Targeted Age Group:: Adult
WRONG SIDE OF A WORKINGMAN – an Illustrated, Adult Urban Fantasy
Alex Cides straps on his tool belt one morning, only to find his wife is gone, his daughters fear him, he’s lost his job and a mysterious curse has thrown him out of balance with the universe. Ten impossible tasks in LA’s mythical underbelly stand between setting things right, or losing everything. Literally.
Link To Wrong Side of a Workingman On Amazon Kindle Unlimited
What Inspired You to Write Your Book?
I was inspired to tell this story on several levels. I wanted to explore and share the glimpses into the many worlds that exist across the Southland of Los Angeles and the trials of a blue-collar tradesman working throughout the city, while also delving into my own experience with chronic pain.
How Did You Come up With Your Characters?
Looking for a way to incorporate my themes of exploring the city, exposing the life of a workingman and drilling into the pain issue, I knew I didn't want to write a treatise, or a literal memoir, but an exciting and entertaining story — So I hit on the fantasy framework of setting the 12 labors of Hercules in modern day Los Angeles, and loosely extrapolated the characters from there.
Book Excerpt/Sample
CHAPTER 3
Miles away, colorfully painted three and four-story brick buildings lined the block of a very old L.A. neighborhood. Murals decorated almost every appropriate wall, some of them by artists who were once famous. Graffiti marred a few of them, but not as many as you think. Los Angeles was a city before Spain lost its hold on Mexico, and the forty-four founders of the pueblo brought their Mestizo, Mulatto, Indio, Negro, Criollo and Peninsularo language and names to the territory. So whatever region you’re in now, from Los Feliz to San Pedro, the streets and neighborhoods may have Spanish names, though you should pronounce them like a local, not a Spaniard.
In this particular neighborhood, not only were the street signs in Spanish, but the store signs too. The ones that weren’t were in Korean. Only the No Parking signs were in English.
As they always had, people walked here. A stooped old woman with her bags in a wheeled basket trundled the broken sidewalk, navigating the other pedestrians. Some were headed to work, some to shop, some merely loitered with nowhere to go. There were sleepers on the concrete here and there, and a small number of hunters, moving only their eyes, looking for a fix or for something they could steel with the smallest amount of effort.
Barely taller than the handle on her cart, she took in every passerby, assessing how badly and how likely they might hurt her. Still, even among the most rangy and hungry-eyed loafers, she felt unthreatened. She had buried two husbands, one of them literally, and seen a war ebb and flow around her. When the black, beater pickup with ladders in the back, jammed to a halt and squeezed into in a space too small for it, she didn’t even flinch. But when the driver’s door screeched like an owl, and the serious faced man who stepped down turned out to be white, she quickened her pace.
The man slammed the door behind him. The old woman was surprised to see him walk with determination into the small shop with the red, white and blue sign painted on the window, “BOTANICA.”
A phalanx of votive candles guarded the door, flanked on one side by a spinning rack of cheerful greeting cards and on the other by a statuette three-quarters the size of a man. Dressed in the robes of a cardinal or a pope, the vestments practically vibrated in livid parakeet green, with white trim and sparkling gold filigree. The saint’s neck ended in a crimson stump, painted blood running down the front of the flowing casula. In its hands it held a silver tray, bearing its own severed head. The eyes gazed piously to heaven, the miter sat perfectly on the brow, pristine white. Gore gouted from the remnant of the throat, filling the tray and brimming over its lip. Sculpted drops of blood hung frozen in the act of spilling over the side to spatter the skirts of the cassock.
Alex paused at the site of the statue, reconsidering. When he decided to proceed deeper into the store, the soles of his shoes audibly crackled where they had bonded to something sticky on the floor. “Probably just an old pool of blood,” Alex dismissed.
The air grew thicker with frankincense and cinnamon and cardamom, as Alex waded through the chest high shelves of zip-toped bags of herbs, multicolored rosaries, wooden, clay and crystal cups, and a catalogs worth of items Alex couldn’t hope to identify. He stopped at a dead end and retraced his steps to pick a different path through the confusion of displays. There was either faint music playing, or a ringing in his ears.
