W- Wink

     Marty finally settled on either an owl or a lizard. The owl ate snakes and the lizard ate spiders. Why not both? He rolled the knife handle in his hand and began carving first the owl. Owls are easy. So are lizards and it didn’t take him long to carve a good likeness of each of them. When Marty looked up and wiped the sweat from his eyes, he peeked at the neighbor girl’s window. She had not been there a few minutes before, hadn’t been there an hour ago but she was there now, moderately obstructed through the limbs of the oak tree, but not so much that Marty could not see she was holding a sign with letters and an arrow on it.

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     She waved when she saw Marty and pointed at the sign. He squinted and made out the word "Peaches?" The arrow pointed toward her back yard, where they had a couple of peach trees and the requisite squirrels that chittered about them. He pointed to her peach trees and realized he was pointing with the Bois D’Arc handle. Sadie nodded.

 Marty said, “Um, okay,” even though she couldn’t hear him.
She held up her fingers and signaled okay.

~Wink by Eric Trant

Author Eric Trant- 3 question interview:

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1) What is your favorite line from your novel Wink? 

Here is my favorite line from WINK. Marty is talking to his neighbor-girl, Sadie, across the fence bounding their properties. 

 ~~~
 He slid the knife out of his belt and showed it to her. “It’s a Jim Bowie knife, like from the Alamo. See how big it is? It’s, like, bigger than my arm. If my mom caught me with this she would beat me senseless. She would slit my throat with it.”
  ~~~ 

 This is one of those lines Dear Reader might not fully appreciate. I agonized over this line. Let me say that again, with proper emphasis. I ~agonized~ over this line. I must have written and re-written this snippet a dozen times, stuck in that writer-loop quandry of write-delete-write. The goal was to show how matter-of-fact Marty was about his mother's abuse, and how naive those around him were of the abuse. He meant what he said, and that sincerity was lost on the neighbor-girl. I hope Dear Reader keeps their mind open as they read, because my goal was to wrap a story within a story within a story, chock full of little nuggets that the casual reader will skim over, but the astute reader will pause and consider on a deeper level. 

2) What or who inspired your Character Marty? 

My brother and I inspired Marty. While we were not in any way abused like Marty, he does possess the boyish wonder, and the quiet, fearless resolve that is characteristic of children who grow up in the country. The attic where Marty finds his solitude existed, and the way he got into it was the way my brother and I got into our attic -- up the carport, across the roof, grab the shutter, and then monkey-swing through the open window, with an air-conditioning unit beneath to break our fall if it ever happened. There were snakes and spiders in that attic, and a lonely chair smack in the middle. The light burned out before we were born. Only the center strip was floored in, and the house spoke to you while you were inside its secret room. That attic breathed and crawled and we couldn't stay out of it. I cannot take credit for much creativity regarding either Marty's personality, or the attic, and maybe that explains some of the vivid imagery.

 3) What is your favorite word and why?

 I'll twist this question and say what my ~least~ favorite word is: wriggle. I hate that word. It should be struck from every language past present and future. I don't know why I dislike it, but that "r" gets me. things wiggle, they don't wriggle. Gads, it makes my fingers ache to type that word.

 I guess if I did have to say a favorite word, I would have to go with "just." I nuke it from all my writings, but it sneaks in against my will, over and over, just when I least expect it. See? So I guess I must have, on a sub-conscious level, a deep and personal love affair with that word. 

Working with you on WINK has been a ~wonderful~ experience, and I thank you for all that, and this interview, too. 

You were a wonderful editor, and I credit you with bringing WINK to life, and with helping settle on the title, which I believe is brilliant. Your input helped me be a better writer, and I will carry that forward on future works. Dear Reader should also thank you for your patience, your attention to detail, and for reading and editing my story several times, slowly and deliberately, because you made wise and judicious remarks on what should be changed for the sake of clarity and flow. I am blessed to have found you on the blogosphere, happy to have taken your advice to submit to WiDo Publishing, and hope to work with you and WiDo on future projects.