I haven't met her yet. But I can hear Munch on the evils of karaoke as a "mechanized paean to narcissism...and you call that music? I've made better sounds than that while being the recipient of certain activities which modesty demands I not enumerate."

erika hasn't met up with Luther Mahoney, correct?

She hasn't met Luther.

Oh, man oh man oh man. When that happens....

LutherMahoneynFaith4EVAH!

I haven't. Late to the party girl, you know.

Dawnfic I am not crazy about is here.

What's funny is I set it in England, and apparently the person I wrote it for is English, which I did not know until five minutes ago.

At least she'll be a critical audience.

LJ, considering the restrictions, I thought it was very well done.

The link to the "master list" at the bottom doesn't go anywhere.

"Kay, I've got something to tell you, and it's quite disturbing...I don't know how I'm going to tell you without having a stiff...drink first."

Since we left the restaurant, he's had two moods, grim and grimmer.Makes Munchkin look like Mr. Rogers. Jesus. I poke around, and he deflects me. And he's smart, not some billy asshole, when he deflects me, I stay deflected. "Hey," I joke, " Are you sure that's how you wanted to finish that sentence? Cause we haven't even had dinner yet.

Some more weird silence. "You don't have to worry. The operation's no big deal."

"What operation?"

"To remove that gigantic pole from your ass. Talk to me, Wesley. What? You know what I picture is worse...you know it is."

"It can't possibly be worse than this," he says, miserably. "I shall need a great deal of alcohol to get this out."

" Is this some chivalry crap? Cause, Wesley, the three bullets they dug out of my heart didn't give a shit which bathroom I use. Tell me straight, huh?"

"You're not the only one with feelings, huh?"

"What did I tell you about that?"

"Quite right. Sorry." And he cleans a non-existent schmutz off his glasses.

"OK, Wes, have it your way. Around here, I'm just a civilian."

I think there's a lot of good there, though, Lyra. I mean, yeah, I can see the points where you threw up your hands and said "screw it," but I think you wrote a believable-to-spot-on Dawn. (I particularly liked the moment when she went to tickle Quentin.) And the Connor encounter worked fine.

Plus, it cracked me up that he has frog fear.

Thanks for the nice compliments!

The link to the "master list" at the bottom doesn't go anywhere.

Thanks, I fixed that. (<kicks stoopid HTML for doing what I typed instead of what I meant it to do>)

Plus, it cracked me up that he has frog fear.

Thanks. Though the line "frogs are evil..." came from my requestor. It was just funniest if Connor said it.

A nifty book I've discovered for writer's, from Writer's Digest's series of How-To and Writer's Guide books: How to Write Action Adventure Novels. It's really good for working out how to tell plot-heavy stories while still creating/using characters that have some depth to them. Also how to cover where you don't have the in depth knowledge of some abstruse technology, plus how to orchestrate the action.

The Writer's Digest books are generally very good. One of my favorites is Scene of the Crime, which is about gathering, handling, and evaluating evidence. It's written by a woman who worked crime scenes for a forensic lab in Atlanta, and it's full of anecdotes, such as the tale of the whole neighborhood knowing there was a corpse back behind a house one hot summer and the coroner being willing to declare the guy dead a block away.