Finally, the labyrinth relented, and he saw his clear way to the counter at the back. Behind the counter, a skinny old man stood on a stool to reach a high shelf. His hair was thick and rich and black, his skin the color of tobacco. Skinny arms like twine of knotted hemp ended in big hands with long, deft fingers. An overgrown and apparently forgotten mustache hid his mouth, but displayed expressions of its own. He ignored his customer, busy with a terracotta bowl shaped like a pregnant woman lying on her back. Concave instead of convex, her deep belly was filled with a vegetal concoction. The man sniffed it and announced in a rich deep voice and Cuban accent, “Two more days. Three? Needs to ferment.” He replaced the bowl on the shelf and said, “Now,” as he turned to his customer.
When he saw Alex he almost dropped from his perch. “Oh my God!” he blurted. He hurried down from the stool and around the counter.
Alex looked into the eyes, which were darker than his own, and spoke cautiously. “I heard you on the radio.”
“Good,” said the priest emphatically.
Alex hadn’t known who to call. He’d tried to do it alone, but with That Note in his hands, everything started to spin and if he fell, there was no one there to catch him. If she was right to leave, and she was right to leave, he couldn’t go complain to a buddy. He couldn’t call his mother. He had no workmates. No siblings. He wished he had a sister so he could get drunk and call her and she’d be the only one he’d show his pain. If only he were an alcoholic, he could worry about none of this, not even his family. He’d go home to bottle, and so what if he never made it right? But he was not an alcoholic and making things right was his job. Then he remembered the resonant voice on the radio and he desperately grabbed at the lifeline. The priest asked seriously, “Is it too late?”
“For what?”
The man looked at him with gravity. “Have you killed a man?”
Alex wasn’t sure about coming here in the first place. Now he was sure he made a mistake. He answered anyway. “No.”
“Come here,” the man said, almost parentally. “Oh, it hurts very much.”
Alex did not come, but he did ask, “How can you tell?”
The man was not kidding when he said, “You’re the first Anglo to come to my Botanica in seven years.” He squinted at Alex, as if trying to focus. “What is your name?”
“Alex. Alex Cides.”
The man seemed pleased. “That is a Greek name.”
“Yes, it is,” Alex said, a little surprised the old man knew that. “So?” he challenged.
“When the Greeks came to their gods,” the man instructed, “they brought offerings. Sacrifices in exchange for their help.”
“You’re not a god.”
“I am an oracle,” said the man. The matter-of-fact magic in his tone, in his eyes, drew Alex in. “What have you brought me?”
Alex told the truth. “I have nothing.”
The thick mustache curled up in a smile. “That is what you think.” The old man said, “My name is Baba. I think I’ve been waiting for you. Come into the back.” And without waiting for Alex, Baba disappeared through a curtained door at the back of the shop. Already having come this far, Alex followed.
The entire back room was an altar and shrine. Candles lit the space. The air was close and still. The smells were even stronger. A funk of sweet and pungent spice rasped in Alex’s nostrils and at the back of his throat. He blinked the sting from his eyes. Primary, secondary and tertiary colors kaleidoscoped in his tears and then coalesced into figurines of saints and gods and demigods standing on every surface and in every nook. A tabletop covered in white linen stood against one wall, crowded with twelve, stemmed glasses filled with water. Framed photographs fought for space with small painted images, a glass pitcher filled with flowers, a crystal skull and another that may or may not have been from an actual person. A baldachin canopy of carved teak stood above it all, framing a large, livid crucifix hung high on the wall. Alex looked up at the bleeding Christ and said, “I never go to church.”
“Of course not,” Baba understood. “You don’t think about such things.”
“No,” agreed Alex. “But now,” speaking the next words aloud was almost too much of an admission, “I’m… out of balance.”
Baba turned on Alex and eyed him seriously. “Sit down.”
But standing this close to the edge, Alex suddenly felt like a fool and he was ready to go. “Look…”
“I have bad news. Sit.” Baba’s intensity stopped him. Wary, Alex sat in a chair by the altar. Baba was solemn. “There is a curse on you.”
The altar, the smoke and candles, the old man’s earnest eyes and terrible words worked fear into Alex. He almost sounded like a child when he said, “A curse?”
Baba squinted at him again. “I can see it like a spike in your neck.” That hit Alex like a slap. Inside his head, the grating sound of cast iron pans smashing together jarred through his nerves. His shoulder jumped in a tiny, painful tick. Automatically, his hand reached for the sore spot deep in his muscle. Baba nodded, “Right.”
