It All Started With Mioko
Well that's not exactly true, it started with Rube, but we'll get to that.
When I moved to New York a dozen years ago, my first solo apartment was on the top floor of a Lower east side tenement at the corner of Ludlow and Stanton. I loved the place despite the fact that it was a 1.5 room hole. I didn't yet know that one of the previous tenants had disappeared from the apartment under mysterious circumstances and that the the building had been taken over by an umbrella organization after the landlord had been put in prison, on murder charges.
No, I was too busy living the freewheeling life of a bachelor in my 20s to worry about the place's nefarious past. I'd just read @neilstrauses The Game, (thanks for changing my life back then Neil & for introducing me to Steemit years later!) and I couldn't keep my pants on long enough to climb down the five story walk up for takeout unless there was a girl involved.
And then one night (4/10/08 to be precise) I got hungry enough to take the stairs and what I found taped to the glass of the tenement's front door changed everything.
My synapsis started firing ten trillion a minute* and the kernel of a character was born... well two, but as I said, one thing at a time.
(*there are about 100 billion neurons in the brain, and around 100 trillion synapses. At any one time, only about 10% of the neurons are actually "firing"--much more and you're having an epileptic seizure).
And without further ado, here she is...
MIOKO
A fixture in the tenement, a photographer and recovered heroin addict. With two rent stabilized apartments in the building, Mioko is the principal target of her landlord, Axelrod's aggressive actions.
Alone on a subway car, Mioko ached from the endless pile of returns and emotional abuse. Was it only Tuesday? A deep hankering for an old pharmacological pal hit her, but she did her best to breathe through. Reaching into her bag, she retrieved a miniature bacon chocolate bar saved from the client-only craft table. She popped the paper top, but was distracted by a rush of air and sound. An MTA conductor pushed through the door connecting her car to the next.
She did her best not to look up at the conductor as he approached. She didn't want to put a face to it.
As he moved down the length of the car, she could feel it coming. He was veering in close to her, and as the pant leg of his uniform accidentally brushed the bare skin of her knee, Mioko's back straightened with a little jerk. Her face filled with a flush of exhilaration.
Stay tuned for our next character, Mioko's stalker Rube... and for the first chapter of Dwelling, soon to follow.
Thanks so much for reading & Steem on!
Doug
SPECIAL THANKS to my wife @zenmommas for years of support during the writing process, @ericvancewalton for his trailblazing, inspired collaboration and incredible guidance, @andrarchy for his mind blowing insight, friendship, @bakerchristopher for being an inspiration as a human artist and bro, @complexring for his brilliance and enthusiasm, Masie Cochran, Taylor Rankin and @elenamoore for their skillful help in editing the manuscript and to Elena Megalos for the fantastic illustrations she created exclusively for the novel's launch on Steemit. I’d also like to thank Eddie Boyce, Jamie Proctor, Katie Mustard, Alan Cumming, Danai Gurira, Stephan Nowecki, Ron Simons, Dave Scott, Alden Karr, Missy Chimovitz, my dad Andy Karr and late mother Wendy , and everyone else who helped lead me to this moment.
I am a Brooklyn based writer, film & commercial director, and crypto-enthusiast, my projects include @HardFork-series an upcoming narrative crypto-noir and my novel Dwelling will soon be premiering exclusively on Steemit, and you can check out more of my work at dougkarr.com, piefacepictures.com, and www.imdb.com/name/nm1512347
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