By Cam
YAFF Muse is a new weekly blog series featuring some YA Fiction Fanatics members. In this series, we’ll post original short stories created from an image meant to inspire our Muse. Hope you enjoy! And don’t forget to check out the other *YAFFers participating in this series (links below).
Photo Credit: Kozarevet's Story 2 by P. Stoev
Hey Mister
“Well, what do you think? I found her by the train tracks.”
I turned in a slow circle and anchored my hand on my hip. “You can’t be serious. This thing wouldn’t scare nobody away.” I clucked my tongue. “And the tracks? You might want to check the seat before you sit in it.” The train tracks were known for two things: Migrants and stop ‘n sticks—otherwise known as pit stops for those needing one last fix before they got too close to border patrol.
Eli hopped off the bench and reached for the pencil he always stashed behind his ear. He frowned.
I pointed by his feet. “There.”
He brushed some rocks away and picked up his No. 2, then scribbled on the notepad he kept in his back pocket. The little journal was worn and curved from all the time spent hugging his butt, but he didn’t seem to notice as his pencil bobbed up and down across the lined pages. He paused, then licked the graphite tip and continued jotting down whatever great stroke of genius he had this time. When he was done, he crooked his finger at me to stand next to him. “This is what I’m talking about,” he said. “All I need is a sheet of aluminum and some nails and I’ll be set. And Rex won’t be bothering you no more. None of them will be bothering you no more.”
I leaned in. And scratched my head. There was a mess of lines and angles and some sort of contraption between the handlebars that looked like a teepee. “Uh. Yeah. It’s nice. I’m sure Rex will be reeaaal scared when he sees that thing coming at him.”
Eli sighed and stuffed his notepad back in his pocket. “Forget it. I’ll just work on it mys—”
A car pulled into the Qwikee-Sip parking lot. The pieces of broken glass and gravel crunched and skipped across the pavement as the car parked in the spot closest to where we stood. I didn’t have to turn around to know who it was. As soon as the driver’s door opened, I smelled the smoke and heard the low twang of a country tune streaming across the speakers. The door slammed.
“Hey, Shanda. Whatcha doin’?”
I pinned my gaze to Eli’s left eye, to the still-healing outline of Rex’s class ring. If I squinted real hard, I saw the ’09 imprinted into the sandy arch of his brow. “Hey Rex. Not much. You?”
Eli bounced on his toes, his fingers playing an invisible keyboard against his thighs. To him, I mouthed, Go. Now. He shook his head. Not a big enough movement for Rex to notice, but mentally I cursed Eli for being such a stubborn little shit.
Rex’s boots ground into the rocks behind me. He was no more than four—maybe five—steps away. That meant it was already too late.
“Well, I figured I’d sit and wait for a ‘Hey Mister.’ I need some beer. Anybody been by yet?” he asked. I heard him pivot in the rocks, probably to scan the store front, then pivot back. He hocked a wad of spit over my left shoulder. It landed on the bench, just missing my school bag.
My fingers curled into my sundress. “No one’s been by yet. But it’s Friday afternoon. So only a matter of time.” I laughed. It sounded odd. Like a too-loud soprano in the church choir who sang off-key compared to everyone else. It made my ears ring.
“Good.” More gravel-crunching. More spitting. “That’s real good.”
I mouthed, Just run, I’ll distract him, to Eli, but he stood there like a Firecracker Popsicle melting all over the sidewalk, not doing anything but looking like a damn fine prize for Rex Tuskergee.
“Why don’t you take your ‘Hey Mister’ somewhere else, Rex?” Eli asked.
I groaned when I heard Rex’s boot dig into the rocks. A second later, the jagged little pebbles pelted the backs of my legs and clanged against the spokes of the bike wheels. It didn’t hurt. Probably looked worse than it felt, but Eli was all heart and no sense. He launched himself toward me. I ducked and turned just in time to see him swat at Rex’s face with his pencil. I cringed. Someone needed to teach that boy how to fight.
Rex laughed and grabbed Eli’s wrists as easy as if they were two chicken legs he’d sopped up with hot sauce and ranch, and twisted. “Boy, I will kill you.” He howled again and dropped Eli to the ground, next to his No. 2 pencil which had broken in half. Then he gave a swift kick into Eli’s belly before stepping over his writhing body. Rex held his arm out to me. “Shanda.”
