Is Anything Real?

What’s she doing?

Looking for a heroine for her story.

Oh no!!!!!! Don’t do it Bailey!!!!

What? What’s the matter Ern?

No matter how bad it appears, don’t, don’t turn to drugs …

Ern .. not that heroine … heroine, like in a female hero.

Wouldn’t a female hero be transgendered?

*Bud shakes imaginary head*  You totally drive me nuts

No I don’t, they won’t let me have a license.

I’m ignoring the last bit of this conversation.

Yeah, like you always ignore me.

I wish.  Anyway, she’s looking for a lady for her hero to fall in love with.  She’s looking for Casey.

You mean as in “Casey at Bat”?  Kinda hard to have a book without the title character.  Even I can figure that out.

Then that makes it a major “duh”.  So, she’s clicking through pictures, trying to find …

STOP!!!  That’s her!!!

Ern, that’s a mannequin.

No, I’m sure it’s a female .. and I don’t care if she’s kin or not …

*Bud buries imaginary head in hands*  No, a mannequin .. a plastic doll that’s used to show clothes in department stores.

Oh, a model …

Close .. anyway, she’s not real

That’s what you keep telling me .. that we’re not real.  So if we’re not real and we speak to folks, and she’s not real …..

No Ern, can’t do it.  A mannequin can not be the heroine in a romance novel.

Can too .. I saw it in a movie …

Movies aren’t real …

Would you stop that!!!!  Is anything real???

Well Descartes, that is a good question …

What cart?  The lunch cart????

Say bye Ern ….

By Ern …..

A Matter of Character

I figured out what my problem is with this book.  My characters.  When Jo Davis was at chapter the other day, we talked about how her books are character driven as opposed to plot, and I agreed saying so were mine.  We both agreed that if you know your characters well enough, then the book practically writes itself as you know how your characters will react in any given situation.  Think about it.  Think about the person that you know best in your life.  Then say this person is in a traffic accident, the other person approaches the car with a menacing look on their face .. how would this person react?  How about if someone told you that they were planning a surprise party for this person – how would they react to that?  If you know someone well enough, you can pretty much figure out how they will react to anything.  And that’s the problem. I don’t know my characters that well.  Normally when I write a book, I have the characters “picked out” (i.e. magazine photos, etc.), their names and all of that chit.  This one hit me without all of that and I just started typing.  Do you know that I’m really not sure what Casey, my heroine, even looks like?  I think she’s a blue-eyed blond, but I’m not sure.  Nick, my hero, is Hugh Jackman .. that’s a given. 

The only other character I’m sure about is a secondary character named Jit, who is portrayed by Michael Jeter.

  Recently I decided on my H/H for the next book – Deacon and Halley – and I know that he’s Josh Holloway.  

But that’s pretty much it.  

I need to sit down and sketch them out.  I need to find Casey.  I need to .. yeah, I got work to do.

Casey at Bat, pt. 2

Remember - not edited!!

“You gonna sit there in the middle of the sidewalk like a damn speedbump all day?”

Nick looked up from where he had been contemplating her skinned knees. Casey stood over him, all 5’8 of her, hands fisted on hips that were a bit fuller than in youth, a frown flittering her face.

“You bit me ..”

“You laughed at me”

“Laughing did not in any way leave a mark. You have your rabbies shots?” Nick prided himself on his reflexes, but even he had to move quicker than expected to avoid the foot that shot out in his direction. Having lost what she had hoped to connect to caused Casey to overbalance again. Instinctively, he pushed to his knees and grabbed her waist to keep her from falling.

“Now now Casey, don’t want to land on that cute little butt again, do you?”

A withering glance, enough to sear his ears off, was her only response, but Nick found it interesting that she hadn’t pulled herself out of his grip. She stood there and stared down at him, hair framing her face, eyes … oh oh, Nick suddenly felt like he’d been caught in the corsairs of a snipers rifle as Casey’s eyes narrowed to slits. Slowly he pulled back, not taking his attention away from her. But slow was not the way to go this time, no a faster pace would have been much better as she reached out and latched on his ear, painfully twisting and pulling on it, tugging him up to stand.

“Shit woman.” Rubbing his ear, Nick took a couple of steps back. So did Jit for that matter. The other man still hovered however, because, you know, life was so exciting in Satchel. Nick noticed that a small crowd had begun to gather. Well, not exactly a crowd, but 10 people was a crowd by Satchel standards. If there were any such thing – standards in Satchel that is. He took special note that the town gossip, Edna Cambridge, was in the front of the group. Great, he’d just made the Satchel grapevine. Not that it mattered since as soon as he finished his business here, he was back to work, but still being the subject of gossip would not have made his mother happy. He could visualize her grave rolling now.

“You think you can just come back here, laughing, kissing and whatever and no one’s going to say anything.” Casey brushed off her shorts and looked around for her flip flop, which had landed in the gutter.

“Kissing?” Jit scratched his head and narrowed his eyes at Nick.

“What? You don’t think anybody wants to kiss me?” Nick felt a little less heat as Casey swung towards Jit.

“Hey now Casey, I, er, of course they’d want to kiss you. You’re very kissable.” Jit, ever conscious of impending work or danger, took two more steps backwards.

“You wanna kiss me Jit?”

