Well, I just can’t not post this one too. It’s a tie, it really is.
My character, a rip-off of James Bond, is stumbling out of the sea, a little tired from his bout with a shark. Onlookers are amazed at what they’ve just witnessed. He gazes coolly at a couple of young things as he walks passed.
“Plenty more fish in the sea,” he says.
And from a song I’m working on:
I never met a girl before
Who made me such a part of her world
that when she went away
She left me floating in space
… I landed on the moon
Must have landed on the darkside
'cause I can’t see the bright side
… and I’m looking for the sea
Of tranquility.
One day I’ll dream up another couple of verses.
If we non-fiction writers are allowed a minute…this is the conclusion of my doctoral dissertation. Maybe not my best ever, but it was a fitting if clumsy end to a long, long effort.
From Lethal Lies, the novel my agent is shopping at the moment. My heroine is talking to her hacker friend on the phone while he tries to talk her through bypassing an electronic lock:
It’s a tie with this one (Wolf is her roommate):
It’s not the best, but I had a sudden EUREKA!* moment today. It’s very very rough, will be rewritten a thousand times over the next few days, but I found the last line of my book (not that it’s finished, but I know how it ends, which is super important to me).
I won’t go into the context as that would take forever, since it alludes to many other things. I will say it’s set in 1987 Alabama and it’s not a dream sequence (not exactly anyway) but a— how to say— explanation/fulfillment of events described. It will make sense and hopefully even be good with full context, but context would take many many pages.
First draft, end of my book (CASSEROLES FOR THE DEAD)-
Weokahatchee, Alabama
March 1987
Too solipsistic for anyone else to appreciate, and will need a billion revisions, but trust me: once refined and with context, I honestly think it’ll be fab-u-lous. I’m quite excited as I’ve been needing a closing to work towards.
*Yes nitpickers, I know it’s more properly ‘evreka’.
And one other, semi-related to the above, but nowhere near the end of the book (also an actual quote of the person speaking):
I’m no writer, but I was proud of this response to a friend who told me that I was always the last to know the company gossip:
“That’s because I work in the Department of Past Sins, where, draped with cobwebs, eyes bulging with fear-induced adrenalin, we club the unholy zombie remnants of past problems frantically with our shovels, trying to beat them back into their graves. Nobody much comes here to visit.”
Why do you think that? The greek letter is an upsilon.
-FrL-
ETA: On wikipedia investigation, I wonder whether you’re saying it should be a ‘v’ because upsilon can stand for a ‘v’ sound in modern Greek?
If so, I’d say that’s a mistake. The word was borrowed into English from ancient greek, not modern greek, and in any case, whatever kind of greek it was borrowed from, the English word is, standardly, spelled (and pronounced) “eureka”.
Nitpickers: do away with one, three come to the fvneral.
This is what, my third bit to post? Anyway this the final story to a series I was writing (and will probably never finish), so there’s all sorts of backstory I’m not going to bother to explain. And there’s something of a heavy Narnia influence (or maybe it’s just me…), but I feel it’s quite good anyway.
I can only barely remember who Rita is… and I’m not telling because it was stupid. Oh, and ‘hearts’ is not a typo (although there may be others).
The very modern reference to CPR is exceptionally offputting. Seems like this guy would “desperately try to share his breath” or some such.
I’m a sucker for time travel stories, would you mind PMing me, or emailing me the rest? Sounds good so far…
This is a passage from very early in Tigershark, one of my many works in progress:
*The Colt’s hammer struck the back of the slide, sending the firing pin charging forward into contact with the primer of the .45 calibre cartridge waiting in the pistol’s chamber.
Under normal circumstances, the firing pin striking the primer would cause the primer to ignite the powder contained within the cartridge’s dull brass case, at which point the heavy metal-jacketed bullet on the end would rocket down the Colt’s barrel and- assuming the shooter had a decent aim- into whatever it was they were aiming the gun at. The recoil generated by the cartridge being fired would push the slide back, and the next cartridge in the spring-loaded magazine would knock the spent brass case out of the gun as the slide fed the new round into the chamber again; all in only a fraction of a second.
Unfortunately, the powder in this particular cartridge failed to ignite; a not uncommon problem with WWII vintage ammunition that has been stored improperly.
So- instead of hearing a “Bang!” as the gun fired and feeling the recoil as the slide worked backwards and forwards, ejecting the spent cartridge and reloading a new one in the process, the shooter heard an audible “Click”- and nothing happened.
