He Wrote, She Wrote

HE WROTE/SHE WROTE: This Is The End

2006-12-31T08:58:00.000-05:00

BOB: As the Door’s song says: "This is the end." The last entry of this blog. I think I wrote that because I watched Apocalypse Now Redux yesterday. But, the good news is that on the 1st of January 2007, we begin the new blog over at http://www.crusiemayer.com/workshop/.

I can hardly remember the beginning of 2006. They say time goes by faster when you get older, but 2006 was a very long year. Many good times, some hard times, yada, yada.

That’s Sentimental Bob.

JENNY: That’s Accurate Bob, too. I had a wonderful time, but it’s a miracle we’re still standing. Well, I’m not. I’m in bed with hot tea and cookies, six hundred miles away. And he’s shooting at pleasure boats from the dock. In other words, all is well.

BOB: We do very much appreciate your support. We never thought there’d be a group like the CherryBombs. Years from now, as you sit around the camp-fire in the smouldering relics of our doomed civilization, you can tell your grandchildren: “I was there at the very beginning.” And mightily bored they will be.

2007 will be different. Fewer conferences. More writing. The writing blog. World Peace. Cats and dogs playing together. Two of the four horseman of the Apocalypse riding by and waving with glee. Five of the seven seals broken. A beast lurching out of the darkness. Little squirrels we’ve helped with our little tiny instruments, capering about happily.

That’s Optimistic Bob.

JENNY: A sign of the Apocalypse if there ever was one.

BOB: Yepper.

JENNY: Happy 2007, everybody. We are not doomed.

BOB: Nothing but good times ahead.

SHE WROTE: And One More For The Road . . .

2006-12-30T00:01:00.000-05:00

There was another scene after the Shane scene and before this one, but we figured this was the one you'd vote to see:

Agnes clutched her frying pan tighter as she felt her way through the dim moonlight in the narrow housekeeper’s room toward the bedside table and the lamp there, really hating the kid who’d made her feel afraid in her own home, even if he was dead now, hating even more that Joey thought she was in trouble.

“I told you nothing happened in here,” she called out, looking around for the cop. “It was all out in the kitchen.” Not that I’m upset with you, sir. Please don’t arrest me.

The wind blew the curtains away from the window by the bed, and she saw that the little bedside table was tipped over, and then somebody clamped a hand over her mouth and said, “Shhhh,” and her heart lurched sideways, and she swung the pan up over her head hard and connected with a smack that reverberated into her shoulders.

The guy wrenched the pan out of her hand. “Stop it. Joey sent me.”

She yanked away from him, and he let her go so that she stumbled, falling against the bed as she fumbled on the floor for the light and clicked it on, breathing hard.

He loomed up over her as her heart pounded, a big guy, dressed in black: black pants, black T, black denim jacket. He looked like he’d been hacked out of a block of wood: strong, weathered face; black, flat eyes--shark eyes, she thought, if this guy had come for me, I’d be dead—cropped dark hair going gray at the temples, now a little bloody on the right; tense, hard, squared-off body, all of it alert and concentrated on her. But the thing she noticed most as she tried to keep from having a heart attack was that he looked like Joey. Younger than Joey, bigger than Joey, but he looked like Joey.

She swallowed. “Who are you and what the hell are you doing in here?”

“I’m Shane. Joey sent me.” He jerked his head toward the kitchen, no wasted movement. “Who’s out there?”

Agnes got to her feet, wishing she had her frying pan back. “Shane. Okay, Shane, thank you for scaring the hell out of me, but this is my house, so I’ll ask the questions.” She took a deep breath. “Joey sent you. Why?”

“I’m here to protect some kid. Little Agnes?”

“That’s me,” Agnes said.

There was a silence long enough to hear crickets in, and Agnes thought, If he makes some crack about me being not little, I’m gonna hit him again, and then he spoke.

“I’m here to protect you,” he said, sounding resigned. “Unless you hit me again, in which case, whoever I’m supposed to save you from can have your ass.”

“Protect me.” That wasn’t good. She’d been worried about the police finding out about her record, but Joey thought she needed protected from something else, something only somebody like this guy could stave off. Which meant something was seriously wrong. Not that the guy who was a corpse in her basement hadn’t been a tip-off, but if Joey thought something was so bad that she needed this guy, it must be really bad because a guy like this could protect her from . . .

Anything.

Out in the front hall, the ugly black grandfather clock left behind by the house’s previous owner began to chime the hour in big gongs that sounded like Death’s oven timer, and Agnes looked at Shane again.

Big. Broad. Dark. Strong. Handsome if you liked thugs. Looked like Joey. And he was here to keep her safe.

How are you feeling right now, Agnes?

Could be worse.

“Okay, Shane,” Agnes said as the clock gonged twelve. “I got Joey in my kitchen, a cop in my front hall, a dead body in my basement, and you in my bedroom. Where do you want to start?”

SHE WROTE: Memory Lane

2006-12-29T11:46:00.000-05:00

We're looking back over the posts because at one time we were going to make them into a book. Remember that, way back in the beginning? Then the year overwhelmed us.

From: Bob Mayer
To: Jenny Crusie
the glorious lives of best-selling authors
sorta pathetic
but good

From: Jenny Crusie
To: Bob Mayer
Been reading the blog have you?
I am, too.
How did we survive?

From: Bob Mayer
To: Jenny Crusie
Fortitude

From: Jenny Crusie
To: Bob Mayer
Ignorance.
If we'd known, we'd have run screaming like babies.

From: Bob Mayer
To: Jenny Crusie
Nope.
I thrive on challenges

But I've been reading them again and you know, they just might make a book. Especially if we added some of the missing information, some even-more-behind-the-scenes info. Not all of it, we have some boundaries, but some of it was, in retrospect, pretty illuminating.

Like some of the fun things you missed. Remember when Bob fell in love with chocolate machine in Boston?

"The neatest thing so far on the tour has been this machine on the 7th floor of the hotel where you push this button and put this packet in and it makes hot chocolate. I am so addicted I think I broke it the first day making so many cups but they fixed it. Thank you SMP. I went up in the middle of Jenny's talk and made two cups and brought them back down. I got the hot chocolate jones. Also the machine is cool. You punch this button and the front slides open and you put this packet in, and it slides shut, then you push another and various lights blink and then it tells you the hot chocolate is done. Basically a gadget."

I got him that for his birthday. Broke down and gave it to him early as I recall. And he got me this amazing tapestry scarf and whenever I wear it, women cluster around and say, "Where did you GET that?" and I say, "Bob gave it to me," and I can see their eyes glaze over. He's a terrific writer, a dynamic teacher, he's funny, he's cute, AND he can pick out scarves. Then I say, "And he's been in a relationship for fifteen years." It's like throwing cold water on kittens, it's awful. But the scarf is amazing and he really did pick it out.

And the T-shirt. I cut it up with scissors in a hotel lobby in a white hot rage. That was bad. But he went off the rails a couple of times, too. We both had many minor transgressions. I think he lost the lizard socks. He seems definitely to have lost Moot. (Wait'll he gets a load of Flamingo Jill. It will be impossible to lose Flamingo Jill.) The worst of all was the time at the beginning of August that we ended the collaboration. You missed that part. We didn't want to traumatize you. I think it lasted about a week. That was a very bad week. Bad enough that we're pretty sure we don't want to go there again. Now we stick with time outs. Like "I'll talk to you again in ten years."

But we're already planning on the Living the Dream 2007 Tour, not that SMP has said they're touring us. Bob wants to do it by boat (I want him to buy the new MacPro 17" laptop so I can justify buying one, but he's insisting on the boat). He found a great used one for $5000 or "will trade." So we e-mailed:

From: Jenny Crusie
To: Bob Mayer
Maybe they'll trade it for the Explorer.
And $4950.

From: Bob Mayer
To: Jenny Crusie
The Explorer runs very well, thank you.
I'm putting bunks in the back for the 2007 book tour

From: Jenny Crusie
To: Bob Mayer
Excellent idea.
We need more alone time in a small space with a lot of carbon dioxide leakage.

From: Bob Mayer
To: Jenny Crusie
You know I could tax deduct the boat if we did a book tour up the Intracoastal.
Think SMP would go for it?

From: Jenny Crusie
To: Bob Mayer
I don't know, but I would.
A lot of Agnes is on boats. We should have put more of it on. You've got the master. Write it in.

From: Bob Mayer
To: Jenny Crusie
email me from your new computer and I'll be on my sinking boat

From: Jenny Crusie
To: Bob Mayer
We don't need no sinkin' boat.

From: Jenny Crusie
To: Bob Mayer
I crack myself up.

And then we went back to work on Agnes because the rewrite WILL be in to SMP on Jan 1 if it kills us both. Which it won't. Because judging from this blog, if 2006 and each other didn't kill us, we're indestructible.

HE WROTE: Happy New Year

2006-12-28T07:58:00.000-05:00

Shane sat on a bar stool, in a shady nightclub on the wrong side of the tracks in a bad part of Savannah, Georgia, and tried to estimate how many people he was going to have to kill in the next hour. Optimally it would be one, but he had long ago learned that optimism did not apply to his profession. He felt his cell phone vibrate in his pocket and pulled it out with his free hand expecting to see the GO or NO GO text message from Wilson, and about damn time. There were only three people who had his number, and they never called to chat. One of them was across the dance floor from him, which left two options. He glanced at the screen and was surprised to see JOEY. Jesus. First time ever and he calls in the middle of a job. Shane hesitated for a moment, then thought, Hell, you gave him the number for emergencies, and hit the ‘on’ button. “Uncle Joe?”

“Shane, you on a job?”

“Yes.”

“Where you at?”

“Savannah.”

“Good,” Joey said. “Close. I need you home.”

Shane frowned. Home? You send me away at ten and now you want me home? “What’s the problem?” he said, keeping his voice cold. Twenty-five years you wait to call, this damn well better be a real emergency.

