Introduction to a writer

( Another city, another night full of questions. )

OOC: Melinda is an Non-Fandom Original Character. She'll be traveling everywhere, asking questions and writing stories. She's itching to RP and would love to interview other muses. Prompts will sometimes be answered with the stories she publishes.

Neglect

Is there someone in your life that you've been neglecting? Who is it, and what can you do to make it up to them?


For the second day in a row, Melinda chose not to answer her cell when caller ID showed a New York number. She knew who it was but couldn't bear to face it. Stanley was a very good guy and the world's best publisher. He would bend over backwards to get her what she needed to write. Oddly enough, he insisted on seeing something in return. Like words written on the page.

It wasn't that she didn't have them, she did. After days with no good stories, she'd gotten a terrific one and that had opened the floodgates. She'd sat in her hotel room for twelve straight hours and at the end she had four stories. They all needed polishing and a hard edit, but they were solid.

She didn't want to talk to him because she didn't want to go back. He hadn't seen her in almost six months and he always got twitchy when she was away. More than her parents, he worried about her when she was on the road. He'd keep worrying, keep calling, and if she avoided him for too long he come find her.

She logged into her e-mail and sent him the best of the stories along with a short note telling him she was fine. The next time he called she'd have to answer, but for now she could pretend all she had to care about was the next story.


238

Romance?

Mel sat surrounded by hookers. Some young, some old, some men with better legs than any of the women, they all shared one thing that she could not. They'd lost track of the number of sexual partner's they'd had. Listening to them swap stories about good lays and bad, she had to smile. If she told them how many partners she'd had, they'd laugh their collective asses off. ( She didn't even need all of one hand to count them. )

Character Profile #1

Taken from Melinda Duval's notebook.


They were young, healthy good looking men. Clear skin and bright eyes highlighted regular features. Both wore their hair in short dreadlocks pulled back from their faces. In the current mode, their clothes were oversized and elaborately colored. Belts cinched their shorts not over their waists but halfway down their hips, boxers as much a part of the ensemble as the crisply clean running shoes. One wore an elaborate death's head belt buckle seemingly carved from bone. The other wore a T-shirt graphically depicting a dead Rap performer.

They took up more room than their slender frames required. Not because they sprawled in the cheap plastic seats, although they did that, but because they carried in them so much life. All that vitality barely contained by the oppressive setting of a police station waiting room. No matter the reason for their presence, the young men radiated liveliness impossible to ignore.

Easy to dismiss them as arrogant or ignorant, they are life fighting to find its place.


Draft 1
166

War

( Si vis pacem, para bellum. If you want peace, prepare for war. ~ The Punisher )

191

Dream Vacations

I'll preface this by saying I travel a lot. All over the US and a bit of Europe. I don't TAKE vacations. I go home and sleep at my parents when I need a break. As such, these are things done in a day or two. Moments stolen from work.

10. Waking in my bed at home. That's home as in my parents'. The house I grew up in. For a second I'm fifteen again and all is right with the world. God, I was a lucky brat.

9. There is a spot of beach in Texas that I found by accident. It's near the end, almost to Mexico. All you can see is water and fishing boats. I spent a day there just watching it all go by.

8. I want a huge wad of someone else's cash and I want to go to one of the big European casinos. On the Rivera, Monaco, I don't care. I want to dress up like a Bond Girl, drink extravagant beverages, have men watch me wondering who I am, and not give a fig if I loose it all. Having a night of totally meaningless pleasure afterward with someone who reinforces that Bond Girl thing would be icing on the cake, but the 'someone else's money' thing is crucial.

7. I haven't been to a theme park since I was a kid and there are tons of new ones. I want to go to one. Maybe not a US one. Japanese maybe? Rides and cotton candy and trinkets that cost a fortune all required.

6. Having water shot at me by little boys on a side street in Florence. The look of terror that the American was going to eat them with priceless and I will never forget their faces. It kept me in a good mood for a while.

5. I want to go to a day spa. Doesn't have to be fancy, but I want the whole deal. Mud bath, massage, pedicure, everything. I want to walk out of there feeling like I've slept for a week. Then…I want to sleep for at least a day. People can wait to see my freshly painted toes.

4. When I meet someone new and think that maybe I'll want to talk to them for more than a few hours. When I find that spark of something in them that goes beyond work I feel like everything is lighter.

3. Someday I want my parents to travel with me. Someplace in Europe, I think. Someplace I've been a few times so I can show them around and then let them wander while I work. They deserve to get away and see the world. I'd like to share that with them.

