I spent the last several days thinking about how I wanted to introduce my new novel to you. If you read my last newsletter, you know about the creative fire (as well as the imposter syndrome) I brought home from a summer writing conference. Then life happened, and I spent a good deal of my winter recovering from Christmas travel woes and getting my act together.
Then one morning, I looked up and it was Spring. But it wasn’t until a few days after the Spring Equinox that I actually felt ready for it—ready to stoke that creative fire. So I started working on Crimson Fox.
And just the other day, a quote I heard on the streaming show “Tiny Beautiful Things” perfectly summed up the spirit in which I wanted to release the first chapter of this novel. Now, I’ve not read the book yet, which is unusual for me (and I definitely want to read it now, having binge-watched the first season of the series). But it hit me like a ton of bricks, and in a good way. I had no idea that it wielded such powerful themes on the mother-daughter relationship (which inspired me on another project I’m working on), and I had no idea that it was about a writer.
When the protagonist Clare says “ . . . I am an accomplished writer, even though I haven’t accomplished it yet,” it resonated completely with me and where I’m at with my writing life right now, having accomplished some, but not nearly all that I aspired to yet as a writer.
And like Clare when she embraces and finds success in an unlikely writing opportunity, I begin to share Crimson Fox with you, one chapter at a time, in my own creative space.
I’m bursting with excitement for this first post, for the words I’ve written so far, and to share the rest of the book with you. So, sit back, relax, and enjoy!
Synopsis:
Gloria Carlisle filled every article she wrote for Anthem magazine with her penchant for classic rock and her passion for storytelling. When her editor assigns her an interview with the lead singer of the country’s number one rock band, it’s Gloria’s chance to establish herself as a Black female writer in a white man’s world of rock journalism.
When the singer cancels the interview and refuses to reschedule it, Gloria must return to L.A. to face her editor with no story.
After hours on the road, Gloria finds herself at the Silver Cactus, a small bar and grill in the middle of the desert, owned by the former bass guitarist of the all-female rock band Crimson Fox. That pitstop leads to a journey across the country and back to the desert in search of the story that was never told—the story Gloria was meant to write, and the one that will show her who she was always meant to be.
Crimson Fox by Anne Eston
Prologue - Lola, Summer 1969
The inky heliotrope haze of smoke and mood lighting draped the patrons of Brenda’s Place in its mysterious gauze. Some bounced and gyrated in time to the music, while others clung to each other, their faces buried in each other’s necks, swaying to a tune only they could hear. Others shot pool or held court in small clusters in darkened booths, by turns laughing uproariously and issuing mock threats. Still others sat at the bar either hoping for propositions or ignoring them.
Lola faced the room with her elbows propped on the bar behind her, observer of all, part of none. She’d been nursing the same bottle of beer for over an hour. It was only half full, and now warm. Still, she wouldn’t let it go, just like she hadn’t been able to let go of this place. Not after she’d finally found the band she’d been looking for; not after they’d heard their first single on the radio; not even now, when they’d just recorded their second single, and would be playing at Woodstock in a few short weeks. Brenda always said that when she got her wings, she’d fly away and never look back. Lola had thought that too, but she wasn’t ready to do that no matter how good things got for Crimson Fox.
Brenda’s had been her home since she came to L.A. She’d crossed the border with her loco uncle and a handful of cousins after her parents died in an accident. Lola knew within a week that she couldn’t depend on any of them to help her, much less take care of her. She was fifteen, and she struck out on her own.
For two weeks, Lola feigned sleep when her uncle and cousins stumbled into the cheap motel room her uncle had rented for them. Her uncle raged about having to take care of her, and refused to give her any of the money he and her cousins had earned that day.
“Why don’t you clean yourself up, put on a dress or something. Open your legs, chica—earn your own way like the rest of us,” he had said to her one day shortly after they had arrived in Los Angeles. Never mind that he wouldn’t give her any money to buy a dress, even if she’d wanted to wear one. Her cousins shrugged and averted their eyes. Only Marco slipped her a little of the money their uncle let the boys keep to feed and clothe themselves, and get a beer once in a while.
During the day, Lola would buy a small meal for herself, and wander the streets looking for a way out from under her uncle. She learned the neighborhood by talking to other immigrants. She saved some of the money Marco gave her for a new pair of jeans, some underwear and a couple of tee shirts. Once or twice she took a bus, but she never moved in the same direction that her uncle and cousins went to look for day work, and she always came back to the neighborhood they stayed in.
