Tag: serial fiction

Small Cuts (12) Genevieve

~ Meg ~ 23 Comments

To find links to all parts of this story, please visit the Small Cuts Page. This is what’s happening with Genevieve:

Upon discovering that I was alone in the house, I had a moment of panic, if Oliver was gone and I had lost time, just how much time had I lost? Was it only the two hours I had originally thought or was it perhaps an entire day? Was it still Sunday, or was it a weekday and Oliver had left for work? I ran to the family room, turned on the television, and flipped the channel to CNN where I was sure the date and time would be displayed across the bottom of the screen.

Breaking News, another mass shooting had happened last night —this time at a Senior Prom in a suburb of St. Paul, Minnesota. Students and teachers dead. A teenage gunman with an assault weapon took his own life when the police arrived. I took note of the date —still Sunday— and turned the TV off. I couldn’t watch. This was exactly the kind of thing that reaffirmed my decision about having children. This world was becoming a living nightmare.

I returned to the kitchen and brewed another pot of coffee, waited while the French roast dripped into the carafe. Time, time. How did I lose nearly two hours? My skin tingled —was this how it felt when your atoms flew apart? No, no, stop… I was just cold. The air conditioning had kicked on at its preprogrammed time. But the time… Think. I must have fallen asleep on my feet. The sleepless night had caught up with me. It was the only rational explanation. The other option was too dreadful to conceive: that maybe I really was in some horrible dream.

I had tried to talk to Oliver about the idea recently. He had argued that people were happy, or at least had a measure of happiness, and such a thing wouldn’t be possible if we were all in some sort of nightmare realm. That it could only be a place of abject misery and fear for everyone existing there. I disagreed. I thought of it in more personal terms. After all, what could be worse for a miserable person than to be in the company of people who were happy? Especially if those people had seemingly worse circumstances than you did and still managed to find some joy in life. No, it had to be that these happy people were some sort of incarnations inhabiting my personal hell, placed there by an external malevolent force so that I would feel guilt by comparison.

“What does that make me?” Oliver had argued. “Some sort of evil figment of your imagination?”

I didn’t know how to answer that. The other dominant thought I’d been having was that I was slipping out of existence. If Oliver was a figment of my imagination, then my reality was even more fractured than I thought. I could not lose this anchor for my existence. Oliver’s wife. I was Oliver’s wife. Genevieve, Genevieve, Genevieve. Get ahold of yourself.

Shaking my head to clear it, I laughed nervously and told him to forget it. “I’m just philosophizing again.”

“Your philosophizing always leads you down a very dark path, Gen. I don’t like it,” he said gently. “Sometimes, you scare me.”

Sometimes I scare myself, I thought.

The coffee maker beeped and I poured a cup. Oliver, Oliver, where did you go this morning? Were things between us so bad that you didn’t feel the need to tell me? What if something happens to you? How would I know?

The phone. I could check the phone. We had that app that lets you find all the devices on your account. I set my coffee mug down, sloshing the contents, and ran back to the bedroom where I had left my phone. I swiped it open and found the app. Four blinking blue dots appeared: two phones, two iPads. Three of those dots were here at home, but the fourth was in Center City, off Rittenhouse Square, the parking garage of The Park Hotel. Why? Why? Was Ollie meeting someone for brunch? Did I forget some appointment he had with a client? Or was it with a friend? What friend? We rarely did anything with anybody besides James and Elaine. Was it James? My friend James. James who was going to resurrect me. I should call James. See what he and Elaine were doing. Elaine. Elaine. Elaine. No. No, no, no, no…. it couldn’t be…

I tore off my pajamas and grabbed a shirt and jeans from my closet. Then stuffing my phone in my purse, I ran for the garage. Keys, keys. Back into the house for keys. Hit the garage door opener. Breathe. Breathe. Ignition. Reverse.

GPS. I needed the fastest way to The Park Hotel. I searched the address at the end of the driveway and started the turn by turn directions. “In 50 yards, turn left.”

Turn left. Leaving the development. Out to the boulevard, on to the highway…“merge onto 676 East, The Vine street Expressway…”

Horns, horns, shrieking tires, the crunch of metal on metal. The thump and whoosh of the airbags exploding. Shattering of glass. Screaming, someone was screaming. Then silence.

Header image: Polka Dots ~ Francesca Woodman

Thoughts On Writing A Series

~ Meg ~ 48 Comments

I was having a conversation with my friend Tom, a new writer still working on the first draft of his novel. He emailed me to say that he was beginning to get some ideas for a new story. He asked me what I thought about writing a sequel to his first novel and extending the tale of his current characters. Since I’m a series writer, my first instinct is to say, go for it. But with some caveats. Of course it gave me the idea for this post.

Writing a series is really a lot of fun. A series writer creates the world they would like to live in. There is a great deal of satisfaction in making your fictional universe just the way you want it. However, there is also a great deal of meticulous planning and record keeping that must be done to make sure that your world remains consistent throughout all the stories set within it. Additionally, if you have recurring characters, they must also remain inside the parameters you’ve already written for them. For example, they can’t be the town sheriff in book one and the town dentist in book two. Or ten years older in the sequel if only six months have passed since the original story.

One of the ways I keep record of the details of the fictional world I’ve created is to have a database of information on each character, a map of my town and in some cases a drawing of the layout of a house or other building. Each character has a detailed biography including age, appearance, occupation, relationship to other characters and personality traits that may impact the way I write them. I will add to that biography after each new story so that the experiences they have had along the way are included for future reference.

