the logistical challenge of getting fourteen backpacks down the cliff face.  The boys had redistributed a lot of their stuff to other boys in their patrols, so they weren’t carrying tents, but they did have sleeping bags, clothes and other essentials.  The packs were mostly about twenty pounds or so. 

Gunny oversaw the rigging of a system to tie a couple of packs together and lower them down.  They had to do it four times to get all fourteen packs down, and it was tough work.  The adults went first, lowering their packs and showing the boys the system.  It took over an hour to get all the bags down. 

Then it was time for them to start going down.  Two of the adults led off and rappelled down the face.  When they got to the bottom, they signaled for the first of the boys to come down.  Jack was in the second to last pair of boys to go down, and he was starting to get nervous.  He’d been to all the training rappels, but none had been this high.  As he stood looking out over the scene in front of him, he could see for miles and miles.  Off in the distance, he could even see the patchwork of farm fields.  In another situation, he would have marveled at the incredible view.  But at this moment the only thought that occupied his mind was that he was standing near a cliff… hundreds of feet from the landing below… and he was preparing to step off.

“Jack, look at me,” Gunny said to him as he held Jack’s shoulders.  He walked Jack backwards toward the cliff, the rope already set up on his carabiner.  Gunny was tied off to a tree, so he backed Jack right to the edge.  “You can do this Jack.  You’re out over the edge now.  Lean back… just the way you did in training.”

“Yes, Sir,” Jack said quietly.

Gunny made sure, for at least the fifth time, that Jack was holding the ropes correctly and knew the procedure. 

“Just lean back and walk backwards down the face.  Look up here to me until you get comfortable.”

Jack stepped off the cliff and started walking slowly backwards down the cliff face.  After a few feet, he came to a little shelf, and he had to jump to get over it.  It took three tries to get the timing right, but he jumped and let out rope at the same time and easily slid down about ten feet.  Getting the hang of it, he got more comfortable. 

Gunny stepped over to the other boy that had yet to go.  His name was Randy, and he was new to the troop.  He was almost fearless as he went over to the edge and started working his way down the cliff.  Soon he was lower than Jack.  But as Jack got down to about fifty feet from the bottom, he caught back up to Randy.

“I’m stuck, can you help me?” Randy asked. 

“What is it?” Jack asked. 

“It’s like there’s a knot in my rope.  It’s jammed.”

“Can you pull yourself up and undo it with the other hand?”

“No… I tried.  But I can’t hold myself up with one hand.”

“What’s goin’ on down there, guys?” Gunny yelled from above.

“Randy’s stuck, Sir,” Jack yelled back up. 

Gunny yelled down the same instruction, and Randy yelled back up that he couldn’t. 

At the top of the cliff, Gunny let out a sigh.  “It was all too smooth,” he said to Jim Davis and Charlie Jackson.  “There has to be one.”

Gunny walked back over to the cliff edge, “Jack, keep going down.  Mr. Jackson is going to come down your rope and see if he can get it undone,” he yelled down.

“Yes, Sir,” Jack yelled back as he continued down the mountain.  A few minutes later his feet were on solid, almost horizontal ground.  He unhooked his rope and waved his arms to let them know at the top he was off the rope. 

Partway up the mountain, Randy was starting to get nervous.  He was yanking on the rope to try to dislodge the snag and it wasn’t working.  A few times, while he was struggling with the rope, he lost his footing and smacked into the cliff face. 

“It’s ok, Randy,” Charlie Jackson said as he started down, “I’ll be there in a little bit.  Just hang out and enjoy the view.”

Charlie kept making his way down the face, knowing that hurrying would be more dangerous than taking his time.  But as the moments clicked by, Randy became more and more panicked. 

“Ok, Randy, can you pull yourself up to take pressure off the part of the rope that is snagged,” Mr. Jackson asked him.

He tried, but he couldn’t hold himself up enough for Mr. Jackson to do much of anything, but he tried for ten solid minutes to untangle the boy’s rope. 

“Charlie, hang out there for a minute.  I’m going to bring him up,” Gunny yelled down.  “Randy, when you feel me start to pull you, just walk up the mountain… like Batman, got it?”

“Yes, Sir, Gunny,” he responded, though still not sure how this was going to work out. 

Gunny told Jim to wrap the rope around the stump between the two men.  “Keep pressure on the wrap.  If I slip, you have to hold up Randy.  That kid probably weighs one-fifty, but with the wraps, it shouldn’t be too bad.”

