quote me!
Stolen from cofax7, who stole from yahtzee63: Quote a bit of my fic at me? Find that one story of mine that you really like, and find a sentence or a paragraph that presses your prose-buttons in the right way, and comment here with it? Don't care how long or short.
In other news, the next segment of Broken Wings is with ivorygates for beta, and she and I are beginning to suspect that it is going to need, oh, another fifteen thousand words or so. Which, since it's hovering right on the border between "novella" and "novel" right now (40,000 words) means that I'm going to have to take its little bits and Lego blocks apart and rearrange and expand and rewrite and stretch out and roll around in it.
Hmpf. I've already rewritten the end of this once, dammit! Double dammit. But we both know there's at least one more Elephant In The Room in the text. (She already found one of them, and it's a huge one -- circling around both the plot and the major theme of the story -- which means that it's intertwined in just about everything, which means I have to go back through and pick apart everything and adjust both the statements I-the-author am making and the weight I'm giving them, and the character actions and the weight I'm giving them.) She's absolutely fucking right about Elephant #1, but we're both convinced there's another one lurking (since when I handed it over to her I said "help me find the elephant", and the one she found didn't make me go "oh! yes! yes, that's it!", plus she's still got that "there is something wrong with this" vibe.)
I hate it when we're both convinced there's something wrong, we just can't identify what without some heavy spelunking. (Which reminds me I have a couple of writing meta essays to write...)
Anyway, I know I'd been saying that the story was done and would be posted soon, but it looks like it'll be longer than that. As compensation, here! Have the second section as a teaser!
*
Downtown Seattle. He runs a different path every morning after his time in the gym; he's being watched, discreetly followed by big men in black cars with tinted windows. (Earpiece radio, like Secret Service. Snakes in their guts, too. No tattoos on their foreheads, but he knows better than most people what marks a sarcophagus can erase.) He's not going to let them think he's trying to make contact with anyone. He knows better than to think that the Jaffa he's seen watching him are the only ones who are observing his behavior.
Mental map. Filled out more every morning. Can't remember who first taught him the mnemonic for the downtown cross-streets, but he's known it for a while: Jesus Christ Made Seattle Under Protest. Farrow-Marshall owns three full blocks under dummy corporations, Madison to Spring, Spring to Seneca, Seneca to University. Ba'al -- Kevin Balim -- has the penthouse at Third & Spring; JD lives six floors down. Main office building is Fourth and Seneca. Balim has a car drive him around the corner every morning. JD runs it.
Today he's halfway up to the university before the cell phone in his jeans rings. "You weren't trying to go somewhere, were you, Jack?" Balim purrs in the earpiece he's been told to wear.
Ba'al thinks that calling him Jack gets on his nerves. JD lets him think it. He bends over and rests his hands on his thighs, gulps for air. He can hold the four-minute mile for a while when he's running on track or field. Dodging pedestrians and dirty looks on a city street, the stop-start-stop of waiting for stoplights and cars making right turns, is harder, so he runs twice as fast to compensate. "Yeah," he says. Protesting innocence would just raise suspicion. "Out for a run. You need a quart of milk while I'm out here?"
Balim laughs, soft and silken and malicious. "I'll take a cappuccino, actually," he says, and hangs up.
The dialtone sings in JD's ear.
He alters his trajectory, cuts three blocks over, the wrong way down a one-way street. It's a petty victory; his minders will catch up with him anyway. It's a lovely clear winter day; for once, it's not raining. Clear enough that he can just see Rainier, peeking through the buildings and the clouds on the horizon. A couple of pedestrians swear at him as he weaves his way through the crowd, dancing on light feet through the push and crush of foot traffic.
Little tiny independent coffee shop on the corner of Second and Seneca. Same one he goes to every morning. The barista doesn't do anything more than glare at him when he forgets to add the cappuccino for his notional lord and master until after he's already ordered his morning latte and the barista has started to make it. No chitchat. No smiles. He fishes a few bills out of his jeans pocket and hands them over with nothing more than a glance down at their faces, then folds one in half both lengthwise and widthwise and drops it into the tip jar as an afterthought along with the change from the morning's order.
One of the guys behind the counter -- JD doesn't know which one -- will fish it out when JD's gone. (JD entertains himself by imagining him bitching to his fellow workers about that fucking kid's daily morning habit of dropping folded, sweaty money in the tip jar, but hey, at least the kid tips.) Smooth it out on the counter. Anybody watching won't even notice his eyes flicking to the serial number of the bill. Old code, one (JD, O'Neill) has been using for decades. If the second number is odd, it means everything's going according to plan. Second number even, things are heating up but still okay. Drop a five in the jar, it means to check the next drop-box in the cycle, for important information. No tip at all means he's about to disappear and will make contact again when he's ready to surface.
The route the information will have to take to get back to O'Neill is circuitous and tortured; O'Neill won't be getting the intel for a few more days, still. Shallow information channel. Single bytes of information, a lone and lonely ping in the wilderness: present and accounted for. All hands mustered. Hi-ho, we're away to spur and saddle; into the frontier we go.
