When the story writes itself -

I’m having a lot of fun pounding out the first draft of Decisive Moment. I love it when it works like this, all the details falling into place as I type, the characters coming to live and interacting and/or going at each other all on their own, and all I have to do is keep typing. As fast as I can.

Here are the stats: 47,000 words in 12 days. For all you math majors, or those who can find the calculator app in your respective devices, that’s around 3,900 words per day, way above my usual 2,500-3,000 count — when things are going well.

Here’s the start of chapter 1 to wet your appetite. Would you keep reading?

Chapter 1 excerpt

With the clunk of a downshift and the revving up of its engine, I hear the Mercedes SUV climbing up the steep grade. I tell myself this is my last chance to pull out. Ever since Jimmy, my paparazzo little brother, implored me to catch this photo op for him, I’ve itemized a long list of reasons I shouldn’t. The only thing keeping me here in the shadows is the image of Jimmy lying on a hospital bed with a broken femur and an array of other injuries sustained at the hands of an irate celebrity. That’s what his paparazzi ways got him, one more reason for me to hate myself for doing this, and also the same reason why I’m doing it even if I pride myself for being a real photographer, a photojournalist that strives time after time to capture the decisive moment with my own brand of raw artistry.

I don’t chase ambulances. I don’t go looking for silly, talent-devoid girls driving around town with chihuahuas on their laps and joints in their lips. I don’t invade people’s privacy. I don’t do the in-the-bush voyeur shtick. Above all, I don’t bootstrap my career and livelihood to this culture of superficial, flash-in-the-pan celebrity. Photography is about so much more than furtive snapshots of a rising Hollywood starlet and her bad boy toy du jour.

I recount all this and more as I poke Jimmy’s 600mm f2.8 bazooka of a lens through the thick chaparral. I look through it and scan the flat rooftop of the mansion on the hilltop across the small canyon. The semi-automatic wielding security detail stirs, as does the pack of paparazzi by the mansion’s main entrance. Like they did yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that when I stood among them, my fellow photographers will be blocked out from any worthwhile shot when the SUV continues up the road to use a side entrance off a narrow dirt trail.

I on the other hand sit atop a killer perch with a wide field of view of the driveway where the SUV will pull in, the pool next to it, the back porch through which my subjects will enter the house. All I need is for a decisive moment to happen between the SUV and the house. A longing look. A hug or tender caress. A little kiss between my starlet and her bad boy lover. Maybe some pool-side action. Heck, I’ll take a peck on the cheek just to call this done and out.

The SUV goes past the front gate, trailed by a sedan I haven’t seen, and the two black BMW motorcycles I did see during my scouting. The sedan follows the SUV to the side entrance. As they did yesterday, the two motorcycles stop to prevent any enterprising photographers from going up the side trail. Not that it makes much difference, since all of them know better than to try, or else they would have trekked that way already. Paparazzi are ballsy except when the other guys can shoot back with one hundred percent analog lead.

The side gate opens and the SUV goes through. The sedan goes next. For the heck of it, I snap a couple of shots. Worthless shots. Throwaways. But I take them all the same, like I do in every shoot, letting my shutter finger warm up for what comes next.

Both vehicles come to a stop, the sedan behind the SUV. All doors seem to open in sync, and I snap a few more shots of bad boy coming out of the back of the SUV, of his business partners jumping out of the sedan, one of them reaching in to drag out a guy wearing a black suit and a matching sack over his head…