Ha. Girlfriend wants the Out. But of course, it doesn't exist.

I was actually mentally linking to my second favourite Shirley Jackson novel, "We Have Always Lived in the Castle."

Scary as shit, funny as hell, deeply twisted, and with the best "the townspeople hate us and we've had a mass murder in the family, so they sing this about us" ditty ever:

Merricat, said Constance, would you like a cup of tea?
No no no, said Merricat, you'll poison me.
Merricat, said Constance, would you like to go to sleep?
Down in the boneyard, ten feet deep?

I love Shirley Jackson.

I think I'm going to have to pick up some Shirley Jackson one of these days. Where would you recommend starting with her, Deb?

Photo #7.

Look at his face! Jaime was so proud of that car. He wanted nothing more than to own it. He said with that car, he could start his own taxicab company. What if it was only one car to start with? He worked four different jobs for two years so he could buy that car. He and his friend, Manolo, drove it 24 hours a day the first year. They bought a second car and hired two more drivers. When we got married, we drove it to Cancun for the honeymoon.

Someday, I wish he’d look at me that way.

Nice, Deb! I absolutely love We Have Always Lived in the Castle -- it might even be my favorite Jackson.

I can't decide which photo to do next.

Sail, that drabble is insanely haunting for me. My friend Dierdre and her ex-husband Hugh had a car that stole all his affection. He was bulding it from scratch; she named it Morag the Hag.

I'd recommend starting with the gold standard: Start with "The Haunting of Hill House", give yourself a week to digest just how tightly packed and terrifying it is, and then move on to "We Have Always Lived in the Castle". Her two non-fiction memoirs about her family, "Life Among the Savages" and "Raising Demons" are howlingly funny, as well as dark and amazing; her short stories are world-famous (two words: The Lottery), and her lesser-known novels, such as "Through the Wall" or "Come Along With Me", are corkers, one and all.

But start with the class of the act. Just because it has the most purely Jacksonian language and terseness.

I've read some of her short pieces but no long ones. But of course, I was speaking of the Simonverse, and the Out being the one magic thing a suspect can say that will make a detective forget the whole thing and let you go home. But by the time you need it, there isn't one.

Heh. I think the girl (or boy) speaking POV in that last drabble? Is an adolescent, adored his or her cousin, killed the faithless friend and knows quite well that they'll never be able to prove it.

Totally armoured; totally bored.

I skipped all the way to the end to tell you all about a short story contest being run by Simon and Schuster. You can only have been published up to twice before, and the story theme is "downtown girls"... seems a chicklit type of thing, 7,500 words or fewer.

[link]

Photo Two The bench is so hard, as cold as a tombstone.

Maritzka chirps at me like a baby bird. Every time she opens her mouth, she wants me to fill it—not with the crackers Mama brought, but with myself. Maritzka would swallow me whole if she could, hungry little wren. The boys are noisier, and their laughter shreds the peaceful afternoon into rags. Too many fingers, too many feet. Too loud. Too loud.

Mama is hopeful—she tugs at my sleeve like a child herself. For reassurance? Am I real? Soon, she says, I will come home to my children.

That hair salon story might fit in there, Deena. But I rarely see anything involving stories where I don't say "I think I have something for that," and history has not borne this out, so far. It does happen downtown, though, to women...but they aren't really Carrie Bradshaw-sassy women. They both struggle terribly, but yet still remain alive in the end. Both of those things may be against chick-lit bylaws.