JD doesn't shower after running into the Farrow-Marshall headquarters building and running up all forty-one flights of stairs to the penthouse offices, coffee cups in both hands. The insult is always worth the discomfort of sitting in clammy clothes all morning.
*
In other news, the next segment of Broken Wings is with ivorygates for beta, and she and I are beginning to suspect that it is going to need, oh, another fifteen thousand words or so. Which, since it's hovering right on the border between "novella" and "novel" right now (40,000 words) means that I'm going to have to take its little bits and Lego blocks apart and rearrange and expand and rewrite and stretch out and roll around in it.
Hmpf. I've already rewritten the end of this once, dammit! Double dammit. But we both know there's at least one more Elephant In The Room in the text. (She already found one of them, and it's a huge one -- circling around both the plot and the major theme of the story -- which means that it's intertwined in just about everything, which means I have to go back through and pick apart everything and adjust both the statements I-the-author am making and the weight I'm giving them, and the character actions and the weight I'm giving them.) She's absolutely fucking right about Elephant #1, but we're both convinced there's another one lurking (since when I handed it over to her I said "help me find the elephant", and the one she found didn't make me go "oh! yes! yes, that's it!", plus she's still got that "there is something wrong with this" vibe.)
I hate it when we're both convinced there's something wrong, we just can't identify what without some heavy spelunking. (Which reminds me I have a couple of writing meta essays to write...)
Anyway, I know I'd been saying that the story was done and would be posted soon, but it looks like it'll be longer than that. As compensation, here! Have the second section as a teaser!
*
Downtown Seattle. He runs a different path every morning after his time in the gym; he's being watched, discreetly followed by big men in black cars with tinted windows. (Earpiece radio, like Secret Service. Snakes in their guts, too. No tattoos on their foreheads, but he knows better than most people what marks a sarcophagus can erase.) He's not going to let them think he's trying to make contact with anyone. He knows better than to think that the Jaffa he's seen watching him are the only ones who are observing his behavior.
Mental map. Filled out more every morning. Can't remember who first taught him the mnemonic for the downtown cross-streets, but he's known it for a while: Jesus Christ Made Seattle Under Protest. Farrow-Marshall owns three full blocks under dummy corporations, Madison to Spring, Spring to Seneca, Seneca to University. Ba'al -- Kevin Balim -- has the penthouse at Third & Spring; JD lives six floors down. Main office building is Fourth and Seneca. Balim has a car drive him around the corner every morning. JD runs it.
Today he's halfway up to the university before the cell phone in his jeans rings. "You weren't trying to go somewhere, were you, Jack?" Balim purrs in the earpiece he's been told to wear.
Ba'al thinks that calling him Jack gets on his nerves. JD lets him think it. He bends over and rests his hands on his thighs, gulps for air. He can hold the four-minute mile for a while when he's running on track or field. Dodging pedestrians and dirty looks on a city street, the stop-start-stop of waiting for stoplights and cars making right turns, is harder, so he runs twice as fast to compensate. "Yeah," he says. Protesting innocence would just raise suspicion. "Out for a run. You need a quart of milk while I'm out here?"
Balim laughs, soft and silken and malicious. "I'll take a cappuccino, actually," he says, and hangs up.
The dialtone sings in JD's ear.
He alters his trajectory, cuts three blocks over, the wrong way down a one-way street. It's a petty victory; his minders will catch up with him anyway. It's a lovely clear winter day; for once, it's not raining. Clear enough that he can just see Rainier, peeking through the buildings and the clouds on the horizon. A couple of pedestrians swear at him as he weaves his way through the crowd, dancing on light feet through the push and crush of foot traffic.
Little tiny independent coffee shop on the corner of Second and Seneca. Same one he goes to every morning. The barista doesn't do anything more than glare at him when he forgets to add the cappuccino for his notional lord and master until after he's already ordered his morning latte and the barista has started to make it. No chitchat. No smiles. He fishes a few bills out of his jeans pocket and hands them over with nothing more than a glance down at their faces, then folds one in half both lengthwise and widthwise and drops it into the tip jar as an afterthought along with the change from the morning's order.
One of the guys behind the counter -- JD doesn't know which one -- will fish it out when JD's gone. (JD entertains himself by imagining him bitching to his fellow workers about that fucking kid's daily morning habit of dropping folded, sweaty money in the tip jar, but hey, at least the kid tips.) Smooth it out on the counter. Anybody watching won't even notice his eyes flicking to the serial number of the bill. Old code, one (JD, O'Neill) has been using for decades. If the second number is odd, it means everything's going according to plan. Second number even, things are heating up but still okay. Drop a five in the jar, it means to check the next drop-box in the cycle, for important information. No tip at all means he's about to disappear and will make contact again when he's ready to surface.
The route the information will have to take to get back to O'Neill is circuitous and tortured; O'Neill won't be getting the intel for a few more days, still. Shallow information channel. Single bytes of information, a lone and lonely ping in the wilderness: present and accounted for. All hands mustered. Hi-ho, we're away to spur and saddle; into the frontier we go.
JD doesn't shower after running into the Farrow-Marshall headquarters building and running up all forty-one flights of stairs to the penthouse offices, coffee cups in both hands. The insult is always worth the discomfort of sitting in clammy clothes all morning.
*