Gud, Yentl really didn't occur to me, but I think the story sounds great, and I love the use of "Cog" as a name and as a metaphor.

Take your time, Barb, and think about it before you dive in again, especially if you've got a few extra days.

Got my song contest evaluation! It was not woeful, so I need not lie on the floor extraneously. Mid-range scores, with an 8 in imagery/poetics. And the specific breakdown was really helpful; I'm already working out how to incorporate the suggestions into the lyric I'm currently working on.

Liese, that's great news about the feedback!

Gud, I'm looking forward to reading Cog.

I spent so much time revising last week that I'm back feeling like new writing is a reach for me. This plus the pollen make for a determined, slightly foggy, determined thing.

Good luck Barb!

Need some gut reactions, sil vous plait. I'm playing with this scene and I'm trying to get the feel of it right and no, I'm not exactly what the feel is other than I'll know it when I get there. I know it reads a little disjointed and that's deliberate, which becomes clear within the first couple of sentences. Basically, I want to know if this character's weariness and desperation is coming through amidst the disjointedness.

##

The French Quarter August 2006

Gabriel clenched one end of the tourniquet between his teeth and pulled tight, rapidly opening and closing his left fist and slapping the fingers of his right hand along the crook of his elbow, pausing only to feel for the telltale rise of the vein. Praying for it to come up faster, sooner…

There… there—

He unclenched his jaw, the filled syringe he'd been holding between his teeth dropping into his palm. Quickly, he adjusted his grip and plunged the needle into the vein, his head dropping back against the weathered brick wall of the alley as the juice burned through his bloodstream and the familiar euphoria washed over him, ebbing and flowing in time with the rowdy strains of "Iko Iko" that drifted from some nearby club.

Look at my king all dressed in red Iko iko an nay

"I bet you five dollars he'll kill you dead," he sang along, in his head, he thought, until he heard the cheer and answering chant of "Jockomo feena nay!" from the group weaving through the light at the far end of the alley, headed toward the noise and unabashed rowdiness of Bourbon. The never ending party of the Quarter had returned, but tonight, they had a feel to them. Celebrating survival. Shooting a big, civic finger at that fucking storm. That mean-assed bitch had blown into town a year ago, done her damage, then left them scrabbling in her left-behind shit like the goddamned Lord of the Flies. But they were still here. Still here and not going anywhere. Not anytime soon, no sir.

Sweat trailed along his scalp and around his ear, cold and sinuous as a snake. Now why had he thought that? He fucking hated snakes. Blinking rapidly, he tried to dispel the image, rubbing his back against the rough bricks to get rid of the feeling of something dark slithering down his neck and along his arm, leaving a dank, clammy trail in its wake, like it'd just come sliding up from the bayou.

The syringe dropped from suddenly nerveless fingers to join the rest of the crap littering the narrow alley—little more than a dark corridor, really, between two ancient buildings, just wide enough to hold the shadows, perfect for a quickie, whether it was with someone—or something—you wouldn't normally be caught dead with out there, even in the hedonistic surroundings of the Quarter. Their remains lay underfoot, a mélange of cigarette butts and crushed Styrofoam cups from Daquiri's and wrappers and used condoms that tripped up the tourists stupid enough to try to use the alley as a shortcut. Why was he thinking of all this shit? Why was he remembering the sting of cold water against his face—the cold that was so alien to New Orleans in August—as he'd fought against the wind and rain, trying to convince folks to leave, that he'd drive them to the Dome, to the Convention Center, to anywhere that wasn't where the storm was trying to beat her way into their house… the House of the Rising Sun, the Crescent City, the Big Easy…

So easy… It had once been so easy. It needed to be easy again. Easy was good. Easy was their way of life after all; even when they were working hard, there was a welcome easiness about everything that made it home.

A screaming trumpet line wailed through the heavy, humid air that bathed him in the soothing warmth of home. So warm, even late, late at night, with the shadows and ghosts as his only company. Just like he liked it.

I don't have specific suggestions. I have one very general thought, but it might reflect differences between us as people rather than help you to get where you want to go. I'm going to spoiler font so you can skip it if there is a risk it could do harm.

It seems too long for the feel you are trying to give it. I know you are going for lush, but the particular forlorness I think you are going for needs to be expressed succinctly to give the right feel. I think stuff you are saying explicitly needs to be hinted at. But I could be reading where you want to go wrong.

TB, I see what you're saying and I really thought about going extremely spare with this scene-- and it could be that I'll go back at some point and pare it down, but for the moment, I think I'm going for the extreme hyper-awareness because of how it might play into where the rest of the scene is going.

Thanks for the thought though--since it hews with a possibility I'd considered, I'll definitely keep it in mind.

I would scale it back, if it were me. I'm not getting weariness so much as a kind of wildness, because his thoughts are all over the place, and there is so much description.

Actually, Amy, maybe wildness is a bit more what I'm going for. Told you I didn't know exactly what the tone of the scene was, exactly. ::grins::

I have found the most wonderful description of the detective character, it's in Raymond Chandler's 1950 essay, "The Simple Art of Murder", where you get the quote "I hold no particular brief for the detective story as the ideal escape. I merely say that all reading for pleasure is escape, whether it be Greek, mathematics, astronomy, Benedetto Croce, or The Diary of the Forgotten Man. To say otherwise is to be an intellectual snob, and a juvenile at the art of living."

In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. I do not care much about his private life; he is neither a eunuch nor a satyr; I think he might seduce a duchess and I am quite sure he would not spoil a virgin; if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is that in all things. He is a relatively poor man, or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character, or he would not know his job. He will take no man’s money dishonestly and no man’s insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness. The story is his adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in.

That's the kind of character I want to create and read.

wrod. Although "he" can sometimes be a she.