Lentbook

Today is the beginning of the Lenten Season, lasting 47 days until Easter.  Christians are asked to give up something for Lent or take something new on.  It is a time of reflection and redemption, so it makes sense to voluntarily surrender a vice or a pleasure.  For me, I'm giving up Facebook.

That's right, I will only be on Facebook on Sundays (which are always a celebration of Christ's resurrection, and as such are not considered part of Lent).  Even then, I will only be on long enough to keep my notifications under control.  I have found myself spending too much time on Facebook and not enough writing or doing other things I need to do.  Who knows, maybe this will become a thing and Facebook will disappear from my life.

Yeah, right.

In other news, I am almost done editing chapter 32 (of 35).  Then I will start revisions based on what my critiquing group has mentioned and send the draft out to a select few individuals to proof-read for me.  I fully expect to edit more, but my goal is to start sending this thing off to agents and publishers by summer.  It's been a long struggle, so I am looking forward to seeing it end and starting a new chapter in my life.  One may be Chicken Soup for the Soul, which seems to have an eternal "looking for writers" thing going on.  I also have a sequel I want to write as well as a personal story I feel very compelled to put down on paper.

So, without further ado, I'm off to finish Chapter 32 and start on Chapter 33.

Sleep

11,440 hours.  That's well over a year of time I have lived.  Truly lived.

I try not to think about it.  After all, who thinks about how many hours they spend asleep, or on the toilet, or driving to work?  No one wants to know how much time is passing by.

Sure, I've been around for some 25 years, but really I was asleep for most of it.  Almost all of it.  I am not the smartest guy.  I'm stuck in a chair.  And Lord knows I don't have much in the looks department.  It wasn't until I went online that I finally woke up.  Got what I deserved.  Became me.

A body.  No, not just a body.  I have a body.  A good body, a good-looking body.  Damn, make it a sexy one.  Muscles, the kind that you could only get with 11,440 hours of working out.  Hair, money, friends, a relationship, even sex.  It's all there, all online, all in this community, this other life.  My avatar is not just a representation of myself – it is an extension of myself.  It is what I should look like if I wasn't bound to this damn chair.

No, this other life is my life.  My chair, my overbite, my greasy hair, the 4 hours a day I spend coding for some company I've never been to… this is what is not real.  This is fake.  I don't have control over it, just like a dream.  I only work because I need to, just like sleep.  When I'm awake, I can do whatever I want.  I'm better than you.  I'm popular and funny and sexy and everything I'm not when I'm asleep.  Hell, who needs sleep?

11,500 hours.  I can ignore the hunger.  After a while, it goes away.  My chair is covered in urine, but I don't care.  It's not real, anyway.  What's real is the woman standing in front of me, her avatar dressed in sexy lingerie.  She's beckoning to me.  I go to her, ready to-

Everything goes dark.  The lights, the computer, the oscillating fan – all of it stops.  There is nothing left but this death-like sleep and the smell of urine.

Novel Update

So for the past several months, I have been busy editing my novel.  To keep myself on top of it, somewhat, I have been reading two chapters at a time for my critiquing group.  Sadly, this is taking more time than I wish to take.  My goal is to submit the novel to agents and publishers by the end of the year.  To be more precise, I want it published by the end of the year, if at all possible. Considering I am only 1/3 of the way through the novel with my group, I am going to need to find other people to critique.

Of course, I have been editing well ahead of the group.  They are at Chapter 14.  I am currently on Chapter 31 out of 35 (plus epilogue).  It has been hard.  There are a few intense scenes (which really take it out of me), I added several chapters, and I have been struggling with tying up loose ends.  And on top of this, there is the problem of word count.

The conventional wisdom is that a novel starts at somewhere between 50,000 and 55,000 words.  When I was first writing this book, I was worried about whether or not I would hit that goal.  Now I'm worried I have too many words.

I've been dong my research, trying to maximize my chances of actually getting picked up.  I want to know what I am getting myself into.  I have read that 90,000 words is about the limit as far as a new author is concerned.  Any longer, and the publisher would have second thoughts about taking on the novel.  In essence, they do not think people would be willing to pick up a book that long by an unknown author.  Now, I do not know how accurate this statement is, but it does make a certain amount of sense.  I was told that if my novel is longer than 90k, I should consider splitting it into two books, maybe even three.

