Weekend Writing Warriors 3/31/13

Happy Easter, everybody! Street Glass is my novel-in-progress. My tagline: Underprivileged 18-yr-old Latino leaves street gang and befriends white, over-privileged musicians.

While some of the plot is subject to change (draft two is a pretty early draft, after all) the basic elements will stay, as will the character "voices". So these excerpts will still give you a good idea of how the plot plays out and what the characters are like. The year is 1986, in Los Angeles, California.

All the previous excerpts are collected here.

Part I’m skipping: the teenager who handcuffed Sandy and forced him to his knees holds up a switchblade and pulls Sandy’s head back by the hair. Frozen in terror, Sandy simply holds his breath and squeezes his eyes shut—but nothing happens. Sandy dares to peer at his attacker, who he thinks of now as “the kid.”

The kid stood for a moment then let go of his hair. Still staring, he stepped back and crossed his arms.

Sandy’s heart pounded; he pulled against the cuffs. Now that his attacker had backed up, maybe he could talk his way out of this. “Listen, I can get you cash, lots of it . . . you know who I am?”

The kid laughed. “I know the girls faint over the blond músico with brown eyes—but you ain’t nothin’. You on your knees at my feet.”

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Weekend Writing Warriors 3/24/13

Street Glass is my novel-in-progress. My tagline: Underprivileged 18-yr-old Latino leaves street gang and befriends white, over-privileged musicians.

While some of the plot is subject to change (draft two is a pretty early draft, after all) the basic elements will stay, as will the character "voices". So these excerpts will still give you a good idea of how the plot plays out and what the characters are like. The year is 1986, in Los Angeles, California.

All the previous excerpts are collected here.

Last week, the guy who nabbed Sandy outside of an alley and cuffed his hands behind his back began to taunt him. He forced a terrified Sandy to his knees and said “Beg me not to kill you.” Sandy sputters something but doesn’t know if it’s what the thug wants. We pick up in Sandy’s POV.

Damn, his voice sounded weak.

The guy laughed. “You as scared as you sound?”

He sprang in front of Sandy and grabbed a fistful of Sandy’s t-shirt. He leaned in close to Sandy’s face. Curly dark hair seemed to fly everywhere but didn’t hide the hatred burning in his eyes.

“My God,” Sandy whispered. “You’re just a teenager.”

For more excerpts from a wide and wonderful variety of stories, visit Weekend Writing Warriors. We have fun blog hopping all over the world, and we hope you'll come along!

Thanks for visiting my blog today. Comments gratefully accepted :-D

I don't even like canned spam

Wouldn't you know. I left off word verification for comments because I want people to be able to easily add their thoughts here, but unfortunately that attracts spammers, so I'm going to turn that option on. Sorry everybody -- well I'm not extending apologies to spammers :D

Weekend Writing Warriors 3/17/13

Image by ic2margare/stock.xchng

Street Glass is my novel-in-progress. My tagline: Underprivileged 18-yr-old Latino leaves street gang and befriends white, over-privileged musicians.

While some of the plot is subject to change (draft two is a pretty early draft, after all) the basic elements will stay, as will the character "voices". So these excerpts will still give you a good idea of how the plot plays out and what the characters are like. The year is 1986, in Los Angeles, California.

All the previous excerpts are collected here.

Last week, Sandy got caught outside an alley by an unseen thug who grabs him from behind and holds a knife to his throat. I’m skipping the part where Sandy feels handcuffs locking around his wrists behind his back. He panics when unexpected things happen; he lets it slip that he has a Ferrari. He and the thug trade a couple of comments. Sandy, creeped out by being held captive by somebody he hasn’t even seen yet, sputters that he has a family and other people who need him. We pick up with the thug’s response:

“Yeah, you got everythin’, don’cha? Not now — now it’s my turn.”

Sandy’s legs were kicked from behind and his knees hit the ground; he gasped. God, please don’t let me die like this!

“Beg me not t’kill you, Anglo!”

          Sandy swallowed though his throat was dry. “Please don’t kill me . . . please, I want to live, please.” Was that desperate enough?

For more excerpts from a wide and wonderful variety of stories, visit Weekend Writing Warriors. We have fun blog hopping all over the world, and we hope you'll come along!

Thanks for visiting my blog today. Comments gratefully accepted :-D

A Polish American Easter -- ahh! :D

Image by patryk1/stock.xchng

Today's post is a little different. I usually talk about my novel-in-progress or something to do with the writing process. Today I want to talk a bit about tradition, although I'll still relate it to my writing because, well, everything in my world comes back to that.

The city I live in took in a huge number of Polish immigrants; my grandparents were among them. Polish Americans love Easter because of their strong Catholic belief. Poles (like a lot of Europeans) also loved their food, so when they established themselves in Buffalo, they built the Broadway Market. It's an old-world-style indoor market, established in 1888.

Current times are tough for the market. The surrounding neighborhoods aren't so nice anymore. The city overall has lost a lot of its population. But true to the heritage of tough Poles, the Market continues to reinvent itself. Fortunately, its Easter traditions are still going strong. I remember going there as a little girl with my mother. One time I briefly got separated from her and just remember looking around at the crowds of really tall people, wondering how in the world I was going to find Mom!

I pretty much took my ancestry for granted. Things tend to seem uninteresting when you grow up with them. When you're a kid, you don't necessarily want to be trotted over to your grandparents' house every few weeks so that all the adults could gather in the kitchen and gab away in Polish.

