Weekend Writing Warriors 6/2/13

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.

Part I’m skipping: Sandy’s intensely relieved to be driving his red Ferrari up the Harbor Freeway again instead of lying in some street in a rotten part of town. Still, he can’t help but think about the Terrible Thing that happened to Razor (who has said his real name is Neal) that night, what the future might be like for somebody who spent half his life in a street gang, and he thinks about certain people from his own past. Sandy says he thinks Neal has potential and adds,

“You can think on your feet and you’re not afraid to take risks, but it’s expecting too much to just let you go out on your own without anything to fall back on. You don’t have friends or family to back you up if times get tough. What do you think about learning skills you could take to any job, instead of a narrow skill like fixing cars?”

“I don’t get it, I almos’ slit your throat.”

Sandy grimaced at the memory. “Yeah, I know, but you didn’t. A few years ago, somebody told me I turned her away when she needed help. I can’t change the past but I can do something about the future.”

Tag along at Weekend Writing Warriors as we blog hop all over the world, reading fabulous snippets from works in progress, works just published and some just about to be. It's interesting to read comments and see who had the same impression as you and who read the snippet a different way. Personally, I not only love the kind things people say about my own story, but the 8 sentence limit forces me to think about what needs to be said and what doesn't. That's very valuable for a writer!

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