So here is my dilemma.  I have a definite break in my book, where the main characters go from Earth into the Afterlife.  There are a few scenes people have talked about wanting in the first third.  I don't know what to do.  Should I take this advice and split my novel into two parts, or ignore it and keep it as one?  I have been planning on a sequel, but that sequel isn't plotted out yet.

What do you all think?

Writing with ADHD

Some of you may be aware that I have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).  This is something I have lived with my entire life, and it has had some major impacts on me and the way I work and think.

I will not go into detail about the potential causes of ADHD, the claim some people make that it is not real, or the medication I used to go on.  But perhaps I should give a brief rundown of what it is like and what I have had to go through.

When we were very young, my brother and I (yes, he is also ADHD.  Twins.) would wrestle together while the TV was on, only stopping long enough to watch the commercial break.  We were put on medication which we hated and which tasted awful.  It made me feel... strange.  Despondent.  Shy.  We always had trouble making friends for a variety of reasons, and this certainly didn't help.  We moved when I was 6. Then we changed schools between 1st and 2nd grade, when we moved again.  We were homeschooled in 3rd grade.  We stayed at one school for 5th and 6th grades, then were enrolled in a private Catholic school.  Because neither of us were raised Catholic, we were often seen as outsiders and it was hard to get to know people.  Thankfully, we were at this school from 6th grade through 12th, giving us the first real opportunity to make friends.  The friends we did make were odd and nerdy, like us.  We called ourselves "The Outcasts."  There were 5 of us.

Throughout school, we were medicated, twice a day.  When the medication wore off, we found it difficult or impossible to stay still, to focus, to do homework.  When it was working, we found it difficult to open up to others, to really be ourselves.  And we were naive.  It tended to wear off at the end of school, so that we would often make fools of ourselves and not really care because we simply had too much energy and too few inhibitions.

Inhibitions.  One of the hallmarks of a true ADHD kid is that they have great difficulty controlling impulses.  Procrastination is chief among them.  This is not to say we would ever become a hoodlum, but it would make it harder to control one's own emotions.  As one doctor told me, we all are born with filters.  These filters let in only the pertinent bits of information, leaving everything else out.  They let out only the things we should do or say, keeping the other things in.  Someone with ADHD does not have these filters and must learn how to handle life without them.  If I am trying to watch a movie, I get distracted by what the people in the row over from me are doing.  Although I know I shouldn't, sometimes I spend money on something we do not need simply because I wanted it at that moment.

Yes, I am still living with ADHD.  It still makes impulses hard to control and makes it difficult to pay attention to things sometimes.  But being ADHD is not only like you are filterless.  Sometimes I have amazing filters.  If I truly get absorbed into something, my mind really does filter everything else out. I have gone without eating, lost complete track of time, and even been unaware that someone else walked into the room with me because I was focusing on something.  But in order for this to happen, I generally move.  Most people say that I vibrate.  My leg wobbles, sometimes a lot.  I chew my tongue.  I fidget in my chair.  And I am completely unaware that I am doing any of it.  The more I focus, the more I tend to move.  It is rare that I am not moving.  Perhaps this is the secret of ADHD weight-loss.

***

When I graduated high school, I stopped taking medication.  I went to college.  I began to open up.  I somehow became extroverted (most of the time) and had a ton of friends.  I had a girlfriend for the first time.  Sadly, she cheated on me and I was devastated, but I got over it.  Then, I had a big test and wanted to really focus for it, so I began to take my medication again.  The result was not good.
I was no longer a naive kid, but had gathered real life experiences.  And when I took that pill, I realized very quickly that the feeling I had always felt when I was medicated was depression.  A deep depression.  It was stronger than before, because now my mind could focus on how I was cheated on.  I had been living most of my life in a depression.
Needless to say, I stopped taking the pills.  I experimented with others for a while, but they all had negative side effects (such as losing 15 pounds of muscle in a week).  So I decided I needed to learn how to LIVE with my ADHD instead of fighting against it.  I've been learning ever since.

