The Fifteen Minute Novel is a novel written fifteen minutes at a time with each week day’s section starting with the sentence from the previous day. At least it is attempting to be a novel. For now I am just aiming at one continuous story, worked on for fifteen minutes each day. Started Friday January 1st, 2021 (in case you want to search for the beginning. I can’t wait to see where it ends up. It could be good, or it could be a mess. We’ll have to see. For now, here is today’s fifteen minutes.
Day 77: As James lifted spoonful after spoonful to his lips he wondered what it was that people actually did to make soup become soup.
As James lifted spoonful after spoonful to his lips he wondered what it was that people actually did to make soup become soup. From what he knew you put a bunch of items in a pot, covered them with water and left them alone.
“Or maybe that’s stew,” he said. Kames shook the thought away. When it came to the culinary side of the world he was definitely on the consumer side of the equation and while vaguely curious, he had no desire to switch to the production side. He knew he needed to find a place with prepared meals that wouldn’t give him high blood pressure or indigestion. He managed his lunchbox meals all right but was not thrilled with the frozen offerings available to him.
As he ate the soup he realized he might have found a viable alternative. He could easily stop by a couple of times a week. The price was well within his current salary range and wouldn’t look overly extravagant even if the taste felt utterly luxurious after a week of frozen meals. If he could find one or two other restaurants like this then he could easily alternate his dinners and not have to resort to the microwave each night.
Pleased with the thought, James finished his soup. When the bowl was empty, he looked to his cookies but decided to tidy up first. Plate and bowl were washed and set to dry and all the trash bundled up into the bin. He picked up the first of the cookies and bit in.
Like every other bite of food in the bag, it was delicious. It tasted like he always assumed cookies on 1950s sitcoms tasted. He was certain that this was the sort of cookie that June cleaver would have given her boys. He hadn’t really believed it existed in real life.
As he ate his cookie, James looked over his remaining reading material. As each night after work featured a large chunk of time reading, there wasn’t much of a selection. James spotted the book Cassie had written. She smiled back at him from the cover. Despite writing off the book, James couldn’t help but pick it up and take it back to the kitchen table where the other cookies waited for him.
The book was done well before he went into hiding. Well before he left the company. The publication date was only a few weeks after his divorce was finalized. While he knew Cassie had her own agenda when publishing the book, his step-brothers featured prominently in several chapters. The sections with them were clearly aimed at promoting their self-aggrandizement schemes. As several of their ‘achievements’ were completed before they were born, it could be nothing less.
But was it more?
That thought circled through James’ brain as he stared at the book and worked his way through the stack of cookies. The book had to have taken time to write and make it through the editing process.
‘That means it was in motion a year, possibly even two, before it reached publication.’ James tried to set aside his recent past for something slightly older. What was going on in his life a year or even two before his divorce?
Ten til Midnight 