"HIT" Chapter title meaning: Troy's story starts with a punch, Slang for killing someone, one half of hit job.
"JOB" Chapter title meaning: Troy and Cabel commiserate over their lost jobs, the over half of hit job
I combined these two chapters because they were originally one in the first drafts. They eventually became too bloated to exist as one.
(I'm bolding the phrases that are important later. They will be linked to the relevant posts)
Hit begins the story with Cabel Walsh not thinking about work, rather than his friends. I have an obsession with making stories circular, and already you're seeing the beginning of Cabel's loop. The first paragraph was rewritten a dozen times. The final version was almost rewritten from scratch by editors Ed and Wendy Lohr of Cressen Books, LLC.
I wanted to start the book with Troy. The incomplete script version of the story begins with him taking a punch to the face in slow motion as he "brandished a grin of displaced confidence." This is the beginning of Troy's circle, one which Cabel will have to complete for him by the end.
Troy is fighting with an 83-year-old "Mr. Harry," who also has a hidden connection to Cabel (See the bottom for spoilers).
Back to Cabel. His story starts as he is driving from work down a country road. In real life, this road, this time of the day, and this time of the year is precisely the moment the character of Cabel Walsh came into my head. It was the dumb Caleb joke that spurred his name being Cabel. The surname, Walsh, came from the quintessence. Often, once I get one half of a name, the other half falls into place quickly. This was the case with Cabel.
Cabel calls Miranda. Her name comes from a crush I had in kindergarten. I figured if I were going to dissect my childhood traumas, I might as well use the entire buffalo of my childhood. They meet at the bar, which is based on the Franklin Moose Lodge. The pair are on a date. It was a first date in the original draft, but the speed at which their relationship progresses suggests a more advanced stage.
Cabel tells the story about being fired from the hometown newspaper, a semi-autobiographical topic that is expanded in Punch. He tells Miranda a more macho version of the story than what he tells Troy in the next chapter.
As they're happy and falling in love, Troy's life is wrecked by his fistfight. He is fired by Adrienne Knotts, but not before taking inventory of her mother's picture on the wall (remember that spark?) Jill, Troy's supervisor, was a late addition to the story. She came about because beta readers informed me his supervisor would be present if he were fired. Jill has no lines in the scene because of this.
In Job, Cabel and Troy meet. Troy talks about his lost job, and Cabel reflects on the newspaper job he lost years prior. Cabel's story is loosely based on my own firing from my hometown paper. The bitterness I had towards it is channeled throughout the story.
The Mallow Cinematic Universe
The most fun I had in this chapter was an exchange between Cabel and Troy. It is as follows:
This is a direct crossover to my science fiction series Echo Suite Saga. The lore of that universe is that a star cluster settled by humans millennia ago was founded by a woman named Terri Fairchance. She and her team arrived there through a portal created in a Texas laboratory.
Troy is hatching a plan. A dumb plan. Cabel doesn't know it yet, but his life is about to be altered for good.
Miscellaneous
The town's name, Chancy was also called Chaney for a time. One sounded like a Pokemon, and the other sounded like a vice-president.
The county was always called O'Brien. It was named after my fifth-grade English teacher and her husband, who published a terrific memoir based in the real county of Pendleton.
Other location substitutions: Tipperton is Upper Tract, WV; Huntsville is Moorefield, WV; Baker County is Hardy County, Stonewall County is Grant County. Pretty much every other location in the story retains its actual name.
Spoilers: The old man Troy fights with was never meant to be anything more than a one-off character. The idea came late to make him the same person who fired Cabel from his newspaper job. Yes, this old man single-handedly sent both Cabel on Troy on their Appalachian odyssey.
You can buy in IN THE COUNTRY DARK in print on AMAZON
On e-book on KINDLE, APPLE BOOKS, KOBO, OR NOOK
Or get the audiobook on AUDIBEL, as read by the fabulous Daniel Abraham Stevens
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