Gunny double checked his safety line, then walked back over to the cliff.  He picked up the rope and started hauling it in, hand under hand.  “Keep walking, Randy,” he said as he brought the boy back up the cliff. 

After about fifteen minutes of pulling, including a couple of short rest breaks, Randy scrambled over the side at the top of the cliff.  He looked up at the Assistant Scoutmaster that had hauled him a hundred feet up the side of the mountain.  He was sweating and flexing his hands, but he barely looked winded. 

“What now, Gunny?” Randy asked.

Gunny picked the rope back up and undid the tangle.  “I don’t know how you managed that one,” he said to the Scout.  “Are you ready to head back down the side?”

“Do I have to?” Randy asked, looking rather nervous.

“That or make the run with Mr. Davis.  And he runs fast.  I’d rather go over the side.

Gunny checked over the rope and tossed it back over to allow Randy to try it again.  He rigged the youth and sent him back over the side.  This time he made it all the way to the bottom without incident. 

“After I get to the bottom, Jim, you can drop the ropes and head down the path.  We’ll wait for you.”

“Ha, I’ll wait for the hikers.  I’ll catch them before they make it to the trailhead.  It’s only ten miles and almost all downhill,” he laughed. 

Gunny shook his head at his friend and fellow scout leader.  Then, he walked over to the side, checked his rigging again and stepped backwards off the cliff.  He made it down the hundred and fifty-foot face in just a couple of minutes, bouncing down twenty or thirty feet on each leap. 

Just after he unhooked from them, the ropes dropped to the bottom and Jim Davis took off on his run.  The boys picked up their packs and started the rest of their hike.  The cliff had cut six miles off their ten-mile hike down. 

***

That was some story last night at the campfire, Gunny,” Ed said as the two men drove back to Hampton in Gunny’s truck. 

“Like that one?”

“Lots of details left out, but quite a story.”

“Think how fun it would be to tell the real one, Ed.”

“Jack wouldn’t believe it.  Heck, I barely believe it and I was there.”

“I know what you mean.”

***

Gunny’s pick-up truck pulled into the church parking lot that evening after their long ride back.  The van was already there.  The boys unloaded and were talking excitedly about the trip with their parents.  Randy’s mother walked over to the truck before Gunny could get out. 

“Mr. Grafton, I’m Elise Roberts, Randy’s Mom.  He told me what happened.”

“Please, Ma’am, call me Gunny, everyone does.”

“Well, be that as it may, I’m still a little concerned that a child could have been stuck on the side of the mountain,” she continued, with a bit of exasperation. 

“Ms. Roberts, my name is Ed Dixon.  I’m a parent, like you.  I was at the bottom, watching, when it happened.  The rope tangle was a freak thing.  Gunny and I, and a few of the other adults there, have done this for decades and never had a rope tangle like that.  But I can tell you that in no way was Randy endangered because of that.  We had several options to handle the situation.”

“Mom,” Randy said from behind her in an almost whiny voice, “it’s not their fault.  I think it was mine.  I was whipping the rope around behind me and I think I made the tangle with my foot.  And while I was stuck, I was scared, but Mr. Grafton and Mr. Jackson got me down.  They weren’t going to leave me,” he said, stretching out the word “leave” to three extra syllables. 

“This is a dangerous activity.  Is it really appropriate for these children?” she asked.

“Ma’am, it absolutely is dangerous.  Your sixteen-year-old son stepped off a hundred and fifty-foot cliff and rappelled down it.  Almost twice.  His harness and rigging were checked multiple times and by multiple people.  The young men that were allowed to rappel were all over fourteen and, like your son, not small guys.  I have been rappelling since I was a Scout, and I’ve NEVER had a person in my care, or with me, that had a serious injury from the activity,” Gunny said, flashing his best smile.  “Please excuse me for a minute, I need to unload the packs from my truck.”

Gunny turned and walked to the back of his pick-up truck to help get the packs distributed.  He reached in and grabbed several of the packs in each arm and pulled them out for the boys to grab and distribute.  A few moments later the back of the truck was clear, and parents were starting to leave with their sons. 

“Mrs. Roberts, did you have any other questions,” Gunny asked.

“It’s Miss Roberts, but please call me… Elise.  I would like to talk about this sometime, though.”

“I’m here every Monday.  I can usually break away to talk unless Mr. Holloway isn’t around, and then I might have some Scoutmaster duties.  Otherwise, I’m pretty easy to catch.”

She thanked him and turned to head back to her car.