She had no desire to drink, but one place several blocks away from the motel fascinated her—a bar called Brenda’s Place. It never opened until four in the afternoon, and one day when she peeked in, the place was mostly empty. Still, she caught a certain simpatico vibe from the place that eased her mind. But she was too young to hang out in the joint, even if she did want to drink. But she might be able to work there.
Lola came back wearing a new tee shirt and acting tough. She walked up to the bar and did her best to ignore the pounding in her chest.
“Gimme a Coke,” she said with a nod to the bartender.
The bartender, a woman that looked like too many people had pissed her off already that day, pulled the soda from a tap and set the glass down none too easily. She had short, blond hair, and both her grey tee shirt and her black jeans were too tight. She wore a silver rope bracelet on one wrist, and a sprinkling of heavy silver rings on both hands, including a dragon head and a skull.
The woman moved off down the bar to polish some glasses. Lola took a sip and pulled out a dollar bill. She laid it on the bar, and after a moment, the woman walked back. When she put her hand on the bill, Lola slapped her hand on the end of it.
“Keep the change, but . . . I’d rather just work for it.”
“Shit,” muttered the woman. She flicked the dollar bill back toward Lola. “Just drink the soda, kid and take off before the rest of the crowd starts comin’ in. If I get thrown in jail for serving a minor, there won’t be nobody to tend this bar.” She went back to polishing the glasses. Lola clawed a handful of stale peanuts from the nearby dish and downed the soda. She slammed the glass back down on the bar, and walked out—she left the dollar bill.
Lola came back every day until Brenda gave her a job doing odd chores around the bar, and a cot in the storage room to sleep on or run to whenever trouble came. When customers came in who didn’t look like they belonged there, Brenda would send Lola to the back and tell her not to come out until she gave her the all-clear. Once when Lola asked Brenda who these customers really were, Brenda had been vague.
“Could be immigration. Or just people who don’t like me and my place,” she had said.
It was still months before Lola truly felt safe. She no longer feared that her uncle and cousins would look for her. She could trust that Brenda wouldn’t turn her in to the authorities for being under age, or to have her deported.
“What, let my best worker get captured and taken away?” Brenda told her. “Not on your life.” But she knew it wasn’t about Brenda needing Lola to work for her. One night, the cops showed up, and Brenda had gone pale. She snapped her finger at Lola as soon as they walked in, which was the signal to disappear.
From her cot in the storeroom, Lola could hear a ruckus. She’d started to turn on her little transistor radio while she lay there and waited for Brenda to tell her it was okay for her to come out. But the look on Brenda’s face had spooked her, so she listened intently.
There were some sharp voices and sounds of breaking glass. When Lola heard a woman scream, she almost bolted out there to help Brenda take care of business. Instead, she stopped at the door with her hand gripping the doorknob. She had to trust Brenda and do what the woman told her the same way she would have obeyed her mother had she been here.
Within twenty minutes that felt more like hours, Lola heard footsteps in the hallway, and backed away from the door. She mapped out a frantic plan of how she would respond if the cops found her back here. But when the door opened, it was Brenda. Her mouth was set in a hard line. She wasn’t crying, but her eyes looked wet.
In an instant, Brenda stepped over to Lola, and wrapped her arms around her. The hug was brief, and hard. It was then Lola knew that Brenda loved her like the child she never had.
“Come on out,” she said to Lola. “I need you to help me clean up.”
The lights were turned up in the main room. It was eerily quiet except for the murmurs of the customers in the booths. A few of them were crying. One of the tables and several of the chairs were turned over. Broken glass was all over the floor. The dance floor was empty.
Brenda was working the room with mugs and a pot of coffee. She spoke softly to the customers that remained. The large utility broom rested against the bar, waiting for Lola to take it in hand and begin sweeping up as Brenda had asked her. But Lola rushed to the door and cracked it to look out. Her stomach roiled as she watched all the women who had been on the dance floor, now in handcuffs, being loaded into the back of a black police van.
Watching those women get carted away sent a jolt of fear through her that if the cops saw her looking out at them, they might arrest her too. But the scene also galvanized her. Lola was beginning to understand the vibe she’d resonated with all those months ago. She was beginning to understand who she was.
