Weekend Writing Warriors 6/23/13

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.

I’m now referring to Razor as Neal, which is his given name. After last week’s excerpt, there’s a discussion about Sandy’s offer to set Neal up in training as a roadie with the rock band Sandy is part of. They also discuss living arrangements for Neal and one more very important detail that Neal’s not happy about but agrees to. The pair arrive at the enormous mansion Sandy and his band live in; Sandy explains that before the band hit it big, they couldn’t afford to live separately and the band’s sound grew out of the guys spending so much time together, so they kept the living arrangement. Sandy pulls his car into the huge garage, puts his arms on top of the steering wheel and drops his head onto them. He speaks first: 

“Thank you God, I promise to donate more to charities.”

Neal grimaced. “Shit, you believe that? God?”

Sandy turned his head to look Neal straight in the eyes and said, “Yeah I do, because there’s no other explanation for a lot of things. I thought Hispanics were strong believers.”

“Some Latinos are. Lupe’s always goin’ on about God an’ some of the cholos go to the church with their families. I only see el Diablo.”

“I guess I should have expected that. . . come on inside.”

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 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