I've learned that sometimes I really do need to simply vibrate.  I've learned that at times I need absolute silence, but most of the time I need noise in order to concentrate.  When I write, I often put on music, anything from heavy metal to classical, progressive rock to electronica.  The only music I never put on is something catchy (sorry They Might Be Giants).  The only way I can explain this is that the music acts as my filter - it takes up those parts of my mind that are apt to wander and keeps them focused on something that does not distract the rest of me.
Sometimes, I need to go to a public place to work.  I tend to prefer restaurants - not ones that are too busy or with live music or interesting stuff on the TV.  I used to go to a coffee and ice cream shop.  Now I go to a sports bar that is pretty quiet on Tuesdays (and sports hold no interest for me).  I am hoping that I will be able to change my venue in the coming days when a new restaurant opens in the area.  However, other times I need to be at home.  Perhaps it is my capricious nature, or perhaps I simply need a change of scenery from time to time.
When I am researching, it becomes hard to keep the research on topic.  When I am going about my "dailies" (the websites I frequent on a daily basis), I tend to put things off (like responding to an email, paying the bills, etc).  And sometimes I need to be reminded that it is time to leave or to get lunch ready.  I am not just a writer with ADHD, I'm a stay-at-home father with ADHD, too.

Living with ADHD has other consequences.  No matter how much people tell me they love my writing, I always get nervous when someone else reads it.  I always think my writing sucks.  I have a hard time filtering out my own inner critic.  It is something I need to learn to deal with.  I do not know if this is related to being ADHD (or if it is simply the nature of adulthood), but I have always felt like a child, albeit a child with arthritis.  I do not think I look or act like an adult, and sometimes I wonder how other adults do it.  That being said, I find it easy to understand what kids are going through, to empathize with them and play with them.  I still have many vivid memories of my childhood, dating back to when I was 2 or 3, so I remember what it was like as a toddler to get a reward or be yelled at or play a game with other kids.  I remember the first time someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up (and in typical ADHD fashion, I wanted to be everything).  I remember writing a poem in kindergarten called "The Windbow" and being devastated when it somehow did not win first prize in a contest, despite it being from a 5-year-older.  So, in some ways I am blessed, and I have embraced this connection to my inner child.  It is part of what defines me.

I do not know what it is like for other people with ADHD (well, perhaps my brother).  I have met many, and have heard many stories that are the same, and many that are different.  But this is what it is like for me.  I am ADHD and I will not let that get in the way of my hopes and dreams.  I will instead learn to work with it.

Resurrectionist

A new year, a new post.  I do apologize for my lack of posting in the past few months.  It really did take a hit on me when I found out one of my stories had been stolen and disseminated without my permission.

Sadly, nothing was done about it.  The person who alerted me to it found it on a website that is, shall we say, not for the kiddies.  The website, however, seems to have a very poor infrastructure, as there is no way to really search it.  Not even the admins can search it.  I spent as much time as I dared on it trying to discover the thief's identity, but so many stories get posted on that site that it was buried under hundreds of pages before I had a chance to even start looking.  Plus, that website was certainly not my cup of tea.

So I will simply have to live with the fact that someone stole my story and that more of my writing is likely to be stolen as well.  I normally would not be gung-ho for attention, but as an aspiring author, its part of the job description.  We writers need to market and advertise ourselves.  I'm not in the business of giving someone ELSE recognition for my own work.  But there's very little I can do about  it at this point, except to simply get over it and realize that the things I post on here WILL be stolen at some point.

That's not to say it doesn't irk me.  That's not to say I will not go after a thief.  It's to say I should expect it.  I will not be posting my best on here (not that I ever did - to be honest these flashfiction pieces have been in dire need of editing).

However, I will return to posting on here.  Short stories and updates, as per the norm, but perhaps not as many as I had been.  There's a simple reason for that - time.

So I have two updates.  The first is that I have, in my hands, a copy of the book I was published in as a contributing author.  I have given 12 short pieces to this daily meditation guide, one per month.  It is by Christian publisher Forward Movement, the Executive Director of which, Scott Gunn, I was fortunate enough to meet in person at church one day.  He read my blog and got in touch with me about writing for this book, and I was truly honored to be chosen.  I also was able to lead an adult forum at my church about my experience writing for "Meeting God Day By Day" and even got to sign a few copies.  It gives me great hope to know that people like my writing, typos and all.

Just so you know, no, I was not paid a penny for this project.  It was a contribution, a donation, and a chance to gain some small amount of recognition.

