Cooking the Hook - NEW

Alone the next morning with her coffee and tarot cards, Anna was adrift in the ocean of sensations and emotions she’d been steeping in since the shooting and  imagined that she glowed in the dark. Anyone who looked at her could see it. She pulled one card from the deck - the ten of Swords.  Her soul pinched her hard on the heart. The dead man lay prone under a black sky, ten swords staking him to the ground, his cloak and the earth under him bloodied. She remembered the day Tam caught her trying to duck the same card back into the deck. She was eight or nine and it had frightened her. Tam pinned the card to the kitchen table with a strong finger. “ No, no, little girl. There can’t be no light without darkness.” Her aunt bent down beside her at the table and put an arm around her. “ See this card? All them swords? All that blood? This is bad as it gets. Yes, that body is dead, but the spirit goes on, you know that. See his hand? Even dead, he blesses his killers...

  "The Killing" did not disappoint but there may just be a KILLING over the commercials!  Yesterday I put off reading an article in the NY Times about the resurrection of the show -I didn't want to run into any spoilers and I won't print any here.  The article had tasty bits about the actual writing of the story. Much to think about for my own writing. I've self-identified as what's called a "spontaneous" writer. A scene here, a character sketch there adding up to a whole pile of (very) loosely related fragments. Picture a cow shitting it's way across a broad pasture, wandering, circling and stepping  in  its old crap. It's become frustrating, pointless and messy. I won't call it a plot but I need to make a map for myself with the things I like about a good story, well told.  A  Start , a  Middle  and a  Resolution  - with plenty of wandering, woolgathering and time shifts and character exploration worked  in  along the...