“I got a little friend needs some help. She lives just outside Keyes in the old Two Rivers mansion. Remember it?”

Fucking Keyes. Armpit of the South.

“Come home and take care of my little Agnes, Shane.”

You adopt another kid, Joe? Gonna take better care of this one? “I’ll be there in an hour.”

“I appreciate it, Shane.” Joey hung up.

Shane pushed the off button. Joey needing help taking care of something. That was new. Old man must be getting really old. Calling him home. That was--

“I’m a Leo—and you?”

Shane turned to look at her. Long blonde hair. Bright smile plastered on her pretty face. Pink T-shirt stretched tight across her ample chest with the word Princess embroidered on it in shiny letters. Effective advertising, bad message.

“What’s your sign?” she said, coming closer.

“Taurus with a bad moon rising.” The hell with Joey. He had a job to do. He looked at the office upstairs.

Two men in long black leather coats and wraparound sunglasses appeared in front of the office door. They took barely visible flanking positions at the top of the metal stairs, just as they had the previous evening at approximately the same time, which meant the target was in-house.

At home, so to speak.

Fucking Joey, calling him home now, in the middle of a job.

“Do you come here often?” Princess asked, coming still closer, about three inches too close. He scooted back on his stool slightly.

“Never.” Except for the reconnaissance the previous evening. He looked up again. Too many people had seen The Matrix, he decided as he took in the bodyguards’ long jackets and shades.

The Matrix probably hadn’t even played in Keyes yet.

Princess came in closer, her breasts definitely inside his personal space. “What do you do for a living?”

“I’m a painter.”

That’s what Joey used to tell people. I’m a painter, he’d say.

Enough with Joey.

Shane glanced across the room. Carpenter was in place, his tall, solid figure near the emergency exit, the flashing lights reflecting off his shaved, ebony skull. I paint them, Carpenter cleans them. Shane nodded his head toward the guards ever so slightly. Carpenter nodded back.

“That’s cool.” Princess began to scan past Shane, probably looking for someone who’d play with her. She must found him because she smiled at Shane blankly and backed off. “Have a good one,” she said and was gone into the crowd.

The phone buzzed once more, and Shane glanced at the screen: GO. Finally. he secured the phone in his pocket, nodding once more at Carpenter, who nodded back and reached into one of his deep pockets. Princess was over by the bar now, dialing on her phone with a blank look on her face as she tossed her head to get the hair out of her eyes. Then she frowned and pulled the phone away, staring at it. Shane knew no one’s cell phone within two hundred feet would work as long as Carpenter kept the transmitter in his pocket working, jamming all frequencies.

He wove his way through the sweaty dancers to the bottom of the staircase and walked up, Carpenter falling in behind him. Both bodyguards stepped out, forming a human wall that he estimated weighed over four hundred and seventy pounds combined with another ten pounds or so of leather coat thrown in. Which meant they trumped him by over two hundred and seventy.

Fortunately two hundred and ten pounds with brains could usually beat four hundred and eighty pounds of dumb.

“Private office,” the one on the right growled.

Shane jabbed his right hand, middle three fingers extended, into the man’s voice box, then grabbed the face of the man on the left and applied pressure at just the right places with the fingertips of his left hand, thumb on one side, four fingers on the other. The man froze in the middle of reaching under his jacket, unable to move, while Carpenter caught the man to the right.

“Tell me the truth and live,” Shane whispered as he leaned close, ignoring the other guard’s desperate wheezing attempts to get air down his damaged throat as Carpenter took him back into the darkness of the landing. “Lie and die. Is Casey Dean here?”

“Uggh.” There was the slightest twitch of the head in the affirmative.

“Alone?”

“Uggh.” A twitch side to side.

Shit. “Left foot,” Shane said. “How many are in there? Tap your foot for the number.”

The foot hit the ground twice, then halted.

“Good boy.” Shane shifted his fingers slightly and pressed. The man dropped unconscious to the floor. Carpenter already had the other man down, sleeping with the leather. At least they’d be warm.

Shane reached inside their coats and retrieved their pistols. He placed one in his waistband in his back, and kept the other one out, safety off. He stepped over them as Carpenter reached down and grabbed the back of each man’s jacket and dragged them to a small janitor’s closet and tumbled them in. Then he turned and faced the stairway to make sure no one else came up. He wasn’t wearing leather.

Shane walked down the hallway to the bright red doorway with a prominent No Trespassing sign hung on it. He kicked it right at the lock, the wood splintered and he stepped in and to one side, eyes taking in the dimly lit scene, pistol up, sweeping the room in concert with his eyes in split-second pie slices.

Movement. Two people. A man. Seated behind a desk. A redhead standing on the other side, leaning forward, palms down on the desktop, her skimpy halter top hanging loose, exposing her breasts. Great, Shane thought. I had to hit at playtime.

Shane strode across the room as the man jumped up and the woman turned, looking surprised. The man was reaching for a jacket when Shane hit him with a cat paw fist strike to the solar plexus, making him thump back on the couch, gasping in pain and floundering, out of commission for a couple of minutes at least.

The redhead lunged at Shane, who sidestepped her claws, grabbed her from behind, and used her momentum to slam her against the desk, pinning her to it. He got one arm in a half-nelson around her neck and pressed the barrel of the gun against the back of her head. He could feel her tight ass pushing back against his groin, and she began to grind as she struggled against him, putting her arms flat out on the desktop and looking over her shoulder angrily. He shoved her shoulders down on the desk and saw a small tattoo of a compass on the small of her back, just above her jeans. Like somebody needs directions there, Shane thought.

She pressed back harder against him with her ass.

“Stop it,” he said.

“Oh come on,” she whispered. “You like it. Come on, we can work this out, you and me. I can--”

Shane pulled the gun back and tapped the barrel, lightly, against the back of her skull.

The girl cursed and rubbed her head. “What the fuck?”

“This is business and you are not part of it. Stay there.” Shane backed away, keeping the barrel aimed at her and when she didn’t move, he glanced at the man who was still gasping for air. Not a problem.

Then Shane reached inside his jacket and pulled out an airline ticket. He tossed the plane ticket on the desk in front of the woman. “You’ve got a problem, here’s the solution. A voucher you can use at the airport tonight. Enough for a one way ticket anywhere in the world.”

The redhead stared at him and then she began to fasten her halter top.

“You don’t ever want to come back to Savannah again,” he told her. “This man hangs with bad men, and they’re going to remember you were here and come looking for you.”

The girl was nodding, reaching for the ticket at the same time she tried to put her jacket on.

“You can go, but if you say anything to anyone on the way out, you will die.”

The girl was still nodding like a bimbo bobble-head doll, one arm in her jacket, the other with the ticket in hand. Shane kept one eye on her struggles as he focused his attention back on the man gasping on the couch. When she was ready and holding the ticket in one hand and her purse in the other, Shane pulled out his phone and hit the speed-dial for Carpenter. “You got one civilian coming out. Redhead. Let her go.”

There was a telling moment of silence. “A witness.”

“A civilian coming out,” Shane repeated.

“Roger,” Carpenter said.

Shane nodded to the redhead and she scuttled to the door and was gone.

Shane turned his attention back to the man. “Same deal for you, my friend.” He slapped another ticket voucher on the coffee table.

“Who—“ the man coughed and tried again as he managed to get to a sitting position. “Who—are--you?”

“Doesn’t matter who I am,” Shane said. “I’m gonna ask you some questions. Answer honestly, you take this ticket and go. Lie and die.”

The man’s face was shiny with pain and exertion, but he wasn’t giving up. “What—do—you—want?”

“You were hired to by the mob to kill someone the US Government would prefer stay alive.”

“Listen, we can make a deal—”

“I am making you a deal.” Christ, this was like talking to some jackass from Keyes.

“Well, I’d like to deal,” the man said. “But you got the wrong person here. I think you got me mixed up with somebody else--”

Shane hit him, an open-handed slap that was more insult than injury. “You’re wasting my time, Casey Dean,” he said, and the man flinched when he heard the name. “The people I work for do not make mistakes. Unlike you.”

“Really, I’m not—”

Shane reached out and jabbed his thumb into Dean’s shoulder, hitting a nerve junction, and the guy jumped as if struck by an electric shock. “Now here’s the deal. You tell me what I want to know and forget about the hit, fly away, and never come back, and it’s the same to me as if you were dead.”

Dean rubbed his shoulder, eyes darting about the room. “That’s it?”

“That’s it.” Shane slid the ticket voucher across the table.

Dean looked at Shane. “You’re really gonna let me go if I tell you what you want and forget about the contract?”

“No. I’m gonna let you go if you forget about the hit and give me the names and contact information of whoever hired you and the name of the target.”

Dean shook his head. “I can’t give the contractor up. He’ll kill me.”

Shane brought the gun level with the point right between the man’s eyes. “Which is worse? The possibility he might kill you in the future or the certainty I will kill you in the next ten seconds?”

“Shit.” Dean slumped, looking suddenly very old. “Listen, I’m just a business manager. A cut out. I’m not a—”

Shane pressed the muzzle of the gun hard against the man’s skin just above his nose.

Dean’s eyes turned inward, mesmerized by the barrel. “I’m telling you, I don’t know the contractor’s name. I just got a call that services were needed.”

“Who’s the target?”

“Didn’t get it yet. I swear.”

Great. Dean was an idiot, but there was a ring of truth in that.

“Listen, I’m cold. Can I get my jacket?”

Shane looked at him, almost pitying him in his stupidity. The dumb fuck has a plan. He pulled the gun back. “Sure.” His assignment was to take out Casey Dean, world class hitman, but if this guy was a world class hitman, Shane was Princess’s date to prom. Some guys were all PR, no game, and Casey Dean was sure as hell turning out to be one of them. Must have been born in Keyes.

When Dean had put on his jacket, he looked downright confident, his eyes sly as they went to the desk. “So I really don’t know anything, but I’m definitely leaving town, just like you said. Okay, if I get my passport from my desk drawer?”

