If she won't do what you need her to do, then you'll have to rescind won't you? The agent probably thought she'd just get a chance to talk to people or be on a panel.

Degree Drabble (100 words, slipping in under the wire)

Sometimes it is easy, even preferable. Being alone, having my own space, making my own schedule. I slip into solitude, comfortable and natural. Wednesdays mean I have to share again, bend my time around someone else.

Other times, his absence is a growling ache in my chest, a heavy loneliness weighing down my routines. I see him in everything I am doing, hear him in everything I say. I wait for the buzz of my phone: a text message from another anonymous airport or a few words between shows.

How much do I miss him? It’s a matter of degree.

Langley, from Langlois? Could work.

Commiserations on the agent-booking. They are tricky suckers.

Tep, it's Monday. Challenge?

edit: oh, Kristin, that's lovely.

If she won't do what you need her to do, then you'll have to rescind won't you? The agent probably thought she'd just get a chance to talk to people or be on a panel.

Well, she knew she'd be spending all of Saturday in group appointments with conference attendees.

I'm feeling really stupid now for not bringing it up, the more so because she's pretty high on my personal target agent list. If I have to rescind, that'll mean taking her off and hoping she never mentions that airheaded, annoying Susan W. to any of her colleagues.

t bangs head against wall

Susan, I'm sorry about the agent woes.

Deb, thank you. It bubbled up this morning and needed to be written.

Just talked to the conference chair, and we've decided it'll be fine to let her not judge, since we have five categories in the contest and are planning for six editors and agents. Phew!

Yay!

And now she'll have you in her mind as someone reasonable and accommodating.

Susan, that's a very good way to get off the hook. One reason less to worry.

Sorry -- me so slow today.

New drabble topic! Challenge #41 (degrees) is now closed; thank you for playing. We have some lovely parting gifts for all the contestants.

Challenge #42 is fire. Just no Beavis & Butthead, please.

(Heh. Heh heh. Fire. Fire fire fire.)

Like the Song Says

The girl 's too young for this, at least if you believe her ID. She's sixteen. Legs that are legs all the way up, hair down to her ass. She's wearing vintage velvet, her grandmother's heirloom mink, coloured beads laced through individual strands of hair.

She's a rocker, a fox. Sweet sixteen, icy hot or, as one boyfriend says, only fourteen but she knows how to draw.

High heels, onstage, amps at her back, dancing the night away. The musicians are ten years her senior, making all that noise, making all those passes.

Nothing makes her happier than playing with fire.