2. The first day in a new city, someplace I've never been. Not the small towns, they pretty much all feel alike. Cities. Rome was amazing the first day. Las Vegas the first time I went. Even with referrals, you have to get the feel of the place and that's always fun.

1. The hour after I've sent in the latest draft of a book. That shining, miniscule moment when I know I'm done with something. Like it or not, happy with it or not, it's done and I can relax.



549

Live today, die tomorrow

Mel sat down at her computer, the glimmer of an idea floating in her mind and began to write.

( If tomorrow you die what is important to accomplish today? )

She closed the file with a sigh. As always, the first drafts felt rough and unsubtle. Still, she thought there was something there, something she could work with.


701

Masks

Dark eyes and sharp beaks. Deep red and pure black ellipses signaled emotion and intent. Carved feathers and fur were hints of the animal soul within. No other details were visible, limbs disguised by matte black cloth. When the creatures moved it was with the jerking and hopping of the jackdaw or the sly maneuverings of the fox. They circled each other crying out to each other and to the night, fighting to be heard over the chants of the tribe. Between them danced the maidens and the hunters, each begging a secret boon.

Frustration growing, desperation building, the two forms fought to reach through the dancers. The fox tried another route, going around the drummers at the back of the circle. She almost got through but at the last instant a drummer stood before her and pointed back to the center. The jackdaw sagged; the fox's defeat his own. As night dragged on, the drummers pounded all that much harder, directing the dance.

Finally the horizon brightened and the drumming slowed. The maidens exited the circle first, carrying with them the assumed blessing of the tribe's totems. Then the hunters, flush with the satisfaction of completing the dance. Finally the drumbeats ceased and one of the drummers stepped forward to kick the fire apart so it would fade.

Alone at last, exhausted beyond words by the passion of an entire people funneled through them, too tired even to notice the pain, they reached across the embers to finally clasp hands.


251

Graffiti

Every place she'd ever been held some form of it. From the ornate and complex signatures of New York and other big cities to the carvings in rocks that were thousands of years old, they were the same thing. "Look at me! I was here! I mattered, if only for a moment." The ultimate human cry of being. Making and raising children was a form of it. Leaving behind architecture or art or music was a form of it.

Mel watched another layer of paint being added to the futuristic image. Three young men and one woman had worked on it over the course of the night and now that morning had come they could get the smallest details. The woman worked now while the men stood look out. The man, boy really, closest to Mel had kept up a steady stream of stories about tags gone right or wrong. He talked about the painters he'd learned from and ones he couldn't stand. He'd been shushed a couple times, but nothing could keep him quiet long.

Taking notes became pointless fairly quickly, but Mel still collected detail after detail about his life. She thought he had no real idea how much of his life he revealed in his ramblings. Without asking she knew he had a little sister, his mom left them when she was still an infant, and their dad worked hard but wasn't there much. He was good in school, except for his art class where the teacher had no respect for the stylized nature of graffiti.

She also knew which girl he had a crush on and how he was going to tell his feelings. She knew he wanted to make his living as an artist but would probably go to work as a custodian or some other manual labor, just like his father. She knew that the girl still working on the wall was his best friend.

Mostly, she knew she liked him and somehow, some day, she'd put him a story. And she'd let him live. Maybe he'd even be the hero.

347

Scars

10. The gouge out of my right shin where I fell as a kid while jumping from one wall to another in our back yard. It went so deep they said it left a mark on the bone and it looks like an ugly crater. I hate wearing short skirts because of it.

9. Mom's cesarean scar. Bless her, she wears it like a badge of honor, but I always feel bad when I see it. I know childbirth is supposed to hurt, but I hate that I hurt her that badly.

8. Grampa Will's war wound. That's what he calls it, anyway. They were fighting in Korea at the time, but he was in Ohio in civilian clothes. He fell off a bar stool and cracked his head open.

7. The huge holes in the countryside that are all around where I grew up that show where the strip mining was. They'll heal, some day, but for now they look like a monster came and rolled up the world like lifting sod.

6. Those lingering doubts that maybe I'm just not good enough to do. The scar sits somewhere just under my left breast and it burns sometimes when I can't get something to work. It's imagined, but it's still there.

5. Auschwitz. Went once with the foolish idea I could use something I learned there. Read that word again and see what kind of fool that makes me.

4. The lines going down the arms of men and women way too young to be chased that way.

3. The spot on Mom's cat where for some reason the fur never grew back after he had an IV once. I have no idea why not or why it bugs me so much. It looks sad.

2. An empty page.

1. The one down the cheek of a man who did me the kindness of telling me what he really thought.

Telephone

( Getting home never really meant landing. )

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