Shane nodded. You bet. Commit suicide with my gun. That’s what I’m here for, pal.

The man turned his back and opened a desk drawer, and Shane brought his gun up.

Dean swung around, a small gun in his hand, and Shane fired two quick shots, both hitting him in the chest. Dean fell back, disappearing behind the desk.

Below, the music pounded, drowning out everything. Shane walked forward, gun at the ready and rolled the man over, surprised to find there was still a spark of life in his eyes. Not surprised to see his two shots were so tightly grouped they appeared to be one hole, but not happy to see them an inch off target.

Fucking Joey, making him lose focus. Fucking Keyes. Fucking little Agnes, too, whoever she was.

A funny look came over the man’s face as Shane aimed the gun at his forehead. His eyes blinked rapidly. “You’re wrong,” he gasped, playing the odds to the end. “We can make a deal.”

“Oh, come on,” Shane said. “You know who and what you are, Casey Dean. You lied. You’d have completed the contract because otherwise you’d never get another job.”

“No, you’re wrong--” the man began, and Shane fired, the round making a perfect black hole in the center of his forehead.

Mission accomplished.

Shane pulled out his cell phone and hit number 3 on the speed dial.

It was answered on the first ring: “Carpenter.”

“Painting’s done. You’ll have to help him on to the next world on your own, Reverend. I won’t be at debrief.”

There was a brief moment of silence. “Wilson won’t like that.”

“The target had no information on contractor or target.”

“Roger.”

Shane put the phone away.

Then he strode across the room toward the window, reached under his shirt, retrieved the heavy duty Kevlar snap link attached to the rear of his body armor, clipped it to a bolt holding a drain pipe, turned outward and jumped, the carefully coiled bungee cord snapping out until it jerked him to a halt three feet from the street and bounced him back up half the distance. As he went down the second time, Shane pulled the quick release and landed on all fours. Right next to his Defender SUV.

Keyes again.

Fuck.

SHE WROTE: Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Celebrate the Season Whatever It Is . . .

2006-12-24T14:44:00.000-05:00

One fine August evening, as Joey “the Gent” Torcelli sat in his deserted diner on the outskirts of Keyes, South Carolina and talked on the telephone and rubbed his gun arm to ease his arthritis; and as beyond Joey’s diner the wildlife in the swamps of Keyes County began to emerge into the deep blue dusk of the twilight and cogitate upon ways to make the encroaching darkness aid them in their endeavors both nefarious and recreational; and as beyond the swamps the last of the evening sun disappeared into commingling waters of the Blood River and the Intracoastal Waterway outside the kitchen windows of the white-columned plantation house known as Two Rivers; Agnes Crandall stirred crushed raspberries and sugar in her heavy non-stick frying pan and defended her fiancé to the only man she’d ever trusted.

It wasn’t easy.

“Come on, Joey.” Agnes cradled the phone between her chin and her shoulder and frowned over the tops of her fogged-up black-rimmed glasses at the raspberries, which were being annoying and uncooperative, much like her fiancé lately. “Taylor’s a terrific chef." Which is why I’m still with him. "And he’s very sweet.” When he shows up. “And we’ve got a great future together.” Assuming we’re ever together again.

Joey snorted his contempt, the sound exploding through the phone. “He shouldn’t leave you all alone out there in that house like that. You should find somebody better.”

“Yeah, like I have the time,” Agnes said, and then realized that wasn’t the right answer. “Not that I would. Taylor’s a great guy.”

“He’s a mutt, Agnes,” Joey said.

Agnes took off her glasses and turned up the heat under the raspberries, which she knew was courting disaster, but it was late and she was tired of playing nice with fruit; the raspberries were about to find out who was boss. “Cut me a break, Joey. I’m behind on my column, I’ve got the Mothers coming tomorrow, I’ve got--”

“And there’s Rhett,” Joey said. “How’s Rhett?”

“What?” Agnes said, thrown off stride. She stopped stirring her berries, which began to bubble, and looked down at her dog, draped over her feet like a moth-eaten brown overcoat, slobbering on the floor as he slept. “Rhett’s fine. Why? What have you heard?”

“He’s a fine healthy-lookin’ dog,” Joey said hastily. “He looked real good in his picture in the paper today. You did, too.” He paused, his voice straining to be casual. “How come old Rhett was wearing that stupid collar in that picture?”

“The collar?” Agnes frowned at the phone. “It was just some junk jewelry--”

The oven timer buzzed, and she said, “Hold on,” put down the phone, and took the now madly bubbling berries off the heat with one hand. Rhett picked up his head and barked as she reached for the oven door to get the tray of cupcakes inside, and Agnes turned, raspberry pan in hand, to see what he was upset about.

A guy with a gun stood ten feet away in the doorway to the front hall, the bottom half of his face covered with a red bandana.

“I come for your dog,” he said and pointed the gun at Rhett who was now baying at him, and Agnes said, “No!” and slung the raspberry pan at him, the hot syrup arcing out in front of it like napalm and catching him full in the face.

He screamed as the sauce and then the pan hit him, pawing at the scalding fruit and dropping his gun to rip the bandana away as Rhett went for him. Agnes ran around the counter and scooped up the pan as Rhett barreled into him, and the guy slipped in the syrup on the tiled floor and went down flailing in the doorway, hitting the back of his head on the marble counter by the wall and knocking off every cupcake she had cooling there.

“Goddamn it,” Agnes said, standing over him with her pan, ready to defend herself and her dog, her heart pounding.

The guy didn’t move, and Rhett began to hoover up cupcakes at the speed of light.

“Agnes?” Joey shouted from the phone on the counter. “What the fuck, Agnes?”

Agnes kicked the gun away into the housekeeper’s room and peered at the guy, trying to catch her breath. She was pretty sure that if he were conscious, he’d be twitching from the hot syrup, not to mention the slobber that Rhett was flinging his way.

When he didn’t move, she backed up to grab the phone off the counter. “Some guy just showed up here with a gun and tried to take Rhett,” she told Joey, breathing hard. “But it’s okay, I’m in control, I’m not angry. Much.” Goddamnit.

“Where is he?”

“On the floor, in the hall doorway. He hit his head and knocked himself out. Joey, why would anybody want Rhett?”

“Fuck that,” Joey said. “Get the hell out of there. Take Rhett with you.”

“Like I’d leave him,” Agnes said, outraged. “I can’t get out. I told you, the guy’s lying across the hall door. I’ve seen all those horror movies. He’ll come to and reach up and grab me.”

“Get out the back door--”

“I can’t, Doyle’s got it blocked with screen and boards. I’m going to hang up and call 911.”

“No, “ Joey said. “No cops. I’m comin’ over.”

“What do you mean, no cops? I--”

The dognapper stirred.

“Wait a minute.” Agnes put the phone on the counter and held the frying pan at the ready, hands shaking, as she craned her neck to look closer at the dognapper.

Young, just a teenager. Short. Skinny. Limp dirty dark hair. Stupid because if he’d had any brains, he’d have grabbed Rhett when he went out for his nightly pee. And now that he was unconscious, pretty harmless looking. She probably outweighed him by thirty pounds.

As she calmed down, she could hear Dr. Garvin’s voice in her head.

How are you feeling right now, Agnes?

Well, Dr. Garvin, I’m feeling a little angry that this punk broke into my house with a gun and threatened my dog.

And how are you handling that anger, Agnes?

I never touched him, I swear.

The boy opened his eyes.

“Don’t move.” Agnes held up her pan. “I’ve called the police,” she lied. “They’re coming for you. My dog is vicious and you don’t want to cross me, either, especially with a frying pan; you have no idea what I can do with a frying pan.” She took a deep breath, and the kid glared at her, and she looked closer at his face, seeing the lurid welts of singed skin where the raspberry had stuck. “That’s gotta hurt. Not that I care.”

He worked his battered jaw, and she held the frying pan higher as a threat.

“So, tell me, you little creep,” Agnes said, “why were you trying to kill my dog?”

“I weren’t tryin’ to kill the dog,” the boy said, outraged. “I wouldn’t kill no dog.”

“The gun, Creepoid,” Agnes said. “You pointed a gun at him.”

“I was just gonna take him,” the boy said. “There weren’t no call to get mean. I weren’t gonna hurt him. I wouldn’t hurt nobody.” He touched the sauce on his face and winced.

The boy closed his eyes, and Agnes was reaching for the phone again when he rolled to his feet and lunged for her. She yelped and smacked him hard on the head with her pan, and he staggered, and then she hit him again, harder this time, just to make sure, and he fell back onto the floor, blood seeping down the side of his face, and lay still. She felt a qualm about that, but not much because it was self defense, and he’d broken into her house, he’d scared the hell of her, he had no right—

Violence is not the answer, Agnes.

That depends on the question, Dr. Garvin.

--and she was not out of control, she was not angry, she was calm, she was shaking but she was perfectly fine, and anyway it was non-stick pan, not cast iron, so she was fairly certain she hadn’t done any permanent damage.

Fingers crossed, anyway.

Beside him, Rhett collapsed, overcome by the number of cupcakes still on the floor.

“I hate you,” she said to the unconscious boy. Then she picked up her phone, and said, “Joey?”

“Don’t do anything, Agnes,” Joey yelled, the sounds of traffic in the background. “I’m on Route 17. I’m almost there.”

“That’s good,” Agnes said, realizing her voice was shaking, too. “He’s just a kid, Joey. He said he wasn’t trying to hurt anybody--”

The kid lunged to his feet, and Agnes screamed again and dropped the phone to swung the pan again, but this time he was ready for her, ducking under her arm and butting her in the stomach so that she said, “Oof!” and fell backward against the counter. She scrambled to her feet as he tried to backhand her, and she ducked and swung the pan again and hit him in the head, really hating him now, and then she hit him again, and then she couldn’t stop, she hit him over and over gritting her teeth, and he yelled, “Stop it, stop it!” and grabbed for her while she pounded him, driving him back toward the hall door, she heard herself screaming at him, “Get out, get out, I hate you, get out of my house, get out of MY HOUSE!!!” as he lurched back, his arms across his head, and then he stepped in Rhett’s water dish and fell back into the wall, all of his weight hitting it as she swung at him, and then he fell through it, screaming.

