The Hall of Mirrors Didn’t Slow Ulrike Down

  • by Kentleaned over my sleeping wife
  • their colored turbans
  • Right?
  • sat down lumpily
  • planted a big kiss right on Hopfrog’s mouth

Tune in next time part 81                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

The hall of mirrors didn’t slow Ulrike down as much as I’d hoped, but I had a good head start and the chaos of the midway to conceal me. I got on the carousel, riding a giant amphibian and checking on my would-be pursuer on each revolution. The clot of teenagers outside the funhouse distracted her, and by the time my warty steed, Hopfrog, brought me back around she was sashaying away with one arm around a boy and the other around a girl. They weren’t even putting up too much of a fight.

To celebrate, I swung out of the saddle and planted a big kiss right on Hopfrog’s mouth. But I was a little dizzy from the ride and sat down lumpily on the floor. It’s normal for adults to be more susceptible than kids to this kind of circular motion. Right?

Hopfrog winked at me. I smacked my numb lips and tried to stand up, but it was no use. I knew now that the frog’s kisser had been coated with real bufotoxin, by someone who knew me well enough to anticipate that I’d choose that mount, and that I’d lay one on it.

There was only one person on Earth who could predict my actions so uncannily. Her agents were easy to spot by their colored turbans, not that I had any hope of evading them now. As I blacked out I felt strong hands loading me into a crate.

I came to in a tent, a gentle ocean breeze coming in through the open flap. I leaned over my sleeping wife and tried to guess why she brought me home.

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We Only Made It a Few Hundred Yards Down the Boardwalk

  • by jenwidely presumed to be sexting constantly
  • “See ya later.”
  • like a tantalizing love machine
  • it helps to have a mirror in the room
  • a “mechanical control abnormality”

Tune in next time part 80                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

We only made it a few hundred yards down the boardwalk before a light on the dashboard started blinking, signaling a “mechanical control abnormality” and smoke poured out of both the engine compartment and the taffy bin.

“Scheiße!” cried Ulrike, frantically squeezing the brake lever.

But we did not slow. Our rocket sled hurtled out of control, klaxons blaring, like some post-apocalyptic ice cream truck. I reached around Ulrike’s unrestrained bosom and hit the button for the ejector seat. We shot upward, clinging to each other and dangling from our single parachute. Below us our taffy sled rocketed through the railing at the end of the pier and hurtled into the sea.

The massive cloud of steam generated by jet engine meeting salt water hid us from view as we made a clumsy landing on the beach. Ulrike grabbed my wrist again and dragged me into the nearby funhouse before the fog cleared.

“When hiding from one’s enemy it helps to have a mirror in the room,” she said, and shoved me into the hall of mirrors. We were suddenly surrounded by dozens of versions of ourselves, some perfect copies, others stretched and warped in hideous ways.

Ulrike gazed around at all the mirrors and breathed hotly in my ear. “I had forgotten how much like a tantalizing love machine you are.” Or at least she tried to. She actually breathed in the ear of one of my reflections, fogging up the glass.

I laughed and said, “See ya later.”

Luckily I had this particular labyrinth memorized. I closed my eyes and ran through, leaving Ulrike cursing and stumbling behind me.

Upon exiting I pushed my way through a group of teenagers. All teens are widely presumed to be sexting constantly, and these did nothing to dispel that stereotype. With any luck their overabundance of hormones would confuse Ulrike’s sensitive nose when she finally blundered through the maze, and allow me to make good my escape.

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The Best Part of Collaboration

Our mission to slenderize the Music Novel is going great. We’re about a third of the way through the manuscript and well over halfway to our goal for cuts. We haven’t set a revised target number of words to remove, just agreed that we won’t stop editing upon reaching the original objective.

It’s going well, but it isn’t going fast. It sometimes takes several looks at a page before the extra words start flashing in red. It’s not always just “yoink!” — sometimes sentences need to be restructured or synonyms need to be found.

The biggest time-sink, though, is syncing up all our changes. It never feels like it should take all that long, because few of the edits are controversial in any way. But it can take as long to convey the edits between us as it took to do them in the first place.

We could certainly speed that up. Using the export features in Scrivener allows us to swap edited nodes in seconds.

But that big source of delay is also the best thing about writing together as a team — talking to each other about the text. Walking each other through the process we used to streamline a paragraph or the rationale for cutting one altogether. Even though few of those conversations involve any disagreement, it’s good to be able to talk shop with a fellow writer.

So, we won’t be utilizing all available technologies to bolster our productivity metrics. We’d give up too much in the process.

While Ulrike Steered Me

  • by Kentapplied the torch
  • with the master of aesthetic curiosity
  • at his silken-voiced finest
  • pull in your boobs
  • gripped the handles and released the brake

Tune in next time part 79                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

While Ulrike steered me up the boardwalk, my mind scrambled for a way out of this. I wondered if my uniform was real or just a costume. Did I have handcuffs and a gun? Or tearaway trousers and a thong?

