Saturday, July 13, 2013

Weekend Writing Warriors 7/14/13

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. Part I’m skipping: Neal meets the rest of Sandy’s band. It doesn’t go well when Sandy says he invited Neal to live in the band’s mansion—Neal’s scruffy and dirty, speaks slurred English with an accent, and has admitted he’s on the run from a street gang who are not afraid to kill. Things get pretty heated, in fact …
(Marie is Sandy’s sister)
Eric made the same come on! gesture with his hands that Coyote had, and growled “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Brian dashed over, pushed Eric back, and shouted “Cut it out!”

Fuck it, nothing would get settled if they couldn’t fight.

“What’s the problem here?” Lennie asked as he came back into the room.

“Sandy’s charity project thought  he was Bruce Lee,” Eric said.

If they were gonna be like that, there was just one answer . . . Neal yanked himself out of Sandy’s grasp and slipped out the switchblade from his back pocket. “Never mind.” He swiped the blade across his own throat.

Marie screamed.
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

16 comments:

  1. Wow, did NOT see that coming! You really raised the stakes in a moment, can't wait to find out more. Excellent excerpt!

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    1. lol! Thanks so much, Veronica. Yup, that move was designed to shock. Neal's not a timid person :-D

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  2. Agree with Veronica - totally shocked and surprised and definitely want to find out what happens next. Awesome way to "fool me". Great #8!!

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  3. Yikes! Great cliffhanger! Took me completely by surprise too. Can't wait to read what happens next.

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    1. Hi Sue Ann! Well, I guess you'll need to come back next week to find out ! ;-)

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  5. I'd scream too! Super hook. I want to know more about this.

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  6. Wow! Quite an interesting change from the previous excerpts. You've done a good job of making a cliffhanger here. Definitely checking back next week.

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    1. That's really nice to hear, thanks so much Beth.

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  7. A shocking cliffhanger indeed.

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  8. Yikes!!!! That's a WTF moment!

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  9. Cripes! What happens next? I hope you'll tell us next week!

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  10. Thanks for visiting, Stevie, Millie, and D.J.

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