Behind the Writing: Chapter 1, Part 2 of Notice of Assignment

There are personal stories embedded in this chapter.

Jun 24, 2026

Today we continue with Chapter 1 of Notice of Assignment. I’m letting you inside how my mind was working as I wrote this debut novella. Well, how I wrote, re-wrote, edited and wrote again the first chapter.

For the first half of this chapter, read last week’s edition of Behind the Writing.

Listen on Spotify or Apple or Amazon

Angie, our closer, came in a minute later and introduced herself to Shawna. Angie had the calm of somebody who had sat at that same table through a thousand combinations of excitement, divorce, death, bad wiring, earnest money disputes, nervous first-time buyers, and people trying not to show each other what they were really feeling.

She took our IDs, wrote down the license numbers in her logbook, then turned it around for us to sign.

“Cal, you know the drill,” she said. “Usually, you’re here as an agent. You want the full speech, or you want me to just answer questions as we go?”

I’d used Angie before for a reason. Sharp. Efficient. No drama. Single mom. Quick wit. Could close a deal with buyers in the room or with signatures getting chased across three states and two time zones. She had once helped me close with an investor from Dubai who purchased a house in Kansas City.

He was a referral from a DC lawyer I hadn’t spoken to in twenty years. I still needed to send him a “thank you” card.

“I’m good,” I said. “Roll ’em out.”

That’s the thing about closings. If you’ve done enough of them, they start to feel less like major life moments and more like paperwork under a watchful eye.

Receive the document. Sign. Initial. Date. Slide. Next.

Then Angie stopped one in front of me. “Cal, you need to sign your legal name.”

I looked at her. “That is my signature.”

“Legal name.” Angie didn’t blink.

I’d heard that line dozens of times in dozens of closings. Still hated it every time. Blue ink. Legal name. Today’s date. Using blue ink was easy. Angie had the pens lined up like surgical tools. The legal name part was the problem. Somewhere back in high school I’d developed a signature that looked like speed itself had signed it, mainly because I had no patience for ceremony.

I signed my name, Calvin Brink. Then I glanced at the date.

Friday, August 13, 2010.

“Well,” I said. “When we moved the closing up, I didn’t realize it was Friday the 13th.”

“I did,” Shawna said.

She didn’t believe in luck. Good luck, bad luck, none of it. She believed in decisions, consequences, character, and whether the checking account could take another hit.

Still, my mind went there for a second.

We had Davis. Sixteen, almost seventeen years old. That felt like good luck.

We’d also had a miscarriage before him and one after.

So, if luck existed, it had a mean streak.

Shawna still carried those scars underneath that personality that welcomed everyone, and everyone welcomed her. One meeting and she knew your name, your kids’ names and birthdays and more about you than I would have learned in six years.

Angie presented a sheet that showed the loan terms. “No interest. It’s like you’re buying a Ford,” she commented. “That’s highly unusual.”

“Hey. They called me. Really wanted to sell this house and get it off their books.” I was bragging just a bit and she knew it. Shawna knew it. People in KC knew I was doing well in this Great Recession. I liked that.

A few more documents went by. Affidavit of title. Settlement statement. The usual stack. I signed where she pointed and dated where she asked and thought, not for the first time, that America’s answer to everything was to create more paper and longer words. More forms weren’t going to fix the housing mess. Putting a few men in expensive suits in jail might’ve helped, but nobody had asked me.

Then Angie slid one more sheet in front of me.

“Last one. Seller sent this over this morning,” Angie mechanically said.

I gave it a quick look. Something assignment-ish. Something lawyerly. Something I hadn’t expected but didn’t think much about.

All I noticed was it said the loan was being made by Isola del Sole Finance and that for its own reasons it was assigning the servicing of the loan to a third party. And on and on.

I didn’t really care who I sent the payments to. I didn’t even read page two.

“Huh,” I said. “They really will invent a document for anything.”

I slid up page one, signed it, and then handed the two pages to Shawna.

“That’s it,” Angie said. Then she looked at Shawna. “Any questions?”

Shawna smiled, but it was that smile wives get when they are being polite in public and reserving the real conversation for later.

