Dude, I laughed. I'm Irish, it's what we do.(And it's holdover from my beat, in my previous life) But maybe bad example, as I still laugh about the retarded girl attempting suicide from jumping from a one-story building. Human condition, right there. Did I still feel sad? Fuck yes. My father figure was in the felons' section of the psych ward for fuck's sake. I needed something to laugh about. ETA, Wrod, Cindy, and drives me bugfuck about bad Kay!fic. Although I did say that ND also had a perfect clearance rate once. :)

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Anne, I agree on the annoyingness, and I've seen quite a few writing books advise against it--it's one of the Rules that actually does work 99.9% of the time, IMO.

Thanks for the help, y'all. I think I've got some idea of how to proceed now. Unfortunately, I think I may have made a bad POV choice that will involve extensive rewriting. Right now I've got the 24 hours after Sebastian's death pretty much all as Anna. I've got her talking with her cousin Alex, who's also an officer in the same regiment and is the one who brings her the news, I've got her dealing with the smotheringly sentimental and effusive colonel's wife, I've got her at the graveside, etc. And I think it's too much. It feels counterintuitive, since she's the one who had the Big Thing happen to her, but I think I need to spend that first evening in Jack's POV, introduce his world and various important secondary characters to my readers, and go back to Anna that next morning, opening with some version of what I wrote above. I think it'll improve the pacing, and not force the reader to wallow in Anna's guilt and confusion any more than is necessary to understand who she is and what she's going through. Plus, I need more Jack in the early chapters, just for balance--besides, he's a delight to write, and so far is a hit with beta readers.

Dammit. The one thing I miss about writing is first person is I never had to do this kind of rewrite. I've really got to start thinking my POV choices through better or it's going to take me twice as long as it should to finish my first draft.

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Once the panicked calls back and forth assured us that my sister in DC was safe on 9/11 (she was working at the World Bank), my mother said "It's like the Pentagon is the American hymen that got popped. Just look at it."

There was no way for me to explain to my shellshocked co-workers why I was laughing so hard.

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Damn, ita, it was. I...uh, never noticed though. Thanks.

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Heh. And I just got in trouble for thinking it'd be lame and cowardly to cancel everything from the rest of baseball season through the Salt Lake Olympics.

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ita just made me snort so hard it hurts.

Jeepers.

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I'd vote your ticket Susan...especially since David Simon killed my previous favorite candidate.

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But maybe bad example, as I still laugh about the retarded girl attempting suicide from jumping from a one-story building.

I feel your pain, erika. *lip bite* I broke up with a boy I never liked that much, when I was in (I think) the 10th grade. Right around that time, I got grounded, and had to miss a party at my friend's house. The jilted boy took a few too many aspirin, or said he did, and started putting on that he was suicidal (he was fine, and really and truly was only attentionidal). Boy-I'd-Always-loved heard about it, and said, "Why didn't he just jump out the first story window?" I laughed altogether too hard for some tastes, and got the glare of disapproval from my more tight-arsed friends.

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...suddenly recalling the "I'll go stick my head in a microwave" conversation.

Which was erika again, wasn't it? You crack-addled black-humorist, you.

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Yeah. Maybe it's the brain damage. Is it any wonder I cling to crime drama? Oh, and Rescue Me that makes 9/11 jokes all the time about how Tommy only found his cousin's...I think, pinky finger. That poor woman lived only to answer "What's wrong with your face?" hundreds of times for weeks. She only thought life sucked before...

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