I placed my hand in the crook of Rex’s elbow and stepped over Eli, who begged for me not to go. But I said, “Hush now, baby brother. I’m going to help Rex with his ‘Hey Mister’ and then we’ll work on that bike of yours. Alright?” I winked but I didn’t think Eli saw it. He was too busy cradling his hands, which jutted out from his wrist bones in weird angles.
I blinked back a tear.
And just in time, too, because a truck pulled up. A battered old thing with a rusty grille and a crooked side mirror, like it was barely holding on and needed more duct tape or tobacco cud to stick things back together. The window rolled down and a man I’d never seen before tipped his cowboy hat at me. “Miss.” He grinned and displayed an impressive lack of teeth. “You look mighty fair tonight.” He swirled his finger at me. “I like that dress you got on.” He nodded and made an indescribable, guttural noise in his throat. It made my stomach turn.
I pressed my lips into a smile and sidled up to his truck. “Hey Mister. I’m awfully thirsty tonight. Wanna buy me some beer? I’d do aannything for a six-pack…” I pressed my boobs against the side of his door, and tried to ignore the smell of Rex’s cigarette burning behind me.
© 2010 Cambria Dillon
(Author’s Note: So when I first saw this picture, I thought of The Wizard of Oz. OBVIOUSLY my story has nothing to do with The Wizard of Oz. Instead it has to do with a boy, his sister, another psycho teen (what IS it with my muse?), and the grand notion of building an aluminum teepee onto a bike as a means of self-defense. Makes perfect sense to me. 
)
*Don’t forget to check out other stories from YAFF Muse participants:
RM Gilbert
Min Buchanan
Rebekah Purdy
Jennifer Fischetto
Vanessa Barger
By Cam
YAFF Muse is a new weekly blog series featuring some YA Fiction Fanatics members. In this series, we’ll post original short stories created from an image meant to inspire our Muse. Hope you enjoy! And don’t forget to check out the other *YAFFers participating in this series (links below).
Photo Credit: Autostop by Criswey
Sweet Louise
She slipped me a note after Wayne Shaw left class with his daily nosebleed.
I need a ride after school.
When I rumpled the paper into a ball, she dropped another note onto my desk.
I’ll owe you BIG TIME.
Normally I would’ve ignored her because nothing was this easy in Chickadee, Texas. But her ass looked like two giant cupcakes smooshed in jean shorts every time she sat in front of me. So, hell yeah I wanted in on that.
* * *
The drive she promised would only take five minutes really took forty-five. My poor car, Sweet Louise, sputtered and hissed the whole way. Sweet Louise was a three-stoplight-maximum girl, a safety-is-a-luxury girl, a steady-supply-of-water-jugs-in-the-trunk kind of girl. She wasn’t built for spontaneity. She wasn’t built for a road like Chickadee Lane. Or a girl like Noxie.
* * *
The first time I ever saw Noxie Ramsey I’d been pretending to sleep in Mr. Hermill’s geometry class. Something about isosceles triangles and acute angles or—I don’t know, anything with three sides is about as queer as a graceful stripper around here, so before I knew it, I had the bill of my hat pulled down until I only saw a one-millimeter band of light. I remembered someone had just farted. It rippled through the air, like a motorboat treading on bubble wrap. The other kids giggled. Freaking immature inbreds. But they shut the hell up as soon as the door opened.
When Noxie sat in the chair in front of me, my one-millimeter band of empty space filled up with the most beautiful derriere this side of Austin. Her jeans dipped just a bit in the back. And while everyone else protracted how many degrees this angle or that angle was, I spent the rest of the class period with my chin on my forearms so I could drool over that little peek-a-boo flash of hot pink silk.
* * *
“This isn’t happening.” Noxie paced between the border of old man Seymour’s wheat field and my car. “Are you sure you can’t fix it?” she asked.
I shook the empty water jug. “Sorry to break it to you, sugar, but I don’t think Sweet Louise is making it anywhere.”
She frowned. “Do you have a cell phone? Maybe I can call a tow truck or something.”
“Who? Fat Ted? It’s Friday. He’s off,” I said, tossing the jug into my trunk.
“What about a cab?”
I laughed. “Nearest cab company’s in Sonora. You’d be looking at a good hundred bucks or so. You have that kind of cash on you?”
“9-1-1?”
“You mean Martha Plantusky? She takes Fridays off, too.”
Noxie threw her hands into the air and screamed. “What kind of crap town is this?” Little clouds of dust rose from her feet as she kicked a pebble across the dirt road.