Agnes froze, the frying pan raised over her head, as he disappeared, and then the wall was solid again, and she heard a thud, and the screaming stopped, cut off, and there was nothing.

She stood there with the pan over her head for a moment, stunned, and then she lowered it slowly and clutched it to her chest, warm raspberry sauce and all, her heart beating like mad. She stared dumbfounded at the wall, waiting for a moment to see if he’d come rushing back through, like a ghost or something. When nothing happened, she went over and pushed cautiously with the pan on the place where the kid had disappeared.

It swung open and shut again, the hideous wallpaper that had covered it now torn along the straight edge of a door-frame.

“Oh,” Agnes said, caught between amazement that there’d been a swinging door behind the wallpaper and fear that there was also a crazed moron behind there.

“Agnes!” Joey yelled on the phone.

Agnes took a deep breath and stepped back to the counter and picked it up. “What?”

“What the fuck happened?”

“There’s another door in my kitchen, right next to the hall door.” Agnes went back and pushed it open again, avoiding the rusted, broken nails that lined the doorway edge, and peered into the darkness. There was no floor in there, she realized. It just opened onto a black void. “Huh.”

“Where’s the kid with the gun?”

“Good question.” Agnes dropped her wimpy non-stick skillet on the counter, yanked open the utility drawer by the door, and got out her heavy-duty flashlight. She turned it on, shoved the door open with her shoulder, and pointed it into the void.

“What are you doing?” Joey yelled.

“I’m trying to see what’s behind this door. I didn’t even know it was here.”

“Agnes, you can explore your goddamn house later,” Joey said. “Take Rhett and get the hell out of there.”

“I don’t think the kid’s a problem anymore.” Agnes held the phone with one hand and peered down into the pool of light the flashlight cast on the floor below as Rhett came to join her, pressing close to her leg so he could peer, too. “He fell into a basement. I didn’t even know I had a basement back here. Did you know--” She played the light around the floor and then froze when it hit the moron. “Uh oh.”

“What do you mean, ‘uh oh’?”

The boy was splayed out on what looked like a concrete floor and he did not look good.
“I think he’s hurt. He’s definitely not moving.”

“Good,” Joey said. “He fall down the stairs?”

“There are no stairs.” Agnes squinted down into the darkness as the light hit the boy’s face.

His eyes stared up at her, dull and fixed.

Agnes screamed, and Rhett scrambled back, stepping in the raspberry sauce, which he then began to lick up.

“Agnes?”

“Oh, God,” Agnes said, as her throat closed in panic. “Joey, his neck’s at a funny angle and his eyes are staring up at me. I think I killed him.”

“No, you didn’t, honey,” Joey said around the traffic noise in the background. “He committed suicide when he attacked an insane woman in the stupid house she bought. I’m almost there. You stay there and don’t open that door for anybody.”

“He’s dead, Joey. I have to call the police.” This is bad. This is bad. This is not going to look good.

“The police can’t help you with this one,” Joey said. “You stay put. I’m gonna get you somebody until we figure this out.”

“Some body. Right.” Agnes clicked off the phone and looked back down at the dead body in her basement.

He looked pathetic, lying there all twisted and dead-eyed. Agnes swallowed, trying to get a grip on the situation.

How are you feeling right now, Agnes?

Shut the fuck up, Dr. Garvin.

Don’t say “Fuck,” Agnes. Angry language makes us angrier.

Gosh darn, Dr. Garvin, I’m feeling . . .

She put the beam on the boy again.

Still dead.

Oh, God.

Okay, calm down, she told herself. Think this through.

She hadn’t killed him, the basement floor had.

You hit him many times in the head with the frying pan, try explaining that one.

Okay, okay, but he’d attacked her in her house. It was self-defense. Yes, he was young and pathetic and heartbreaking down there, but he’d been a horrible person.

Why do you always hit them with frying pans, Agnes?

Because that’s what I always have in my hand, Dr. Garvin. If I were a gardener, it’d be hedge clippers. Think how bad that would be.

She punched in 911 on her phone, trying to concentrate on the good things: Rhett was fine, Maria’s wedding was still on track, her column would be finished eventually, Two Rivers was starting to look beautiful and it was hers, well, hers and Taylor’s, pretty soon she was going to be living her dream, and her cupcakes were burning but she could make more cupcakes—

There’s a dead body in my basement and I lost my temper and I hit him with a frying pan many times, I was not in control--

“Keyes County Emergency services,” the police dispatcher drawled.

“There’s a dead body in my basement,” Agnes said, and then her knees gave way and she slid down the cabinet to sit hard on the floor as she tried to explain that the kid had broken into her house and had been going to hurt her dog while Rhett drooled on her lap.

“A deputy is on the way, ma’am,” the dispatcher said in the same drawl, as if dead bodies in basements were an every evening occurrence.

“Thank you.” Agnes hung up and looked at Rhett.

“I have to make cupcakes,” she said, and he looked encouraging, so she got up to get the blackened cupcakes out of the oven and clean the floor and get back to work, thinking very hard about her column and Maria’s wedding and her beautiful house and everything except the dead body in her basement and the goddamned frying pan.

SHE WROTE: Tick, tick, tick . . .

2006-12-24T14:38:00.000-05:00

Bob and I have been over at the new blog, painting and putting the last few nails in. Well, actually, Mollie's been doing most of the heavy lifting, but we've been helping. We've had the beta testers in and they've found the glitches, we've put up posts and taken them down, and now we're taking a break before we go live on the first. But we didn't forget you. Nope. The next post is our gift to you, and the one after that is our Happy New Year. If Bob remembers to put it up.

Any way, season's greetings, whatever season you're celebrating, and we hope you're staying warm and happy wherever you are.

HE WROTE: It was the best of times, it was the . . .

2006-12-14T14:27:00.000-05:00

We're coming down to the end of the year. It's cold out. I had to close the sliding glass door this morning. A dolphin just jumped out of the water and landed with a splash. Guess it was cold.

I'm working on the 2007 Blog. Starting from scratch. Using all that I've learned over the past couple of years. So it's going to be an interesting experience.

2006 lasted a very, very long time. There were many good things and some not so good things. I'm trying to recover all the blog entries from this year and put them in one document. Should make for interesting reading.

Jenny has been hacking and slashing at Agnes. I've got a good chunk of it and will print it out and go over it with the red pen over the weekend. I'm currently using the red pen on Chasing The Ghost. I'm just about done, then key in the changes, and I think it's ready to send in.

Also working on the Sanctuary proposal. We're going to have a hero and heroine who will have a lot more conflict between them than our previous characters. They're going to be very different people who are going to have to learn to work together. Yet, it will also require them to arc, well, I know at least my guy is going to have to change over the course of the books. He's going to need redemption in many ways, which is the strongest of character arcs. Of course, he won't be like the guy in A History of Violence. Not redeemable. Should make for an interesting experience in writing. My character in Chasing the Ghost, Horace Chase, has a similar path and I've really enjoyed refining his character.

Sixteen more days until the end.
Nothing but good times ahead.
We're doomed.

SHE WROTE: DLD the Paperback

2006-12-09T15:30:00.000-05:00

Here it is, the paperback cover of Don't Look Down. The closed cover is on the left, the open stepback is on the right. The only thing that's changed on the real cover is that Lucy's pants on the stepback are denim blue instead of purple and JT is wearing black boots instead of dress shoes (Bob almost had a coronary).

It jumps right off the shelf at you, much edgier than the hardcover jacket, and I'm thrilled with it. Out May 1.

And now back to cutting fifty pages--that's 12,500 words--out of Agnes before Monday. Because Jen said so, that's why.

SHE WROTE: New Blog Smell

2006-12-06T16:27:00.000-05:00

I swear, you could cut the paranoia here with a knife.

You can get into all of the CherryForums without registering EXCEPT the craft forum. That will include the HWSW forum in January. I put the test under the craft forum because I thought, duh, that's where it would go, forgetting for the moment that it was the only one you had to register for. My mistake.

You have to register for that one because that's where people actually talk about their work so that's the one place we thought people would want to feel protected. Any place else, anybody can just walk in and post. The craft topics, we actually talk about the stuff in our stories, give away all kinds of content, and while we're probably being over-protective, that's kind of the Cherry way. We want you feeling safe. But really, you could have gone on any of the other boards without registering and I should have put the HWSW test somewhere else. I just forgot you had to register for craft.

Mollie is the one who approves you. All she does is click "approve." The only thing she checks for is to make sure you're not spam. Sometimes she goes out for coffee. Occasionally she has dinner. At night she sleeps. I told her you were heading her way so she stuck closer to the computer than usual and you should have been approved fairly rapidly once the e-mail got to her, but as I said, sometimes she eats. You know kids these days.

But everything seems to have gone pretty smoothly. I no longer worry about the first week in January when we start the new year. The only other thing is to remember that this isn't where we'll be in January, but again, I think there'll be a link here on Dec. 31, and if not, you can always find the new blog through my website. And JenT is right, as always.

Also, you're going to LOVE the new blog. Everytime I go over there I giggle at how cool it is. It's like moving into a new house. It has that new car smell. Which is what Bob said when he got into my car. I said, "That's what every guy who's gotten into this car has said. What is it with guys and new car smell?" He said, "How many guys have been in this car?" Five, if you want to know, but I still want to know, what is it with guys and new car smell? Women never say that when they sit in my car.

You're going to love the new blog smell on the new site. I'm just saying.

Thank you for going over the cliff. It was very helpful.