We passed a troupe of street performers just as the fire eater applied the torch to his breath and unleashed a swirling trail of flame. Its heat demonstrated how sheer and flimsy my uniform was. Ulrike brought us to a stop to admire the jugglers and acrobats, whose sign proclaimed them the Aesthetic Curios. As they cavorted, with the master of aesthetic curiosity narrating their every feat like some hybrid ringmaster/auctioneer at his silken-voiced best, I devised a scheme to take advantage of Ulrike’s distraction. In a thong, doing cartwheels, I could disappear among the Aesthetic Curios.

Sidling back a step, I yanked on the breakaway uniform.

But it wasn’t breakaway. The fabric was thin but tough. I yelped in pain and surprise, trying to undo the self-inflicted wedgie.

Ulrike spun around and said, “You fool! Now they know!” She snagged my hand again and dashed to the nearest unmanned taffy cart. Leaping onto it, she initiated its mechanical transformation into a low-slung ground sled. It wasn’t designed for two riders, leaving each of us dangling partially over the sides.

The sled’s jet engine emitted a deafening whine.

“Pull in your boobs,” I advised, as she gripped the handles and released the brake.

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The Growl Came From a Human Throat

  • by jenAnais Nin isn’t enough of a clue
  • as men do who are stalking man
  • “One cannot always be love-making.”
  • is engaged to be married
  • I don’t like to be alone

Tune in next time part 78                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

The growl came from a human throat, which made it much more intimidating. Animals can be reasoned with.

Suddenly hands clapped over my eyes and my feral companion said, “Guess who!” in a familiar, smoky female voice. “I’ll give one hint,” she purred with a German accent. “I am not Anais Nin.”

I had her identity narrowed down to two. Depending on which of the German sisters she was, my night was about to get very lucky or very unlucky. “Merely eliminating Anais Nin isn’t enough of a clue,” I said. “You have to give me more to go on.”

Her icy fingertips massaged my eyeballs through the lids. “I can tell you apart from Jason in the same way as men do who are stalking man — through your scent and through the shape of your corneas.”

“Ulrike,” I breathed.

“Of course it is me!” She released her grip on my face and bounded over the back of the bench to sit beside me. “I have missed you darling,” she said.

“I thought you were keeping yourself busy with John,” I said.

“One cannot always be love-making.” She eyed my crotch and I felt that familiar mix of fear and desire that I always felt around Ulrike. “And anyway, John is engaged to be married to Tessa now, and I don’t like to be alone.”

She took me by the hand and led me toward my doom.

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Sweeping Up the Verbal Dust Bunnies

r-avatarRevisions of the Music Novel have reached the next stage, which is the always painful make-the-damn-thing-shorter stage. Jen embarked on that task while Kent finished up a few straggling critique comments, and now we’re both on the hunt for excess verbiage.

We won’t belabor the challenges of killing our darlings, or debate optimum word counts. The book will be better when it’s shorter, period. A concise telling produces a more concentrated experience.

So, much as we’d love to make excuses and not make cuts, this is where we are.

Jen’s head start on the winnowing meant we had a choice about where Kent would jump in. There being two of us, this is potentially a chance to get something done in half the time by divvying it up. However, so far we’re not doing it that way. Kent started at the top, hitting stuff Jen had already been through.

Initially we assumed this would be a sort of gut-check only, but Kent was able to find an appreciable number of extra words still in the first chapter so we’re going to keep moving in this manner until we run into a reason not to. Although unexpected, the outcome does make sense. The first editor takes care of the bulky stuff, exposing the next layer for her partner. Like moving the sofa out of the way to sweep behind it.

Efficient teamwork isn’t always about maximizing bandwidth. Sometimes an approach that looks redundant at a glance can turn out to produce much stronger results and save you time in the long run.

I Wished Tessa Had Taught Me

  • by Kentlike an oversized elevator
  • my newly acquired Martian tongue
  • really vivid part of my memory
  • “I want to touch her, too!”
  • Sniffed again.

Tune in next time part 77                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

I wished Tessa had taught me her ninja stealth, so I could roam the train unnoticed and track down my contorting seductress. Oh well. I wasn’t sure what I meant to do if I found her anyway. I spent the remainder of the journey in the compartment, taking my time about putting on Svetlana’s leotard. It gave both the material and my inhibitions time to relax.

At the station, my appearance drew much attention. Too much. I covered my overly sleek attire with a trench coat snatched off an unattended pile of baggage, and dashed out to the street.

Fortunately, the train station borders the city’s arts quarter, where I was able to blend in. Another man in a sequined leotard three sizes too small approached up the sidewalk. He paused when he reached me, saying, “That coat fits you like an oversized elevator, and without it you’d be an oversexed escalator. Come upstairs and I’ll show you my newly acquired Martian tongue. It’s not a fake, boy, don’t even think that. I brought it home from my last trek to the red planet. You know it’s nothing like that silly movie? It has a lot of dust, though, that’s a really vivid part of my memory. Maybe you could come along next time? You look like the adventuresome, spacey type.”

I probably should have declined the invitation, but I hoped to obtain less conspicuous clothing. Seemed like a long shot, but I was desperate.

