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**** Jamie Sheffield’s HERE BE MONSTERS is #139 in the never-ending series called INSIDE THE EMOTION OF FICTION where the Chris Rice Cooper Blog (CRC) focuses on one specific excerpt from a fiction genre and how that fiction writer wrote that specific excerpt. All INSIDE THE EMOTION OF FICTION links are at the end of this piece.
Name of fiction work? And were there other names you considered that you would like to share with us? Here Be Monsters is the title of my first novel… I knew the title as soon as I began thinking about the book. The other novels in the series are Caretakers, Between the Carries, Thunderstruck, and The Weaving… all of which I somehow knew once I started major work on writing them.
What is the date you began writing this piece of fiction and the date when you completely finished the piece of fiction? I began writing Here Be Monsters in July of 2012 and published it on January 1 of 2013.
Where did you do most of your writing for this fiction work? And please describe in detail. I did most of my writing in my office (Below Right black and white photo) and in a coffee shop (Below Left color photo)
What were your writing habits while writing this work- did you drink something as you wrote, listen to music, write in pen and paper, directly on laptop; specific time of day? I drink lots of coffee, listen to classical music without words, and am most prolific in the morning hours… I do lots of early planning using pen and paper and post-its, but do all writing of my books on my laptop.
What excerpt of the book was the most emotional for you to write? This excerpt can be as short or as long as you prefer. The first chapter of Here Be Monsters came to me essentially in one piece, and it gave me a lot of information about Tyler Cunningham, the main character; it gave me the rest of the book and the series.
Jacob and Sadie, 9/4/2012
There's a gentle glow coming on in the sky to my right as I drive North through the cold and empty beauty of the Adirondack Park; I would point the impending dawn out to the girl in the back of my Element if she weren't unconscious and bleeding on the easy-to-clean floor. I cross the northern border of the Park at the same time that the sun creeps over the white pines on the side of the road. I don't know if that first ray of morning caught her eye, but my passenger groans, clears her throat a bit to try and speak, then clacks her teeth hard together again to hold back whatever she was starting to say. I consult the map in my head, determine that I won't make it to the house before she starts acting up, think about Murphy's Law and the prevalence of state troopers on backcountry roads for only a moment, and then pull over to deal with Sadie Hostetler.
"Sadie, my name is Tyler Cunningham. I'm a friend of your father, Jacob, and I'm taking you home, unless you'd prefer to go to a hospital." I spoke in the same low tone I use with the skittish dogs I walk at the shelter. I'd talked with Dorothy about this very moment, what I should say if I did manage to find Sadie, and how I should say it. Dorothy runs the animal shelter in Saranac Lake, and if I had friends, she would be one of them.
Based on a lifetime of reading everything within reach on every subject that caught my eye, my opening statement to Sadie should have been reassuring, and started to build some trust between us; it didn't. I'd pulled over and open the door to the back of the car, so when she hit me with her shoe, we didn't crash, but that was the only good news. She raked for my eyes with significant talons that I hadn't noticed when loading her into the car at a little before 5am that morning. I grabbed her in a bearhug to try and still her; it didn't work, and when she started trying to butt me with the back of her head, pushed her away from me.
"STOP IT!" I yelled, in a much less sympathetic tone than Dorothy might have used in the same situation, but my ear hurt (from the shoe) and my cheek stung (from her nails).
"I'm not going to hurt you, we're only about 10 miles from your home, your family likely already has breakfast on the table, and that's where I'll take you if you will stop hitting and screaming."
We were actually closer to 9.2 roadmiles from Sadie's home, but I've found that people without maps (and brains) like mine don't want or need that level of exactitude.
"Who the fuck are you, what's going on, and why on Earth would you think that I want to go to my father's house?" she asked in a tone that I believe signaled anger and fear and frustration, but not imminent violence.
"My name is Tyler Cunningham, owner and operator of Smart Pig Thneedery. I'm bringing you back home at the request of Jacob Hostetler, your father. I'm not at all certain that you want to go home, but I'm very nearly certain that it's a better option than the place you were until a couple of hours ago." Again, 108 minutes is more precise than people generally look for in conversations.
