Peek Inside My New Novel, Maxime PART I

Being worried is what Maxime does best.

At sixty-four-and-a-half, Maxime Bastien Baumann wants to retire more than anything else, but he can’t. He’s too worried.

He’s not a hypochondriac; he’s just anally retentive. And obsessive compulsive. And constantly afraid of being late. His life is structured and lived by a set of rules: two full pages if he writes them down, double-spaced.

For Maxime, being late is never a bloody option.

As his life with his wife of thirty-seven years and their two sons implodes, Maxime realizes his “life rules” desperately need an overhaul. Staggering through setback after setback, Maxime must learn to replace worry with confidence and flexibility, stop seeing others as schmucks, reconcile with his family, and learn that it will all come at a great personal cost.

 And here is a taste from the first chapter.

Chapter 1

Maxime discovers a lump

Maxime was worried.

He had a doctor’s appointment. That was not why he was worried: he might be late. Maxime was never late. Anybody who knew anything about punctuality and who knew Maxime knew that being late could never be a bloody option.

Maxime was a private man. His life was structured and lived by a set of rules—two full pages if he wrote it down, double-spaced. He did so once. These were not actual rules, Maxime believed, only life beacons. Since his earliest memories, it had been this way. It started with his father. Not that he resented the man—he was a good person, a devoted father, and Maxime was comfortable with this life guided by rules. He was certain that Donna suspected as much—the rules thing—but was too sensible a woman to make a scene about it.

Maxime was a man who doesn’t speak out of turn or put his nose into other people’s business where it didn’t belong. He had learned these rules from a young age, and they served him well, helped keep his nose clean and relatively straight, not crooked like some second-class boxer’s.

He leaned closer to the mirror, taking care not to skip a spot on his cheek. He couldn’t stand electric shavers and preferred the sleek contour type, the manual ones. The only problem with his preference was the exorbitant cost of the disposable blades—why the government didn’t do something about the exploitation of the poor consumer was beyond his comprehension. Bloody capitalists. And then they expected him to vote for them.

Perhaps it was time to print out the letter he had written years earlier in this regard, and mail it to the Minister of Natural Resources—he would just have to change the date. The thing that held him back was the second rule on page two: Don’t stir things up.

He leaned closer and concentrated. The tricky part: the three-quarters of an inch between his almost straight nose and his upper lip—these triple blades were sharp. Maxime couldn’t stand facial hair. Never could. He turned his head. He had missed a spot: a small patch of hair in front of his ear. He jutted his chin sideways, leaning even closer.

“Damn it!” He had drawn blood.

Maxime hunched over the sink and dabbed cold water from the tap onto his cheeks. The cut stung. There was blood on his hand and in the water.

••• 

Thank you for reading! (If you enjoyed it, please tell your friends.)

The novel will be launched on 31 October 2017. It will be available in eBook and paperback format. It will then be available on Amazon, Nook, Kobo, and iBook.