A fly buzzed by my ear. I slammed my trunk closed and ambled toward her. “Where were you making me take you anyway?” I asked, wiping my hands on the backs of my jeans. “There’s nothing out this way.”
She rolled her eyes and leaned against the driver’s door. “Please. I wasn’t making you do anything,” she said. “You practically drooled all over my shoe when I showed up at your car.”
Fair enough.
Thick black smudges lined her eyes, making them appear small and large at the same time. She glared at me as if I were nothing more than a ride on four wheels for her. I picked up a strand of strawberry-blonde hair that had escaped the ponytail she wore high on her head. Sifting the satiny tendril between my fingers, I said, “Okaaaay. Where was I voluntarily taking you on this fine Friday afternoon?”
She swatted at my hand. “Bus stop.” No need to tell her the bus didn’t run on Fridays either. “I need to get the hell out of this place. There’s a Greyhound that comes through every other week. It’s supposed to be coming today. I checked online. Figure I can hop off in Little Rock, then make my way to the East Coast by train,” she said.
I cocked my head and squinted. “Well, it’ll probably take some time before I make it back into town and get the parts I need for my car to start up again.” I rolled the hem of her collar, right where her carotid flickered under her skin. Her breath hitched. “So why don’t you start thumbing your way toward the bus stop now? Someone’s bound to drive along and pick you up,” I said.
Noxie would’ve taken a step back, but she had nowhere to go. Trapped between me and Sweet Louise. She bit her lip and narrowed her eyes, maybe to see if I was serious. City girls always acted surprised with me. “You think someone will really drive by? No one’s passed us yet.”
“Pshaw. Of course. Chickadee’s the only road leading out of town.” Leaning closer, I lowered my voice until it was as low and smooth as Sweet Louise on fresh oil. “And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there ain’t nothing to do in town. Especially on a Friday night.”
She tucked the loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Yeah, no kidding. Everyone’s either showing off their shitty cars or tipping cows.” The muscle under my eye ticked and I thought maybe she noticed it. But then she laughed and dipped all the way through my open window—God have mercy on me—and snatched up her bag. When she whipped around, I acted real noble, like I was admiring Seymour’s wheat field. “But promise me something,” she said, getting close to my face.
Her breath smelled like oranges. It was real nice. And despite what I always told myself, I bottled it up in my memory to save for a summer drive. “Sure, Noxie. Anything.”
“Once you fix your car, do you think you could drive up the road just to make sure I’m not still stranded here?”
I exhaled. “Of course. But I don’t think you’ll have any trouble. Not in these parts.”
Noxie Ramsey smiled, raised up on her toes, and planted a kiss right on my cheek. I stood there, catching flies with my mouth wide open, as her round ass swished down Chickadee Lane, a cloud of dust hugging Every. Single. Curve.
Once she disappeared, I wiped my hand down my face and pulled out my pay-as-you-go mobile phone. Only one number was in the call log. When I heard the line pick up, I said, “Mile marker eight. ETA in two.”
The voice on the other end rattled and coughed. “Good.”
“When will I get my new engine? You said last time—”
The line went dead before I finished.
As I walked around my car to screw the distributor cap back on, I stroked Sweet Louise’s roof. “You’ll get your V8 soon, pretty baby. And then you’ll be purring like the big girls in no time.” She didn’t answer back—how could she? She was just a car—but I was real gentle when I closed her hood because she hated it when I was too rough.
After I lowered myself into the driver’s seat and turned the ignition, a high-pitched scream shrieked down Chickadee and revved across the wheat field. It lasted two-point-six seconds before falling silent.
I nuzzled the steering wheel and sighed. “Soon, my Sweet Louise. Soon.”
© 2010 Cambria Dillon
(Author’s Note: When I look at this picture, I think of cows, muscle cars, and chainsaw-wielding serial killers. (I mean, who doesn’t, right?) And for some reason, Texas seemed the perfect backdrop even though I’ve never been there. Sorry to all you Lone Star residents!)
*Don’t forget to check out other stories from YAFF Muse participants:
RM Gilbert
Rebekah Purdy
Traci Kenworth
By Cam
YAFF Muse is a new weekly blog series featuring some YA Fiction Fanatics members. In this series, we’ll post original short stories created from an image meant to inspire our Muse. Hope you enjoy! And don’t forget to check out the other *YAFFers participating in this series (links below).
