Halfway mark=I miss having time to draw.
(comicgenesis link to the same strip here)
No spiders or people named Mitzi are harmed in my actual NaNoWriMo story. The plot in the strip and the plot of the story aren't going to follow each other exactly, for instance this strip has more exciting plot development than my NaNoWriMo story. *weeps*
Remember how my last cut tag promised various squabbles but then had most of one scene? I remembered to put some actual squabbles here now!
So there are now four people who could be missing in a hurricane floating around on a boat (the weekend cruiser type, like I even know WTH that is, I have learned so much about cruisers off Wikipedia, Flickr and eBay it has made NaNo'08 not a total waste) and Uncle Wade's destroyed the radio and any GPS they may have had.
The boat was swaying a bit too much for Jimmy’s liking and he wandered back outside to see if Wade was still at the wheel. Unfortunately he was.
“Sir?” Jimmy called.
Wade wouldn’t look at him, “Get below, boy. You blow overboard I’m leaving you for the fish.”
Jimmy gripped the railing leading up to the covered wheelhouse and braced himself against the hard rain. He decided against pointing out that there were few fish this close to shore but then went ahead and started to ask anyway. “How far out are you planning to go?”
“As far as it takes!” Wade yelled into the wind. The boat was bouncing over the waves like a toy and Jimmy’s insides pitched and rolled right along with it. Wade was laughing maniacally as he ducked behind the wheel, and Jimmy instantly regretted having his eyes open when he heard something thundering and looked to see the heavy clouds let loose with enough lightning to illuminate the waves coming at them.
“Sir?” Jimmy began.
“Ah, shut up, kid, it’ll be better than a movie!”
“Titanic, sir?”
Wade blew a raspberry and cackled as they dipped and rolled. “You watch girly movies like that? No wonder you’re looking to run away! I mean the manly movies! You ever see that one with Clooney?”
“Sir, that was based on a true story and all those men died.”
Wade was quiet, conveniently crashing through a particularly sickening wave like he wanted to wash Jimmy away. He looked back, laughing, and saw the boy was still there. Once Jimmy finished spitting out water, he joined Wade in his laughter. “You see?” Wade screamed. “There’s no way we could have survived that!”
Jimmy stopped laughing.
I've had a lot of fun letting these two loose at each other's throats. I have no idea if it's as fun to read, but I wuv these dumbasses.
A couple of thousand words and four days later, they start having problems with the fresh water pumps and it doesn't go over very well.
Wade looked around the cabin in disgust. “Oh, hell,” he said. Pacing back and forth, he hoped it didn’t look like he was trying to find a way out of the cabin that wasn’t blocked by another person. “What am I doing? I can’t even take care of myself, how am I supposed to take care of kids? And a boat?”
“We’re okay,” Lucy tried to assure him, even though it didn’t sound as though she believed it either. “Actually, Ashley, I have to talk to you later.”
The prospect of whatever Lucy had in store for her terrified her more than dying. She leapt to her feet and yelled the first thing that came to mind. “We could take the lifeboat and look for land!”
Everyone looked at her.
“It might be better if we split up?”
Wade seemed to be considering it, but Ashley made sure he didn’t get any ideas. “Jimmy? You could probably survive longer, you come with me.”
Jimmy was reluctant but Wade was flabbergasted. “You would leave me alone with Lucy?”
“What’s wrong with me?” Lucy asked.
“You would leave Lucy alone with me?” Wade said without missing a beat. He poured on the drama and added, “I’m an old man, hasn’t she seen enough death?”
“You’re not old,” Ashley said, regretting it instantly.
Wade aimed a finger directly at his daughter’s nose. “Then why do you want to leave me to die here with all the food?”
Ashley dismissed him angrily and sat back down. “This is stupid.” Lucy appeared at her side, timidly mumbling something. “What?”
“Can I talk to you in private, please?” Lucy said again.
“Lucy, you wouldn’t leave me here with Jimmy, would you?” Wade asked. Behind him, the boy’s face drained of all color. Lowering his voice slightly, but not enough to go unheard by Jimmy, Wade insisted, “You can’t leave me with him, he’s got issues.”
“I do not!” Jimmy yelled.
Lucy was looking pale and tired, and her eyes were going out of focus as the men squabbled. She poked Ashley in the shoulder again and Ashley swatted her hand away. “What?” Ashley yelled. Clearing her throat, Lucy bent in close to the older girl’s ear and whispered something. Ashley recoiled. “No.”
“Does she want you to kill me?” Wade asked. “You’ll never see land again if you kill me, you know that, don’t you?”
Copyright ©2008 Lynda Naclerio
And that's very nearly what I'm up to now. So I'm gonna go have more fun with my boatload of bastards now.
...also if anyone happens to be named Lucy, Wade, Ashley, Jimmy, or Daryl, I swear I just pulled those names out of thin air. One time I wrote a whole story where the villian had the name of a relative and I never noticed. It made me sad when I had to change that name.
I caught up on my wordcount last night but somehow it keeps running away from me. PPPBT!
Oh hey yeah, one the snippets I posted reminds me, can I use title of movies and songs and breakfast cereal or will I potentially need to write to Kellogg's and say, "Hey, I've written a really awful book but they eat a lot of Corn Flakes in the beginning and...one makes a crack about it." Or even worse, "Hey, James Cameron, one of my characters calls another girly for having seen Titanic, is that cool with you?" I've Googled it and I've never found an answer that didn't break my brain. Or make my brain less broke.
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