The sound was known as a “Dead Man’s Click” for a reason.*
“…And they killed Kenny again!”
I sat in stunned silence, listening to a group of Sixtysomethings describing how funny they thought that “new show” on Comedy Central was. Earlier they had been talking about mistakes in signage; "They left the “f” out, " said one of the women in the group, " and so it said “Now hiring all shits!” One of the men added his own favorite:“it was supposed to say that this gal was going to have her first public showing but instead it said pubic showing!”
At the table next to me, a middle-aged couple sat eating breakfast with their daughter, Christy, who was trying desperately to find something to talk about that her parents would be interested in, but wouldn’t inspire tales of woe from the father about how hard it was for him when he was growing up. This girl sounded intelligent and funny, and relatively wise for her age. I knew her name was Christy because her mother kept on calling her “Christy, honey”. She made the mistake of steering the conversation into dangerous territory when she brought up her latest misadventures on the yearbook staff at school. I was cheering for her all the way, but I had to wince when her father declared with all authority that in his day, they had to cut out and paste all of the photos by hand, and “you kids have the computers and you kids have it easy and you’re all on “cruise control” with the computers and the digital stuff”…I could practically hear the poor girl tucking her legs and arms and head back into her shell while she weathered this little squall of inane self-important rambling from her old man.
Off in the corner, conversation had switched from South Park to Madonna: “Well, she never actually said she wasn’t a lesbian…” I wondered if I had wandered onto the set of an MTV special.
My Eggs Benedict arrived, the eggs perfectly poached and resting on Canadian bacon atop a toasted croissant, drenched in Hollandaise sauce and partnered with perfectly cooked hash browns and toasted wheat bread…cold chocolate milk awaited me in the clear plastic cup to the right of my plate, and a bowl of fresh fruit filled a small bowl to the left. This was going to be a good breakfast…
The girl at the table next to me had successfully shifted the conversation to topics that her father couldn’t possibly have any prior experience with; her relationships with her friends. Her mother seemed to be trying to listen to her, but whenever she tried to comment on her daughter’s situation it became apparent that Christy had left her mom behind somewhere in yearbook land. Her father seemed to be fighting with his meal too much to show much interest in what Christy’s friends were planning on studying in college…
“…I didn’t see what was supposed to be so bad about Eminem, I mean he sang with Elton John, and we know he’s gay…”
My meal finished, I gave one last smile to the cute waitress that kept glancing my way and took my check up to settle my debt.
Very nice writing, indeed. Is there more?
I like the end of a poem I wrote called Migraine. Too bad I don’t like the rest of the poem nearly as much.
Outside a doe is frozen
to the weeds by the road.
She was killed by physics,
superstition’s sullen brother
idiotic, relentless and sure.
The words that woke you last night were for her,
cried out in the shape of a prayer.
(I post this in order to sucker people into commenting on my writing and the technical accuracy of this passage.)
Chapter One: Prelude
Do you remember where you were on 31 December, 1999? Perhaps you do; it was an unusual day in many ways. That evening almost everyone had plans to celebrate the new year, and (prematurely) the new millennium. Still, it was a Friday, a work day for many, and so it had aspects of a normal day. Before we look at the first decade of the new century, let’s look at an average family on this last day of 1999.
The alarm went off at the usual time, both the husband and wife worked. Staying at home to raise the children was a luxury for families striving for the good life. The morning was a hectic scramble for breakfast and preparing for the day. There was no school in session most places, the Christmas break ran until Monday.
Across the nation it was a cool and clear day; thirty-five degrees in Manhattan, chillier in Chicago, warmer in Los Angeles.?
The newspaper was on the front stoop. Almost certainly the family did not check for e mail or look at an online newspaper.? Still a well-to-do family had a computer, maybe a nice one a Pentium II chip operating at something close to 300 megahertz with 96 megabytes of RAM connecting to the internet at 56 kilobytes per second over a dial-up modem. It may have had a CD drive, but usually used a 3.5 inch floppy disc drive for most purposes. It was running the Windows 95 operating system on a ten gigabyte hard drive.
The local paper probably had a story about readiness for any disruption caused by the Year 2000 computer bug. For a couple of years, experts had fretted that computer systems around the world would suffer from not realizing the year ‘00’ followed the year ’99.’ The Federal government spent 9 billion dollars ensuring systems were ready for the rollover.