SHE WROTE: This Is a Test

2006-12-04T13:01:00.000-05:00

We're starting to get next year's workshop blog lined up. It won't be here on Blogger, so if you have trouble finding it next year, you can always go to jennycrusie.com and click on the link there to get to it. It'll have an rss feed and also an rss for the comments which is nice. I think. And you wouldn't believe how great the interface is. It's searchable so you can find old topics with no problem and there's a table of contents . . . Mollie has done an amazing job again.

Anyway, this test is for the forums. As you know, we'll post the first craft post on Sunday and then follow-up on Thursday, and then on Saturday we'll stop the comments and move everything on that topic over to the CherryForums where the discussion can go on forever if you want. I'm just not sure how to move you there. So I put the revised syllabus up over there
and invited people to criticize it. This means you. Now I want to see how much trouble people are going to have getting there from here. I don't want to shove a bunch of lemmings off a cliff the first week in January. So I thought I'd shove just a few lemmings off a cliff the first week in December. Once again, you.

So to see if this works, I'd appreciate it if some of you would go to Cherry Forums. I posted the syllabus in Writing Craft which is under the Writing Topic but you can't see it because you have to register to get in there. Registering is easy, just click on "Register (newbies!)" (that's Mollie talking) and choose a username, give your e-mail (no salemen will call and you will not be put on a mailing list although mine is really cool) and put in a password. Once you're approved (takes about ten minutes), the Writing Craft topic miraculously appears above "Writing Life" and you click on it and then go to the HWSW Writing Topics and see if you like where I moved POV. No, it's not next week. (We ask people to register for the craft topic because people discuss their work there and it's the one place we figure should be protected.) When we put up the HWSW Discussion Board, it'll be right there under Writing Life, so you won't have any trouble finding it.

In other news, Bob and I may be MIA for awhile. We're on the last week of Agnes and it's really crunch time. It's good stuff and we're happy with it, but we're not doing much except typing and sending terse e-mails. For example, we just discovered we have characters named Franklin and Frankie. It takes a year to see this. And Wilkes and Wilson. How do we miss these things? Then there are the big fixes. But we're doing good. We'll just be gone for a couple of days.

Now go over that cliff. Thank you.

HE WROTE: In The Beginning

2006-12-02T09:10:00.000-05:00

I was thinking this morning of the first booksigning Jenny and I-- her and I-- did. It was on Long Island. Way out on Long Island. I was reminded, yes, naturally, of the Seinfeld episode where George drives his dead fiancees parents to the tip of Long Island pretending he had a house there. Anyway-- it seems like forever ago. As the Grateful Dead say: What a long strange trip it's been.

In the beginning we had a cocktail napkin with notes Jenny scribbled- she denies this, but it's true. The Kukumu Bar in Mau-- and no, they weren't serving alcohol yet. A woman who runs a B&B or a film producer. And I teach The Original Idea: have something that will send a shiver down someone's spine. Yawn. Then we had a food critic and a hit man. Which Jenny is still wrestling with on her whiteboards as you know from her web site.

Now we have a former mercenary turned head of security; and the vice president of guest relations at the most exclusive resort in the world. They aren't going to like each other much when they first meet. He'll be dirty, grungy, bloody, and just wanting a cold beer when he gets off the floatplane. She's be cool, calm, collected and sharply dressed, waiting to greet the inbound movie stars who are having a clandestine affair at the resort. Sparks will fly, mayhem will ensue. In my Hollywood pitch I'm calling it "Moonlighting, with a darker edge and more action, in a resort setting."

Back to the cocktail napkins.

HE WROTE: In The Stretch; To Do list

2006-11-28T10:24:00.000-05:00

It’s the end of November. Been a long year. I’m a bit scared to go back to reading our entries from the beginning of the year when we young and naïve and the world looked so bright and cheerful. On my lengthy ‘to do’ list besides ‘blow off the driveway’—which Jenny wisely did not make a snarky comment about yesterday—is ‘blog document’ which is where I have to take all our entries for the year and finish putting them in one document. I know it’s going to be over 200,000 words.
Right now, also on my to do list is ‘blog 2007’. I’ve got 26 entries to write and would like to have most of them done before the end of the year. So that’s a lot of work.
When I was in Chesapeake for that conference I found myself at the dinner the night before we presented actually starting to bitch about book tour. I stopped myself and apologized. I know I swore I would never do that and I did catch it.
I did the major re-write of Chasing and now am doing another run through on the screen. Then will print it out and break out the red pen. Plus, I have to do something I’ve never done before on one of my books: do a motif and symbol run through. See, even I can learn. I’ve got a list, like ‘garden’, ‘landlord’, ‘sex’ (don’t ask); ‘letter’, etc. that I have to make sure are evenly layered through the book.
FYI in January, (26th to be exact) I’m co-hosting a one day workshop in beautiful Beaufort, SC on writing as part of the Iodine Literary Conference http://www.eatgoodbread.com/iodine.html
The other presenter is agent Nadia Cornier of EZ-pass fame. I’ll talk about writing from a writer’s POV and she’ll talk about things from an agent’s POV. I’ll be right of course.
BTW, Beaufort is very pretty. The Big Chill was filmed there. Even better, I can drive up there in an hour. No flying.
Jenny wanted to rename a character in Agnes so I suggested Dorsai Tyler.
Also on the ‘to do’ list is ‘Sanctuary Proposal’, ‘rewrite Who Dares Wins’ and ‘Hannah to the vet’. The fun never stops.

SHE WROTE: Don't Panic

2006-11-25T11:06:00.000-05:00

We're going to be doing some year-end maintenance on the blog for the rest of this weekend, updating some tech stuff, getting ready for the new year, and HWSW may disappear for awhile. We're doing that on purpose. Don't shriek at Blogger. In fact, you may just want to go away until Monday if logging on and finding nothing here raises your blood pressure because that's probably what's going to happen. We're telling you now, go read a nice book. Talk to real people in person. Eat something nutritious.

See you on Monday.

HE WROTE: 2007 Blog, coffee, etc. Happy Thanksgiving

2006-11-23T10:23:00.000-05:00

Yeah, yeah, I had a blog all ready to post about the syllabus but of course, what’s-her-name posts first. Because she has little patience.

I’m trying to get Chasing The Ghost done in draft by the end of the week so I can print it out and do a line by line on it and then send it in next week. And I just got to a point where I have to write another dang sex-scene. Sigh. And no, I don’t need any help. Thank you very much. I’m very happy with the way the changes are tightening the book down.

As far as the blog in 2007. We’ll stick to topic but, of course, we’ll make snarky comments about whatever, like we did this year. Like writing the first book of our Sanctuary series. Book tour, if we do that again. Australia and New Zealand from which I fear only one of us is coming back alive. It’s going to be a very different year for us. A lot less conferences—right now all we’re doing together is Aust/NZ and the Low Country RWA retreat. That’s after doing like 22 together this year. But we will have to meet occasionally to discuss the book. I visualize something from the Cold War where they met at a bridge on a dark and foggy night and shoved the exchange prisoners across. Nah—probably in NYC at Charlie’s brownstone. Where we sit in the City That Never Sleeps and work on our laptops.

I keep thinking I have to go pack a bag for a flight—but I don’t. Weird. And nice. I think we were pretty fried. I lost a day this last week. I mean, literally lost a day. On Friday morning last week I was convinced it was Thursday. That was weird.

Oh—the coffee. Hey, I make my own. But we were leaving for the airport. And it was a joke. Geez. I used to carry instant coffee to the field in a baby bottle. Pour it in my canteen cup over a heat tab. That was apropos of nothing.

Anyway. Dorsai are characters in a Gordon Dickson series. Mercenaries. But since everyone made mock, no Dorsai Finn. I think Jim Finn has a nice ring to it. Originally the placeholder was the actor who plays House, but now I’m thinking Clive Owen. Or Moe from the Three Stooges. Decisions. Decisions.

Happy Thanksgiving.

SHE WROTE: Authors Are God-Like Beings

2006-11-20T17:07:00.000-05:00

We were evidently both typing without our glasses, discussing the names for our Sanctuary characters. My girl is Susan, in homage to Susan Sto-Helit because I adore that character. I have no idea what her last name is yet. I was going with "Bean," but I don't think it's going to work. It doesn't matter. It'll come to me.

Bob was thinking about "Spartacus" for his guy and then sanity prevailed. But the whole hero thing was good, and I mentioned Finn, the Celtic hero, and we both liked it, so Finn it was. Except I thought it was his first name and Bob thought it was his last name, so then we had to come up with a first name. And I was zapping him dozens of suggestions, and he was getting snarky so I sent him:

Dorsal.

Dorsal Finn.

Get it? Knee slapper, right?

He loved it. Seriously. He said the guy's parents were science fiction readers.

I said, "Are you out of your mind? You can't call him Dorsal Finn."

He said, "Why not. Dorsai Finn. It's classy."

It took awhile and some squinting at the monitors before we realized we were looking at two different words. But either way, it's out. I think he's come up with something else since then, but for awhile, the discussion grew heated.

Dorsal Finn. And his brothers, Pectoral, Pelvic, and little Anal. Who was always the butt of the family jokes.

Honest to God, we really have these e-mail conversations. And people ask us where we get our ideas. Divine inspiration, that's where. Yessiree.

SHE WROTE: How It's Gonna Work

2006-11-18T22:00:00.000-05:00

Sorry, didn't mean to be obscure about how the blog is going to work next year.

Every Sunday, one of us will post a short blog entry on a topic (see syllabus in previous blog entry). It will be that person's opinion on that topic. Occasionally, the other person who contributes to this blog will disagree, but she or he will have to shut up until Thursday. It will be a short entry, no more than a thousand words, on the basics of that topic. Anybody can read it. Nobody has to sign up. Nobody has to pay anything. Nobody even has to read it. It's just there.