“No. I don’t know half of what I signed. But he better.”

Angie laughed.

I did too, but not as confidently as I wanted it to sound.

Shawna meant it. She wasn’t all the way bought in on the deal, but she was bought in on me. There’s a difference, and any married man with a pulse ought to know it. She had gone through lean with me. She had stood by me through ideas that sounded smarter leaving my mouth than they did on paper. She loved me. Believed in me. She was just ready for life to deliver a little more thick than thin for once.

Any closing usually ends with some version of celebration. Handshakes. Smiles. Congratulations. Maybe even a gift bag if the agent is feeling generous or theatrical.

This one felt different.

I was the buyer and the agent, which made the usual ritual as ridiculous as the Missouri Real Estate Commission requiring me to sign a contract with myself to represent myself. I wasn’t about to congratulate myself too hard for spending our money on a downtown Kansas City, Missouri house that still needed work. Lots of it. Any closing gift I might’ve earned was already spoken for in paint, flooring, fixtures, and whatever fresh problem waited behind the walls.

“Perfect,” I said, standing.

I leaned down and kissed Shawna on the cheek.

“I’ve got a buyer appointment across the street. I’ll see you around four-thirty, and then I’ll take you by the house. Afterwards, I made a reservation at that restaurant that you said feels like we are in a mob movie every time we eat there. It’s just around the corner from our house.”

She nodded, but she didn’t look convinced. Not angry. Just unconvinced.

There’s a difference there too, and I should’ve paid more attention to it.

Then Angie gathered the stack, Shawna picked up her purse, and just like that the room emptied out.

A few signatures. A kiss on the cheek. One more house.

At the time, that’s all it felt like.

To get the first four chapters of Notice of Assignment, visit CalBrink.com.

Behind the Writing: Part 2 of Chapter 1

She took our IDs, wrote down the license numbers in her logbook, then turned it around for us to sign.

If you have ever bought a house, you’ve seen the closer. These are some of the most underappreciated players in real estate. You see them at the last minute. But behind the scenes for at least the last month they’ve been making sure you have the right to buy the house and they’ve been the chief liaison between the lender, buyer’s agent, seller’s agent and their own title people.

And they’ve seen every emotion possible. Sellers crying because they are leaving a home they raised four children in over the last three decades. Buyer’s crying because at the last minute they’ve been informed they should have listened to their lender and agent when they cautioned, “Don’t buy anything between now and closing! Nothing. No cars. No jewelry. Don’t use your credit…”

And then they do it anyway.

Then tears are in order for everyone who spent the last sixty days of working with them only to see all that work not reward a dime because the buyer believed the car salesman when he said, “Oh, don’t worry. We won’t run your credit until after you close.”

And, of course, they’ve seen joy. So much joy. A first generation home buyer. A move across country sale by the seller to take a dream job half a continent away.

Real estate closers, or title closers in many parts of the country deserve your respect. They have mine. They are the unsung heroes of real estate transactions.

Lastly, they know more than most buyers and sellers realize. It’s just that it isn’t really their place to say out loud what, maybe, should be said.

“Cal, you know the drill,” she said. “Usually, you’re here as an agent. You want the full speech, or you want me to just answer questions as we go?”

He was a referral from a DC lawyer I hadn’t spoken to in twenty years. I still needed to send him a “thank you” card.

“I’m good,” I said. “Roll ’em out.”

That’s the thing about closings. If you’ve done enough of them, they start to feel less like major life moments and more like paperwork under a watchful eye.

Receive the document. Sign. Initial. Date. Slide. Next.

That line about the DC lawyer? I planted it twelve hundred words into this book. I won't tell you why yet. But when you finish Notice of Assignment, come back and read this paragraph again.

And, have you ever been so confident in yourself that you overlooked something that should have been an obvious warning? Yeah. Me, too.

Then Angie stopped one in front of me. “Cal, you need to sign your legal name.”

I looked at her. “That is my signature.”

“Legal name.” Angie didn’t blink.

I signed my name, Calvin Brink. Then I glanced at the date.

