Excerpt from Nuff Sed: A Novel of Desert Steve (coming this fall)

The novel is now in its fifth draft (with my editors/readers. Stay tuned for the publication date, which I am hoping will be sometime September.

It is often said that writers begin their books too early: the first chapter should not be the first chapter. Usually this is became the author wants to set up the story with some background. But it is almost always better to jump right into the action. If there is crucial background material, an author should find a way to weave it in later.

This has been true in my novels. All five (including the current work-in-progress) ended up with a different chapter 1 than in earlier drafts. Usually, the remedy was just to delete the first chapter (or more) and begin with a later chapter. For Nuff Sed, I kept the original chapter 1, but place it later in the book. It was a good chapter, I think, but not where the novel needed to begin.

Even though this is an historical fiction novel, which means it is chronological, I felt that the readers first experience should begin with an action that hinted at the themes of perseverance, boldness, quirkiness, and obstacles/suffering. It now begins with the scene that became the reason why Steve Ragsdale became “Desert Steve,” and why he part of the history of the American West in the 1900s. It also had the advantage that the beginning words of the novel are the same as its title.

Here is the first scene of the novel, Nuff Sed: A Novel of Desert Steve.

July 15, 1921
Blythe, California

“‘Nuff sed.”

“Excuse me?” The tax collector seemed confused and not a little irritated.

“What’s so difficult to understand, Mr. Jessup? I can’t pay my farm tax. Acts of God and the Devil have conspired to make it impossible. Acts of God? Bad growing season and the Spanish flu pandemic. Satan? That’s the government’s Great War causing low cotton prices. I need an extension.”

“I find it troublesome that you equate the government with the Devil, Mr. Ragsdale. These are difficult times for everyone.” Jessup took off his eyeglasses and laid them atop the open file on his desk. “Even in the best of times, we rarely offer more than two extensions. You’ve had two.”

“Don’t think you understand basic economics. If I pay you now, I can’t buy seeds and supplies for this year. I’ll have no crop to sell, and you will get nothing. Or, I can give you twenty-five percent now. That enables me to buy supplies, plant a crop, and pay the rest after harvest plus what is due for that year. 

“I cannot give you another extension.”

“You’d rather have nothing forever than twenty-five percent now and the rest later?”

Mr. Jessup looked out the window. A minute stretched out. He sighed. “I might be able to take half now and half in a month, but I will have to check with my superior.”

Steve recalled that Lydia had asked him not to lose his temper. He took a breath. “Blood from a turnip, Mr. Jessup.”

Jessup shook his head. “I’ve made my offer.”

He held his tongue again. We elect these incompetents and pay their salaries, and in return, they charge us for living on our own land. “Do you know what a farmer is, Mr. Jessup?”

“Of course I—”

“A farmer is a human being who gets farmed to death by politicians.” 

“Mr. Ragsdale—“

“I have a wife and four children. You’re offering me a Hobson’s Choice: pay now and have no money to plant a crop. We starve. I don’t pay you, you take my farm. We starve. That ‘bout right?”

Jessup sighed. “I am not going to debate with you.” He held Steve’s gaze. 

Steve nodded. “Guess it’s good to be a fat-ass on the government teat rather than a cotton farmer in your jurisdiction.”

“Now, Mr. Ragsdale, there is no call for vulgarity. We are done. Good day.”

Steve nodded and pulled out a sheet of papers. “One last thing, then. May I borrow your pen?”

Jessup, frowning, slid a pen and inkwell across the desk. Steve dipped the tip in the ink, signed the document, and slid it back.

Jessup looked at it and frowned. “What’s this?”

Steve stood up. “You now own a cotton farm in the Palo Verde Valley. In four weeks, when we have vacated our belongings, it’s all yours.”

Jessup opened his mouth and then closed it. 

Finally got him to shut up, Steve said to himself. “Enjoy, but beware. The government bureaucrats are the Devil’s ass.” He turned to leave. 

“Gonna go change the world, Mr. Jessup. Or at least the part of it between here and Indio.”

“That’s 100 miles of empty desert!”

“Quite true.” He tipped his hat. “Farewell. I have to see an old prospector about his well.”