HE WROTE: Agnes, Moot, Peeling Rubber

Agnes is out, to our agent and editor at least. It’ll come back. They always come back. Usually Fed-Exed. I have noticed that checks don’t get Fed-Exed. Of course we Fed-Exed it out, so that’s to be expected.

But we actually need it back. Fine-tuning things. Like the flamingos. Cerise and Hot Pink. We already figured out several things that need to be redone or added or cut. We’re adding china. Not the country, those plate thingies. BTW since toys come from China, so do spy codes. Or so Jenny writes in Hot Toy, her new paperback. Where she gets ideas like that, I have no idea. Geez.

We wrote Agnes a bit differently than DLD. We’re learning and refining the process. Shifting the balance of work to my doing more up front and in first draft and Jenny doing more on the back end and in rewrite.

Moot is not lost. She’s out in the swamp. It was that time of year. She NEEDED to go back to the swamp, ya’ know. She’d have started biting things. She’ll be back. They always come back.

Of course I don’t think we should put Moot and the flamingoes in the same room.

I’m writing this on the flight back to Savannah from Cincinnati. Jenny dropped me off in her new Prius. I didn’t know a Prius could burn rubber peeling out, but this one did the second I was out of the car. Of course, that might have had something to do with my running commentary on her driving and the near accident we had when Jenny ran a stop sign. But she’ll be back. They always come back.

We did a workshop for the OVRWA, which was really well run. I think we made sense, even when I talked about Ice Station Zebra and On The Beach. We’ve decided we need to update our examples. And, like, use OUR books as examples. Which will, of course, force everyone to BUY them. Duh. We’re slow. But we there eventually. So on the brilliant writing blog, which we’re doing next year, all the examples will be from OUR books. Psshhwww.

We watched Serenity last night because we might do an essay on it for an anthology. (It was kind of sad because the movie that was still in Jenny’s DVD player was The Ref, which was the last movie we watched together like a month ago. And there was still the same coffee in her coffee pot from the last time I was there. Good thing my Army experience prepared me for month old coffee. You just skim off the green scum on top and put it in a canteen cup and then hold a lighter under it for a minute or so. This is not to say Jenny doesn’t keep a fine house, but that she’s been, like, BUSY.) Anyway, I’d seen Serenity before so I could sit there and explain it to her, because it was kind of confusing. There were like memories inside flashbacks inside movie images that someone else was watching. It all makes sense if you really, really, study it, but I don’t think that’s what most people have in mind when you go to the movies. I liked the bad guy best of all. Naturally. He had the best character arc.

I’ve got the first season of Moonlighting in my bag to watch as research for Sanctuary, the placeholder title for our next books. It’s going to be about a stripper nun and a religious assassin who band together to fight an evil empire of Vampires and Mermaids on an alternate world much like Earth, except different. You know, different. Because it exists in our brains which are different. You know different.

Because my religious assassin has taken a vow of chastity, the stripper nun is going to start getting frustrated and start killing Vampires and having sex with the Mermaids. (That’s a Seinfeld episode btw- not the vampires or the mermaids or the nun or the assassin, but the gist). But eventually the nun will have to pierce the assassin’s armor—I mean literally. Like with a knife or the jaws of life or a can opener.

And then a band—or is it school?—of wandering troubadour Mermaids who are having a hard time booking a gig, because you know, they like have to stay in the water, have to nurse my assassin back to health while Jenny’s stripper nun suddenly finds her faith again and takes a vow of chastity just as my assassin decides after his Mermaid experience that chastity isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

So Book Two, will be the assassin trying to get into the nun’s habit. That’s what Aristotle would call a reversal. A technical writing term for things, like, you know, reversing. Those wily Greeks and their classics.

Book Three is a bit sketchy but by then the vampires are going to be looking a little hot to both nun and assassin. I mean, like really hot, since most of them are getting burned at the stake by the Mermaids, which, let me tell you, is going to be a really, really hard scene to write logistically. Jenny always comes up with these really difficult scenes, but I always figure out a way to make them work. Anyway, each of the main characters will spot a vampire they take a shine to (can you shine a vampire?) and rescue them from the stake. Then, of course, they’ll get jealous, stake the vampires and ride off into the setting sun—which sets in the east, which is what’s different about our world, which is a lot like Earth, except different. Well, that and the vampires, mermaids and some other stuff, which we’re working on.

We’ve also decided we’re going to start a new line of t-shirts. On the front it will say “Nothing But Good Times Ahead” with the CherryBomb logo, and on the back it will say “We’re Doomed” with our web site address. Or the logo again with the plunger pushed and the cherry exploding.

That’s copy-righted by us, btw.

So.

Nothing but good times ahead with our nun and assassin and vampires and mermaids.

Who are all doomed.