September 2005

I’ll be plugging National Novel Writing Month (known to the oldies as NaNoWriMo) pretty much until November 1. (Be afraid. Be very afraid.) For those of you who don’t know, it’s a crazy month-long novel-writing all-out sprint to 50,000 words of novelesque beautimusness, which happens in November every year. I participated last year and ended up with the first draft of my (sort of) complete romance novel manuscript. Know how many first drafts of manuscripts I’ve written since last November? Hm, none. There’s just something about the craziness and camaraderie of a shared and hard-to-reach goal that keeps me going.

So I need your help.

1. Please vote! (And thanks Emily, Bridget and Ben for voting already. So far Valleys is in the lead, with a unanimous vote, which surprises me a little bit. I kind of just included that one to round out the voting options, though I will say that the characters are probably my favorite out of the three excerpts I posted, maybe because I’ve spent the most time thinking about them.)

2. Consider being my NaNo buddy! I’m already counting on the illustrious Skye to fill this position, but I can always use more people! Your job? Do NaNo. Post your word counts. Leave “nyah nyah nyah” comments on my blog if you’re ahead of me. Allow me to leave “nyah nyah nyah” comments on your blog if I’m ahead of you (which I will be– I kick bootay). Hopefully Kate’s back in this year. She and I nyah-nyahed each other to the finish line last year. Exciting stuff.

3. Leave comments! I’ll plan on posting my novel this year, which I didn’t do last year. I’ll at least post excerpts anyway. Give me feeeeeeeedback. I crave feeeeeeeedback. Hey, that’s why I have a blog in the first place. So, in summary: feeeeeeeedback. Thanks.

End plug. For now.

So I’ve decided that in order to motivate myself for National Novel Writing Month this year (which is in November, by the way), I need people rooting for me. And the best way to get you rooting for me is for you to have a vested interest in what I’m doing. (Which is not the easiest thing to generate on my part. Heehee.) So, in order to create vested interest, you are going to help me decide what to write. I have about a bazillion stories that I’ve started and never finished, and I have decided that this year, I’m going to finish one of them. I shall not fail! So you, my adoring public (harharhar) are going to vote on which one you want done. Here are your choices, in no particular order, given with tentative titles and excerpts (oh, and, incidentally, all this stuff is, like, mine, so don’t steal it, k?):

1. Darkness

“I never meant to say goodbye,” she whispered as her fingertips brushed softly against the flesh of his cheek. He choked on all the words he wanted to say, and then he couldn’t breathe. As she faded into the darkness of the night he slowly came back to the mattress, the bundle of sheets, the dark, bare bedroom. He reached over and switched on the lamp on the floor next to him. The word mocked him from the yellow post-it note. There it was, proving it had been a dream. “Goodbye” in her steady, precise handwriting.

He pushed himself off the mattress and went to the kitchen. In the dark, he searched in vain for a glass. No, of course they would be gone too. He stuck his head in the sink and drank from the faucet. The street lamp shone in through the still-opened mini-blinds over the otherwise curtain-less window. It flickered a bit, as if it might go out, then buzzed audibly and cast a slightly sicklier orange light onto the sidewalk below.

On the way back to the bedroom, he made a pit stop. He listened to the stream of piss echo in the empty, pitch-dark bathroom. Upon hearing the deafening flush, he promptly rummaged for a shirt and shorts in the mattress-and-lamp room, and stumbled out the front door, stuffing bare feet into rotting sneakers as he made his way down the stairs, away from the ghastly, sickening, empty apartment.

As he sped away in his car, he cranked down the windows and let the night air do what it would to his hair. Really, it didn’t do much, as he hadn’t bathed in a few days and the grease held it mostly in place. But it wouldn’t have mattered if his hair had been blowing in his eyes, obstructing his view. He’d driven this road in every state of being imaginable, and never once had an accident. He drove her to the hospital that night on this road, calm as you please. He drove her home two days later, late afternoon sun glaring into his eyes. Why did he remember the sun about that drive, over everything else? The noises, the conversation, the feeling in the air, he couldn’t remember any of that. Just the sun. On a whim, he closed his eyes. He felt the slight curve to the left, and saw the light briefly change through his eyelids as he passed the gas station on the right. He slowed to a stop at the corner, listened for the sound of cars at the intersection, then took his foot off the brake and let the car roll. Just roll. He forgot to open his eyes at first when he heard the shriek and the subsequent thump on the passenger side of his car.

2. The Lake

Nate drove back to the hotel in silence. It seemed odd to hear only the growl of his truck engine after the cheerful banter between himself and Rebecca, and during lunch, between Rebecca, Amy, and Moses, who’d shown up around noon just as promised.

“Rebecca darling, you’re going to put me out of business,” Moses chided after she told him she’d already seen to the chandelier.

Rebecca grinned in response. “Except I work for you, Uncle Moses.”

“Well that makes me about the luckiest handyman on the west coast,” he beamed. Rebecca glowed under his compliment. Moses patted his full belly. “And you,” he stopped to jab a finger toward Nate, “are the luckiest hotel manager on the west coast for having Mrs. Fields here in the kitchen.” More glowing, this time from Amy’s direction.

Well satisfied with the reaction from his compliments, Moses pulled a worn pipe from his coat pocket and began to fill it from the tobacco tin in his other pocket.

