Creative Critiques & More...

[Charisma69]

I like what I've read so far. I won't go into too much detail as my DSL connection keeps kicking off and on - this time it's not the phone jack.

The story is not one that I would generally read - I'm not much for stories taking place in the now, with the exception of Stephen King and Anne Rice (which generally has lots of historical content). Anyway getting past that I found the story to be engaging, though a little confusing at times for the same reasons Feigy mentioned. Understanding that Max is the Uncle helped out considerably with that aspect.

It would be nice to read more - preferably something from the beginning.

Also, I would really like to read Gin.

[tjaman]

I tried to excerpt it a couple different ways, but the fact remains that "Where Was I?" is all but impervious to excerpting. It's written in a woven, nonlinear format (flashing back, flashing forward) and in fact -- I noticed this particularly in Book 3 -- if you try to force it into a linear timeframe, important suspense elements get lost.

What I can do is pick out bits of it that I think are reasonably good writing samples and we can sample those, without worrying too much about what the characters are doing or how they got to where they got to.


Incidentally, anyone else got, y'know, stuff?

[tjaman]

“I have always loved this view.”

The words fell unbidden from my lips. I’d brought my girlfriend on our first overnight trip anywhere, and from my aunt’s front porch we looked out on the twilit city of Minot, North Dakota.

The view was beautiful. The harvest moon balanced precariously on the big “M” atop the Midwest Federal building, the sea of lights in the small bowl that contained the city made a rallying effort against the storm-washed sky, and that fat orange moon added to the surrealism of the moment.

For I was sure I’d never — never not once — ever seen this view before.

I know full well that when you fall in love nothing is the same. The ice cream tastes sweeter, the stars are brighter and the dogs are noisier — poets fall in love and the whole world is hopped up on crystal meth. Neurologists say a lover’s brain lights up all over the place while beholding its beloved, so there’s a reason why the otherwise mundane transcends apocalyptic visions of the new heaven and new earth and the Holy City of Jerusalem streaming from the sky every time one’s new girlfriend so much as enters the room.

But at that moment, I was truly certifiable. I knew it, and my face showed it. Fifty years too young for Alzheimer’s and I was in its throes. I’d never seen this view before, and frankly I — or, at least, that bit inside my brain that observes what’s going on — was impatiently tapping a metaphoric foot waiting for some kind of an explanation.

Jan, with the observing eye of an artist, sensed my confusion. “Paul?”

“I’ve ... Never mind. It’s beautiful. The view, I mean. Absolutely beautiful.”

The view, as I turned toward her, was indeed beautiful. Her dark coppery hair was picking up light from absolutely everywhere and her — what woman’s eyes are not beautiful? — jade green eyes were deep and mysterious and ...

She leaned in to kiss me. We were at the stage of confident kisses. When we first met — a couple months ago, now — I was determined to kiss like I imagined Fabio kissed on the covers of all of those romance novels, the woman he was kissing invariably wrenched in ecstatic desire. In actual fact what happened was I seemed to have removed a good portion of her makeup and actually left a sort of bruise, which steered me back toward — well, not cold and dispassionate, like how you’d kiss your grandmother, but some stage or two ahead of injury.

We’d been at the Bounce, a club in downtown Denver. The beat was hard, the dancing athletic and my kiss, at the moment, intense. Jan’s moment was at least as intense and as it passed — in proportion with her lip gloss — her kiss mingled passion with retribution.

Her boyfriend was at a table not too terribly far away, but the anger in her kiss was directed at the little 19-year-old blonde he was with. And at him. At both of them. Whatever. I was a reasonably reasonable or available person to get back at him, and whenever she needed to twist the knife, she’d lean over and laugh or kiss me or, as they passed, kiss me deeply and angrily and passionately and I was determined to kiss back.

Okay, I had no knowledge of his presence at the time. None. I thought this fabulous redhead was drawn in by my man-of-the-world je ne sais quoi, the kind that appreciated the irony of Robert Smith and Marilyn Manson and laughed with them while listening to Tracy Chapman. So deep, so aware, such an understanding soul. I was sure just by peering into my bottomless gray eyes she could reconstruct my entire bookshelf and CD collection and recognize as she did so just how complex and fascinating I indeed was.