It wasn’t often that Nick felt absolute pity for another man, but poor Jit was digging himself deeper and deeper into the shit pond.

“I, um, well … “ Jit’s face was turning a lovely tomato red as Casey towered over him. “I meant that other guys would find ya irresistible, yeah, that’s what I meant.”

“And you don’t?”

Nick was pretty sure that Wile E. Coyote felt much the same way as Jit did, as the Acme safe came down on him. Yeppers, not really a good day to die. He also noted that ol’ Edna had stepped away from the peanut gallery.

“You kissing a lot of men lately Cassandra?”

Casey jerked towards the newcomer in only what Nick could describe as a marionette gone wild, strings yanking arms and legs in staccato motions. Oh yeah, this was going to be a show.

Casey at Bat

I've been participating in this writing game - a certain number of new words a day. Doing okay - not wonderful, but good. I'm going to share a bit - BUT it is totally unedited. I'm not stopping to fix things, not reading through to make sure that spellcheck didn't catch "saw" instead of "was", not even stopping to "fill out" spots. I'm considering this the bare bones of the story. I've already decided that I need to go back and insert 2 chapters, but that's for later. Anyway, this is a bit of what I'm doing.


Now, it wasn’t that she was overly tall, okay maybe she was; but Jit was about as tall as a toadstool, and skinny to boot. And standing there in that oversized jumpsuit, its pants and sleeves rolled up at least half a block, he looked more like a scarecrow than anything else. Yet, he was Jit, always faithful, always ready to lend a hand, especially if Casey were involved. She didn’t feel guilty worth a wit for using that hound dog loyalty to her advantage, and this month she really needed advantage.

“Jit hon, I really need that car fixed. You know I promised Maisey that trip to Dallas this weekend, and I can’t let her down.” Again. In Maisey’s short life, Casey had let her down in more ways than she wanted to think about.

“Don’t worry, Mac and me’ll get this old piece of junk ready afor Friday evenin’.”
Narrowing her eyes she looked directly into his “If you don’t sleep through it. So help me Jitty, I’ll pull out whatever hair you have left on that scrawny head if you let me down.”

“You know, didn’t your momma ever tell you that you can kill more flies with honey than you can with vinegar.”

“Yeah, and a few other aphorisms too, like you can lead a whore to culture, but you can’t make her think.”

“Aphor-what?”

“Aphorisms, little sayings. That’s my word of the week.”

Jit scratched the three hairs on his chin, his face screwed up tight. “Sounds dirty to me.”

“That’s ‘cuz you have a dirty mind Jit.”

“Hmm … say, is that Nick Trevor over there?”

Casey didn’t need him to indicate what ‘there’ was, the hairs on the back of her neck had already alerted her to the fact that her bastard of a neighbor was in the vicinity. Blatantly she turned around, just in time to see Nick slip into the hardware store, the bell on the door jangling from across the street. She hadn’t seen him since Friday, when he’d disappeared quickly over the fence into his own yard. Not that she’d been looking of course, but then again …..

Stepping into the street, she nearly tumbled forward when the sole of her flip-flops curled under her, but she continued to walk doggedly towards the store, ignoring Jit’s call behind her.

“Friday, Jit. Just have the damned thing ready by Friday.” Upon reaching the other side, she hesitated, unsure of herself for the first time in a very long time.

“Shit a duck, it’s only Nick, a man. A member of the forever doomed and avoided. Get a grip.” Still, she wished she had something else on instead of her Daisy Dukes, cropped top and flip-flops. “Excuse me? He’s a moron, a degenerate, a piece of ….”

“Cassandra Sue, you talking to yourself?” Jit’s voice, so close to the middle of her back, startled her, and this time the flimsy flip-flop gave in, tumbling her gracelessly to the cracked sidewalk. Even Jit couldn’t catch her, not that he could have handled her weight if he had, no the lame-brain stood watching helplessly as Casey landed on hands and knees just as Nick stepped out of the store.

“You all right?”

Casey stared at his knees, unwilling to look up.

“You know, at any other time, that wouldn’t be a half bad position to have you in.”

This time Casey lifted her head, the hair that had earlier been pinned up tumbling into her face, obscuring her view. But she didn’t need her eyes as she blindly crouched forward and bit him on the leg, hard.

“Dammit Casey” Nick leapt back, hand clasping his leg just below his knee, hopping on the other leg for just a second before smashing to the walk beside her. There he lay, sprawled on his back and Casey felt a bit of a smirk.

“You know honey, at any other time, that wouldn’t be a half bad position to have you in.” Jit snickered behind her and Casey couldn't help but giggle. Yeah, this could work.

My Playlist

I know, blogging on a Wednesday, what is the world coming too?

I'm actually here to ask you for a few prayers. My brother David had 2 heart attacks yesterday, and is having a cathertization (spelling?) this morning. For those of you that remember, David had quadruple bypass in 2003, so his heart is definitely a big issue.

Okay, and here is the playlist for the current WIP Casey at Bat. Normally I pick only instrumental music, and music that has never had lyrics - like the soundtrack to Lord of the Rings or something. The words tend to distract me. But this time I felt the need for actual music to set the mood.

Oh, and I've written 2,156 words since Monday. WhooHoo!!!