touch the lead to the pages of your manuscript
Samples from things I haven't finished, of which there are nauseatingly many. All titles are working titles, if I even have that much. All Stones, with one exception, which is at the very end.
Some Things You Do for Money (and Some You Do for Love)
[Mick, Keith, Barbados 1989]
Keith shrugs. It's one of his all-purpose, might-be-expressive-if-he-didn't-use-it-for-every-sodding-thing shrugs. Mick knows he can do an exact imitation of the shrug, but he decides against it. There's no third party here to laugh, except the driver, who likely wouldn't dare. He folds his sunglasses neatly into his breast pocket. If Keith must style himself a Barbadian, Mick can be an Englishman right back, God knows. He's done it for years.
untitled
[Part of endless, beginningless Mick POV epic that I haven't broken down into reasonable slices yet]
"Thank you, thank you, what a great audience," he says, "and now, the moment you've been waiting for. All the way from Liverpool, the--"
"Sod off."
"The Silver Sodoffs. Yes, indeed." He drops his arms and scratches himself under his shirt. "With their number one album, A Hard Wank's Night."
Midnights
[Keith POV, the second half of 1969]
The fifteenth time someone asks if you saw it, saw the boy with the gun or the Angel with the blade, you don't repeat, "No, man, we couldn't see anything." You say, "Get the fuck out of my face," think better of it, simplify: "Get the fuck out."
Absent Friends
[Ronnie, 1988]
"Fucking kill him, I mean it, I'm gonna cut his tongue out, and--"
It could be another dream, or it could be a production of Dial M for Murder. Or, most likely, he's simply answered the phone in medias Keef. "Hello," Ronnie says, through a yawn. "Er. Don't kill anyone, pal, you don't like prison."
More than 2,000 Miles, All The Way
[Mick POV, 1966]
You wake up in North Carolina or South Carolina, in Florida, in what they call the U. S. of fucking A. The country of cowboys and guns and Buddy and Muddy, the land where the slaves came out of the fields singing and the white boys in the bars picked up the tune. Of course it doesn't live up to the imagination. It's nothing you might have imagined.
untitled
[Gram Parsons, 1972]
This chick at the Stones' office has a knockout voice, the only English chick you know who genuinely sounds like the Queen. "Hi, Gram," she says. "Keith would like you to meet the band at Villefranche-sur-Mer."
You wedge the phone against your shoulder and roll a joint. "What'd he say, exactly?"
"'Get that motherfucker to come see my Nazi house,'" she recites, all plummy and proper.
One Who Returns to the Garden
[Simon Cowell/Ryan Seacrest, Ryan POV, waiting for next year's AI to start so I'm interested again]
Phenomenon. That seems to be the watchword now for where you work, the Idol phe-NOM-e-non--you have to lift your eyebrows and make your eyes big when you say it, like, un-be-LIEVE-a-ble--and two weeks after the finale, there's still at least one major story about it on the Web every day, and at least five people to send it to you, as if you didn't know how to set up your own email alerts--
...now, how are we going to make me FINISH THESE, y'all?
Some Things You Do for Money (and Some You Do for Love)
[Mick, Keith, Barbados 1989]
Keith shrugs. It's one of his all-purpose, might-be-expressive-if-he-didn't-use-it-for-every-sodding-thing shrugs. Mick knows he can do an exact imitation of the shrug, but he decides against it. There's no third party here to laugh, except the driver, who likely wouldn't dare. He folds his sunglasses neatly into his breast pocket. If Keith must style himself a Barbadian, Mick can be an Englishman right back, God knows. He's done it for years.
untitled
[Part of endless, beginningless Mick POV epic that I haven't broken down into reasonable slices yet]
"Thank you, thank you, what a great audience," he says, "and now, the moment you've been waiting for. All the way from Liverpool, the--"
"Sod off."
"The Silver Sodoffs. Yes, indeed." He drops his arms and scratches himself under his shirt. "With their number one album, A Hard Wank's Night."
Midnights
[Keith POV, the second half of 1969]
The fifteenth time someone asks if you saw it, saw the boy with the gun or the Angel with the blade, you don't repeat, "No, man, we couldn't see anything." You say, "Get the fuck out of my face," think better of it, simplify: "Get the fuck out."
Absent Friends
[Ronnie, 1988]
"Fucking kill him, I mean it, I'm gonna cut his tongue out, and--"
It could be another dream, or it could be a production of Dial M for Murder. Or, most likely, he's simply answered the phone in medias Keef. "Hello," Ronnie says, through a yawn. "Er. Don't kill anyone, pal, you don't like prison."
More than 2,000 Miles, All The Way
[Mick POV, 1966]
You wake up in North Carolina or South Carolina, in Florida, in what they call the U. S. of fucking A. The country of cowboys and guns and Buddy and Muddy, the land where the slaves came out of the fields singing and the white boys in the bars picked up the tune. Of course it doesn't live up to the imagination. It's nothing you might have imagined.
untitled
[Gram Parsons, 1972]
This chick at the Stones' office has a knockout voice, the only English chick you know who genuinely sounds like the Queen. "Hi, Gram," she says. "Keith would like you to meet the band at Villefranche-sur-Mer."
You wedge the phone against your shoulder and roll a joint. "What'd he say, exactly?"
"'Get that motherfucker to come see my Nazi house,'" she recites, all plummy and proper.
One Who Returns to the Garden
[Simon Cowell/Ryan Seacrest, Ryan POV, waiting for next year's AI to start so I'm interested again]
Phenomenon. That seems to be the watchword now for where you work, the Idol phe-NOM-e-non--you have to lift your eyebrows and make your eyes big when you say it, like, un-be-LIEVE-a-ble--and two weeks after the finale, there's still at least one major story about it on the Web every day, and at least five people to send it to you, as if you didn't know how to set up your own email alerts--
...now, how are we going to make me FINISH THESE, y'all?