“Moses,” Rebecca warned under her breath, eyes narrowed in a slow glare.

Moses stared blankly for a few moments before the light dawned. “Oh of course. I’ll just be right outside,” he said as he made his way to the back porch to smoke.

Rebecca sent a silent look of apology to Nate. “He forgets,” she explained after Moses was well out of earshot. “I have to remind him almost every day lately. But I can’t have him smoking around Jacob.”

Nate hadn’t missed the poignant sadness in her expression. He offered a smile of reassurance, which Rebecca accepted with a wobbly smile of her own.

After lunch, he’d driven Rebecca, as promised, to pick up Jacob’s lunch and then to deliver it. He watched from the truck as she ran out to the school yard to deposit the brown sack next to her son, who was sitting in a circle with a group of boys. Nate remembered similar transactions from his own childhood, only usually it was the housekeeper bringing lunch, it was in an insulated container (though he’d pleaded with his mother repeatedly just to send a brown sack like all the other boys’ mothers), and he couldn’t wait to be rid of her. Jacob actually seemed pleased to see Rebecca, and he even tolerated a quick kiss on the cheek from her and a pat on the head before she ran back to the truck. When she climbed back into the cab, a bit breathless from her run across the playground, she gave him a grin that sent a shudder through his torso.

“He likes your truck,” she informed him with a wink. “That means Mom just gained cool points. So thanks.”

Nate laughed. “I’m glad to share the cool points whenever I can. Afterall, I’ve got plenty to spare.”

Rebecca smirked. “If I need to borrow some modesty, I’ll be sure to look elsewhere.”

He’d dropped her back off at the hardware store unceremoniously, though he couldn’t help comparing her demeanor of that moment from the one he first met her with. A smile was so much more natural than a scowl on her face. She’d sent him back to the hotel with such a smile and a friendly wave.

Nate smiled to himself and couldn’t help feeling a little proud for melting the ice queen. Such tasks had always been a specialty of his. Just turn on the charm and let the thawing begin. But even as that thought crossed his mind, he knew Rebecca was different. With her, he hadn’t “turned on the charm.” He’d been himself—his bumbling, chattery, nervous, idiotic self. And she’d warmed up to him, not to some version of him in a suit that said “money” and a smile that said “prospect.” Of course she had to know he had money. She was under the almost-true assumption that he’d bought the hotel, after all. Rebecca Grant was a lot of things, but certainly not a gold digger. Nate realized with a start that she was the first woman since his teenage years he hadn’t suspected of being after his money.

“Damn it to hell,” he muttered to himself.

This was not the comfortable feeling of control that he was used to. This, he realized, was the beginnings of trust. Friendship even, and he hadn’t had a true friend in years. Ironic smile firmly in place, he gunned the engine the rest of the way up the driveway and threw the truck into park.

He shook his head, smiling stil
l, and mumbled again, “Damn it to hell.”

3. Valleys

She took another glance in the mirror and blushed a deep red at the sight of herself in a slightly too large pearly green thing with ridiculous ruffles sewn in awkward places. Her hair had been left to dangle in silly curls about her face and, worst of all, she felt as if she were naked even with all the fabric making up the dress. Indeed, she was bare from her shoulders up. The dress draped down around her bosoms in what looked to her like a most indecent fashion. She attempted to hike up the dress a bit, cursed the pinching shoes (which happened to be the same shade of appalling green), and willed her face to return to a normal hue before she stepped into the dining room.

Weston looked up from the crowding throng of ruffles and perfume surrounding him to the most beautiful sight he’d seen all night—perhaps all year. Hell, it just might have been the best thing he’d seen since—well, never mind all that. Tonight was a night to be happy, and he beamed at her as she entered the hall. She absolutely shimmered in the perfectly suited sage green dress that his mother-in-law had selected. Her sun-warmed cheeks glowed with a fresh scrub and tendrils of her soft red hair absolutely floated around her face. Add to that the fact that Wes had never seen her quite so done up or quite so revealed, and Weston was perfectly at a loss for words. The reaction surprised him, and he cleared his throat and shook his head in an effort to shake away such thoughts of her, of all people. She was practically his sister.

Weston managed to break free of the gaggle of giggling girls with a few polite excuse-me-ladies and a well-directed pat or nudge, much to their disappointment. He headed straight for her, where she stood in a corner looking miserable, trying to cover the top third of her torso with too-small hands, gloved in white satin.

Though he approached her from behind, the instant his rough hands wrapped around her slim shoulders, she knew it was him by the shivering flood that ran through her veins at his touch. Wes took her quaver as nervousness and laughed unsympathetically, then planted a friendly kiss on her cheek, which warmed to burning under his lips. She smacked his hands away from her shoulders roughly to hide her reaction.

“Don’t touch me. I hate you,” she hissed.

“That wasn’t very lady-like,” he said through a poorly hidden grin.

She shrugged. “Lady-like I’m not,” she admitted as she grabbed a flute of champagne from a passing butler’s tray, “And the only way I’m going to make it through this evening is drunk.”

With that, she swallowed the contents of the delicate glass in one huge gulp, replaced it on the stunned butler’s tray, and reached for another.

So tell me which one you like best, and if you don’t like any of them… well, tough cookies. It’s not your story. Heehee.