Around the Streetmarket by Plamen Stoev
Black Summer Rain
“That black looks hot on your feet.” Gavin smiles at me. It’s the sort of smile he uses when he wants something.
“Not feet,” I say. “Toes.” I wiggle them to show him exactly what I mean. He plants his hands on the car’s hood on either side of me, and leans in, way in, until he fills my field of vision. “You’re going to make me spill polish all over your paint job if you don’t be careful.” Actually, it would get on the towel under my butt and not the paint job, but I give him a gentle nudge anyway.
“I don’t care,” he says, plucking the bottle from my fingers.
I’m not sure where he sets my Knocking On Death’s Door nail polish because he pushes me back until my spine kisses the curve of the hood. It was eighty-seven degrees at noon so the top of the car is warm—no, wait. Not warm. Warm is like apple pie after ten seconds in the microwave. The car is scorching and I wonder if my thin white shirt will melt off my body.
Gavin nuzzles my neck and angles his head so he can blow down my top, between my cleavage. He knows this drives me crazy.
“What do you want?” I ask, and my voice is a little breathy, a combo of the humidity and Gavin’s hard-on teasing the space between my legs.
There’s a naughty hint in his eye when he flicks his gaze at my mouth. It’s in the lazy way he blinks, like he’s trying to hypnotize me, and in the way his mouth puckers just a bit. I swallow hard because I know what he wants.
* * *
It’s one of those flash storms, the kind that catches you while you’re walking home from school or getting the mail or rolling a joint on the hood of your boyfriend’s car.
Gavin curses and grabs the rolling papers and baggie before he ducks toward his house. I laugh because summer rain is my favorite. Closing my eyes, I turn my head to the crying sky and open my mouth. Precipitation doesn’t taste as clean as it did when I was a little girl, but it’s not as bad as, say, drinking from the toilet.
My shirt is soaked through and I realize anyone who wanted to could look out their window and see my flimsy bra with the black stars as clear as if I wasn’t wearing anything.
The rain patters harder and it’s the only thing I let myself hear. Pure. Powerful. A shiatsu massage for your ear drums. When I turn, my breath hitches because Gavin’s an inch from my face. He holds an umbrella over his head, except one side dips at a forty-five-degree angle so a cascade of water pelts his shoulder. I don’t get why he bothers with it.
“Come inside,” he says. “I want to smoke before my parents get home.”
I glance at his car, then the street. When I turn back, he has a mixed expression on his face. I wink and say, “I have a better idea.”
* * *
I tell Gavin to slow down around the bend because I don’t want to burn myself. For once, he actually listens and we pass the street that takes you into the farmer’s market without any problem.
The rain has scared everyone off the road, so I place the lit joint between his lips and let my head fall back against the headrest. My eyelids flutter because it’s almost impossible to keep them open when so much smoke is trapped inside.
* * *
They say it wasn’t Gavin’s fault. That the driver coming from the opposite direction took his eyes off the road and didn’t see us in time. But that driver can’t really say anything, least of all the truth, and no one bothers to ask me.
I roll my eyes at an EMT whose face has turned a brilliant shade of albino. But she sees right through me like I’m not even there, like she doesn’t notice I’m plastered with rain. My star-spangled bra practically winks at every John, Dick, and Harry but no one gazes for more than a second. When a firefighter storms by, I wiggle my black-painted toes. But that gets zero reaction, too. And I find it odd no one asks where my shoes are or why we were driving in the first place.
If they did, I’d say, “Because summer rain is my favorite.” With drops so big they’ll wash you away.
© 2010 Cambria Dillon
(Author’s Note: The girl in the pic looks like a bit of a rebel, no? I mean, who runs barefoot in the rain? The street is just so…gross. Well, that small detail is what inspired me for this week’s story. It started with the simplest activity of painting toes and ended with a stoner-ghost. The mind works in mysterious ways!)
*Don’t forget to check out other stories from YAFF Muse participants:
RM Gilbert
Min Buchanan
Rebekah Purdy
Traci Kenworth
Vanessa Barger
Penny Randall
By Cam
No woes today. But it is 2010 and I’m off to a flying start on my YA paranormal–you know, the experimental one?–that I’ve tentatively titled, BLUR. And even though I did the plotterly thing by making an outline AND a really REALLY colorful plot board/story board/Post-It party, it seems my characters are driving this bus themselves without paying any attention to my carefully detailed plans. The nerve. I know some of it will end up on the chopping block, but it’s all part of the process…
…The Getting To Know You Process.