At this point, I'm not sure how much money I will ever make at writing, but anything is good at this point.  I very much would love to be a professional author, to spend all day writing, to crank out a book every year or two, and to make a decent living off of it.  But I do not need to, so I will not sacrifice quality for quantity.

The second update is that I am nearly finished with the first draft of my novel.  For those of you who don't know my system (i.e. all of you), I call the first thing I hammer out (which is more of a placeholder) my "rough draft."  I am not willing to let ANYONE see the rough draft.  Not even the President.  It is too rough, too unformed.  I am not proud of it, because it is not meant to be something I am proud of.  It is there as a starting point, to form the skeleton of the story upon which I will frame the meat in later drafts.  The "first draft" is what I am willing to let people see after I have personally gone through and edited the entire novel for myself, taking into account the things I think are broken or wrong with it, the places where I feel it needs more or less.  This I am not proud of.  I'm scared every single time my critiquing group reads it because I think they will hate it (even though they usually love it).  After it is complete (I have 5 chapters left), I will send it around to people I trust for critiquing.  The second draft will take into consideration all of those initial critiques.  Then I will search for another round of critiques.  This third draft (or more, depending on how much work people feel it needs), final draft, is the one I would be proud of enough to send off to an agent or publisher.  I want my first novel to make a good impression, to have as little editing needed as possible.  After they critique and edit, we will come up with the "final version."  Notice how this isn't a draft any longer.  That is what I hope to get published.

So to say that I am "close to being done" is not entirely accurate.  I have done the hard part - writing the novel.  I am almost done with the harder part, editing the novel.  I'm working on the even harder part, accepting critiques and editing further.  Then I will have the hardest part - finding someone to actually publish the thing.

If all goes according to plan, by the end of this year I will be a published author.

Dream a little dream

When someone first asked me if I dream in color, I thought it was a joke.

Who doesn't dream in color?

I often have vivid dreams, and I remember a good deal of them.  Perhaps some scientist has (or will) correlate this to creativity.  Perhaps not.

But in recent years, my dreams have become either entirely mundane or just plain ODD.

I did share my most recent nightmare with you all, an instance in which I was captured in a self-aware dream that led to me experiencing my first bout of sleep paralysis.

Last night, I had a similar situation.  Only this time, it was also a lucid dream.  A lucid dream is one in which you are aware that you are dreaming, and sometimes you can control the dream (or at least parts of it).  The difference is, the nightmare I experienced was definitely out of control.

This dream, however, was not as nightmarish.  I knew I wanted to get up early this morning so I could write before I had to take our daughter to school.  Usually when this happens, I wake up at various points in the night and glance at the clock, worried that I somehow set the alarm wrong or that the power went out in the night.  It inevitably leads to a very tired morning.

Last night, I woke up, but I couldn't move my body to check the time.  In fact, the need to continue sleep was so heavy on my mind that I only remained awake for a few moments before falling back to sleep.  When I did fall back asleep, I realized I was back in a dream.  I tried to get out of it again, but again I couldn't move or stay awake.  I began to search for help within my various dreams, which I started to realize I could control.  But that's not as fun as it could have been had I not been worried about the fact that I could not wake up.  I do not know how many times I glimpsed consciousness in the night.  The only movement I managed was a periodic hip wiggle.  I knew that at some point Amy would wake me up, or Addy would jump onto the bed and wake me up, or my alarm would go off and wake me up.

Amy did wake me up, but not for long.  I reached out to her in my dream state again, a la Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, asking her dream-self to somehow help me wake up.  It didn't work.  Addy jumped into bed with me, and woke up me and managed to break me from the paralysis, but I only managed roll over.  I was actually trying to roll OUT of bed.  My logic was that if I could plop on the floor, the impact would jolt my body into action.  But before I got that far, I fell asleep again.  It was my phone's alarm that woke me up completely.  Let me tell you, it is LOUD and it is ANNOYING.  More annoying, apparently than a 3-year old putting her beclawed, cold feet on your back.

When I was finally awake, I didn't want to go back to sleep for fear that I wouldn't be able to wake up again.  Hopefully, tonight will prove a little more restful.  But if not, perhaps I'll try to have more fun as a lucid dreamer.  Flying velociraptor, here I come!

Theft

Today, I was with a writing group trying to plan out a chapter.  We got to talking and I wanted to get their opinion on my latest short story, Cheat.  When the girl next to me read it, she told me that she had actually read that piece a couple days before on a website I've never heard of.