Small numbers of troops had been called out in Washington, New York and other cities to increase readiness?. Mayors promised to man their emergency command centers during the night’s celebrations.
Some experts warned against flying at midnight for fear air traffic systems might fail. Few took such warnings seriously; and not a single one of those brave souls who did fly on the last day of 1999 encountered any trouble. Most of these travelers used a paper ticket, a cardboard envelope containing a flimsy coupon for each leg of the trip. Not a single one of these flyers had to take off their shoes for a federal security guard at the airport.
The comics page almost certainly featured Peanuts; Charlie Brown had a few more weeks to run until its end in February.? The crossword was a favorite among many readers, but few had ever seen a sudoku number puzzle.
The business section featured the year-in-review of the stock market (which was closed). The Dow Jones Industrial Average stood at 11,497, having risen a bit more than 25% in the year . Even more shocking was the 85.6% increase in the NASDAQ Composite Index, the best year for any stock index since 1915. Companies mentioned would include long-standing blue chips such as Chrysler, Eastman Kodak and General Motors. Perhaps an aggressive portfolio would have included the impressive but somewhat mysterious Enron.
Nobody owned shares in the stock exchange itself of course; it was a non-profit corporation?.
Due to the robust market, the Fed, under the leadership of Alan Greenspan, was in a long period of reducing interest rates?. The Dow started the new year at 11,497 and would peak at 11,908 two weeks later.
The morning news programs were focused on both the past year and the coming millennium. Perhaps there was a clip of President Bill Clinton and the First Lady, Hilary; they may have been crowing about the federal government’s record budget surplus.
Only now, looking back, would we notice that the television screen seemed oddly square. The curved glass screen would of course have been on the front of a cabinet that extended at least as far back as it was wide. Large flat screens were still an expensive specialty item and the conversion to wider, high-definition screen had not yet begun.
The drive into work was easier than usual. Like the schoolchildren, many adults were still on vacation. On the highway, our average family would see cars familiar to our eyes. Large Sport Utility Vehicles competed with minivans for space on the highway. Toyotas and Saturns were well-represented, an Oldsmobile or Plymouth would have attracted no comment. Nobody had heard of a Scion?. Nowhere to be seen was a hybrid car, or any vehicle made in China. Gasoline was at $1.31 a gallon?, a price so low that oil-producing nations were working to reduce output?.
The car would have had a radio that had both AM and FM bands. Nobody had a satellite radio, and nobody paid a monthly radio bill. Maybe our average commuter would have listened to a cassette, or more likely a compact disc. He almost certainly did not have an iPod or any other MP3 player?.
Britney Spears was at the peak of her career with “… Baby One More Time.” Madonna was still on the charts with Beautiful Stranger. Phil Collins was singing “You’ll Be in my Heart.”? Music critics opined that 1999 was the year of the Latin Invasion, with more and more Spanish-speaking artists releasing English-language tunes.
The family car had an airbag, or even two, but lacked a navigation system?.
Our average person might have stopped at a Starbuck’s for a cup of coffee, but of course not bought a sandwich or pastry. The food at Starbuck’s was famously bad. Ideally one person brought the coffee at a coffee shop while a coworker went to McDonald’s for breakfast sandwiches.
Stopping at the supermarket for last-minute supplies, a shopper would have had his purchases scanned by a cashier. Nobody had seen a self-service checkout station yet.
On television, a little more than a week before New Year, the tenth anniversary episode of “The Simpsons” was aired. Other important new shows were “The West Wing” and the American edition of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?”? If technically savvy, perhaps our typical family would have recorded their favorite shows on videotape cassettes. They did not have a hard-drive recorder and unless they were a bit well-off did not have a DVD player, although they were a popular Christmas gift that year?.
Many American families subscribed to a cable television service. There they could see the groundbreaking mafia drama “The Sopranos.”?
Movies would be a topic of discussion at the evening’s party no doubt. The top box office draw of the year was “Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace” with a take of almost 450 million dollars. Earning only 140 million was “The Blair Witch Project”?, perhaps the most influential movie of 1999.
No matter how well-connected a person was on the last day of 1999, he certainly would not know about Wikipedia, the abuse of children by Catholic priests, the marriage of homosexual couples, the question of torture by American law-enforcement or the use of cloned meat in the food supply.
If the name Arnold Schwarzenegger was mentioned, it would have been in a discussion of actors, not politicians. Joe the plumber was a name completely unknown to the public, as was Sara Palin.
A new decade lay ahead.