It wanted the line breaks. 100 words, exactly, according to Word.

We walk into
the room with the too-cold air conditioning and the patterned carpet
and set down our baggage which
sits like elephants
or backpacks you didn’t even notice at first.
We pick our way through this field of
the bags the TSA warns you about, reasonably and incessantly,
and cringe when someone stumbles on one they don’t see
but we do.
Or we watch
as we talk
each other fold and unfold t-shirts from this baggage, dedicated to one another,
“And I happen to know that’s factually true”
“Fuck you, bitch”
“For the love of God,
talk to me”

Susan, insent with comments on that chapter from last week. Sorry I took so long on it.

I'm supposed to be writing the jacket copy for Matty Groves.

My creative so-called brain is definitively elsewhere....

Got another bite from an agent requesting my manuscript.

Keep fingers crossed....

Go, Allyson!

ita! I just wrote The Section, where the reader gets their first solid introduction to Domitra Calley, the bodyguard. You're very recognisable, physically, in this.

She gets to call my protagonist - based on the original love of my life - a dick.

I am soooooooooo happy.

Let me know if you want it on its own, or with the rest.

edit: oh, man, my daughter is of the funny. I'd said, A question: Scene is a medical clinic, funded and licensed to treat heroin addicts. They have drugs, are licensed to store them for the treatment of said addicts. What in hell is the proper term for the room where those drugs would be locked, stored, kept, and inventoried?

My daughter's response?

Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston's house.

What?

Got another bite from an agent requesting my manuscript.

Awesome. Crossing them now.

Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston's house.

Snerk.

Congrats, Allyson!

Deb -- all together would be best, for context.

ita, sending the entire thing, edited and updated to this point. It's a bit over 100 pages, just about 21K words. Dump any older version - the one I'm sending replaces them.

Music in Shadowland

"Talk to him."

I say nothing. He's been unconcious for a few hours; a mild heart episode, they said, but it happened during dialysis and somehow, some way, he's just decided to shut it all down for a bit. He's not dying - I'd know if he was. But he's not here, either.

"You should talk to him, Deborah. You never know what a person in this state will react to."

I say nothing. I lace my fingers through the long pianist's fingers, and bring my lips to his ear.

"Talk to him."

I begin to hum, his favourite riff.

Deb, that is absolutely beautiful.