Cooking the Hook - NEW

The last hurricane left the great fountain in Audubon Park filled with brackish water and, unaccountably, a dead three-foot long sand shark. The fish had putrefied in the heat and when the power came back on and the fountain started up, the whole east end was bathed in the gag-worthy perfume of rotting magnolias and liquefied fish. Tilla had left all the window to her apartment open to help dry the floors. She had been lucky. Home at the time of the tide-driven surge, only mere inches of dirty sewer and seawater had made its way over the top step into her place. She'd had time to get things up off the carpet. Pulled all the books from the bottom shelves to the top. Picked up all her shoes and Kip's bedding, piling everything on the dining room table. The carpet, which was shitty in the first place, was doomed, as was the couch and love seat. The frilly plaid skirts carrying the rank water up into the padding. She was sick of that old shit anyway. Kip whined behind her on th...

Like a mangy beast, the manuscript shifts, and growls as I comb the knots out of its fur, careful around the wounds. Pick fleas and crush them with my teeth. Soothe.  Smooth, but leave it wild and living, uncivilized, uncultured.

Sometime in the night, this happened. Yes. Those are my first five pages he's chewing on. It doesn't hurt. When was the last time you read a book that kept you up too late, made you laugh, made you sweat and made you say "NOW WHAT?" and made you sad when the ride was finally over? Me neither. That's what I'm writing.

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...

I've been emailing back and forth with an unofficial beta-reader. Unofficial, but she's willing to read and comment and for that, I'm deeply grateful. She's a reader, not a writer. Bonus! She was sad to report that, at the end of part one, she did not like my female main character one bit. I was glad to hear it because that was my intention. I starting thinking back over how hard it's been for me to make her as fully faceted a character as the male MC. Then something the beta wrote about when she stopped liking Anna made me realize that, because of a very violent experience, Anna is suffering from post traumatic stress disorder which was not recognized, particularly for crime vicitms, unitl the 80's, the decade after this story takes place. I did a little quick google and she has many of the long list of criteria found in the DSM . Although she spent a short time in a mental facility, the stay was adjudicated and she resisted what little treatment there wa...

My FB feed is flooded with ads where authors (or maybe it's their publishers) are giving away books for free. Nada. Nothing.  After writing several books worth over the past three years, all I can think is this.