Writing a series can mean following the life and times of one recurring character, as in a detective series like Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch novels, Kathy Reich’s Temperance Brennan series (Bones) or Jonathan Kellerman’s Alex Delaware novels.

Another way is to have each new story focus on a different character from a collection of which we’ve already been introduced. Nora Roberts does this with her trilogies and quadrologies. Three or four women (or men) will be introduced in book one, but the story will focus on the romance of only one of them. The other women (or men) will be well-developed secondary characters that return in the subsequent story, one of them as the main character, and so on. This is the format I followed for The Bucks County Novels. There is a risk in this approach, however….

Each of our characters deserves a unique voice. It is very difficult to write a story set in the same locale, perhaps within a circle of friends and not have the personalities of all your male and female characters blend together. My real world friends who have read my book Three Empty Frames say they hear my voice narrating the part of my main character, Jen. I had to try really, really hard not to sound exactly like that for the other women I wrote for the subsequent books, but I’m sure there are overlaps even so. Our own writing style makes that task difficult. We always sound like ourselves. That is why, in writing this sort of series, it’s even more important to have the detailed biographies on each one of our characters; to help focus on their unique attributes and distinguish them from the rest of the cast.

I am not sure if I will write another book in The Bucks County Series. At the moment, my focus has turned to a couple of stand-alone ideas. Perhaps when they’re brought to completion, I’ll go back to Doylestown for another series story. There are some fun characters in my fictional world who could have an adventure of their own.

Wishing you happy writing and productive editing!

Featured illustration my own.

Small Cuts (11) Oliver

~ Meg ~ 22 Comments

To find links to all parts of this story, please visit the Small Cuts Page. Here is what happens to Oliver:

What a weird morning. I rolled over to find Gen’s side of the bed empty and cold. I never heard her get up but the smell of coffee wafting from the kitchen meant she must have been up for a while. I threw off the covers and padded barefoot downstairs. The open concept layout of the house gave me a view of the kitchen from the bottom of the stairs. Gen stood at the sink, staring out the window above it, at something across the street. I walked as far the center island and stopped, waiting for her to turn around. She continued to stare straight ahead.  Finally, I softly cleared my throat. “Gen,” I said. No response. Nothing.

I tried again. “Hey, Gen. What are you looking at?”

Still she didn’t answer. Well… I guess last night’s good humor was gone and she wasn’t speaking to me. Whatever. I poured a mug of coffee from the full pot —Gen hadn’t taken one yet— and brought it back upstairs with me. If she was in a mood, there was no sense in sticking around. After showering, shaving and getting dressed, I returned to the kitchen and set my empty mug in the dishwasher. Gen was still at the window.

“Gen, what the hell are you staring at?” I asked, more annoyed than curious. Without breaking her gaze, she murmured something I couldn’t make out. “What did you say?” I asked. An almost imperceptible shrug of the shoulders was her only response. I moved to stand behind her, lightly resting a hand on her arm. She flinched slightly and I let it drop. So that was how it was going to be. I followed her line of sight and saw a trio of vultures circling in the field behind the house across the street. “Afraid they’re waiting for you?” I joked. Even this didn’t elicit a response. With a heavy sigh, I turned away, grabbed my keys from the entryway table and went to my car.

It was too early to meet Elaine so I drove around for a while. Without thinking, I passed James’ and Elaine’s house just in time to see James backing out of his driveway. I sped up and turned the corner at end of the block, hoping he didn’t recognize the car. I needed to get a grip. This was a stupid and totally unnecessary risk. As I left the neighborhood, I had already started formulating excuses for why I might have been on the street. I couldn’t think of a single one that made any sense.

After leaving the car in the hotel’s parking garage, I still had time to spare so I walked around the park from which the hotel took its name. My nerves were rattled and I knew no matter what I did, they wouldn’t settle until I saw Elaine. I had rehearsed what I was going to say to her over and over again. I only hoped that first, this wouldn’t be a complete shock to her —it couldn’t be, right?— and second that she felt the same way. The question was what the hell did we do next? 

I circled back to the hotel and entered through the front doors. The lobby had several seating areas with a view of the elevators. I sat on one of the sofas and tried to read the copy of today’s paper left on the cocktail table. I couldn’t concentrate and I couldn’t sit still. I slowly paced the hotel lobby, peeked in the restaurant and wound my way back to my original position. Lights and sirens drew my attention to the front window and I missed seeing Elaine get off the elevator. She cleared her throat behind me and said, “Hey.” I turned to find her standing just a few feet away. She looked gorgeous. I just wanted to take her in my arms and never let go. 

“I’m so happy to see you,” I said, moving in for a hug. But before I could reach her, she stepped back, a look of panic in her eyes. My heart squeezed in my chest as I tried not to let my smile falter. I awkwardly dropped my hands to my sides. “Everything ok?” I asked, dreading the answer.

My casual retreat seemed to calm her somewhat. Nodding quickly, she managed a nervous smile. “Yes, yes. Fine. I’m fine.”

I gestured toward the restaurant entrance. “Shall we?”

She nodded again so I offered to let her lead the way. I nearly collided with her when she abruptly stopped. Turning to face me, she said, “Ollie, I’m not really hungry.”

I was so close, not touching her was impossible. I held her by the shoulders and looked deep into her eyes. “What do you want to do?”

“Oh, Oliver,” she said as a tear trailed down her cheek. And I couldn’t help myself, I led her to a quiet corner of the lobby, gathered her into my arms and held her as she quietly cried.