The comment box will be there, too. If you have questions, you can ask them. If you disagree, you can do that. If you have comments ON THAT TOPIC, well, it's a comment box, gang. What you cannot do is chat. Because it's a classroom and the people who are reading the blog and then going to the comments are trying to learn more about that topic, not about your social life, fascinating though it is. 2006 was about how cute we all are (and you wouldn't believe what Bob just tried to name his character for the new book). 2007 is about the Crusie/Mayer Writing Workshop which may be the subtitle since that's the logo we're putting up. Oh, and there's going to be a T-shirt sometime around February, since Bob and I have both become entranced with the idea--you know, the T-shirt with "Nothing but good times ahead" on the front and "We're doomed" on the back--since that perfectly describes the writing experience which bounces between "I'm a genius" and "This is crap" on a hourly basis. We’ve got the same designer who did the logo working on it now, so it’ll be gorgeous.

Where was I?

Right. The comment box. Stick to the kind of comments you'd make in a relaxed but on-topic class. We're not deadly serious, you can enjoy yourself, but if you start to talk amongst yourselves, you're gonna get deleted because it's rude. You shouldn't be making people who are trying to learn something wade through your chat. That's self-centered. Yes, this is Mom, smacking you with a ruler. And don't think it's going to be the last time, either. That's why we told you to get a place of your own, remember?

Then when everybody’s had time to make a comment, the other half of the blog duo will come in on Thursday and give her or his opinion on the topic and answer questions. In theory, that’ll be it. Only two blog posts a week, the original post and the response. In actuality, I’m guessing there will be more. I often find it difficult to let Bob have the last word. Especially when he’s wrong. No, not wrong, misguided. No, not misguided, differentially crafted. No, wrong.

I'm kidding, there really isn’t a right or wrong in fiction: Whatever gets you to the story you want to tell, that’s the way to go. We’re just putting up what we think about the topics we listed. And then you can chime in. And then we’ll chime in some more. And eventually down the road, there’ll be a book on the craft of writing. And along the way in 2007, we'll all think about the craft of fiction, whether you’re a writer or a reader. Which is good.

Oh, and we’ll be talking about Agnes and Chase and You Again and Sanctuary because we’re not stupid, we’ve got books to sell and talking about them helps sell them, so if you want to know what we’re working on, this will be the place to find out.

Plus there’ll be the fights. I know some of you come for the fights. I think it’s disgusting, and we’re certainly not having them to keep you entertained, but the chances of us fighting in 2007? Very high. Especially if Bob doesn’t learn to clean out the coffee pot.

I think that pretty much answered everybody’s questions, right? You are under no obligation. Salesmen will not call. There are no hidden fees. We are not responsible for belongings left behind. No animals will be injured in the making of this blog. No guarantees expressed or implied.

If anything goes wrong, it’s Bob’s fault.

SHE WROTE: The Syllabus

2006-11-17T21:44:00.000-05:00

Bob was supposed to post this but he's cleaning his office. He found the early notes from when we started DLD and he's taking a walk down memory lane, saying things like, "It's amazing we produced a book as [expletive deleted] up as we were back then." Like we're sane now. Anyway, I didn't want to side track him by reminding him that he was supposed to post the syllabus for HWSW 2007, the How To Write Fiction Blog, so I'm posting it. This is tentative because we're still working it out, but this is the plan so far. Feel free to comment on anything you feel is missing. Syllabus is subject to change without notice, so don't get attached to it or make plans around it or anything. You know us. We're erratic.

January: The Original idea
1. Jan 1: Introduction (Jenny)
2. Jan 7: What to Write (Bob)
3. Jan 14: The Girls in the Basement (Jenny)
4. Jan 21: The One Sentence Idea (Bob)
5. Jan 28: Situational vs. Character Ideas (Bob)

February: Story Core
6. Feb: 4: Central Story Question (Jenny)
7. Feb: 11: Protagonist & Antagonist (Bob)
8. Feb 21: Goal & Motivation (Bob)
9. Feb 28: The Conflict Box (Jenny)

March: Character
10. Mar: 4: Character Types (Bob)
11. Mar 11: Character Archetypes (Bob)
12. Mar 18: Levels of Motivation (Bob)
13. Mar 25: Internal & External Goals (Jenny)

April: Character
14. Apr 1: Character Flaws (Bob)
15. Apr 8: Ficelles (Jenny)
16. Apr 15: Foils (Jenny)
17. Apr 22: Community (Jenny)
18. Apr 29: Relationships (Jenny)

May: Plot & Pacing
19. May 6: Narrative Structure (Bob)
20. May 13: Subplots (Jenny)
21. May 20: Climaxes (Bob)
22. May 27: Beginnings (Bob)

June: Pacing
23. June 3: Foreshadowing (Jenny)
24. June 10: Tightening the Story (Bob)
25. June 17: Turning Points (Jenny)
26. June 24: Exposition (Jenny)

(Semester interlude to focus on the publishing business and being an author as the authors’ new collaborative novel is released and they go on book tour and travel to Australia and New Zealand to present at conferences)

July: Business One
27. July 1: Collaborating (Bob)
28. July 8: Publishing (Jenny)
29. July 15: Bookselling (Jenny)
30. July 22: Marketing Internet (Jenny)
31. July 29: Agents (Bob)

August: Business Two/Sex & Violence
32. Aug 5: Editors (Jenny)
33. Aug 12: Being an Author (Bob)
34. Aug 19: Action Scenes: Sex (Jenny)
35. Aug 26: Action Scenes: Violence (Bob)

September: Unity
36. Sept 2: Metaphor and Motif (Jenny)
37. Sept 9: Repetition and Pattern (Jenny)
38. Sept 16: Theme (Bob)
39. Sept 23: Unity (Jenny)

October: Editing and Rewriting
40. Sept 30: Outlining (Bob)
41. Oct 7: Finding Patterns (Jenny)
42. Oct 14: Everything But the Story (Jenny)
43. Oct 21: Beta Readers (Bob)
44. Oct 28: Copy Editing (Jenny)

November: Point of View
45. Nov 4: The Camera (Bob)
46. Nov 11: First Person (Bob)
47. Nov 18: Third Limited (Jenny)
48. Nov 25: Head-hopping (Jenny)

December: Everything Else
49. Dec 2: Third Omniscient (Bob)
50. Dec 9: Setting (Jenny)
51. Dec 16: Dialogue (Bob)
52. Dec 23: Conclusion (Bob & Jenny)

I can already see some things I want to change. Who wrote this outline?

Bob? Bob?

Well, the book isn't being released until August, so we'll probably teach fiction through July and then bump publishing/promotion down into August/September. And I don't know think we want to waste a week on a "Hi, how are you?" introduction, do we? Nah.

Bob? BOB?

Maybe he found Moot.

SHE WROTE: A Few Clarifications

2006-11-15T22:15:00.000-05:00

There seem to be a few misconceptions out there, so I thought I'd clear some things up:

Sister Sites: Those are sites that Mollie and I actually control, so the only links that will be posted there are the ones that are there now except for the Unfortunate Miss Fortunes site that will go up sometime in June. The internet: We love it.

The Coffee: I don’t do mornings; Bob does. I don’t drink coffee; Bob does. Bob spends a fair amount of time at my house so he is no longer a guest. He gets up when he wants to and he makes his own coffee when he wants it, and eventually we wander into each other and work, but it’s not like he needs a hostess, which is why I figure it’s up to him to empty the coffee pot rather than leave it to me to guess if he’s made any that morning. He knows where the sink is, he used it to fill the coffeemaker with water in the first place. This week I was really in a crunch getting Agnes off to Fed Ex, so Friday at 4 AM I was printing out two copies of the ms to send to Jen and Meg while typing the handout for our seminar the next day, setting up the Fed Ex pick up, running the sweeper in his room and making sure his bathroom was clean and his bed was made, and I noticed there were a couple of pieces of paper in the wastepaper basket next to his desk from the last time he was there, and I meant to empty that but forgot, but I made sure there were bottles of water in the car so that when, after about six hours of sleep, I picked him up at the airport, he’d have water and he would be properly hydrated. I also offered to let him drive my new car, put up with some of the most obnoxious back seat driving ever, took him out for lunch, took him back to the house, and then printed out the hand-outs for the seminar we were doing the next day. The seminar went beautifully, we talked about Agnes and the new book and the essay we were going to do, everything was lovely. Then Sunday morning he said, “The coffee was still in there from the last time I was here and it was moldy.” I thought, “What the hell?” but I did not say, “Well, why didn’t you empty it before you left the last time, you goober?” or “Gee, I guess the coffee fairies must have taken the last couple of weeks off,” or even “Bite me, Bob, you can walk to the airport,” I just said, “I’m sorry.” Then he said, “And you didn’t empty the wastebasket in my room.” [Crickets here.] Yes, it was a near death moment for the Bobster, folks. The only reason he’s still with us is that he’s never been like that before. I have no idea what was wrong with him. I’m just assuming it was a short personality blip and that we will now return to our regular Bob. The fact that he then posted it on the blog, I am lumping with the rest of the Bob-had-a-senior-moment phenom. I am quite sure it won’t happen again. Quite. Sure.

