Erika, this is a cliche, but still true: if you never try again, you will always be zero for five. Keep taking that risk. You inspire me.

erika, what's the problem? Happy to beta. You just go write it, please.

Kristin, I'm just out of the shower, but you bet, send along.

Thank you...I know you didn't mean that in a Tiny Tim sense, right?Part of it is an honest desire to express things about life and part of it is a big jolt of fuck-you to all of those people who've wanted me to give up "that writing thing" in favor of, well, I'm not sure...(Maybe that's why I haven't. No better offers. Or maybe because it's the writing thing or the minimum-security thing. )At least these people won't hate that my characters swear sometimes. But I'm still disappointed about "Partners".ETA: What the problem always is, Deb. "What if I clutch? And my dreams crash and burn."(Whoa...two Homicide refs in two posts..there might be something in this obsession thing, after all.)

Imprint

From an old photograph, with "Lausanne 1939" on the back, she stares up at me.

Christ, she's gorgeous. Blue-black curls, huge eyes, cheekbones, but more than that? She's loving it. Unlike me, she has beautiful arms; one hand's on an out-thrust hip, one perfect leg teases the photographer: probably my father.

She's an icon of arrogant sexuality. She looks more like the me I've known all these years, than the she I knew all those years.

I wonder what, in the weight of time, could have twisted this confident siren into the cold bitter woman I never wanted to know.

Deb, ouch. That drabble stings.

I'm putting the finishing touches on the revision. It will be insent shortly.

Looking at that picture of my mother is a genuine viscero-emotional disconnect. I look more like her than any of the other kids, and I can hardly stand to look at it. It terrifies me. What happened to her?

I'm here, and drying off before we head south, and will open as soon as it gets here.

Pictures of my mom and me at about age 12 could be the same person, in different clothes. As adults, the resemblance is definite, mind you, but not doppleganger.

erika, the change in her wasn't so much physical as it was emtionally and spiritually profound. It wasn't so much that the girl in the photograph was pretty, or vibrant, or the usual stuff; it was that she was someone else entirely. She was eyefucking the photographer like a hot date; the picture oozes pure sexuality. She flaunted it. It was fucking beautiful.

And I have no idea who that girl was. The woman I knew was cold, distant, shuttered, physically occasionally violent, and very unstable.

Deb, she could make lightbulbs shatter, couldn't she?

Deb, insent.