And all the while, thinking: Oh, but of course, this poor little — how she laughs now! — this innocent flower, how she hardly can help herself but to find me irresistible. But how naturally she flies to my side and puts her arms around me, leans into me and gives me a mmph, mmnph, that’s, um, quite the kiss there. Shouldn’t we have asked about each other’s family before kissing this kiss? MmphX! And then later, kissing with her hands, now, absolutely the best kind, I thought, her hand moving down my shirt and between my — oh, man, definitely remember that one for later. But, um, shouldn’t I at least know her name? Oh what the hell, I’m kissing back ...

[tjaman]

Sudden pulling away, her jacket was on and she was grabbing her purse. “Thanks, hon,” she said, panting. “You’re sweet, but I gotta go.”

“Wait!” I said. “I can kiss better than that!”

During a lull between sets we had actually been having a sort of a conversation. A kind of one-sided conversation. Y’see, I’d broken up with Susan not too terribly long ago and I was determined to share my whole self, everything about me, if for no other reason than to spite Susan and the epitaph she assigned our relationship that read “emotionally unavailable.” I was going to be so available, I determined in the fetal-ball stage of our break up — the part where you identify, confess and systematically absolve yourself of all relationship sins. I was going to be a damn’ convenience store of emotional availability for the next woman who came along.

Anyway, I was so busy sharing, here, with Jan that the subtle — and, in hindsight, not terribly subtle, and, as he walked by, downright explicit if not actually kinda perverse — ways in which she was attempting a jealousy-inducing display of passionate nonchalance almost entirely for the benefit of her ex-boyfriend (which just coincidentally happened to benefit me) zoomed me like a jet does cattle.

“Wait!” I called again. “What’s your name?”

“Leela!” she yelled over her shoulder, and the music had started again.

Quick calculation: Conversation. She knew I’d just that week moved to town, that I was in seminary, that I was just starting up there after five years of soul-numbing P.R. I called it “soul-numbing” because my all-but-married-to-her girlfriend Karen terminated a pregnancy — one which would otherwise have interfered with her coordinating this huge multilevel launch of a new regional electronics superstore.

“It’s just the wrong time to be having a baby,” she said, in an extraordinarily decisive way — not to mention irretrievably after-the-fact.

So while my otherwise inconvenient son made himself useful providing stem cells for genetic research, Karen launched her national whatever-the-hell, and while it was a truly gala opening there is one electronics superstore which — quite without its ever knowing why — will never entice me to spend money there. I don’t care what kind of sale they’ve got on TVs.

I didn’t go into that. Oh hell, maybe I did. I don’t know. Life was kind of a fog after Karen. I was so upset with her that my next true-and-forever love, Susan, never had a prayer. And I’d so completely shut Susan out I was determined to let the next woman — any woman — in completely. And that’s probably what happened with Leela. I mean Jan.

Looks: Well, she was fabulous. Hell, any woman who fondles your crotch within two hours’ conversation is automatically fabulous. Me, well, my mirror has put up with a lot over the years, but I haven’t gone detectably gray if I keep my beard shaved. I’ve got a chin, if nothing else, and my nose isn’t nearly so bad as it could be. Despite running most days and doing a little rock climbing, I could probably lose ten pounds and never miss it, but who couldn’t?

And let’s face it, Susan was no one I wanted sitting there in my empty passenger seat on my way home.

12:30 Friday night and the Bounce was packed with beautiful people. Leela was finding it difficult to slip through the crowd, and then even with that head start and my slight disorientation, it didn’t take me five seconds to decide to pursue. Dropping a $20 on the bar as I passed, I caught glimpses of her lime-green “chase me” blazer moving a little ways ahead of me, a flash of copper looking outlandish in the ultraviolet, her purse catching on people as she passed. I caught up with her outside as she stared eyes watery in the tail-lights and the dust kicked up by the little black Chrysler LeBaron that shot forward out the driveway down the road.

[tjaman]

“Crap,” she breathed, her world vanished in a prick and a blonde and a puff of blue smoke.

