Sometimes You Hear the Bullet

True to form, I've already started thinking of not going to that stupid reunion dinner. The other day it seemed like something I really should do, but now I'm having second thoughts (don't worry, I'll change my mind every other day for weeks to come) about it. I didn't like most of those people when I was going to school with them, so why would I want to go back there now?

Well, I am curious to see some of them and what's become of them all. And I'm curious also to see what a few of them look like, especially the cute ones I liked back then who wouldn't give me the time of day.

We'll see.

*****

I have a tremendously cute neighbor. She lives upstairs from me. She's a smallish girl, but she walks around on my ceiling like a bull elephant. She's cute in kind of a Jacquie-esque way, and has an amazing ass on her. I'm talking world class there, baby. I may have only encountered three in the world that would rank higher (Jacquie, Amy, Karen from Rugers). I've only encountered her in passing so far, and I know her name is Brittany. I also know she has a boyfriend (or boyfriends -- I'm not sure if I've seen the same dude around more than once or different dudes). I'd put her at about 20ish, probably 22. Even setting the dude thing aside, I think she's out of my league (I know I've dated out of my league before, but I usually have a way in with those cases). She's mainly around to drive me a little bit bananas.

*****

Speaking of bananas, word from Cooter is that he and Amy are not getting along at all and are fighting all the time. He's even saying he's about ready to kick her out, so now I have a baseline concern that I might come home from work one afternoon and find her sitting on my doorstep with a suitcase or two. And then what do I do? I won't send her away, I know that. But if she comes over with bad bad intentions, do I have the guts to go through with it knowing what hell it's going to cause? I don't know.

Over the past few weeks, since the crisis of conscience that was chronicled here, I've backed way off from the both of them and the whole situation. I've managed to put some distance between Amy and me, but if things go sour there she could still show up here.

I need to be careful.

*****

So I finished that first scene of Chapter 16, and it shows what a little polish and tune-up can do. It went from being a perfectly decent scene to one that's really good. Alyssa only has a small cameo in the scene, but she comes off very well in it. Emma, though, is amazing in this scene. Obviously, I've been working at building her up into a sympathetic character that the readers will root for, and she really shines in this scene. But the most remarkable improvement here has been in Kelly.

Now, you might think it's difficult writing a lead character that's based on myself, and even with all the artistic license going on, anyone who reads this book who knows me will know that I'm Kelly. You might think that makes writing the character a little tough, and you'd be correct. Finding his voice and how to play him was the hardest part in the earliest going. Since he's kind of the audience point of view character, I didn't want to make him into too much of a Cowboy, but I think in the earlier drafts I erred too far on the side of caution and made him too much of a schmuck. I've been fixing that all along during this rewrite in particular.

But in this scene here I really gave him back a lot of his balls. And yeah, he is something of a Cowboy here, too. When someone he cares a lot about is being threatened, that'll definitely push his buttons, and he can be very protective of said person, which is what we see here. I'm trying to dance around the details of this scene, but it's definitely something I'm proud of.

The next scene is a mess. It's a hosptial scene where I try to cover a whole mass of stuff, and it just seems way too crammed. I think I know how to begin to fix it, which would be to expand on it a little, and instead of using so much expositon to stop and play out some dialogue between a few key players. Even so, it's going to take a few days to work this scene out.

The two scenes after that are fairly straightforward, and not in need of much surgery.

But somewhere, perhaps between this chapter and the next, I believe I need to add something -- like maybe a small chapter of one scene that follows up on something seeded in the first scene (the Kelly, Emma, Alyssa scene). But here's where it gets tricky. There *is* something that needs to be followed up on somehow, but it's something that kinda has to happen outside of Kelly's knowledge. So for the first time in the book there might be a scene (and since it would have to be set apart from the other scenes, a chapter unto itself) that isn't a) from Kelly's perspective, or b) something from another character's perspective that's being told to Kelly. And I'm on the fence as to how to do this right now.

I have about a week, though, to figure that out.