winslow

On the commute home, I realized I could just go to the bookstore. I didn't have anybody waiting at home. No obligations. I could make my own plans.

When I had cried at the train station, this wasn't what I imagined. Married at eighteen meant I went straight from the folks' house to the dorm to our apartment. I'd never lived independently, and it seemed terrifying.

Instead, it was liberating. I didn't love him any less, and when he came home, I wouldn't be any less glad. But I would be more confident, less reliant, stronger.

I took the next exit.

Liese, that's extremely pretty.

A moment to indulge my memories - which have been running fucking rampant recently - with another First Time drabble. Also autobiographical, although unlike the last one, the conversation isn't precise.

Reverie: When First We Met

Sunlight streaming through windows, splattering the piano, the antique rug. We're talking, lazy, idle.

"It was at Woodstock."

"That was the second time." He shakes his head at me. "Six months earlier."

I blink at him. "What? No way."

"At a bloke called Peter's apartment. Just after Christmas. Big posh place on the Upper West Side."

"But...but..." I'm stammering now. "Woodstock. You were a newlywed. I went and cried behind a stack of amps. I'd remember an earlier meeting, wouldn't I?"

"Apparently not." The brown eyes move away and, with a shock, I realise I've hurt him. "But I do."

Aww, wow.

That's wild, because the whole line of things could have perhaps been different. And he thought you remembered.

It floors me, that I don't remember. I remember the party, because I'd been to a booksigning with my much-older journalist sister that day, and Peter Beagle had signed my copy of The Silver Stallion, and then she took me to this party where there were all these music industry types - that's what Peter did, PR or some junk - but I don't remember meeting N there. He said he remembered meeting me just fine - his immediate reaction, according to him, was "well, now, here comes something different."

But I still don't remember him being there.

Drabble 2, ripped out of an unfinished essay:

I discovered the Bronze in the Spring of 2000, just when I hit the wall of monotony at work. A co-worker made the fantastic suggestion that I think about what I was worth, divide that by what they were paying me, and the difference would be the number of hours I could spend doing jack shit at my desk. This gave me 1.7 hours of slack-time, if I rounded up, and I did. This was more than one full day of work I spent chatting with other people about television shows, life, and arguing about the wisdom of using stranglation as a means to torture a vampire, since, you know, they don’t breathe. I chalked it up as “flex-time.”

Liese, I love, love, love your under the bed drabble.

OK - is there any reason at all you can't lace the book with some of these drabbles? Because that acts as a damned near perfect introduction to the section on the Bronze. And after all, the drabbling? Definitely part of fandom.

So it's appropriate, surely?

It pretty much is the intro to the Bronze. The Firefly drabble is a loose riff of the first paragraph of the Save Firefly story.

Liese, I am Susan on your drabble.

So, they work both as drabbles and as parts of the broader picture? Gorgeous, that is.

Thanks, all. Very kind of you.

Of course, I am mortified that I had to go back in and edit the typo in my favorite author's name! That's the trouble with cut & paste, you propagate your errors much easier that way.

Also, Allyson, I really like deb's idea of integrating shorter bits like the drabbles in your book. You could use them to give splashes of color and hints at things you can't go into further. I can definitely picture sidebar excerpts and pieces alongside your essays in that sort of a compilation. I think it would work well for the reader and for the flow of your whole entity.