“He might want to tune that engine up once in a while,” I said.

She jumped. “Oh God, you! Sorry about that. It’s just ...”

We walked to her car as she told me the blonde was one of the boyfriend’s tech school students and that she was essentially earning extra credit in a not-even-a-little-bit-embarrassed-about-it kind of way. She said she’d walked in on them, that she’d left and she’d gotten her own little place, and ... well, then, my role in the evening as it unfolded.

“First, never apologize for kissing like that,” I said, recognizing in an instant how I must have gone on and on about Karen, and even in that moment of recognition how little it mattered. In that moment Leela — Jan, dammit, Jan — was someone on whom to unburden a lonely, laden heart, and I, well, I was reasonably attractive, reasonably available eye-candy to fire God’s ninth commandment. Or sixth. Hell, what’s the practical difference between coveting and cheating anyway? Cheating’s just the action of a covetous heart.

“Look, this has been a weird night for both of us, to say the least,” I said, the music of the club still pounding in my ears, and a renewed sense that she couldn’t possibly have heard more than half of what I’d said in there — the laughing, the kiss and the programmed responses indeed directed at the boyfriend — the ex-boyfriend — rather than me. “Can I call you later and get together for coffee sometime?”

“Sounds real good,” she said, dropping a tamer, safer, more ... Midwestern kiss on my cheek, unlocking her car and grabbing a piece of paper. She scribbled out a number and ...

“Who’s Jan?” I asked.

“I am. Long story. Over coffee, you said?”

“Sounds real good,” I echoed. “Nice meeting you ...”

Squeal of tires. 12:50 a.m. Light traffic. Bitter chill. Free confessional. A certain ... lightness of being. And a phone number crumpled in my right hand.

Life was good.

[tjaman]

That's how "Where Was I?" starts. We discover later that Leela is the name Jan uses when she goes to clubs, so as to be less traceable if she doesn't want to be traced.

We also learn, later, that Paul is tormented by dreams -- as it turns out, repressed memories -- of his father's murder, 25 years in the past. He discovered the body when he was 3. Book 2 takes us back to 1975 in Minot when his aunt and uncle get married and his father gets offed, and he sees the skyline for the first and otherwise only time. It's got some twisted associations for him.

In Book 3, he rescues Jan from the guy who killed his dad lo these many years ago. She's kidnapped because he's putting the pieces together. I could include an excerpt from his meeting with the school shrink if anyone's interested.

[Charisma69]

Wow! All I can say is I am in awe of your writing talent and would so like to read more.

That part was really great, so great in fact that I think I'm still barely verbal.

That so needs to be published. Anyone who doesn't think so must be on crack.

[ReadyToBake]

Okay, I'm really hooked on Gin! Tell Us More!

[tjaman]

Whoa, headrush, y'all.

I like that this part of the board is members only. Even so, I'm kinda shy about putting like the whole play online at once. I think "Gin" can go in weekly installments -- posting one act at a time, as it were.

How about this? I'll post Act 2 on Wednesday, and leave Act 1 with a synopsis for newcomers.

Again, really, thanks guyz. * sniff * Youse're all so kind ...

[ReadyToBake]

You're welcome. And may I say how happy I am that someone strayed over from tvtome, where I still can't post. And it's still driving me crazy

[tjaman]

This may be terribly subversive, RTB, but we do miss you over there. Could you just create a new tvtome user profile?

[ReadyToBake]

I tried that by using one of my guest screennames, but I couldn't access anything that way, so maybe I'll try it under my regular screenname.

[ReadyToBake]

For some reason my javascript is disabled, I have no idea how to fix that, but wouldn't that prevent me from posting here also? I went to the main tvtome forum, found the ''how do I change my user profile '' thread, I clicked on a link in that thread tried to change it, and it says my javascript is disabled and has to be reset .

[tjaman]

Mine pops an error screen on each and every new window. It asks if I want to continue running javascripts on that page. I always say yes and thus far I've always been able to post. Weird.

[ReadyToBake]

Lucky you I don't even get that option, I click that reply button and nothin' happens