This has been a pet peeve of mine forever. Doesn’t matter who the closer or company is. I’ll just leave this alone.

Friday, August 13, 2010.

“Well,” I said. “When we moved the closing up, I didn’t realize it was Friday the 13th.”

“I did,” Shawna said.

In real life, this would be my wife and I. When I’m focused on something, I don’t see the details. My wife absolutely would have noticed this. She even said so.

She didn’t believe in luck. Good luck, bad luck, none of it. She believed in decisions, consequences, character, and whether the checking account could take another hit.

Still, my mind went there for a second.

We had Davis. Sixteen, almost seventeen years old. That felt like good luck.

We’d also had a miscarriage before him and one after.

So, if luck existed, it had a mean streak.

I’m going to be very personal here. This section was hard to write. In real life, we have four children; two were natural and two were adopted from the foster care system.

How many children do I write into this book? All four? One?

In the end, I decided to write in one child to keep a reader focused and, frankly, to simplify myself from having too many moving parts. But for the record, and let’s be extremely clear about this, each and every one of our children have made me who I am today. In some form or fashion, they contributed to my learned skills and behaviors. Human behaviors.

There is much more to that story that one day I will share. But not now.

Just know I would be nothing without them all.

And the non-viable pregnancies? Painful.

If you ever do meet my wife, she will be truly interested in you. She’s a special woman.

Angie presented a sheet that showed the loan terms. “No interest. It’s like you’re buying a Ford,” she commented. “That’s highly unusual.”

In the Great Recession, all sorts of financing was going on. Banks were desperate to work with people that had cash and good credit. In real life, I did help some of my buyers get deals that could never happen today. The banks won. The buyers won. I won by selling another house.

It’s one of the good things that came out of the Great Recession, for some of us. But make no mistake, it did feel a lot like picking through the bones of someone’s dreams.

When I wrote “Putting a few men in expensive suits in jail…” I meant, and mean, every word of it.

America, we got fleeced.

Then Angie slid one more sheet in front of me.

“Last one. Seller sent this over this morning,” Angie mechanically said.

I gave it a quick look. Something assignment-ish. Something lawyerly. Something I hadn’t expected but didn’t think much about.

All I noticed was it said the loan was being made by Isola del Sole Finance and that for its own reasons it was assigning the servicing of the loan to a third party. And on and on.

I didn’t really care who I sent the payments to. I didn’t even read page two.

“Huh,” I said. “They really will invent a document for anything.”

I slid up page one, signed it, and then handed the two pages to Shawna.

“That’s it,” Angie said. Then she looked at Shawna. “Any questions?”

Uh, you may wish to dog-ear this page.

Shawna smiled, but it was that smile wives get when they are being polite in public and reserving the real conversation for later.

“No. I don’t know half of what I signed. But he better.”

Angie laughed.

I did too, but not as confidently as I wanted it to sound.

Any closing usually ends with some version of celebration. Handshakes. Smiles. Congratulations. Maybe even a gift bag if the agent is feeling generous or theatrical.

This one felt different.

Marriage is buried in this section. Tell me I’m wrong.

Perfect,” I said, standing.

I leaned down and kissed Shawna on the cheek.

She nodded, but she didn’t look convinced. Not angry. Just unconvinced.

There’s a difference there too, and I should’ve paid more attention to it.

Then Angie gathered the stack, Shawna picked up her purse, and just like that the room emptied out.

A few signatures. A kiss on the cheek. One more house.

I’m going to confess. This is me. Done. Next.

In fact, it’s one of the reasons I don’t stay mad too long. It’s over. Move on. But it’s also one of the reasons I can be a bit transactional. If you are into the DISC profile system, I’m high D and C.

Have some fun. Investigate the behavioral types.

Sure, I can adapt. For a while… but then I always come back to being direct and wanting things the way I want them.

And that mob reference? You might want to file that away. Or, look into Kansas City’s history.

At the time, that’s all it felt like.

Ask anyone that works with or for me. I have a saying.

Everything is fine. Until it’s not.

Your comments are fun. What do you think of my writing process. What questions do you have about the way I write?

Cal Brink Files

Discussion about this post

Ready for more?