“Why?” And the question was not a woeful, “why me,” but a confused, “who would bother?” Alex voiced his objection. “I’m just… nobody.”
“Maybe. Maybe you are not.” Baba assessed Alex’s tired eyes. “How do you sleep with that pain in you?”
“Sleep? I barely remember it.”
“No sleep, no balance.”
Alex fixed Baba with a questing look. “The pain. It came before the money problems.”
Baba knew already. “Before the wife problems. The temper.”
Alex was struck again. He tried to hide it to maintain some distance, but his voice cracked when he said, “Yes.”
“It’s been a bad year.” Baba was not sympathetic, just observing.
So, Alex reported, “Very.”
Baba leaned in close and Alex could smell the fennel, parsley and thyme on his breath. “It isn’t over.”
Alex felt his temper mount. Not over? He surprised Baba by breaking the tie and accepting his fate. “Great. Okay. I’m gonna go now.” Alex rose and headed for the door.
Baba threw a new line out. “This is not your neighborhood.”
Alex stopped. “No it isn’t.”
“You drove a long way to get here.”
“I get it. It’s a metaphor.”
Baba conceded, “Yes and no. You are worried that everything I’ve told you is too spiritual, too fantastic. Too hippy dippy.”
“Well, yeah.”
Baba assessed the man before him, choosing his next sally with tactical care. “Years ago, two scientists with a giant antenna heard a hiss that should not be there. They repaired their equipment, checked their settings. They even chased all the pigeons off the tower.”
“So, this is the metaphor?”
Baba wouldn’t let Alex slow the progress of the story. “The hiss wouldn’t go away. It came from all directions. If they were detecting something real, what was it?” He paused just long enough for Alex to wonder. “It was the ripples at the very edge of the pond. A stone thrown in the middle made waves that dissipated, but did not disappear. The blast of the Big Bang created a shockwave that propelled the universe into existence. Over eons, the shockwave reverberated smaller and smaller, but it did not go away. It didn’t even become invisible. It became the hiss and static you hear and see when your TV is tuned to no station at all.”
Again, Alex was struck by Baba hitting so close. This time it wasn’t a hard slap, but a slow, icy tingling that spread from the smallest part of his brain to the tips of his fingers and made his face feel hot. “My TV?”
“It’s all how you look at things. It doesn’t matter if you call it spiritual or call it God or call it science. It’s the universe.” Alex was frozen, motionless with wonder but looking back he’d tell you he had nodded knowingly. “You watch it like a camper watches a camp fire. And the universe speaks to you.”
Alex didn’t mean to whisper. “What does it say?”
Baba knew he had Alex now. He drew him in further by saying, “You can lift this curse.”
Acrid magic leaked out of Baba like cigarette smoke. Alex tried to ignore it. It was too strong. Defeated, Alex sighed and asked, “How?”
Gently, Baba prodded, “Who has done this to you?”
Alex was perplexed. “It’s not… the gods?”
“No,” answered Baba, in the tone of someone teasing out “now you’re warm, now you’re cold” clues.
“You know, but you won’t tell me?”
Baba rushed to his own defense. “No, no. That’s not what I said. I will help you find out. But are you ready?”
Impatient and desperate, Alex blurted, “Just tell me.”
“I can’t,” Baba apologized. “You have to sacrifice.”
Alex’s frustration mounted. “I told you. I don’t have anything.”
“You have a strong back,” Baba corrected. “You have arms and hands. You have a tradesman’s wit.”
“A what?”
“You are a workingman.”
“You’re damn right,” Alex bristled.
Baba smiled again. “Work for me.”
Author Bio:
Justin is an author, screenwriter, horseman and artist with a passion for storytelling across multiple genres and media. He lives in a 100 year old haunted house in South LA and is slowly fixing it up (but not exorcising it) with his wife and their dog.
Justin has written such films as Ghost of New Orleans (starring Terrence Howard, Lake Bell and Josh Lucas) and Tempting Fate (starring Tate Donovan and Ming-Na Wen). He wrote, produced, directed and starred in the award-winning independent horror feature, #1915House. Development deals include Touchstone Pictures and MGM. His debut novel, exploring the mean streets of LA’s skid row, Seven o’Clock Man, launched to five-star reviews. His second novel, an illustrated urban fantasy, Wrong Side of a Workingman is out now.
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