Little Red King – Query Letter

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I think we’re getting closer. Jia you!

After graduating college, 22-year old John Ingram doesn’t know what to do with his life. He wants to leave behind his terrible degree, the terrible economy and his broken family, and when he sees an ad seeking English teachers in China, he jumps at the chance.

The ad leads him to Wuhan, his home for the next nine months. Wuhan turns out to be better than he imagined: he makes good money working only twelve hours a week, his students treat him well, even the most banal interactions provide a story to tell, and Michelle, a Chinese graduate student, makes him forget the life he left behind.

Michelle is hesitant to date anyone, especially a foreigner, but John is persistent. A banquet leads to a date, a date leads to a quick kiss on the shores of Wuhan’s South Lake. Michelle is looking for a serious relationship, and John has decided to be with her, even if it means staying in China the rest of his life.

But when another teacher sexually assaults a student, John is fasely accused.

Deportation looming, John must decide whether his life here is worth fighting for or risk returning to the terrible degree, terrible economy and broken family he left behind.

LITTLE RED KING is 120,000 words.

New fiction: The Traveler

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Some flash fiction, available in Dual Coast Magazine:

The traveler pulled out a chair and sat down across from me. I looked up.

“Tonight’s the night?”

The traveler was quiet. He was here before me, and I always figured he’d be here long after I left. Two years ago, he pulled the chair out like he did tonight, ordered the bottle like he did tonight, and took a sip, careful not to let his beard fall into his drink.

Two years, and I guess I don’t need an answer.

Tonight is the night.

Read the rest here.

Boat Goggles: Porn Star and The Mole

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First, the clinical definition:

The American Medical Association defines Boat Goggles as the condition in which men and women find attractive people they ordinarily wouldn’t spare a second look. A result of confined spaces and a limited selection pool, Boat Goggles has been known to turn ‘fat’ into ‘plump’, ‘big’ into ‘curvy’ and it has also been known to turn split-second decisions into lifelong regret. (See also: Drunk Goggles)

***

Porn Star came to the library tonight.

She’s part of a squadron, a red jersey, Crash & Salvage. Up until now our mighty warship USS Theodore Roosevelt has held 2,000 people. The squadrons — pilots, people who work on the planes — they bump that number to 5,000. It’s had a wonderful effect on the chow lines, not to mention our six working washers.

Porn Star has blonde hair, unkempt and surely out of regs. She wears her sleeves up, showing arms covered in tattoos, and she walks with a twitch, a deliberate twitch, so deliberate it might be comical.

Were it not for the Boat Goggles.

I see signs of her passage in advance. Heads turn. At the start of the cruise, they turned slightly. Yep, that’s how it starts. The Boat Goggles don’t fit well at first. They’re uncomfortable, the frames too tight.

Then a week passes.

Two weeks, three, marching through this labyrinth of pipes and steel walls, and the Boat Goggles feel more comfortable. Pretty soon, you don’t even notice them.

So you turn your head too. You have no subtlety, but that’s okay. Neither does she.

In she comes. There’s a logbook on the desk where you sign in, and she takes her time, bending over despite the desk reaching her neck. She devotes so much time to ensuring that her letters fit perfectly in between the lines. Attention to Detail.

From there she twitches into the TV room.

Another morning, you’re transiting the mess decks, and you see Porn Star sitting at a table with a bunch of guys. She’s showing them her tattoos.

She has a lot.

***

Before I get out of here, let’s talk about The Mole.

She had a mole on her cheek. Short, chubby full-figured, she was a CTI ((Cryptologic Technician Interpretive. They do foreign languages.)) temporarily assigned to the TR, to gain an understanding of the “real” Navy life she’d undoubtedly picked CTI to avoid.

She was working with the CTTs ((Cryptologic Technician Technical)). Curious about ship life, she asks, The fanrooms are where people go on the ship to get busy, huh?

The guys talk about this at night in the berthing. She said that, yeah dude, she actually said that! No, she’s okay fucking hot.

Who can fuck her first? It doesn’t matter.

This long at sea, you’ll gladly go last.

