Writing Prompt: You’re afraid that your name and personality just don’t fit your writing style. To help sell your work, come up with a pseudonym and an alter ego for it.
Tex McNabb. Call me Tex. My real name. Some folks say, what’s your baby name. I tell ’em I don’t got one. The say nah. The name they called you when you was born. I say I don’t got one. That shuts ’em up.
I live in a house my grandma built with her own two hands, mostly. Had some help, here and there. Met a man, did what she needed to do to get the rest of the house built, had my mom. She run off to be a trucker. Truck broke down one day, she did what she had to do, and then there was me. I live with my grandma, mostly.
The place is piece outside of Washout, a little town a ways from a little but bigger town a ways from a place no one ever heard of. If I need an airport, there’s Tulsa.
But I don’t never need no airport. Everything I need is in Washout. There’s the general store, for bacon, cornmeal, coffee, the occasional vegetable. There’s the nail shop, for repairs on the cabin. There’s the typewriter store, for ink ribbons, paper, and such. Sometimes, when times is lean, I do what I have to do for paper.
You see, I’m a writer. Crime novels mostly, sometimes I’ll write one of them there thrillers. I wrote a romance once. Under a pseudonym, of course. Who’s gonna buy a romance novel from a fella name of Tex? For that one we went with Flora McNabb. The review on that one was brutal. One feller for one of them newspapers in one of those cities wrote, “What the hell did Flora McNabb do to get this piece of trash into print.” I wrote that man a letter. “She did what she had to do.”
Folks ‘spect I write westerns. Well, let me tell you. I could. I’m out here in the brush. There’s horses. There’s rattlesnakes. Clemmet, fella who runs the general, he’s one fourth Comanche.
But there’s nothin’ in it. Fella keeps to himself, rides his horse, eats corn cakes and bacon, drinks coffee, shoots a rattlesnake here and there. Then there’s a piece of trouble. He don’t want to get mixed up in it, but he does. There’s some woman, says she’ll do what she has to do to get him to help, and him, well, he doesn’t even give her the satisfaction, just helps her anyway. There’s no justice in it.
Next thing you know, his horse is run off, his rifle is out of bullets or ammo or rounds or whatever you call ’em, and the woman is dead. He’s hell-bent on revenge and boy does he get it. And then he finds his horse. But beans don’t taste like they used to, now he’s killed a man or twelve. So that’s it then. The rest of his days is ridin’ the range, tryin’ to right wrongs.
I’ll pass, thanks. I’ll stick to the crime novels. Easier to write, if I’m truthin’. Some feller in the big city with a slick name, like David Harbrace or maybe Gregory Oldencraft. Hardened by a life on the streets. He’s broke as shit and drinks too much and when someone’s daddy gets plugged for seeing a mob hit go down, he lets whoever do whatever they need to do to help ’em. He’s a sour son of a bitch but he’s kind that way. Solves the crime, goes back to drinkin’. Not that he ever stopped.
Me, I tried drinkin’, but it didn’t sit to well. I did all of the things. I got a few bottles of whiskey from the general. Got one of them glasses, the fancy ones, crystal, cost me two hundred bucks. Had Clemmet work a connection, get me some rough-cut cube-shaped ice. Drove into Tulsa, attended a seminar on how to put the ice in just so, how to pour the liquor, how much water to add on top. The lady who ran the seminar, she was a nice old gal. A big one, for sure, but the big ones’ll sometimes do what they got to do for a hell of a lot longer than them skinny gals on Sheridan by the airport. Let me tell you.
But like I said, it never took. Got through, maybe, four or five bottles, a quantity of ice cubes, wore that damn glass out. It was a rough weekend. Had to trash most of what I wrote. “She crawls up on the roof to watch the sun set. A cigarette keeps her company. And then when it’s dark, she crawls back down, goes back inside, opens a can of soup for her dad.” You see what I mean. Trash is the right word.
That’s okay though. Nothing ventured, as Clemmet will say now and again. Got a call from that seminar woman a while ago. She said her boy’s thinkin’ of becoming a writer, did I have any tips for him. We had a nice conversation. I told her to tell him that writin’ ain’t nothin. The real work’s when you’re done and you want someone to read it. She asked what he should do. I told her to tell him to do what he had to do. That’s what I did. I think she knew what I was sayin, cause she said she’d tell him, and she didn’t seem too tore up about it. Nice gal, all things considered.