The New Series: I was going to say that the stripper nun and the religious assassin idea was an idle daydream of Bob’s fertile brain and not a real project but I’m getting to like it. My girl would not be a stripper nun but she’d be some kind of undercover something who had identities as both a stripper and a nun, and I can see her getting stuck with Bob’s religious assassin on a mission--although the last religion he tried to saddle a character with was Buddhism and when I asked him what he knew about Buddhism he said, “Nothing,” so I’d have to wait and see exactly what religion he came up with there, I’m think the guy would probably be a Thuggee—and then the vampires and the mermaids kind of threw me because I thought, “Where the hell did Bob come up with mermaids?” but then I remembered we’d just been in the Norfolk airport and he’d had to sit and look at this sculpture of a half-naked mermaid for quite some time and it probably imprinted on him. The religious assassin’s vow of chastity is not a problem because my girl has more sense than to get carnally involved with a guy who’s both a killer and a monk, but she does not get frustrated. My girl knows how to take care of herself. Then the whole thing about her having sex with the mermaids is just Bob and his assassin monk wanting to watch, so they’ll have to go play somewhere else. Same thing with my girl opening the assassin’s armor like he’s a can of tuna. Sometimes I worry about Bob and his fantasies. Then I remember: Not my problem. Where was I? Oh, yeah, my girl’s not taking a vow of chastity, either. This is Bob’s idea of conflict? He can have the vicious mermaids nursing his monk back to health if he wants although it sounds like Monty Python’s Holy Grail to me. And stretching this whole who’s-chaste-and-who’s-not thing out over three books? I don’t see it. But I kind of like my undercover whoever and the nun’s habit, and Bob writing a chaste assassin, that I’d like to see, and the mermaids and the vampires could be a lot of fun, so maybe it’s not a joke. It’s not Sanctuary, either, but you never know. Maybe we’ll do a really perverse fantasy where my stripper nun gets all the action and his assassin monk never gets laid.

Because he won’t rinse out his own damn coffee pot, the bastard.

HE WROTE: Agnes, Moot, Peeling Rubber

2006-11-12T21:50:00.000-05:00

Agnes is out, to our agent and editor at least. It’ll come back. They always come back. Usually Fed-Exed. I have noticed that checks don’t get Fed-Exed. Of course we Fed-Exed it out, so that’s to be expected.

But we actually need it back. Fine-tuning things. Like the flamingos. Cerise and Hot Pink. We already figured out several things that need to be redone or added or cut. We’re adding china. Not the country, those plate thingies. BTW since toys come from China, so do spy codes. Or so Jenny writes in Hot Toy, her new paperback. Where she gets ideas like that, I have no idea. Geez.

We wrote Agnes a bit differently than DLD. We’re learning and refining the process. Shifting the balance of work to my doing more up front and in first draft and Jenny doing more on the back end and in rewrite.

Moot is not lost. She’s out in the swamp. It was that time of year. She NEEDED to go back to the swamp, ya’ know. She’d have started biting things. She’ll be back. They always come back.

Of course I don’t think we should put Moot and the flamingoes in the same room.

I’m writing this on the flight back to Savannah from Cincinnati. Jenny dropped me off in her new Prius. I didn’t know a Prius could burn rubber peeling out, but this one did the second I was out of the car. Of course, that might have had something to do with my running commentary on her driving and the near accident we had when Jenny ran a stop sign. But she’ll be back. They always come back.

We did a workshop for the OVRWA, which was really well run. I think we made sense, even when I talked about Ice Station Zebra and On The Beach. We’ve decided we need to update our examples. And, like, use OUR books as examples. Which will, of course, force everyone to BUY them. Duh. We’re slow. But we there eventually. So on the brilliant writing blog, which we’re doing next year, all the examples will be from OUR books. Psshhwww.

We watched Serenity last night because we might do an essay on it for an anthology. (It was kind of sad because the movie that was still in Jenny’s DVD player was The Ref, which was the last movie we watched together like a month ago. And there was still the same coffee in her coffee pot from the last time I was there. Good thing my Army experience prepared me for month old coffee. You just skim off the green scum on top and put it in a canteen cup and then hold a lighter under it for a minute or so. This is not to say Jenny doesn’t keep a fine house, but that she’s been, like, BUSY.) Anyway, I’d seen Serenity before so I could sit there and explain it to her, because it was kind of confusing. There were like memories inside flashbacks inside movie images that someone else was watching. It all makes sense if you really, really, study it, but I don’t think that’s what most people have in mind when you go to the movies. I liked the bad guy best of all. Naturally. He had the best character arc.

I’ve got the first season of Moonlighting in my bag to watch as research for Sanctuary, the placeholder title for our next books. It’s going to be about a stripper nun and a religious assassin who band together to fight an evil empire of Vampires and Mermaids on an alternate world much like Earth, except different. You know, different. Because it exists in our brains which are different. You know different.

Because my religious assassin has taken a vow of chastity, the stripper nun is going to start getting frustrated and start killing Vampires and having sex with the Mermaids. (That’s a Seinfeld episode btw- not the vampires or the mermaids or the nun or the assassin, but the gist). But eventually the nun will have to pierce the assassin’s armor—I mean literally. Like with a knife or the jaws of life or a can opener.

And then a band—or is it school?—of wandering troubadour Mermaids who are having a hard time booking a gig, because you know, they like have to stay in the water, have to nurse my assassin back to health while Jenny’s stripper nun suddenly finds her faith again and takes a vow of chastity just as my assassin decides after his Mermaid experience that chastity isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

So Book Two, will be the assassin trying to get into the nun’s habit. That’s what Aristotle would call a reversal. A technical writing term for things, like, you know, reversing. Those wily Greeks and their classics.

Book Three is a bit sketchy but by then the vampires are going to be looking a little hot to both nun and assassin. I mean, like really hot, since most of them are getting burned at the stake by the Mermaids, which, let me tell you, is going to be a really, really hard scene to write logistically. Jenny always comes up with these really difficult scenes, but I always figure out a way to make them work. Anyway, each of the main characters will spot a vampire they take a shine to (can you shine a vampire?) and rescue them from the stake. Then, of course, they’ll get jealous, stake the vampires and ride off into the setting sun—which sets in the east, which is what’s different about our world, which is a lot like Earth, except different. Well, that and the vampires, mermaids and some other stuff, which we’re working on.

We’ve also decided we’re going to start a new line of t-shirts. On the front it will say “Nothing But Good Times Ahead” with the CherryBomb logo, and on the back it will say “We’re Doomed” with our web site address. Or the logo again with the plunger pushed and the cherry exploding.

That’s copy-righted by us, btw.

So.

Nothing but good times ahead with our nun and assassin and vampires and mermaids.

Who are all doomed.

SHE WROTE: Where's Moot?

2006-11-10T23:52:00.000-05:00

Fed Ex picked up Agnes today for Saturday delivery to Jen, so on Monday we should be getting notes back that begin, "This needs cut" (it ended up 120K again, and no I don't know how, plus I still haven't put in the Cranky Agnes column so that's more), and tomorrow Bob and I do the Crusie-Mayer workshop for the last time in 2006--yes, the Living the Dream/Gator Tour ends tomorrow, folks, and thank God for it--so tonight he looked around the chaos that is my new unpacked office and said, "Where's Moot?"

(You may remember that back in the beginning he said I was going to lose Moot. And that about a month ago, he took custody of Moot because he said I was going to lose her.)

I said, "What do you mean, 'Where's Moot?' You have Moot."

He shook his head. "You have Moot."

And I remembered. He didn't bring her to Surrey. He didn't bring her to Chesapeake. The last time I saw her was in Cleveland when he took custody.

I said, "You lost her, didn't you?"

He said, "She might be in one of the side pockets of my other bag."

I said, "You lost Moot. How could you lose Moot?"

He said, "She went back to the swamp. She knew it was time."

We would have had a bigger fight about this but we're both so exhausted we were pretty much at the "You lost her." "No, you lost her." level, so we just gave up and watched Studio 60 on Tivo instead. Bob objected to most of the plot points saying, "Nobody would do that." When Simon told the cops it was his joint in the jacket, Bob said, "Nobody would do that." I said, "I'd do that." He said, "Yeah, you would." I said, "You lost Moot." He said, "She went back to the swamp." Then Steven Weber offered to buy the judge a boat and he said, "Nobody would do that," and I said, "You're right." Then we collated fifty handouts for the seminar and Bob went to bed and I watched The Daily Show on Tivo. I report this for anybody who thinks we have sparkling conversation when we're together.

I just want it to go on record that Moot was fine right up until the time Bob decided he should be in charge. I did not lose Moot, Bob did. Also Agnes has been turned in. And the Gator Tour ends tomorrow. With no gator. Which is not my fault.

I can't believe he lost Moot.

HE WROTE: Hot Toy

2006-11-06T09:55:00.000-05:00

I’ve clothed the women in the book. Scantily, but they’re clothed. Technically.

I was in the supermarket yesterday buying clothes for my characters, paper napkins if I remember rightly, when I looked across all the checkout counters—a long way—and saw JENNIFER CRUSIE on the top row of the paperback rack. It was the only name I could read so it was a good cover. I thought the name sounded familiar so I decided to investigate.

There was a book there called HOT TOY. With a very hot cover.

It turns out my ‘partner’ has been cheating on me and writing other stuff. Well, I was dismayed to say the least. Shocked. Aghast. Whatever. The Usual Suspects.

But I also noticed chapter one of DON’T LOOK DOWN, our He Wrote/She Wrote, Crusie/Mayer, romantic adventure, (three other speaking points, whatever) was in there. So good advertising. If you got to cheat, at least pay the piper. Or the toll. Or the troll. Whatever.

Where was I?

AGNES: we’ve had a draft done for a while but it’s not quite there. The ending needs to be tightened. It’s a little too long right now and complicated. So that’s my job today because Jenny has abandoned me to go home to the bosom of her family in Wapakakakanottoa, Ohio. Of course, I’m abandoning her tomorrow to drive to Charleston.

We talked a lot about what will follow Agnes this past weekend in Norfolk. And will talk more this upcoming weekend in Cincinnati. I spent the flights coming home sketching out ideas for my character and supporting characters. Very exciting to be doing new stuff.

We also discussed marketing and other ideas. Jenny had a pretty good idea that we’ll check out next year.

Yes. Teasers all.

Back to figuring out how to kill all these people.

SHE WROTE: And now for something completely different . . .

2006-11-02T00:35:00.000-05:00

So we’re still working on Agnes because I don’t write as fast as Bob, but my rewrites are fabulous so I’m worth the wait, and then Bob sighs and follows along behind me and cleans up any inconsistencies I’ve written into his action scenes and tries not to scream . . .

Where was I?