But Easter was always a different story! There was food, food, food, and Easter candy. Beautiful white lilies around the house. A sense that the weather had really, truly, finally broken or was about to. It really started a day or two before, when the family would gather to color the eggs. --and the table, each other, the floor, and whatever else got in the way of us kids! We always colored too many eggs and it was days before they were all eaten, but we had the time of our lives.

Easter Saturday, the whole neighborhood would turn up at church for the blessing of the baskets. This was also tons of fun: each family brought 1 or 2 baskets stuffed full of each food they were planning to have for Easter dinner. It was just a little bit of each food, but the baskets were stuffed because everybody had that much food. We even put salt and pepper into tiny bits of foil for the basket. Right on top, in a place of honor, was placed the butter lamb, symbol of the Lamb of God and of spring.

The whole church was permeated with the smell of hundreds of Easter baskets. You can imagine it wasn't easy to keep hands out of the baskets! The priest would recite a blessing of the food, then would walk down the aisles and fling holy water on the congregants! It always made us kids giggle to get splashed.

I had fun back then but didn't really think of anything my family did as continuing traditions that kept our common heritage alive. Now that so many members of my immediate and extended family have passed on, life is pretty different when any of the holidays roll around.

Getting involved with the main character of my novel -- a guy who at first thinks of his ethnicity as something that holds him back then learns to appreciate it -- got me thinking about my own heritage. This is the city my family settled in. This is where my roots are. There's a wealth of traditions based on life in Poland and adapted for a new continent. Cultural traditions are what keep communities thriving. They keep us connected to each other in a mosaic: the colors shift a little over time but the overall pattern is still there.

So somebody who doesn't exist helped give me a new and deeper understanding of my life. Kinda weird but neat. God bless the writers, they not only show us mirrors into our souls, they show us how to look into our past. Writing is an age-old tradition itself. Life really is a never-ending circle.

I regret not learning Polish when I had a lot of native speakers all around me. But I can visit the Market, the center of local Polish American life. I'm really looking forward to stopping over next weekend. It's a little different than it used to be, but there will still be lots and lots of food. I think, though, that I'll skip the Market's fifth annual Peep Eating Contest :p

Weekend Writing Warriors 3/10/13

Street Glass is my novel-in-progress. My tagline: Underprivileged 18-yr-old Latino leaves street gang and befriends white, over-privileged musicians.

While some of the plot is subject to change (draft two is a pretty early draft, after all) the basic elements will stay, as will the character "voices". So these excerpts will still give you a good idea of how the plot plays out and what the characters are like. The year is 1986, in Los Angeles, California.

All the previous excerpts are collected here.

Following on last week’s excerpt, Sandy has stormed out of the rehearsal he and his band were having. I’m skipping the description of him barreling down freeways in his Ferrari, going over the argument that made him leave rehearsal. Preoccupied with that, he swings off the freeway and drives several blocks before realizing he doesn’t know where he is. He decides to walk around to cool off, even though the area looks maybe not as nice as he’s used to. He parks at a restaurant and walks, eventually losing track of which way he’d come. We continue in Sandy’s POV:

Huh, lost somewhere in L.A. Maybe he could get a song out of that once he got home. Blown off course in some murky neighborhood . . . no, mixed imagery didn’t work.

That dark space up ahead looked like an alley entrance, but he hadn’t passed an alley before, at least he didn’t think so. He’d just hurry past.

Was that a sound behind him?

He gasped as his right arm was grabbed from behind and yanked up against his back. Something smooth, cold, and sharp pressed against his throat.

A rough male voice spoke in his ear. “Gotcha, Anglo.”

For more excerpts from a wide and wonderful variety of stories, visit Weekend Writing Warriors. We have fun blog hopping all over the world, and we hope you'll come along!

Thanks for visiting my blog today. Comments gratefully accepted :-D

Weekend Writing Warriors 3/03/13

Street Glass is my novel-in-progress. My tagline: Underprivileged 18-yr-old Latino leaves street gang and befriends white, over-privileged musicians.

While some of the plot is subject to change (draft two is a pretty early draft, after all) the basic elements will stay, as will the character "voices". So these excerpts will still give you a good idea of how the plot plays out and what the characters are like. The year is 1986, in Los Angeles, California.

All the previous excerpts are collected here.

There is swearing in today's snippet!
 
Following what happened last Sunday, I’ve skipped most of the argument the guys in the band get into. Suffice to say that Eric—guitarist, lead vocalist, and frontman—has accused Sandy and Lennie of always backing each other up because they’re best friends, and shove his opinions aside. Then Eric says the band owes him. For Sandy, drummer and co-founder of the band with Lennie, that’s just too much. We pick up with Sandy’s reaction, in his POV (this is the first time readers see references to Eric’s and Sandy’s families). 

“What shit! You came to us begging to get away from a family of religious fanatics who told you playing rock music would damn you to hell, so I think you should get off your high horse.”

Eric leaned closer to Sandy and growled, “At least nobody in my family cut my face in a drunken rage!”

Of all the fucking things to say. Sandy’s muscles tensed. “You do realize you’re talking to somebody who hits things for a living?”

“Somebody who can’t handle a drunken woman is no match for me.”

“You fucking asshole!” Sandy shouted.

For more excerpts from a wide and wonderful variety of stories, visit Weekend Writing Warriors. We have fun blog hopping all over the world, and we hope you'll come along!

Thanks for visiting my blog today. Comments gratefully accepted :-D