SCRIBBLES

Thank you!!

I just want to thank my READERS! I’ve put up about 140 different pieces since I’ve started. I’ve got 109 subscribers that have signed up since June. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but I’m happy. You guys are reading my stuff. There’s not a lot of comments, but I get that. People sometimes think the writer doesn’t need to hear from his readers. The fact that you’re opening an reading my stuff is good enough for me. (Although hearing from you guys once in a while would be cool.)

When I get down on myself because nobody’s signed up for the day, or maybe a week goes by and no one subscribes, I look at my stats and try to figure out what I can do to bring in more readers. Aside from going on Twitter, which I seldom go on anymore, (I still post there, though,) I put links up on Facebook and LinkedIn. They don’t bring a lot of readers, but I’m getting a few. Aside from friends—and I certainly don’t have that many (I had one once, but he moved to England…but then he came back and never contacted me, so, well, I don’t know what to say about that)—but I’m getting a lot of readers from Substack itself. But I scroll down the list of stories and look at how many people have looked at my stories. Some of them have quite a few. One of them has 541total views with an open rate of 67%. Twenty of my pieces are triple digits, with the lowest open rate of 39%, the highest the afore-mentioned 67%. The opening rate for eleven of them are in the 40% range; six of them are in the 50% range.

I must be doing something right. I mean I don’t have a lot of followers, but those of you who are here, are wonderful! Amazing! You prove to me what I’ve said from the beginning: If the story is good, the readers will come. I don’t know what the average rate is for opening emails and reading them, or at least looking at them, but I think I’m doing okay.

I’m almost finished with my Time Travel NaNoWriMo Challenge, and then I have to go back to the paywall, because I have my three PAID subscribers, and I have to give them a reason for Subscribers—besides being my good friends. So I’m going to put up my JACK OF DIAMONDS. I’m going to start from the beginning. That way, if someone wants to climb on board and read it ($5/month) they can start from the beginning. I’m going to put whatever readings I do, or songs I have, behind my paywall. I hope you consider signing up when the time comes. I’ll be putting my stories up on my FREE subscription page. I’m working on one right now, and liking it. I don’t know where it’s going right now, but it’s about a fading movie star who moves to Italy with her kids because she has cancer and wants to die in Florence—I mean, who doesn’t want to die in Florence? (They have an English cemetery there.) I’m tentatively calling it: A COUNTRY BEYOND THE STARS. Here’s a piece of it.

1956

I remember when Uncle Charlie told me that death was understanding life. I never understood exactly what he meant by that; but I was a kid, and my mother had just died days before. When he said it though, I remember thinking it must be something adults say to children when they lose a parent. It didn’t make any sense, but then, a lot of things Uncle Charlie said and did never made any sense. I mean, he’d missed his own sister’s funeral. He showed up three days late stinking of gin and wearing mismatched socks.

I was eleven years old when my father died. That was the year Uncle Charlie said he was going to move us out to Tuscany. It had always been a dream of Mother’s to die in Florence, he said, and I told myself to look Florence up in the Atlas before I went to bed that night. It was a city he’d visit during the war he told us, and Mother laughed, saying she thought it’d been a vacation. 

“And why’s that?” Uncle Charlie asked. 

“Because you said it was a tour!” she laughed. And Father laughed with her.

“It was a tour. Unfortunate that it was a tour of duty,” he said.

His gaze drifted off toward the ceiling. There was a single tear at the edge of his eyelash, and he looked down at me—perhaps sensing me staring up at him, I don’t know—because he winked at me before grabbing Mother and kissing the top of her head. And then he leaned over and kissed Father’s head as well. Whatever he was thinking was gone, lost in that brief hug, along with the tear. Then he and Father poured themselves another drink and toasted to their great, good fortune, because Uncle Charlie had arrived with news that Mother had won the role in an Italian movie.

Rather than saying it was a night I’ll never forget, I like to think of it as a night I’ll always remember. I’ve learned over the years that I’ve forgotten more things than I’ve remembered, but I’ll always remember that night because of that single teardrop hanging on Uncle Charlie’s eyelash; and how that was the night I learned the finality of everything.

Uncle Charlie was employed at the talent agency that supposedly represented Mother throughout her acting career. A fine mess he’d made of that, is all I can say. We lived south of London at the time, and Uncle Charlie said he’d taken care of everything. Of course there were papers to be signed, and drinks involved. Father was drinking his whiskey sours, and Uncle Charlie his gin and tonics. That neither man was sober enough to handle such a transaction mattered not one whit to Father, or to Uncle Charlie for that matter. Uncle Charlie said he need only take care of his sister.

“God have mercy on us,” was all my mother said when she heard that.

And then Father looked at his watch and half-stood, leaning over the table and finishing as much of his drink as he could.

“I’m late,” he said, putting the drink down and picking his cigarette up out of the ashtray. It was hanging out of his mouth as he tightened his tie and ran his hands though his slick, black hair.

“Good?” he asked me, and I gave him a thumbs up which he told me was American for good.

“Are you leaving, Darling? Oh, please don’t,” Mother said, reaching out for his hand. “You really shouldn’t.”

“No choice, my love,” he said, picking up his suit jacket from the back of the chair. “Cecil’s expecting me, and he’s only here until tomorrow,” he added, picking up his drink and draining the last of it.

Father’s was the first funeral I’d ever been to.

I can’t believe it! I used the “Find & Replace” feature to change “Father” and replace it with “Uncle Charlie,” and the kept working on it. But I forgot to look at the first page. If you read it before I fixed it…sorry.

Tell me what you think. Don’t be afraid to leave a comment. Writing is a lonely business. If you don’t leave a note once in a while, we tend to think no one likes what we write (even if the stats say different.

But I just want to thank you all for hanging in there. Those of you who were there from the very beginning (like my old pal Al; we went to high school together), my three paid subscribers, and everyone else.

Enjoy your weekend, and think about maybe SHARING this with your friend(s).