***

Throughout this feverish tangle of sheetmetal, swabbed decks and wet paint, men and women work together twelve hours or more a day.

The Boat Goggles fit so well. Human nature will reign as the long days continue, as the last of the recruiter’s lies die for the new Seamen checking in to operate multi-million dollar equipment and sent to do a commander’s laundry, as the mighty warship USS Theodore Roosevelt qualifies to deploy, 90,000 tons of bottled lust.

It’s not a memoir

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Couple Seven Year Laowai reviews are up.

First, from Sharlene Almond:

A true story based on Travis’ life when he worked as a teacher in china …Because it is quite short and more of a short biography than a novel, it is difficult to get fully immersed into the storyline.

And Big Al’s Books and Pals:

I’m not sure what to make of this. Is it fiction? (The author called it literary fiction when it was sent to me and the disclaimer at the beginning says it is fictional. The book retailer sites have it classified that way.) Is it a memoir? (The book description makes it appear so and it reads like it). The author’s bio makes either seem possible.

Notice a trend?

It’s not a memoir. I’m not fifty-year old alcoholic ex-Math teacher, and I did not spend seven years in China, I was there for roughly two and a half.

This isn’t Valley of the Dolls. 7YL is a small part of Little Red King, a much larger story, and it is not a memoir. If it were, if I included every little thing I did in China, the book would be over 4,000 pages long and nobody would ever read it.

Letter from (America) (about) China

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“Welcome back to the land of loose sand, my friend. Long time no see.”

It took an hour and a half for the first horn.

But, if you subtract the time it took to get off the plane, find your luggage and get on the bus, then it took about five minutes for the first horn.

Three for the first near-miss.

I spent March in China, after three years back in America. I left China as an English teacher, dealing with sudden schedule changes and overly complicated logistics. I came back as a Navy sailor . . . dealing with sudden schedule changes and overly complicated logistics.

Everyone in the Navy does a particular job, and mine isn’t well known. The name certainly doesn’t help:

“Arrow Grapher? What the hell’s that?”

“Aerographer.”

“Huh?”

“I do weather.”

“Oh. So what’s arrows got to do with it?”

But even in the Navy, my job is pretty obscure, and since in the military we eat sleep drink and breathe acronyms:

“AG? What the hell’s that?”

“Avant-Garde.”

“En garde?”

Touche.

I know, I know, kind of went in secrecy, didn’t I? That wouldn’t have happened three years ago. Hell, back then I would have written some long Facebook note, tagging people who don’t care and chui’ing the niu about how I’m headed to this exotic place while you’re stuck in traffic tomorrow morning. Everyone hates people like this, and for good reason: they suck.

China’s not “exotic”. Interesting, yes. Lovely, yes. Exotic?

You see, three years does funny things to the brain. It makes you forget the worst and remember the worse as bad, the bad as good, and the good as some of the best moments of your life.

It makes your return a jolt to reality, and it can push you in the wrong direction: eight people asking you why your baby was crying last night isn’t amusing, it’s fucking annoying.

The man who cuts in front of you for the taxi isn’t an otherwise kind fellow influenced by a famine mere decades old, he’s an asshole.

And while this should go without saying, bai jiu is not a gateway into the local culture, it’s a deadly alchemy of poison and paint that causes certain former expats who are foolish enough to mix it with Sprite (to mute the nasty taste) to puke on the sidewalk and go to the hospital the next morning, where (and this too goes without saying) they stick an IV in you and send you home.

Three years makes the nostalgia lenses several inches thick, but no matter how thick, you need to take them off. Go on. Take them off.

And appreciate what deserves to be appreciated:

– walking through fields of sunsoaked youcai with my wife and daughter

– seeing how much Wuhan, despite remaining a construction site, has changed

– Wuhan University’s cherry blossoms

– bicyling along the dam overlooking the river, watching the barges carry great hauls of sand

And above all, seeing what few see, what few want to see and being content in the knowledge that their ignorant opinions on China don’t matter.

So my in-laws, my former students, friends, fellow former expats, expats who are lifers by choice and expats who are lifers forever planning that move out of China, I’ll leave you with this:

你的家真漂亮。