AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Lies.”
“Pardon?”
“It’s a lie. No one sends me fan mail or letters of any kind.” Dani pulled her hoodie strings, hiding her face. “Keep reading.”
I can hear you asking, "Chaos, why the devil would anyone want to do that? The idea blows the steam out of my chimney.” But, why not?
Trains are all about imagination.
You don’t have to understand. You don’t need a big brain, because you have me, the Conductor of Chaos, to do the thinking for you.
In today’s post, I’ll be giving you all the deets on my Southern Pacific GS-4 Daylight 4-8-4 (Sunny)’s transformation into Gordon from Thomas the Tank Engine.
Put on your conductor hats!
The first thing to know about Sunny is that she's a powerhouse. She’s red and orange with silver accents, and she's as majestic as model trains come. Her 4-8-4 configuration makes her the most worthy of any HO scaled model on the market to represent Gordon, the top engine on the Island of Sodor.
Making this happen took more than slapping on a layer of paint and a 3D-printed face and calling it a day. No, it was a process that required time, patience, and a healthy dose of chaos. Ready to break it down step-by-step?
Lucky for me,due to all the pictures, that was the end of the first page.
“So?” Dani asked, one eye peeking from the squished hole in her hoodie. “What do you think?”
Oh I had thoughts. Buzzing, snarky thoughts. I settled on, “Like I told you before, I don’t know anything about trains.”
“You don’t have to know trains to know writing. How is it as a blog piece?”
“There are some tense issues,” I said. “You’re writing after you’ve already changed the train’s name and?—”
“Name. Shape. Paint. Form. Personality.”
“Okay…after the entire transformation,” I said. “But you talk about Sunny in the present as if the train’s name is still Sunny.Isinstead ofwas.”
“Fair.”
“Also,” I said, getting on a roll, “Don’t insult your reader.”
“Insult? No one takes offense to being called a trainiac unless they’re a maniac.” Dani snorted.
“I was talking about…” I pointed to the section in question. “Needing to do the thinking for them. It implies the reader isn’t capable.”
“Oh.” Her voice fell.
“In good news, the train words probably play well with your audience, like when you usedderail.And as I said, I’m not your target audience.”
“Harsh but fair.” She nodded. “Thank you, stranger. We will exchange no more words.”
She took her things and went to one of the tables. A small part of me wanted to say something else to encourage her, but she seemed perfectly fine and I didn’t want to get trapped into reading or discussing more, so I kept my mouth shut.
Eventually Dani left, and the hours ticked by until my shift ended at five a.m. Exhausted, I was ready to crash. I handed off the keys to Edwardo and gathered up stale baked goods for the weekly donation.
My eyelids were nearly as heavy as the overstuffed load in my arms. I’d been working the night shift at Eterni-Tea for over two months, and my body still hadn’t completely adjusted to the backwards schedule. Every night around two or three a.m. I was struck with a mild case of sleepy delirium.
The winter air would perk me up. If it didn’t, I’d probably wake up face first on the sidewalk somewhere, with pigeons making a nest out of my hair. The squirrels would come and then all the city’s forest creatures would feast on the asphalt-textured bran muffins no human would purposefully consume.
Actually, that didn’t sound all that bad.
I mean, what harm would it do if I lay down right outside the building and took a nap? Just a quick one for a boost of energy that would carry me home? Feeding the wildlife would be a service to the people who would otherwise chip a tooth on those muffins. Taking a sidewalk nap would make me a hero.
