Beautiful, Fay.

Here's mine for this week:

One Way Out

She looked around at the floor that had taken forever last spring-days too nice to be cooped up all weekend. Nice little cocoon.

She could pretend that he had only gone out to get some more paint. Well, except for the blood and the unfinished wallpaper project with its pock-marked patches. Stay in the cocoon, a little bit drunk, and a little bit numb. Only stirring to open up another bottle of wine they’d planned on sharing someday. After the baby was born.

The baby. There was a definite time limit on this cocoon. And a lonely life-yet never alone- on the other side.

Wow. Power in that one.

My (probably) final on this challenge.

White Rabbit

I am falling like Alice into the darkness of improbability:

the problem
of course
is that the improbability is my history.

Down, and down.

Not really Alice; I don't ponder the eternal verities. I never ask
do cats eat bats?
but rather, where is this love I had
this quiet storm of passion
where did I leave myself, given to you too young, rejected, unreclaimed?

Soon I will land, but not in Wonderland
the bones of my soul will break
there will be no caterpillers, no hookahs, no rabbits, no mushrooms

Only memory
and the other side of this life.

Okay, it's after midnight in Ohio, so technically I missed posting this on Monday. Sorry -- I'm chagrined at my slacktastic ways.

In any case. Challenge #71 (the other side) is now closed.

Challenge #72 is dancing. Please try not to quote Abba.

(A drabble lifted from/rooted in a scene in the first Kinkaid Chronicles book, Rock & Roll Never Forgets; this snippet of song lyric was written by me, and is part of the novel)

'Heart Attack' (gig vignette)

come on back, come on back, daddy's waitin' for you at the sugar shack....

She's in green, the back cut low, masses of buttons. She's got new Jimmy Choos, and she's got me; just before we went onstage, she got one hand between my thighs, and staked a claim. After this long, she ought to know what's hers.

oh pretty mama, you're givin' me a heart attack...

The crowd's loving it. So am I, but what I'm loving more is my old lady, moving her hips, shaking her shoulders, dancing while she waits in the wings, invisible to everyone but me.

Mmmmmm, Deb, I'm loving it too.

Also, I just listened to John Kay's Heretics and Privateers.

Wow.

Also, I just listened to John Kay's Heretics and Privateers

Nice piano. Nuff said. (although, it's really earlier Kay with nice piano. When my book advance cheque gets here, I'm treating myself to the Lost Heritage cd.)

Question:

I need hooking up, please.

Does anyone out there know a good source for finding genuine samples of genuine mid sixteenth century journal writing by women?

I have snippets - Jane Grey, Elizabeth I's Armada speech - but those are formal and that's not what I'm looking for. The documents in question are supposed to be by a well-born Scotswoman, a sensible spinster, who ends up as Anne of Cleves' good friend, lady in waiting, and confidante. I need a chatty feel, but accurate in usage.

Help.

Deb, I did a google on women writing sixteenth century

This was the first of many urls

[link]

Mart, I did that first thing. The problem is, I don't need 16th century women's lit. I need letters. I need journals. In the same way that Aphra Benn, as much as I adore her, does me no good whatsoever.

Can't use poetry, or translations of Mary of Scotland's letters to her cousin Elizabeth from the French. It's light years from what I need, which is a specific tone.

And how do I make that URL shut up? It's drowning out my hard rock.

When I collected my mail from while I was out of town, I got two of the three contest results I'd been waiting for (the Molly, where I made the semis but fell a few points short of finaling, and the Maggie, which doesn't give out scores--all the judges are published authors who are supposed to give you a detailed critique, but the rankings are between them and the contest coordinator).

For one of my Maggie judges, "detailed critique" meant congratulating me on a great job, telling me she loved my story conflicts in my synopsis, and excising a stray comma or two and suggesting I stop using scene breaks when I switch POV. Which I suppose is fine if she doesn't think I need anything beyond those cosmetic changes, but they're supposed to give at least a page, and I wouldn't have minded an essay on why the story is wonderful as-is! The other loved my description and characterization, and said so at length, but said my synopsis needed work and didn't think my conflict was strong enough. I'm not sweating that one, because I've already rewritten the synopsis based on previous contest feedback, including describing the conflict a little better. But I've concluded some readers just aren't going to get the class conflict and there's nothing I can do about it except grit my teeth about how much more accurate and less melodramatic it is than making them from enemy families or using some stupid misunderstanding.

My Molly feedback was more detailed and varied. Three of my four judges thought I needed to tighten the pacing a bit, though they had different suggestions for how to do it. I lucked into a fellow Peninsular War buff and a French & Indian War reenactor, both of whom loved the military context and praised my research while raising minor research questions (in one case I just need to be more clear, in the other I think she's right for enlisted men's wives, while I'm right for officers' ladies, but it wouldn't hurt to confirm). Nice to know I'm pleasing the core of my target audience.

By and large, all six of them liked it, and most of them gave useful suggestions and feedback. I've become more philosophical about not finaling in these things. They're useful if you get good feedback. Finaling is gravy. I don't have to win a writing contest to be good enough to be published.

That said, I think I've gotten all the use I can get out of contesting with the WIP (for the first chapter, anyway--I may still enter a synopsis contest or one for a specific scene like a first kiss or sex scene). I'll enter the Golden Heart with it, since that's the one that really gets you somewhere, but I'll trust to my querying and pitching skills to get it in front of agents and editors.