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Rompecabezas


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[Special Note: The new website is now live. As a result the links throughout this thread are invalid except for the latest posting to the thread. All of William King's stories can now be found at William King]

William King

 

Rompecabezas

 

Chapters 1 and 2

 

Edited by Zach Caldwell
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A totally enjoyable read.  We see he is now away from that dump of a hotel. The best is he got his boy in a box with him. Oops, where did the boy go? I do not want to say anything that would be a spoiler. It is a joy to read and pass your time. Well worth the effort. Read it, I think anyone would be pleased.  It is well wrighten and the plot is differant but keeps my interest.

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Wow, Once you think you know where it is going it changes. A totaly wonderful read. We see Jabez once more so how, I mean. Well we will just have to come back to see. The dream and now the coastal town. Is the town a dream or what. Who knows right now. I am sure things will become clear....maybe. Just relax read and enjoy thats all we can do for now till next time.

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I can only repeat a few lines of narrative, which is a feeble reply, but the only answer I have.

The narrator explains that “Nothing was clear in the landscape, just exactly as nothing was clear in my head.” He recounts his dream where he says, “Things always happened like this, I would never arrive.”

And he has the same questions that you, the reader have. “It begged the question as to whether it was possible to complete such a task, whether all the pieces would ever come together to reveal the whole.” Seeing Jabez is confusing: “... how did he get here, that was a mystery, it all comes back to nothing being how you think it is.”

He is taking you with him on his journey, and his journey is a struggle and confusing. As you say, you may decide that you know where things are going, but unexpectedly it all suddenly changes direction. You can only do one thing, just as the narrator himself can only do one thing – continue the journey looking for the answer! 

Thank you for commenting, I appreciate it.

 

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For those of you following this story, somehow I had lost chapters 14 and 15. So of course when I went to prepare the update, I went with what was in my files, and sent out chapters 13 and Epilogue.

That was incorrect and has been fixed. Online are chapters 13 and 14. Next week will be chapters 15 and the Epilogue.

My apologies to Mr. King for that grave error.

Al

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So, I started this after the first two chapters were posted and then stopped (deciding to wait til the whole thing was uploaded first) and I finished up the last few chapters a couple of hours ago.

There's a lot going on here, William.  At once intriguing, the story remains stand-offish enough to keep me at arms length - never really letting me into the meat and bone of it until the last chapter.  For a story that is so very sensory I found that frustrating... frustrating in a way that engaged me much like the puzzle of your title.

The writing in places put me in mind of an out of his tree Burroughs and an angy young Ballard (two of my favourite writers btw) and that Burroughsian aesthetic carries through into the imagery you conjure - not just the dreams of your characters feverishly erotic fantasy but the almost apocalyptic landscape he travels too.  From truck stop to mountain top the deep heat and grime leapt at me through my phone screen.

Great work William, thak you for sharing it with us.  I look forward to reading your earlier story on the site soon and hop we'll see more in the future.

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Rompecabezas, words from the author.

A paragraph written by a friend on Facebook inspired the story which is why it is set in Mexico, although that fact is not specifically stated until the end. It's not your usual type of story, although it is strangely enough a romance. Nevertheless, as one reader commented, "it borders on the surreal." Reality, dreams, past and present are blurred at the edges and interwoven into the narration of a journey.

It presented an enormous challenge to me as a writer, how to progress the story so as to encompass three different threads - the journey through a hot dessert landscape, the other reality of the Palace and it's gardens, the boy Demitri from the narrator's past. To do this in such a way so as not to lose the reader completely, but to allow them to guess at what was going on. What were all the pieces that would fit together to reveal the puzzle.

In chapter 7 the narrator arrives at La Terraza Sobre el Mar (The Terrace Over the Sea), it's the chapter title. This is a real location, when I was describing it I was remembering the Café Hafa in Tangier. I relocated it from Morocco to Mexico!

Here's the description from Wikipedia:

"Café Hafa is a cafe in Tangier, Morocco, located along the cliff top overlooking the Bay of Tangier. Opened in 1921, the cafe has retained its 1920s style of decor and through the years has been visited by numerous writers and singers, from Paul Bowles and William S. Burroughs, to The Beatles and the Rolling Stones. The cafe is known for its mint tea, a Tangier special brew.

With its simplicity, with its dominance over the Strait of Gibraltar, with its plastic chairs, its tables with tablecloths, with its blue walls, with its trees that grow without concern to none and with charm to which no one can resist, the Café Hafa has built its glory, its history and its reputation that crossed borders and have inspired numerous international writers."

I wouldn't presume to class myself as an 'international writer', but it did inspire me.

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@Ellio Lee William Burroughs is also one of my favourite authors, making your review comments praise indeed. The style I adopted for this book is unique to this story and whilst there might be something similar in my other stories, they are not at all in the same genre. Thank you so much for your comments, I am very pleased that you liked it.

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