"Your dad...father, asked for my help when he heard from a friend of yours, Hannah, that you had gotten in some trouble, and subsequently disappeared, while on your Amish version of Walkabout...Rumspringa." This next bit wasn't true, but it was close enough for a girl that had my right ear ringing and blood running down my face and into the collar of a reasonably new shirt, "I owed him a favor, and he asked. Finding you in my world is the sort of thing I'm better at than he would be, or he would have done it himself."
"How did you find me?" she asked, now with some interest and a hint of trust in her voice...at least no open hostility.
"The same way I do everything else, I read and I research and I ask questions...I throw stones in the water, watch the ripples, and adjust my aim until something happens." I could tell that my answer didn't satisfy her, but also that she wasn't going to ask again, which worked just fine for me.
"What are you going to tell my father about how and where you found me?" she asked, noticing for the first time, perhaps, that she had on a too-big man's shirt (mine, from the get-home-bag I keep in the car) and a pair of panties that wouldn't be out of place in a dirty laundry-bag.
"He asked me to bring you home, and that's what I plan to do. What you decide to tell Jacob about the last week of your Rumspringa is your business. Will those men in Placid know how and where to find you, if they decide to look?"
"N-no," she stammered, paling and clenching all over with the memory, "they only knew my first name, unless...my purse!"
"It was on your barstool when you vanished from the bar 2 nights ago. Your friend Hannah grabbed it and gave it to me when I talked to her yesterday; it's on the front seat, where you can ride now if you want. So we...you should be clear."
She nodded and looked up into my face from the back of my car, and giggled unexpectedly (to me, at least), "You're not what I expected."
"What did you expect, the Marines?"
"No, I had this fantasy that my father and uncles would come in whacking those guys with ax handles, or something. I didn't figure on a skinny guy who would cry because of a scratch from a girl."
"I'm tearing, not crying...and for your information, the scratch really hurts, and could get infected."
Sadie smiled and moved into the front seat, and we headed down the road again, through the thinning woods and into the farmland of far-northern New York, towards home.
Jacob's dog heard my car long before I got to their house, and they both were waiting by a pole-fence when I crunched into the circle in front of the Hostetler Home. The Amish dress and the lack of pickup trucks in the farm's yard made me feel as though I was driving out of the present day (where girls got snatched as playthings for monsters masquerading as boys) and into something that Norman Rockwell (or his father) might have drawn.
Jacob nodded at Sadie, waved her up onto the porch where her mother Mary was waiting, speaking to me only after the women had embraced and gone inside with arms around each other, "You'll come inside for coffee."
It was a statement, not a question, and so even though I would have preferred a coke, or to be home in bed, I climbed the stairs into Jacob's house, nearly tripping on one that was taller than the others. We sat at a heavy kitchen table made from slabs of Maple wood that was probably chopped to clear the land for this farm a hundred years ago. A younger model of Sadie put steaming cups of black coffee in front of us, and closed the door behind her as she left us alone in the hot and pleasantly yeasty kitchen.
Before I made the drive up here to meet Jacob 2 days earlier, I had (as always) done some research, in this case on the Amish, and particularly the Amish of northern New York. Each small community has their own "Ordnung", or set of rules relating to the "Demut" (humility) and "Gelassenheit" (calmness). Jacob was the leader of the community in Madrid Springs, which included 18 families, his interpretation/understanding of the rules was law in their valley.
Coming to me, an outsider, for help with his daughter, had cost him...might end up costing him the position of leadership he held in his community. I had asked him about it when we met on the 2nd, and he dismissed it with a wave, either assuming that I wouldn't understand because I was an outsider, or that I took it for granted that people took care of family, regardless of cost.
"Tyler Cunningham, I can never thank you in any meaningful way for what you have done for me and for my family." While he was verbally sneaking up on what was, for him, an uncomfortable subject, I studied...him, his clothes, his kitchen (most of the room was taken up by a wood-cooking stove and this huge table), the faucets at his sink, gas and kerosene lanterns on the wall and overhead, and the lack of outlets along the walls. I was mapping this place and the way that it felt and smelled and sounded; I could feel my brain sucking it all in, and the maps that I have inside my head of people and places and ways of being growing, extending. My interest in Jacob's world was the reason I had allowed myself to be roped into this mess in the first place; not the money he was going to awkwardly offer me in a minute or five.