The poster may or may not have said that s/he did not write it.  But the site is not very searchable, so we were having trouble finding the piece, particularly since the site is NSFW and we were in the middle of a Barnes & Noble.  She doesn't think that they credited me with it.

Apparently, the piece did well and a lot of people "liked" it; so many, in fact, that it was featured on the site.

Now, here's where things make me angry.  I don't mind that people like the piece of a NSFW site.  That's fine.  I am glad people enjoyed it!  I am even glad the person didn't take credit for it.  But I didn't get credit for it, and I didn't give permission, and I wasn't asked.

I cannot tell you how infuriating this is.  Here I am, trying to build an audience, and a golden opportunity like that slips away under my fingertips.  It makes me realize 2 things:

1) My pieces WILL get stolen

2) I could probably get a bigger audience if I specialize more.

So now I get to figure out what my next move will be.  I could stop putting up short stories altogether, but I'm not sure how much that will help me.  I suppose I could instead simply collect them for publication.  But if I do that, I need to do something for exposure, to gain an audience.  I could find a niche and go with it.  If so, what niche?  Any ideas?

Cheat

Today's short story has some adult themes.  You have been warned.

----------------------

The soft touch of her youthfulness, the heat of passion and flesh, the tangling of limbs and lives, the anger and betrayal – these things overwhelmed all feelings of guilt.  I don't even know the woman's last name, but in all fairness, I wouldn't want to.  After all, I never knew the name of my wife's lover.

For that matter, I never knew my wife.

A lot comes with 10 years of marriage.  It seems every day we learned more about what we liked or disliked.  Just when I thought I knew her, she'd throw me for a loop with another strange obsession.  Sure, things changed.  Sex became less frequent, less adventurous.  Infatuation faded into complacency.  Routine took over.  But I never expected to see that email on her computer.

"Last night was amazing.  I can't wait to see you again.  How about this weekend?"

It wasn't fair.  I had been loyal to her since we met, and now she was off gallivanting around!  Since when did I become… boring?

I made sure to let her go that weekend.  That's when I met Joanna.  I wished I'd gone to that adult dating site earlier.

My own tryst was cut short.  I had to make it home before my wife did, not that I would have cared if she caught me coming home late, disheveled and smelling of sex.  But there were chores I wanted to do before she got home.  After all, I didn't need her anymore.

She didn't come home that night.  By the next morning, elation turned to jealousy.  By the afternoon, anger.  The following morning, fear.

They found her body 2 weeks later, stuffed into a plastic trash bag. 

Dark

Keep my brothers in the dark, I do.  It is my job.  Yes it is.  We brownies do not like the light.  We fear the light.  The light hurts us.  It blinds us.  It exposes us.  Every night we come out.  Every night we fix.  We fix everything, we do.  The gates above rejected us, yes, yes.  They told us we were unfit.  Unfit!  The gates below did not want us.  No!  I remember!  We were too nice, they said.  We could not get along with the others, like soap and scum, oil and water.  We are caught between!

Some of our cousins, they play tricks.  They paid the gatekeeper to stay out.  And they pay him still, pay him always, every 84 moons.  Bah!  The moon is too bright.  We hate the moon.  We like it inside, in the dark.  Always in the dark.

I remember, I told my brothers, I said we should help.  Help the stewards.  Steward the stewards, that we do!  We clean their houses, mend their toys, if only for a bit of morsel.

It is becoming hard.  "Droko!"  They came to me.  "Droko, they humans, they tame fire now to keep the dark away!"  So I learn to snuff out flame.  I brave it, the light.  Droko knows how.  This works for many moons, many seasons.

"Droko!  They keep flames in glass pots!"  I try to break the pots, but they are too far.  They put their light pots on the ceiling!  Humans are tricky that way.  I braved the day, I watched the stewards.  Droko learn how to put out the lights.  They call it a "witch" but it does not look like a witch to me.  It is too small.  It stays on the wall.  I point it down, the lights go out.  My brothers get to work.

They learn, too.  Yes, much to learn.  Wood toys?  They are gone!  Now it is all e-lek-tonics.  Bah!  Make light, their toys do.  Make sound!  We hate it.  But we fix it! We do good!  We cut wires, turn off the light toys.  Then we fix.

