Saturday, April 27, 2013

Weekend Writing Warrriors 4/28/13

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.

After last week’s excerpt, Razor and Sandy talk about a few things. Sandy repeats his offer of cash to help Razor start over in another town and repeats that it’s easy. Except that it’s not. Razor drags Sandy over to the only source of light in the room, burning branches inside a pair of old oil drums. He shows Sandy a small tattoo on his hand and explains:
“That’s for la vida loca, the whole gang thing. The ink’s forever, just like Mi Familia.” He pulled his shirt up to show the gang tat above his heart. “Born here, kill here, and be killed here — that’s all there is. If I split, can’t come back ’cause I get a bullet in my head.”

The Anglo stared at the tats, then looked him in the eyes. “Somebody once told me that I gave up on her and now she’s dead. I am not letting that happen again.”
I’d like to point out that the term la vida loca predates Ricky Martin by a few decades J
Mi Familia is the name of Razor's gang.

Join us at Weekend Writing Warriors. We're a pretty friendly bunch. We'd love to see what you're working on and we hope you have fun blog hopping all over the world reading bits of what we're working on. 

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

11 comments:

  1. I want to apologize to everybody for not visiting last week. I had a pile of stuff going on and just ran out of time. But I'll do better this week :-)

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  2. Don't exactly know where this is going, but it's got my attention. I love the lingo.

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    1. Thanks Michael. That's a really nice first comment of the day :D

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  3. I'm glad Sandy isn't giving up on his efforts to help Razor, but the entire gang life thing is so complicated, just as your character explains. Very well done snippet!

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    1. Thanks so much. This of course is just the beginning of Razor's struggles, and Sandy's facing some trouble as well.

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  4. Good for Sandy! I like that he isn't giving up.

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  5. This has a coplete ring of authenticity. I can just imagine these two gradually getting to know each other.

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    1. Cool :D That's exactly what I love to hear! Thanks Paula.

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  6. I just had to see what happening with Razor and Sandy. Really enjoying the story! Has a totally authentic ring to it. (Just saw somebody already said that - must be true then. ;-) ) Have a great week! :-)

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    1. But it means a lot to get that validation from more than one person! Back @ u Debbie :D

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