane of every army. These were soldiers’ women or family as well as bakers, hawkers, harlots, swindlers, tailors, smiths, cobblers, preachers, and every other manner of distraction a soldier might have in the field. Some would even creep into the battlefields under cover of darkness and pillage what prizes they could from the dead.

The uncontrollable randomness of a follower’s camp introduced one more unpredictable element near the field of battle, and the comforts they offered were often overshadowed by their dragging, debilitating presence. Still, followers were what kept many men sane and willing to fight on. There were thousands of them, and their train as they trailed the marching corps could span for more than a mile. Yet it was pointless to try and leave them behind. The soldiers would only slow down so that the followers could keep pace. Like every other general before him since ancient Greece, Longstreet tolerated these ragged hangers-on, but at times like this, when mobility and focus could literally win or lose the war, he felt that any distraction to his army was a threat.

The general pushed away from his table, rubbing his eyes, head bowed. He wanted air and to clear his mind, even if only for a few moments. Longstreet pushed through his tent’s door and tried to breathe in the muggy night. They had marched through 100-degree weather today, encountering a thunderstorm just before sunset. He could feel the camp’s restlessness as men tossed and groaned in the heat and humidity.

Longstreet resisted the urge to loosen his uniform collar, knowing that his two attending corporals would be falling into step only a few feet behind him. Instead, he found a barrel of drinking water, grabbed the wooden cup next to it, and scooped out three drafts. He closed his eyes, feeling the droplets wend through his beard. Not far off, someone was playing a flute, helping to distract his comrades from the stifling summer night.

Longstreet moved among campfires, giving nods and smiles to those who noticed him in the darkness. A voice rose up, somber yet clear, to sing with the tune.

If amid the din of battle

Nobly you should fall,

Far away from those who love you,

None to hear you call,

Who would whisper words of comfort?

Who would soothe your pain?

Ah! The many cruel fancies

Ever in my brain.

Several more voices joined in for the chorus.

Weeping, sad and lonely

Hopes and fears, how vain!

When this cruel war is over,

Praying that we meet again.

A grim smile of pride and sadness came to Longstreet while he listened. All these men wanted was to go home, embrace their families, and work an honest day, just as he did. Only now, of course, there was so little of his family left. Of his four children, scarlet fever had claimed three last year over the course of eight terrible days. He could only imagine how hard it was for Louise to continue on while fourteen-year-old Garland, their only remaining son, begged daily to join the war with his father. If Garland left, she would be alone in their home, with no one to offer comfort save the other mothers of Richmond. Collectively, they had lost many dozens of children to that winter’s epidemic.

Yet those deaths were few. Thousands more might be waiting at the end of the First Corps’s impending march. He had felt a certainty of it building throughout the month. With that certainty came growing dread. This was no longer a war for some idea of Southern independence or even the Southern way of life. After so much bloodshed and the threat of so much more, this was now a battle for life itself. Longstreet wanted to save as many of those lives as he could. He may not have been able to save his children, yet somehow he might still be able to save his soldiers. He must. There was only so much loss one man could bear before breaking.

He wandered for a bit, almost forgetting his attendants, considering of all things the green onions and kale that had filled this field until his army’s arrival. The potatoes weren’t yet ripe, and the apple orchards Longstreet now found himself entering wouldn’t be ready to pick for another month. At least this particular farmer would have something to harvest in the months ahead. He would be luckier than many others they’d visited.

A voice called out not ten feet to his right, Evening, General, sir.

Longstreet started, and then felt foolish for doing so. He was tired, and his mind was elsewhere. As the man stepped