And it was in Brenda’s that Lola first tasted love. She’d been all of seventeen when Carly sauntered up to the bar, badass and sexy as hell. She wore a black leather vest with no shirt underneath, black jeans, and black boots with spurs. A silver chain hung from her neck, with a single shark’s tooth that dangled above her cleavage. She wore her jet black hair in a ponytail at the base of her neck.
Lola had looked up, dumbfounded, as Carly approached the bar. As the scent of mint and oranges reached Lola’s nose, Carly sucked in her teeth and set her empty beer mug down hard on the bar.
“I’ll have another, chiquitita,” she said as he ran her tongue over her teeth.
Before Lola could find her voice to respond, Brenda appeared and snatched up Carly’s mug.
“Don’t even think about it, sis. She’s way too young for you,” Brenda said as she pulled at the tap to refill the mug. “Hell, she doesn’t even know what she wants yet.”
“Oh, she knows alright,” grinned Carly. “I can see her heart pounding in her chest from here. Pretty little thing. Chicana, aren’t you?”
“Back off, Carly. Plenty of other prospects for you in here tonight.”
When Brenda took that tone, she meant business. Carly picked up her beer and walked away from the bar. But not before she winked at Lola.
Lola’s heart had been pounding. She’d looked down at the bare skin on her chest that neither her overalls nor the bra she wore beneath them covered. Going shirtless had been a riskier choice and when Brenda had looked at Lola that morning, they both knew Lola was pushing her boundaries. She may have been too young, but Carly was right. She knew what she wanted, and Brenda probably knew it too.
Brenda’s warning didn’t stop Lola from following Carly down the hall a couple of hours later; it didn’t stop Carly from pinning Lola to the wall when she came out of the bathroom and giving Lola what she wanted. Within a week, Lola brought Carly to her cot in the storeroom. Within a month, Carly ditched her for an older, more experienced woman.
Such was life. Lola grinned at the memory and took another pull on her warm bottle of beer. How naïve she had been. How little of real life she’d understood back then.
Not that she understood it now, but she had someone waiting for her, just a day’s (or in this case, a night’s) drive away, in a cozy little adobe house at the foot of a mountain range. This love was the purest, most real thing Lola had ever felt.
She looked at her watch. If she left soon, she might make it back to her love by sunrise.
Lola sighed. Brenda’s was no longer home. It would always be in her heart. But something tingled along her spine, the feeling that with all of this change for the band, when Lola left tonight, she wouldn’t be back again.
She frowned at the possibility. She would never do that to Brenda, just disappear one day and not come back. Lola dismissed the idea, but the tingling remained. Something was off about tonight. She didn’t want to think about it anymore. She’d just grab her guitar and go.
Except her guitar wasn’t here. Neither of them was. The one she recorded with was in the cab of her pickup. Her favorite one was 800 miles away, and waiting for her to come home.
In the next instant, Lola felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned, and Brenda locked eyes with her. Brenda looked so much older lately. So tired. But she had the same look in her eyes that she did the night of the police raid.
“There’s a call for you. Take it in my office.”
Lola sat her bottle on the bar and strode toward Brenda’s office at the end of the hall. She’d known something was wrong even before she’d turned to see Brenda’s face. There were only a handful of people who knew that they could find her here. Almost all of them were in the band.
The faces in the hallway became blurred, and the sounds rippled as if she moved along the ocean floor. Lola collided with other bodies and didn’t care if she was to harsh in pushing them aside.
Too slowly, she found her way to the end of the hallway. Her hand twisted the knob on the office door, and Lola left it ajar after she pushed it open. She stumbled to the desk, reached for the receiver that lay next to the phone, and pressed it to her ear.
“Hello?” said Lola, barely breathing.
“Lola!” A sob that belonged to one, not the other, of the voices Lola had imagined it might be. But both were sacred. Lola would have cut her own heart out not to hear either of them in that much pain.
“Jax . . .”
“He hurt you?!”
“The baby . . .”
“I’m coming, honey . . . I’m coming.”
Lola dropped the phone and left by the door to the back alley, the voice of her only other real love echoing in her mind. Another one that broke her heart. Now there was a baby, goddamnit. Something she’d never be able to give anyone she loved. But to this one Lola could give a piece of her heart again. She could go to her now.
And so, she went.
***
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