“I think she was flirting with you, Gunny,” Ed said, smiling.  “At the end, anyway.”

“Ya really think?” he responded.

“Yep-  ‘but please call me-’ dramatic pause- ’Elise’,” Ed said back in a falsetto voice, “but whatever.  She is pretty, though.”

In the case of the excerpts, maybe hoping that you will like it enough to want to read some more. But then on Friday, I have slipped in something about the act or business of writing.

The last couple of Friday posts are things like Vella and the Story Arc, And on Vocal…, and Sometimes they are Bad. During the same period, the Monday and Wednesday posts were stories like Widow’s Walk, First Date-Again, and an excerpt from The Call.

Of course, there are always a few other treats mixed in, and there have been a few posts announcing book sales, and soon I hope to have a bonus post announcing a new book. But I’ll try to stick mostly to that formula for a while.

But what I would REALLY appreciate is you subscribing. If you subscribe to the free weekly newsletter (goes out Saturday morning around 10am Eastern) you can catch up on the posts, and pick up a FREE ebook called Escape. Don’t tell anyone, but I’m thinking about changing to a new ebook, and subscribers will get that one free, too. I’m also almost ready to offer the ebook up in another format aside from pdf to make it more friendly for Kindle app and device readers.

As a very quick reminder, Vella is for “episodic fiction.” That means that each individual work will be shorter. Under 5,000 words. There is some speculation that 2,000 to 3,000 words would be ideal. Users will pay per word (in credits) for the stories that they read, and the first three installments will be completely free. After that, the user will buy an installment, and the writer will be paid a percentage of the revenue it generates.

I see a lot of writers thinking about taking an unpublished book and using it for Vella. And that is not a bad idea. Assuming the chapters are of an appropriate length, and there is enough of a hook to push the reader from chapter to chapter, that might work out really well.

There are two issues I see, and the best illustration I can use is the differences between a TV series, a TV mini-series, and a movie.

A novel is much like a movie. There might be some mini-stories, but there is a base story arc, and it is the entirety of the movie. The next thing is that a novel typically has about 75k to 100k words (there are certainly epics that are MUCH longer). Keeping in mind that the first three episodes are free… and that could be 15k words, 15-20% of the book might be free.

A mini-series is somewhat like a movie, but more like an epic novel. It would translate much better to the episodic treatment. The writers have to engage the audience to tune in tomorrow for the next installment. Usually, there is a two hour “intro” to get us hooked on the premise, and invested in the characters (like the three free chapters) and then we have a few nights over a couple of weeks where we invest 10 or 12 hours in the show… much longer than the 2 hour movie. It might be like a 300k to 500k epic. The free 15k word intro is a drop in the bucket.

Then there is the TV show. Every week. Sometimes for a season, other times for a decade.

In a TV show, though, we have several differences. We have the weekly story arc… the episode. We might also have a story that takes the season to unfold. Relationships between the characters may develop over several episodes, or even seasons.

So, we have an overall story arc… like Sam getting home in Quantum Leap. Then, within the episode we have a story arc… like what problem Sam has to solve in order to make the next leap and get closer to home. During the run of the show, there are changes in the relationship between Sam and Al, forming mini-arcs. And the next thing is that each episode teased the next one at the end. We knew where Sam leaped, and the signature line “Oh boy…” told us he had a problem to solve.

I think that the most successful stories on the platform are going to utilize a TV episode model. There will absolutely be stories that will be wildly successful that do not. But the TV episode style could develop into many hundreds of thousands of words, with a miniscule portion of them being “free”. It could go on forever, assuming that the premise is strong. If needed, it could even be divided into seasons, allowing multiple types of story arcs, and making more of it free.

Compared to the 2 hours of a movie, or the 12 hours of a mini-series, the 26 hours run (or more) of a single season of a TV show is huge… and shows that go multiple seasons can produce hundreds of hours of episodes. That would translate into millions of words of the story.

I have actually knocked out a variety of posts on Vocal since I last mentioned it here four weeks ago. In fact, aside from Lucinda’s Choice, all of the others were written since my last update… I think. So, that should put me around 15 postings there in the last month.

Today I wanted to highlight a few posts I’ve done about writing.