Like for instance, who knew my main character sweats like a pig when she gets nervous, anxious, scared, happy, or feels any emotion whatsoever? I’m going to have to arm her with plenty of underarm protection, but really–did she have to adopt such a gross quirk? Why couldn’t she just, I don’t know, twirl her hair or something? And she’s a liar. Not the kind that could do serious damage, but the kind who always fibs just a little. The kind where one teensy weensy little white lie helps more than it hurts. Or so goes her philosophy. She also likes to play musical cabinets by slamming the doors in varying rhythms to make the contents jingle in tune. And did I mention she’s blind? Yeah. My original outline had her getting her sight back after a near-deadly accident…but she’s informed me that she’s more attuned to her surroundings without her sight so she’d rather go into hiding than get it back. Hmrph. Teens.
So, yes. I’m in this wonderful, eye-opening stage fondly known as ‘Getting To Know You’. How do you get to know your characters? Do you plot only to have them rebel against your wishes? Or maybe they’re obedient from the get-go? Do you conduct character interviews ahead of time so you’re already enmeshed in their nuances? Or do you squeeze your eyes closed and have them lead–or drag–you by the hand the whole ride? How do your characters develop?
And oh yeah, I almost forgot. Nathan Bransford– agent and blogman extraordinaire–has another one of his cool, overwhelmingly popular and utterly intimidating contests on his uber popular blog. Throwing caution to the angsty teen wind, I decided to enter.
The contest is promoting his client, Jennifer Hubbard’s, debut release of her YA — THE SECRET YEAR. The blurb sounds interesting so I’m adding it to my TBR list. Basically it’s a poor-boy-meets-rich-girl-who-has-a-boyfriend story where the two have a secret affair but the girl dies and he finds her journal with unsent letters addressed to him. Interesting, yes?
The contest prompt is to write the most intriguing fictional teen diary/letter entry. Nathan is the judge and he’s offering one heck of a carrot. The deadline is today at 4pm PST (that’s 7pm EST for those of you unsure of the time conversion *wink*).
I entered a journal entry that Jamie wrote in her BrailleNote about the first day she met Peter. I read it over. And it’s crap. But it’s also a very neat writing exercise that helped tremendously in the ‘Getting To Know You’ process. I highly recommend doing this for your characters as a learning exercise. I know I’ll be including it next time!
So that’s it! Takeaways –
Check out Nathan’s blog
Enter THE SECRET YEAR Teen Diary Contest
Have a ‘Getting To Know You’ date with your main character
And Happy 2010!
PS — Here’s my oh-so-colorful Plot Board/Story Board/Post-It Party for BLUR:
Isn’t it pretty?
By Cam
It’s a week before Christmas and I must say that although I LOVE this holiday, it’s also screwing with my personal timeline for my current WIP. Here’s where I am–I’ve finished Chapter One of my spanking new YA. The same one that interrupted my NaNo and has left my sleep schedule all out of whack. I still find myself dreaming snippets of this story, waking up to write it all down lest I forget, and embracing new research methods (which have been so insightful and irreplaceable in helping me understand my protagonist).
But there’ s something I’ve recently encountered that caught me completely off-guard. Yes, this is a YA and that alone was enough to make my head spin. I love reading YA, but I had been writing paranormal romances. ROMANCES. As in, against-the-wall steam, lusty heroines, and naughty heroes with a penchant for stalking the halls of my mind with their beefed up chests and brooding eyes. Well, it just so happens that YA’s don’t really have a whole lot of, ahem, s-e-x. And what little nookie there is, is usually behind the scenes.
So imagine my second surprise when I actually start writing this thing and notice that I’m using a whole lot of I, my, and me, me, me. WHAT?! I’m writing first person? But, but…I’ve only really written in third person before because sex scenes are always more fun to write and read when you can get in the heads of both characters (in separate scenes of course). What the heck do I know about writing in first person? I don’t even like to read in first person all that much. At least not in romance novels.