"My friend Gregory Simmons told me that you helped him a few years ago { TC - it was 17 months }, and that you would help me, but in my rush and upset of the other day, we did not discuss your fee. We can pay any fair price that you name, and will count ourselves blessed by God to do it."
"I'm not a detective. I'm just a guy who does favors for friends with problems, or situations, that interest me." There was no upside that I could imagine in telling him that his daughter didn't interest me nearly so much as the plumbing in their house, or the presence of a gas-powered tractor with wooden wheels on a farm with no trucks.
Jacob seemed flustered by a response different than what he had anticipated, "Is your coffee all right?" I hadn't touched the mug in front of me, while through some magic of timing or signals, he had finished his, the younger daughter had come in, refilled it, and left again without being asked/summoned.
"It smells wonderful, but I don't enjoy hot drinks." Jacob took this in, looked as though the words hadn't come together in a configuration that he was used to, and pressed ahead.
"I have paid my way in this world since I was 15."
"Gregory bought one of my photographs after the favor that I was able to do him." I suggested.
He seemed to understand this quid pro quo, and followed up on it, "I saw this photograph when I went to seek Gregory's help in the matter of Sadie, and it's a little...showy for my taste."
"Last spring I painted a series of watercolors 20 miles east of here...fields and barns and streams and sky. I used a soft color palette that might go nicely with both your beliefs and with the colors in your house. The last painting I sold in that series went for $500."
Jacob seemed relieved to have a number, and excused himself for a minute, returning with five $100 bills. He put them in my hand with some ceremony, and intoned, "For the rest of my life, when I look at the painting, I will remember the service that you did me and my Sadie. Still, though, I hope that you will call upon me if you ever have need; it would be a blessing to help you if it is within my power."
I told Jacob that I'd bring the painting around within the week. We talked for a few minutes more, about Rumspringa and having to explore the world in order to know it, and the possibility of beauty without the sting of evil. We were talking about Sadie, but also about Jacob and about me. We shook hands, and I walked out and down and into my car (adjusting my stride to avoid tripping over the single uneven step on my way off of the porch).
I left the Hostetler Farm at 8:14am, and headed south, headed home to Saranac Lake, NY. I had expanded my world and maps a little, and seen but not learned ( again) the lesson that a simple life in a simple place is not a talisman against bad things or bad people. The next 10 days would teach me this lesson once and for all, at great cost, and in ways that I couldn't imagine as I navigated my mental map of the world I had built. Everything would be new and unfamiliar, and for people like me, the unfamiliar (even good, if unfamiliar), is worse than an anticipated bad thing.
About halfway down to Saranac Lake, at 9:03, I celebrated the 29th anniversary of my birth, as always, in silence and with a hollow awareness of my movement through time and space.
Why is this excerpt so emotional for you to write? And can you describe your own emotional experience of writing this specific scene/excerpt? Once I had this piece, I was able to access the protagonist of the series and to follow him around on his adventures… writing it gave me a new friend and a thing that I could share with people.
Were there any deletions from this excerpt that you can share with us? Nope, the chapter came out essentially in one piece, and wasn’t radically altered in future iterations.
Other works you have published?
● Caretakers: 2014
● Between the Carries: 2015
● The Weaving: 2015
● Thunderstruck: 2016
● No Man is an Island… Except Me: 2019
Jamie Sheffield lives with his wife, son, two dogs, and four tortoises in the woods of the Northeast, mostly writing about his favorite wild place on Earth, the Adirondack Park. When he's not writing, he's probably camping or exploring the last great wilderness in the Northeast.
Besides writing, Jamie loves cooking and reading and dogs and dozens of outdoor pursuits that his friends and family classify variously as dangerous, foolish, nerdy, stupid, and likely to get the attention of Homeland Security.
He worked as a Special Education teacher in the Lake Placid Central School District for nearly 20 years before deciding recently to try his hand at writing just about full-time.
"Here Be Monsters" was his debut novel, in 2013. In the years since this best-selling novel was published, he wrote a series of shorter ebooks that follow the exploits of his protagonist, Tyler Cunningham, along with a trio of follow-up novels.
Most recently, Jamie published a collection of short fiction titled, "No Manis an Island... Except Me", fifteen stories about people who are square pegs in a round hole world; a writer's dozen of people and places where unusual is the norm, where odd is ordinary.
instagram.
com/jamiesheff/
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