This one is older than that, but Just Write the Book… And doesn’t everyone want to know Why I Write…

But the two I’m more interested in revolve around Vella, an upcoming platform for episodic fiction from Amazon. The details are still in flux, but it is something I am seriously looking at, for a variety of reasons. Episodic fiction would be like a TV show or mini-series, but written. Shorter “episodes” of under 5000 words, but lots of related stories… episodes. It would be a paid platform, in that readers would pay for the episodes (after the first couple) and the writers would share in the revenue. So… here are the posts I wrote about that. Kindle Vella and Vella and the Story Arc.

any moment her father or her mother could climb the steps and see us.

That was more than forty years ago, and I can still smell her perfume. I’ve never known the name of it, but I can’t pick up its scent without thinking of her. I can feel my fingers slipping through her blonde hair. I see her bright green smiling eyes. I hear her joyful laugh. The soft crush of her lips on mine.

Sunrise was the best time… the sun coming up over the Chesapeake Bay, over the beach only a block away. But it was rare that I would be there that early in the morning. Second best was sunset. The fiery color was behind us, but the boats and the star would twinkle against the deep blue of the evening sky as it faded from blue into black.

Even now, just the idea sends me back in time. Looking at her as the last rays of the day filtered through her hair, lighting a halo around her angelic face. Sitting across from her, holding hands across the divide… her feet next to me, mine next to her. Her smile.

“So, what is a widow’s walk?” I asked her father one night as we stood next to the grill on their balcony. They had a small thrift shop on the first floor of the building, an apartment occupying the two floors above that, and finally the widow’s walk snaking along the peak of the roof.

“This house was built by a sea captain a hundred and fifty years ago. Looking around,” he continued, “you can still see a lot of his touches… the joinery in the wood, the details.

“He built it for his wife, Ophelia. Her picture is in the hallway. Beautiful woman, dark hair and eyes. And he built the walk on top so that she could look out to the sea. If you look, over in the southeast corner, there is a socket set into the rail. She had a telescope in a locker in the cupola that she could set into the socket and watch the sea when he was gone.

“The captain disappeared on one of their voyages. I guess that would have been around 1830.

“When the ship was due in, she went to the roof, out on the walk, and scanned the horizon with the telescope. A day turned into a week. A week turned into a month. ‘He’s lost,’ they told her. A month turned into a year.

“Every day, rain or shine, she would go up to the walk and scan the horizon for a sign of the man she loved.

“Even before that she was a widow of the sea. She knew her man couldn’t leave his first love, no matter how much she wished he would. And like any widow of the sea, she wanted to know when her lost love would return.

“That’s why it’s called a widow’s walk,” he finished. He had a far-off, wistful look in his eyes.

“He loves to tell that story,” Holly said softly in my ear as she snuck up behind me, wrapping her arms around me and squeezing.

“I guess I do,” he said. “I guess the romance of the sea has a place in my heart.”

After that, sometimes when I was riding my bike to her house, I would catch Holly on the walk watching me come down the street… sometimes with a telescope. I would wave and she would raise her hand to me. Even from the ground, I could see her brilliant smile.

***

Ophelia looked through her telescope in the failing light of the evening. It had been so long. Day after day she waited, watching. James had never lied to her, and he said he would come back. His last voyage was to be three months. Cuba, Brazil, the Canary Islands, Italy, Portsmouth and then home. Then he was retiring.

But the three months turned into four, then six. Then a year. She didn’t lose faith. Even when sailors came back talking of a storm in the Atlantic, and word filtered in that his ship never made it to the Canary Islands, her faith was steadfast.

James would return for her.

A decade passed, then two. Every morning at sunrise and every evening just before sunset, she would be on the walk, her eye to the spyglass. Her spyglass trained on the horizon. She knew every ship that sailed the bay, but none of the sails were the ones for which she was looking.

In 1853, she disappeared. A dinner for two was set on the table, uneaten. Everything was perfectly placed. All the captain’s favorite foods were laid out. A single candle burned much of the way down in the center of the table.

Clarinda, Ophelia’s best friend, looked from her window at sunset. She didn’t see Ophelia and rushed across the street to her house. She rushed up the stairs to the private apartment over the small shop Ophelia owned, calling her friend’s name.

That was when she discovered the dinner laid out. She quickly looked around the apartment, then ran up the outside stairs to the walk.

The telescope was heeled over in its mount. She scanned the horizon, then looked through the telescope. She almost thought she could see something at the edge of the sea, where it and the sky met.

Ophelia was never found. Locals combed the shoreline, thinking she had lost patience and swam out to sea to join her husband. Clarinda never uttered what she saw while looking through the telescope that evening on the widow’s walk, only leaving it in her journal.

