Extraordinary Heart: Chapter 1

Blink… blink… blink… blink… Without abandon, the tall, vertical cursor on Diana Owler’s computer monitor flashes on and off in a field of utter whiteness. The short woman with long, straight, wheat-blonde hair holds her tightly fisted hands above the light-gray keyboard of her desktop computer. She opens her hands and wiggles her fingers two inches about the array of marked buttons in a mock-typing motion. But without touching the keyboard, she drops her hands into her lap and stretches the tight muscles in neck with a long rotation of her head. The burning in her neck is warm against the cool air in the cool room. He left the air conditioner on high again, is the only thought that passes through her mind. Brilliantly and beautifully crafted sentences do not.

“It’s always the first word,” she recites, almost groans, whispering almost too softly for her own ears to hear. Her thoughts are interrupted by the crying of an infant in the next room. She smiles and walks into the next room. She cradles the tiny baby in her arms. “Hello, Andrew, how was your nap?”

The infant’s face remains clenched and continues to cry. Shifting the child to one arm, Arielle unbuttons her shirt. Feeding him with one hand, she walks into the next room, the kitchen, and grabs the stack of letters on the counter: a few bills, a catalog to a store they don’t shop at, and a letter from the real estate company. Except for the last item, these are all tossed back onto the countertop. Slipping her pinkie into the edge of the fold, Diana efficiently opens the letter with one hand still holding her son.

Feeling Andrew letting go, Diana grabs a towel from over the counter, flings it around onto her shoulder, and lays Andrew again her to burp him, the letter still in her hand. He burps immediately. Wait a relief, she thinks. She recalls how Gloria, her first daughter, took at least three minutes to perform this task. Diana lays her son down back in his room, knowing he will need a change within minutes. She scans the contents of the now-opened letter. She and her husband, Corey, have been looking into purchasing a house. With Gloria fully able to walk and Andrew struggling with bravado to figure out crawling, even the spacious apartment has become too cramped for anyone of their likings. Ironically, for the moment, Diana finds the apartment rather lonely with Corey out getting three-year-old Gloria a haircut. Andrew is wonderful company, and a great listener, but not much of a talker at the age of three months.

Their real estate agent, Shelley Dunn, spends nearly a hundred words telling Diana that, yes, there are plenty of homes their desired size within their price range. Diana immediately throws the letter away. She knows there are plenty of right-sized houses within their price range. She and Corey knew this two months ago. Between Corey’s promotion and his already generous salary, plus Diana’s newest book to be published next month (which will be a success according to her editor, who is an incurable exaggerator) (Diana still trusts her, thought), the family is financially secure. If Shelley would only find these many houses within their price range and show them to the family, they could actually purchase one. What a concept!

With the sound of crying coming from the next room, Diana correctly assumes that Andrew is finished with his business, so she strolls in to do her duty.

* * *

The autumns in Montgomery, Georgia, can be rather cool once November rolls around, and Diana knows this all too well. A heavy jacket surrounds her torso and a scarf adorns her neck. Once again, she finds herself with writer’s block, so she has opted to walk to the grocery store, which is conveniently only a quarter mile away. The beautiful scenery never ceases to inspire her to write a short story or a poem or even a song. And the trip is never complete without passing the neighborhood book store.

Oh, might as well, she thinks, as she takes a sharp left into the bookstore. Zion Street went under a nice renovation two years ago, and it is one of Diana’s favorite areas. The city had decided the area was an eyesore, so they spent millions making it look elegant, through the addition of red-brick façades and black, rod-iron lampposts. It was millions of dollars of tax money to beautify an area that supported old time stores which were replaced every few years anyway because old time stores just weren’t competing. The trend of adding profitable stores to the mix was a very slow and gradual one. The bookstore was the rare exception and the pioneer of this trend. Though the front is barely fifty feet across, the enormous storage area connected to the tail of the store is stocked to the brim with merchandise. Inside, hidden behind the polished wooden counters and pastel wallpapered walls is a highly advanced computer networking system that tracks thousands and thousands of books. The system keeps a catalog on all of the store’s merchandise, its customers, and which merchandise these customers buy. There are lucrative benefits for becoming a member, which is free of charge. For example, books are sold at decent prices; reserving books cost nothing; and a mere swipe of your membership card at the inconspicuous self-registration kiosk provides a large list of recommended books based on previous purchases or a short, customized questionnaire. It’s a very complex system, and Diana knows this all too well. The custom-made system was designed by a team at OmniTech, Inc., an Atlanta-based programming firm, led by her close friend and confidante, Christopher VanDrey. The system for Books of Eden was the first project he ever managed, in fact. The generic version of the system is reaping large profits for the company now.