I got over my initial visceral response and started doing more research. Reading research. Reading as many first-person books as I could in a two-week time period. I noticed a trend that I guess I never paid much attention to before. It seems that romances are the overwhelming leader of books written in third-person. Because most other books I picked up — literary women’s fiction, legal thrillers, cozies, commercial fiction, YA, MG — are written in first-person. I’ve read a lot outside the romance genre before so why didn’t I pick up on this tidbit before? I can only assume it’s because my goal of writing toward publication is still new (April 2009 is when I started seriously writing…although like every other writer out there, I’ve been writing since I was a kid). During that time I started pursuing this goal, I was fully engrossed in romance. I had just given birth to my daughter in September ’08 and who knows, maybe I wanted to spice up my new lifestyle change a little. (But I can positively say I’m not a newbie to romance novels since I picked up my first romance book — a Jude Deveraux sheet-wrinkler — when I was twelve.)
So here I am writing in a new genre, writing in a new POV…what more could be thrown at me? Heh, heh, heh. My muse is wicked. That little tramp. Because a third revelation comes to me after I re-read my first chapter. I had to read it again because I felt like a deer caught in headlights, like eighteen-wheeler headlights with a neon row of fog-lights thrown in for good measure.
Here’s my first sentence (DISCLAIMER: This is rough. Very, very rough. So don’t get mad if your eyes start to bleed.):
I feel the fingers of dread massage my stomach as I walk across the pebbled pavement.
Huh? Then I read further thinking this must surely be a fluke…
A piece of gravel finds its way inside my flip-flop. But before I can stoop down to wheedle it out from between my toes, it’s already gone. I cough. Noxious exhaust pollutes the air around me, thick and suffocating like icing on the cake of my impending sentence. A warning that today is really going to suck.
Like I don’t already know.
Huh? I read it again. And again. I envision plantlife shriveling, puppies dying, books burning…did I write that in present tense? Warning bells go off in my head. Danger! Danger! I read it for the hundredth time. No way. This can’t be present tense. I’ve never written in present tense before. It’s like a foreign language to me. I start to think that maybe I’m one of those religious fanatics that can all of a sudden speak Latin even though I’ve never spoken Latin before. Yes, that must be it.
But after splashing a little water on my face, I settle into my seat with a fresh cup of hot tea. I start out slow, only punching a few sentences into my laptop. Then I start pounding away, typing until my eyes are dry and my tea’s too cold to drink. And I think maybe…just maybe, I kind of like this new writing style. I like the freedom it gives me. I like feeling more connected to my character, more invested in my story. Maybe this won’t be so bad after all.
The next day I ventured into the cyber world just to make sure I wasn’t turning to the dark side or anything. And I stumbled upon a wonderful post by Timothy Hallinan, an author of thrillers, about the advantages to writing in present tense. You can read his full post here.
There’s one passage that really struck a chord with me.
“It had an immediacy I enjoyed. It was less like writing and more (do I dare to say this?) like a movie or a play. Plays and movies exist in a permanent present tense, a period of time that begins the moment the curtain lifts or the image hits the screen. The viewers enter this period of time with the characters, and live through it right beside them. (This is an interesting illusion because it holds even when we see a film for the third or fourth time.)”
I highlighted the point that made me sit up and think, Holy cow, that is sooo right on. I was a Thespian in high school (I denounce the term “theatre geek”). I once majored in Theatre in college (before I realized I didn’t want to eat tuna fish and Ramen noodles my whole life). So I know what it’s like to have that curtain part and there’ s no turning back, no assurances that this performance will go smoothly. It’s the excitement and thrill of investing yourself completely in your character, playing off the audience’s emotions, and letting it all unfold naturally.
Hallinan is right on with his assessment. Why didn’t I think of that before? Major lightbulbs went off in my head when I made this connection because in my story, I want the reader to know everything as it happens. I want the reader to sit on the edge of his or her seat and wonder if my protagonist will be okay in the end. I want the reader to feel like they’re the character, the one experiencing this story first-hand.
I want that experience for them.
And for me.
So tell me…am I alone on this vessel of first-person present tense? If you write it, what do you see are the advantages? If you don’t, have you tried it? If not, what do you see as the major disadvantages? I’d love to hear from you!
By Cam
NANO IS DONE. NANO IS DONE. NANO IS DONE. Woo-hoo!!!
And guess what? I’m a WINNER. A big fat winner, winner, chicken dinner.
My ending word count was 50,322. And only a third of them are probably really bad. The other two-thirds are quasi-bad but salvageable. And I have two beginnings in this draft because I couldn’t make up my mind on where I wanted to start the story. Plus, I have about 30K more to add before reaching a conclusion.
