Thanks everyone. I'm going to ponder.

Man, I don't even remember haircuts in 1974, except on male rockers.

Off to take daughter to airport (there aint enough coffee on earth), but I wanted to post a nice review from the Chicago Tribune. This was Dick Adler, their mystery and thriller reviewer:

A nice review, by Dick Adler (the Chicago Trib's reviwer of mysteries and thrillers):

The Famous Flower of Serving Men

By Deborah Grabien

Thomas Dunne/St. Martin's Minotaur, $22.95

The thing I like best about Deborah Grabien's interesting, beautifully researched and detailed books featuring house restorer and folk musician Ringan Laine and his life partner, theatrical producer Penny Wintercraft-Hawkes, is the way they make old British ballads so important a part of the story. As she did in "The Weaver and the Factory Maid," Grabien shows us how the songs crept into people's lives and souls, affecting them in ways that today's music, for all its variety and volume, just can't match.

Even the ghost-story aspect of the narrative--the presence of the spirit of a rather spiteful actress in the London theater Wintercraft-Hawkes has inherited and Laine is about to turn into a new home for her company--isn't as intrusive as it was in Grabien's first book. As Laine and Wintercraft-Hawkes try to solve the crime that is keeping the ghost's presence active, most readers will be so caught up in the wonderful sights and sounds that they won't be spooked.

Also, Bev, not sure about using the word "inspired" in there; Kristin has no way of knowing that most of them were inspired. Besides, it's really difficult to inspire a class full of teenagers; inspiration is a bolt from the blue. "Intrigued" might be a better word.

Oh, Liese. How powerful. How painful. I love that drabble.

One of the items on today's to-do list is sending out a thank-you to that agent who sent me the, ahem, rather negative rejection letter. Masochistic, perhaps, but I'm trying to get in the habit of sending thank-yous to anyone who takes the trouble to look at my stuff or otherwise do anything for me in the writing world, no matter how I feel about their feedback! Of course, this is a hard thanks to write, since I can't thank her for her encouraging feedback or say that I hope we can work together in the future or anything like that. How does this sound?

Dear Ms. Agent:

Thank you for taking the time to review the partial for my Regency historical, TITLE, and the synopsis for my work-in-progress, TITLE'S SEQUEL. I enjoyed meeting you at PLACE WE MET and hearing your perspective on the state of the industry. Thanks again, and best wishes for a wonderful holiday season.

Sincerely,

MY NAME

Sounds nice and formal and distant.

Liese:

Wrapping in words is a complex image that I adore. In the case of your drabble it's kind of chilling, and desperate. Inadequate (edit: I mean in the sense of communicating feelings of inadequacy and not your use of the image.)

The syntax of human interaction as a concept is fascinating. In Meatless Days by Sara Suleri, there is a part where the author describes her grandmothers bent back as making her a question mark, and that character is in many ways unreadable.

Your drabble called this to mind for me.

Cool. I'll run with it, then.

Sidenote to the thread in general: *GUSHINESS DISCLAIMER*(edit)

Thank you all for being so welcoming (again). I've really been at a sticky place since April with me and my writing... Becoming an editor seems to have stillted my natural writing groove. Even papers this year are like swimming the English channel. So, I did this thing where I avoided all things writing because I felt embarassed at not being able to commit anything to paper and also, kind of like a phony since people (in my personal/academic life) associate me so much with writing.

Also, the absense of a creative writing class in my schedule (I've taken them all) is hitting me hard. Learning discipline when struggling with intense feelings of inferiority is also hard. I don't know if any of you have been in this place...

Drabble time!

Challenge #33 (passage of time) is now closed. Thank you for playing. All contestants will receive lovely parting gifts.

Challenge #34 is a slight tweak on Deb's suggestion -- first impressions. Have at it!

Since y'all twisted my arm to go on another three-way with Failure and Rejection, I thought I'd share what I've written so far
Saturday Morning Cut By Erika Jahneke Cheryl’s life only makes sense when she cuts hair. Something doesn’t fit or is uneven, she can train it back or trim it, squirt it with water or product, something. You can’t exactly pull life back with a banana clip. Even the smell, which every associate stylist she’s ever had complains about, is one of her favorite things.Burned hair, perm solution, color with its sinus-opening ammonia...if she could snort it she would, because when she’s here, she makes things happen. She knows exactly how long a dye job lasts. Not like, say, a marriage. She picked up Pete’s wandering eye before he could admit to it himself...they’ve always been in a weird kind of synch. She thought it would save them, back when she was still scarred from watching her own parents flick mashed potatoes at each other in a fit of rage-beyond-words, but it’s hard to read your own husband’s mind and not find yourself. She has trouble adjusting to change. It takes her half a television season to identify the models-cum-district-attorneys on Law and Order, after all, and by the time she does, Jack McCoy has moved on. Maybe they’re all the same.

It’s not hard to get stuck in the past in this salon...salon being a gross overstatement. This is an old-school beauty shop, not one of those sybaritic temples to Paul Mitchell promising coconut-scented hairgasms. This place is still half Cheryl’s mom’s fifties modish pink Formica. Cheryl swore she’d never work in here, but she forgot to tell herself what she would do instead, so here she is, gamely attempting to resurrect the beehive for what one of her few college classes would’ve called her aging “client base.” Sigh.She can see it over her head in a balloon like in her kids’ comic books. She could do a lot of things; she goes to conventions, tries to keep up, admires short spiky styles, new colors. It’s all wasted. Her clients want the hair from when their mental clocks stopped, the last time they felt they understood, which around here taps out at about 1964 or something....the Goldwater years.
”Like, wow, what a bummer, man. A total bad scene.” she says and laughs at herself.
When she first started here, she used to do her own hair, sometimes a platinum that made her feel famous, but lately anything new she brings home makes Pete say “Why do you have to act like some fucking *kid,* Cheryl?” Because I’m not fucking dead, Pete. “I thought you’d like it.” Given that that girl you stare at is only about nineteen. She’s not that pretty, though. Her pores are huge and her makeup is too dark for her complexion. But she is a lot younger, probably doesn’t squint when she reads, if she reads.Cheryl wonders if she should refit the place, make it more modern, or if she did the wrong thing in fighting the city when they wanted to run the freeway through here. Mid afternoon is slow on weekends...the older ladies get started early and frantic moms looking to get kids haircuts prefer not to go downtown for them, in favor of a chain salon with a million chairs and toys in the waiting area. So she is surprised to find a woman she’s never seen before, leaning on crutches and looking in her window.” Hi,” Cheryl says, trying to look and not look both. “ I thought you were closed.” “Well, you know, it’s...practically.” She couldn’t defend this place to this woman.