Diana is personally acquainted with the owner of Books of Eden, John Waltmire, and this acquaintanceship keeps Diana’s books in the front shelves. She often goes to check and see what Diana Owler originals are featured on the shelves for that day, and today is no exception. The three-book set of her fairly popular Chronicles of Sonriso series is on the “Must-Read” counter-side display case. Diana planned for the series to have five books, but trilogies are always noteworthy, according to her publicist. Diana recalls two years ago when the first two books of Sonriso were sold in a similar set. The main difference is that the two-set was done as a single bound book, whereas this recent three-set puts the three individual paperback into an open-faced, decorated box. She can already see Bridget putting out the four-book set, then the five-book set.

Then the six-book set, Diana thinks dreadfully in her mind. She makes a mental note to make the sixth, should there ever be one, not as good as the rest, so that people will respect the integrity of the originals. In reality, she doesn’t find the medieval historical fiction chronology as her best work, but the books are easy to write, and it’s given her invaluable opportunities to improve her character development, not to mention pad her bank account. Of course, during the local TV news interviews she does, she always spits out the normal “They were a joy to write!” babble that Bridget feeds her. It’s not quite a lie. She does find herself writing ten pages of a novel in one sitting. She’s grown to love her characters, but her heart is truly taken by her anthology pieces. Her first anthology, A Tear’s Burning Desire, has graced the shelves of bookstores for eighteen months now. Quite an unconformity, it’s a collection of not only poetry, but of seven short stories of various genres and one acoustic guitar piece. Diana insisted on joining the publishing team for that publication, and although the team hated her perfectionism afterwards, no one could deny that the large hardcover digest was a work of art for both the writer and the designers. Diana almost squealed when she read the reviews in the New York Times, with nearly all glowing reviews. Two critics, who happened to be the very harshest and most well-known of critics in America, did call it “still a bit amateur,” and “trying too hard,” but having the phrase “immense potential” in both reviews brought a smile to Diana’s face that didn’t leave for at least twenty-four hours. The only experience that beat the reviews was the joy brought to Diana by the birth of her first daughter, even if bringing her into this world came with its expected amount of pain. She was a passionate writer, but motherhood is motherhood.

One reason for Diana’s errand, arguably the main reason over the fact that the family is completely out of Gloria’s favorite cereal, is that the second anthology is in the works. It’s currently untitled, (Diana never even thinks about the title until she’s compiled all the poems and stories and so on.) and Diana needs some time to connect with nature so that the anthology will progress.

Her first anthology had the definite theme about the power of the ties of deep friendship. She knew, going into A Tear’s Burning Desire, at the time untitled of course, that the overarching theme would be friendship. This new work, as far as Diana could tell, would also incorporate friendship, but it was already taking a much more spiritual feel, more about how friendship affects the world and really more about how the world, the environment around people, affects those with strong friendships; maybe even the cycle of the two: environment and friendship. The mental image of Christopher’s eyes rolling appears in her thoughts. In his free time, Christopher also writes short stories. His writing style, however, centers deeply on thick plots. Lately, she has had to praise him for starting to master character development, character interrelationships, and even developing the mood by creating an appropriate setting. He, however, lets his themes develop autonomously out of his writing. “Let the critics find deeper meaning” is his motto, verbatim. It is, in fact, written in one of Christopher’s frequent letters to her. Of course, his only critic so far has been Diana. She gets great pleasure out of critiquing his stories. Weakly, she uses it as a basis for the style for Chronicles of Sonriso.

As she leaves the store, she watches a woman smoke a cigarette in old clothing. Though she believes this would be great inspiration for a poem or two, the very mundane tone wouldn’t at all fit the ethereal emotion of her current works. Diana has a secret desire to write some really nitty-gritty kind of anthology: something a little more grim, not so much spooky, but harsh. She shivers at the prospect, or maybe it was the wind blowing though her jacket. Anyway, she knows she won’t be writing anything along those lines until she’s at least forty. Well, publishing maybe. It would be kind of cool to experiment with some naturalism.

Maybe Christopher’s onto something when he doesn’t let theme run his writing.

Chapter 2 coming soon...