Card Sharks

I dove headfirst into Chapter 9 this week, and I have to say this is probably the single most fun chapter to work on, and aside from Chapter 2, it's probably my favorite overall so far. It's a one scene chapter in which four of Alyssa's friends show up for a game of poker, Kelly sits in, and Emma is there in the periphery of the apartment. People in on the joke know that Alyssa's four friends here are based on four people from the old FMC crew circa 1998, and even though a lot of people from that era are in the book somewhere, I think these four were nailed especially well. I don't know if Guinevere remembers who they're based on from having read and discussed the chapter back in the day, but I'd be surprised if she can't pick out who two of them are right off the bat. A third one is probably really gettable, too. The fourth might not be one you'd think of right away, but I bet you'd recognize her as being that character if I pointed it out. Who knows? All four might be really obvious for all I know.

This chapter caused kind of a stir back when I first wrote it, because while I wasn't letting anyone but Guin and Krysten read the whole shebang, I let a lot of people read this particular chapter, including one of the people one of the characters is based on, and she thought it was *hilarious*. In fact, of the four, I think I nailed her the hardest, because she's a really easy person to get down on paper. She was even reading bits of it outloud in the kitchen. It got so far out there that I scaled back after this and kept subsequent chapters to my two regular readers. Still, that brief time in the spotlight was a lot of fun.

A lot of the reason I enjoy this chapter, aside from the interaction of those five characters (including Alyssa, who was pretty much writing herself by this point of the book), is Kelly's involvement in the game, because being thrown in the middle of all that girltalk with those personalities involved provided a lot of comical moments of embarassment for the poor boy, and that's fun to work with. There's also some really sneaky things that I've worked into the chapter, which might not stand out during the first read, but will be more significant when you know more. And there's a really nice moment with Emma that closes out the chapter, too, which actually justifies the whole card game.

There's a lot of good lines thrown around in the chapter, which I can say because I'm often a mark for my own writing when I'm working on a level like this, and Alyssa probably has my favorite of them all. It might not be one that stands out to someone reading, but I think it's something that's very nicely put in response to something Kelly says after being cross-examined by a couple of the other characters.

I should be done with this one tomorrow night. Then Chapter 10 is humongous, and that might take me a little while to get through. Since I'll be on X-Mas vacation pretty soon, I'm hoping to slam it down pretty hard.

I'll let you know how that goes.