But later, she would say that she could see Ophelia pacing the walk, usually at sunrise, but sometimes at sunset as well. She would always be wearing a black dress, as many had seen her in, wrapped in a bone-colored, lace shawl. And if she looked to the sea, she would see those same sails on the horizon. When she would look back to Ophelia’s house, her friend would be gone.

***

I had never seen Ophelia, but Holly said that she had seen her a few times. I thought maybe one evening when we were sitting in the cupola, holding hands, quietly watching the light fade, we might catch a glimpse of the woman that had so loved her captain.

“What is she like?” I asked one night at the sun dipped below the horizon behind us, a cargo ship’s light rolling slowly south in the bay.

“Sad. She was heartbroken. She would walk along the course, looking to the sea. Sometimes, she would bend as if looking through a telescope that was no longer there. Then, the last time I saw her, she was looking, as she normally did… and she jumped.

“Her movement, solid, but ethereal, startled me. She looked directly at me, but also through me. I could see the joy on her face… it emanated from her. She glowed. Then, she ran along the walk to the steps, spun and climbed down them… and disappeared.”

“You haven’t seen her since?” I asked.

“I thought I caught a glimpse of her glow out in the bay that night, but I don’t know.”

Holly slipped off the bench opposite me in the cupola and sat next to me, my arm wrapping around her. She snuggled into me as I held her tight.

“I think she found her happiness. I think her captain came back for her like she knew he would,” I said.

Holly turned to me. Her hand touched my cheek. I pulled her close and felt her soft lips with mine. Everything about that moment burned into my memory.

“I hope so,” she said after the kiss, as I took in her perfume and felt her hair between my fingers.

***

Holly is long gone. Her parents passed away a decade ago and she has her own family on the other side of the country. I’ve moved away as well, with a family of my own. But I still visit my mother nearby.

The shop her family owned is boarded up, the house in dire need of a renovation. It was built over two hundred years ago, and its age showed forty years ago when I was last inside. But it is sadly abandoned.

I often stay in a hotel a few blocks away, overlooking the beach and the bay beyond. It isn’t far from my mother’s house where I grew up. Sometimes, I sit on the hotel’s balcony so that I can watch the light fade to night, see the sky go from brilliant blue to black, and watch the twinkle of stars and ships on the water as they grow and take over the night.

But one night was different.

As I sat on the wicker chair, an ice-cold beer on the table next to me, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something move on Holly’s widow’s walk. I spun… Ophelia was walking the course. I watched her look out to sea. After a few minutes, I saw her jump and could see her aura brighten.

I set down my drink and sprinted from the room. I ran down the stairs from my fifth-floor room, not willing to wait for an elevator. Reaching the ground floor, I tore through the lobby and out the door, sprinting down the boardwalk.

The glow from Holly’s roof passed in front of me, a hundred yards away. I chased after it as fast as my aging body would allow. She moved over the ground like a shimmer, quickly, but not hurried.

Forty yards away, she crossed to the sand. I angled toward the water, cutting diagonally to where she was headed. I needed to be closer… to see her.

Twenty feet away, I skidded to a stop. My hands were on my knees and my heart thudded in my chest.

Ophelia turned to me. “Thank you,” she said.

I looked up, and there was a glowing launch from the ship sliding onto the sand.

“The love between you and Holly allowed us to be reunited,” the captain said. “This is our celebration.”

He lifted her onto the boat, a moment later it slid back out into the bay, cutting through the waves.

***

“Hi Holly,” I said into my phone, sitting again on the balcony.

“Oh my gosh… I haven’t talked to you in forever,” she replied.

“I saw Ophelia… and Captain Morgan. They told me that we freed them to be together again. I think it was that kiss.”

“That was forty-one years ago tonight,” she said. “I was actually just thinking about it.”

***

Clarinda’s Journal:

There, upon the horizon, lit by the setting sun were the sails of a schooner. As I continued to watch, I could see a woman on the aft deck, her hair dark, flowing in the wind.

The two-masted ship began to turn out to sea, away to the south.

If I didn’t know better, I would have thought it Capt. James Morgan’s ship. She was as sleek and beautiful a vessel as I ever saw sail. Watching through the spyglass, I could see the woman and the captain kiss. If it were Ophelia, she was twenty years younger. Always a beautiful woman, she had again the radiance she’d lost when all thought her love gone.

I turned back, an otherworldly boy and girl sat in the cupola, intertwined. There was a flash as they kissed, then they were gone. It was calm.