It does not work for long.  It was a moon ago. A human, he has toys with magic eyes.  I keep watch in the dark, but the eyes, they watch me.  In the horrible day, the human went to his toy.  His magic eye, it saw me!  It showed him on his light toy.  I was there, in the dark, but in the light.

"Droko," I says.  "This can not be!  If the humans see us, they stop us.  We know this.  They always do.  If my brothers do not work, the gates below will take us!"  I said this, I did.  Stop the human, I did.  It was easy.  I breaked his toys!  I found him asleep.  I stopped his air.  Oh!  I will be with my fallen brothers!  But I did my job.  Yes.  I keep us in the dark.  That I do.

Gravity

"Warton?  As in Tom Warton?"

That was the question I had always been asked.  Whenever I told anyone my name it wasn't, "Didn't you write that book?" or, "I love your stories," or "I can't wait to see your next novel."  No, it was always, "Are you really related to that guy who makes cars?"

I didn't even drive a Warton.  I thought they were ugly machines that didn't have enough power and wasted too much fuel.  I stared down at the first one my dad ever built, supposedly in his own garage.  I doubted that.  Frankly, I thought it looked much better after I had doused it in gasoline.

This was only one of a dozen cars that sat in the small museum attached to the factory.  I'd practically grown up at the factory.  I spent so much time there, I knew all the guards, I knew the security system inside and out, and I knew that on the night of the World Cup finals, all the night staff would be glued to a small TV in the guardroom.  It wasn't hard to get around them.  Nothing could make them leave the game.  It was the same when dad owned the place.  The day of the World Cup finals always had a sort of party atmosphere, and dad allowed it.  But even now, after his death, the Board of Directors refused to change anything.  They were superstitious, afraid that changing anything would incur the wrath of my dead old man.

I quickly spent the entire canister of gasoline in the museum and slipped out of the door to the main floor of the factory.  I knew where the gas pumps were, so it didn't take me long to refill the container and start distributing the liquid to the machines, the files cabinets, the offices.  When I got to the boardroom, I knew my work was nearly over.  The company would never recover, but my name would.

"Hands in the air!"  It was Jorge, the youngest guard and, truth be told, an old friend of mine.  We were the same age, spent time in the factory together, went to school together.  His voice rang from the only door to the entire room.  I put my hands up, a match between my fingers.

"Go back to the game, Jorge," I said as I turned around.  He flinched when he saw it was me.

"Ashton?  What are you doing here?"

"I'm putting an end to this blight on the family name.  On my name."

"What blight?  Your name is on the map because of this place."  His hand was on his gun's holster.

"Do you even know what I've been doing for the past 5 years?  Did you know I have two books out?  And they both have great reviews!"

"Why does that mean you have to burn down your father's factory?"

"Because I have no sales!  No one knows my name!  They only know my dad's name!  I'm trapped in his gravity!"  I could see that Jorge didn't understand.  "If I can't break free from my father's star, I'll never shine on my own."

"Destroying your father's namesake is not the way to do it.  Come on, Ash.  If you just come with me now, we can watch the game together and I won't let anyone know it was you in here."

I looked around the boardroom, seeing the name "Warton" splayed out on every seat, on every window, even on the carpet.  But I knew that it wasn't my name.  Not any longer.  I smiled and lit the match.  He put his gun in front of him.

"Put the match down, Ashton!" he said, though as he spoke I could see him shaking.

"Are you sure you want me to do that, Jorge?"  I flicked the match at him.  It landed on the table and smoldered… then went out in a pool of gasoline.  "What the Hell?"

Jorge ran up to me and knocked me over with his shoulder.  He was bigger than me and definitely stronger.

The next morning I woke up in a cell with three other guys.  They all eyed me suspiciously.

"Good morning, Tinkerbell," a rather wiry man said.  All three of them laughed.

"Where… what happened?"  By the time I got my bearings, things came back to me.  The struggle, the cops, the beating.  My head still pounded.

"Woah, hold up there, Tinkerbell.  Looks like you took quite a pounding."  Another chuckle from his comrades.

"Stop calling me Tinkerbell," I demanded, getting an "ooooh!" from my cellmates.  "I'm Ash Warton."

"Warton?" One of the others asked.  "Like the car?"