Another small hang-up? I had to change my original title, Fortune’s Folly, to Silverslip Society because Fortune’s Folly already exists out there in the romance world. Who would’ve thought that was such a popular title? But no hard feelings because Silverslip Society is waaaaay better. *Insert eye roll here*
Now that NaNo is over, I’m going to get started on an idea that literally woke me up from a dead sleep. I can’t say it was a dream because I really don’t remember dreaming about anything that had to do with my new idea, but all I know is I woke up at 6 a.m. and wrote the first scene on my iPhone–squinting, mind you, since it was pitch black in my room–while Hubs groaned and pulled the covers over his head. I bought new pens, new journals, and I’m ready to flesh out some of this idea. And get this–It’s a YA. I know. I was shocked, too. I guess my Muse channeled some teen angst while standing in line to see New Moon (which I did manage to see a week after its release and have to admit it was a lot better than the first).
As of today, I’ve only written a couple of scenes just to get a sense of my characters. But I already know it’s going to be told First Person POV which is a new thing for me. To say I’m nervous about it would be a major understatement.
I’ll keep you updated on how this story goes. But I’m really excited about it. Like really excited. I told my BFF about it and even pitched the whole story to my Hubs and let him read the scene I wrote that morning. I usually don’t involve Hubs in my writing because to put it simply–he just doesn’t get it. He’s a reader of all things manly, autobiographical, or manual-like. The only fiction he reads are thrillers. Romance is not his cup of tea. YA is definitely not his cup of tea. But I told him about my idea because I love what’s in my head already. Hubs surprised me and got excited about it, too.
Okay…putting on my plotter hat for now. Wish me luck on this new road!
By Cam
So my goals through the end of the year are all tied to this one WIP. A WIP that just. Won’t. Die. I’m not really a formal goals-making person (see post here), but I decided to play along anyway. Well, I think this is why my muse ran out to get some sugar and still hasn’t come back. Yet.
That’s okay. I’m not bitter. Why, you ask? Because I have a brand new shiny muse! In fact, multiple muses with a whole lot of hopping and shagging going on. I find that I’m getting hit with inspiration almost every day. And sometimes in the strangest places.
Here is a list of the thirteen things that have randomly inspired me over the past week…
- Craigslist ad – if you follow me on Twitter, then you know I got a brilliant light bulb moment from spying an ad for a drag queen singing telegram. You’ll have to stay tuned to find out what the plot bunnies do with this one.
- Fairy tales – more specifically, Beauty and the Beast meets Ugly Duckling. And yes, there’s a bunny furiously thinking up a storm in response to Samhain’s Red Hot Fairy Tales call.
- Fever Blister/Cold Sore/Lip Funk/Fill-in-the-blank – Eww. Gross. I know. With my daughter’s first birthday party last Saturday, I had a lot of stressful things to think about (30 adults + 12 kids under the age of 10 = Carmex overdose). So yeah, one of those nasty little suckers popped up on my lip and got me thinking…
- This image – Pictures say a thousand words, eh? How about 350, give or take?
- Spiderman kazoo– After loading up with various useless—but surprisingly expensive—crap for party goody bags, I was hit with yet another story tickle. Spidey meets Barbarella???
- Ballet flats – Mine stink. Like odor-eaters-stink. After dusting off a pair from last Fall season, it made me wonder…surely there’s a villain out there whose supernatural powers are based off a serious case of odorous feet. Death by feet funk has a nice ring to it, donchathink?
- Water goal – In my effort to try and drink more water, another bunny hopped by as I sat and stared at my half-empty Nalgene bottle.
- Halloween candy – Really Halloween-anything. All those ghosts, goblins, witches, vamps…what’s not to love?
- Kanye West – Yes, even Kanye “Douchebag of the Year” West can inspire those little plot bunnies who think it would be hilarious if an equally-embarrassing interruption were to happen to the protagonist during an oh-so-important life-changing event.
- Candy Apples – That bright, glossy, candy-coated apple I saw at the grocery store is the perfect signature shade for a heroine who’s as flirty as she is feisty.
- Purell – Hand sanitizer inspired one of the quirky characteristics of my heroine in my current plot-storm.
- Alec Mazo – Dancing With The Stars resident hottie. Just take away all that sequins, glitter, and that leggy wife of his.
- Gena Showalter – That lady writes faster than anyone I know (not that I actually really know her, unless you count that time or two when I stalked her throughout RWA DC). She inspires me to no end. And her books kick ass.
So there you have it. What inspired you this week?
Cambria Dillon - YA Writer