Right, we’re still working on Agnes but we’re there. I mean, the book is done, we’re just making it better. And this weekend we’re going to talk to the Chesapeake RWA, and if you’re there you’re going to see us probably wrangling over it still, but it’ll be over the polish because basically, it’s done. Not done enough that I can legitimately heave a sigh of relief because I can’t let go of it yet, I know I can make it better, and Bob, if you put the thumb screws to him, would also admit that we’re making it better, although frankly, he’d have been so much happier if we’d turned it in weeks ago because he hates missing a deadline more than he hates having to discuss a relationship, but even Bob will tell you that it’s better, especially since he got to put the bomb back in. Which is kind of a spoiler, so don’t tell anybody.

Speaking of spoilers, about next year. We’re both going to be working on our solo books for awhile before we begin shaping up the new collaboration, although Bob, being the workaholic he is, wants to start wargaming it next weekend (“I remember when I used to call that ‘brainstorming’,” she said with a sigh) when he’s in Cincinnati to do the last stop on the Living the Dream tour, but we have another collaboration in mind, too: He Wrote, She Wrote 2007.

(Stop screaming, CBs, it’s not going to be like this year’s, you can’t play on it, which is why we made you set up your own space.)

He Wrote, She Wrote 2007 is not going to be a journal because we figure the world has heard all it needs of our personal travails in collaborating on and promoting our novels since, frankly, the ensuing years are just going to be more of the same. It’s not like we’re going to mature. So we sat in my living room several weeks ago and decided it was time to do something Educational and Interesting instead of Whiny and Self-Involved.

Which is why the 2007 blog is going to be called He Wrote, She Wrote: How To Write Fiction. Or He Wrote, She Wrote: How to Write a Novel. Or He Wrote She Wrote: Damn It Bob, We Can’t Call It How To Write Because We’re Not Doing Non-Fiction. So we have some bugs to work out. But the plan is good. Every Sunday one of us will post on a writing topic, and then the following Thursday, the other person will post a response to that post and whatever showed up in the comments on writing. Anything in the comments that’s not on writing gets deleted. Think of it as a class. If you chat, we kick you out. That’s because it’s hard for people to scroll through chat to get the writing stuff. We’ll be taking a semester break in August to promote Agnes and go to Australia and New Zealand, and during that time we’ll talk about publishing and promoting. Then in September, it’s back home and back to writing topics again.

We have no idea how this will work. It may be that we’ll post and there’ll be crickets, but that’s okay, we’re used to amusing ourselves. Or maybe it’ll turn into a really great writing forum, and we’ll get some exciting arguments started. Bob’s already planning something on Why Prologues Are Good. That’s going to be one ugly week.

Bob will come in here and blog later with the schedule we worked out, but we’ll probably change that, too. And frankly, I think you should weigh in when he does, because my argument was that it should be all about writing, no publishing stuff, and he said no, the publishing stuff was important, and then it got heated, so if you see anything missing from the list of writing topics, feel free to point out that the missing topic is more important than something in the publishing list. Really.

Oh, and eventually, we’ll rewrite the whole thing and elaborate on the topics and make it into a book. Maybe. Who knows? We thought that about this year’s blog, too, and then it became The Blog That Ate Chicago, and we wandered off and forgot about the book idea entirely. Unless Bob is plotting something behind my back.

Going back to Agnes now. It has no prologue and never will.

SHE WROTE: About Those Rats . . .

2006-10-31T18:30:00.000-05:00

Two years ago, give or take several months, I wrote an essay called Rats With Islands: How to Survive Your Publishing Career (http://www.jennycrusie.com/essays/ratswithislands.php) and in it I said this about the collaboration:

"Last year, in the midst of a major burn-out, I started collaborating on a book with a guy. Nobody thought it was going to work because there's this impression floating around that I am controlling and opinionated (tsk) and because Conventional Wisdom says that collaborations that are not hidden behind a single pseudonym sell 60% of a book written under one of the author's solo names. (CW also says that you never tell anybody that CW says the book will only sell 60%, which pretty much tells you how tight CW and I are.) The thing was, though, this was a really good collaboration and the book it produced was not only exciting to write but great to read (IMHO). So now Reality and I are facing off, but it's okay because I have an island. On this island, people look at a book with a male and female writer listed on the cover and think, “Wow, both genders' points of view, gotta have it.” On this island, the word of mouth is terrific and the book sells 110% of what a solo author book would sell. On this island, editors all over New York read it, see the sales, and grab their assistants, saying, “Get me a male/female collaboration, stat!”

I am mentioning this because of two things:

Don't Look Down sold better in hardcover than my last book, BET ME (which did damn well, thank you).

And this appeared yesterday as a press release announcing a multi-book sale:
"Janet Evanovich and Stephen J. Cannell's new hardcover adventure series, in a major deal, in a two-book deal, to Jamie Raab at Warner, by Robert Gottlieb at Trident Media Group (NA)."

It is, of course, possible that the participants in the afore-mentioned deal, both very fine authors, have no knowledge of the Crusie-Mayer collaboration and came up with idea entirely on their own, but we did spend three weeks on the NYT list and Ms. Evanovich and I do share an editor at SMP, so I'm thinking they probably noticed us. Which means I called it on the nose two years ago. Which doesn't happen too damn often in publishing.

You may bask in my wisdom now.

(Oh, come on, after all I went through convincing people I was right about this two years ago, including, yes, BOB, I deserve a little moment of glow here.)

SHE WROTE: Large Whiteboard, Small Book

2006-10-29T20:10:00.000-05:00

So we're in the last week (we ended up with an extra week since Jen can only read one book a weekend--a baby and a toddler and she can only edit one book a weekend? slacker--and she already had the Miss Fortunes for this weekend so Agnes gets bumped to next weekend or later) and we got terrific beta reads which sent us back to work and I got all of Agnes up on the big white board (I moved my office to a different room that had walls instead of windows so I have my big white board back) and now I can see the whole thing and it looks . . .

Small.

That's the thing about a novel. It really is small. After you work for months and months, writing and rewriting and revising and plotting and planning and arcing and tearing your hair out, you look at it and the damn thing is SMALL. People can read it in an afternoon if they lay in a good supply of cookies and milk (or whatever) and don't do anything else. It takes us MONTHS to write and then you all blow through it in a day and say, "So what have you done lately?"

And yet, small as it is, I still can't get my mind wrapped around Agnes. I still don't have her completely yet, she's still not quite THERE for me yet. I've got four days to get the last click. I'll get it, she's really, really close, but . . . not yet. Shane has clicked, that bastard Bob always nails his guys in the first draft and don't get me started on how he's plot and I'm character and he gets his character right off the bat, but Agnes . . . well, she's a complicated girl. Plus I've got those flamingos to arc.

About arcing motifs. You can't just drop them into the text every so often and say, "Look, there are the flamingos." You have to progress them. They have to mean something different every to the plot every time. If you read Welcome to Temptation, you may remember the water towers. If you're reading "Hot Toy," from the Santa Baby anthology, you know what happens to the Major MacGuffin from the beginning of the story to the end. In DLD, Moot starts out as a nameless gator lurking under the bridge, waiting, Lucy imagines as a joke, to call for the wine list, and ends up the serious lethal antagonist in the last scene. Arc. You can't just say, "There's that gator again." You have to make the gator mean something to the plot and change/arc with the plot. Thus, you arc the motifs as well as the characters and the plot. The water tower changes, the Major MacGuffin changes, the flamingos change, or at least the way the people in the book regard them changes and their circumstances change. I'm not sure how much Cerise and Hot Pink mature. The whole book is only six days and I don't think flamingos are highly introspective.

So anyway, for something I can diagram on a single white board, this book is one complicated motif-arcing, motivation-challenging, sex-and-violence ridden romantic adventure. She cooks, he kills, they have great sex. The beta readers are having trouble with the motivation for Agnes's violence, and they're not sure why Bob keeps writing miscellaneous naked women into his hitman scenes, but they're all thumbs up on the sex, so that's something.

Off to motivate Agnes's meat fork and put some clothes on Bob's henchwomen. And arc those flamingos. This is the stuff they don't teach you in MFA programs.

HE WROTE: Yeah, yeah,

2006-10-27T19:13:00.000-04:00

Ok, Jenny's posted four times in a row. And I'm sure she's just waiting to tell me about it.

But I've been busy. Writing and rewriting the end of Agnes while Jenny has been catting around finishing other books.

Ref Agnes: We cut the third POV character, Xavier. Well, not the character, but his POV. So we only have either Agnes’ or Shane’s POV. He had a neat POV and I enjoyed writing him, but as Jenny pointed out, he didn’t have enough arc to support the POV.

Looks like I’ll be going with Jenny to Australia and New Zealand in August 2007. The two countries will never be the same.

We received good news on DON’T LOOK DOWN the other day. The hardcover sold pretty well, considering the collaboration was a new thing. So thank you all.

I'm teaching my retreat now. Which is very tiring because I have to think about seven different books. I've got a couple of whackos from the Atlanta area, Dianna Love Snell and Ann Oortman who tried to get me drunk tonight in the bar, but their plan failed miserably when Lisa said "We must write tonight". So. Nice try. Although I have had some of my retreat groups start drinking heavily-- in the room-- before noon. I have no clue why.

And reference the picture: Jenny said: "Look, she needs help!" And I was ready to leap into action. But, alas, it was a false alarm. Jenny messes with me all the time like that. Living The Dream. LTD. BTW: Jenny hit me again during a video interview in Ohio. Just saying.

Surrey was great. Always wonderful to see Don and Carol McQuinn. And Andy Cohen who used his blackberry or whatever it was in to check what the legal age of consent in Canada was, but I think Jenny's already posted on this. And we had the dancing chicken, which we don't want to get into.

So we're STILL rewriting Agnes. Jenny's cutting the heck out of Act One and now rewriting Act Four which needs work. And work we will.

Right. Yep. On our shield or with it.