The next several hours are lost to me, except for my own repeated yells of, “I want to touch her, too!” I woke up on a bench, back at the boardwalk, in the middle of the night. In place of Svetlana’s leotard, I wore a police uniform. I blinked. Behind my bench, someone or something sniffed. Sniffed again. And growled.

 

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“A Snake is Not a Rodent.”

  • by jencreate an extraordinary hybrid
  • your love was just a game
  • he wasn’t exactly suffering
  • sprang vigorously out of bed
  • I’m going to remember tonight forever

Tune in next time part 76                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

“A snake is not a rodent,” I explained. “And you can keep it.”

The woman blinked her vacant eyes.

“Civilization!” Svetlana cried from the driver’s seat. She pulled the van into a parking lot and tossed the keys to the prisoner. Looking at me she said, “If we hurry we can catch the next train.”

She pulled me out of the van and we sprinted into the train station. We only had enough money for one ticket to the city, so Svetlana tested her contortionist skills to the limit by fitting herself inside my clothes with me. When she did this with Heinrich, they had used a harness. I had no such contraption, which meant my limber passenger had to find… other handholds.

By the time we reached our sleeping compartment, sleep was the furthest thing from our minds. We stripped and wrestled each other into bed, then spent several hours relieving our frustrations, if you know what I mean.

“I’m going to remember tonight forever,” Svetlana whispered just before she sprang vigorously out of bed. “It is the night I became pregnant!”

“Wait, what?” I said. “You said you were on the pill!”

“I lied. But it was for a good cause.” She pointed to my penis and said, “And anyway he wasn’t exactly suffering.”

“That’s hardly the point!”

“I know your love was just a game, but it’s a game I have now won. Combining your seed with my own genetics will create an extraordinary hybrid! Half contortionist, half whatever you are.”

I was in shock. Could she possibly know my secret?

Without another word she dressed in my clothes, leaving me with only her skimpy leotard, and fled the compartment.

 

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That Barely Hurt A Bit

r-avatarWe have a large pile of marked-up pages from taking the Music Novel through our critique group, and we mentioned recently that the process of digesting all that input is something we find cumbersome. Happily, it turned out that a fairly simple workflow adjustment made things go very smoothly for us this time, so all of that valuable input is now added to our Scrivener project as comments. We’ve even made significant headway on addressing it.

What was this radical innovation in critique-copy processing? We ran it in parallel rather than in series. Instead of picking up a single review copy and going all the way through it, then doing that with the next one on the pile, and so on, we grabbed all the copies of a chapter and spread them on the ottoman at once (where we had room to turn all their pages — the auxiliary writing cave has a big ottoman). Not only was it more efficient mechanically, but it allowed us to compare the notes immediately when different readers commented about the same thing.

If, on some future occasion, we devise a more interesting solution to this issue you’ll certainly read about it here. But for now, simple is best.

“Poor Harold?”

  • by KentHe may not kill you
  • But unlike Kim Kardashian
  • refused to give up to him a tender young rodent she had captured
  • a magic thingamajig
  • make up for it by bribery

Tune in next time part 75                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

“Poor Harold?” the vinegar woman hooted. Her rosy face and rolling gait spoke of many pints, most of them not vinegar.

After almost a minute of wheezing, hacking laughter, she finally drew herself upright and caught her breath. “Oh, he’s poor alright. He’s a poor Harold, he’s a poor driver, he’s got poor hygiene, and oh yes, he’s got no money. Get it, he’s POOR!” The exclamation’s attendant blast of her awful breath made me wish the wind would shift and engulf me in the smoke from the cooking fire. That only smelled like someone was cleaning out a coffee pot with a goat.

“You run off and tell the ‘thorridies whatsoever you choose,” the vinegar woman resumed. “Harold’s fine. I expect him back in a tick. He may not kill you on sight, but he’s going to be in a mood I can promise you that. Doesn’t care for being set on fire, although I tell him and tell him how it helps with the fleas.”

I glanced around in case Harold was sneaking back to the campsite. In that moment, Svetlana vanished. I heard the van’s motor start. Vinegar woman’s jaw swung slack as she spun to see what was happening, and I sprinted to join Svetlana in the van.

We were a mile up the bumpy road before we realized we were not alone. A sleepy female voice from the back of the van inquired about dinner.

I looked at our fellow traveler. A young woman with olive skin and long dark hair, her makeup overdone and her eyes empty. She reminded me of someone from television. But unlike Kim Kardashian, this woman was chained up in the back of a seedy van. I asked her who she was. While Svetlana’s driving tested the structural integrity of the stolen vehicle, I listened to the other woman’s tale. She never told me her name, only that she was being punished (by Harold, I wondered?) because she refused to give up to him a tender young rodent she had captured. Now she was cursed to wear a magic thingamajig. She had tried to tell him she was sorry about not sharing, tried to make up for it by bribery. But he wouldn’t lift the curse. He didn’t even want the rodent anymore.

“Here,” she concluded, “do you want it?” She held out her hand, on which rested a snake’s head. The rest of the snake formed a spiral around her arm. The reptilian tongue flicked.

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